Many mainstream news outlets confessed to their gullibility over the Iraq-WMD claims, but have fallen into another groupthink over Russia-gate, as Randy Credico and Dennis J Bernstein heard from ex-U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray.
By Randy Credico and Dennis J Bernstein
Despite the certitude of the U.S. Congress and the corporate press, not everyone believes that the Russians “hacked” the Clinton campaign and handed Donald Trump his stunning victory. Among those saying that the Russians did not do it is the former whistleblowing British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who collaborates with WikiLeaks, which published the Democratic emails last year.
Former British Ambassador Craig Murray
“‘I know who leaked them,” Murray said recently. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.”
Ambassador Murray, a friend and close associate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, was also an early opponent of the the U.S.-British-led war against Iraq, and an early whistleblower on the wide-ranging program of torture and rendition promoted by U.S. President George W. Bush and condoned by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was recently absolved by a British court — on a technicality — of being criminally liable for the US torture program.
These days, Ambassador Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He served as British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.
Dennis Bernstein: My first question, Mr. Ambassador, is whether you are concerned with this Russia-gate frenzy and how it might end up leading us into a direct confrontation with Russia, and thus open the door to World War III?
Craig Murray: Well, there is always that danger when a confrontation exists between nuclear armed powers. The whole anti-Russia propaganda campaign that is going on at the moment is quite extraordinary because there is no factual basis behind it. But it is certainly a continuation of the anti-Russia propaganda that has dominated political discourse in the United States for several years now.
Of course, this is very much in the interests of the armaments industry. We have to remember that there are those who benefit enormously from extra spending on armaments and the armed forces. These people are the ones pushing the agenda.
DB: We’ve been doing sort of a poll of our guests, asking them whether they consider what happened in the United States as a leak or a hack.
CM: Well, through my association with WikiLeaks, I know for sure that it was a leak and not a hack. As Bill Binney, former technical director of the NSA, has pointed out, were it actually a hack the NSA would be able to pinpoint it. In fact, there is no such evidence. This is not something WikiLeaks got from a foreign state or from hackers. No, there is no doubt at all that this was an internal leak. Besides which, we are talking about two separate things in the DNC emails and the Podesta emails, so it would be wrong to presume that there is only one leaker.
Randy Credico: Is this just an artifice to cover up the real motivation with regards to Russia, which is to break the country into small states and to prevent them from getting involved in the world oil supply?
CM: I am not sure they actually want to break up Russia. They rather like having a reasonably strong Russia because it gives them an excuse to invest large amounts of money in armaments, which are very profitable. The militarist forces on both sides like to play up the strength of the other and portray the other as evil. That is primarily what we have going on here.
Recently, Putin seems to be the master of the diplomatic game. And we should not forget that all of these people are part of the global one percent. The way they invest their money and where they live and how they socialize makes them all very much part of the same club in an interconnected world. So we should not be too distracted by the smoke and mirrors that the global elite put up. While these are very dangerous games to be playing, the people playing them have some very cozy relationships behind the scenes.
RC: Tell us about your relationship with Julian Assange and the conditions he is now living under.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (Photo credit: Espen Moe)
CM: Well, I have known Julian Assange for several years now. Like Julian, I was myself a whistleblower. I left the British foreign service in order to expose torture and extraordinary rendition related to the war in Iraq. We have a club of whistleblowers, if you like, of which Daniel Ellsberg is a kind of patron. And obviously WikiLeaks, which is the best publisher for whistleblowers, is very important to us.
I have been appalled by the treatment of Julian and the evidently nonsensical allegations made against him in Sweden. And I am saddened by the continued persecution of WikiLeaks by the United States. Of course, a lot of people are very sore that the dreadful American war crimes were exposed by the leaks believed to be perpetrated by Chelsea Manning. A lot of people don’t like the light that WikiLeaks shines on the dark places of government. But in the land which purportedly upholds freedom of speech as a great virtue, it is a dreadful shame to see the persecution of a publisher in this way.
Then, of course, we see the completely ridiculous nature of this whole Russia-gate affair. Really it was just a kind of propaganda excuse for Hillary Clinton’s appalling election campaign. All this makes unlikely allies who have ganged up on Julian Assange from the establishment side of both major parties in the United States.
RC: In the wake of the recent UK elections what, if anything, has changed for Julian Assange?
CM: Nothing good at the moment. We still have the conservative party in power and now they are in alliance with the Democratic Unionist Party, who are the most retrograde, religiously motivated party here and who tilt the government even more to the right than it was before. In the medium to longer term, based on the performance by Jeremy Corbin’s Labor Party, which comes as a breath of fresh air in British politics, we may well see a reversal of the current situation.
DB: One of the issues that WikiLeaks confronts head on is the endless wars that the United States has been waging, in Iraq in particular. Tony Blair was being investigated for lying us into the Iraq War but [on July 31] he was absolved of all charges.
CM: Interestingly, what the UK high court said in the recent judgment was that there is no crime of aggression under British domestic law. They claimed that this international crime has never entered into British domestic law by an act of parliament and can therefore not be enforced in the UK.
So it was a very technical acquittal. They are not saying that Blair is innocent, they are saying that legislation has never been enacted making that international war crime a domestic crime in Britain. This is quite extraordinary in many ways. The United Kingdom was one of the three countries that constituted the Nuremberg Tribunal, where the crime of aggression was the main charge.
