Exclusive: For five months, there was a daily drumbeat on Russia-gate, the sprawling conspiracy theory that Russia had somehow put Donald Trump in the White House, but suddenly the “scandal” disappeared, notes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
Democrats, liberals and some progressives might be feeling a little perplexed over what has happened to Russia-gate, the story that pounded Donald Trump every day since his election last November – until April 4, that is.
Green Party leader Jill Stein and retired Lt. General Michael Flynn attending a dinner marking the RT network’s tenth anniversary in Moscow, December 2015, sitting at the same table as Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On April 4, Trump fully capitulated to the neoconservative bash-Russia narrative amid dubious claims about a chemical attack in Syria. On April 6, Trump fired off 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase; he also restored the neocon demand for “regime change” in Syria; and he alleged that Russia was possibly complicit in the supposed chemical attack.
Since Trump took those actions – in accordance with the neocon desires for more “regime change” in the Middle East and a costly New Cold War with Russia – Russia-gate has almost vanished from the news.
I did find a little story in the lower right-hand corner of page A12 of Saturday’s New York Times about a still-eager Democratic congressman, Mike Quigley of Illinois, who spent a couple of days in Cyprus which attracted his interest because it is a known site for Russian money-laundering, but he seemed to leave more baffled than when he arrived.
“The more I learn, the more complex, layered and textured I see the Russia issue is – and that reinforces the need for professional full-time investigators,” Quigley said, suggesting that the investigation’s failure to strike oil is not that the holes are dry but that he needs better drill bits.
Yet, given all the hype and hullabaloo over Russia-gate, the folks who were led to believe that the vague and amorphous allegations were “bigger than Watergate” might now be feeling a little used. It appears they may have been sucked into a conspiracy frenzy in which the Establishment exploited their enthusiasm over the “scandal” in a clever maneuver to bludgeon an out-of-step new President back into line.
If that’s indeed the case, perhaps the most significant success of the Russia-gate ploy was the ouster of Trump’s original National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who was seen as a key proponent of a New Détente with Russia, and his replacement by General H.R. McMaster, a protégé of neocon favorite, retired Gen. David Petraeus.
McMaster was viewed as the key player in arranging the April 6 missile strike on Syria and in preparing a questionable “intelligence assessment” on April 11 to justify the rush to judgment. Although McMaster’s four-page white paper has been accepted as gospel by the mainstream U.S. news media, its many weaknesses have been noted by actual experts, such as MIT national security and technology professor Theodore Postol.
How Washington Works
But the way Official Washington works is that Trump was made to look weak when he argued for a more cooperative and peaceful relationship with Russia. Hillary Clinton dubbed him Vladimir Putin’s “puppet” and “Saturday Night Live” portrayed Trump as in thrall to a bare-chested Putin. More significantly, front-page stories every morning and cable news segments every night created the impression of a compromised U.S. President in Putin’s pocket.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)
Conversely, Trump was made to look strong when he fired off missiles against a Syrian airbase and talked tough about Russian guilt. Neocon commentator Charles Krauthammer praised Trump’s shift as demonstrating that “America is back.”
Trump further enhanced his image for toughness when his military dropped the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb (MOAB), nicknamed the “mother of all bombs,” on some caves in Afghanistan. While the number of casualties inflicted by the blast was unclear, Trump benefited from the admiring TV and op-ed commentaries about him finally acting “presidential.”
But the real test of political courage is to go against the grain in a way that may be unpopular in the short term but is in the best interests of the United States and the world community in the longer term.
In that sense, Trump seeking peaceful cooperation with Russia – even amid the intense anti-Russian propaganda of the past several years – required actual courage, while launching missiles and dropping bombs might win praise but actually make the U.S. position in the world weaker.
Trump, however, saw his fledgling presidency crumbling under the daily barrage of Russia-gate, even though there was no evidence that his campaign colluded with Russia to interfere with the U.S. election and there wasn’t even clear evidence that Russia was behind the disclosure of Democratic emails, via WikiLeaks, during the campaign.
Still, the combined assault from the Democrats, the neocons and the mainstream media forced Trump to surrender his campaign goal of achieving a more positive relationship with Russia and greater big-power collaboration in the fight against terrorism.
For Trump, the incessant chatter about Russia-gate was like a dripping water torture. The thin-skinned Trump fumed at his staff and twittered messages aimed at changing the narrative, such as accusing President Obama of “wiretapping” Trump Tower. But nothing worked.
However, once Trump waved the white flag by placing his foreign policy under the preferred banner of the neoconservatives, the Russia-gate pressure stopped. The op-ed pages suddenly were hailing his “decisiveness.” If you were a neocon, you might say about Russia-gate: Mission accomplished!
Russia-gate’s Achievements
Besides whipping Trump into becoming a more compliant politician, Russia-gate could claim some other notable achievements. For instance, it spared the national Democrats from having to confront their own failures in Campaign 2016 by diverting responsibility for the calamity of Trump’s election.
The photograph released by the White House of President Trump meeting with his advisers at his estate in Mar-a-Lago on April 6, 2017, regarding his decision to launch missile strikes against Syria.
Instead of Democratic leaders taking responsibility for picking a dreadful candidate, ignoring the nation’s anti-establishment mood, and failing to offer any kind of inspiring message, the national Democrats could palm off the blame on “Russia! Russia! Russia!”
Thus, rather than looking in the mirror and trying to figure out how to correct their deep-seated problems, the national Democrats could instead focus on a quixotic tilting at Trump’s impeachment.
Many on the Left joined in this fantasy because they have been so long without a Movement that the huge post-inaugural “pussy hat” marches were a temptation that they couldn’t resist. Russia-gate became the fuel to keep the “Movement” bandwagon rolling. #Resistance!
It didn’t matter that the “scandal” – the belief that Russia somehow conspired with Trump to rig the U.S. presidential election – amounted to a bunch of informational dots that didn’t connect.
Russia-gate also taught the American “left” to learn to love McCarthyism since “proof” of guilt pretty much amounted to having had contact with a Russian — and anyone who questioned the dubious factual basis of the “scandal” was dismissed as a “Russian propagandist” or a “Moscow stooge” or a purveyor of “fake news.”
Another Russia-gate winner was the mainstream news media which got a lot of mileage – and loads of new subscription money – by pushing the convoluted conspiracy. The New York Times positioned itself as the great protector of “truth” and The Washington Post adopted a melodramatic new slogan: “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”
On Thanksgiving Day, the Post ran a front-page article touting an anonymous Internet group called PropOrNot that identified some 200 Internet news sites, including Consortiumnews.com and other major sources of independent journalism, as guilty of “Russian propaganda.” Facts weren’t needed; the accused had no chance for rebuttal; the accusers even got to hide in the shadows; the smear was the thing.
The Washington Post building in downtown Washington, D.C. (Photo credit: Washington Post)
The Post and the Times also conflated news outlets that dared to express skepticism toward claims from the U.S. State Department with some entrepreneurial sites that trafficked in intentionally made-up stories or “fake news” to make money.
To the Post and Times, there appeared to be no difference between questioning the official U.S. narrative on, say, the Ukraine crisis and knowingly fabricating pretend news articles to get lots of clicks. Behind the smokescreen of Russia-gate, the mainstream U.S. news media took the position that there was only one side to a story, what Official Washington chose to believe.
While it’s likely that there will be some revival of Russia-gate to avoid the appearance of a completely manufactured scandal, the conspiracy theory’s more significant near-term consequence could be that it has taught Donald Trump a dangerous lesson.
If he finds himself in a tight spot, the way out is to start bombing some “enemy” halfway around the world. The next time, however, the target might not be so willing to turn the other cheek. If, say, Trump launches a preemptive strike against North Korea, the result could be a retaliatory nuclear attack against South Korea or Japan.
Or, if the neocons push ahead with their ultimate “regime change” strategy of staging a “color revolution” in Moscow to overthrow Putin, the outcome might be – not the pliable new leader that the neocons would want – but an unstable Russian nationalist who might see a nuclear attack on the U.S. as the only way to protect the honor of Mother Russia.
For all his faults, Trump did offer a more temperate approach toward U.S.-Russian relations, which also could have tamped down spending for nuclear and other strategic weapons and freed up some of that money for infrastructure and other needs at home. But that was before Russia-gate.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
It all reads convincingly . And despairingly . How will this end ? My guess is the steady degradation of life in the USA will result in steadily worsening social unrest which will result in more of the same – foreign aggression as both a distraction for the populace as well as a profitable matter for the leadership . Hell for even more people than at present . The best that can be hoped for is a sudden collapse of USA power – which would probably mean economic misery for the world with it – but even then that might be an improvement on the perpetual war future .
Terrific comment. I rarely bother with news commentary articles because most are so predictable and vapid. This one is worth reading. Thank you!
There was enough evidence of Russian collusion to justify probable cause (of espionage / terrorism) for the issuance of a FISA warrant to monitor Trump adviser Carter Page. That happened last year.
Or, it could be, that congress is on spring break and hearings and therefore headlines will resume in another week. I don’t think this is just going away – Dems will keep blowing life into it until proven true or false. The appearance of the taming of the president by Neo-cons is real, but Trump could simply be borrowing a Bush-esque distraction technique of bombing on Friday before spring break to change the story for a while, until hearings resume, however. I will not disagree that Neo-cons have reasserted their stance by ousting Flynn and Bannon, but these guys just needed to go away; Bannon was especially dangerous to have near the levers of power, no matter what side you are on.
I noticed the lack of russia-gate stories lately also, but I still think this has mostly to do with the lack of Schiff, Burr and Warner being out of town and out of the limelight. Wait ’til next week, I guess.
what a sad, trivial little bit of nonsense that focuses on peripherals rather than considers the serousness of the Russian interference in the US election.
Same old shit, but this time it’s someone else with the byline. Quit the wha wha and shifting of blame. Trumps actions are on him, not those who aim to find out what is financial/political motivations are or have been.. The fact it’s not in the news means little. The fact that it is ongoing IS important.
The last paragraph is so laughable and simplistic. Really? There is no evidence this guy would do anything other than support tyranny whereever he can find it and as long as it increases his bottom line. Show me the evidence other than his stump speeches which are all over the place.
Yea, your opinion is no more valid than mine…you’re the journalist. Do better than just fill up space with the same shit that’s been squawked over and over again here at CN.
I don’t think whatever you learned in the primary school playground maps too well onto the nuclear confrontation the so-called adults are trying to sort out – although one wonders if Trump ever graduated from second grade.
The problem Mr Parry poses at the end of the article is whether it is better to capitulate to nuclear blackmailers, for fear of something worse, or stand up to them. We all learned in the primary school playground that giving in to a bully just encourages him to go further. The lesson of history is that capitulating to people such as Putin and Kim just encourages them to demand more. (Hitler is the example closest to us in time and best known in the US but is far from being the only example.) The big question is whether Kim’s or Putin’s military forces will fight. Putin’s conduct both in Ukraine and in Syria suggests that he doesn’t believe his army will fight. In Kim’s case, why would soldiers fight for a regime that is starving their families? It was precisely such a situation that set off the Russian Revolution. In both his and Putin’s case, would an order to launch a nuclear attack be obeyed? Why would soldiers do something that might bring nuclear retaliation down on their own families? Kim and Putin must be asking themselves the same question and hoping that Trump won’t call their bluff. Who dares, wins!
Dear Mr. Kenny – I respectfully submit that what you have just posted is the same kind of insane neocon thinking that could well trigger WWIII. Let’s turn your “reasoning” around and apply it to the nations the world’s biggest bully, the USA is trying to intimidate, North Korea and Russia. I guess if they follow your thought they will not hesitate to confront the US bully by a preemptive strike. I don’t think you are aware of the real dangers involved in a nuclear Mexican standoff.
Maybe you should turn your thoughts to how we create a peaceful world. I don’t think the line of thinking you displayed above will help in that.
Thank you Mike k. Just like Joe Tedesky, you are a true gentleman. I need to learn from you two. Peace begins within.
Skip you are making me blush. But thanks anyway – we try,
Trump is just a wobbly orange ball of jelly, easily rolled around by experienced players.
McMasters, Petraeus, Krauthammer – all of these establishment warmongers mentioned in this piece are members of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations). While Hillary Clinton (pictured in this article) does not belong to the CFR, she is on record as admitting that she relies heavily upon them for advice. However, Clinton’s daughter, Chelsea, is listed as a member. So, I would suggest that people look into the history of this nasty imperialist rat pack and into the financing, mentoring, and guidance that the CFR received from the late oil, minerals & financials ghoul, David Rockefeller Sr..
Neo-cons are merely one faction of an establishment foreign policy machine that is managed by those who control the purse strings. What follows is what prominent British Labor Party politician and operative, Baron Denis Healey, who served as a British Defense Minister had to say: “World events do not happen by accident. They are made to happen, whether it is to do with national issues or commerce; and most of them are staged and managed by those who control the purse strings.”
Two-time Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Brigadier General Smedley Butler (USMC) had this to say in 1935: “I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the Big Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.”
The only thing that has changed since Smedley’s days are the operational methods of those who control the purse strings or call the shots. Who controls MSM? The MSM is more than just an echo chamber; it has a carefully crafted and controlled agenda that is set by its owners in order to serve their purposes and those of the so-called “deep state.”. This should be obvious to any thinking person. Who are these MSM owners and for whom and for what do they really stand and serve?
As for our demagogue-in-chief (DINC), Donald J. Trump, he has a long history as a serial lawbreaker, fraudster, charlatan, and blatant self-promoter. He will do whatever it takes to protect and promote himself, the Trump Organization and the Trump brand including taking the dog out for a very long wag.
As far as North Korea goes, Is there really a problem? They are like a fugitive who has been cornered by an overwhelming number of police from a SWAT team; the fugitive can either surrender or attempt to shoot his way out with a limited amount of ammo. However, as soon as the desperado opens fire, he will be annihilated by overwhelming police fire power. What would the North Koreans have to gain from attacking anyone? Obliteration! Are we to believe that the luxuriated, pampered, and worshipped North Korean leaders really so suicidal?
We simply do not know what is going on behind the scenes at the White House. Is the Don being threatened by Russia-gate, whether allegations of Russian influence and campaign machinations are true or not? Is the Don being blackmailed for something about which the public has no knowledge? Is the Don just acting like the venal, unprincipled, and greedy SOB that he has always been, i.e., placing his self-preservation first? Maybe it is all of the above. I don’t know.
