A lack of skepticism has characterized much of the reporting on Russiagate, with undue credibility being given to questionable sources like the Steele dossier, and now progressives like Jane Mayer and Cenk Uygur are joining the bandwagon, Ray McGovern observes.
By Ray McGovern
Russiagate reporting has increasingly taken on a tabloidish and sensationalist character.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks are the latest progressives to jump on the anti-Trump, pro-Russiagate bandwagon. They have made it crystal clear that, in Mayer’s words, they are not going to let Republicans, or anyone else, “take down the whole intelligence community,” by God.
Odd? Nothing is too odd when it comes to spinning and dyeing the yarn of Russiagate; especially now that some strands are unraveling from the thin material of the “Steele dossier.”
Before the 2016 election, British ex-spy Christopher Steele was contracted (through a couple of cutouts) by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee to dig up dirt on candidate Donald Trump. They paid him $168,000. They should ask for their money back.
Mayer and Uygur have now joined with other Trump-despisers and new “progressive” fans of the FBI and CIA – among them Amy Goodman and her go-to, lost-in-the-trees journalist, Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel.net. All of them (well, maybe not Cenk) are staying up nights with needle and thread trying to sew a silk purse out of the sow’s-ear dossier of Steele allegations and then dye it red for danger.
Monday brought a new low, with a truly extraordinary one-two punch by Mayer and Uygur.
A Damning Picture?
Mayer does her part in a New Yorker article, in which she – intentionally or not – cannot seem to see the forest for the trees.
In her article, Mayer explains up front that the Steele dossier “painted a damning picture of collusion between Trump and Russia,” and then goes on to portray him as a paragon of virtue with praise that is fulsome, in the full meaning of that word. For example, a friend of Steele told Mayer that regarding Steele, “Fairness, integrity, and truth, for him, trump any ideology.”
Now, if one refuses to accept this portrait on faith, then you are what Mayer describes as a “Trump defender.” According to Mayer, Trump defenders argue that Steele is “a dishonest Clinton apparatchik who had collaborated with American intelligence and law enforcement officials to fabricate false charges against Trump and his associates, in a dastardly (sic) attempt to nullify the 2016 election. According to this story line, it was not the President who needed to be investigated, but the investigators themselves.”
Can you imagine!
I could not help but think that Mayer wrote her piece some months ago and that she and her editors might have missed more recent documentary evidence that gives considerable support to that “dastardly” story line. But seriously, it should be possible to suspect Steele of misfeasance or malfeasance – or simply telling his contractors what he knows they want to hear – without being labeled a “Trump supporter.” I, for example, am no Trump supporter. I am, however, a former intelligence officer and I have long since concluded that what Steele served up is garbage.
Character References
Mayer reports that Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 from 1999 to 2004, described Steele as “superb.” Personally, I would shun any “recommendation” from that charlatan. Are memories so short? Dearlove was the intelligence chief who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on July 23, 2002 after a quick trip to Washington. The official minutes of that meeting were leaked to the London Times and published on May 1, 2005.
Dearlove explained to Blair that President George W. Bush had decided to attack Iraq for regime change and that the war was to be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” Dearlove added matter-of-factly, “The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”
Another character reference Mayer gives for Steele is former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin (from 2000 to 2004) who, with his boss George Tenet, did the fixing of intelligence to “justify” the war on Iraq. State Department intelligence director at the time, Carl Ford, told the authors of “Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War” that both McLaughlin and Tenet “should have been shot” for what they did.
And then there is CIA veteran spy John Sipher who, Mayer says, “ran the Agency’s Russia program before retiring, in 2014.” Sipher tells her he thinks the Steele dossier is “generally credible” in “saying what Russia might be up to.” Sipher may be a good case officer but he has shown himself to be something of a cipher on substance.
Worse still, he displays a distinct inclination toward the remarkable view of former National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who has said that Russians are “typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever.” If Mayer wanted to find some ostensibly authoritative figure to endorse the kind of material in Steele’s dossier, she surely picked a good one in Sipher.