So for the high court to rule that the United Kingdom accepts the existence of the crime of aggression and can prosecute it internationally but does not accept that it applies domestically is illogical and a case of special pleading. The high court judges are just ganging together to protect Tony Blair and making asses of themselves with this very strange ruling.
DB: Tony Blair has played a role in deciding who will control the massive oil resources in the Middle East and in other places you are familiar with. Do you want to talk about what he has been up to?
CM: Since leaving office, he has been primarily concerned with making money for himself, on a very large scale. He is now worth hundreds of millions. It is fairly obvious that the actions he took while in office with regards to Iraq, with regards to Libya, were all undertaken to promote the interests of British and other Western oil companies and mercenary companies.
He famously worked to block the prosecution of British Aerospace for paying billions of dollars in bribes to Saudi princes to gain arms contracts, on the grounds that that would be against national security because it would damage our alliance with Saudi Arabia. That was one instance where Blair, while prime minister, intervened directly to aid the armaments industry and prevent an anti-corruption prosecution.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and U.S. President George W. Bush shake hands after a joint White House press conference on Nov. 12, 2004. (White House photo)
Since he left office, he has been cashing in on all of this. He is completely shameless. He is a consultant to the president of Kazakhstan, for example, a very nasty dictatorship. One thing that has become public through a leak is that he was advising the government of Kazakhstan on how to handle public relations after Kazakh soldiers massacred coal miners for going on strike. Here’s Blair, who used to represent a coal mining district, advising on how to do a good PR cover-up of the massacre of coal miners.
The man is completely unprincipled. He is just out to get whatever money he can. I wouldn’t say he has much power nowadays. He rather prostitutes himself to the wealthy, particularly those from countries with dubious human rights records who view it as helpful to cash in on his global image.
RC: We know about the War Logs and what they exposed in Afghanistan. Can you talk about what happened in Uzbekistan?
CM: It is very different to know about it intellectually and to come face-to-face with it. Within a month of first arriving in Uzbekistan, we got detailed photos of a guy who had been literally boiled alive at one of the big prison camps. He had been alive when placed in the boiling liquid. That sort of thing makes you realize what it really means when people talk of torture.
There is no doubt that the CIA were actually colluding in such torture and to a large extent financing it. Hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars were put into the Uzbek security services and the CIA was getting their so-called intelligence from those torture sessions.
We also discovered that the CIA was flying people into Uzbekistan under the extraordinary rendition program. In pretty much every case, they were never seen again. At that time, I assumed that all the people being flown in to be tortured were Uzbeks who had been captured abroad and flown back to their own country. I didn’t realize that the Americans were flying in other nationals to be tortured by the Uzbek security services.
RC: What were they trying to elicit from these people who were being tortured?
CM: In virtually every case, they were making them confess to membership in Al Qaeda and to the existence of widespread terror plots to attack Western countries. I am ninety-nine percent certain that every one of these stories was untrue. Often I could show the information was wrong.
But the object was to exaggerate the threat posed by Al Qaeda because that was the justification for our foreign policy, for all our invasions, and for all the restrictions on civil liberties at home. The security services required a strong terrorist threat in order to justify their actions. By sending people to be tortured, they were manufacturing the false existence of a terrorist threat.
RC: What happened when you went public with this?
CM: I arrived in August and I think by December I was sending back top-secret internal telegrams protesting this, which were bound to get me sacked. In some ways, I consider myself something of a fraud as a whistleblower. I protested internally, I did everything I could within the system to stop it. I was making the case that these actions were illegal and that we were colluding in these actions by receiving this intelligence.
I thought that if we got this before government lawyers, they would advise the government to put an end to it. What happened to me then was similar to what happened to Julian Assange. After a twenty-year unblemished career, I suddenly found that I was up on charges of trying to extort sex from visa applicants, of being an habitual alcoholic, and so on.
DB: Ambassador Murray, what would be your understanding of how high in the US government people knew about this rendition program?
CM: In the UK I am certain that it did go all the way up the chain as far as Tony Blair. I made sure my protests went that high. When I was told to shut up, I was told that this had all been authorized from the very top. In the States, I know it went as high as Donald Rumsfeld because he had signed off on torture techniques personally. The lawyers who drafted documents on what was permissible in terms of torture certainly passed those by George W. Bush.
DB: Was what happened in the Ukraine a case of Russian aggression or a US soft coup?
CM: I am actually quite critical of both parties. There is no doubt that the United States was interfering very strongly in Ukrainian politics. On the other hand, I also think that the Russians supported levels of violence that were unnecessary. I get very criticized by the left. The left has become very pro-Putin, as a reaction I suppose to the lies of the right. But it is overcompensation to paint Putin as a saint. So the US was undoubtedly engaged in attempts at a coup, something it has been doing for decades.
RC: Ambassador, you were involved in peace negotiations in Sierra Leone back in 1998. At the time you ran across someone named Spicer who was an arms merchant and ran mercenary companies and who later went to Iraq. Could you just encapsulate that period in a few minutes?
CM: Spicer, together with a guy called Tony Buckingham, was initially in charge of a company which was called Executive Outcomes, made up of former British special forces personnel who sold themselves to oil companies in Angola and other oil-rich African states in order to physically take control of oil resources during times of civil war. They perpetrated an awful lot of atrocities, including machine gunning villagers from helicopters.
