Special Report: In the Watergate era, liberals warned about U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics, but now Trump-hatred has blinded many of them to this danger becoming real, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern notes.
By Ray McGovern
Russia-gate is becoming FBI-gate, thanks to the official release of unguarded text messages between loose-lipped FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and his garrulous girlfriend, FBI lawyer Lisa Page. (Ten illustrative texts from their exchange appear at the end of this article.)
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the third presidential debate in 2016, during which Clinton called Trump Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.”
Despite his former job as chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through “Security 101.” Or perhaps he was busy texting during that class. Girlfriend Page cannot be happy at being misled by his assurance that using office phones would be a secure way to conduct their affair(s).
It would have been unfortunate enough for Strzok and Page to have their adolescent-sounding texts merely exposed, revealing the reckless abandon of star-crossed lovers hiding (they thought) secrets from cuckolded spouses, office colleagues, and the rest of us. However, for the never-Trump plotters in the FBI, the official release of just a fraction (375) of almost 10,000 messages does incalculably more damage than that.
We suddenly have documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process. And that puts in a new and dark context the year-long promotion of Russia-gate. It now appears that it was not the Russians trying to rig the outcome of the U.S. election, but leading officials of the U.S. intelligence community, shadowy characters sometimes called the Deep State.
More of the Strzok-Page texting dialogue is expected to be released. And the Department of Justice Inspector General reportedly has additional damaging texts from others on the team that Special Counsel Robert Mueller selected to help him investigate Russia-gate.
Besides forcing the removal of Strzok and Page, the text exposures also sounded the death knell for the career of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, in whose office some of the plotting took place and who has already announced his plans to retire soon.
But the main casualty is the FBI’s 18-month campaign to sabotage candidate-and-now-President Donald Trump by using the Obama administration’s Russia-gate intelligence “assessment,” electronic surveillance of dubious legality, and a salacious dossier that could never pass the smell test, while at the same time using equally dubious techniques to immunize Hillary Clinton and her closest advisers from crimes that include lying to the FBI and endangering secrets.
Ironically, the Strzok-Page texts provide something that the Russia-gate investigation has been sorely lacking: first-hand evidence of both corrupt intent and action. After months of breathless searching for “evidence” of Russian-Trump collusion designed to put Trump in the White House, what now exists is actual evidence that senior officials of the Obama administration colluded to keep Trump out of the White House – proof of what old-time gumshoes used to call “means, motive and opportunity.”
Even more unfortunately for Russia-gate enthusiasts, the FBI lovers’ correspondence provides factual evidence exposing much of the made-up “Resistance” narrative – the contrived storyline that The New York Times and much of the rest of the U.S. mainstream media deemed fit to print with little skepticism and few if any caveats, a scenario about brilliantly devious Russians that not only lacks actual evidence – relying on unverified hearsay and rumor – but doesn’t make sense on its face.
The Russia-gate narrative always hinged on the preposterous notion that Russian President Vladimir Putin foresaw years ago what no American political analyst considered even possible, the political ascendancy of Donald Trump. According to the narrative, the fortune-telling Putin then risked creating even worse tensions with a nuclear-armed America that would – by all odds – have been led by a vengeful President Hillary Clinton.
Besides this wildly improbable storyline, there were flat denials from WikiLeaks, which distributed the supposedly “hacked” Democratic emails, that the information came from Russia – and there was the curious inability of the National Security Agency to use its immense powers to supply any technical evidence to support the Russia-hack scenario.
The Trump Shock
But the shock of Trump’s election and the decision of many never-Trumpers to cast their lot with the Resistance led to a situation in which any prudent skepticism or demand for evidence was swept aside.
President Donald Trump delivering his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)
So, on Jan. 6, 2017, President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an evidence-free report that he said was compiled by “hand-picked” analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA, offering an “assessment” that Russia and President Putin were behind the release of the Democratic emails in a plot to help Trump win the presidency.
Despite the extraordinary gravity of the charge, even New York Times correspondent Scott Shane noted that proof was lacking. He wrote at the time: “What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
But the “assessment” served a useful purpose for the never-Trumpers: it applied an official imprimatur on the case for delegitimizing Trump’s election and even raised the long-shot hope that the Electoral College might reverse the outcome and possibly install a compromise candidate, such as former Secretary of State Colin Powell, in the White House. Though the Powell ploy fizzled, the hope of somehow removing Trump from office continued to bubble, fueled by the growing hysteria around Russia-gate.
Virtually all skepticism about the evidence-free “assessment” was banned. For months, the Times and other newspapers of record repeated the lie that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies had concurred in the conclusion about the Russian “hack.” Even when that falsehood was belatedly acknowledged, the major news outlets just shifted the phrasing slightly to say that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached the Russian “hack” conclusion. Shane’s blunt initial recognition about the lack of proof disappeared from the mainstream media’s approved narrative of Russia-gate.
Doubts about the Russian “hack” or dissident suggestions that what we were witnessing was a “soft coup” were scoffed at by leading media commentators. Other warnings from veteran U.S. intelligence professionals about the weaknesses of the Russia-gate narrative and the danger of letting politicized intelligence overturn a constitutional election were also brushed aside in pursuit of the goal of removing Trump from the White House.
It didn’t even seem to matter when new Russia-gate disclosures conflicted with the original narrative that Putin had somehow set Trump up as a Manchurian candidate. All normal journalistic skepticism was jettisoned. It was as if the Russia-gate advocates started with the conclusion that Trump must go and then made the facts fit into that mold, but anyone who noted the violations of normal investigative procedures was dismissed as a “Trump enabler” or a “Moscow stooge.”
The Text Evidence
But then came the FBI text messages, providing documentary evivdence that key FBI officials involved in the Russia-gate investigation were indeed deeply biased and out to get Trump, adding hard proof to Trump’s longstanding lament that he was the subject of a “witch hunt.”
Peter Strzok, who served as a Deputy Assistant Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, second in command of counterintelligence.
Justified or not, Trump’s feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous — particularly at a time when the most urgent need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals.
On the home front, Trump, his wealthy friends, and like-thinkers in Congress may now feel they have an even wider carte blanche to visit untold misery on the poor, the widow, the stranger and other vulnerable humans. That was always an underlying danger of the Resistance’s strategy to seize on whatever weapons were available – no matter how reckless or unfair – to “get Trump.”
Beyond that, Russia-gate has become so central to the Washington establishment’s storyline that there appears to be no room for second-thoughts or turning back. The momentum is such that some Democrats and the media never-Trumpers can’t stop stoking the smoke of Russia-gate and holding out hope against hope that it will somehow justify Trump’s impeachment.
Yet, the sordid process of using legal/investigative means to settle political scores further compromises the principle of the “rule of law” and integrity of journalism in the eyes of many Americans. After a year of Russia-gate, the “rule of law” and “pursuit of truth” appear to have been reduced to high-falutin’ phrases for political score-setttling, a process besmirched by Republicans in earlier pursuits of Democrats and now appearing to be a bipartisan method for punishing political rivals regardless of the lack of evidence.
Strzok and Page
Peter Strzok (pronounced “struck”) has an interesting pedigree with multiple tasks regarding both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump. As the FBI’s chief of counterespionage during the investigation into then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s unauthorized use of a personal email server for classified information, Strzok reportedly changed the words “grossly negligent” (which could have triggered legal prosecution) to the far less serious “extremely careless” in FBI Director James Comey’s depiction of Clinton’s actions. This semantic shift cleared the way for Comey to conclude just 20 days before the Democratic National Convention began in July 2016, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would bring charges against Mrs. Clinton.
Then, as Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division, Strzok led the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election of 2016. It is a safe bet that he took a strong hand in hand-picking the FBI contingent of analysts that joined “hand-picked” counterparts from CIA and NSA in preparing the evidence-free, Jan. 6, 2017 assessment accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of interfering in the election of 2016. (Although accepted in Establishment groupthink as revealed truth, that poor excuse for analysis reflected the apogee of intelligence politicization — rivaled only by the fraudulent intelligence on “weapons of mass destruction“ in Iraq 15 years ago.)
In June and July 2017 Strzok was the top FBI official working on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia, but was taken off that job when the Justice Department IG learned of the Strzok-Page text-message exchange and told Mueller.
There is no little irony in the fact that what did in the FBI sweathearts was their visceral disdain for Mr. Trump, their cheerleading-cum-kid-gloves treatment of Mrs. Clinton and her associates, their 1950-ish, James Clapperesque attitude toward Russians as “almost genetically driven” to evil, and their (Strzok/Page) elitist conviction that they know far better what is good for the country than regular American citizens, including those “deplorables” whom Clinton said made up half of Trump’s supporters.
But Strzok/Page had no idea that their hubris, elitism and scheming would be revealed in so tangible a way. Worst of all for them, the very thing that Strzok, in particular, worked so hard to achieve — the sabotaging of Trump and immunization of Mrs. Clinton and her closest advisers is now coming apart at the seams.
Congress: Oversee? or Overlook?
At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily cozy role as “overlook” committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today’s technology permits blanket collection, and “Collect Everything” has become the motto.
Former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, with almost four decades of membership in the House and Senate, openly warned incoming President Trump in January 2017 against criticizing the U.S. intelligence community because U.S. intelligence officials have “six ways from Sunday to get back at you” if you are “dumb” enough to take them on.
Thanks to the almost 10,000 text messages between Strzok and Page, only a small fraction of which were given to Congress four weeks ago, there is now real evidentiary meat on the bones of the suspicions that there indeed was a “deep-state coup” to “correct” the outcome of the 2016 election. We now know that the supposedly apolitical FBI officials had huge political axes to grind. The Strzok-Page exchanges drip with disdain for Trump and those deemed his smelly deplorable supporters. In one text message, Strzok expressed visceral contempt for those working-class Trump voters, writing on Aug. 26, 2016, “Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support. … it’s scary real down here.”
The texts even show Strzok warning of the need for an “insurance policy” to thwart Trump on the off-chance that his poll numbers closed in on those of Mrs. Clinton.
An Aug. 6, 2016 text message, for example, shows Page giving her knight in shining armor strong affirmation: “Maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace [Trump].” That text to Strzok includes a link to a David Brooks column in The New York Times, in which Brooks concludes with the clarion call: “There comes a time when neutrality and laying low become dishonorable. If you’re not in revolt, you’re in cahoots. When this period and your name are mentioned, decades hence, your grandkids will look away in shame.”
Another text message shows that other senior government officials – alarmed at the possibility of a Trump presidency – joined the discussion. In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” Strzok added, “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you’re 40.”
Insurance Policy?
Senate Judiciary Committee chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, says he will ask Strzok to explain the “insurance policy” when he calls him to testify. What seems already clear is that the celebrated “Steele Dossier” was part of the “insurance,” as was the evidence-less legend that Russia hacked the DNC’s and Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails and gave them to WikiLeaks.
If congressional investigators have been paying attention, they already know what former weapons inspector Scott Ritter shared with Veteran intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues this week; namely, that Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson, who commissioned the Russia dossier using Democratic Party money, said he reached out to Steele after June 17, just three days before Steele’s first report was published, drawing on seven sources.
“There is a snowball’s chance in hell that this is raw intelligence gathered by Steele; rather he seems to have drawn on a single ‘trusted intermediary’ to gather unsubstantiated rumor already in existence.”
Another VIPS colleague, Phil Giraldi, writing out of his own experience in private sector consulting, added: “The fact that you do not control your sources frequently means that they will feed you what they think you want to hear. Since they are only doing it for money, the more lurid the details the better, as it increases the apparent value of the information. The private security firm in turn, which is also doing it for the money, will pass on the stories and even embroider them to keep the client happy and to encourage him to come back for more. When I read the Steele dossier it looked awfully familiar to me, like the scores of similar reports I had seen which combined bullshit with enough credible information to make the whole product look respectable.”
It is now widely known that the Democrats ponied up the “insurance premiums,” so to speak, for former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s “dossier” of lurid — but largely unproven — “intelligence” on Trump and the Russians. If, as many have concluded, the dossier was used to help justify a FISA warrant to snoop on the Trump campaign, those involved will be in deep kimchi, if congressional overseers do their job.
How, you might ask, could Strzok and associates undertake these extra-legal steps with such blithe disregard for the possible consequences should they be caught? The answer is easy; Mrs. Clinton was a shoo-in, remember? This was just extra insurance with no expectation of any “death benefit” ever coming into play — save for Trump’s electoral demise in November 2016. The attitude seemed to be that, if abuse of the FISA law should eventually be discovered — there would be little interest in a serious investigation by the editors of The New York Times and other anti-Trump publications and whatever troubles remained could be handled by President Hillary Clinton.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee of Judiciary on Crime and Terrorism, joined Sen. Grassley in signing the letter referring Christopher Steele to the Justice Department to investigate what appear to be false statements about the dossier. In signing, Graham noted the “many stop signs the Department of Justice ignored in its use of the dossier.” The signature of committee ranking member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, however, was missing — an early sign that a highly partisan battle royale is in the offing. On Tuesday, Feinstein unilaterally released a voluminous transcript of Glenn Simpson’s earlier testimony and, as though on cue, Establishment pundits portrayed Steele as a good source and Fusion GPS’s Glenn Simpson as a victim.
The Donnybrook is now underway; the outcome uncertain.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army and CIA intelligence analyst for 30 years; prepared and briefed the President’s Daily Brief for Nixon, Ford, and Reagan; and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
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Sample text messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, released to Congress and the media on December 13, 2016
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03/04/2016
Strzok – God Hillary should win. 100,000,000-0.
Page – I know
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04/02/2016
Page – So look, you say we text on that phone when we talk about Hillary because it can’t be traced, you were just venting, bc you feel bad that you’re gone so much but that can’t be helped right now.
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07/08/2016
Strzok – And meanwhile, we have Black Lives Matter protestors, right now, chanting “no justice no peace” around DoJ and the White House…
Page – That’s awful.
+++++++++
07/14/2016
Page – Have you read this? It’s really frightening. For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance http://NYTI/ms/29WCu5!
Strzok – I have not. But I think it’s clear he’s capturing all the white, poor voters who the mainstream republicans abandoned in all but name in the quest for the almighty $$$
Page – Yeah, it’s not good.
Strzok – Poll Finds Emails Weighing on Hillary Clinton, Now Tied With Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/29RV5gf
Page – It is
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07/26/2016
Strzok – And hey. Congrats on a woman nominated for President in a major party! About damn time! Many many more returns of the day!!
Page – That’s cute. Thanks
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08/06/2016
Page – Jesus. You should read this. And Trump should go f himself. Moment in Convention Glare Shakes Up Khans American Life http://nyti.ms/2aHulE0
Strzok – God that’s a great article. Thanks for sharing. And F TRUMP.
++++++++
08/06/2016
Page – And maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because you’re meant to protect the country from that menace. To that end comma, read this:
Page – Trump Enablers Will Finally Have to Take A Stand http://nyti.ms/2aFakry
Strzok – Thanks. It’s absolutely true that we’re both very fortunate. And of course I’ll try and approach it that way. I just know it will be tough at times. I can protect our country at many levels, not sure if that helps
++++++++++++
08/09/2016
Page – He’s not ever going to become president, right? Right?!
Strzok – OMG did you hear what Trump just said?
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08/26/2016
Strzok – Just went to a southern Virginia Walmart. I could SMELL the Trump support…
Page – Yep. Out to lunch with (redacted) We both hate everyone and everything.
Page – Just riffing on the hot mess that is our country.
Strzok – Yeah…it’s scary real down here
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10/20/2016
Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.
Strzok – I CAN’T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY (redacted)??!?!
Page– I don’t know. But we’ll get it back. We’re America. We rock.
Strzok– Donald just said “bad hombres”
Strzok– Trump just said what the FBI did is disgraceful.
END
That would be a good thing.
Touché!
Todd Bridges, into the breach to defend ‘our intel guys.’ They’re not our intel guys, Todd, they’re a mafia, chickenshit cowardly murderers, torturers, drug dealers, and child traffickers. Just look how they cry and whine when somebody wants to take away their get-out-of-jail-free card in phony DoJ red tape. If they were real men with balls, they would take their medicine and go to prison when they break universal-jurisdiction law. But waah, waah, waah-baby! Pussies.
Also notice the formula Will slips in with his content-free criticism of McGovern. Funny how nobody ever names CIA when they’re telling you CIA works for the president even as CIA is undermining (Eisenhower,) framing (Nixon,) purging (Carter,) or shooting the poor chumps (JFK, Reagan.)
http://johnhelmer.net/the-cia-bull-in-glenn-simpsons-russia-shop/
The article starts off with Strzok and his flame,bitching about various politicos and bemoaning what they have to do to keep up with their workloads in election season.
And you consider that to be
“…documentary proof that key elements of the U.S. intelligence community were trying to short-circuit the U.S. democratic process.”
Really?
I had some incredulity regarding line of thought that our intell guys have become politicized.
Your writing only re enforces it.
It is a pretty weak article, but the FBI does tend to be the Pinkerton agency for whomever is president at the time.
“And maybe you’re meant to stay where you are because [sharp intake of breath] you’re meant to protect the country from that menace [heave of bosoms / diminuendo violins /passionate embrace].”
Page gives us an epic star turn in the Jill Kelly role in this classic CIA exploding honey trap. Give some FBI nitwit the lifelike ‘girlfriend experience,’ then burn them both to divert attention from CIA’s purge. While Kelly deftly took out ass-kissing CIA hood ornament Petraeus, Page tried it with a presidential figurehead, a slightly harder target.
Nice!