I suspect all of the above and more. By the fruits of this nut case we shall know him. God have mercy upon us all!
Well balanced view here. Thanks. Especially enjoyed the Butler quote. Things don’t change that much, do they? Hoping for that change that is so badly required if we as a country…as a civilization…expect to survive and thrive. Maybe on the other side of this ridiculous point in human history we’ll see light.
The Russia spy thing seems to have disappeared.
Russia- gate is Brussels and Merkels attempt to distract the peoples attention from their disastrous policy of open borders.
Let ’em drown or starve eh? Who gives a shit. It’s the American way!
And who are the ‘neocons’ of whom you so often write?
“To realize their fantasies of world domination, the neocons resorted to a triple discourse, as Laurent Guyénot shows in this study, i.e. a cynical political philosophy developed by their mentor Leo Strauss for domestic consumption; a cold analysis of Israeli strategic interests for the benefit of the leaders in Tel Aviv, and a fear-mongering warning against imaginary dangers besetting U.S. public opinion. …”
http://www.voltairenet.org/article178638.html
Israel Firster Zionist Jews aiming to use American blood and treasure for Israeli lebensraum.
I mean there is no question about the Jewish-and-Zionist origins and impetus of the movement. Whether and why writers will do backflips to avoid this relevant information as to the things motivating NYTimes’ cavalcade of Zionist warmongers, Bill Kristol, Krauthammer, the Kagans, Wurmsers, AIPAC, ADL, JINSA, CFR – another matter.
I think preventing more needless war and death is worth taking predictable smears from predictable dissembling Israel Firsters, but that’s just me.
This is leaving aside that, like the sarin attacks, ‘isis’ itself is a CIA/Mossad/Saudi golem.
http://www.activistpost.com/2014/09/10-signs-that-isis-is-scripted-psyop.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/12/us-caught-faking-it-in-syria/
https://leaksource.wordpress.com/2015/01/17/the-yinon-plan-greater-israel-syria-iraq-and-isis-the-connection/
http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/top-10-proofs-isis-us-israeli-creation/
Qatari pipelines? 5 years and tens of billions to create chaos and jihadi Bantustans through which a pipeline is to be built abd maintained to compete with Israeli oil/gas from Golan (Genie Energy) and Leviathan (good ol’ boys of Noble)?
what idiot believed this? Israel, not Qatar rules the Deep State and Congress and Obama and, it seems, Trump.
But if the truth is forbidden as to who and what neocons (not militarists generally – obviously) are, it is even more so as to who has predominant influence in the corporate MSM.
I’ll leave it there. The truth is ‘hate speech’ when one hates truth.
But I think the Zionist-Jewish role is clear, major if not predominant, and discussing it is not only not, without more, ‘hate’ – REFUSING to duscuss these people’s motives and ethnocentrism and loyalties is letting them hide behind their Jewishness in order to escape criticism for warmongering for Israel.
How many need to die before ‘independent’ journalists will state plainly that the reason why so many Jewish Zionists are ginning up the next round of wars (wildly disproportionately in the media, given that they are a fraction of the country’s Jewish Americans who are as a whole only 2.5% of the population) is out of ethnocentrism and loyalty to a foreign state ruled by racist, belligerent warmongers?
How about a tour through Zionist warmongering re Syria for 30 years?
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=western_support_for_islamic_militancy_2049
Now consider:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/12/report-kushner-is-micromanaging-the-national-security-council/
Being anti-war, saving human life, might require a little bravery from now on, as well as grasping that ‘Most A are B does NOT imply ‘Most B are A’ – the cognitive fallacy which buttresses the ‘smear’ in the face of per se facts.
Those warmongering ethnonationalists loyal to a foreign power should not escape identification qua such and criticism merely because they are Jews… most of whom are NOT ‘neocons’ – a movement that was and is in its essence engendered by Zionist Jews aiming to use American blood and treasure to fulfill the Oded Yinon line of plans.
We either find a way to rationally, fairly discuss this aspect (along with private central banking, petrodollar, MIC etc – NO ONE is arguing single cause here) or they will hide behind the antisemite smear to keep murdering hundreds of thousands of human beings FOR GREATER ISRAEL.
Well said Matt. Someone has to give us a look behind the curtain of anti-Semitism slurs to see the ugly dangerous folks hiding there.
No one is justified to hide from the truth. Out the evil bastards for the good of all of us!
Why is no one investigating the Clinton’s Russian connections? They have plenty of shady connections.
http://www.inquisitr.com/2039432/russian-donations-to-hillary-clinton-foundation-looks-like-bribery-says-mitt-romney/
Russian donations to Hillary Clinton Foundation ‘Looks Like Bribery’, Says Mitt Romney
by Robert Jonathan
April 24, 2015
Previously undisclosed Russian donations flowing into the Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has prompted Mitt Romney to describe the situation as potential bribery.
Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and successful businessman, was the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.
This latest revelation is part of the ongoing controversy over the Clinton Foundation accepting big checks from foreign governments (including some with dismal women’s rights records) and multinational corporations with business before the U.S. government while Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State and the resulting allegations of conflicts of interest. -snip-
You’ll never find this stuff reading and watching and listening to the blanket MSM propaganda.
I guess we are supposed to hold our breath while Trump’s secret plan to save the world ripens in secrecy, waiting for him to unexpectedly spring it on the deep state, overturning all their diabolical schemes. This one sucks, even as a bizarre fantasy.
Maybe what you fail to acknowledge is the deep state is not some monolithic unified entity. There exists a rift in the deep state and Trumps election has widened it and brought it into full public view. Trump is allied with a faction of the deep state that is in opposition to the Neocon faction. It’s a long way from over so no, I’m not gonna hold my breath. You believe what you want, deride me in whatever way makes you feel smugly superior. Only time will tell what’s really going on beneath the surface of the headlines, the bloggers and the political theater.
I apologize if I came across as smug and superior. My bad. You are of course welcome to your point of view on anything whatever, but you or me or anyone here should also be open to criticism. I am glad you are sharing your views here, but I politely disagree that there is a positive deep state that is waiting in the wings to deliver what many on this blog would love to see – a world free of militarism, with economic justice for all. What is in the wings (marginalized) is the folks who gather here and elsewhere who do not have deep pockets, or loudspeakers, or police and armies to get their ideas for a better world across. I believe that the positively oriented deep state that you speak of if just a desperate fantasy with no other real existence.
OK. I will concede that Trump’s initial impulse (it turned out not to be much more than that) was to make a deal with Russia, and that raised some people’s hopes about his presidency. But Trump proved to have no spine to hold up against those who opposed that. But to say that this implies that this real estate con man somehow represented a powerful peace wing of the deep state is a bridge too far, really a bridge to nowhere…… All the rest of Trump’s promises to make America great again were pure disasters, many of which, like increasing the military budget and putting war hawk generals in charge of policy, suit the deep state just fine.
For months on end …..Trump is Putin’s puppet. The Russians are coming repeat and rinse …..
President Trump bombs a empty air base warning the Russians and Assad before hand. Russians are coming nonsense disappears . Raytheon corp. and neo cons are happy never suspecting they’ve been played like a fiddle. Well played Mr. President Trump.
Another fan of Trumps supposed skillful play. Dream on…….
Please Decent American people: Empeach that idiotic Adolf Trump as quickly as possible ! We could end up with a new Nazi Empire…
That idiotic “Big Mouth” Adolf Trump could end up being a catastrophy for America and for the rest of Humanity. Psychiatry should seriously check that man’s behavior. (Beside his hugly face is scary)…
I think it is great to see that Parry is no longer and apologist for the Obama Administration.
Why do you bring this up PP? Do you need to take a swipe at Mr. Parry? Why?
Trump against all odds, opposition and predictions defeats all the other Republican candidates and wins the nomination.
Trump against all odds, opposition and predictions defeats Hillary Clinton and wins the Presidency.
He beat all of these people at THEIR OWN GAME! How did he accomplish this? Certainly not because he’s a dumb ass.
I don’t for one minute believe that the Neocons have broken him. What I do believe is that members of the military/Pentagon (who Trump has surrounded himself with) are sick of the Neocons and their wars and the direction they have taken our country. They have a long term plan to regain control, to change direction and make the policy change necessary for America to be stable and in a good position as the balance of power shifts in the world. So far the Neocons outnumber them and so everything is going to have to be done in the shadows and on the sly.
Anybody willing to do the research will see that Trumps foreign policy beliefs have been consistent for decades. Go back and read old interviews with him. I believe in the long term he will work for detente with Russia and a non-interventionist foreign policy. He obviously couldn’t just waltz into the white house and change everything, now could he?
Look at what is happening with China and N Korea since Trump hosted the Chinese president and spent time talking with him. Trump is not stupid, he is playing a long game, he has backing we can’t see yet, and I’m hoping he’s going to win.
Take note of his recent tweet that the tax protesters were paid. How long before this turns out to be proven true and reported in the media? Just like him tweeting about Obama wiretapping him and it turning out to be true. How is this happening? Because he has allies feeding him information. Read between the lines, look under the bushes and have a little faith that the clown part of Donald Trump is mostly just an act so that people continually underestimate him to their detriment.
Your faith in Trump and the war making generals he selected is amazing – and ridiculous. It is too foolish to merit refutation. Quit smoking that stuff, it’s too strong for you, and it’s making me dizzy!
RUSSIA INVESTIGATION HEADING TOWARD A TRAIN WRECK BECAUSE REPUBLICANS DON’T CARE WHAT HAPPENED
Jon Schwarz
March 30 2017
(excerpt)
IN A BETTER, imaginary world, there would be no need for Thursday’s Senate hearings into whether and how the Russian government meddled in the 2016 presidential election. Instead, a combined Justice Department and congressional investigation into the subject would have started last summer and could be wrapping up right about now.
This investigation would have been successfully carried out by the government’s normal mechanisms — because in this made up universe, politicians would care more about the country they live in than getting to the studio in time for their next appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight. For the same reason, they’d defy the instinctive secrecy of the intelligence world in order to declassify whatever evidence they uncovered so Americans could judge it for themselves.
Unfortunately, on this planet we’re on a trajectory to the worst possible outcome. It’s now easy to imagine a future in which Trump and Russia become the millennials’ equivalent of the John F. Kennedy assassination: A subject where no one can honestly be sure whether there was no conspiracy or a huge conspiracy, the underlying reality concealed by the thick murk of government secrecy, and progressives exhausting themselves for decades afterwards trying to prove what really happened.
Democrats were thrilled when FBI Director James Comey took the unusual step of revealing that the bureau is carrying out an “ongoing investigation” into whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. But as Hillary Clinton would strenuously tell you, the mere fact of an FBI investigation does not prove anything, and no one should believe it does. The FBI could easily close its investigation without filing any charges — especially since this is a counterintelligence inquiry rather than a criminal one — either because investigators found no evidence of wrongdoing, or because they did but believe they can’t seek an indictment without revealing classified surveillance programs. The FBI then might give no public explanation of its decision, and leave secret indefinitely whatever evidence was gathered.
What happens then? Democratic partisans will be infuriated, and rightfully point to the fact that Comey’s investigation was ultimately overseen by a Trump political appointee at the Justice Department. But they’d have no formal recourse. (The investigation began last year during the Obama administration and is now supervised by Acting Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself on the subject. However, Rod Rosenstein, Trump’s nominee for Deputy Attorney General, will eventually be in charge.)
Meanwhile, there are several ongoing investigations in Congress, with the two most significant ones carried out by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
But these inquiries suffer from the same flaw: They are supervised by Republicans. The situation is especially dire with the House Intelligence Committee, now that the escapades of its chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, have revealed him to have a toddler’s sense of personal responsibility. Even worse, the ultimate authority in the House, Speaker Paul Ryan, has demonstrated his own lack of integrity by refusing to ask Nunes to recuse himself.
https://theintercept.com/2017/03/30/russia-investigation-heading-toward-a-train-wreck-because-republicans-dont-care-what-happened/
Just because the neocon Establishment has eased up doesn’t mean they’ve stopped entirely. Here is an April 16, 2017 example of how they’re still ready to pounce:
“Carter Page Went to Moscow With a Tape of Donald Trump Offering Treason For Hacking”
A single misstep – like failing to follow neocon directives – and the thumbscrews will appear once again.
As of the time I’m making this post, Mr. Parry is quite right – the Russia-Gate story has completely disappeared from the headlines on Google News.
In fact, I saw this bit of “good news” for Trump:
“Poll Finds Donald Trump’s Support Inching Up to 50 Percent”
Amazing how that works – just get into step with the neocon Establishment and suddenly all is well.
Funny how all Trump had to do was become a war criminal and all the Russia did it nonsense kinda went away. This if nothing else should be enough to ‘prove’ the news in Merica is ‘fake’. America better wake up or it’s over for a whole lotta people, including the ‘indespensibles’. Blessed to be a witness……
With the overwhelming consensus of our thought leaders, makes you think that we must be wrong. Mr. Parry noting the transformation of Trump in the media is so true. Even the photos of Trump in Yahoo are more flattering and of course Trump being a puppet has vanished.
There is one overwhelming positive to come from all this nonsense and that is the fact the reality of the Deep State has shown itself. The term “Deep State” has now evolved in, particularly, the alternative community. A few years ago I was banned from Naked Capitalism for insisting on using the term and now it is regularly used on that site which kicked me out (as ‘Banger’) because it was trying to curry favor with liberals in the Obama administration. Now “liberalism” has been outed as yet another face of the Deep State and many commentators on the alt-right and alt-left are steadily asserting. You even see the term used in the mainstream media on occasion. Also, people are realizing that conventional political actions from demonstrations to voting are of no use–we do not live in a liberal republic but a one party state with two right wings as Gore Vidal liked to say. This is dawning on many more people than when Vidal was alive and, I believe, signals a cultural shift–where that shift will go is anyone’s guess but at least at this time you have to be very stupid not to believe that Washington and its clients and propaganda organs are the chief enemy of the people of the USA.
When the corporate news media seem to be doing the bidding of the intelligence agencies and military, you have to wonder how much coordination is going on between them. I wonder if some supposed journalists are on the CIA or NSA payroll. It just seems like there is too much concordance there.