After Executive Outcomes, they moved on to a company called Sandline which was involved in a very crooked deal to take control of the diamond resources of Sierra Leone. To me, involved in the peace negotiations there, it was sickening to witness the desire of Western companies and Western governments to get out of it access to Sierra Leone’s diamond and titanium resources.
Then of course the people at Executive Outcomes and Sandline went on to really strike the jackpot in Iraq, where they ran a private mercenary company called Aegis, which worked for both the British and United States governments and employed tens of thousands of mercenaries. The people responsible for it made billions of dollars from the privatization of killing. All of this is quite startling and far too little known.
WikiLeaks logo
DB: Getting back to where we started, what do you see as the importance of Julian Assange in the context of what is called mainstream journalism?
CM: Julian Assange has been a central figure in breaking the monopoly on what we are allowed to know. People now increasingly distrust the mainstream media and get their information from places where you have direct access to source documentation rather than read the opinion of some journalist on it. I think that is very important. I think other whistleblowers have made a mistake by going through the mainstream media, who have then acted as gatekeepers on what we find out through those leaks. The Panama Papers were a great example of that kind of lost opportunity.
Julian is really the figurehead for freedom of information and a figurehead for governments to trounce. He is an enormously intelligent and articulate individual who has a tremendous contribution to make to international debate, aside from the material that he publishes. Obviously, he would be able to fulfill that role to a much greater degree if he were free.
Dennis J Bernstein is a host of “Flashpoints” on the Pacifica radio network and the author of Special Ed: Voices from a Hidden Classroom. You can access the audio archives at www.flashpoints.net.
That’s jim dandy. Close off that Russian venture and look into the Russians holding a financial chokehold on the Trump fortune. You know, Putin and the Russian Mafia for which Trump laundered money. The same Trump who has been pinched for money laundering hundreds of times. And we’ll take it from there.
But god bless your defense.
Darrin – yeah, right after you start looking into the $100 million missing from the Clinton Foundation. Start right there.
Smells like bullshit to me.
Murray is an unreliable narrator; just because he is telling the story you want to hear is not a good reason to abandon all other avenues of inquiry.
Julian Assange is an unreliable narrator and likely a very motivated actor on his own behalf, being trapped in a closet in a South American embassy in the UK for years now.
Binney et al are in no position to actually know what is going on and are making assumptions and statements that don’t reflect the reality of counterespionage and computer “hacking” techniques, the easiest of which is to pay a guy to plug a usb dongle into a computer without getting caught. Not that hard.
You can’t go too far into Angleton land here. So many unquestioned assumptions in the VIPS narrative, so much bad faith argumentation against intel agencies, so much conspiracy attribution without evidence.
Not much effort to follow the money.
I guess at least if you are a stooge for Russia today you won’t be tarred as a Commie, rather as a tool of Rosneft and the billionaire oligarchs’ club. Not so revolutionary.
Binky – what’s BS is the fact that the FBI never looked at the servers. That’s what stinks! “Follow the money,” you say? Yes, straight to the Clinton Foundation.
” The left has become very pro-Putin, as a reaction I suppose to the lies of the right.” I think he’s talking about the Democrats. So he thinks that the Democrats are pro-Putin? Quite the contrary, the Democrat groupthink tells them that Putin is the devil because he interfered with the election. It’s been an all out bashing fest for quite some time now.
Thank you for this shocking but essential information. I hadn’t known that both ‘sides’ exaggerate the strength of the other to foment these many wars, terrorizing the world into submission. It hadn’t occurred to me that they are all members of the global one percent club with cozy relationships behind the scenes. This is somewhat reassuring–though maybe it should not be.
In gratitude for your work toward Peace,
Kind regards,
Hildegard
Thank you for all this shocking but essential information. I thought I’d heard much of the worst. I appreciate Ambassador Murray’s clarity and the details he provides, making it clear he is telling the truth. Reminding us that it’s the arms industries pushing war for massive profit. But I hadn’t heard that both ‘sides’ exaggerate the power of the other to foment these unbearable catastrophes for humanity. This gives me some relief from the horrors that seem to be coming up. It also hadn’t occurred to me that they are members of the same global one percent club, with cozy relations outside of the public view.
Thank you, Ambassador Murray and Dennis Bernstein for bringing so much essential knowledge.
Kind regards,
Hildegardb
Thank you, Randy Credico and Dennis J Bernstein and former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray. Your article/interview sums up so much, and illustrates the money-opportunities associated with war. This is a good one to share widely. It, to me, would be hard to argue with any of the points you made — unless I were Michael Kenny, which I’m not, thank God.
” Many mainstream news outlets confessed to their gullibility over the Iraq-WMD claims ”
Of the many most are still employed in the MSM as if “the Iraq-WMD” lies were blameless.
I was infinitely more appalled by the domestic white wash evidence in the Manning/Iraq/Afghanistan leaks … I found it impossible to believe that local correspondents had no idea of our complicity with the death squad and eventually the de facto ethnic cleansing they brought about (in a male-dominant society, killing 10-20 Sunni males a day, leaves a lot of widows and orphans, many of whom take refuge first in Baghdad, and then in outlying cities as existing intact family units are overwhelmed and as more men are targeted, arrested, disappeared.
We did nothing. We largely pretended it was a “both sides do it” when there was nothing equal about the number of dead and displaced.
Here in the USA, we have article VI of the constitution:
“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”
This makes the Geneva Conventions the “supreme law of the land”. So why isn’t Donald Rumsfeld and the other war criminals in the dock or already behind bars? Blair got off on a technicality that doesn’t exist here in the USA.