Can’t we the people take down the entire Cabal? It is well within our constitutional rights. The overwhelming evidence of a sinister cabal has been there full force since 18 months prior to the WTC terror, insurance, insider trading, patriot act scam! These people need to be put in prison, hard labor breaking rock and forced to rebuild our nation’s infrastructure for ten cents an hour on bread water and two 500 ingredient hot dogs a day. And lashes, lots of lashes and tattoos with prison numbers across there foreheads. For starters!
If this cabal of criminals are not sent to the gallows, might I suggest they be sent to Elba Island with cameras everywhere so that we and everyone around the world can watch them play the hunger games.
Excellent work. Consortium news in a valuable asset for the independent news media. Mr. McGovern’s work is valuable as well. Thank you.
Yeah it changes nothing though, we need to gang together in million person battalions as Americans and start bashing skulls and putting the entire cabal in prison. Are we really thinking alternate news is going to get Clinton or the other crims put in prison, not by a long shot. They’ll all get off Scott free and laugh at our weakness again. We have a legal, moral responsibility to beat this cabal all the way to prison. Maybe make them repair our nation’s highways first, if they die working to death, oh well. I’m so over reading and posting, I want to create a hundred million militia and take the nation back and get every troop back on our soil. Then sign business agreements with Russia and the other eastern countries. Then leave Saudi without military arms, and Israel, in fact I’d bomb Israel to free the Palestinians for good.
or you could join a few million people in refusing to pay your taxes or spend money on anything but food and rent. probably 1000x more effective than your fantasies
Suppose we the people can get our privacy back if none of us renew our cell phone plans for three months, and demand that we have an option to have a phone that cannot be tracked unless we choose to.
Fbi subverts law & society
https://www.academia.edu/13447621/Corruption_of_Law_and_Society_By_fbi
http://austin.indymedia.org/article/2018/01/18/crusader-against-fbi
ok…no bias by our intrepid reporter here…sex shaming aside…cough. Since I’ve been declared a “Hasbera” Troll by young Abraham (I prefer ZOG Media Rep because it has that corporate ring to it,). I don’t expect you to listen to me (After all, I am just a filthy jew [unless of course I’m just another protestant German American who’s mother’s cousins mostly disappeared from the active rolls of the Wehrmacht shortly after the battle of Stalingrad]).
If you’re still following me thus far,consider that this report is about as sad and anything I’ve read in the NYTs lately. Sure Strzok appears to be a moron in some respects, but (with the exception of his *apparent* unqualified support of Hillary) he sounds pretty rational in his private text messages. My guess is that these texts compare fairly favorably with anything Ken Star and his people would have been texting to each other (if there had been texting back then). Friends/enemies…this reads like a freaking editorial, yet here you all are creaming your jeans at the thought of the “deep state” exposing itself once again…And all the while, you sit at home in your underwear composing comment board missives congratulating each other. My opinion is that the world in general and the players in this political tragedy playing out today in particular, the good old USA are more nuanced than y’all seem to think. of course I could be wrong…yet something I noticed here in Madison, Wisconsin back during our troubles in 2011 (when Obama failed to put on his comfortable brown shoes and march for our public servants, and we invented Occupation), is that the people doing the most to make the world a better place seemed to know the least about the many conspiracies, betrayals and historic minutia that brought us to where we are. They simply didn’t have time to sit around on the internet showing everyone how fucking smart and un-gullible they were. Or, as my old lefty mom used to say to me: “that’s great that you know all that shit about George W. Bush and the Texas Air National Guard, but what are you gonna do about it?” The answer of course was… not a fucking thing. Time to help mitigate the damage or admit you’re useless in terms of dealing with the present crises.
Nice rant, but your notions are quite as meaningless as the verbose “intellectual” chit-chat you condemn in the rest of us. Your “lefty” mom was right.
Stuff like not paying taxes is silly – that’s an option open only to the very wealthy. Marching in the streets can get a person killed in Modern America, and his/her death will count for nothing. Probably that’s why it isn’t done more than it is. Police have demonstrated they love shooting citizens, and juries have repeatedly shown that this is an entirely justifiable practice almost all the time.
Unless you March in millions with the very open notion we’re going to take down the cabal, put them in prison without trial and hold elections with non political people, academics, circuit judges, rank and file who pass background checks of morality. Talking time is over, alternate reporting is over, action is the only thing that will force change. And everyone knows or can be made to know as soon as reasonable people take over the airwaves of the mainstream media, the Robert Perry’s, Peter Lavelles, Ed Schultzs of the world. One year of people anarchy to drain, crush and bury that damn sample and its media whorls.
Swamp not. Sample
An option open to and used by thousand upon thousand of quakers,Jehovah’s Witnesses and others of modest means, during the South East Asian conflict. I could tell you how to do it,but as they say… I’m not your research monkey. Here’s one tip though: you could file a new w2 with your employer (assuming you have one) and change withholdings to the max-30 in my case. I just did that last week. What you choose to do after that can take many forms.
Uhhhhhhhhh! And why was this ever posted? n If this is the best of the bulk, you all need to be severely ashamed of yourselves at this point!~ What trump has been saying and doing to this country makes this look like raindrops from a sunny sky! Damn! This is weaker than a scratch from a flea!
It’s entirely possible for more than one crime to be happening. Trump is indeed a horrible president, but running (and supporting) an illegal coup against him is horrible too.
On the subject of Trump being horrible, he is getting plenty of assistance from the Democrats.
The Same Democrats Who Denounce Donald Trump as a Lawless, Treasonous Authoritarian Just Voted to Give Him Vast Warrantless Spying Powers
The very first photograph at the link shows Pelosi and Schiff (pissant – Israel) together. They like to whine about Trump, but are unwilling to do anything at all to rein him in.
https://theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the-same-democrats-who-denounce-trump-as-a-lawless-treasonous-authoritarian-just-voted-to-give-him-vast-warrantless-spying-powers/
Democrats-R-Republicans often enough, but their real function is; to quote Chris Hedges from Death of the Liberal Class, as a safety valve to let off steam every time the conservatives go too far. In this case however, I think even more so, the conservatives (Mueller,Comey,the FBI) are serving much the same function…it appears that they are going to “get” Trumpkin and so the liberal and progressive folks (and more than a few republicans) sit at home doing nothing while Trumpkin and the Rs consolidate their power. Then,if the troubles of 2011 in the state of Wisconsin are to be our guide…once a true civil revolt is co-opted and Trumpkin’s wings are clipped, he will be allowed to continue on wrecking everything (with the help of the Rs and a surprising number of Ds). My suggestion is, get the hell off your computers and do something while you still can. Best start by refusing to pay your taxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance
All the best for the complete recovery of Bob Perry. We are all pulling for you.
With respect,
Dorothy Hoobler
This is my first time on this site…I find that some of you have a good idea of the corruption happening but you are missing the larger picture…Globalists are worldwide…the Clintons and Bannon are working with the Chinese…the Globalists own all mainstream media, Twitter, Facebook, Google and usually own both main candidates in any election and have their fingers in both sides of any war…Understand that Trumps new tax law brought companies back to the States from China and starting in February when the new tax charts come out the average american worker, not the rich ones, will be seeing extra cash every paycheck from tax savings, and the new tax law for rich landowners will in fact impact Trump as well as other rich people…but it was the right thing to do…Trump is not racist or has said half of what he’s been reported by mainstream media and they have been proven wrong many times…but they don’t cover any of that in their news…Trump has backing from insiders in all walks of government agencies which is how they pulled off a coup and actually got someone elected who is a nationalist instead of a globalist…but globalists are everywhere and I think Trump and his group has done many things reversing the globalist agenda of destablizing the societal and economic fabric of America like they have already done in Europe…I believe in immigration but the globalization method of dumping that many unvetted immigrants in the general population is designed to destabalize everyone’s country…the UN and the EU are the armies for the globalists…watch for the showdown in Europe to happen with the countries electing non globalist leaders recently…pay attention to the saber rattling of the EU…nationalists around the world are trying to overthrow the globalists actually controlling the world…is Trump perfect and what are the true agendas of the backers no one can really say, but Hillary was the endgame of the globalists for their agenda in the states that has been delayed by Trump’s coup…he is smarter than people credit him for which is why he was such a good trojan horse for the nationalists…like globalists their are nationalists in all parts of the government which is why so much of the globalist agenda has been derailed, but the mainstream media is still owned by the globalists and all social platforms which has been exposed via undercover journalistic video being exposed by the Veritas project…Soros paid Antifaa has also been exposed as having paid insurgents with police being told to stand by as violence against peaceful Trump supporters was orchestrated…again the videos of the attacks have not appeared in mainstream media…there is so much video evidence exposing mainstream medias bias of the events happening right now, and most of that bias is through not reporting on facts actually happening and focusing on demonizing Trump and creating civil unrest…all the hate and violence and trying to incite civil war is exactly what was done in the Ukraine…but then most people only saw what the mainstream media presented…it is a recipe that the globalists have used multiple times in regime change, people need to stop seeing this as a strictly local political problem and look past all the smoke and mirrors of the globalist owned propaganda machine
So you don’t think Trump is nothing more than the short tempered blowhard we saw on The Apprentice? You think he made $10 billion by being smart and savvy with people, business and finance. You think his willingness to absorb additional tax burdens is the result of his big picture view of the structural flaws in the economy and tax laws? You think he is a proud American who seeks to see America’s blessings preserved for the benefit of future generations?
Seems to me you are not watching enough TV.
Newsflash, Trump is just a dumb racist who stole all his money from minorities to fund Israel’s plans for world domination and a new Russian Renaissance. Duh. I heard he’s planning to make Russian a mandatory language requirement in the public schools, don’t you know.
Let’s read these texts for what they are:. A weaselly beta male trying to posture as a hotshot to a loose woman who has, or may soon, let him in her pants. When viewed from this, the correct and true perspective, is so embarrassing and sad and petty that you have to wonder how the govt even runs at all. Or WHY? Such disdain for the general public that feeds their coffers. And not a shade of duty or integrity. Just a bunch of ‘Im an FBI hotshot and I make the rules’ commentary from an FBI hotshot who could ACTUALLY do nothing to stop what ultimately happened to the country or himself. He couldn’t even stop his 8th-grader-with-a-boner texts from publicly embarrassing him and destroying his career and family. If you like rich irony this is the dark chocolate mousse version of it.
So the takeaway lesson should be that. Yes many in the DOJ and FBI conspired against Trump. Yes they all lied, cheated and considered themselves above the law. But don’t ever let it be lost on you what low grade, low ability people they were. These machinations are all an extension of this fact and likewise so we’re their total failures. In other words, it’s a twisted tale with lots of bad guys. But in the end nobody was ever in any real danger. Turns out the bad guys were all 8th graders with boners who were worse at deceit and election meddling than they were at talking to girls. And don’t let it be lost on you that most of the people still running g the government are cut from the same cloth. So it’s ours to take back whenever we’re ready. It won’t be hard at all. It might only take one picture of boobies. They all seem willing to bet the farm on less.
This is a great report. I am especially happy to see that Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter are back on the same page. Ritter is a good man and an uncompromising truth teller. He wrote a report published in Truthdig disputing the validity of the July VIPS report that purported to show that DNC was not “hacked” by the Russians because the “download speed” of the creation of a Guccifer 2.0 file was too fast to happen over the internet. This file was a complete fabrication by some DNC operative that had nothing to do with the DNC email file published by Wikileaks. Ritter simply pointed out that the “download speed” of this file was “apropos of nothing”. It was a bad report that actually weakened the case being made for no Russian hack by resting the conclusion on a false inference. However, it was politically inconvenient to say this at the time. I’m sure William Binney knew Ritter was right, but he also was politically constrained not to say so. Instead he sort of worked with it while putting more emphasis on the original VIPS report from January, which said that if there were a Russian hack, the NSA should be able to provide proof positive in the form of a trace showing where the hack originated and terminated. The fact that they have not done so and instead talk about “high confidence” just means they’re lying. That is a valid argument. We also have Julian Assange’s positive statement that the data did not come from a state actor, and his very strong hint that it came from murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich. We also have the word of former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray, now who says he knows it was a leak and has met the leaker. We also have Ritter’s report on Crowdstrike, the sleazy tech company hired for “security” by the DNC. https://medium.com/homefront-rising/dumbstruck-how-crowdstrike-conned-america-on-the-hack-of-the-dnc-ecfa522ff44f
American traitors:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48588.htm
“…don’t elevate the likes of former CIA directors Michael Hayden and John Brennan and the former director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, to the position of “senior statesmen.” They are not the voices of reason… They are monsters who have ignored the Constitution, the US code, and international law.
Hayden is probably the most public of the three. The former director of both the NSA and the CIA has never seen a camera that he didn’t want to get in front of. … I am convinced that he’s a danger to the American way of life. Hayden headed the NSA from 1999 to 2005. It was on his watch that the NSA made the decision to spy on American citizens… It was Hayden who targeted whistleblowers Thomas Drake, Bill Binney, and Kirk Wiebe. It was Hayden who created a domestic call telephone database to keep a record of every phone call and text message made by every American and to hold it forever. And he’s been utterly unapologetic. Hayden said during his confirmation hearings that intercepting the communications of Americans was “consistent with the Constitution,” even if it meant overriding or ignoring laws forbidding warrantless wiretapping. Hayden served as CIA director from 2006 to 2009, where he oversaw the agency’s system of secret prisons and the extraordinary rendition program. While there, he steadfastly supported the agency’s torture program, lied to Congress about it, and tried to loosen regulations that would have allowed drone strikes based on the “behavior of ground vehicles.” Hayden, along with others, co-authored a “rebuttal” of the Senate Torture Report, saying that torture worked. And it wasn’t really torture….
Like Hayden, John Brennan did incredible damage to our civil liberties during his tenure as Barack Obama’s deputy national security advisor for counterterrorism and as CIA director. It is impossible to calculate the number of people John Brennan killed during his time in government, none of whom had the Constitutional benefit of having been charged with a crime, of having evidence presented against them, or of facing their accusers in a court of law. Brennan, the keeper of the infamous “kill list,” decided who would live and who would die. It was as simple as that. Brennan had no respect for the law and no tolerance for any journalist or citizen who challenged him on it.
Brennan also had no respect for the Congressional oversight committees. He famously ordered his spies to hack into the computer system of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, lied about it, and then when caught, filed a “crimes report” with the Justice Department asking that the Intelligence Committee investigators be arrested. If that isn’t anti-Constitutional authoritarianism, I don’t know what is.”
One does have to ask, why did Comey bring it up at all, at the time he did– his timing was impeccable to undermine Clinton’s campaign simply by casting some doubt at a critical point such a short time before the vote. If the FBI was that intent on undermining a Trump Presidency, Comey either must not have been on board with that attempt, or was simply incompetent at it…
I remember whent Ray McGovern was not a right wing ideologue.
He still isn’t. He’s a damned liberal. But he speaks the truth.
Most folks understand the CIA use Blackmail and Extortion to control world leaders since the Kennedy assassination.
Today, the FBI is run by the CIA.
It’s the other way around, the US as top predator nation wants to dismantle Russia. Read Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine” chapter on Russia in the ’90s.
As for Trump’s shady business deals, I don’t believe he’s honest, but since we live in such a dishonest and corrupt society controlled by American oligarchs, I’m not surprised. But the Clinton Foundation has not been investigated, either, and there are many questions about their activities.
I’m suspicious of Israel’s influence on Trump via Jared Kushner. I wonder how a 36-year-old Jewish, budding real estate magnate becomes “senior adviser” to the president. And the Kushner family are close friends of the Netanyahus. The Israel lobby makes sure no questions about Israel are ever asked.
All well said but I’ll caution you against being a media dupe. Netanyahu is under house arrest pending corruption charges in his own country. The idea that he is remotely controlling our President through Jared Kushner is mostly preposterous. I know this story gets a lot of play but it’s mostly baseless and retarded. And consider WHERE it gets play and what other nonsense gets play in those same outlets. You seem more intelligent than this. Stick to your other points. They’re far more rational.
How was a soft coup not obvious throughout the PRIMARIES with all the FRAUD in REAL time.
They assume that the whole of America has ADHD and forgets what happened.
Obama, Clinton, the DNC, DOJ, CIA, FBI CRIMINAL CABAL we’re all involved and as a Sanders supporter at the time I see it’s more than possible that Sanders knew damned well what was going on. Does anyone really believe he wasn’t privvy to the INVESTIGATION against Clinton and her email scandal?
We have a criminal cabal in power hiding behind the Democratic party and the long held assumption that this is the party of the people. Not only did they rig the election for Clinton but the Democratic policies have been causing harm to Americans for the better part of fifty years now, on steroids by the time Clinton rose to power, ripping apart social safety nets, deregulation of banks, expansion of the private PRISON complex, sailing American jobs overseas, then OBAMA, his bailing out of banks, filling his cabinet with Citigroup, doing NOTHING as blacks were shot dead in the streets by white cops, expansion of surveillance police state, and SEVEN ILLEGAL WARS FOR ISRAEL.
Trump is merely ACCELERATING where previous Administration left off.
.The corruption and fraud are OBVIOUS.
IT. IS. OBVIOUS.
And if the American people don’t FULLY awaken to the right/left paradigm ILLUSION soon we are all going to be DEAD. NOTHING will be done about Obama or Clinton. And it’s why Obama can seat himself in front of David Letterman and provide the cup is half full ILLUSION of America as having hope, while NEVER being questioned about his WAR CRIMES or HIS administration help in cahoots with the Zionists to have their Queen installed.