Mayer notes, “It’s too early to make a final judgment about how much of Steele’s dossier will be proved wrong, but a number of Steele’s major claims have been backed up by subsequent disclosures. She includes, as flat fact, his claim that the Kremlin and WikiLeaks were working together to release the DNC’s emails, but provides no evidence.
Major Holes
Mayer, however, should know better. There have been lots of holes in the accusation that the Russians hacked the DNC and gave the material to WikiLeaks to publish. Here’s one major gap we reported on Jan. 20, 2017: President Barack Obama told his last press conference on Jan. 18, that the U.S. intelligence community had no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks.
Using lawyerly language, Obama admitted that “the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”
It is necessary to carefully parse Obama’s words since he prides himself in his oratorical constructs. He offered a similarly designed comment at a Dec. 16, 2016 press conference when he said: “based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC. … the information was in the hands of WikiLeaks.”
Note the disconnect between the confidence about hacking and the stark declarative sentence about the information ending up at WikiLeaks. Obama does not bridge the gap because to do so would be a bald-faced lie, which some honest intelligence officer might call him on. So, he simply presented the two sides of the chasm – implies a connection – but leaves it to the listener to make the leap.
It was, of course, WikiLeaks that published the very damaging Democratic information, for example, on the DNC’s dirty tricks that marginalized Sen. Bernie Sanders and ensured that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. What remained to be demonstrated was that it was “the Russians” who gave those emails to WikiLeaks. And that is what the U.S. intelligence community could not honestly say.
Saying it now, without evidence, does not make it true.
Cenk Also in Sync
Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks at once picked up, big time, on the part of Mayer’s article that homes in on an “astonishing” report from Steele in late November 2016 quoting one “senior Russian official.” According to that official, “The Kremlin had intervened to block Trump’s initial choice for secretary of state, Mitt Romney.” Steele’s late November memo alleged that the Kremlin had asked Trump to appoint someone who would be prepared to lift Ukraine-related sanctions and cooperate on security issues like Syria.
Mayer commented, “As fantastical as the memo sounds, subsequent events could be said to support it.” Fantastical or not, Uygur decided to run with it. His amazing 12-minute video is titled: “New Steele Dossier: Putin PICKED Trump’s Secretary of State.” Uygur asks: “Who does Tillerson work for; and that also goes for the President.”
Return to Sanity
As an antidote to all the above, let me offer this cogent piece on the views of Joseph E. diGenova, who speaks out of his unique experience, including as Counsel to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Church Committee). The article is entitled: “The Politicization of the FBI.”
“Over the past year,” diGenova wrote, “facts have emerged that suggest there was a plot by high-ranking FBI and Department of Justice (DOJ) officials in the Obama administration, acting under color of law, to exonerate Hillary Clinton of federal crimes and then, if she lost the election, to frame Donald Trump and his campaign for colluding with Russia to steal the presidency.”
He pointed out that nearly half of Americans, according to a CBS poll, believe that Mueller’s Trump-Russia collusion probe is “politically motivated.” And, he noted, 63 percent of polled voters in a Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll believe that the FBI withheld vital information from Congress about the Clinton and Russia collusion investigations.
This skepticism is entirely warranted, as diGenova explains, with the Russiagate probe being characterized by overreach from the beginning.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served in Army and CIA intelligence analysis for 30 years and, after retiring, co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Excellent article.
Julian Assange has repeatedly said, on the record in fact, that his Weakileaks source was Seth Rich, assassinated on the streets of DC for his trouble. Not the Russians.
It is not all bad. This Russian for profit propaganda thing is really educational. You know exactly who is a corporate tool and who is not by the stories they tell and then money they get.
The sad last gasps of failing media sites, cash in before they lose all the marks, all the propaganda victims. Mother Jones was a real surprise, like they jumped off a cliff in the rash to grab propaganda cash, screaming on the way down, rich, rich, rich, whilst leaving a trail of, well, you know what on the way down, so sad.