Under the circumstances, if Murray indeed knows who leaked the info, he should do everything he can to persuade that person to have the courage to come forward. If the person refuses to come forward, Murray should reveal the name regardless. Protecting that person at the risk of nuclear war is extremely misguided loyalty.
Murray adds an interesting perspective regarding nefarious relationships with corrupt governments in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. As far as the left/right controversy goes I would generally define left as anti-establishment and therefore the Democrats and the Blair faction in the U.K. could never be “left”( more like opportunists). However, it is apparent that such labels have become muddled. I once tried to clarify some of the jargon in an historical context in this post:https://crivellistreetchronicle.blogspot.com/2012/01/looking-behind-idealogical-labels.html
BobH, that is a fine essay and I wholeheartedly agree. I often say that I can’t write, so I hesitate to comment. I almos exclusively read. Your separation from economics and social liberalism is well analyzed. The Dewey line of progressivism is one that I deeply admire and ascribe to. Many thanks…
BobV,…coming from you, that is indeed a compliment; I have gleaned a lot from the wisdom of your commentary and the many valuable links you have contributed to CN.
If the US is stupid enough to attack North Korea it will go down in history (that is of course if we are able to tell history after Armageddon) as the most war mongering nation on the planet. The media (MSM) and its corporate owners will also have the same honors as those responsible for promoting the US into dropping bombs on nations that have not attacked the US. North Korea has never attacked another country while America has a long list of invasions, death and destruction. North Korea has said it would stop its missile program if the US stop its war games on its borders. This is information you don’t hear on the media. This shows the US is provoking NK into war and has the media (propaganda machine) working furiously on its behalf. Russia and China will inevitably be drawn into the US (imperial tyranny) global goal of world dominance. This will of course be the end of civilization as we know it today – not that the US can be called civilized; just look at the US record since WWII – below is an example of US tyranny. Now the US is building a Naval Base in the Ukraine to add to the 1000 other bases they have around the world – this is why America has no health care, why our infrastructure is going to pot, and why our elderly and poor go to bed hungry – our environmental laws are being shredded while the people are silent, being given misinformation by our corrupt government and media. The US is no longer a democratic state, it has become a dictatorship run by the Pentagon and its agencies (deep state). This madness will continue unless the people rise up and demand an end to US aggression/terrorism. We the people have the power to do this we just have to say no, we will not empower you anymore. Trump and his sycophants are not in control they are puppets and the string are being manipulated by the psychopaths in the Pentagon.
If the United States attacks either North Korea or Iran it will be entirely a matter of choice, not necessity. Neither of those two countries poses a threat to invade or take over any other nation, let alone attack the United States. Iran is helping Syria to defend itself against outside aggressors, many recruited, trained, armed and paid by Washington. That is not aggression and not a valid pretense for an American military attack against that country. The worst thing NK or Iran is guilty of is using harsh rhetoric against the Yankee bullies.
Just leave them alone and there will be no war. There will be no killing of hundreds of thousands, or probably millions on the scale that must be envisioned to take down either of those countries. The entire infrastructures of these countries need not be leveled to rubble as you see what was done in Iraq, Libya and Syria (we are not even shown the damage in Afghanistan, Yemen or Somalia), but that is what will happen in an action that will make “shock and awe” look tame in comparison.
And when nuclear facilities are hit, as they are sure to be, with American warheads, be they nuclear or conventional, the radioactive fallout will poison lands far beyond these targets of American wrath. China, Russia, South Korea, Japan, the Middle East and perhaps Central Asia and even the Philippines will be poisoned in events worse than Chernobyl or Fukushima. The United States should be condemned for even contemplating such genocide and such wide-ranging and persistent destruction against other societies (and innocent bystanders, i.e., neighboring states) that have caused it (or any other countries) no harm. The envisaged military actions against these societies are light years away from what Christian scholars ever considered to be a “just war,” they are more like the war crimes prosecuted at Nuremberg.
Does Mr Murray seriously expect us to believe that if someone unknown to him said “I know who leaked them” but then refused to name the leaker, he would blindly and gullibly believe that person? Taking Mr Murray at his word for a moment, though, produces some interesting conclusions. Mr Murray refers to the leaker in the present tense, which means that person is still alive and thus cannot be Seth Rich. Equally, if it was Seth Rich, there would be no reason not to name him. On the other hand, I don’t see the point of the “hack v leak” argument. If anything, a leak is a far more serious situation. It means that Russian interests who promised DNC “dirt” to Trump Junior have infiltrated the DNC. That raises the worrisome question of what other US bodies the Russians have infiltrated. And if the infiltrators are not working for the Russian government, who are they? The Russian Mafia? Thus, the absurd argument is that A is not guilty because the prosecution claimed that he shot the victim to death whereas it is now proved that he stabbed him! By the way, I can’t imagine that the pro-Putin camp will be very happy with Mr Murray’s views on Ukraine. They tend to argue that because the US violated Ukraine’s rights, Russia is entitled to “punish” the US by also violating Ukraine’s rights! Another absurd argument.
I know you are the resident troll, MK, but this is what Murray said in this piece
‘I know who leaked them,” Murray said recently. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.”
Murray claims to have met in Washington the leaker in person who handed him the thumbdrive or similar onto which the documents had been downloaded. Murray then brought this drive back to Wikileaks.