He will never see inside a criminal court for what he, Clinton and the alphabet agencies have done to cause HARM to the American people…
Look I’m NOT “:all in” on the “Russia-gate”/”collusion” theory–but ,it sure seems obvious that TRUMP IS LINKED TO RUISSIAN OLIGARCGHS’ MONEY since no one else would loan to him any more. Sure looks like Trump has SOMETHING going with Putin (or needs Putin to stay in-good w/those Russian oligarchs-lenders). I DISLIKE both Bill & Hillary Clinton (did NOT vote Hillary OR Trump–voted Green Party)but, haven’t her emails, Benghazi, Clinton Foundation, Whitewater, Monica & how many times a day the Clintons hit the can all been endlessly investigated ALREADY???? Atotal Corproate Kleptocracy is being created before our eyes—& no doubt Hillary would have done HER part to CONTINUE building “government OF Corporations, BY Corporations & FOR Corporations”, begun by her husband in the 1990s. But, Trump’s no innocent either
All the money came from internal resources. The media gave Trump 2 billion in free advertising. They acted confused after the election as though somehow Trump gamed the system and so they blame the commies. Their confusion is unfounded. They knew exactly what they were doing which was making lots of money. Do you think they will investigate themselves?
You understand that giving someone free air time doesn’t actually give them any money, right? And that Russia is not communist?
No, probably not … this page is chock full of raving right wing morons. All Trump supporters are vile, ignorant, stupid, sociopathic maggots.
No. Your wrong money isn’t free it’s expensive. Besides it costs a lot too. Takes money to make money as my Gran Pop used to say. He also thought I was the Devil but never no mind that, That’s between me and him.
If time is money then airtime is money. See why? Because any time is money time.
Time = Money or said another way perhaps you can more better understand, MONEY = TIME. Money/Time = Time and Time again. Wasn’t that the name of a song or a movie?
Look at it this way, If you have lots of free air time then you may or not have been given that free time because it is free or because somebody is paying for the time. It could be calculated as the opportunity cost of providing air time for free as defined by potential lost revenue or opportunity cost. That is the money the media would have made from other advertisers with the airtime they spent talking about Trump not paid for by advertisers.. It might seem to some to be “free” since nobody paid but the equivalent time spent for free on Trump if it is converted into a cost as if someone paid for that time turns into billions of dollars.
I was taught this in communist Russia last year.
Thanks for understanding Comrade.
JP Sottile reported the MSM gave Trump 4.9 billion dollars worth of free media coverage. This also made Hillary spend more on commercial advertising for her own campaign.
I would also caution you Lydia to be careful that you don’t mix Putin in with Eastern European or Western Russia oligarchs. I’m leaving a link to Phil Butler who seems to be covering this aspect of relationships fairly well.
https://journal-neo.org/author/phil-butler/
Lydia for the sake of balance read a little Phil Butler, and skip a few episodes of Rachel, and you may see through this maze of characters. I’ll be right behind you, by the way, attempting to learn more myself. Only for heaven sake don’t buy into the MSM narrative, it’s rarely ever the truth.
If the shoe were on the other floor, would it be fair and right to bring down the U.S. president over what a U.S. business person or oligarch did? In fact, I am of the opinion that Putin is too smart for any of that kind of horse play.
Just wanted to help spread your view of this crazy Russian interference narrative with maybe give you some options for you Lydia to survey, as to then make your opinion known. Joe
I can completely accept the analysis.
But I have to ask, what is new in the FBI’s behaving illegally or corruptly or politically-bent?
Its entire history is characterized by these behaviors.
It always was political, serving Presidents with tittle-tattle and intimidating legislators with secret files about their private lives.
I really do think America has gone loonier than ever to expect anything else where the record virtually since the beginning of the agency is clear.
Readers may enjoy:
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/the-dreadful-record-of-the-fbi/
John you are right. We should not forget J Edgar Hoover built the FBI to what it is, as Allen Dulles designed the CIA to what it is. Both organizations need to be dismantled from what they have become, and recreated into two well overviewed agencies. Although, something tells me that if both Hoover and Dulles were alive today, that much would be different in the performances of these separate agencies, and not for the better of a free society. No, I just think that the original founders of these corrupted information bureaus would have pulled this Russia travesty of propaganda off much better than their predecessors have, that’s all.
Good comment John. Joe
Totally agree. The good old days never existed. Only the bad and the very bad. You are right. I think we are delusional to expect them to behave and if we want that it needs to be forced on them. They are delusional too. What’s with all the Captain America stuff? You get a clear picture they think they are the rightful rulers. The sentiments might as well be that of a dictator saving his country from the clutches of evil with no regard for the law. It is clear that the FBI has an agenda to get Trump and is willing to bend the rules and distort reality to do so. I know people who don’t care and want Trump removed even if it is a pack of lies. I don’t get it. Two wrongs do not make a right.
‘Two wrongs don’t make it right’, but ah my friend isn’t it a bit warming to the heart, that the best advice is found in standard cliches your grandmother told you. Which leaves me to wonder, did none of our leadership have grandmothers?
Having just completed reading Michael Wolff’s tell all ‘Fire & Fury’, I came away believing that there are more people on this comment board with a better view of our political reality, than what sits in the White House. I’m not reserving this criticism just for the Trump Administration, in as much as I’m critiquing almost all modern day White House administrations. These so called leaders who are led by the nose from their high level benefactors, along with the many parasites who hang on to an administration, are certainly living with inside their own bubble. There again, I believe these scoundrels know they live inside of a self designed bubble and they just don’t care, because they have goals to reach and with this we all suffer.
I’m also glad that Brennan and Clapper are no Hoover or Dulles, because otherwise we would be sending B52’s over Moscow. Joe
What sits in the White House is what has been allowed to sit in the White House. Former White House administrations obviously were the tools for the MIC and were indeed led by the nose. Our National Media is causing all of us or at least most of us to be led by the nose. Whether or not the current leadership is being led by the nose is obvious. It is indeed being led by the nose. The Mueller investigation is nothing more than a shot across the bow for Trump. Continue on the present course and you will be blown out of the water. Follow our instructions and prepare to be boarded whereby we will take over the ship of state or else. Trump has responded by calling on fellow pirates to support and rescue him. The republican leadership is on the fence. Pirate Trump has delivered the Gold to the realm with the Tax reform bill but Washington politicians face an uneasy alliance going forward. Can Trump deliver more of what they want or is the Tax Reform victory his swan song. It remains to be seen if Trump’s victory on internet service providers will be overturned and whether or not the Congress sees an advantage in supporting the many federal agencies which have been redirected by Trump or whether or not they will align with the anticipated backlash from American citizens and oppose his deregulation agenda to remove at least all of the laws governing federal agencies.
My prediction is that with the help of the commercial press we will not be exposed to sufficient negative coverage of the Trump administration since the corporations are all benefiting from Trump’s tax win.
Could it be that all of the corporations will turn against the loudmouthed Trump?
I really do not think so. They will align with the money they are making off the tax reforms and support Trump despite the insults that escape his lips.
From my Grandmother: Actions are louder than words.
Trumps actions and his successful tax breaks are going to be louder than his words. He can fairly say anything offensive and be forgiven for it by the corporations that control everything because they have been handed a windfall by the current administration which they could have only dimly wished for under former administrations.
Tax reform means the corporation or the Super PACs they fund will not have the slightest appetite for going after Trump?
I see this Russia Gate investigation going nowhere in a hurry. Even if the FBI finds some evidence of Russia’s involvement it remains uncertain if our corporations which have recently realized windfall tax relief and have also recently been granted the ability to fund elections because the tax law has given them billions of dollars in disposable cash. Corporations will be forced over their ethical concerns to fall in line with the administration which laid the golden egg. It is all about the money.
I think Trump knows this which is why he felt comfortable calling nations “shithole” nations. I think he has won the day with tax reforms and he is therefore off the hook for anything he says.
This has also been true for former administrations. Reagan was a famous deregulator and he was the Golden President and the Teflon Don. There was no chance that anyone could touch him because he served corporate interests, Although he deregulated Saving and Loan banking and it blew up leaving us taxpayers the 600 billion dollar bill, was he ever blamed for it? Nope.
Bush Jr. deregulated the energy sector and Enron blew up but were Bush or Cheney ever held accountable? Was the Congress ever held accountable for enacting the deregulation laws which caused the collapse of Enron?
They impeached Bill Clinton yet he was responsible for banking deregulation which merged investment banks with savings banks and precipitated the collapse or Great Recession but Bill Clinton’s deregulations were not at the heart of his Impeachment.
Bush Jr. was the Commander in Chief when the planes hit the Twin Towers and the Bush administration went out on a limb to blame Iraq and Saddam Hussein but did the main stream press including the venerable NY Times ever question the veracity of the claims? Congress simply appropriated the funds to go to war regardless of the debt ceiling and repeatedly forked over hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the war. Nobody in Congress was concerned enough about it to change their votes for hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending.
It really doesn’t matter who is in the White House as long as they can be led by the nose.
According to the “stable genius” in the White House, they are F-52’s.
I laddie buc you’s but described the blooming problem. Trump is being given a crash course in DC politics. And yes, if Trump’s actions end up speaking louder than his words, then he may stand for another day.
I read last night about the Uranium One probe, and it would appear that the FBI has proof of Russian skullduggery interfering with a transport company or something. Although this Uranium One investigation doesn’t involve the Donald, it still involves Russia. I think Hillary is to be found floating around somewhere in this story, but at least by what I read the Russians are deeply involved. I’m surmising that in the end, even if Trump or Hillary gets a free get out of jail card (no jail time at all), that the villains will still end up being the Russians. Why do I think that….oh I don’t know, maybe over a twelve month screwball investigation looking for Putin’s finger prints where none are to be found allows me to think this way.
Don’t go with my reporting of this Uranium One story, because there are enough little articles to read about this, that it is hard to be definitive about just exactly to what is going on.
As my drunk uncle once said, believe half of what you hear, and nothing of what you see, and you’ll be alright. I think that’s why they invented football, so we peons wouldn’t get too involved in our country’s political discourse, and in a way they may have been being nice to us with that advice. My only problem, is I want to know to just what in the name of Red Beard is going on….poor me.
Great essays Citizen One, really enjoy reading your stuff. Joe
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we at first attempt to deceive. Of course it is true that the establishment in Washington was guilty of having what the “old-time gumshoes used to call “means, motive and opportunity.” Anytime the power establishment has felt threatened they have resorted to blaming Russia. It started after the death of FDR and the assumption of the presidency by Harry Truman. Truman was a neophyte who gobbled up the conspiracy theories about Russia and was instrumental in the initiation of the cold war. Had we viewed Russia as an ally which helped way more to defeat the Germans than the allies ever did and had not met them with a paranoid conspiracy theory about how they were our next greatest enemy we might have avoided all the money making by the MIC. But that was what “old-time gumshoes used to call “means, motive and opportunity.” and it was the fire starter for the MIC who saw gold in them thar hills in the form of a permanent armaments industry. The government complied and the cold war was born not so much as a response to a real threat but as a means to cultivate the concept of an enemy state which would justify the creation and most importantly the continued government funding of the Military Industrial Complex via the invention of the Russian Bear. It was an obvious motivation since communism was the antithetical enemy of capitalism and there was an economic motivation by the military to not beat their swords into plowshares but to militarily oppose the threat of communism.
Out of this was born the cold war which has been recorded by our history as a never ending plot to go to war against the other super power that won the war to vilify and demonize the Russians.
W launched many military offensives all around the World in the succeeding decades in pursuit of phantom menaces all of which made the military contractors rich while creating a vast armaments industry based on the threat of a Russian menace or Red Tide which constantly was attacking our notion of a free and democratic world.
But what if these narratives were all concocted just to continue to justify vast expenditures and lavish contracts from the government which paid the military contractors bills? Historians have dredged up the facts about Russia’s nuclear weapons capabilities in the 1950’s and 1960’s and have revealed that The USA had always held a vast nuclear arsenal far larger than Russia even though the government stated the reverse was true.
What if the entire history of the justifications for our massive military buildup were all based on false estimates of the threat posed by Russia from the end of the second world war to the present?
What if there was a conspiracy to create a Russian Bear in order to justify a massive defense spending plan which was hatched in the aftermath of the allied victory in WWII up to the present day?
This scenario might be what “old-time gumshoes used to call “means, motive and opportunity.” of the MIC to reap huge military contracts.
Eisenhower although he delivered his famous exit speech about the threat posed by the Military Industrial Complex was a chief supporter and enabler of the vast expenditures by our government after the war against the Russians.
So two presidents Truman and Eisenhower were really just tools of the MIC and Eisenhower’s warning about what he had created upon his exit was nothing more than a Mea culpa as he skedaddled out of the room.
Ever since then, Washington has been preoccupied with blaming the Russians for everything. Of course there have been serious threats from Russia in the intervening decades as they tried in vain to keep up with the USA. They have launched some foreign wars which were met with the USA intervening to stop them most noticeably in Afghanistan. Russia was certainly instrumental in the formation of socialist regimes but so too was the USA instrumental in the covert actions to upend those regimes and restore them to frequently totalitarian governments. The anticommunist battles all had the advantage of creating justifications to enlarge the military budget.
Enlarging the military budget has become a staple of Washington. Every year the budget goes up and in the years where some liberal administration proposes to cut that budget there is an outcry of anti American unpatriotic failure of leadership. which has sympathy for the socialists (communists) and is trying to weaken Americas already quite formidable defensive and offensive capabilities. Going against the MIC is a sure way to land you in the communist sympathizer category.
What all of this has meant is that the defense industry has made a killing off of Russia. But what has Russia really actually done?
Enter Donald Trump the Russia friendly guy.
He proposed early on to cancel the F35 and other military contracts and had the self proclaimed interest to normalize relations with Russia and to form economic relations with Russia which would be far more productive than demonizing them. That landed him squarely in the camp of the communist sympathizers and instantly made him an enemy of the MIC. The notion that an outsider who had won the republican nomination and election to the president of the USA who was not aligned on the continued lavishing of military expenditures on our MIC was the most shocking development that they never saw coming.
There is little doubt that the Washington MIC machinery in place and living large off all of the money expended on the military since WWII were alarmed. They were now facing a republican who was advocating reductions in the budget of the military and was suggesting that it would be better economically to forge commercial alliances with the Russians than to be at a constant state of fear and panic.
Te Peacenic republican Donald Trump who had been a democrat leaning civilian who questioned the MIC and had supported many democratic initiatives including cavorting with the Clinton’s must have been an immediate existential threat to the MIC which formerly could rely on republicans to unquestioningly support their campaigns for more conspiracy theories about foreign devils which required more money to thwart..
So was hatched the conspiracy to blame the Russians for the election that brought the “liberal populist” in conservative clothing into the White House.
It is in fact a government conspiracy and as popularized by the national press a giant fake story to reinvent a decades old recipe for success by inventing a Russian Bear as the chief reason for the current president. A self serving fabrication which ignores all of the real reasons for what happened and invents a convenient story for the continuation of our historic military expenditures against the Russian threat.
There is no doubt that the USA and our government and the military have created a decades old strategy to spend vast sums of money based on the creation of an existential threat to our existence. The invention of the nuclear bomb has provided the means to scare us into coughing up all of our wealth and treasure to the MIC for protection from annihilation and that continual threat of nuclear annihilation has been hanged over our heads like a Sword of Damocles forever threatening us with extinction unless we fully comply with the plans of the MIC.
Right now our military budget stands at a staggering 700 billion dollars a year and is expected to grow by an additional hundred billion dollars. It is twice the amount of the Chinese and ten times what the Russians spend. It is more than the next seven nation in total spend.
When anyone goes up against that amount of money and challenges assumptions there is sure to be a giant backlash. Going up against the MIC was perhaps a brave and honest attempt by Trump to bring some sanity to our addiction to the defense based on conspiracy theories about foreign enemies but now it has brought the conspiracy to bear on the current administration by attacking it with the same ferocity it attacked Russia ever since WWII.
Anything or anyone who challenges the conspiracy will be keel hauled and thought a right and proper lesson on who is in charge of our government. That would be our Military Industrial Complex.
But how can we know this is what is happening? It is simple. There is no news about Russia except for how they might have usurped our democracy and managed to elect Trump. Stories of the bad actor of Russia doing bad things around the World have been supplanted by stories about how they elected Trump. Back in the day we were treated to endless propaganda about how Russia was building up their military and Washington had a cozy industry of using this to justify more military spending. But now all efforts are focused on Trump and predictably there is no current mass hysteria about the Russian Bear other than their attempts to influence the election.
Such an amorphous and adaptable enemy which somehow can be aimed at anything while ignoring everything that has gone before is an obvious hoax. It is a buffonish Orwellian Dystopia where the daily hate can be focused on whatever threat it faces. It reveals itself in the opportunism it creates in its attempt to curtail the most recent threat (Trump) while failing to cover its behind in keeping up the former propaganda that used to keep us all awake at night. What happened? Did the former threat of Russia’s military might go away? No, but the focus has changed. Now the focus is on the domestic threat of Donald Trump and his desire to end the madness.
But I fear the madness will win. The spin masters will rule the day and we will all be brainwashed into believing that Putin has the ability to elect whoever he wants.
All the more reason besides the fake claims illegal immigrants voting for Hillary to curtail the next election and impeach Trump and install military rule to right the wrongs of Trump and the Russians.
What will it mean? Lots of money for the MIC.
CitizenOne – “What if the entire history of the justifications for our massive military buildup were all based on false estimates of the threat posed by Russia from the end of the second world war to the present?
What if there was a conspiracy to create a Russian Bear in order to justify a massive defense spending plan which was hatched in the aftermath of the allied victory in WWII up to the present day?”
Yep, create a false story, and then reap all of the benefits. The public think you’re trying to protect them, and they never suspect that your motive was purely to enrich yourself. Perfection.
Perfection indeed for the psychopaths. Scheme as old as civilization. Pair with false flags and play the heroes in their very own perpetual protection racket.