I have always liked ray for his courageous willingness to speak truth to power. But I think
He is mistaken here. It happens to the best of us. I think trumps lawyers sold trump out behind his back. If you want to follow the money follow the wives
Please, Mr. McGovern, do not give these people credit for “making mistakes” or “lacking knowledge”.The constantly repeated Russia theme has so many holes that these critters surely do know the garbage they are disseminating, but do it anyway. Meyer, Uygur, and their security-state buddies have settled on the rewards that come from siding with those who have deep pockets. Further, one has to question their “left” bonafides since they parrot a propaganda line commensurate with Bernays, that leads to Goebbels and Riefenstahl, with a little Stalin thrown in. it seems being part of media in this country consists of growing until you are noticed, than taking the cash that comes from being “big”. Some of that growth is attracting ‘progressive’ supporters, somewhat the way Obama operated in his home town Chicago- community activist gone establishment, then rogue deep-stater.
Democrats gave the game away when they operated servers without ANY security, and emailed each other as if they were on NSA encryption, begging to be copied and thrown to the public, which seemed to not pay that much attention anyway. I suspected this open email system was set up on purpose, to ultimately throw the election, then start this “Constitutional” crisis and show the world they can out-Republican the Republicans on security and military posturing. All to gain moderate and center-right Republicans that could guarantee victory in any election for years. They almost blew it when Democratic vote fixing won California and New York enough to give her more votes, but the revolving stories since then show their panic and lack of plans. It does show media-FBI/CIA/NSA collusion, the portions of which involved being desperate for a mainstream government that hides its criminality while smiling at the people they own…er…serve.
This seriously ridiculous media travesty deserves as much sarcastic & sardonic humor as can be mustered. Please check out C.J. Hopkins at Counterpunch “The Cult of Authority” for the best perspective I’ve read in weeks on this cocked-up mess. There just aren’t that many who’ve taken a proper bead on this story and retained a reasonable perspective, as Robert P. did, until shown convincing, substantiated proof, which has NOT been forthcoming. There’s a lot of spoof and poof, as if by magic out there, but no actual proof of collusion. Unless you’re talking of that between the Clinton cabal, the FBI and the DOJ or Trump’s posse and Israel, that is. As C. J. opines, it’s basically a show now, by a bunch of poseurs, including those at The Intercept. Matt Taibbi also laced into the story pretty well the other day. Common Dreams ran it (Russiagate and the New Blacklist). But be warned, if you’re squeamish about wailing and gnashing of teeth by obvious bots, plants, low paid interns or whatever you want to call them, then you might want to avoid the comments section on that one. It’s literally crawling with them. Someone must have Taibbi targeted. Well, enjoy these days of free & open expression as it may not be long before the Commissars of major media (Post, Times, CNN, etc.) begin to filter out all but the “official” version of stories as the new watch dogs for “fake news”. ‘Course they won’t go digging in their own backyards because they want to keep those bones buried. And they don’t dare to bite the authoritarian hand that feeds them.
I’m not familiar with Mayer’s work, but I’m familiar enough with Uygur’s to have unsubscribed from TYT back in 2016, straight after the election. The only reason I stayed subscribed during the election was the vain hope that Jimmy Dore would convince Uygur a lesser of two evils election was no election at all and it was time to try for something better. He didn’t convince him. I had a look at the TYT articles on line last week and it was bad Trump this, worse Trump that. Nothing else, just Trump, Trump, Trump. You could be forgiven for believing America was an egalitarian land of milk and honey before Trump came along if you got all your news from TYT.
Just a quick note on the word “progressive”. Too often it’s used as a synonym for “liberal”- someone who supports the rights of the individual above all things. This must include the rights of the capitalist, but few liberals note the contradiction. They never have. And that’s why liberals have never truly been leftists, inspite of their beliefs to the contrary.
Since establishment Dems and “lefty” media will not shut up about every minuscule non-event re RussiaGate, someone needs to provide real-time rebuttals and debunking. Do you not know that Jane Mayer just published a 15,000 word RussiaGate nothingburger in the New Yorker?
That shit requires pushback. You’re welcome.
??? Listen to it again. GG did not slide over into anything. He repeatedly pointed out Risen’s logical flaws re RussiaGate.
#Wut?
Three questions:
1) Do you believe stories or legends from the intelligence agencies are contributing to anti-Trump “fake news”?