Note also that Murray, as is customary these days to avoid so-called sexist terminology, used ‘they’ when he means ‘he’ or ‘she’. It could well have been Seth Rich, and Murray’s words do not suggest the person is either alive or dead.
I love your leap to lightspeed of ‘what other bodies the Russians have infiltrated’. Concentrate on finding evidence for a single Russian infiltration rather than an insider hack, before rushing to multiply such allegations.
Finally, where has Russia ever claimed any entitlement to ‘punish’ the US for as you put it ‘violating Ukraine’s rights’? The US via Nuland and her ambassador, perpetrated a colour revolution coup that overthrew the legitimate Ukrainian government. The new regime immediately banned the Russian language and supported very right wing groups who persecuted and murdered people in Odessa, persecuted and murdered Crimean residents on their way back from Kiev having protested against the coup and is continuing to terrorise the pro-Russian opposition in Donbass and Lugansk, who quite understandably, want to continue using their own language and cede from the repulsive Kiev regime. As for Crimea, the population voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia (as they had wanted to do when the USSR broke up) and Russia accepted them back.
The US wanted the naval base in Crimea and to expand NATO even closer to the Russian border, Monsanto wants the very fertile Ukrainian soil for their GMO projects, Biden and his son and other US gas interests wanted to frack gas there. All in all, there was effectively Zero US concern for the people there. All else is hypocracy.
Even Assange has stated that Craig Murray is not authorized to talk on behalf of WikiLeaks.
Assange: Some leaks may have been Russian
http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/310654-assange-some-leaks-may-have-been-russian
Assange also declined to comment on a Daily Mail report that his confidant Craig Murray flew to the United States to retrieve the documents printed on the site. Murray told the Daily Mail that he met with an intermediary in a wooded area near American University in Washington, D.C., who was handing off the documents on behalf of someone with “legal access” to both the DNC and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta emails.
“Craig Murray is not authorized to talk on behalf of WikiLeaks,” Assange said sternly.
Do the employers of “Michael Kenny” seriously expect us to believe that he is anything other than the troll(s) permanently assigned to scribble absurd “skeptical” arguments?
Taking the “word” of “Michael Kenny” raises the worrisome question of US/NATO active measures against independent investigative journalism sites like Consortium News.
And if the infiltrators are not working for the American government, who are they? The Russian Jewish Mafia?
By the way, the Russian mafia in Israel began with the mass immigration of Russian Jews to Israel in 1989. The Russian mafia saw Israel as an ideal place to launder money, as Israel’s banking system was designed to encourage aliyah, the immigration of Jews, and the accompanying capital. Following the trend of global financial deregulation, Israel had also implemented legislation aimed at easing the movement of capital. Combined with the lack of anti-money laundering legislation, “Russian” organised crime found it an easy place to transfer ill-gotten gains. Russian and Ukrainian Jewish criminals have also been able to set up networks in the United States, following the large migration of Russian Jews to New York City and Miami, but also in European cities such as Berlin and Antwerp.
An by the way, I can’t imagine that the pro-NATO camp will be very unhappy with “Michael Kenny’s” views on Ukraine. They tend to argue that because the US violated Ukraine’s rights with an armed coup d’etat, America is entitled to “punish” Russia for “violating Ukraine’s rights” to attack and abuse its ethnic Russian population! Another absurd argument.
Obviously, this “Michael Kenny” is not a real person. It would be possible that someone really had the absurd idea that the only ones who might be interested in making public confirmation for things like the biased behavior of the DNC against Bernie Sanders and collusion with the media could be Russians (of course, no one apart from Russians can have an interest in fair primaries in the United States…) and leap to the ludicrous idea that if it was an internal leak the internal leakers must have been Russian agents. Things like that can happen when people hear the same talking points all the time. But when someone grabs at every opportunity to add a comment with such an absurd non-sequitur, it is not credible any more that he really believes in this.
“It means that Russian interests who promised DNC ‘dirt’ to Trump Junior have infiltrated the DNC.”
This is McCarthyism of our time.
On McCarthy and McCarthyism–
from
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mccarthy-says-communists-are-in-state-department
“During a speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator Joseph McCarthy (Republican-Wisconsin) claims that he has a list with the names of over 200 members of the Department of State that are “known communists,” The speech vaulted McCarthy to national prominence and sparked a nationwide hysteria about subversives in the American government.
Speaking before the Ohio County Women’s Republican club in Wheeling, West Virginia, Senator McCarthy waved before his audience a piece of paper. According to the only published newspaper account of the speech, McCarthy said that, “I have here in my hand a list of 205 [State Department employees] that were known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping the policy of the State Department.” In the next few weeks, the number fluctuated wildly, with McCarthy stating at various times that there were 57, or 81, or 10 communists in the Department of State, In fact, McCarthy never produced any solid evidence there was even one communist in the State Department.
Despite McCarthy’s inconsistency, his refusal to provide any of the names of the “known communists,” and his inability to produce any coherent or reasonable evidence, his charges struck a chord with the American people. The months leading up to his February speech had been trying ones for America’s Cold War policies. China had fallen to a communist revolution. The Soviets had detonated an atomic device. McCarthy’s wild charges provided a ready explanation for these foreign policy disasters; communist subversives were working within the very bowels of the American government.