Great time elapse of events Citizen One. I think I once told you this before, but it would be great to if you taught our youth history. The way you tell this tale of America’s ever growing love for war, is an aspect of an American evolution that should be well learned. Eisenhower was driven to enlarge our nuclear capability in an effort to bluff the USSR, even though Ike knew our military was vastly larger than the then USSR, but no matter money needed to be made and the enemy had to be shamed into submission.
Enjoyed the read Citizen One, your comment read like a CN article, well done. Joe
Thanks Joe,
If it sounds like a CN article it is because I have read a lot of them. The always fascinating, sometimes terrifying, sometimes disgusting and shameful actions by our government have largely been misreported, underreported and flat out lied about for too long. CN has always done its job of conducting investigative journalism to uncover the truth. The awards won are well deserved and Mr. Parry should be inducted into the journalism hall of fame if there is one.
I was reading an article about effective meetings which are the bane of modern business and it concluded that based on their analysis the best meetings which delivered the best outcomes were meetings where there was an open debate where assumptions could be challenged without fear of reprisal or revenge or retaliation. In other words, meetings where it was all about the best way to move forward and come to a plan without all the common disrupters like the monopolizer, intimidator, negation artist, digression artist, the non sequitur black belt, saboteur, etc.
In a way, this site is a lot like that. there is not the crazy banter often completely unrelated to the conversation which plagues many sites. For the most part people stick to the topic of the article and comment on it with insight.
So my thanks to you Joe and everybody else who reads the articles and is inspired to jot down their thoughts on the matter. Also to the truly great articles that are brought to light by the many talented authors. Sometimes I am angered by the contents but not like main stream news which brings on waves of nausea every time I dare to take a sideways peep at the rotten stinking garbage heap which is our corporate commercial “news”.
Donald Trump has every right to be angry at them and call them fake. I have been aware of it for a long long time and I have only seen it get worse over time. It is really good to see that this site is only focused on the truth and not playing politics. This is a place where one’s opinions don’t get in the way of facts. Even if we don’t agree with Trump’s policies and positions, that is completely separate from whether or not there was collusion with Russia for the purposes of winning the election.
I think the FBI has become an island unto itself believing it is above the law and this article makes a good case for that. Although we probably hopefully have seen the last Hoover administration with its sordid history it seems clear that the FBI still needs to be reformed and a level of ethics and professionalism which is lacking needs to be put in place.
I agree with you Citizen One that CN is a terrific site, and a treasure to be found by those looking for objectivity and the truth.
The CIA and the FBI should have had their comeuppance along time ago, like for sure back in 1963. Although what gives these spook agencies such good cover, is a rigged media system who can guide the insanely naive masses anyway they wish to. If the truth were to be told about the FBI and CIA, it would take but only a matter of hours for the uninformed public to rise up and scatter these corrupted agencies and sweep them away into the wind. Wow, it’s profoundly satisfying just thinking about it, but then I have to come back down to earth, and live with what we got.
Also Citizen One feel free to grace this comment board with your brilliance, as the temporary editorial slowdown could use some help to fill the void while the great journalist Robert Parry recoups. Take care Citizen One. Joe
https://sputniknews.com/radio_connecting_the_pieces/201504031020425876/
Mild-ly, Thanks for the link! — 1984 has arrived. A little late but nevertheless!
The last time I talked with an F.B.I. agent, I discovered he was a human being, with his own personal thoughts and feelings, just like me. I’m sure there are just as many Trump and Hillary supporters therr as in the outside world.
Keep dreaming sweet dreams………….
Thanks, Ray, for the good run down of what is going on behind the scenes. We can be glad it’s coming to the fore. Hopefully the right people and the top echelon of the FBI will now be investigated.
A note on something we all know at CN: I just clicked one of the links in the article, went to comments and saw that the trolls were out in spades before the conments were closed. Many “replied” close to the top to try to color everything their way. Nothing new!
They all need investigating in DC. If we can just get them all investigating each other, maybe they will have less time for all the serious mischief they are constantly involved in. I suggest a permanent ongoing investigation of every resident of DC having anything to do with the so called government there.
Trust Clapper? He soiled himself before the US and the world by lying about the budding Orwellian surveillance system — but this is how we happen to be stuck, after all these years, with the likes of criminal Clinton. Establishment Washington is willing to forgive, and forgive again, if the operative is working on their side — I.e., working for war and more wasted US taxpayer money.
Clapper, Clinton, BO — and a number of their other associates are all, per Paul Craig Roberts, indictable.
What are we waiting for???
“If, as many have concluded, the dossier was used to help justify a FISA warrant to snoop on the Trump campaign, those involved will be in deep kimchi, if congressional overseers do their job.”
That makes no sense. They work for Trump. Why doesn’t he just fire them?
In May of 2015, just what was the Chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission opinion of the then upcoming election cycle?
‘F.E.C. Can’t Curb 2016 Election Abuse, Commission Chief Says’
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
MAY 2, 2015
~” The leader of the Federal Election Commission, the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and spent, says she has largely given up hope of reining in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign, which could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
“The likelihood of the laws being enforced is slim,” Ann M. Ravel, the chairwoman, said in an interview. “I never want to give up, but I’m not under any illusions. People think the F.E.C. is dysfunctional. It’s worse than dysfunctional.” “~
~~~~~
It’s been almost 3 years since that statement. Her statement was before the whole charade really even started. Ann, she directly tried to tell us that their were laws being broken. … And, just how much action have seen from “..law enforcement..”, or the two major (..clown..) parties, or the media, to follow up with any of her concerns?
Interesting note; thanks.
So where in these texts does it indicate the FBI itself was trying to undermine Trump? All I see is one individual commiserating with another about a candidate they don’t like, which is any citizens right.
I believe the text from Strzok that talks about a meeting where they discuss needing an “insurance policy” is the smoking gun.
” In an apparent reference to an August 2016 meeting with FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, Strzok wrote to Page on Aug. 15, 2016, “I want to believe the path you threw out for consideration in Andy’s office — that there’s no way he [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk.” Strzok added, “It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event that you die before you’re 40.””
This is more than expressing an opinion or commiserating with a collegue.
Hard to say what might have happened if Trump had been able to follow through on his election promises – friendlier relations with Russia, dismantling of NATO, ending wars. Without Russiagate and 24/7 hounding by the MSM, the war in Syria might have been wrapped up much sooner, the threats against Iran might not have happened, the sanctions against Russia might not have occurred, and on and on.
If you want to totally lose your country, keep trying to impeach Trump. If you want to be really truthful, start calling it what it is:
Coup-Coup-gate.
Unless we get off this see-saw of duopoly two-party politics in the US, we will continue this opposition thinking of partisanship. Gregory, your comment about Obama is excellent, his administration was in so so many ways as harmful as the Bush group. Americans, unfortunately, don’t seem to care about war, they are so embedded in The Matrix.
Whatever will be revealed as the real truth of the Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election (maybe there was none, meddlings in the election were homecooked, trying in vain to make Mrs Clinton President?), the bottom line still is: DJT is an ignorant, politically useless amateur, whereas the President of Russia is a shrewd, seasoned and cunning pro. The urgent task for The United States now is to replace DJT with somebody who has at least some of the qualities to match Mr Putin. Very soon.
Thanks, Sally Snyder, for your comment (the very first one), and the link to viableopposition.
While I will agree that a country should put forth it’s most qualified people to negotiate with likewise qualified foreign government representatives, I would appreciate an American President who could be able and willing to take down the Shadow Government Deep State apparatus that holds our country hostage. When it comes to dealing with Putin, maybe we Americans could start with giving the Kremlin Leader a little, no change that, to a lot of respect.
Maybe you know this Vesuvius, but having read almost every speech Putin has delivered over this past two years, even when Putin lays on the criticism upon the U.S. and it’s endeavors, Putin always reaches out to his American Partners, as he often refers to the U.S. in this manner. More Americans need to learn more about how the U.S. via it’s Wall Street front raped the Russian people back in the nineties, and that all Putin is doing is he is attempting to make his homeland stable for the betterment of the Russian people. Joe
Thanks, Joe T. I believe that you and I agree, and in comparing DJT to President Putin I just want to show the difference between an incompetent leader and a very skillful one. — The Deep State, just two years ago Mike Lofgren published his book, I read it last year and I certainly recommend it to anyone interested in the matter. However, the American Deep State was formed many years before, I would say around the time when Ike Eisenhower was president; his warning for the Military-Industrial Complex had something to do about that. The assassination of JFK in 1963 is the most clear evidence of a Deep State in action, and the still hard hush-hush as to what happened is proof that the DS is still working. The JFK Records Act of 1992 did not change anything, though ALL documents were to be published after 25 years, i.e. in October 2017.
For a complete description of the Dallas plot, see Dr James W. Douglass’ book “JFK and the Unspeakable, Why He Died and Why It Matters” (2010).
Vesuvius we do agree, and I think of all the JFK assassination books that James W Douglas produced the most interesting, and possibly best written.
I get what you are saying about the comparison between Putin and Trump. It would be nice if the U.S. were to drop this Russia-Gate nonsense, and were to treat Russia with proper respect, but as you know Vesuvius that isn’t what’s to be. Instead we are living with a MIC/Zionist controlled monster who needs to be fed a lot of war, and with this we Americans also find that no matter who sits in the Oval Office it’s war, war, war, and more war. This is the conundrum all of us people on this planet are faced with, as no matter who leads the U.S. they seem doomed to this leadership fate.
Maybe to equalize Trump to Putin we could get Putin a Twitter account. Joe
Well said, Joe. Your comments, as always speak of better future for all Nations, living peacefully together instead of seeking domination over the others.
Dave common sense, and respect, goes a long way. I thread the message that Ambassador Nikki Haley conveys, and her outright belligerents in my opinion is more worthy of a street fighter than that of a UN ambassador.
In fact, this attitude is nothing new for the U.S., if you can recall George W Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ claim along with his declaring ‘that you are either with us or against is’, as he threw down the gauntlet upon the world to be careful to whom you befriend. Yes Dave, ignorance has replaced diplomacy, and because of that many the world over suffer tremendously for their sins of not paying homage to the great empire and its banking interest. In another time and place Dave, this would be considered criminal, and our diplomats such as Ambassador Haley would be labeled as thugs, but no Dave we are living in the age of U.S. ambitions which are bigger than the world can accept at this time. Pendulums do swing, and I’m wondering to just when this pendulum will swing back towards a U.S. policy of sanity, laced with respect for others. Joe
This is a very good summary but it leaves out a key piece of history: the FBI took down another president. Nixon was an earlier FBI casualty. “Deep Throat” was W. Mark Felt, a top-level FBI official.
I’d be most interested in McGovern’s reflections on this fact and how it affects this story, and others, about the power of the Deep State.
When you have police cruisers parked near minority voting precincts and nobody does anything
and when you have the Supreme Court buying Indiana’s voter ID law in 2008 (which paved the way for the others)
and when last in class right-wing voting machine companies determine who wins based on unseen and unverifiable processes,
there’s not much democracy left. It’s every faction for itself and the public be damned. It makes perfect sense that some members of the elite and their agents will fight a hideous monster like Trump in different ways. It doesn’t matter how they do it, just that they get it done. Less severe is vastly preferable to insane and suicidal.
Trump is an outright racist, bully, misogynist, climate change denying kleptocrat who could care less about anyone but himself. He’s letting the clock run out on the survival of the species due to his insanity. He needs to retire and very soon. Mueller will get him on money laundering and other financial fraud.
I’m no fan of Trump, but he was not a professional politician. He did not invent the corrupt system you describe. It was put in place and entrenched years ago by people like the Bush’s and the Clinton’s, to name just a few. For every peccadillo you find in him, there were just as many and just as serious flaws in Hillary Clinton’s character and public record.
It is certainly not justifiable to remove him from office via a questionable conspiracy amongst the intelligence agencies because you happen to side with the opposite faction. That would be charactierised as a coup d’etat and certainly not within the purview of our constitution or laws. In fact, it would be more heinous than anything Trump may have actually done–and he certainly did not collude with the Russians to get himself elected. Neither he nor the Russians are that skilled in American politics or foreseeing the future.
If you are convinced of his guilt, you need to produce that bothersome requirement called actual evidence, of which there is heretofore none. Mere accusations should not be enough to destroy anyone, though that tradition seems to be changing overnight in America.
You say you fear for the survival of the species because of Trump’s “insanity.” That very same fear is what lead millions of Americans to vote against Hillary Clinton (or not vote at all) in the last election. In fact, many of us feel we would not even be here more than a year after the election if she won, because she was so bellicose and confrontational against other nuclear powers and downright hegemonic versus the greater world.
Neither of the two major candidates, nor their vice-presidential running mates, were fit to hold the presidency. Hillary and her operatives made sure that the one candidate who was qualified to run the country had the nomination stolen on her behalf. I don’t know why you think putting Mike Pence into the office would be a fix, or what kind of thoroughgoing coup d’etat you would like to see enacted. Maybe you look to Ukraine as a model system for America to emulate.
Your hysteria stands only to make a bad situation even worse. Sorry to have to be so candid, but your “solution” will only lead to a civil war after the coup is rejected by half the population. Most of the Democrats, whose party I belong to, also need to chill, stop acting like insurrectionists, start cooperating in the legislative process, begin making positive recommendations and settle for compromise until the day they are re-elected to majority status and regain the presidency AT THE BALLOT BOX.
Nothing important will be accomplished at the ballot box. The societal cultural system in the US is so broken and corrupt, that voting will only prolong the agony, not fix it. Besides the ballot box is rigged. So unless you are like the cowboy who responded to an interlocutor who asked why he kept playing a wheel he knew was rigged to take his money and never payoff, by saying, “yeah, but it’s the only wheel in town!” Voting and the money system are two of the basic ways the oligarchy controls the sheeple. Playing their game only disempowers us.
The oligarchs sap our revolutionary energy by offering us a sop – soaked in poisonous deception. That is the voting scam.
I will agree with you Realist, that in order to do a first rate thorough proper house cleaning in our Nation’s capital, we cannot begin with Trump and then merely just end with Trump, or our spring cleaning will all have been in vain. Taking out Trump only would be like cleaning the front porch, while garbage was flowing out of every crack and crevice the house may have. Haven’t we been raised to do a complete and thorough job, so why stop with just going after the President when there are so many others who should be brought to be held accountable?
I would also include the money changers who flock with their lobbyist to bend every rule they can in order for them to profit by. We need to stop the Dual Citizen’s agendas, as we also need to put a door stop in the corporate revolving door, which Washington is so well known for.
This is all a product of the U.S. having the best government money can buy.
So Realist you make a good point, and I wish to support you with your comment. Joe
I’m not hysterical and even if I were, it would have no impact on the current situation.
We have a national coup every six, four, and two years when the oligarchs ration out funds to those politicians who cooperate with the main narrative — more paranoia, more diversion from the central tasks of our times.
To get on the ballot in Iran, you must pass an extensive religious test. To get on the ballot here, you have to pass the acceptable beliefs test offered by big money. Same tune, slightly different book.
The contents of the ballot box are the end product of the selection and programming of candidates. The ballots don’t even exist. Rather they’re a collection of bits and bytes on proprietary software. Thanks to modern technology, the rulers can rescue their cause even at the last minute with the right hack.
No matter what we do, we get what they want.
On the other hand, for those who believe in Santa Claus, there is hope for those who’ve been nice and a lump of coal for the naughty.
Realist –
Very good post. We had been life long democrats since the days of McGovern. But after the destruction of Libya, I quit taking interest in democratic party politics. We had been fooled for too long. To be honest, in my inside, I was rooting for Trump during the last election because he promised a better foreign policy without foreign interventions. I still think even now that Hillary, if elected, would have been even much worse than Trump, for the rest of the World beyond the West.
It seems like Trump does not have much control over the foreign policy. All his actions seem to be to save his own skin some how. A few days ago, I think I heard it on PBS news some invited expert talking about looking into Trump’s financial records and tax filings.
I would recommend that a serious reading of the Wikipedia summary of the life and enemies of Pres. Andrew Jackson would open eyes in regard to why Pres. Trump admires that Pres., even though most people only know something about the “Trail of Tears” and Jackson being evil, etc. I believe that many of the forces, Domestic and Foreign, allied against Pres. Jackson are the same as now allied against a President asserting that he is a Populist, but instead of “Coffin handbills” our age has the hysteria and name-calling non-stop from the personalities on CNN, MSNBC and assorted media. As for Progressives, how did Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson turn out with their racist and imperialistic regimes?
Obama is an outright narcissistic social-climbing con artist who couldn’t care less about peace, Constitutional law, the struggles of wage-earners, social/political/legal justice, or anything else that might concern the greater good of general populations–who unlike his friends, can’t buy their way into or out of most any convenience or trouble.
Obama’s record on environmental impacts, the healthcare delivery system, the student-loan crisis, infrastructure development, the housing scandal, etc. etc. is piss-poor and catered to wealthy interests nearly exclusively. He was right in the thick of politicizing “intelligence” and the Department of Justice. He expanded the surveillance state and covered for Cheney’s “dark side”. He got “good at killing people” with drone strikes and earned the moniker “Obomer” to an exponential degree.
When you speak of “hideous monsters” you ought to be prepared to include people who enable and “cover for” vile terrorist mercenaries. Obama did just that.
The sooner Democrats (and Americans in general) recognize the Obama regime for what it was as opposed to some fairytale feelgood pack of b.s.– well then we might be able to hold our politicians accountable for what they do and insist upon sane policies and priorities. The eight years prior to Trump need your scrutiny—because that’s a big part of what got us Trump in the first place.
It does matter how we “do it”, and it is important that we don’t devolve into some lawless “every faction for itself” banana republic. The people of this country need to find some common purpose (for the 100%) and find it soon.