It is not only the intel agencies and mass media. The mass media, election financiers, duopoly, politicians, and their appointees in judiciary and intel agencies are all owned by the oligarchy of MIC/WallSt/Corps/Israel/KSA and the rich, serving them for bribes, promotions, and handouts. This is their belief system, money=virtue no matter how they get it.
The bully-boy rises in business and funds the tyrant who must create foreign enemies to pose falsely as protector and accuse his moral superiors of disloyalty, as Aristotle warned. The source of this corruption is economic concentrations, which have seized power because the Constitutional Convention did not protect democratic institution from the economic concentrations that did not then exist, and the emerging middle class did not do so because they were too preoccupied with their escape from poverty.
Jefferson warned that “the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants” in every generation, and this is long overdue. It will not be pretty. We can be slaves or we can rebel; there is life’s option today.
You are so right on Sam. I love it! Keep publishing your clear vision of truth…..
Excellent..as always!!!
What I am waiting to hear is a technical person mention the effect of the NSA recent release of their secret hacking tools and what that means to the MSM and their noniformed tech bias. The release of the hacking tools of the NSA shows not only the weaknesses used against people with software firewall protections, but it also states the NSA could pretend to be a Chinese hacker, a Russian hacker, and a foreign government hacker as well. This has been documented.
Please Mr Parry, get some IT experts to show how this drama over the hacking blamed on Russia could be our own NSA at work! An article of this magnitude is needed now more than ever.
Those who have been in the NSA and are retired have said this had to be an inside job since a hacker could not know how the files and other items were set up within the NSA. This is important news, especially for those who constantly blame Russia for ever hack ever. Please get some experts to tell the populace the dirty tricks the NSA plays with its software, and it’s not to protect American citizens. This is obvious.
Wikileaks makes this point already, that the Vault 7 tools permit leaving hacking traces to implicate major power sources like Russia and China, and that this could be done by anyone with those tools, many of which came from other countries. There are several articles debunking the few alleged signs of Russia hacking, as showing rather unlikely imitations of Russian sources.
I have seen simpler signs of Russia-blaming in investigating internet piracy operations, where websites were named or given false server locations to suggest Russian influence, but had offices in the US, and were operated as part of piracy operations with numerous shell companies in western fraud venues like Cayman Islands and Panama, with the real operators based in the US and Canada or in the western fraud venues. Some of the scammers were actually internet name registrars, who could make up any name, office address, or server location they pleased, and register it as though verified by the international authority ICANN.
So any evidence merely suggesting a physical source is almost certainly faked.
Yes Sam,
I wish more people knew this is possible with our current software. Just imagine, the NSA perhaps has created all this Russia bashing, for whatever reason. It is amazing to think about how treasonous this could be.
Some of the retired VIPS have said it had to be an inside job due to files a hacker couldn’t get, so maybe those in the NSA itself are against the policy. One can only hope. Thanks for the response.
This is a great analysis of how the fascist ruling system was able to coopt Trump. Far from being courageous, Trump’s 180 on Syria showed his weakness and surrender to the deep state power structure. The real question is whether this amounted to a rubicon crossing leading to armageddon or as Trump probably told himself, a feint to gain more freedom of action to implement promised foreign policy which led to his nomination. He won, after all, because he was the only one providing any measure of resistance to the bipartisan foreign policy structure. Unfortunately, commission of a war crime was what the structure required, and unfortunately it sets a precedent of acts of war on behalf of el qaeda. In my view, the future looks pretty bleak.
We seem to have learned nothing from George Bush’s ‘slam dunk’ evidence of WMD’s. The CIA may provide accurate intelligence to the white house but their posture with the American public has been one endless stream of lies, half truths and carefully crafted deceptions. Yet it was this very same CIA quoting “secret” evidence that was the source of the Russia Gate story. The NY Times quoted a Washington Post article, which quoted an earlier WaPost article where a CIA source told the WaPost reporter that he had seen evidence of Russian tampering with the elections, but couldn’t share it with the reporter.
I thought the general rule in journalism was to accept an anonymous source as long as the information provided was supported by some identified source. The Washington Post and Times version of this was to use one another as the identified source. This closed loop then took on a life of its own.
What is really scary is the degree to which the mainstream media simply ignored facts to manipulate public opinion. Cable news was the worse. I’d love to hear from one of those experts who can recognize tell tale signs of when someone is lying. The whole cable news crowd would be exposed.
PCR is again sticking his neck out , saying what needs to be said :
Paul Craig Roberts: “It Has Become Embarrassing To Be An American” ( at ZeroHedge )
A few highlights :
– Western Civilization, if civilization it is, is the greatest committer of war crimes in human history.
– These war crimes committed by four US presidents caused millions of civilian deaths and injuries and dispossessed and dislocated millions of people.
– Violence for its own sake. That is what America has become. There is nothing else there. Violence is the heart of America.
– Beginning with the Clinton moron every US government has broken or withdrawn from agreements with Russia.
– Anyone who tells the truth is by definition against the United States of America. And the moron Pompeo intends to get them.
– Washington is a collection of morons, people stupid below the meaning of stupid. People so far outside of reality that they imagine that their hubris and arrogance elevates them above reality.
– Come on morons, eliminate yourselves! The rest of us cannot wait.
About the only thing I disagree with is PCR’s focus on Washington’s collective stupidity as being the big problem. I think the main problem resides with the top echelon in D.C. , and in many , if not most , of those individuals , the issue is a surplus of evil – heartless , soulless evil – rather than a deficit of brainpower.
And , obviously , the same problem extends beyond D.C. , and beyond U.S. shores as well.
Zionists, the real threat to the United States……http://fair.org/home/thomas-friedmans-perverse-love-affair-with-isis/
Apr
13
2017
Thomas Friedman’s Perverse Love Affair With ISIS
By Adam Johnson
NYT: Why Is Trump Fighting ISIS in Syria?
Thomas Friedman urges Donald Trump to be “utterly cynical”–not unlike a Thomas Friedman column.
For the second time in as many years, Thomas Friedman has explicitly advocated that the United States use the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria as a proxy force against Syria, Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. The New York Times foreign affairs columnist made this suggestion in his Wednesday column, “Why Is Trump Fighting ISIS in Syria?”
Indeed Friedman is a candidate for a charge of “Providing Material Support to a Terrorist Organization.’ If the author of the article were named Abu Muhammed, or similar, I don’t think this article would be so well received/ignored in the mainstream media.
I agree with Paul Craig Roberts who classes those supporting war on behalf of el qaeda, ISIS, or whatever term they go by as traitors to civilization. The fact this is all on behalf of the barbarous element destroying the civilized element makes it criminal. The fact it could go off the rails and go nuclear makes it profoundly stupid.
Lets get right down to the nitty gritty. Trump knows the White Helmets are terrorists. If he didn’t know that he would be completely negligent in his job. He knows the media lied about the attack and he knows the White Helmet al-Nusra Front terrorists killed those kids he and his daughter exploited for propaganda purposes. He also knows the media paraded those kids as supposedly of a father in mourning when in actuality that ‘fake father’ was a terrorist who killed those children that belonged to some other unfortunate real father he probably killed.
The Syrian war is a horrific charade being carried out by US and UK/western Zionists in collaboration with the Saudi Gulf State terrorists. Israel and Saudi Arabia are two sides of the same Zionist coin set up by the British after WW2 as fake foils to each other. Trump is part and parcel of this charade. He knows how things are orchestrated. All the leite do. It is taught to them at Yale, Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge. Its all classic hegelian Dialectic to keep the masses confused and fighting.
Trump’s speech to AIPAC in March 2016 showed who the real Donald Trump is and who put really put him in power. Lets not kid ourselves. The last year was an elaborate ruse, a circus, a smoke and mirrors show. Note that Trump and Clinton both attended the Al Smith dinner after the third debate with Henry Kissinger and the UK Zionists sitting right behind the two of them. Note that Trump had previously stated he would put Clinton in prison, yet instead he raised a toast to her when she attended his post inauguration party.
Trump is simply the other goon chosen by the global elite…..nothing more, nothing less. The show goes on while these 0.1% elitists and their vassals in power play the same old divide and conquer tactics on people who are far too reactionary and dumbed down to understand how they are simply screwing themselves by playing along with this constant staged performance. Those who place hope in Trump are no different than those that placed hope in Obama and tried to rationalize his decisions after he also had sold them out to the corporations within the first year. Alas, these unfortunate dupes place their politics above their humanity, and thus, are lowly, pathetic characters themselves…..in the end, they are all screwing the rest of us 99% who are trying to get a better slice of the pie and help right the world’s injustices.
At an Indivisible event hosted by a local Austin group (TX-21) this weekend, participants were each given a colored dot and invited to ‘vote’ for their issue of greatest concern — stuff like healthcare, immigration, etc. Oddly, the organizers included “Russia” as a category of concern.
As you can see, a huge issue like immigration got 15 votes.
Russia? 17 votes.
I find this outcome very sad, and very disappointing.
p.s. A participant sent me a photo, but I don’t know how to post it in a comment.
This and many other articles amalgamate to this conclusion that I draw.
The U.S. is now clearly governed by an oligarchy which is overtly divided into factions. The sham of our democracy is no longer needed and the actors are playing their hands without regard to public revulsion or responsibility. The politicians have other masters to serve. History has shown this is almost always the case when nations are driven by imperialism or maintenance of empire and are ruled via the theater mask of democracy and freedom. “If you want to know who controls you, look at whom you are not allowed to criticize” (Voltaire). These are factions which seek only power/influence and the attendant self enrichment. This enrichment is subject to the whims of the seeker and where on the food chain they are trying to climb from; for some the haughty confidence of having the ear of the powerful, others pure monetary interests, and others, the most dangerous ones, those who are driven by ideology interwoven with oligarchic capitalism.
Yet as the evidence of these conditions are abundant and as with “The Emperor’s New Clothes” we are subjected to the Orwellian New Think that provides easy acceptance of the absurd, and then the horrible. As quoted above, Voltaire again, “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” In the name of profit, we are awash in the absurd and atrocities are already the norm.
We have been committing atrocities for more than a decade now (for decades depending on the definition) … how is the MOAB that turns the air to fire not banned like Chemical weapons. We have used white phosphorus and used and distributed clusterbombs. Depending on who you believe, we allowed Gadafi’s chemical weapons to be transferred to Syria rebels, iirc, along with other Libyan arms (during a period where we called on all nations to not further arm the “rebels”. The drone program last I heard was still “secret” because it was illegal (international law) however, we reported stopped with the “nicety” of using civilian operators to stay within Geneva Conventions … to protect our uniformed personnel from being charged with war crimes.
The closer you look, the worse it gets… Remember the children starving in “rebel held territory” in Syria … we have an entire civilian opulation starving in Yemen and reportedly children / babies starving in Mosul (where we “oops” and killed nearly 300 civilians a week before … etc.)
The root of all this is desires of individuals whom are absolved of responsibility in that they are pursuing what are reported to be altruistic results via a mechanism which doesn’t consider the well being or results of this altruistic ideal, as the mechanism is Capitalism.
Capitalism isn’t designed to deliver the best result to the recipient, it is designed to deliver the least most acceptable for the most profit. As long as our systems of government in the West are dominated by Capitalist Free Market ideology the “citizens”, now denoted a consumers, are nothing more than a means to the domination of capital over labor and the rights of citizens of nations to demand “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” which in the U.S. was supposed to protect citizens from the depredation of a ruling elite, a monarchy as it were.
But now we have this exactly. The twists of time are indeed fickle.
Last thing we heard concerning the multifaceted Russia gate investigation was a focus shifted toward Susan Rice.
Then, as if by Abbra Cadabbra, ALL mention of the investigation completely disappeared.
This is magical manipulation of information.
“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of our own choosing.”
—Orwell, “1984”
Yes, Rice “probably” did nothing wrong … but….
the more recent from Friday got buried …
cnn: British intelligence passed Trump associates’ communications with Russians on to US counterparts
http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/13/politics/trump-russia-british-intelligence/
As has the (largely unrelated, but of course related) Shadow Broker story (in which the CIA hacked the international banking logs/transfer system) …
The “news” has been bad for a while, but under Trump (for a variety of reasons I suspect) it’s become laughable … The internet ablaze with fear of a nuclear or anti-nuclear strike on Korea … pretty much crickets … no UN, no frantic diplomatic missions, no other countries named as expressing concern, much less horror .. and no backgrounders explaining that a preemptive strike is not legal … and threats of a preemptive strike might be a.bad.idea.
But the winner at the box office this Easter weekend was probably yet another cartoon based on a Marvel comic or a Star Wars sequel or some other franchise back for more … because we are a nation of children apparently … no matter how sophisticated and deeply we want to analyze our childhood favorites.
Oh, Schiff will never give up, Sheryl. Michael Hoefler’s earlier post about the banking industry is spot on, it’s going down, and there won’t be a bailout this time. The neocons will have to use up what they’ve got.
Possibly not all that bad, read Ellen Brown thoroughly she knows banking better than most… Local, real lending to community involved, sustainable, micro-entrepreneurs is the answer…
Bob, whilst the whole system has to be reworked from scratch a total reset – crash – will be devastating. The “elites” have already been preparing for that event. The militarized police is for protecting the haves from the have-nots.
I googled, and there is still MSM reports on Russiagate and the investigation. The NY Times did one today on Mike Conaway replacing Devin Nunes.
No, no, Miranda, we need you! Every sane, thinking person, those who are here, and others who feel this dreadful concern, we have to keep speaking up. Read an article on Paul Craig Roberts by John W. Whitehead, whose thesis is that the US is so in hock for its failed wars that have all been paid for on credit, that the country is ready to tumble like Rome, and getting the sheeple to look at something else is all the power structure has left. The article is “The Reason the Military Security Complex Had to Prevail Over Trump”. It’s definitely a powerful argument, and it needs to be brought out powerfully in discussions with people who aren’t looking at things clearly. Amazingly, Russia has paid its debt, and even wrote off the old debts owed to the USSR by Cuba and the African nations. Part of the reason they have to be demonized, I venture to guess. I remember how Dick Cheney said before invading Iraq, “We have plenty of money”. Yeah, sure, Dick, you do!
I’m not giving up. I’m just venting.
But I am afraid things will have to get worse before the people rise up in a real anti-war movement again.