1) What percentage of anti-Trump “journalists” and “academics” are actually being handled by the CIA or MI6?
2) Whom do you know or suspect among the anti-Trump scribblers and talking heads are assets of the western intelligence community I am sure you are aware of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird and other operations to handle/control/influence/support so-called “journalism”.
If the anti-Trump coup began shortly before Trump was elected at a meeting in London at the club of MI6’s Sir Richard Dearlove with Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan and National Security Advisor James Clapper, could there have been more intervention by the spooks with the media than Dearlove’s protege Steele’s and FBI director’s Comey’s leaks from Steele’s “dirty dossier” and other fake news?
Now there’s a claim of a Russkie plant inside the Demo’s campaign? HaHa, Hilarious Hilary! Wouldn’t it just be poetic justice if they found a way in through her unprotected server? Oh, right, we’ll never know because of all the shredded emails! HaHa. Limp Noodles, new logo for DOJ, FBI and Congressional “investigators”. These dog bites (wo)man stories never get old. But man, she’s barking up the wrong tree. If she wants to get to the top of the dungpile, she needs to get her a game show host gig to upend the Donald. Us USers loves us some blatant fakery! HaHa
oops, with all the jumping sharks, got turned around, should read “(wo)man bites dog stories”, screwed the pooch on that joke
Mayer’s disparaging dismissal of Senator Grassley’s concerns are another indicator of bias. The Grassley-Graham memo to DOJ went beyond the Nunes memo and is arguably more credible, first because Grassley has a long track record of supporting whistleblower complaints revealing government fraud, waste and abuse. Over the years, this Senator, in his role exercising Judiciary Committee oversight, has accurately identified numerous cases of wrongful FBI actions which resulted in numerous reforms, which even led to the accreditation of the previously unaccredited FBI forensic laboratory. Secondly it should be noted that, unlike Nunes, Lindsey Graham was a “never Trump” critic. This makes his concerns about FISA Court abuse more credible. It’s amazing that Jane Mayer would not be concerned about these potential judicial abuses, given her track record of criticicizng the Bush Administration’s abuses.
Did Steele jump the shark too?
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-07/dnc-hack-involved-russian-agents-within-democratic-party-unreleased-steele-memo
Thanks for this article. The New Yorker is the ultimate neoliberal magazine, so no surprise there. They’ve not only drank the Kool-Aid, they’ve made a Jackson Pollock out of spewing the strict nonsense of the neoliberal agenda. Progressives are not on the staff, except in movie reviews, book reviews, artist reviews, etc. I know: I read the magazine from cover to cover for 8 years.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn’t Hillary Clinton or the DNC give the Young Turks $20 Million? If that is the case is it surprising that Cenk Uyghur is basically on side with Clinton’s condemnation of Trump and Russia? I used to think that the Young Turks were good until I watched their coverage of Syria and Ukraine. I also find it ironic that Cenk pushed hard to get money out of politics because of its corrupting nature meanwhile he accepts $20 Million from the Democrats (of course the Democrats want nothing in return – wink, wink, nudge, nudge). Also, I was dumbfounded how Cenk could say how much he supported Bernie Sanders and then knowing that Hillary Clinton, and the Democrats, railroaded Sanders go onto support Clinton blows my mind.
America has gone full-on batshit crazy. For me, watching America’s obsession and condemnation of another nation for supposedly interfering in its’ election is like listening to a car thief complain that someone stole their car. America is dropping bombs in what 7 countries now to pull off “regime change” irrespective of international law, has trained 11 Latin American dictators (largely overthrowing democracies to install them), it armed / trained / funded the Mujahideen which would go onto Al Qaeda and the Taliban, it cannot pass a simple bill to stop supporting terrorists, and has pulled off (or attempted to pull off) more coups than any other nation on earth – but still has the hubris and arrogance to point fingers and I find that truly astounding.
Yeah, ain’t they stinkers?