Reviving a New (Green) Deal of Reconstruction for our run-down, dilapidated Republic, and joining with China, Russia and New Silk Road policies to achieve this objective, for ourselves AND for the development of the rest of the World, will provide the common purpose, NOT ONLY for our citizens, but for ALL of humanity. And we will finally achieve a World civilization of peace, development and humane behavior. And, as the ancient Greeks would have said; The Gods (we prefer the term ETs these days, instead of Gods or Angels…the Rose still smells as sweet in any case) are smoothing the Way towards achieving this outcome, and Athena still walks with, and Mentors, Her designated Heroes, in this Saga (not all Warriors fight with Weapons of death & destruction).
Yes! There are no “good guys” on either side. Only hyper-partisans or dupes say there are and believe that overthrowing the Trump regime is any kind of solution to what has been a death spiral of our “democracy” (or some facsimile which used to give at least lip service to liberty, equality and justice) that has been ongoing my entire life.
Mike K does not think the fix can be accomplished at the ballot box. Michael Collins says he doesn’t care how they do it, that just getting rid of Trump will accomplish something–exactly what is not clear. I’d say that such scenarios will imply some sort of mechanism similar to that employed in Ukraine, as even a kangaroo court will provoke a massive backlash, and that implies violence and death which I do not want to see. At the very least, it implies a quick military putsch and the imposition of martial law in which all our rights are dissolved and the people made to march in lock step to an even worse tyranny.
We’ve been down this road before, with the attempt to impeach Clinton, the push to impeach Bush, the talk of impeaching Obama, as neither side seems willing to tolerate or work with the other and the proffered solution is always instant regime change, but nobody looks to the catastrophe that will occur on the day after, when the civil war, martial law or a military putsch begins in earnest.
Who thinks that the day after Trump is disposed of in whatever fashion the Deep State is simply going to capitulate on all the current policy you may personally fear and loathe? And that most of the country will amicably accept whomever is forced upon them as their new leader?
As Robert Parry made clear in his last piece, most of the discord driving this country to this day was sown back in 1974 when Richard Nixon was removed from office in a long process intricately orchestrated from behind the scenes–including first getting rid of Spiro Agnew and then inserting Gerald Ford as the presumptive heir apparent to Nixon before the formal inquisition began.
Ask Hillary for more details on that charade, since she was a legal counsel to the impeachment committee. Basically, this has been a process to overturn the constitution 44 years in the making. Don’t fall for it no matter how crass Trump’s personality may be. That was just another beauty part in the whole conspiracy. He was the perfect fall guy the public could both love and then hate. The main issue is not him. It’s an effort to formally install those previously running this country from behind the scenes by subverting the presidency itself. We will all have to live with the consequences, but just be aware of why the power play and that the manner (some would say the illusion) of choosing our leaders will never be the same again.
TPTB will no longer have to suck up to voters and hoodwink them in the charade of an election. At best, you’ll be given the “right” to rubber stamp some Maximum Leader in a sham vote, just like they do in every other banana republic. Think of the cost savings in a one-party rather than a two-party system (which we have de-facto already), though maybe they will still run some stiff against the establishment pick to maintain illusions. But they won’t have to once they start re-writing the constitution in the aftermath of the great crisis they seem to be instigating. Of course, that’s my take. Our illustrious mainstream media would have you believe the “resistance” is the modern day counterpart to the founding fathers.
Gregory Herr – Well said. Very true.
and a sad side note to all this is that some of the people who were tasked to carry out the dirty work of drone killings are also ruined lives with PTSD over the horror of targeting wedding parties and killing innocent people with their children:
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/national-bird/
it doesn’t end…….
I missed seeing the link to Mr. Parry’s essay back in May of 2017 on my first reading. Wow, but was he ever a prophet! There is another current essay up using the same language:
h**ps://mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com/2018/01/publius-tacitus-trump-dossier-timeline.html
I don’t know enough about the timing and other issues to make even a decent Tin-Foil Hat guess, but I’ve still got to wonder out loud if Russia Gate wasn’t a desperate attempt to divert attention from that Failed Domestic Coup? To what degree are the newspapers involved in the original planning? It’s hard to conceive of the Neocon York Times and the Bezos’ WP being being as pure as the driven snow on the original Coup work.
Oops – the first link is just a teaser, and leads to the actual story.
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/01/the-trump-dossier-becomes-a-disaster-by-publius-tacitus.html
Though FBI and Clinton appear to have been in cahoots, where does James Comey’s October 28th 2016 letter fit in, which really seemed to have swayed the public opinion?
If anything, FISA warrant was more an “insurance policy” to shape the POST-election discourse. Not affect the election itself.
I’d love to rub this piece in the noses of relatives who haughtily contended that the ongoing witch hunt by the “resistance” is totally justified since there is supposedly so much evidence that Trump and the Russians colluded and rigged the election, and that surely I would be demanding a congressional investigation of potential skullduggery if Mrs. Clinton had won the election, except that, as stated here by Ray McGovern, no one would have ever questioned that outcome, since everyone predicted Hillary to win in a landslide, possibly even Ivanka and Melania. Yet it turns out as a byproduct of the great witch hunt, that it WAS partisan insiders, including Strzok and Page (operatives in the FBI, no less), who gamed the outcome of the election but in favor of Clinton, and the only reason they are being outed is due to the foolish phony crusade against Russia and Trump being perpetrated by Hillary’s Democratic “resistance!”
I look forward with great anticipation to learn what dirt Comey and Mueller, as prominent players for the FBI but very possibly also on the roster of Team Clinton, may have on their hands in this caper, which started out as an attempt to fix an election but morphed into no less than an attempt at a soft coup. Ray McGovern makes clear that there is plenty of both smoke and fire to investigate this evidentiary thread to the bitter conclusion, but will the Democrats, Congress and the mainstream media succeed in stonewalling and covering it all up through blatant acts of omission?
I doubt very much the Hillary crowd and her many supporters (including people I know and love) want any part of seeing real justice done in this matter and will try to obstruct and obfuscate any evidence such as Ray discusses in this piece. If the “resistance” had any real moral character, they would be attempting to defeat Trump on his ideas and policies rather than to destroy him by smearing his reputation and framing him as a traitor–to say nothing of making the world a more dangerous place by incessantly slandering Putin and the Russians and taking increasingly provocative actions against that country and its national interests. Their game is simply an application of “patriotism” being the last refuge of scoundrels, an old standby the GOPers themselves have used many times. Pathetic. Neither side deserves to “win” or lead this country.
Pathetic indeed that the “ideas and policies” of the Democrats, such that they are, have become in the main either indistinguishable from Republican policies or deemed not worthy (apparently) of any due diligence. It’s “hard”, I suppose, for the poor saps to muster the character that a fight based on “merits” as opposed to accusations would require. But then they still have the temerity to claim righteousness and “patriotism”. The American political scene is garbage–overgrown “infants” abound.
Quite true Realist, both major parties belong in the dust bin of history. But we had already a party with a fresh agenda (the Green Party) – but nobody came! The decades long dead hand of past conditioning of the American public to accept the “only two choices” ploy, prevented them from even considering Jill Stein. Inability of the majority to think outside of the boxes constructed for them, will be one of the major nails in our collective coffin.
Part of the reason I voted for Jill Stein (other than wanting to support the Green Party
whenever possible) was because it was so fun to tell people that I was voting for
‘The Other Woman’. Most people had no idea what I meant and no clue that there
even was ‘another woman’ in the running and on the ballot . . .
The Green Party who hold .02% of all elected office in America,including and down to Dogcatcher…
Your words of frustration about you being the lone voice among the many dissenting friends, and relatives, is a very familiar situation to relate too. My one hope is that time will vindicate us both for what we believe to be the truth.
I also agree that much has been wasted on this Russia-Gate nonsense, and that by narrowly focusing on this Russian collusion pumped up silliness we are overlooking many of Trump’s bigger faults. Go figure, what’s a country to do when everyone in charge of it, is a careerist just looking for the next opportunity to make a name for themselves.
Good post, as always Realist. Joe
Realist –
To convince the Hillary crowd is a hopeless task. We had our friends for many years, who live in Seattle area now, for lunch today at our house. We worked together in John Kerry’s campaign when they used to live close to us here. He is a retired Scientist who worked in aerospace and his wife has MBA, and worked in very responsible positions. For three hours, I tried to convince him about this Russia Gate nonsense. But was of no avail.
When they left, he said: “Yes. Russia interfered in our elections. Robert Mueller will find something. We will see it soon”. I gave him a copy of that thirty six page Jan 6, 2017 report by three intelligence agencies to read if there is any evidence presented in that. He had no interest to read that. Like my wife, they watch Rachel Maddow show for their information. Now they are already rooting for Joe Biden as an ideal candidate.
From the study room, I could hear my wife watching Rachel Maddow just a while ago. It was same – Rachel Maddow ranting that this Russia’s Putin is trying to destroy the American democracy for twenty years now. We live in an insane asylum now.
Dave reading your comment here does make me wonder to just how much of a percentage that people like you and me have with our opinions, and critiques, of our modern day current affairs. I like you are surrounded by believers of the MSM narrative that Russia interfered with our U.S. presidential election. Yet, you and I Dave, along with quite a few others here, doubt these claims, and with that I ask you, just how many of us do you think we are? Joe
Joe, I am afraid there are not many people out there who read anything beyond the fare offered to them by CNN, MSNBC, PBS, FOX . . and MSM news papers. They believe in what is fed to them 24/7 by the Ruling Establishment – without analyzing any of it.
As CitizenOne in his excellent comments further down while talking about this current madness going on in the country said : “But I fear the madness will win.” Sadly, it seems to be the case.
Dave by just getting to the truth, is a win in this life. Joe
Yes, Dave, most Americans are simply lemmings who believe the pushed narrative in the mass media, disseminated under the directive of whomever controls the Deep State. How else did Rachel Maddow suddenly rocket to the top of the ratings on cable “news?” In trying to bring down Trump, she started peddling the same jingoistic, warmongering, right-wing, anti-Russian crap that Fox Noise had always been famous for.
The Democrats*, whom MSNBC purportedly support, have made all the wrong choices but don’t believe the canard for a moment that they are in any way “liberal” or “progressive.” The few remaining actual “liberals” and “progressives” did not follow the sheep (I think they mostly follow the likes of CN, ICH, CP, ZH and other “alternative” media ) nor did they leave the party: the party left them for Hillary’s and Obama’s brand of neoconservatism, reputedly at war with the Republican form of that disease, but, not so secretly, really in cahoots with them. (*the party moguls and apparatchiks, not the rank and file who were ready to nominate Bernie Sanders, until the game was fixed.)
Trump was never a real Republican, or even a bona fide politician for that matter, but just a dupe promoted by the media to ensure a Hillary presidency. But, since the media propagandists did their job too well and Trump was actually elected, the media’s full attention, as well as that of most of the elected and non-elected government has been to either take him down or keep him in a box. Since they were already at war with Russia (and successfully duping the public with their false narratives), how convenient to marry Trump to Putin, cast him as a traitor and jettison him or leash him. People will believe whatever they are told and make no enquiries into what they are purposely not told.
There would have bee na similar coup carried out by the Republicans had Hillary won. One thing no one seems to mention is that a almost certainly, there were a number of people failed to vote for Hillary or who voted for Trumpkin because they suspected the R’s would launch another “Whitewater” style investigation to tie up Hillary the same way they tied up Big Bill. The funny thing is,it’s still the Republicans at the FBI who are after Trumpkin, even if many liberals are hopeful that they will get their man.
I think having a president who owes a billion or two to a bunch of Russians,is profiting in a very direct way from the office he now hold and has the unfortunate appearance of being a money launderer r is reason enough to get rid of old Trumpkin, don’t you? That would be some real justice I could get behind.
Will, Commissar of ZOG
This article is right on. If anyone had anything connecting to Russia it would be Obama & Hilary the Communist deep state. The people want honesty tired & sick of the corruption & money laundering through the deep state Obama & Hilary team. We true Americans don’t want world order & we love freedom & the Constitution. We don’t like globalization Communist or just walked out crazies that want to rule the world. Clean house in all agencies!!!!
With this latest report on Russia as geopolitical threat submitted by Senate Foreign intelligence Committee chaired by Ben Cardin of Maryland, is a new hand being dealt to keep up the push toward war from MIC?
Seems all these facts just don’t affect “liberals”, they don’t care, they want Trump out so badly, and they’re playing right into the hands of the neocons. Maddow had Cardin on her show, so excited to scream about Putin’s dastardly deeds, is she. (Cardin also was behind the Senate bill to make BDS a crime that failed recently when ACLU stepped in. He’s supported by AIPAC money and is up for re-election.)
Trump just makes things worse with his own brand of insanity.
We owe Mr. Ray McGovern a huge debt of gratitude for his relentless efforts
to save our democracy—what’s left of it.
This is the latest obscenity from cardin, the senator from AIPAC. (He is up for re-election in Nov 2018, with zionist big money behind him, no problem expected).
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/cardin-releases-report-detailing-two-decades-of-putins-attacks-on-democracy
RT reports significant contributions from appelbaum, ioffe, lucas, all ready putin bashers.
Corker and other gopers did not sign on.
GOOD ARTICLE; thank you. i’ve been trying to get someone who has standing to listen to this for years. i don’t remember when I started seriously writing Comments to media articles, but I started saving them in 2009 and I now have 900 pages of them. one of my main themes is that our slipping away from Democracy started with Hoover, the Dulles brothers, Prescott Bush, the Bund, etc. back in the 1930s. With Nixon and Reagan, Deep State owned the Republicans and when GHW Bush stepped from the CIA into the White House, he took our domestic and foreign intelligence groups to another level. The CIA & FBI effectively ran the country. Bill Clinton was easily bought off with promises of great wealth. After all, coming out of the poorly educated and very politically corrupt state of Arkansas it wasn’t hard to do.
As General Wesley Clark said publicly, by 1991 the first Bush administration was openly planning to take over the world’s supply of oil with regime changes. When baby Bush took over his CIA/Deep State counselors made such an ignominious mess of the post-911 years that there was no possibility of a Republican win in 2008. The solution was both simple and simple-minded. Buy the Democrats’apparatus. Promise the two carefully chosen “minority” candidates that the loser of the candidacy would be President after the winner’s 2 terms. The two chosen were guaranteed to be compliant to the Deep State’s orders. Obama did as he was told and Hillary was given the Secretary of State job to make her credentials look good when it was her turn to run.
Following CIA orders, Hillary totally botched the job at State with the orders she was given for regime changes, every one of which has been a disaster. She spent 4 years photo op hopping to make herself look worldly wise.
Deep State’s Democrats had not foreseen Sanders and the Republicans had not expected the renegade Trump. Both establishments’ candidates came out looking like fools. The Deep State owned DNC got rid of Sanders, but since Deep State had lost some of its stranglehold on the Republicans, the Court Fool, Trump beat back the other oafs.
It has been decades of down the sewage drain toward a kind of Democratic facade for what is really democratic fascism. The ignorant, corrupt, and unbelievably incompetent Deep State controllers at the CIA and FBI have been desperately trying to gain the upper hand with Trump and they are making some headway.
Meanwhile, the extremist elements of hysterical femininity and the LGBT have overplayed their Hillary hand and thanks to a few heroic whistleblowers the truth is slowly leaking out. Unfortunately, the nation is so damaged it is probably beyond saving, because the Mindset that is Deep State has thoroughly seeped into the mainstream minds of the biparty black water of the Washingtonian swamp and the mainstream media like the NY Times.
Interesting ideas; thanks.
I appreciate your taking this all back to the Cold War era because that fear mongering laced hold over this “democracy” has never really let up. And Trump’s racism and homophobia – as much as people like to pretend otherwise – has been embedded in the dark side of the Republican Party for decades. Rising to the top when necessary to win elections, witness the Dukakis/Willy Horton attacks by Bush I and the McCain/faux prostitute black child by Bush II.
Steve Schmidt waxes very eloquently about a once honorable Republican Party, but I think he is waxing, maybe for a future Romney run? just saying…..they have never owned up to all their war mongering crap. and the Democrats as you say joined in to that under Clinton, Obama-Clinton…
There’s a quite brilliant book on the CIA that documents their progression from the founding under a hesitant Truman: David Talbot’s THE DEVIL’S CHESSBOARD. I found that it was hard to put down. It stops well before our 21st Century mess, but the evolution and especially the Deep State Mindset are so clearly installed and documented that it seemed almost superfluous to talk about the more recent events. It was published a year or so ago and is easily obtained new or used.
Good recent history. Except I disagree with Herself taking directions from CIA. She is an arrogant war monger in her own right and doesn’t like taking orders from anyone. The revelations of that Secret Service agent have revealed her as an extremely aggressive and violent person noted for temper tantrums. Her conservatism goes back to graduating from Wellesley and becoming a Republican;an amazing feat after being educated in radi/lib Boston at that time.
On the other hand her CIA collusion goes back to Arkansas when she privately-while taking a public stance to the opposite- supported the CIA’s contra war, because her husband’s industrial development fund got 10% of the budget for the Amena, Arkansas CIA contra airport. It was also used for cocaine smuggling. She and CIA are birds of a feather; only they are more skilled.
Clinton paid $millions because she suspected ahead of the vote, she would lose. She will willing to steal Bernie’s rightful place as Trump’s opposition and she was willing to steal state vote results to beat Trump. However, her actual position was so poor that she might not steal enough of the state votes to even win.
So, she designed a plan with her financial supporters and Obama holdovers to pick up where Trump’s Republican Party elite opposition left off. The British MI5-6 actually did more than just provide Steel to this effort. This story is very wide and long.