This article is a perfect example how the right will ignore the facts to support their fear based views. The FACT is this president and his team are under investigation by the FBI for collusion with Russia. They don’t investigate nothing. They obviously have some major concern’s. Yes while the investigation is going on the main stream media can only get to the public information about what occurred. So that appears that there is nothing there. But I wonder if when the FBI start making arrests you will retract ur narrative and admit the truth. But somehow I doubt that. You will say he was setup somehow by the neoconservative to make sure that a republican is never elected again or some such bullshit
Please go spread your Neo-Con propaganda somewhere else.
If you can’t tell the difference between the anti-war Left and the right, at least spare us having to deal with your trolling.
Chad’s fire-and-forget troll comment is a clumsy effort to paste an “alt-right” label on independent investigative journalist site Consortium News.
Robert Parry and contributors at Consortium News consistently demonstrate sound journalism.
In the face of all the “fake news” propagated by mainstream media and online disinformation groups like Bellingcat, a growing global community turns to Consortium News for its high standards of accuracy, fairness and balance in reporting and analysis.
Troll comments always turn up when Parry and CN contributors report on major issues.
With the anti-Russia propaganda now shifted fully into overdrive, troll activities clearly are on the rise. The logical fallacies of these characters are pretty easy to spot. Chad’s pot shot is a perfect example.
Chad while I can take the time to respect your view point, and I will admit there are plenty who believe as you do that Putin stole the election in favor of Trump, I think your wrong,
I’m not a Trump supporter. I never supported him nor did I vote for him, but while you were paying attention to the MSM’s 24/7 coverage of Trump being Putin’s puppet, there was something much more grave going on here. What we Americans are watching is a sitting president being made to acquiesce to a higher power. This higher power has many names, CIA but yet not every CIA employee, the FBI and once again not everyone in the agency, a certain few from a lot of places will do for time purposes, but a certain few who’s agenda is probably not your agenda. Love Trump or hate Trump but what you just witnessed was a newly elected president being flipped by the Deep State, and now everything Trump does will be whatever it is the Deep State tells him to do.
Forget who’s in the White House, because now it doesn’t matter. America should change it’s name to U.S. of the Deep State. These creatures who belong to this cabal aren’t right or left, or are they conservative Republican or liberal Democrate. They are the people Eisenhower warned us about when he made the phrase Military Industrial (Congressional) Complex. Even JFK made reference to this group when spoke about the dangers of secret societies. Trumo began his flip when he signed an executive order to spend 54 billion more dollars than our already 540 billion dollars we already spend on defense.
Chad I probably didn’t change your mind, but I want you to understand that Robert Parry’s isn’t bias towards or against anybody, but merely that he is telling the truth. Chad you are shooting the messenger with your comment.
There were many who called Robert Parry a ‘hanger on’ or ‘an Obama apologist’ because many a time the good reporter Parry wrote a panoramic view of Obama. Since Parry’s panoramic view included important people around President Obama many readers took Parry’s reporting to be an excuse for our 44th president….so Robert Parry gets it from both sides, and all because he try’s to report with his best integrity at stake, and his honest facts to be ridiculed by the partisan on lookers is his reward.
JOE..AN EXCELLENT REPLY TO “CHAD”…
Many of us rely on Robert Parry’s inciteful remarks as well as
many (not all) by other consortium writers.(?Contribute to
Consortium if you can. I cannot living on a fixed income…
my only income.)
Parry’s primary weakness is his too- often expressed views that
Trump (or any other White House occupant in recent
memory) should or could have “courage”.
In our underground (but for consortium) let us try to
understand not only others but ourselves.
—Peter Loeb, Boston,MA, USA
—-
Peter you contribution is your words, and references. Now go enjoy yourself, and stay close to us, because otherwise you would be missed. Joe
Joe-
Once again you are teaching me how to be a gentleman. Thank you.
Skip besides the fact that I don’t want to chase anyone away from frequenting this site, that after many many years of winning and losing a few fights I don’t wish to fight with anyone anywhere any longer.
The other thing is where we should all aim our focus. Like instead of blaming Hillary’s loss on Putin, that the Democrate’s should put the blame on Hillary and the DNC campaign committee for screwing over Bernie Sander’s. This sharpening of our focus should also include looking beyond a suddenly warring Trump, and to see who and what made Trump flip to where he stands now. This isn’t rocket science as they say, as much as it is us staying on target to see things as they are, and not as the Corporate Owned Media says it is.
Take care shipmate…Joe
Much better reply than mine, Joe.
Well Miranda talking to Chad is like discussing current events with my family. Our news media has a way of building a whole different narrative around what we should be talking about. For example, why have we since November been concentrating so hard on blaming Russia for Hillary’s defeat? This Russian decoy has worked wonders to hide the fact that Hillary & her DNC campaign cronies stool the primary right from under Bernie’s grass roots movement, and there in lies America’s well informed citizen problem. The good news is Chad has visited this site, and I hope he continues to speak with us, because if Chad is like my family then he will be a good person to have around.
Miranda in your comment above, which I responded too, you hit the ball out of the park. Also thanks for your kind words….Joe
If ze gestapo makes an arrest, ze perzon must be guilty of somezing.
Sounds like an advertising meme: “The FBI: They don’t investigate nothing.”
Unfortunately, Chad, the FACT is the Federal Bureau of Investigations and other agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community have quite a legacy not only of eagerly investigating nothing, but of not investigating a whole heck of a lot of something when it was deemed politically expedient by certain sectors of government.
Of course, this observation in no way casts aspersions on the many dedicated federal law enforcement officers who serve in the FBI.
During his 20 March 2017 appearance before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), FBI Director Comey explicitly stated: “Please don’t draw any conclusions from the fact that I may not be able to comment on certain topics. I know speculating is part of human nature, but it really isn’t fair to draw conclusions simply because I say that I can’t comment.”
https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/hpsci-hearing-titled-russian-active-measures-investigation
Your comment is very interesting, Chad.
First you claim the article is an example of “how the right will ignore the facts”. Then you get busy speculating about whether “you will retract ur [sic] narrative and admit the truth” and “some such bullshit”.
It really isn’t fair to draw conclusions, but the fact that you just attempted to slur the article and its author as “alt-right” or some such bullshit suggests that you are a PropOrNot-style propaganda troll.
Now would be a good time to retract your narrative, Chad.
Absolutely. This was quite a predictable turn, and many (including me) have been predicting it. Trump fired cruise missiles at Syria, and he is giving free reign to Mattis, McMaster etc. to mostly wage war around the globe in the way that they wish (e.g. “Mother of all bombs” in Afghanistan, which jihadis claim killed only civilians). The Russia scandal is kept on the back burner and can be revived at any moment if Trump goes off the Deep State script again – online, I have noticed Mike Pence gratuitously appearing in an excess number of press photos recently. Yes man, wax figure, CIA propaganda fan Pence is ready to step in and fill any platitudinous void at at moments notice.
I tried and tried.
I didn’t really like Bernie because he was not really a socialist and he wasn’t really a peace candidate. But I rejoined the Democratic Party to help him get the nomination to stop Clinton and her ilk.
But they stole the election anyway.
I tried and tried after that to get all my cultural liberal friends to wake up and vote Green. But they were flummoxed into buying into the duopoly and my state still voted its electoral slate for the Queen of Chaos.
I spoke out against the Russian nonsense and called on my cultural liberal friends to oppose Trump on all his bad policies except when he was good and that peace with Russia was good and opposing regime change was good. But they couldn’t resist the propaganda of their ‘go-to’ media pundits who wear their liberalism like a badge. One of my best friends, a woman dedicated to concerns about the earth and social justice when it is domestic and who was right beside me years ago opposing the Iraq War told me that Rachel Maddow was her ‘Go-To’ person on how to think.
I reposted articles on Facebook and made my own arguments. But my facebook friends refused to open their minds and read them, continually posting one liner memes with eye catching pictures that promoted hatred and fear of Russia. I realized after a while they must have blocked me.
I got sick to my stomach after the election when both Jill Stein, in her recount efforts, and Bernie Sanders, in his Trump resistance, both spouted this nonsense about Russia.
Now I feel powerless and hopeless. All I can do is pray that Putin will be wise enough and good enough to get us through this without the war that the idiotic warmongers in the US want. I have no hope left in the political system. The Democratic Party is beyond disgusting. The Green Party is chaotic and weak. The Nationalistic Trump is easily manipulated.
I might as well just tend my own garden.
That sounds like a good idea. Maybe get put of politics all together. It’s obviously too scary for u.
I didn’t say I was scared of being in politics. I said I was feeling hopeless and helpless.
I certainly sympathize, Miranda. I feel much the same way. The Clinton machine must have threatened Bernie to get him to kowtow to them.
Maybe there is hope: an astrologer friend told me that by sometime in 2020 – the US will have a completely new political system as well as a completely new financial system. I believe she was thinking it would be good for the people of this country.
We will see. I will watch things unfold – speak my truth where I think it is useful – and work on becoming a better person.
Very good comment, and it more or less describes the phases I went through. The liberal left comes out of this looking incredibly lame, and incredibly hubristic. And, actually, just stupid and clueless. Able to recognize just one tune and sing it back.
So, for the time being, I think tending one’s own garden is an excellent idea.
Miranda well said.
Let me start by telling you of what I have just learned is going on with our American society’s news on Russia. Google ‘Ellen Degeneres Russia ant-LGBT’, and then prepare yourself for some pretty upsetting news, or rather what I think is propaganda. Apparently Western News Sources are reporting that gays are being rounded up in Chechnya and thrown into concentration camps. Ellen Degeneres is playing the part, as did Harvey Feinstein and Dan Savage did prior to the Sochi Olympics, where she is leading the charge against Russia’s suppression of gays. Savage and Feinstein’s representation of Russian law N135FZ was totally wrong. N135FZ was nothing more than a tv/movie rating guide, much like what we in America have ratings code which notifies audiences of the films content. There wasn’t even a mention in N135FZ of homosexuals, or gay, but any retraction otherwise is not to be found in America. So once again a new crisis of Russian poor character, which also stars in the top billing slot Ellen Degeneres, is now playing in our Western Media’s press.
So while maybe Trump is off the hook over Russia-Gate, Putin’s Russia is still viewed as being evil. All of this is maddening when you know otherwise, but this is what the System does, and apparently they do it well. This time though, it seems scarier since because of ‘the gay’ angle which is being played rather loudly in our media, you have sexual identity liberals screaming at the top of their voices for something to be done to stop this evil homophobic Putin guy. Miranda just wait until your friend gets this news from the ever theatrical arm waving pen scribbling Rachel, you may want to get a new friend.
What amazes me completely is how liberals and Democrate’s totally ignore the sins of Hillary, Debbie Wazerman Schultz, John Podesta, and the DNC committee in regard to their sabotaging Bernie Sander’s presidential csmpaign. I mean seriously going after Putin now, while the real culprit is celebrated as the popular vote candidate who should have been installed into the White House is proof of how we as a nation have become throughly numb minded, and idiot political props to anything tangible or real. If anger over losing this past presidential election were aimed in the right direction, well we may have by this time just finished watching Hillary’s putting the screws to Bernie investigation wrap up…and hopefully Queen Hillary would have been found guilty, and had her ass thrown in jail, but we all know how that will never happen…but we can still dream of such a justice coming about, right?
The last thing that I find mighty depressing, is how there are a substantial amount of Americans that think a good president is a warmongering president. It would seem to me a more healthy society’s response would be to rally around a leader who wants to negotiate with other countries towards making this world a more peaceful place. There is something seriously wrong with a citizenry who jumps for joy when causing others so much pain and death. The best propaganda bs, is we Americans think we are the good guys.
The anti-Russia propaganda is off the hook.
My contention is that President Cheetoh was appointed rather than Queen of Chaos precisely so that the press could bleat louder about the satanic horrors of RussiaGate™.
These latest shrieks about the “first concentration camp for gays since Hitler’s times” come from the usual suspects: Western-backed Russian anti-government newspaper Novaya Gazeta and its Radio Liberty megaphones.
euromaidanpress.com/2017/04/07/kadyrov-opens-first-concentration-camp-for-gays-since-hitlers-times
The Novaya Gazeta allegations are eagerly promoted by Paul A. Goble who worked on Soviet Nationalities issues for the Central Intelligence Agency and the US Department of State, and was a director of communications at Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe. Goble currently serves as a columnist for both Kiev’s Euromaidan Press and Interpreter Mag, a project of New-York based Institute of Modern Russia. The president of IMR is Pavel Khodorkovsky, the son of former jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. In January 2016, the magazine was absorbed by Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty.
You get the picture.
Abe as usual you come through. I hope people see your comment, so as they may get a hint of what really does go on inside of America’s adventurous ongoing media schemes towards more war. You sight a lot about BellingCat and Higgins, but there remains along side that knowledge a large portion of our populace who will never remember of ever even hearing that term ‘NGO’ if they probably did hear it once before in pasting. Little may be expected of this uninformed public for their beginning to understand still yet what a NGO mission is, not the written one either, but the real one where the NGO agitates foreign societies to revolutionary discontent, as will the NGO be found where there are muddled election results, and often shadows of NGO maybe found to be a bit darker by even convertly assisting in regime change, and with the public’s lack of that knowledge the average American is at a loss of ever learning the truth by knowing the players.
Whoever is behind this American effort to demonize things all Russian is guided by the devil himself. Media Agitation Projects is a map to more chaos, and hellish deaths to come. Leadership would give us a speech such as JFK’s American University speech Kennedy gave in June 1963. James W Douglas with his ‘JFK’s Murder and Why it Matters made a good case to that speech John Kennedy delivered at American University outside to an America who was hardly listening, was in Douglas’s analogy Kennedy’s death nail.
If you believe ‘that behind every great fortune is a great crime’ then go look at our U.S. Defense Departments Budget. The question that should be on every Americans lips, ‘is why all the war’, but instead citizens and generals alike get all excited in a good way feeling all macho until too much patriotic blindness sets in, and with that loss of sight they pass out listening to Lee Greenwood.
Americans everywhere got to hear where this Russian propaganda like Pussy Riots, Raging Homophobes in Sochi, and now Chechnya is throwing gays into concentration camps is coming from. I’m not even going to openly contemplate what comes next for fear I may give someone some bad ideas, but even without knowing what that will be, is what we do know for now is that Russia is in America’s crosshairs….so 2nd Amendment American with the gun reference. (Sorry)
Two quick points.