To be sure, McCarthy was not the first to incite anxiety about subversive communists. Congress had already investigated Hollywood for its supposed communist influences, and former State Department employee Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury in January 1950 for testimony dealing with accusations that he spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930’s. But McCarthy went a step further, claiming that the US government, and the Department of State, in particular, knew that communists were working in their midst.
“McCarthyism,” as the hunt for communists in the United State came to be known during the 1950’s, did untold damage to many people’s lives and careers, had a muzzling effect on domestic debate on Cold War issues, and managed to scare millions of Americans. McCarthy, however, located no communists and his personal power collapsed in 1954 when he accused the Army of coddling known communists. Televised hearing of his investigation into the U.S. Army let the American people see his bullying tactics and lack of credibility in full view for the first time, and he quickly lost support. The U.S. Senate censured him shortly thereafter and he died in 1957.”
Examining further: “It means that Russian interests who promised ‘dirt’ to Trump Junior have infiltrated the DNC”:
*it simplifies “Russian interests” as ANY interests in exposing the DNC;
*it avoids the possibility of any honorable effort to expose the DNC (and The Clinton Foundation);
*it presents the contradiction that this inside Russian mole would then expose itself with materials bearing Russian identifying marks immediately spotted by IC;
*it leads to chain-associating as with “what other bodies have the Russians infiltrated?” which could extend to all those who voted for Trump as being Russian agents;
*it suggests any alternative view to Official Theory is another body infiltrated (over-simplification on steroids);
*it leaps to Ukraine (while, perhaps unwittingly admitting the US violated Ukraine’s rights) and associates critics of US action there with “pro-Putin” forces;
*it distorts Russia’s action in Ukraine as “violating Ukraine’s rights” and twists it to suggest Russia is “punishing” the US (implying this connects to the “dirt” on Clinton).
This is Pavlovism at full-throttle AKA waving the red flag at the bull.
I’m reminded not only of McCarthy but Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. I believe the pathology is called paranoia, in which the paranoiac doggedly whirls, insists, parades, justifies, distorts to support an opportunistic agenda.
It’s amazing how history repeats as though we humans are incapable of learning lessons that last more than a single generation. Back in the late 60’s when we faced the prospect of living through 8 years of a Richard Nixon presidency, the media was full of stories about what a Red-baiter Tricky Dick had been in his 1950 senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas. The terrible abuses of McCarthyism of only 15-20 years earlier were laid bare. It became a badge of honor to have been black-balled by the likes of J. Edgar Hoover in what was reviled as a terrible witch hunt. All the young people of the 60’s starting careers and engaging in politics for the first time asked, how could this be? I remember that. I lived through it with them, and remember vowing we’d never make the same mistakes our parents’ and grandparents’ generations did, not on something so senseless and dishonorable.
They don’t care about any of that any more. Now in the twilight of their public lives they are enthusiastically doing it themselves. Hey, whatever it takes to “get” Trump, “get” Putin and “get” any other commies they disingenuously say are trying once again to subvert our democracy and seize power against all the monumental forces of the American Deep State–as if! And, this time round, it’s a tag-team match involving both the Dems and the GOPers, now comprising a unified War Party whose symbols should not be the donkey and the elephant but flying pigs. Believe them and you can be sure that pigs can fly.
“To be sure, McCarthy was not the first to incite anxiety about subversive communists.”
Not to forget the first Red Scare, of the twenties.
I posted the following comment as an appendage to a long post on McCarthy, which is now in moderation. Thus to the repetition. The McCarthy link is to a this day in history website. Why not wait? I’ve had comments in moderation held for 24 hours and even deleted, and I’d rather get this response out while the discussion is ongoing. My apologies for the repetition.
~~
Examining further: “It means that Russian interests who promised ‘dirt’ to Trump Junior have infiltrated the DNC”:
*it simplifies “Russian interests” as ANY interests in exposing the DNC;
*it avoids the possibility of any honorable effort to expose the DNC (and The Clinton Foundation);
*it presents the contradiction that this inside Russian mole would then expose itself with materials bearing Russian identifying marks immediately spotted by IC;
*it leads to chain-associating as with “what other bodies have the Russians infiltrated?” which could extend to all those who voted for Trump as being Russian agents;
*it suggests any alternative view to Official Theory is another body infiltrated (over-simplification on steroids);
*it leaps to Ukraine (while, perhaps unwittingly admitting the US violated Ukraine’s rights) and associates critics of US action there with “pro-Putin” forces;
*it distorts Russia’s action in Ukraine as “violating Ukraine’s rights” and twists it to suggest Russia is “punishing” the US (implying this connects to the “dirt” on Clinton).
This is Pavlovism at full-throttle AKA waving the red flag at the bull.
I’m reminded not only of McCarthy but Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny. I believe the pathology is called paranoia, in which the paranoiac doggedly whirls, insists, parades, justifies, distorts to support an opportunistic agenda.
The treasonous affair against the vital interests of the US is unraveling:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-10/new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-year’s-dnc-hack
“Qualified experts working independently of one another began to examine the DNC case immediately after the July 2016 events. Prominent among these is a group comprising former intelligence officers, almost all of whom previously occupied senior positions. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), founded in 2003, now has 30 members, including a few associates with backgrounds in national-security fields other than intelligence. The chief researchers active on the DNC case are four: William Binney, formerly the NSA’s technical director for world geopolitical and military analysis and designer of many agency programs now in use; Kirk Wiebe, formerly a senior analyst at the NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center; Edward Loomis, formerly technical director in the NSA’s Office of Signal Processing; and Ray McGovern, an intelligence analyst for nearly three decades and formerly chief of the CIA’s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch. Most of these men have decades of experience in matters concerning Russian intelligence and the related technologies.