Hillary Clinton was willing to split the Nation, ruin the Democratic Party and risk taking us into Civil War in order to be the President or keep Trump (an “outsider”) from holding office. The British saw it as another step in taking over the country, doing so through establishing corporate structures, primarily through Wall Street banking (clones of Bank of England) and getting the CIA/NSA (clones of MI5-6) through Truman’s Cold War relationship with the anti-Russian Churchill.
Trump has a chance to finish JFK’s work at taking apart the FED, CIA/NSA and making corporations for a non-public purpose illegal.
“Despite his former job as chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through “Security 101.”
You guys are way too gullible to believe he is that naive.
FBI and the rest of the Deep State wanted Trump in. This is just cover for that story. Deep State controlled MSM deal never played up the Russia angle until Trump was safely elected , but stayed on Hillary emails till the end. Comey said he was opening up investigation on her days before election before saying it was off . The leaked emails came from the Deep State operatives within the DNC and not Russia. After the election Russia Gate was played up primarily to get a gullible publics support for a future War on Russia than against Trump , who was always going to be hated by the majority seeing as he lost the popular vote.
So long as Trump delivered on the tax cuts and continues our foreign policy and wars of the last 15 years , which he has done with some help from Russia Gate, both parties and their controlling elites are happy.
Trump is so much more easy to control than a savvy Hillary would have been. Hillary may have went rogue Nixon or JFK, or like Bill Clinton perhaps was drifting to. All were reigned in by the Deep State in the end but its way too much trouble to do. Best to avoid it. So much dirt on Trump and he could lose everything under Rico. Way easier to control despite the bluster.
The fact that Trump Dirt was not played up by MSM and Deep State controllers before the election tells it all. They could probably get Charles Manson elected with the same kids gloves treatment given Trump
Up is down in this Orwellian world. LOL
There was not, nor would there be any need for the deep state to “control” Hillary. Hillary was and is the deep state. Deep state actors had every reason to believe Hillary would win. It is a mistake to think that the deep state has more wisdom or control than is actually the case. The trope that everything is what it is because the deep state wants it so, is in some ways parallel to a common Christian belief. Sometimes as hippies say, “Shit just happens.”
~ “…deep state wants it so, is in some ways parallel to a common Christian belief. Sometimes as hippies say, “Shit just happens.” ~
Mike, well said. This is the only way that I can add up the Brexit.
.. And, I think that you are spot on with “..Hillary was and is the deep state.” I can’t say that any better either.. (..smile..)
But, I think that Pft also has a very legitimate hypothesis. … And, I think that he had great courage to state it.
Who shelved all of those thousands of missing emails? Hillary, or the Dark State? They are the People’s property. Does the Dark State really think they can convince us that Hillary acted all alone in cleaning up after 2013 guccifer 01, and subsequent disclosures? .. It was their effing job to go and recover our property!!
If the Dark State did bury those emails, (..to protect their own butts..) then just how happy were they with Hillary? .. After what they were up to in Honduras, the Ukraine, Libya, Syria, and Saudi Arabia, to name a few, I ‘am quite sure that there was plenty of “core careerists” in the Dark State who were Plenty Pissed. … And, those revelations would have shaken down the HOUSE, both Nationally and Internationally. … Could we possibly have seen some War Crime Trials; as well??
And, Hillary was crowned the winner before the charade even started. (..de mock a ry.. it was a Jerry Springer Show..) .. But, the only way for her to even possibly lose, would be to dramatically suppress the turn out. .. And, Comey, he did a great job at taking it the podium at precisely the right times to maximize the Dark State impact. (.. There is essentially 2 elections and 2 campaigns now, with the Early Voting, followed a month later with the conventional Election Day. So, you need to do gotv, etc., around 4 months out for a Presidential.)
We all know, that Americans are all to easily played to be the “Foolish Partisan Hack.” .. And, isn’t this one of the foundational cornerstones of Russiagate? .. So, they now have to give the red team a chance to run the ball up the middle. .. And, why not Strozk? … His outing (patsy) will in no way shake down the Institution. .. Nor bring back Frank Church..
Thank You Mike & Pft..!!
Pft – interesting post.
“‘Despite his former job as chief of the FBI’s counterintelligence section, Strzok had the naive notion that texting on FBI phones could not be traced. Strzok must have slept through ‘Security 101.’ You guys are way too gullible to believe he is that naive.”
My take is that Strzok was 98% certain that Hillary would win. That’s why he got sloppy. And had she won, none of us would be the wiser. As time went on and Trump’s numbers started to look better, they wanted an “insurance” policy, something they could hold over Trump (Russiagate) in order to divert attention away from themselves and tie his presidency up in knots. When Anthony Weiner’s laptop was discovered with classified emails, Comey didn’t know what to do. I think we’re about to find out what went on in short order. It’s all unraveling now.
Can you just imagine the horror the Deep State must have felt the night that Trump won the election? All that corruption and collusion, and nowhere to hide it! OMG, their worst nightmare just came true. Using a phony dossier to get a FISA warrant, and then spying on your opponents/President-Elect? This is like using Russiagate to cover up the next Watergate.
And during the run-up to the election Trump was treated with kid gloves? Are you kidding me? I went back and forth between CNN and other stations, and I could not believe what I was hearing. Nobody touched upon Hillary’s destruction of hard drives, the erasing of 30,000 subpoenaed emails. I kept listening for it, but it didn’t happen. In fact, whenever Hillary’s name was mentioned, it was always in glowing terms, or they were making excuses for her. Most of the time they talked about Trump, and they were frying him in hot oil every single night. He was dissected, dismantled and shredded. It is a mystery to me how the guy was ever elected.
DeepStategate on deck. Thank goodness for organizations like Judicial Watch who have been dogged in their determination to get documents.
Thank goodness too for good people like Ray McGovern, William Binney and the rest of the VIPS.
Good article, Ray McGovern.
Thanks, Ray. Your article pretty much sums up what went on.
The Clintons along with Trump should be prosecuted for federal mail crimes, larceny, blackmail, and wire law violations.
The country is run by Schumer’s beloved friends in the deep state. Can you imagine all the crimes they are involved in as we speak.
The US government is one big crime family, who are constantly at war with the public interest, and with each other – not to speak of their endless wars against every other nation. Fighting, lying, and stealing is their game – love has no place in their worldview.
VIPS reports have focused on U.S. intelligence agencies manipulating U.S. politics while ignoring Israel-gate, the mounting evidence of pro-Israel Lobby bipartisan interference in the 2016 election, and Israeli influence on American foreign policy, particularly toward Russia.
The Israeli hand behind Russia-gate is difficult to ignore.
Pro-Israel Lobby influence is reflected in the new Senate Foreign Relations Committee Democratic staff report on alleged “Russian hybrid threats” released on 10 January 2018. The report was commissioned by U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the Committee’s ranking member.
https://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/FinalRR.pdf
The report is extensively based on reports from leading pro-Israel Lobby think tanks such as the Brookings Institution and the Atlantic Council, and NGOs like the Open Russia platform of Russian Jewish oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
The report comes one year after Senator Cardin introduced the Counteracting Russian Hostilities Act of 2017 (S.94), which served as the basis for the anti-Russia sanctions package signed into law in August 2017. Presenting the new report, Cardin spoke of “Russia’s obvious meddling in the 2016 U.S. election”.
Cardin also is author of Israel Anti-Boycott Act (S.720) introduced into Congress on 23 March 2017. The bill declares that Congress opposes the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution of 24 March 2016, which urges countries to pressure companies to divest from, or break contracts with, Israel.
The Israel Anti-Boycott bill introduced by Cardin amends the Export Administration Act of 1979 to include in the prohibitions on boycotts against allies of the United States boycotts fostered by international governmental organizations against Israel and to direct the Export-Import Bank of the United States to oppose boycotts against Israel. The bill is aimed at international governmental organizations, including United Nations agencies and the European Union.
VIPS colleague Philip Giraldi has touched on the matter of Israeli collusion with the incoming Trump team to subvert American foreign policy.
Giraldi has discussed the actions of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who contacted then Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak at the direction of Jared Kushner, who in turn had been approached by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Giraldi notes that “Israel, not Russia, was colluding with the Trump Administration prior to inauguration day to do something highly unethical and quite probably illegal, which should surprise no one.”
Russiagate Becomes Israelgate
By Philip Giraldi
http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/russiagate-becomes-israelgate/
Deep State and the controlled MSM are in the Israeli camp. Last thing they want to do is expose Israeli influence because they would be exposing themselves. Another Clinton as President would be intolerable to them. Bill Clinton ” ‘I killed myself to give the Palestinians a state’. Last thing Israel and their supporters wanted. They made sure it didnt happen.
Now it’s the magical hand of Israel defeating Hillary. That’s pretty far fetched if you think about it. Is this the backup theory of why Hillary lost, if it wasn’t the Russkies?
Pro-Israel Lobby hands up the behinds of both Punch (Trump) and Judy (Clinton) didn’t care which puppet occupied the White House. Ongoing demonization of Russia and unconditional support for Israel was assured no matter who sat in the Oval Office.
The reality of Israel-gate should spell political doom for sitting Pubs and Dems in 2018 and especially 2020.
But mums the word in mainstream media. And good li’l doggie Sanders is still herding sheep and barking loudly on command about “Russians!”.
Laughable.Divide and conquer.The zionists want you to see them.
Ray McGovern notes: “At this point, the $64 question is whether the various congressional oversight committees will remain ensconced in their customarily cozy role as “overlook” committees, or whether they will have the courage to attempt to carry out their Constitutional duty. The latter course would mean confronting a powerful Deep State and its large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques, including J. Edgar Hoover-style blackmail on steroids, enabled by electronic surveillance of just about everything and everyone. Yes, today’s technology permits blanket collection, and ‘Collect Everything’ has become the motto.”
But that means more than confronting a powerful domestic Deep State apparatus.
A foreign power with access to surveillance technology that permits blanket collection also possesses a large toolbox of well-practiced retaliatory techniques to influence American electoral politics and foreign policy: Israel.
Israel was singled out in 2007 as a top espionage threat against the U.S. government, including its intelligence services, in the National Security Agency (NSA) Strategic Mission List, a document obtained by Edward Snowden and published by journalist/activist Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept.
https://theintercept.com/2014/08/04/cash-weapons-surveillance/
In a section of the 2007 NSA document headed “Foreign Intelligence, Counterintelligence; Denial & Deception Activities: Countering Foreign Intelligence Threats,” Israel was listed as a leading perpetrator of “espionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations…against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community” organs.
The term “manipulation/influence operations” refers to covert attempts by Israel to sway U.S. public opinion in its favor. In this, Israel has dubious company, according to the NSA: Other leading threats were listed as China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, France, Venezuela and South Korea.
Israel has similar company in threats against U.S. infrastructure, according to the NSA document. Under a section headed “Mastering Cyberspace and Preventing an Attack on U.S. Critical Information Systems,” Israel, India, North Korea and Cuba are identified as “FIS [financial/banking system] threats.” Israel also appears on the list of countries believed by the NSA to be “enabling” electronic warfare “producers/proliferators.”
The document underscores the schizoid relationship between the U.S. and Israel, which cooperate closely in military and intelligence operations but also aggressively spy on each other.
A previously released Snowden document said that “one of NSA’s biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel.” Another revealed that a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate ranked Israel as “the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.,” behind only China and Russia.
In a series of articles in May 2013, Newsweek reported that “Israel has been caught carrying out aggressive espionage operations against American targets for decades,” an allegation vociferously denied by Israeli officials, who insisted that Jerusalem stopped spying on the U.S. after the late 1980s arrest and conviction of its secret agent Jonathan Pollard, a U.S. Naval Intelligence analyst.
In July 2014, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Israel eavesdropped on Secretary of State John Kerry’s cellphone conversations during Middle East peace talks in 2013. (According to a July 20, 2014, piece in The New Republic, “The Kerry team spoke more carefully over cell phones, believing the Israelis might be listening.”) The State Department had no comment on the Der Spiegel allegations.
Citing NSA documents, Greenwald’s piece in The Intercept said, “the NSA has significantly increased the surveillance assistance it provides to its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU; also known as Unit 8200), including data used to monitor and target Palestinians. In many cases, the NSA and ISNU work cooperatively with the British and Canadian spy agencies, the GCHQ and CSEC.”
The US congress is the last place to look for oversight or justice; that just ain’t going to happen, ever.
@ “Israel was listed as a leading perpetrator of “espionage/intelligence collection operations and manipulation/influence operations…against U.S. government, military, science & technology and Intelligence Community” organs.”
At least one of those Israeli influence operations is even now pushing the U.S. toward war against Iran. Israel and its fellow travelers in the U.S. have relentlessly pushed the meme that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. A poll was reported in 2012 demonstrating that four out of five Americans believe that Iran has nuclear weapons and that it is a threat to the U.S. and its NATO allies, which is strong testament to the effectiveness of Israel’s pro-war propaganda operations directed at the U.S. population. Anon., 80% of Americans think Iran’s nuclear program threatens the US, Times of Israel (31 July 2012), http://www.timesofisrael.com/80-of-americans-think-irans-nuclear-program-threatens-the-us/
Yet our intelligence oversight committees in Congress stand silent, even though it has been the consensus position of all U.S. intelligence agencies since 2007 that Iran has no such program, a position joined by Israel’s Mossad. See my article here, collecting relevant links. https://relativelyfreepress.blogspot.com/2015/09/a-question-about-ron-wydens-intelligence.html
And all through the JCPOA negotiations, both those committees and the Obama Administration permitted that propaganda campaign to continue, setting the stage for Mr. Trump to blow up the JCPOA agreement and declare war on Iran.
What use are such oversight committees in that light?
Yes, many Congressional committees are propagators of the groupthink, and recipients of the campaign bribery, that motivates the abuse of programs that they are to oversee, ensuring further abuse. Overlook committees indeed.
Yes.It is number one.
Do you think, just maybe, this FBI faction wants to keep the status quo untouched, with $21 Trillion missing from the Pentagon and HUD since 1998 (no one’s bothered looking at other departments and agencies including the Justice Department) and 44,000 ghost soldiers on the Pentagon payroll? Think about that. $21 Trillion is enough to fund free healthcare for everyone. It’s enough to keep Social Security solvent. It’s enough to pay off the national debt (at least the admitted portion – one wonders how many phony T-Bonds are outstanding and who’s holding them). It’s enough to give us infrastructure and bullet trains comparable to that in China.
Why the Russia-Gate diversion?
Its not missing they just dont know where it was spent. Shoddy accounting or something. Rumsfeld announced on Sep 10 , 2011 that 3 trillion could not be accounted for and a day later a plane smashed into the Pentagons accounting department. Nobody remembers.
Mc Govern mentions that the NY Times has dropped that 17 US intelligece agencies has supported the ” assessement”. Well today in the NY Times editorial they do say this “It drives home the point that the 2016 election, which every American intelligence agency has said involved Russian interference to help elect
Donald Trump, is part of a pattern in which Mr. Putin has worked to erode etc, etc.”
Even though it has been established that the “17” is a lie, the NY Times continues the lie.
You mean there is not a single honest and honorable person among the NY Times editors? – Absolutely agree. The NYT is equivalent to a second-rate brothel.
Wonderful remark. I just wish I could claim it as my own.
:)
Breaking news for Americans: (1) in truth a “magic bullet” doesn’t exist in the, like, actual – “real world” – and Oswald was simply a patsy for the CIA’s coup; (2) the laws of physics – were not, and in the “real world” cannot simply be – “temporarily suspended” – (although fighter jet protocols certainly can) – in order for the official 9/11 story to be presented as somehow “credible;” and (3) surprise, surprise we don’t live in a nation that even in the wildest of imaginations remotely resembles a – “democracy.” Stay tuned to absolutely – “no”- MSM outlets for further details on these and other important stories.
Why isn’t the FBI investigating Jared Kushner and his several loans from Bank Hapoalim in Israel. The bank is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice over accusations that it helped Americans evade taxes. Or Jared’s donation to Bet El, a group constructing illegal settlements in the West Bank. C’mon FBI you can do better than looking for Russians under the White House rug.
In a globalized world it is entirely appropriate and reasonable for foreigners and their governments to take an interest in United States elections and to attempt to sway the electorate into electing candidates favorable to their interests. Indeed, it would be irresponsible not to do so. The line would involve altering results or taking actions to overthrow them, as the United States all too often does.
What is utterly inappropriate and treasonous are for personnel employed in agencies of the United States government, especially the intelligence agencies, the Justice Department, the FBI or the military to intervene in the electoral process.
That is the all too real scandal of the 2016 elections.
Ole! Right on.
Possibly if the U.S. was to stay out of every other nations affairs that whom ever would get elected president in the U.S. won’t matter all that much to ‘these fear of getting invaded’ countries.
As damaging as this report should be, Congress is so complicit that “overlook” is likely to overtake”oversight”. The “six ways from Sunday to get back at you” will be hanging over any of our august representatives who dares to take on the intelligence agencies and the MSM is no more likely to challenge the prevailing myth makers.
Congressmen who do tend to have plane accidents. Journalists receive anthrax letters or die a sudden death despite being in good health. Presidents get shot or impeached. People have learned to tip toe around the truth
That’s why Trump uses the “strongman” approach, relying on marines, loyal generals and such, or so I’ve seen in YouTube reports, on sealed indictments and such. This approach obviously enables a fascist coup…but we already suffered a slow-motion fascist coup starting with operation paper clip in the forties/fifties, sealed with 911. Word is Trump didn’t even want the job (too disruptive of business), so there is that straw-of-hope that it’s only a “strongman” approach and not the beginnings of a fascist dictator (that would be for whoever replaces Trump and comes riding in on a “white horse” to “save the day”).