First, and I know that the enlightened audience here probably knows or feels this already, but the anti-Russan propaganda has to be off-hook, nutty, insane, vicious etc because it has to convince us that it is worth dying for the Zionists’ worthy cause of war on Russia. I have been following the Western demonisation of its enemies for more than three decades and the principle I established is that the intensity of propaganda is directly proportional to the cost to the audience of their desired reaction. This law of propaganda applies in the commercial sphere as well.
Second, Kadyrov is the principal barrier to the Saudi money which could destabilise Russia again by re-igniting the extremely costly Chechen rebellion. Kadyrov is a very popular leader in Chechnya who has found a modus vivendi with Putin and guarantees peace in this Russan sore. This is exactly why he became the target of the US MSM personalities serving the Zionists. You may recall that it was the Saudi prince Bandar who offered a trade to Putin during his visit to Moscow: no Chechen terrorism during Sochi Olympics in return for Putin abandoning Syria’s Assad.
It should not amaze us too much that we are all held hostage by the strength of the Mass Media which is owned, and operated by our Ziocon war lords. So senseless, and unnecessary, that we the people of this world need to be under the thumb of these corrupt Devils.
KIza read my inquiry regarding this latest scheme where the Ellen Degeneres is leading the charge against Chechnya throwing gays into concentration camps. Abe so far, and Jessica and James Lake (on another article) have been helpful with their attempts to uncover who is behind this recent propaganda attack. We need to post comments here revealing who’s behind the curtain so we may expose these lying nogoods to consortiumnews readers.
I can only add WHY – to depose Kadyrov and thus re-open the Russian festering wound in Chechnya (previously financed by KSA). You guys can find out WHO, because you are closer to the source of this obviously Zionist initiative. This is one good thing about the Internet – very few pieces of information are totally absent, the challenge is only to find them and connect the dots.
Thank you for that valuable information. Out of curiosity I searched the internet for Pavel Khodorkovsky. One of the first pictures that popped up was one of Pavel Khodorkovsky side by side with Martin Schulz – the guy who’ll probably lose to Angela Merkel in the upcoming elections in Germany.
HILLARY CLINTON WINS IN 2016
I was unaware that Hillary Clinton had any sins at all.
I don’t WANT Bob Parry to go to the NYT!! Why should
I wish him such a hell?
I was born during World War II. Imagine yourself as
an anti-National Socialist in Germany during the late 1930’s.
It is absurd to talk about resistance. Perhaps it would
be more real to talk about survival.
—Peter Loeb, Bostonh, MA, USA
What’s the right thing to do? To think about resistance or survival? At least we can try to try to enlighten those who’re willing to think rational.
Your comment instantly reminded me of a quote from Martin Niemöller (1892–1984):
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I think you know, but I totally agree Joe, thanks for your efforts. And Miranda Keefe, hang in there!
Again, Bernie’s latest, on Sunday, April 16, suggesting that because of the BS story propagated by the yankee regime, its vassals and propaganda machine that Russia and Iran should overthrow the legitimate secular Syrian government and cooperate with the yankee imperium in the installation in a barbarian regime reveals either the initial fraud of his campaign, or his subsequent personal weakness. He has revealed himself as a sell-out to the level of, for instance, Hollande of France or Tony Bliar of Britain.
Miranda-
I think a lot of us here have had the exact same exchanges with friends, and share your feelings. The propaganda machine is daunting, and unless you are a logical, critical thinker, and have time to search for the truth, it is very easy to get sucked in. Tending your own garden is very therapeutic, but keep speaking truth to power. The world needs you!
Russia Gate was just a blackmail campaign that turned the Trump Putin bromance into an ugly breakup. Rupert Murdoch was once rumored to say that he didn’t worry about what the bloody politicians would do once they found out he was not going to do what he promised. He boasted that they will keep their bloody heads down until the blow passes otherwise they will be made to look bad. That fairly well sums up the power of a free press. They are free to make stuff up. They are free to lie and to make anyone who doesn’t go along with their agenda look bad. It is the same in every society. The critical thinkers are continuously labeled and branded as enemies of the state. The fact that 100% of all the media opinion pieces in the MSM, FAIR found no instances of qualifiers like alleged or suspected when placing blame on Assad for the chemical attack is typical propaganda. Out of 47 Op/Ed articles, only one was opposed to the use of missiles to send Assad a message that chemical warfare would not be tolerated. Obama was a willing accomplice with the neocons as was Hillary At least Trump challenged them for a while while the discombobulated nonsense about Russia this that blah blah blah droned on.
Our main stream media sucks big time. We are all going to regret going along with all their lies. There are over half a million people dead in Syria. Anyone showing any of it on TV? But this strange chemical attack coming one week after Trump defied the neocons and said he was walking away from the fight flooded the news with images of the bodies of lifeless children.
What motive did Assad have for doing this? None. What motive did the neocons have for faking a false flag and whooping up a military response. Everything to gain from it and nothing to lose.
Any detective will tell you to look for motive and opportunity when trying to solve a crime. Our media gets an F minus in detective school and an A+ in propaganda school. The neocons are thinking this is too easy to pull the wool over our eyes and it is. It is shockingly easy to do. It is also very very wrong.
.
Exactly; mass media and elections must be restricted by constitutional amendment to funding by limited and registered individual contributions. But as those are the tools of democracy, this will never be publicly debated. Jefferson warned that “the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots” in every generation, and this has not been done in ten generations.
If Trump can’t stand up to his generals who support the neocon war goals, there won’t be progress. Who picked these guys for him, all from the Iraq War days? Something was really afoot to stick him with these warmongers, and Nikki Haley, too, a very bad choice! He was clueless.
It was Obama and Clinton who poisoned the relations with Russia. Even before Russia intervened on behalf of Syria, the neocons have wanted to prevent Russia from becoming a world power again. I think during the campaign Trump really saw business potential with Russia, maybe fighting terrorism, too. But Clinton stopped that with her vicious rhetoric against Putin.
I have to say that the social media age has allowed some of the pettiest, most vicious aspects of human nature to rise to the fore. Russiagate has certainly showed that. People trying to paint others as treasonous for attempting to defend Russia. Give me a break! We are supposed to say, “My country, right or wrong”?
I agree with you. The real villains in all this are the Neo-Cons/Liberal Interventionists and H.R. Clinton was their leader. She is the cause of this and I will never EVER forgive her.
If Trump’s capitulation leads to the unthinkable, she’ll be the worse villain in the history of the Earth.
I completely agree. It is the Clintons and Obama who have (1) failed the country; (2) brought us the wimpish nonentity Obama who betrayed the electorate’s hopes; (3) brought us Trump by sinking Sanders, nominating Clinton, and thus putting Trump in the WH. Don’t forget, too, that much of what ails this country can be traced directly back to terrible policy and legislation of the first dual-presidency, Clinton I. Hillary Clinton was a disaster the first time around, the second time around, the third time around (as SecState), and the fourth time around. The Democratic Party if certifiable for constantly giving Clinton “her turn.”
Even if his capitulation turns out to be less than leading to the unthinkable, the Clintons have been revealed to be the spearheads of a corrupt odious fascist element which is more dangerous than any earlier iteration because of the fact nuclear annihilation could be the end result.
Well said!
That has also has bothered me a great deal-who in the hell is sending these neo con “candidates” to trump; almost from day one, we have had a steady drumbeat of “oh gad no” with the odious elliott abrams, bolton, woolsey, patraeus, on and on ad nauseum . Wilkerson (powell’s former chief of staff) was aghast as were many people but they kept being put forward as viable candidates for whatever position.
Now, we have those same people coming out for moar war, boots on the ground without invitation, drumbeat for regime change, and the problem is that many of them are in the admin at this time, The are all starting to sound like madeleine albright, prob one of the most despicable people to have a destructive hand in foreign policy decisions.
Jessica, you say the pettiest, most vicious aspects of human nature-I would characterize it as an extremely evil aspect, without regard for the destructive consequences of their policies.
Nice thread all of you thanks…
After reading this and many other articles both here at Consortium and at other sites, I have come to the unhappy conclusion that by November ( and probably before) we will either have impeached Trump or we will be in World War III or maybe both. The people in charge of our government are frankly insane; there’s just no other way to say it. I they aren’t “ignorant” or “stupid” as I have heard some people describe them – that’s way too kind. These people are bat-shit crazy, and it’s time the citizens of this country wake up and realize it.
Spending billions (and soon to be trillions) on war and war machines instead of infrastructure here at home and on health care and education and on the environment etc. etc. is literally taking our tax money and blowing it up! Think about it – that’s exactly what they are doing, and if that is not insane I don’t know what is. Our representatives in Congress and our senators regardless of party affiliation ( with some exceptions) are all crazy, it goes without saying that the executive section is nuts; although it also was crazy under Obama only we didn’t notice so much. The judicial branch (aka Supreme Court) has now gone totally off the rails and in the future will no longer be respected or believed by the citizens of the US. All of this is sort of glued together by the big corporations, oil, gas, war machines and munitions and big pharma who actually run the entire show.
The media blabbers on and on, but since the premise of all their talk is factually untrue, nothing they say makes sense no matter how erudite people like Fareed Zacharia (sp?) can sound. He is just one of many who spout off basing their comments and conclusions on factual lies.
Get ready for armageddon folks. I’m 83 and I remember what the world looked like when it was relatively sane. Even the Republicans I grew up with were interested in helping others (conservatively, of course) but they weren’t greedy monsters. Democrats were more of the Roosevelt mold and war was not a prefered goal, as it is today.
I’m not religious, but all I can say is “God help us”
thanks ranney…i dont go that far back but,,,i remember the day i found out it wasnt all rhetoric from our government….remember Kent State…
Fareed Zakaria
Regarding insanity. All one has to do is watch the accolades given to “Bibby” in congress recently.
I forgot to include the Vice President Mike Pence recent speech at AIPAC. The mother of all crawls.
ranney: Excellent comments. We may be heading that way as you described, impeachment or World War III. And everything else you said is so true.
Well spoken, ranney. I have a little more hope for the future. My sense is that the hotshots in our banking industry are once again going to screw themselves and everyone else with their reckless investing tactics.
This time – however – I do not see them being bailed out again. I think they are going to be broken up or simply go bankrupt – causing an entire banking and financial industry to have to start over and rebuild. Might take these neocons down with it.
I still think that these proponents for war should have to spend a week to a month in boot camp where they have to crawl on their belly for a hundred yards under live ammunition fire. Might teach them some respect for humanity.
Re future banker bailouts: they already saw that problem and came up with an involuntary alternative, the “bail in.”
Your deposits will get swapped for scrip: some sort of subordinated claim on whatever equity might be left in the institution after the sharpies have had their way with it.
You won’t be asked; it’s already in the bag.
I too wish that the meltdown of oligarchy was so soon, but suspect that the financiers of the duopoly will always be bailed out, even if their depositors are not. Goldman and its racist zionists are now in the admin and run the show.
Boot camp may teach them to pretend patriotism, and give them second thoughts about wars, but sympathy with humanity is taught earlier by means such as literature and good examples and exhortation that show them that “There, but for the grace of [circumstances] go I.”
The Corporate Democrats are not enthusiastic about investigating Russia’s very probable complicity. Why? Because it lifted the tiny curtain on how much these “Democrats” cheated, lied, and stole Bernie’s votes and momentum at every turn. Surely you remember the 16 anti-Sanders articles in the Washington Post alone on the day before the first Super Tuesday. Everyone saw the Corporate Cruise Missile “liberals” steal, lie and cheat. We won’t forget it, either. The Dems are still trying for “business as usual.” We, the American Public, are not standing for it. There were 180 tax day events across the country and internationally.
My favorite sign, bleeped:
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Turn over your tax returns
Mother******
Your favorite sign applies equally to your sanctimonious Pied Piper, who’s as much of an egotistic hustler at the illegitimate POTUS. Yeesh, these delusional comments are depressing.
Russia’s very probable complicity? Why insinuating Russia had to do anything at all with the hacking? Vault7 shows that the CIA could’ve easily framed everyone (the Russians, Iranians, North Koreans, …).
What happened to the approach innocent until proven guilty?
At the very least, Trump ended complacency. And he will be the “catalyst” for the new era we are entering. His followers won’t get what they were promised (duh), Hillary marginalized the liberals for the next twenty years. So, my hope is with the progressive youth for the future.
Pablo, I think Trump might be impeached over Russia-gate
Clinton has seriously damaged the left, dividing liberals who identified with her from those who saw her militarism and zionism. There will be a host of new fake-liberal identity candidates and Clinton herself to perpetuate this damage for the advantage of the warmongers. But one really popular grass-roots progressive could pull them together again within a few months. What we need are progressive parties that honestly represent their supporters, and form coalitions to elect a real liberal rather than an oligarchy faker.
Perhaps Tulsi Gabbard, now being attacked by the democratic power structure, could be that candidate. Most democrats, including people who used to extol the rule of law, appear to have degenerated into good soldiers for the power structure. I notice even Sanders is attempting to compromise by suggesting that Russia and Iran overthrow Assad. This is Sanders jumping the shark and losing any remaining shreds of credibility as a progressive, and suggesting the truth of the sheepdog accusation.
It is good to know that Sanders is in fact a fascist zionist warmonger running on domestic issues, as I suspected from his silence on foreign policy. So his support was from Jewish zionists, just like Clinton, and not from diverse contributors.
Does anyone know whether Stein is the same way, both having Jewish names and finally supporting the zionist Clinton?
Well, it’s a good question but I do think Stein is capable of having sufficient principle and honesty to want to challenge the election count without our automatically assuming this meant she was favoring Clinton.
Agreed, right on. We could use five or more new parties, absolutely NOT connected to establishment BS with young bright candidates vowing serious to represent the people instead of the plutocrats.