Based on the knowledge of former officials such as Binney, the group knew that (1) if there was a hack and (2) if Russia was responsible for it, the NSA would have to have evidence of both.
Under no circumstance can it be acceptable that the relevant authorities—the National Security Agency, the Justice Department (via the Federal Bureau of Investigation), and the Central Intelligence Agency—leave these new findings without reply. Not credibly, in any case. Forensic investigators, prominent among them people with decades’ experience at high levels in these very institutions, have put a body of evidence on a table previously left empty. Silence now, should it ensue, cannot be written down as an admission of duplicity, but it will come very close to one.”
The independent researchers found that the” first five files Guccifer made public had each been run, via ordinary cut-and-paste, through a single template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints.”
Alperovitch and whose who ordered him to do the alteration, thus putting the world closer to the nuclear war, have to be convicted and executed. The Nuremberg Protocols were created precisely for this kind of slimy criminals.
Many thanks to both Craig Murray and Dennis Bernstein for standing up to this ridiculous and near total propaganda onslaught. And, of course to Robert Parry for giving us the rare forum to discuss it. Special note to Mr. Murray, l “found” you and have followed you since this crisis began and I’m deeply impressed by your life-time service…
“The left has become very pro-Putin, as a reaction I suppose to the lies of the right.”
Just who is the “left” in the United States? I don’t see one at all, but most folks would probably identify the Democrats as the political “left” in America, at least a couple of centimeters behind the Republicans who have been charging hard to the right for eons. So, the man is saying that Hillary Clinton’s party is supporting Putin? I think he fumbled that ball. Actually, I don’t see anyone in politics or the American media supporting Putin even tepidly. The conventional wisdom is that he is the devil incarnate. Everyone says this except for a few old statesmen, journalists, pundits and scholars, like Stephen F. Cohen, who are subsequently demonized and shut out of the public “discussion?” “debate?” “conversation?” (actually it is so one-sided that it is none of those, just an echo chamber).
Realist, I certainly can’t speak for Mr. Murray but I think that he sees President Putin as a Russian Nationalist, which is a kind of skeptics way of approaching sovereignty. As for President Putin, clearly he sees Russia as under attack and it is also fairly clear that he introduced something like Special Forces into situations he deemed necessary. He was drawing a line with his own power. He did the same in Georgia and I think he did the right thing “for Russia”.
As for the “left” in America. The young generation, the occupy movement, gets it almost by acclimation they are the organized left. The remainder, the old Democretic Party on the left, the New Dealers, are still trying to figure what happened, apparently they’re still asleep, tho having said that, they are the object of this intense propaganda so maybe they are an enormous but repressed majority…
Murray may also be receiving criticism from the “left” in the UK and in the EU.
Thomas, thanks, I think that there is a new offensive right now, that is the Neocon Left+Clintons at work. Here in California, the established left is fighting with an as yet not clear left, environment movement. I think this is the New left, if you will, that is huge in California, voted in very large numbers for Bernie, and was disenfranchised at the polls. Good cop/Bad cop both parties are worthless for the people…
Bob from where I sit here out East, California voting looks to be manipulated, and controlled, by certain factions of the Democratic Party. Recently, Judicial Watch has made reference that in California there were more votes than voters. Surprise, surprise, that this is now coming out. I seem to recall, maybe it was you, that after Bernie loss to Hillary in your state, you or someone did, make a comment that you could not figure this Hillary win out, because you saw way more Bernie yard signs than you did Hillary. Then there was all those confusing registration rules, and votes being thrown out during the Democratic Primary. Not much was made of this by the MSM, but at that time I recall the alternate internet media tried to make a big deal out of these voting infractions, but there’s only so much that can be done without the MSM in regards to making this stick in the ever changing and revolving American mindset.
http://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/judicial-watch-warns-california-clean-voter-registration-lists-face-federal-lawsuit/
Joe, I think there are both Republican-controlled states and Democrat-controlled states wherein both of them cheat their asses off, add and detract votes as necessary, and ultimately ensure that the “right” candidates are sent to Washington. There are a handful of “battleground” states where neither hold ultimate power, where cheating by one can be effectively offset by counter-cheating. Where Hillary’s stratagem went awry last November was taking for granted the efficiency and determination of her cheaters in Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee, basically throwing those toss-up states to the rural Republican supporters. The Dems did not realise that not enough of their rank and file were gung ho about supporting the wasteful and suicidal wars their party had promulgated under the great deceiver Barack Obama and were promised more of under a return reign for the Queen of Chaos. They just assumed the party apparatchiks would crank out the necessary votes by hook or by crook and they were stunned when it didn’t happen, and couldn’t be made to happen even during the dodgy re-counts in those states. Obomber’s actions during eight years of administration spoke louder than whatever malarkey Hillary was feeding the electorate during the campaign, and the fixers were just not able to inspire enough people to vote for her or to rig enough voting machines in the big cities. As you say, the numbers didn’t add up, so they had to stop the recounts when more votes were apparently cast than there were registered voters on the rolls. People forget what happened just a few months ago.