The thing that always strikes me as very, VERY implausible about ‘Russia-gate’ is the idea that somehow Russians could SIGNIFICANTLY influence the US political culture MORE than all the campaigning, propaganda, and dirty-tricks that the Dems & Repubs do domestically (that we’re inundated with for 1-2 yrs before the election). That somehow a culture on the other side of the world — that doesn’t share much history with the US population (ie; such as the British, French, and Spanish) — could supposedly know and successfully (though secretly) affect the outcome. We’ve got domestic political committees and lobbyists and pundits and numerous other ‘politicos’ in this country, many of them with full-time jobs, working 8-10 hrs/day, some making 6 or 7 figure salaries, with large staffs, whose only job is to try to influence the US election. They’ve often got 10’s of millions of dollars budgets at their disposal, and in total the money spent on the US POTUS election is in the BILLIONS of dollars. But all that pales in comparison to a supposedly small cadre of Russian operatives working on Facebook (and all those Facebook readers uncritically believe everything they read on the Internet?) and a supposed ‘hack’ of DNC that released TRUTHFUL records?
It just sounds too much like the old Soviet Union era James Bond films (SMERSH, Spectre,et al), or vaguely like Joe McCarthy’s ‘…list of 57 Communists working in the US Government…” (which later grew to 200 and then thousands, probably as he got more notoriety and his alcoholism grew worse).
It’s true – it also shows the disdain that the poobahs at the DNC et al have for average voters – a real insult to our intelligence.
The Hillary patronage system – she’s the Queen Bee. Her die hard supporters are the members of the oligarchy including the opinion makers at the Ivy League universities, the MSM, and one could say for the sake of brevity all those who give knee jerk approval to bashing the whistle blowers for revealing wrong doing at the top of their political pyramid.
If the truth threatens the patronage system, the mouthpieces who try to crush the whistleblowers, simply reveal their own dishonest allegiance to the gravy train they are on.
Many are dangerously in denial.
Eddie, that is the central point, isn’t it. The contention that Russia was able to affect the election is absurd on its face. Beyond this is the overarching hypocrisy of a nation that spend hundred of millions doing what they claim Russia is doing all over the world.
For some odd reason I feel that these recent revelations revealing what goes on behind the FBI curtain in regard to ‘Russia-Gate’ has vindicated many of consortiumnews authors, and most if not almost all of the CN comment posters, as well. It is no well kept secret to how all this past year Robert Parry had stayed the course on this story, and to how at times we all thought that maybe Mr Parry was beating a sleeping dog. Well, as it turns out, Robert Parry was on to something. This is another good reason to visit CN, and learn from to what this wonderful site has to offer.
What to me seems like a big mistake made by the FBI, was why did they have Strzok who crafted together words to allow Hillary off the hook, do the Russia-Gate investigation? In my mind I would think that having Strzok work on both, could have a bias devastating effect on any conflict of interest questioning which could arise from a cynical review of the parties at the FBI who would have had a need to know, or a valid reason to work on both the Clinton file and the Russia collusion investigation. Maybe it’s just me, but I do see huge flaws in this arrangement of FBI personnel, and circumstances from deep inside the FBI being revealed certainly lean towards proving me right.
I’m glad Ray McGovern and the VIP’s are present, and providing us all with important information, which is always left out by the reporting of the MSM. I’m also hoping that people outside the U.S. read McGovern’s essays since this may at least give comfort to some outside the U.S. to know that there are some Americans who have not drunk the Kool-Aid, and that we Americans in total are not all that crazy as our leaders are…just some of the uninformed ones are.
I’m not getting my hopes up that anyone above the rank of Strzok and Page will receive any jail time. Instead I see backroom agreements being made, and blackmail threads along with political favors being granted paving the way towards the higher ups (Hillary or Trump) getting off Scott Free. If I’m wrong, I will be a happy citizen, and if I am right, then I will just merely ask you, ‘so what else is new in the land of Oz’?
Thanks, Joe T.
Happy to report that a popular progressive German website, NachDenkSeiten, has been translating and publishing some of the more important VIPS Memoranda, together with some of my own articles, for a fairly wide German audience. I recently got word that NDS has posted our Dec. 21 VIPS Memorandum on Iran and Terrorism, and is preparing to do the same with this one on the FBI role in Russia-gate. Below is the link to the German translation/posting on Iran.
But let me first ask if any of our Consortiumnews readers/commentators have ideas as to HOW WE MIGHT INDUCE SIMILAR WEBSITE AND/OR PRINT MEDIA OUTSIDE THE U.S. TO TRANSLATE AND POST OR REPRINT the material we customarily post first on Consortiumnews.
Der Iran ist nicht der Top-Sponsor des Terrorismus – ehemalige Geheimdienstmitarbeiter informieren Trump
9. Januar 2018
http://www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=41843
Ray
This blog translates in French, on a regular basis, some articles from Consortium News:
https://www.les-crises.fr/?s=consortium+news&x=0&y=0
You should ask Sibel Edmonds how to circulate information in Turkey.
Dear Ray McGovern, Please do posterity a massive favor by seeking to provoke and to precipitate, in full public view, a major showdown between the VIPS and the Deep State (viz., Brennan, Clapper, Hayden, et al). Do appeal to Bill Binney, Coleen Rowley, Thomas Drake, Larry Wilkerson et al to formally file an Amicus Brief on behalf of defendants Roger Stone and the POTUS in the action currently being brought against them both by a bunch of former Obama attorneys accusing them of collusion with Russia in the 2016 election — i.e., an Amicus Brief from the VIPS countering, flat-out contradicting, and mercilessly condemning as no more than a crock of shit all the claims in the Amicus Brief already filed by Brennan, Clapper, et al in which, with their signatures, they all arrogantly and shamelessly assert ex cathedra that yes, indeed, Russia sought through concerted action to swing the US election in Trump’s favor. Sure seems to me the time has come for VIPS to grandstand in such a high-profile manner.
P.S. It’s not partisanship that’s involved here. It’s simply truth and reality that are at stake.
Hire a pro to translate your articles! Europe is home to many certified translators of every language. I live in Germany and can personally recommend an English-to-Russian translator and an English-to-German translator.
The problem is not in getting them translated, which happens. (Although your suggestion “*hire* a pro..” does point to one aspect: most of those who would be happy to translate them cannot afford to do too much work for free. But maybe you and other who agree would like to start a collection?)
It is getting them published, preferably in publications or on Web sites with a wide readership — although they get to more outlets than you are aware of.
Well, Mr. McGovern included “translate” in his question (“…HOW WE MIGHT INDUCE SIMILAR WEBSITE AND/OR PRINT MEDIA OUTSIDE THE U.S. TO TRANSLATE AND POST OR REPRINT…”) — so perhaps it isn’t a foregone conclusion, as you assert, that “the problem is not in getting them translated”. But perhaps you’re correct and I’ve misunderstood that translations per se aren’t the issue.
I think it would be worth Ray McGovern’s while to directly query some of the editors of the non-English outlets he has in mind. They could tell him what the path of least resistance is in getting his work published.
In the event that translations are indeed an issue, I’m suggesting that Consortium News and/or its authors shoulder the load of translating their work. Because the activity of translating is work. Also reading a non-native language is work. Thus, I think it would be much easier to “INDUCE” non-English alternative media outlets to publish CN articles if they were submitted in the language of the outlet. Not only would the editors immediately understand the articles better, and thus give them more immediate consideration, they wouldn’t be responsible for having to do the work (more likely, subcontract the work) of properly translating the articles. The alternative media sites being targeted for publication likely have similar if not smaller budgets than Consortium News. So, if Mr. McGovern (and other authors) feel strongly about this, I think they should consider making translations part of the CN budget.
GCC: http://www.AlJazeera.com
UK: http://www.off-guardian.org
East: perhaps http://www.journal-neo.org
Other progressive sites that may link to foreign sites:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
http://www.antiwar.com
http://www.rt.com
http://www.sott.net
http://www.opednews.com
http://www.juancole.com
http://www.truthdig.com
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.therealnews.com
http://www.veteranstoday.com
http://www.globalresearch.ca
http://www.strategic-culture.org
Don’t forget https://thesaker.is/
They have sites in multiple languages and a few people who may be able to translate from English to target foreign languages
Ray, by the looks of it it would appear that your request for how to reach a wider outside the U.S. readership is intriguing, and that there are those who have suggestions. I would humbly suggest news releases with photos of various VIP members, and maybe some short articles placed in certain places, might help.
I will tell you this that between your articles posted with the combined VIP membership, along with articles posted by separate members of the VIP association, gives a reader a lot of informative ammunition to use when it comes to speaking about current events. I myself have enlightened a few just by quoting what you wrote Ray, and my having a real reference to refer my listeners to. So Ray never let this crazy American society get you down, because even when your not working your written words are hard at work trying to save the world from itself, so you are doing it even when you think you are not.
Thanks Ray, and thanks to the VIP’s….. & Robert Parry may he get better soon. Joe
Thank you for the tip.I as a German reader didn’t know that the website exists.
Ray McGovern please consider sending articles to defenddemocracypress a multilingual site formed during the Greek financial crisis. You will find, I think, a broad and influential audience there.
Thank you for your work through the years…
http://www.defenddemocracy.press/about-us/
Hope you are doing well, Robert.
Peter Strzok looks a lot like Doogy Howser. Much of what he says seem words of someone trying to impress the girl. Hard to take his words seriously and how in the hell does someone like that be the deputy director of FBI counterintelligence. His sentiments about Trump has the smell of Washington all over them. But I would have to see a great deal more to demonstrate that such a person would be able to orchestrate anything and his comments were anything other than telling his sweetie what he thought she would like to hear. So glad “we” nominated a women.
I hardly ever comment here, but I must take time to thank Robert Parry for his work, I’ve been reading Consortium News for years, and wishing Mr. Parry a quick and full recovery, his loss is a loss to all those who cherish the 1st Amendment to the U. S. Constitution and a free press. Also thanks to Ray McGovern and the VIPs, Consortium News also provides a forum for their good work. One has to look far and wide to find the A-one journalism found here.
I agree!
The abuse of power and illegal acts carried out by federal officials involved in the “Russiagate” investigation may have been far worse than bluntly-worded texts between our two star-crossed lovers, Mr. Strzok and Ms. Page. The operation seems to have involved a much wider and higher ranking assortment of officials. It appears that virtually the entire NSC considered publicizing conversations of US citizens obtained through FISA wiretaps that ended up being publicly released indirectly as contents in the Steele Dossier.
The Washington Post reported that Carter Page, who is prominent figure in the Steele dossier, was the subject of a wiretap order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Court issued (or more likely, as we explain below, reissued) in the summer of 2016.
“The FBI and the Justice Department obtained the warrant targeting Carter Page’s communications . . .” adding that “the FBI had reason to believe during the 2016 presidential campaign that a Trump campaign adviser was in touch with Russian agents.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fbi-obtained-fisa-warrant-to-monitor-former-trump-adviser-carter-page/2017/04/11/620192ea-1e0e-11e7-ad74-3a742a6e93a7_story.html?utm_term=.8c60ec301972
It is not widely known that in 2014 Page was an FBI informant and testified in court the following year in a case involving FBI wiretapping of Russian intelligence officers working out of the UN Mission in New York. Court documents and Justice Department releases show that a cooperating US person introduced listening devices in papers given to the targets, which would have been done with renewable FISA wiretaps issued at that time. See, https://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/is-carter-page-an-fbi-informant-who-wormed-into-trumps-campaign/ ; related, http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/politics/carter-page-russian-official/
The contents of FISA wiretaps are inadmissible in court as illegally obtained evidence in cases against US persons without a traditional Title III warrant issued by a federal Judge. It is a felony violation of the Espionage Act to release the identity of US citizens picked up in these wiretaps, or to publish the contents of FISA wiretaps without first obtaining a declassification order. Numerous officials have denied that there have been any Title III wiretap warrants issued in the Russiagate investigation, and, in fact, the information given by US officials early last year was still classified, putting those officials who talked to the NYT and WaPo in violation of felony provisions of the Espionage Act.
A second figure, George Papadopulos, is also identified as having been the subject of a FISA warrant, only it is not clear when that warrant was issued, but it was reportedly not until July 2016 that the Australian government is said to have reported a conversation Papadoulos had with one of its diplomats in a London drinking establishment. That would have been at some point after the Wikileaks publication of DNC emails on Friday, July 22. The timeline become improbably compressed if we are to take that as “How the Russiagate investigation began”, as the Times recently claimed. It makes much more sense to see electronic surveillance of figures around Trump as having commenced many months – in the case of Page, years – earlier, and conducted over a far longer period.
We do know that in early February, 2017 the NYT published a story that “current and former American officials” had revealed to reporters the contents of classified electronic intercepts of conversations between incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the Russian Ambassador. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/09/us/flynn-is-said-to-have-talked-to-russians-about-sanctions-before-trump-took-office.html This coordinated action by multiple officials to leak information involving US persons obtained through FISA warrants goes back to the early summer of the previous year.
“In June or July”, according to a report in Newsweek, FBI Director Comey sat down inside the White House situation room with National Security Advisor Rice, the DHS Director, the Secretary of State and a number of other NSC principals and ranking staff to hammer out strategy in the emerging “Russiagate.” According to “[t]wo sources with knowledge of the matter ”: http://www.newsweek.com/fbi-director-james-comey-russian-tampering-election-576417
“Well before the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) accused the Russian government of tampering with the U.S. election in an October 7 statement, Comey pitched the idea of writing an op-ed about the Russian campaign during a meeting in the White House Situation Room in June or July.”
‘He had a draft of it or an outline. He held up a piece of paper in a meeting and said, ‘I want to go forward. What do people think of this?’” says a source with knowledge of the meeting, which included Secretary of State John Kerry, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and National Security Adviser Susan Rice.”
[ . . . ]
The op-ed would not have mentioned whether the FBI was investigating Donald Trump’s campaign workers or others close to him for links to the Russians’ interference in the election, a second source with knowledge of the request tells Newsweek. Comey would likely have tried to publish the op-ed in The New York Times, and it would have included much of the same information as the bombshell declassified intelligence report released January 6, which said Russian President Vladimir Putin tried to influence the presidential election, the source says.”
Thank you Ray McGovern! I think you make a most compelling – urgent – argument that the huuuuuge danger to this (any) democracy is for powerful behind the scenes actors to take it upon themselves to override the peoples’ choice, no matter how flawed that choice.
Meanwhile the corrupt, extremely flawed Democratic candidate who failed to earn the trust of so many voters ( endless regime change wars and financial exploitation) sits atop a patronage system of hangers on who pile on to the attacks against whistleblowers of conscience who warn of wrong doing by their government.
Jack London’s novel exposing the ruthlessness of the oligarchy – “The Iron Heel” – should, I think, be compulsory high school reading.
It exposes the desperation faced by its victims and the complacence of those who benefit from the patronage system while calling the economic “underclass” the “deplorables” – just like someone we know……
Thank you, I will read The Iron Heel so long ago recommended and never read:
“the breakdown of the Second Revolt… would compel a Third Revolt and a Fourth Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood, ere the world-movement of labor should come into its own”
The view of this as a struggle of labor is perhaps dated, as it is a struggle of all humanity for democracy, against the tyranny of new forms of power such as economic power, and information power. The urging of open revolt may be dated as well, as modern characters have no courage due to the evisceration of public morality by mass media, although the means of resisting economic and information power may be less open than past revolts.
The “Mercenaries” of middle-to-lower class who betray their own advocates for money, would include ninety percent of the population here in Florida.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Sam F.
“new forms of power such as economic power, and information power” ain’t that the truth.
yeah, the delusional members of the pyramid of power (and betrayal) preach “democratic ideals” “fairness” “equity” and other distractions while stealing wealth through trickery and deception and opaqueness and corruption…..
There is no level playing field for working people.
Whistleblowers, an open and free internet and full transparency and strong regulations are just a start to solve this mess….
Thank you evelync. I was unaware of that novel by Jack London but I will link it below and read it. I have many connections to Jack London Country and I will never “see” it in the same light again. Also I’m not the least surprised to see Sam F responding, as he has shown an interest in the extension of this conversation into the realm of restorative justice that so intrigues me. In a better world, may we band together in a more just environment?…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Heel
I, too, was unaware until very recently of this aspect of Jack London’s work and his passion on this subject. Really remarkable that this part of his thinking has been ignored. It’s really telling about our culture that it’s been ignored.
Thank you!
Sam F and Bob Van Noy,
I’m only about half way through, myself, reading The Iron Heel and today came across this recent article in The Guardian about the book:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/nov/22/jack-londons-vision-future-present-the-iron-heel
If you’re still in the process of reading the book, you may wish to wait before reading this article since it gives some stuff away……
Thanks, will do, my copy is on the way. I love this site and the “internet’s”.
How sweet it is! And what fools these two mortals – Strozk and Page – indeed, all of their crooked ‘law enforcement’ colleagues and bosses- be.
As for Feinstein’s release of the Simpson transcript, while it may have been a lame attempt on her part to cover her Party’s ass by ascribing an ‘honest motive’ to GPS Fusion, if it is followed up diligently, it could have a devastating effect on the Magnitsky Act, since Bill Browder, its prime mover (and Magnitsky’s employer), was described by Simpson for what he really was, and is- i.e., a fraudster, money launderer, and much, much more- and if he collapses, the raison d’être behind the statute does as well. A brilliant example of the clueless being hoisted on their own golden petard or spear..
Feinstein is an abject failure of course. This is the same person who lamely permitted the CIA to monitor her Intelligence Committee communications. She is a captive of the deep state and complicit in its maneuvers. This time though she has listened to fools and run a fools errand as there is much revealed in that leak. Feinstein joins Stzrok and Page as a trio of fools.