The neocon pressure on Trump which you describe and analyze well has a counterpart in the pressure placed on Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien back in September, 2002. He was showing reluctance to join the forces pushing for war against Iraq. Then an article appeared by Marie-Josée Kravis in the Wall Street Journal in which she denounced him as an apologist for terrorism and claimed that former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had the right idea and knew how to deal with terrorists, having invoked the War Measures Act against the Front de Libération Nationale beck in 1970. There was a comparison with a German official by the name of Schroeder, who was under attack at the time for alleged anti-semitism. A major chain of newspapers owned by Izzy Asper fully supported the war and gave prominent headlines to the story. The story did not mention that the writer was married to Henry Kravis, a billionaire and an earlier big supporter of the Republican Party and George H.W. Bush in particular. Nor did it mention that Marie-Josée Kravis was co-chair of a big fundraiser for George W. Bush in May of 2002. In other words readers would not be tipped off to the likely political motivation for the story.
The story led Chrétien to cave, and the headlines soon read “Chrétien supports the war” or words to that effect. Later it turned out that his Canadian support was nugatory in military terms, showing a certain wiliness on his part. Once a big PR pressure mechanism is mounted, and appears successful, and the pressure is allowed to subside, it is very difficult to resurrect it a second time with the same force and pressure.
The reason is that people begin to recognize the media assault as propaganda. It remains to be seen whether Trump will achieve his goal of rapprochement by having apparently caved to the pressure, but in showy rather than militarily significant ways.
Thank you Randal Marlin for that well described account. It is this degree of complexity that I see over and over in critical times that feed my conspiratorial proclivity. It’s not chance; it’s propaganda and, you’re correct, people are slowly beginning to “recognize” propaganda. I see this tendency as positive in that there is an “end” to propaganda’s effectiveness, and I think we’re reaching that state.
America should be friends and allies with Russia! I thought that was a very good possibility when Trump won the WH. Very bad he had some idiots that happened to be married into the family whispering ‘nothings’ into his ear. Worst mistake ever to blow a chance at lasting world peace. Thanks so very much, I ‘n JK!!!
i am having a problem with an aspect of the tomahawk attack….not only were syria and russia notified of this attack…it appears as though all of the missile defense systems were turned off also….these are automated systems that will engage a cruisemissle attack…so why did they not engage? would this attack provide political strength to all parties involved? i can find no evidence that these systems were operational during the attack…or vice/versa as in an acknowledgement of destroyed missiles by russian authorities… .here is another very uncomfortable story from NEO, that the chemical “incident” may very well be a part of…
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/30/golan-heights-israel-oil-and-trump/ check out the names on this oil corporation board….was wondering what cheney was up to lately…
See : “There Was No Way for Russia to Shoot Down Trump’s Syria Cruise Missiles ” at Russia Insider.
“The earth is round. There was never a way Russia’s radars 200 km away could detect relief-hugging missiles”
It’s also suspected that the flight path was crafted so as to avoid air defense installations.
thanks for the source….also is speculation that the missle attack plan started before the chemical “incident” occurred so that they would be able to strike that soon….
Yes , I heard that too. I have no idea if they could have adjusted the missile flight paths on such short notice or not. I’m pretty sure the last part of the flight path would have been unchangeable on short notice , as it has the pre-programmed map of terrain , structures , etc. that allows precise targeting.
The first thing that you are wrong on is that it is the Russian AWACS planes, which were reported to have been operating in Syria after the SU24 shootdown, which could have tracked the cruise missiles with their look-down radars, no matter how far they may have been from the Russian air defences in Syria. The second thing you are wrong on is that the missiles of S300 and even more of S400 are much, much faster than cruise missiles because they have to catch up with super-sonic jets and ballistic missiles (S400). Therefore, the only question is – did the Russians withdraw their AWACS planes from Syria during one of the Putin’s draw-downs? Otherwise, there is no doubt that the Russians could have organised AWACS flight with a two hour notice. The Russian AWACS are supposed to be able to transfer targeting data to S300 and S400 missile batteries and both systems have Tomahawks on their capability list, not that it is terribly hard to shoot down the sub-sonic cruise missiles.
I’m not sure the Russians had two hours’ notice, one of the reasons the Russians were upset and related to canceling the de-conflict agreement. I think it was more like one hour of notice. What is your view on the 36 missing missiles, gone astray or not, or is that propaganda? Plus MUCH appreciation for your comments above on propaganda!
Thanks D5-5, we had some minor disagreements in the past, but we are both sensible individuals who have a good idea what is going on behind the MSM screen of BS.
Thanks for asking my opinion on the missing Tomahawks, I did work in air-defence for a period of my life. Apparently, the Israelis claim that all 58 missiles struck the Syrian airport (one struck a field) and this is based on some satellite images which could have easily been forged. We should not forget that Raytheon company has strong roots in Israel and its stock price would be affected adversely if 61% of the missiles fired ended up off target. It is well know that Raytheon makes Patriot air defence system whose effectiveness in downing Saddam’s crude Scuds during GW1 the Israelis already grossly lied about and were exposed. The Russians claim of only 23 missiles hitting the target is based on a drone-view analysis of the impacts and, unless the Russian military do not know how to count, I am inclined to believe that a larger number of missiles missed their target. I personally believe that Russia has removed its two AWACS planes from Syria, in which case the shootdowns of low flying missiles would have been virtually impossible. Finally, there is a knowledgeable consensus online that most likely the missiles were jammed by the Russian EW capability just at the targeted airport. There would be two possibilities:
1) the jammer spoofed the missiles by giving their computers a wrong location of the target (very sophisticated but more difficult to do), or
2) the jammer used Electromagnetic Pulse to fry the electronics on the missile (what the Russians previously did to the missile cruiser Donald Cook).
Obviously, I would be betting on the latter. Localised EW capability (at the targeted airport only) would explain well why some missiles still hit the target, because a single EW system faced a large barrage meant to overwhelm defences.
An alternative explanation is that Trump just did again what he did for his whole campaign — he grabbed control of the media narrative. They talk about what he wants them to talk about.
Who’s the victim here?
The neocons want their war, desperately, and want to think they got it. But they always lie, to themselves and everyone else.
So far, Trump only gave them a few Tomahawk missiles and one big bomb on an Afghan cave. He has not delivered the war they want, just hints of one.
If Trump was as stupid as his enemies say, then he would not be President.
This has not played out.
“This has not played out yet.”
I think that’s plausible to the extent that I think I agree. The problem is that it was a really bad (murderous) act to solve a problem that could have been solved with some courage (leadership) to eg. let the investigation run its course.
Question is does he have/will he now have the guts to back away from horrendous acts with global repercussions when the media bloodlust calls for more human sacrifice in order for Trump to prove himself “more completely?”
I think he has the skills and experience to engineer popular will. The election showed that. But will he use that tool?
Dunno. Dangerous times.
Not stupid. Fascist, sick, wiley, ill.
Must be stopped as fascism unfolds
Excellent..as always!!!
I agree with about 90% of this but I think it still overlooks the odd attachments of Trump and his early cohort with various Russian interests and an admiration of Putin to the point of sycophancy. I think treating Trump’s wish for better relations with Russia as “good and noble Trump”, while most of what Trump does is shovel in money and power for Trump, is a striking anomaly that suggests either naivete or insufficient information. There still are probably some impeachable offenses there as well as in other of Trump’s dealings. I do think staking so much on Russia-gate by actual liberals was and is a big political gamble that has more downside than upside. It remains mostly a distraction.
“An admiration of Putin to the point of sycophancy.”
Trump said that he thought that Putin was a good leader. He said he thought that he could deal with the guy. He said that together the US and Russia could defeat ISIS and Islamic Terrorism. he said that he would like to normalize relations with Russia. How is that sycophancy? Sounds like common sence to me. He spoke the truth about the leader of another of the world´s super powers. In the land of the free and brave you are not allowed to make an observation about a foreign leader now? What in the world ever happened to freedom of speech? Have Americans thrown that quaint idea under a bus because the Washington Post and New York Times demands it of them? Is that the new qualification needed to be a ” Good American”? To be a ” Good American ” now are you required to be a ventriloquist´s dummy and repeat over and over again ” Russia Bad, US good, no matter the contrary facts? As an American or to be a ” Good American” are you required to repeat a mantra that makes no sence and was never true? Oh and Trump has never even met President Putin.
Dan Kuhn: I completely agree with your comments. I think Trump made appropriate remarks about Putin. Given the state of things Russia was in when Putin took over, it is understandable to the World beyond U.S. and E.U. borders that, Putin has been a great leader for his Country and for the World. It may be the reason that The West hates him so much, and want regime change in Russia.
I wonder what this world would be like had Prince Lvov – who became the leader in Russia after the Czar was forced out of power – had had his desire realized to create a republic modeled after the US. He apparently did not want to end the war with Germany and to do land reform – so was forced out of power. His successor – Alexander Kerensky – also lost power for the same reasons. And then the Bolsheviks and Menshiviks seized power – aided by the Brits. We all know the rest. What is ironic – after Russia conceded Ukraine and several other territories to the Germans – they got them all back after the war was over – even though they were not involved in its completion. Had the previous leaders done that – Russia may have had a democratic republic instead of the oligarthy that they have today. Had Prince Lvov realized his dream – we would not be having this conversation.
Surely your characterization of Russia as oligarchic isn’t meant to detract from the facts of American oligarchy. As to “what might have been,” perhaps if Russians had formed a functioning democratic republicanism at an earlier stage in their national history, we would have a good example to follow. Our own example is corrupted to the hilt, and the Constitution itself precariously close to tatters.
As to your earlier comment…”to the point of sycophancy” is really overwrought. “Good and noble” replaced by “reasonable and pragmatic” (in terms of Trump’s attitude toward relations with Russia) is a better descriptor of what was not naively hoped for, but was rather encouraged and cautiously hoped for.
Your “impeachable offenses” and other aspersions are unsubstantiated.
Your characterization below of Putin is unsubstantiated.
The fact that you equate what Trump said about Putin with being either a propagandist or on a man-crush is a laugh.
A republic modeled after the US? Whilst most of the natural resources of the capitalist Republic USA have been consumed, the communist model – by “mismanagement” – preserved the ones of the former Soviet Republics. Does anyone think Roosevelt’s New Deal would’ve been possible without the communist opposite side of the Soviet Union? Pure capitalism, without any restrictions, inevitably will end up in a new feudalistic society. The tools of oppression of dissent are already in place (militarized police, spying on everyone in the name of “national security”, …). Union busting already started several years ago. Besides the negative aspects for average people there’s another problem with unrestricted capitalism: Economics doesn’t consider nature (the environment) at all. Environmental protection (be it exploitation of resources or dumping dangerous waste) is seen as a huge burden for the competitiveness of large companies.
So, yes, if Prince Lvov could’ve realized his dream, we wouldn’t have this conversation at all. The earth probably would’ve been destroyed by now.
Your anodyne description of Trump’s comments about Putin appears also to be extremely naive. Trump, an extreme narcissist, has rarely praised others, especially if he cannot by doing so take credit by association for someone else’s “greatness”. Also, unless you are a fan of murderous, kleptocratic authoritarians, to say Putin is a “good leader” is not a true statement especially in the context of American politics. Putin being a murderous kleptocrat doesn’t mean he is taking over the world or the “puppet-master” that liberal New Cold Warriors make him out to be. Trump took significant risks to his own political standing to paint a positive, glowing picture of Putin that was false when politically it would have been wiser for him to say: “For geopolitical reasons we need better relations with Russia & Putin, as we pressure him to improve civil rights In Russia”. He took the risk, out of stupidity, a man-crush or greed, to look like a Putin propagandist. Your naive interpretation of his remarks also tends toward the propagandistic or just extreme naivete about Russian internal politics.
WOW just wow. A perfect example of a smart person who has been fooled by his own countries propaganda as well as a willingness to let our own bias to drive the car …so to speak. WOW just wow!!!
The HQ of murderous kleptocrats is Wall street. (Who is financing all the wars, except for taxpayers? It’s the bankers!)
Let’s not forget what the new “liberal hero” George W. Bush said about seeing into Putin’s soul or whatever nonsense. But that is all down the memory hole. It’s just attack Trump (a fine project) but all the rest of recent events be damned (an idiotic mistake).
I agree. Without Russia he’s an impeachable fascist criminal on emmolients clause, muslim ban, judge attacks, inciting violence and more.
If he was for detente’, it was $ Exxon etc
Who ya going to believe? The New York Times the Post and professional deep state propaganda liars or your own eyes? Examine the commercial press during the last few years, and it has increasingly followed a uniform propaganda line reminiscent of previous imperial dictatorships such as the Soviet or Nazi regimes.
This is spot on!
There are two narratives possible here. One is Bob Parry’s, which I share, is that Trump was genuinley bent on Detente 2.0 with Russia, clearly a real goal of his since it cost him so much political capital, votes and support; RussiaGate derailed him from this very real goal. The evidence supports that.
The other narrative is that the Trump who struck Syria is the real Trump emerging or that Trump is unstable and can go any which way. Either version of this view depends on analysis of personality not policy. Stephen F. Cohen has pointed out that this is the usual approach when it comes to Trump – personality not policy. It is little more than psychobabble. This second narrative is the preferred one of the “progressives,” whose lack of objective politics leaves them unmoored. They bear a not inconsidersble responsibility for the success of RussiaGate in which they became de facto allies of the neocons and neoliberalcons, as Pepe Escobar likes to call Jean Bricmont’s “humanitarian imperialists.”
Now there is a question whether Trump can get back on track with Detente 2.0 or whether he has given up. We can be certain of one thing. If Trump moves back toward Detente 2.0, RussiaGate will explode again on the front pages of the MSM.
I got a better explanation John Walsh – the Aassad chemical attack & Trump’s missile response is staged to undermine the allegation that Trump is a Russian puppet.
So Putin gave La Donald the go-ahead to do exactly the opposite of what he was installed in the White House by Putin to accomplish–keep Assad in power in Syria–just to persuade people that he wasn’t installed in the White House by Putin?
Oy vey baby–the Right wing of the Dem Party has been selling some baaad weed.
Third option; they didn’t get involved in our election, he wanted detente’, there was also corruption involved with that and Exxon, like all Trump touches.
Aaaah, the eternal question: how many angels can dance on the tip of a needle?
Trump has now openly joined the dark side, which his government appointments were indicating from the first day.