Bob, I’m in California, too — Laguna Hills. I voted by mail in the primary and was able to determine that my ballot was received but have never been able to confirm that it was counted. And of course, Clinton and the newspapers/news reporters called California for Clinton, …was it the night before the election or early the morning of? Can’t remember. And I understand that still not all the votes have been counted. Occasionally I see among the commentators here that the Bernie supporters voted for Hillary in the general election. I didn’t and a lot of the people — many of whom are women — didn’t either. I wonder what the truth is. I truly believe that most people who supported Bernie were alert to the issues, alert to WikiLeaks, alert to what took place during the debates, and then just could not bring themselves to support such a corrupt candidate as Hillary no matter what. (Are you in OC, Bob?)
I’m in the Capital, Virginia and I can tell you that the democrats are no more trustworthy than the republicans. We’re out here in Huge numbers and un-represented…
Virginia, see “State Party Fight Is Also A Warning” NY Times today, front page. These two parties are worthless when it comes to The People…
BobV et.al….just for the record I too am in California(Sonoma Valley). In the “open primary”I had a “decline to state” registration that wasn’t contested but as it was a mail in ballot, but as the counters were party regulars I have serious doubts as to whether it was counted.Both my sons were given “provisional ballots” along with countless other people I know. I have no doubt they were trashed.http://www.gregpalast.com/placebo-ballots-stealing-california-bernie-using-old-gop-vote-snatching-trick/
I tend to believe the primaries are even more rigged than the general election. However, in those areas where electronic voting predominates I’m convinced there was a lot of vote flipping.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/4/21/1518460/-Election-Fraud-Proven-at-Audit-by-Chicago-BOE-flipped-precinct-by-18pts-from-Bernie-to-Hillary
Bob H , Yes Primary fraud and then general election fraud on a massive scale And, that is at the very heart of Russia Gate! That is what the Clinton democrats are really masters of…
Bob, I think the world sees Mr. Putin as a Russian nationalist, not a globalist who bows down to the United States as the unipolar world hegemon. I’m sure both the left and right in American politics recognise this and neither approves, though, since Hillary’s defeat, it is an embittered “left,” if one may call it that, that more vociferously attacks Putin and his “proxy” Trump. Both the Dems (the alleged “left” but more realistically just feeble imitators of the hard right) and the GOP (the genuine article of conservatism) are to blame for rekindling the new cold war with a flame much more intense than during the original phenomenon, but Hillary’s troops, who used to know better when they opposed Dubya for the same policies they themselves later adopted under Obomber, seem to be the most virulently passionate in their hatred of Russia and love of war right now. On orders from the Deep State and in collusion with the Republicans and the media they have furiously and systematically attacked the office of the presidency and, under threat of impeachment, criminal charges and smears of sedition, they have stripped the president of constitutional powers and bent him to their bellicose will on foreign policy. It just makes no sense for Murray or anyone to say that the American “left” is pro-Putin, not even comparably “pro-Putin.” The remark is totally risible and detracts from the logic of his arguments. That is the point I was making.
Got it and thanks to both you and Joe…
Realist, I agree with your post! I was startled at Craig Murray’s comment about the left being pro-Putin. He may have been talking about the UK-left, their position, not the US-left. I’m pretty sure.
Virginia, if he was talking about Mr. Corbyn, whom I admire, I can accept that. Of course, their “left” included Tony Blair, who has a boatload of sins in the Middle East for which to atone.
“If the right one don’t get ya, the left one will.” — Tennessee Ernie Ford
One reason is perhaps that you attached your comment to the wrong article…
> Just who is the “left” in the United States?
He was not talking about the USA in particular, but presumably mainly about Britain.
And of course he means by “left” the Left internationally, not the right-of-center Democratic Party leadership and Congressional caucus.
I already allowed for that presumption in my response to Virginia hours ago–right above your post.
The left in the US doesn’t have a party, unless you consider the Green Party a party. The political situation reflects much of human nature, in that people are more likely to follow a path of excitement even if they suspect that it will end in failure. I refer to one famous case from the past which is known by its code name, MarketGarden.
What issue could be more important than one of potential war or peace between the two largest nuclear powers on the planet? What issue should be more scrupulously examined on strictly objective terms with as much real data input as humanly possible than whether the United States should publicly condemn Russia, punish Russia with severe economic sanctions that adversely affect even our “allies” and potentially attack Russia for alleged serious misdeeds? Rather than doing due diligence before setting out on a path that can potentially lead to the total annihilation of civilisation, this entire matter has been given the most slipshod treatment by both the American government and the American corporate-owned “mainstream” media. The accusations can only be characterised as will-o-the-wisp, with absolutely no foundation other than angry accusations from a scary and bellicose political candidate and her party who are sore for losing an election she should have won easily against a political naif and newbie. The winning candidate has proven so inept in his interaction with the separate branches of government and with a hostile media such that his own party, undoubtedly wishing to mitigate the damages being inflicted on him daily by the opposition have stopped supporting him, and indeed many are actually attacking him, trying to leverage him out of office to be replaced by a more manipulable vice-president. On this basis the world may be plunged into World War III? Has everyone of authority and influence in this country gone collectively insane? Or am I caught in some repeating nightmare that just gets worse in every REM cycle? Who, besides a handful of very senior statesmen, pundits, journalists and scholars can still remember and harken back to an era when policies of such tremendous import were decided by the application of clear-headed logic to real corroborated data and information rather than bombast and talking points blatantly confected from whole cloth?
Why is this being “moderated?”