“Freeing” FISA evidence
“…Trump administration and Republican congressional leaders plotting the enactment of an addition to FISA [FOREIGN Intelligence Surveillance Act] that would permit the use of evidence of [U.S. citizen] crimes in federal court even when it is discovered during mass surveillance authorized by general warrants.”
http://www.mintpressnews.com/congress-plotting-cut-hole-4th-amendment/236237/
Let’s not tie Big Brother’s hands in “helping ” us to be safe from all those foreign (and domestic) “enemies.”
There were/are two targets: Trump and Russia with leader Putin. Two goals: undermine Trump’s authority as elected president and establish Russia as an “evil” pariah nation.
To the latter, Senate Democrats led by Ben Cardin yesterday released a “Russia Report” purporting to document “Vladimir Putin’s 20-year attack on democratic institutions in his own country and Europe.” Here’s the kicker: “The report leans heavily on open source information as well as staff interviews with European diplomats and government officials.”
Open source information? Everyone knows the United States has the most thorough intensive electronic eavesdropping program in recorded history, and yet a report which literally calls for a transformation of our democratic societies into a war-footing against Russia “leans heavily” on open-source information? What transparent BS, much like the Intelligence Assessment from a year ago. The utter contempt for the American people exhibited by politicians and the media is so obvious.
The Russians have dignified the nonsensical report with a denial.
The lying scum in Washington (everyone in government) once again revealed as the totally corrupt garbage they truly are. And if anyone thinks that is too harsh, you need to clean your truth revealing glasses, and take a long look at what your “representatives” are doing with your money, and all our lives. Are we going to continue alibiing these arch criminals all the way to Armageddon??
Brooks?Calling a traitor(Israel)?hahahahaha……….
So glad Ray brought out the Brook’s article link. Hadn’t seen that anywhere before. It’s gives context, and adds confirmation that Strzok and Page saw themselves on a mission.
For the life of me, I can’t understand how such imbeciles could be polluting our institutions with their presence. They have their heads so far up their posteriors it’s amazing they are able to pull off entrapping mentally ill persons in phony terror plots and get away with it to the extent they have. Are there truly no adults in government?
So now here we are, on the brink of war with not one, but two nuclear-armed nations, all because a bunch of overgrown children thought they could take down one of their own with bogus accusations, ignoring the quite real scandals that could have done a far better job of hindering or removing Caligula Drumpf. I can’t imagine the Democrats managing to con enough voters into throwing their ballots away on their far right corporatist candidates in November, after wasting so much time and energy purging actual liberals from the party and chasing phantoms of their own making. About the only hope right now is that maybe enough voters will turn out for third party candidates to toss out the bums from both major political parties.
We need to dump and abandon both major parties in the USA. Anyone voting for candidates of either one is a fool and a dupe.
The way to get “term limits” is for enough voters to commit not to vote for the incumbent, regardless of party, in the primaries.
this about sums it up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jmWPYt1gjE
I want to highlight this part:
Excellent observation, and a demonstration of how the “plotters” are going to be responsible for some of the expanded Trump horrors in the future.
What the dreadful woman did was to allow future witnesses to “adjust” their testimony – to keep their stories straight. Feinstein has no business holding any position of responsibility.
This was a perfectly splendid essay by Mr. McGovern, and I applaud him for assembling so many seemingly isolated tidbits into a neat package.
Feinstein is just another millionaire criminal.
This is the part that is chilling:
The deep state really is in control. One wonders if this event will tear down the walls or simply become a post mark event in the growth of deep state control over all aspects of ‘freedom’ here in the use.
Mark T-
I agree with your view. Schumer’s “6 ways from Sunday” quote is no doubt accurate, and very few in congress have shown any spine whatsoever. It will be interesting to see how the MSM responds if the narrative falls completely apart. I am also worried that the Deep State might see it as the right time for another major false flag event to change the sheeple’s focus. They may even have to resort to another assassination. They wouldn’t have any problem at all finding a “lone nut” patsy, probably wearing a pink pussy hat.
As an adjunct, take a look at Glenn Greenwald’s article on the hypocrisy of the Congressional democrats in voting to retain President’s authority to spy on citizens without getting a warrant: https://theintercept.com/2018/01/12/the-same-democrats-who-denounce-trump-as-a-lawless-treasonous-authoritarian-just-voted-to-give-him-vast-warrantless-spying-powers/
Apparently yesterday (Wednesday 1-10), Feinstein stated that she felt ‘pressured’ to release the transcript:
https://twitchy.com/brett-t/2018/01/10/about-face-now-dianne-feinstein-says-she-was-pressured-to-release-fusion-gps-transcript/
Although today she seems to be walking that statement back already . . . for obvious reasons of Who & Why.
Excellent essay, thanks.
Thanks to Mr. Ray McGovern, Mr. William Binney and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) for their efforts to end the toxic and destructive to international relations “Russia-gate” charade. VIPS is the early front-runner for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, and the worthy next recipients following the noble organization International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was honored for 2017.
An historic, sincere apology is warranted and owed to the government of Russia and its people.
Hillary Clinton has some big-time explaining to do to the American people. Considering the enormity of consequence subsequent to the original decision to manufacture the lie about so-called “Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election”, any “What difference does it make?” stance on her part regarding this matter is unacceptable – and must be thoroughly rejected. The right, moral and next logical action going forward will find images of Mrs. Clinton on newspaper front pages worldwide with her right hand raised, swearing the oath to convey the “truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth” in front of the United States Congress – and humanity.
Clinton belongs in jail.
Well said, Jerry!
“An historic, sincere apology is warranted and owed to the government of Russia and its people.”
Do I hear a second ? This is EXACTLY what should be required of all those involved !
(In addition to whatever criminal proceedings/punishments are warranted)
It is so disturbing to realize that, had HERSELF won, none of this would ever see the light of day,
as McGovern describes above. Such utter hubris . . .
I could not agree more Jerry. Especially the apology to Russia. Perhaps in a better world. Unfortunately the syncophants hold all the power.
I’m still dumbstruck by these events and am so grateful for the small group of investigative journalists providing real information.
ConsortiumNews Rules!
Also, I hope Mr. Parry is well, makes a full recovery, and is with us for years to come.
Pray for Robert.
Yes Clif, here and here, and I will second your comment with that. All I can say, is it is good to have consortiumnews to fall back on in these days and times of fake news. It is also good to see Ray McGovern posting articles here on CN, since Robert Parry is resting and getting well. Good health to all, and yes consortiumnews rocks. Joe
If Ray is right we should see jail sentences coming to these treasonous conspirators,, including Mueller, and a chance to dismantle the whole rotten apparatus. Thank you Mr. McGovern for your long service to our country and for your commitment to uphold its constitution.
Yeah, when Mueller goes to jail, maybe they will also release all the marijuana “criminals” rotting in there. (Now I’m dreaming……)
An excellent overview, as I would expect.
Ray, you should take a closer look at the Guccifer 2.0 story, and get in direct touch with the British cyberanalyst Adam Carter who has done a magnificent job of unraveling it. The essence of this story is that the “Russia meddled in the election” story is not a mistake, but an outright hoax concocted by affiliates of the DNC, most likely Crowdstrike, and eagerly gobbled up by Deep State Russophobes who wanted to believe it. Note that the CEO of Crowdstrike, Shawn Henry, was, like Strzok, head of FBI counterintelligence – and a protege of Robert Mueller!
Here is Adam’s website: http://g-2.space/ and his email address: [email protected]. I’m sure he would be thrilled to hear from you.
And here’s something I’ve written recently pertinent to G2.0: https://medium.com/@markfmccarty/every-aspect-of-russiagate-is-an-outright-hoax-crafted-by-paid-associates-of-the-dnc-and-abetted-3a81e3fd665e
Dmitri Alperovitch, of CrowdStrike fame, must be subpoenaed and brought on the Hill for questioning. His treasonous tinkering with DNC computers (which were never shown to the suddenly shy FBI) makes an important part of Russiagate. It was Alperovitch who made the “discovery” of Russians’ “hacking the DNC computers.” Both Shawn Henry and Dm. Alperovitch should be investigated in the light of murder of Seth Rich because Seth knew that there was no hacking. Dmitri Alperovitch, a Ukrainian Jew, is a vicious Russophobe and an “expert” (along with hapless ignoramus Eliot Higgins) representing the ziocon Atlantic Council.
Per Wikipedia , Alperovitch was born in Moscow in 1980.
So , when he said Russia was responsible for the DNC hack , he may have had first-hand ( i.e. , his own hand ) knowledge.
Good point!
No. You already know that his knowledge was not firsthand.
Could a deal be made with Anthony Weiner to get his testimony? Wonder what he knows!
I wonder how long the Democrats will keep up their intenable position, defending the abuse during the 2016 elections (both the takeover of the Clinton campaign of the Democratic primaries right from the start and the collusion of media with the Clinton campaign and various abuses related to the general election, mainly collusion between the secret services and the Clinton campaign and spying on the Trump campaign) and peddling absurd and completely evidence-free conspiracy theories, according to which the Russian government knew years ago that Donald Trump would become the Republican nominee. After all, theoretically, Democrats might be in a good position, the US has a relatively unpopular Republican president and a Republican majority that conducts unpopular policies in favor of a small rich majority (which, however, is only slightly more extreme than the policies of establishment Democrats who also favor the rich). But with their absurd behavior, rejecting any kind of investigation of abuse for which there is concrete evidence and calling it a distraction from the conspiracies they promote and for which there is no evidence whatsoever, even after more than a year of intensive search, the credibility of Democrats is so low that I would not consider it too far-fetched any more to predict that Democrats will become irrelevant in the medium term and that a new party will be the main opponent of Republicans.
Hopefully it will be a true working people’s party representing the vast majority of the population.
I can dream, can’t I?
Dream on, if it helps cover over the pain of the reality we are living……….
The coming Summer should see a shite storm of BS from the DNC- leaning press and media. The stakes are sky-high, and as Ray, to his stellar credit, has carefully pointed out, will do or say anything to subvert the will of We the People. Get out your umbrellas!
The notion that Trump is anti-poor just because he is rich is a disgraceful libtard shibboleth and nothing more.
I’ve been waiting for that new Party to rise, but seems to be no real sign yet. Definitely needed though. The Democrats have failing the American people and betrayed our democratic electoral process before the election and after, with their nomination and general election process meddling, and with the current soft coup attempt now failing. They made Trump possible, for good or bad. Turning their backs on their base of working class people to pander to identity politics will cause the Democrats to lose more elections and become even more irrelevant. And the arrogance of people like Strok and Page is striking–did one actually text they could “smell” the Trump in West Virginia? I can smell beltway elitism from here. So they feel justified in trying to overthrow the rightfully elected president (over 300 electoral votes) because they know better than us rubes in flyover country. Whether or not you like Trump, it seems obvious that swamp needs to be drained…
You must have forgotten to mention the warning given by the Australians to the FBI well before the Steele Dossier came to their attention and the fact that the FBI already had started the investigation of Trump campaign dodgyness well before it’s appearance. Maybe the stuff they were finding independent of the dossier gave them reason enough to want to protect us from Trump.
Yes, all these “maybe”‘s with which people attempt to justify handing over power to the secret services… Such an attitude is a good ground for the demise of formerly democratic political systems.
Are you familiar with the lawful proceedings for wiring a person? Have you read the Strzok-Page correspondence? And, have you heard about Awan affair, Clinton’s email criminal negligence, and Seth Rich murder? Btw, your post reads like fine propaganda.
The Imran Awan debacle is a whole ‘nother kettle of fish. Very difficult to find info in the MSM,
but I did find this interesting entry in “Conservapedia”, which looks fairly complete and accurate :
http://www.conservapedia.com/Awan_investigation
His connections to DNC chair Debbie W-S are so unbelievable. But true.
And, there doesn’t seem to be any official investigation of this very strange relationship. Although it most certainly impacts on the Weiner laptop and Hillary-Abedin shenanigans with official secrets.
That sounds like a familiar attempt to salvage “Russiagate”.
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According to a realnews.com interview by Aaron Mate of Marcy Wheeler — who has been documenting Russia-Gate (on the side of, where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and using many of the false “facts” and narratives disputed by Robert Parry, Ray McGovern, William Binney, and many other (actual) journalists and national-security experts) — “[Christopher Steele] brought that first report [the Steele dossier] with the pee tape allegation in it to the FBI in the first week of July 2016. According to the public story, the Australians did not inform the FBI about Papadopoulos’ drunken ramblings until after, it would be July 22nd. That’s when WikiLeaks started releasing the emails. According to Comey, that investigation was opened in late July.”
January 11, 2018
“In Fusion GPS Testimony, More Questions Than Answers”
http://therealnews.com/t2/story:20887:In-Fusion-GPS-Testimony%2C-More-Questions-Than-Answers
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Treason. We are dealing with treason in high places. The national security agencies have been used for partisan goals to undermine the elected POTUS. This should be qualified as an attempt at regime change in the US.
At the same time, the intel agencies demonstrated dereliction of duty by allowing and ignoring the Awan affair, Clinton server scandal, and Steele/Alperovitch (CrowdStrike) fraud.
I see that you are “…fully within the official propaganda media bubble.”
My above reply was to Robert Walton.
It is not for foreign intelligence services, be they Australian or British to “protect us,” from our own decisions. The foreign power that intervened in the presidential elections was not Russia at all but was the British who colluded with a corrupt Obama administration to prevent Trump’s election and then to undo the vote of the people. We now know that the entire process was rigged, first against Bernie Sanders, then against Trump. Yes, our entire system is in truly in danger, but not from Russia.
That’s exactly what I read weeks ago.I’m not quite sure but I think it was on moonofalabama.org.It was said that British governments and their agencies together with American agencies have had always an allegiance to the Democrats and their presidents.Both wanted to prevent a Republican POTUS by all means.
They didn’t want Trump elected,they would have amenable to gop candidates like rubio and jeb.Divide and conquer.
Except the Papadopolous link is a red herring. If they started the investigation in July 2016 because of his drunken comments why was he not interviewed until January 2017? It is just more mainstream media bullshit.
Precisely when the investigation was opened, right down to the minute, can be established by the FBI paperwork opening the investigation file.
If the Russian had hacked the DNC emails the NSA would have the evidence. Since the NSA has not produced the evidence I’m assuming they they did not. But let’s assume they did. Why would exposing the unethical and criminal behavior of Clinton and the DNC be a bad thing? We should thank the Russians then for protecting us from Clinton.
A warning given by a man who had given millions and millions of Australian taxpayer money to the Clinton foundation. There is no such thing as coincidence. Research for yourself His name is Alexander Downer. Follow the money.
Balderdash. You must have forgotten that the Steele Dossier is a complete fabrication made out of whole cloth and that all your heros are now inexorably going down in flames.
Like most never-Trumpers, you don’t deal with facts too well.
Sure, it was reported in the New York Times so it must be true. So, according to you and the Times, the fact that Papadopoulos mentioned a Russian source had unfavorable information to share on Hillary Clinton warranted FBI interest and, ultimately , a 702 filing for a a FISA warrant.
Sure, whatever you say. You certainly aren’t getting played by the same deep state seditionist who are now trying to scramble out of this mess by using favorable media to try to sell their implausible story.
you mean the liberals of Australia interfered with US liberals to sway the election? Seems that is a CRIME
McGovern’s take, as always, is cogent and hits the target. He connects the dots and reveals the facts refuting the official myth which is totally unbelievable to anybody not fully within the official propaganda media bubble. What it reveals is a conspiracy maintained by what is a de facto fascist state to maintain its control. It is disappointing that Trump has largely bowed to it and that the conspiracy continues despite its being discredited, and that it remains dominant in the “received wisdom” of the yankee state.
“Justified or not, Trump’s feeling of vindication could hardly be more dangerous — particularly at a time when the most urgent need is to drain some testosterone from the self-styled Stable-Genius-in-Chief and his martinet generals.”
Here, McGovern admits that he is just one more Deep State snowflake. I guess he had to write that in order to get this article published. Or maybe not. Either way, McGovern just confirmed to me that he is a total never-Trumper libtarded snowflake kook not to be taken seriously.
Trump!
Why? What has he done for you… I mean if you’re not a billionaire.
Silly sycophant.
Soul crushing venality, how long will we stand for it?
As shown in this article, Vladimir Putin has long understood America’s changing role in the global geopolitical reality:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-new-global-geopolitical-reality.html
All empires come to an end. Sometimes it’s with a whimper and other times it’s with a bang.
I do not like living in this SHITHOLE called the US of A Unfortunately, I cannot move to Norway. I am a citizen here and DJT is making me dislike this shithole called USA.
Moving aside, alas I can’t move either, how many Norwegians want to move to the US?; as suggested by Mr Trump when discussing the immigration of the Haitians.
the only Norwegian who might possibly want to be here , might be a hockey player in the NHL.
Or people going outside their basement once in a while. Norway really turned into a shithole in the last 2 years. Everyone with eyes also knows why.
But I guess people like you always have to feel it on their own first, before they realize the obvious.
And perhaps also Anders Breivik!
Funny you want to move to a country whiter than America.. Why don’t y’all u move Haiti non shithole country that it is, I am sure they will take you. No one will me miss see ya.
Obviously, you’ve never been to Norway. Born of a Norwegian mother, with relations in Oslo, I’ve often visited the country since my first visit at the age of two in 1951. It was certainly whiter than America up until the 1980s, but that has all changed. These days, Norway’s immigrant community of many different colors from all over the world is thriving.
87% of the population are of Norwegian of the remaining 13% most are from Europe….hmmm
I have been using the pseudonym Sam F here for some time. I have three times asked people using “Sam” to please use a distinct pseudonym to avoid confusion, without effect. If you are not seeking to speak improperly in the name of another commenter, I suggest adding a distinct last initial, etc.
And this one with a bung in the hole.