Ultimately, Trump’s is the first post-Brexit hit on the people, sorry that it had to be the US people. Come 2020 election, the Masters of the Universe will pull Hillary out of the mothballs and place her against Trump. At least Hillary was honest that she would start tens of wars and possibly annihilate humanity. Who are you gonna vote again people, the honest killer&thief Hillary or the lying killer&thief Trump? Yet, we are discussing here whether Trump was always on the dark side or he found an easy way out of his own predicament by joining it now. In reality, we should be discussing if US will survive till the next election under a male Hillary. Ultimately, with either male Hillary or female Hillary, US is heading all in the same direction.
In 2016 election, the choice between Trump and Hillary appears to have indicated a generational change among the country’s Zionist Masters. The old generation of Zionists was for Hillary, the new generation of Zionists was for Trump. Trump was a salesman who was given talking points and logistical help to win the election and he did it. If Trump were to implement 1% of the change he promised (including putting America first), he would have had zero chance to become the President. If he had a character strong enough to resist the Zionist pressure on him, he would have been shot.
Whichever you look at it, we got a male Hillary in the White House together with a young Zionist puppet master Jared Kushner. In due time, the US will get not what it wanted then what it deserved.
Trump Won’t Be Cancelling World War 3 After All
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fy0bT4FK9c
On April 6th, 2017, on the 100 year anniversary of America’s entry into World War I, Donald Trump launched airstrikes against against the Syrian government; in retaliation for a gas attack supposedly perpetrated by Assad. There was no investigation, not even a hack job of a frame up like we had in 2003. The evidence we do have contradicts the official story, and the stakes are much higher this time around.
Then before the dust had even settled, Trump pivoted to Asia. Ratcheting up intimidation tactics, towards North Korea. Threatening regime change and practically begging the already insecure Kim Jong-un to do something stupid. And that’s the point. Provoke a response, and then play the victim.
If he can’t get it the old fashion way he might just make one up. Trump cut a deal with the deep state, and the neoliberal/neocon/corporate alliance. They got his back now. As long as they get their war, everybody’s happy.
Make no mistake this is just the beginning. Expect the unexpected in the South China Sea, Iran, and Eastern Europe and on the home front.
The circus tent is coming down, but boy is he gonna give us a show in the meantime.
Trump isn’t just flirting with World War III, he’s inviting it. He wants everyone to know that he’s crazy enough to pull the trigger; thinks it’ll help him twist some arms, thinks he can force the big boys to negotiate.
But this isn’t isn’t a real estate deal, and that’s not an ace he’s got up his sleeve. Nobody wins a nuclear war.
i am having a problem with an aspect of the tomahawk attack….not only were syria and russia notified of this attack…it appears as though all of the missile defense systems were turned off also….these are automated systems that will engage a cruisemissle attack…so why did they not engage? would this attack provide political strength to all parties involved? i can find no evidence that these systems were operational during the attack…or vice/versa as in an acknowledgement of destroyed missiles by russian authorities… .here is another very uncomfortable story from NEO, that the chemical “incident” may very well be a part of…
http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/30/golan-heights-israel-oil-and-trump/ check out the names on this oil corporation board….was wondering what cheney was up to lately…
Excellent link here, thank you for this tip, suggesting that all of the events over the past weeks are linked, and are moving in the direction of more false flags and excuses for attacks. At issue specifically is the recent discovery of oil in the Golan Heights, which applies to the favored pipeline by Israel-US interests running north into Turkey and across to Europe in competition to the other pipeline favored by Russia-Assad.
What a tragedy this episode has been. Democratic leaders turned to models of Joseph McCarthy and that turning will be remembered and will haunt us for years to come. We will now find out how much assorted Democrats and Republicans want to try to ruin China, that will not happen of course, but the danger is real.
Very well written for a broad audience, and an interesting perspective on the Syria attacks as a chance to befuddle the Russiagate mass media, which cannot be extended there or in Korea.
Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
He may prefer to be independent, and there may be better polling websites, but pressure on the NYT to recognize the superior reporting of their opposition is a good thing. It is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition can demonstrate the concerns of a far larger number. I will repeat this post from time to time.
wow… you really believe in this crusade yeah? NYT have been purveyors of deep deception for years now, and you think they care about legitimate journalism? Do a search right here at Consortium News and get caught up on Parry’s full frontal assault on the NYT Propaganda Machine, you’ll find headlines like these:
NYT’s Absurd New Anti-Russian Propaganda
How the NYT Plays with History
The Dumbed-Down New York Times
NYT Shows How Propaganda Works
No Lessons Learned at the NYT
When Journalists Join the Cover-ups
The NYT’s Out-of-Control Bias
NYT Revamps Its False Ukraine Narrative
More Anti-Russian Bias at the NYT
NYT’s Fake News about Fake News
The NYT’s New Contra Lies
So let me get this straight, you think Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr and his editorial staff would welcome R. Parry if enough people signed a petition? wow… sorry Eric, but I had to do this… somebody had to do it.
Oh I quite agree, RAW. Hence “It is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it.” This is both a vote for Mr. Parry himself, and a jab at NYT. Indeed they can ignore this, but they will know that for everyone who signs this, there are many potential subscribers, and lost subscribers, who want something better. That says something.
you took the words out of my mouth
The petition has reached 184 signatures, and is now being sent to [email protected] each time someone signs.
If anyone has a better email address for the final judge of senior editorial staff there, I will change the destination. Other known email addresses there are:
[email protected]
[email protected]
Done! Good Luck!
“Lies, my dear boy, are found out immediately, because they are of two sorts. There are lies that have short legs, and lies that have long noses. Your lie, as it happens, is one of those that have a long nose.” – Fairy to Pinnochio
– from Carlo Collodi’s “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (serialized in 1881-1883) – the original text for the Walt Disney adaptation
Evidence-free RussiaGate allegations get mentioned in the most interesting places.
As if on cue, on 13 April 2017, MIT Technology Review published an ominous article purportedly revealing sinister “Russian Disinformation Technology” https://www.technologyreview.com/s/604084/russian-disinformation-technology/
The article presents a dire description of supposed Kremlin misdeeds:
“It took the weaponization of information in the 2016 U.S. presidential election for the Western world to start to notice. We now know of e-mails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian hackers, of sophisticated botnets, of similar attacks across Europe; but the full extent of Russia’s activities is still being uncovered. Realizing that we are at war, and understanding how we can fight back, is now urgent business.”
As a “grim but useful case study” of alleged Russian perfidy, author Jason Pollock presents Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat’s “story of MH17”.
Pollock depicts Higgins as a “highly regarded citizen journalist” and Bellingcat as “a self-organized group” using “little more than laptops, open-source materials, and relentless dedication” to battle those treacherous Russians.
Pollock’s mashup of Bellingcat articles is a fitting homage to Higgins, whose Bellingcat “Investigation Reports” and Atlantic Council “reports” themselves are little more than mashups of Bellingcat blog posts.
Like the majority of mainstream media, Pollock is oblivious to the self-referential game of “post-truth” propaganda that is the Bellingcat long-nosed brand.
But Pollock’s article is interesting not only because it fails to present evidence of an alleged Russian “net of disinformation” supposed to underpin RussiaGate.
More interesting is the fact that the article appeared two days after MIT professor Theodore A. Postol, a long time contributor to MIT Technology Review, presented analysis of the report released by the Trump White House concerning the Khan Shaykhun attack in Syria.
On 11 April 2017, physicist and defense technology expert Postol wrote that Trump’s report “contains absolutely no evidence that this attack was the result of a munition being dropped from an aircraft” and that photographic evidence used by the White House pointed to an attack by people on the ground.
Higgins and the gang at Bellingcat blog have vigorously backed the narrative of an air-dropped bomb.
Back in September 2013 and January 2014, Postol and former UN Weapons Inspector Richard Lloyd published important investigations of faulty US technical intelligence in the Damascus nerve agent attack of 21 August 2013. Analyzing available data, they found a number of items to be inconsistent with the Obama White House’s narrative of the incident.
Postol and Lloyd concluded that the Ghouta chemical attack did not seem to have been launched by the Syrian government. Their investigations were attacked by self-appointed “citizen investigative journalist” Higgins and his collaborator, self-declared “chemical weapons expert”
Postol and Lloyd repeatedly debunked the claims of Higgins and Kaszeta. Nevertheless, Higgins has continued to be cited by mainstream media, human rights organizations, and Western governments.
Debunkings of Higgins’ “findings” are typically ignored by the media while Higgins hurled Twitter insults.
Once again, Higgins’ nose is protruding in the form of Bellingcat “findings” about the Khan Shaykhun attack.
Once again, we find what Pollock describes as “a charade, wrapped in a travesty, inside a miasma: a relentless campaign of abuse and deceit, trying to entangle every fact of the matter” with Higgins and Bellingcat leading the charge.
In March 2017, MIT professor Theodore A. Postol was interviewed by French journalist Édouard Vuiart for the Les-Crises site based in Paris.
Here is a portion of the interview with professor Postol (translated from the French text) where he specifically addresses fake news purveyor Eliot Higgins:
Vuiart: “The mainstream media have put forward Higgins, hailing his ‘revolutionary’ methods and his fight against the fake news. The French newspaper Le Monde even presented it as ‘the future of journalism’. What do you think of the significant deterioration in the quality of media coverage?
Postol: “Throughout my career, I have endeavored to work with journalists on every occasion. I have always regarded journalism as the key element in making democracies effective. Unfortunately, I totally agree with you that there has been a significant deterioration in the quality of media coverage over the last few decades, and in my opinion, fake news also reflects the decline in editorial level of new media.
“The fact that Le Monde can quote someone like Eliot Higgins, who is in fact a kind of fake news producer, violently underlines the world’s lack of editorial vigilance. A very small effort on the part of the editors of Le Monde would have sufficed to note that it can be said that Mr. Higgins is in fact a sort of provider of fake news . Instead, the editors of the World seem to have given their imprimatur to Higgins as a source of serious information…
“I do not specifically refer to Le Monde , but you should also know that I have the same opinion (and the irrefutable proof) of the lightness of the editorial control of the New York Times and the New Yorker , both of which have published some of the writings of Higgins and his colleague Kaszeta. Any journalist or news organization that considers Bellingcat to be a truly reliable vector of information simply demonstrates that it has done little to verify events that are biased in Bellingcat .
“Unfortunately, worries about fake news have to be extended to some mainstream media that do not do their job and whose stories have similar effects to the fake news they criticize.”
Postol: “Bellingcat refused to publish any information that contradicts its version of the facts.”
English translation of interview (Thank you, Google Translate. Say hi to “Le Chevalier blanc de Google” for us)
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=https://www.les-crises.fr/postol-bellingcat-a-refuse-de-publier-toute-information-en-contradiction-avec-sa-version-des-faits/
Postol : “Bellingcat a refusé de publier toute information en contradiction avec sa version des faits.”
https://www.les-crises.fr/postol-bellingcat-a-refuse-de-publier-toute-information-en-contradiction-avec-sa-version-des-faits/
Thanks, Abe, indeed Pollock’s MIT TR article is proof-free while claiming to celebrate a new technology of speculation as proof, just the “charade, wrapped in a travesty, inside a miasma” that he deplores. The Higgins/Bellingcat evidence consists of phone calls and maps supplied by Ukraine intel and unknown volunteers, and even that if true would suggest only that ethnic Russians made statements about Buks, or that Russia retaliated for military attacks on Donetsk et al. It is revealing that they do not insist upon publication of the US data on MH17, nor criticize the lack of Ukraine ATC data, or the routing of MH17 over the war zone. They appear to be credulous ideologues at least, and more likely scammers.
Odd that MIT could find no one but Jews to write the articles on either side: when I was there they were all extremely racist zionists reflexively attacking anyone who would not give them the farm without questioning, with inverted accusations of racism.
Apparently “lies that have short legs” are those cannot outrun the truth.
Old school “intelligence community” agencies once suffered the indignities of supplying “magic bullets” and “magic passports” to plug enormous plot holes in “regime change” narratives, both foreign and domestic.
New school “intelligence community” agencies have outsourced the indignities to digital “magic passport” suppliers like CrowdStrike, and virtual “magic missile” and “magic bomb” launderers like UK-based deception operative Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat.
A key “source” for ODNI allegations of cyber activity is CrowdStrike, an American cybersecurity technology firm based in Irvine, California.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer of CrowdStrike, is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank.
Like Higgins and Bellingcat, Alperovitz and Crowdstrike provide on-demand “regime change” propaganda material.
Alperovitz, quoted frequently as the main source of the Russian hacker/Trump “compromised” story, has said that Crowdstrike has “high confidence” it was “Russian hackers”.
“But we don’t have hard evidence,” Alperovitch said in a June 16 Washington Post article.
Allegations of Russian perfidy are routinely issued by private companies with lucrative US Department of Defense (DoD) contracts. The companies claiming to protect the nation against “threats” have the ability to manufacture “threats”.
The US and UK possess elite cyber capabilities for both cyberspace espionage and offensive operations.
Both the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) are intelligence agencies with a long history of supporting military operations. US military cyber operations are the responsibility of US Cyber Command, whose commander is also the head of the NSA.
US offensive cyber operations have emphasized political coercion and opinion shaping, shifting public perception in NATO countries as well as globally in ways favorable to the US, and to create a sense of unease and distrust among perceived adversaries such as Russia and China.
The Snowden revelations made it clear that US offensive cyber capabilities can and have been directed both domestically and internationally. The notion that US and NATO cyber operations are purely defensive is a myth.
Recent US domestic cyber operations have been used for coercive effect, creating uncertainty and concern within the American government and population.
The perception that a foreign attacker may have infiltrated US networks, is monitoring communications, and perhaps considering even more damaging actions, can have a disorienting effect.
US offensive cyber warfare operations work in tandem with aggressive US and NATO propaganda efforts against governments that fail to cooperate with Washington’s diktats.
Concerning the possible relevance of ethnicity, none other than the Jerusalem Post, that notorious hotbed of anti-Semitic rumor mongering, lists George Soros, Sergey Brin and Lawrence (Larry) Page of Google among the world’s richest Jewish people http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Jewish-Features/The-worlds-50-Richest-Jews-1-10
Crowdstrike’s Alperovitch and Google’s Brin were both born in Moscow. Brin’s parents were graduates of Moscow State University who emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1979 with their five year old son. Suffice it to say that for many former Soviet Jews, there’s no love lost with Moscow (or Kiev for that matter).
Based on this admittedly paltry collection of data points, and backed by the Jerusalem Post, it’s fair (and not at all anti-Semitic) to say that Bellingcat’s Eliot Higgins wakes up every morning, reviews his NATO-issued to-do list, and asks “Yes, but is it good for the Jews?”
Not to mention Glenn Greenwald.
Two years ago, a “huge admirer” asked:
“Hi Eliot – I’m a huge admirer of your work and I think it’s an incredibly important (and plain incredible) thing that you do […]
where do you see bellingcat going? Do you ever see yourself going down the VICE route into broadcast and production, or more along the lines of Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept website?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/syriancivilwar/comments/2bbo2s/im_eliot_higgins_aka_brown_moses_of_the_brown/
“Eliot” replied:
“Currently I’m keen to develop projects around Bellingcat, which take advantage of open source information, and allow Bellingcat readers to get involved with projects, start spreading those skills.”
Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat “projects” have included a plethora of propaganda “reports” about “chemical attacks” in Syria.
Higgins’ collaborators at Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab (DFRL) are the primary fake news teams tasked with propaganda laundering in the aftermath of alleged “chemical attacks” in Syria.
Bellingcat “investigation reports” are a signature mix of disparate so-called “open source” elements and spurious reasoning.
The deeper layer of deception underlying last year’s Washington Post / ProporNot debacle was that PropOrNot functioned as a conspicuous straw man.
Repudiation of PropOrNot was leveraged to project the appearance that Higgins and Bellingcat, and other and ProporNot “Related Projects” (Interpreter Mag, Atlantic Council’s DFRL, Kiev’s StopFake) are “professional” organizations of true “independent researchers” by comparison.
This disinformation strategy is reinforced by the fact that Bellingcat is directly allied with the Washington Post and New York Times, the two principal mainstream media organs for “regime change” propaganda in the United States, via the Google-founded “First Draft” network.
Google is an enthusiastic supporter of Higgins despite Bellingcat’s track record of debunked claims about Syria and Russia. Google formed the “First Draft” coalition in 2015 with Bellingcat as a founding member.
In a triumph of Orwellian Newspeak, this Google’s new “post-Truth” propaganda coalition declares that member organizations will “work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process”.
Apparently the key method of “verification” is to cite Higgins, his collaborators at Bellingcat, and the Atlantic Council.
Designated reporters at the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, UK Guardian, and other “First Draft” media “partners” write articles based on the “findings” of Higgins & Co.
Regime change groups like the Atlantic Council, and compromised human rights organizations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also cite Higgins “findings as having been “confirmed” by reporters at key “First Draft” coalition media outlets.
This highly streamlined game of fake journalistic “verification” has intensified in the aftermath of the Khan Shakhun attacks in Syria. The misinformation process enabled the Trump administration to launch its Tomahawk missile attack against Syria without significant resistance from the American public.
Bellingcat is vomiting up a fabulous new “report” on Syria, so stay tuned (mainstream media will be, for sure).
Google has a cozy $100 million “shared kindred spirit” with “best in class” Crowdstrike.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRMPZp70WVI
In July 2015, CrowdStrike completed a $100 million financing round, led by Google Capital. In this video, Google Capital’s Gene Frantz and Dmitri Alperovitch’s buddy George Kurtz discuss what led to Google’s decision to back the Keystone Cops at Crowdstrike.
“The problem is the adversary.” – Dmitri Alperovitch, MIT Technology Review EmTech Address 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZutubFtb6k
Fair enough. But the real nation state adversary may not an “enemy” but a “very close ally” who “wants to help”.
Google invested in the company’s Series C funding round in 2015. To date, CrowdStrike received total funding of $156 million from Google Capital, Accel Partners, and private equity firm Warburg Pincus.
CrowdStrike has received $156 million in funding from Warburg Pincus, Accel Partners, and Google Capital. According to the company, its customers include three of the 10 largest global companies by revenue, five of the 10 largest financial institutions, three of the top 10 health care providers, and three of the top 10 energy companies. CrowdStrike also keeps “Partners” like Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Google Cloud Platform out of the clutches of invisible bears.
CrowdStrike still “stands fully by its analysis and findings” (aka evidence-free allegations) of “Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network” in 2016.
Google, the company that runs the most visited website in the world, the company that owns YouTube, is very snugly in bed with the US military-industrial-surveillance complex.
In fact, Google was seed funded by the US National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The company now enjoys lavish “partnerships” with military contractors like SAIC, Northrop Grumman and Blackbird.
Google’s mission statement from the outset was “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”.
In a 2004 letter prior to their initial public offering, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin explained their “Don’t be evil” culture required objectivity and an absence of bias: “We believe it is important for everyone to have access to the best information and research, not only to the information people pay for you to see.”
The corporate giant appears to have replaced the original motto altogether. A carefully reworded version appears in the Google Code of Conduct: “You can make money without doing evil”.
This new gospel allows Google and its “partners” to make money promoting propaganda and engaging in surveillance, and somehow manage to not “be evil”. That’s “post-truth” logic for you.
Google has been enthusiastically promoting Eliot Higgins “arm chair analytics” since 2013
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbWhcWizSFY
Indeed, a very cozy cross-promotion is happening between Google and Bellingcat.
In November 2014, Google Ideas and Google For Media, partnered the George Soros-funded Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) to host an “Investigathon” in New York City. Google Ideas promoted Higgins’ “War and Pieces: Social Media Investigations” song and dance via their YouTube page.
Higgins constantly insists that Bellingcat “findings” are “reaffirmed” by accessing imagery in Google Earth.
Google Earth, originally called EarthViewer 3D, was created by Keyhole, Inc, a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) funded company acquired by Google in 2004. Google Earth uses satellite images provided by the company Digital Globe, a supplier of the US Department of Defense (DoD) with deep connections to both the military and intelligence communities.
The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is both a combat support agency under the United States Department of Defense, and an intelligence agency of the United States Intelligence Community. Robert T. Cardillo, director of the NGA, lavishly praised Digital Globe as “a true mission partner in every sense of the word”. Examination of the Board of Directors of Digital Globe reveals intimate connections to DoD and CIA.
Google has quite the history of malicious behavior. In what became known as the “Wi-Spy” scandal, it was revealed that Google had been collecting hundreds of gigabytes of payload data, including personal and sensitive information. First names, email addresses, physical addresses, and a conversation between two married individuals planning an extra-marital affair were all cited by the FCC. In a 2012 settlement, the Federal Trade Commission announced that Google will pay $22.5 million for overriding privacy settings in Apple’s Safari browser. Though it was the largest civil penalty the Federal Trade Commission had ever imposed for violating one of its orders, the penalty as little more than symbolic for a company that had $2.8 billion in earnings the previous quarter.
Google is a recent joint venture partner with the CIA. In 2009, Google Ventures and In-Q-Tel invested “under $10 million each” into Recorded Future shortly after the company was founded. The company developed technology that strips information from web pages, blogs, and Twitter accounts.
I am reminded of Woody Allen’s 1971 film Bananas.
Some Quotes from the film:
Witness: I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’ve known Fielding Mellish for years and he’s a warm, wonderful human being.
Fielding Mellish: Uh, would the clerk read that statement back please?
Court Clerk: “I’ve known Fielding Mellish for years and he’s a rotten, conniving, dishonest little rat.”
Fielding Mellish: Ok, I just wanted to make sure you were getting it.
Fielding Mellish: I object, your honor! This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.
It seems prophetic of Mr. Allen’s zany comedic style way back in 1971 to get to the root of the problem of fake news or in the case of the movie a kangaroo court or in the case of our own Banana Republic a kangaroo media press.
What we have in our media coverage surrounding the chemical gas attack as far as evidence goes is indeed a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham as stated in Bananas the movie.
We have a kangaroo press presiding over our banana republic conducting the investigation into the gas attack. Evidence in the kangaroo press is lacking and conclusions are based on no evidence.
It gets worse. There is also clearly no motive as well as a lack of evidence for blaming the chemical attack on Assad. Just days before the gas attack, Mr. Trump, Nikki Haley and Rex Tillerson publicly stated the US was walking away from the fight against Assad in Syria.
From a March 31 Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/03/31/britain-odds-us-bashar-al-assads-future-syria/
“the Trump administration appears to have backed away from that position, saying the question of whether or not Mr Assad stayed in power was no longer a priority for the US. “You pick and choose your battles and when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out,” said Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN. Her comments echoed those of Rex Tillerson, the US secretary of state, who said Thursday that “the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people”.
Then on April 4th the chemical attack happened. FAIR conducted an analysis of the coverage of the gas attack which showed that 47 of the Op Ed articles from the 100 main stream media outlets supported the missile attack with only one opposing and that all reported that Assad had conducted the attack while omitting qualifiers such as “alleged” or “accused”.
FAIR analysis from 4-11-217: “Out of 47 Major Editorials on Trump’s Syria Strikes, Only One Opposed”
http://fair.org/home/out-of-46-major-editorials-on-trumps-syria-strikes-only-one-opposed/
What could possibly be a motive for Assad to commit this crime against humanity just as the USA was walking away? There is no motive.
So without evidence or a motive to link Assad to the gas attack virtually every media outlet rushed to judgement and concluded Assad was responsible for the gas attack and then, in an 83% majority of Op Ed pieces applauded Trump’s missile attack in revenge or as punishment for the attack.
The rush to judgement of Assad’s guilt by the media and their overwhelming support of the retaliatory missile strike is indeed a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham. The kangaroo media in our Banana republic is just the kind propaganda machine required for a war.
The NYT and the Washington Post, as well as all of the other mainstream media accomplices, were not trying to report the news, for even a young and green journalism undergrad could have done that.
No, it’s time for a reality check. What we have witnessed since the election is a full frontal attack, not on Trump, but on the possible breakout of peace.
Does anyone in this readership think that things would have been any different had Burnie been elected and pursued peace? I can see the headlines in my mind; “Has Socialist, Burnie Sanders been a Russian communist in disguise all along. Is Burnie’s model for America the failed Soviet Union?”
Before we waste any more of our time, do you really think our rallies and elections will matter with a media controlled by a few oligarchs? A media under such control stands the First Amendment freedom of the press on its head. True freedom of the press is the real issue of our time. Our founding fathers knew that press freedom was essential. Our media freedom has not been eroded by the government but by unbridled capitalism.
I long for the days of the Fairness Doctrine. I remember when regular folks used to get equal time to refute editorials on the nightly news. Nine times out of ten I’d agree with the refuter. As for Bernie, I lost all faith in him when he caved to the Clinton machine. And the brunt of his platform was domestic policy. He even talked about the Saudis “getting their hands dirty” fighting terrorism. As if their hands aren’t blood soaked already funding the terrorists.
Breaking up the MSM, the Big Banks, and the MIC lobby is our only hope for real change.
Exactly, Wayne, dissenters are seen by oligarchy as the problem, and must be more than merely vocal, but vocal dissent has other values, and silence is worse.
It is fascinating how Mr Parry suscumbs to the MSM propaganda on things such as language, expression, style and similar. He is proof how MSM propaganda works even on well intentioned and enlightened US citizens.
Mr Parry: “If, say, Trump launches a preemptive strike against North Korea, the result could be a retaliatory nuclear attack against South Korea or Japan.”
No, Mr Parry the retaliatory nuclear strike would be against US military bases which are in South Korea and in Japan, which the puppet regimes of the two countries allowed on their territory against the wishes of the majority. By adopting the expressions we pick up from MSM we are half-accepting their false facts. The MSM “journalists” are professional propagandists, whilst Mr Parry is real journalist who is not a match for the professional propagandists. I do not blame Mr Parry for this because:
1) some of my very smart friends fall for the same deeply buried propaganda tricks,
2) propaganda is relentless, ubiquitous, overwhelming, if you consume even a minimal amount of it, it will rub off you.
This just goes to prove my long-argued point: the only safe amount of MSM swill to consume is ZERO.
Western MSM propaganda is cancerogenous chemical for the consumers’ minds. Here is another example: the massacre of 97 children in Rashidin (nobody can know if any were blond like the two Trump’s gas “victims” because they were all burned beyond recognition) out of 127 dead in a truck bomb explosion. During the exchange of pro-Government civilians and pro-rebel civilians, whilst the pro-Syrian government buses were still waiting on the rebel held territory, someone among the “rebels”/terrorists spread crunchy food on the floor of a truck to attract children and then they blew it up.
Here is what CNN had to say:
CNN called the massacre “a hiccup”. The first Washington report was illustrated with a pastoral scene of “Shias” walking in a green field. The write-ups disguise to the average reader on which side that vast numbers of casualties of the incident were. They will not say who the likely culprits are. Some insinuate, against all logic, that the government did it.
Her is what BBC had to say:
Those who actually read further will learn that some of the victims were Shia and that “evacuees from government-held towns were killed, along with aid workers and rebel soldiers”. The BBC story goes on to insinuates that the government did this because “rebels” could and would not do such: It happened when a vehicle loaded with food arrived and started distributing crisps, attracting many children, before exploding, the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab said. She said it was not clear how the vehicle could have reached the area without government permission. But there is also no evidence that rebels were involved in the attack, as the government claims. It would not be in the rebels’ interest, our correspondent says, as they were waiting for their own supporters to be evacuated from the other towns. The BBC correspondent and her editors know well that “rebels” are not united at all and that their interests diverge. It is completely clear who committed this massacre. But the BBC insinuates “the government did it.”
Gee, I wonder how the purveyors of propaganda always know who did it immediately when a terrorist crime happens, gas or bomb. It could not be because the MSM and the terrorists have the same bosses, now could it? Another of my long-argued points: no killed body, child or adult, can go to waste, it must be utilised for furthering the cause of the Zionists’ Global NWO.
I agree fully, except that we must not mistake Mr. Parry’s balanced appeal to a broader audience, for failure to see that much stronger statements would be valid. Persuasion of the unconvinced requires positioning statements from their perspective, which he does far better than most. There is no shortage of stronger statements in the commentary, which are not deleted.
Well, you are technically right, but it is true that a nuclear attack on US bases in South Korea and Japan will be equal to a nuclear attack on South Korea and Japan, given the broad destructive power of nukes, and their inability to respect arbitrary confines and boundaries. Conversely a so called pre-emptive American attack on Norh Korean military installations would be viewed by everybody as an attack on North Korea as a countty.