DiGenova and his wife, Victoria Ann Toensing, are long time adversaries of the Clintons and are Republican hacks. He says nothing that diminishes the charge that Russia interfered in the US election. In fact, Mueller has charged the Russian troll farm with interfering in the US election to elect Trump. Using the typical lawyer tactic of raising doubt seems to be what diGenova is doing to undermine the Mueller investigation. It won’t work. If Trump colluded with the Russians, Mueller will probably uncover it.
The missing link is just what you pointed out on several occasions. How did the hacked emails get to WikiLeaks? There certainly was incentive for Russia and WikiLeaks to work together. Assange and Putin both opposed Clinton – and favored Trump. Putin certainly had the motive for helping to elect Trump who promised to improve relations with Russia. During the campaign, Trump threatened to defund NATO and sold himself as a non interventionist – a reference to the Syrian theater and Ukraine. Assange is a natural political ally of Russia. He considered HRC to be a war monger and opposed her for President. To Assange, she represented the establishment, “palled” with the neocons and was the centralizing cog in the “deep state”.
Assange is unabashedly anti-western. Assange accused the US government of interfering in Russia’s sphere of influence (Ukraine) and Assange had a show on RT which he used to spew anti-American rhetoric. RT representatives visited Assange in the Ecuador embassy in London. Additionally, Assange lied when he said he would turn himself into the US government if Manning was released. Assange has said the DNC hack was an inside job, but has never provided any proof. This is simply another Assange lie. US intelligence accused Assange of colluding with RT – which is funded by the Russian government and serves as a propaganda outlet for the government.
In every sense, the Russian government and WikiLeaks were natural partners on interfering in the US election.The Russian government almost certainly insulated Assange from the source of the emails, but Assange’s attempts to blame an insider in the campaign makes one wonder if he colluded outright with the Russian government.
Thomas – I would normally ignore your comments, but I couldn’t let this pass.
The forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his team make clear that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked- get it? In other words it must have been an inside job, and in this regard it is curious that our storied and incorruptible FBI – and Special Prosecutor who seems to have a limitless mandate- have been so silent about the murder of Seth Rich, who was reported to have been in touch with Wikileaks. Nor, I guess, have you carefully read the passage from Obama’s last press conference cited by Ray where, in addition to questioning how or from where Wikileaks received the emails, Obama in his careful way referred to it as a leak. You might also pay heed to former British Ambassador Craig Murray’s statement that he personally met with the leakers or those closely associated with them. I’d match Murray’s integrity against any in our government.
As for Assange, IMHO he is a citizen of the world and advocate of REAL democracy, REAL human rights, REAL transparent governance- and REAL, honest journalism with 100% accuracy, and verified by the very documents of the government itself. It is a concept foreign to those whom you so passionately defend.
Let’s divorce diGenova’s politics as you view them from the logic and facts in his argument which are solid.
As for interfering in the US election, I suspect enough of the deplorables, i.e., the 99% (including those who might have normally voted Democrat) disagree with you and instead point to the bungling efforts of the DNC leadership and their allies in the Administration and Intelligence Services (CIA, FBI, et al) to foist a damaged candidate on the electorate – or the more long term structural problem of those in the Deep State never allowing the electorate to have a real choice of candidates- as the real interference in our electoral process.
Great rebuttal, and spot-on!
Russiagate is bullshit!!
Go Ray!!!
The late Robert Parry encapsulates this issue very well. He penned an article on December of 2017 stating “A curious feature about the Russia-gate “scandal” is that its proponents ignore the growing number of moments when their evidence undercuts their narrative. Instead, they press ahead toward a predetermined destination in much the way that true-believing conspiracy theorists are known to do.” I rather believe in Mr. Parry’s integrity and honest reporting over what the US media are spewing showing no prove at all. Even many democratic leaders have agreed that “rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare.” The more a rational person reads about Russia gate outside the national media, the better informed he or she is. For instance, I read that the Harvard-Harris national poll found a big disconnect between the Russia obsession of Democratic Party elites in Washington and voters around the country. Food for though ” Nothing dies quicker than a new idea in a closed mind”
As for Cenk Uygur (and others like him) that Trump does Putin’s bidding at some level simply does not square with the facts. In fact, Putin should ask for his money back. Every one of Trump’s major appointees in foreign policy has been openly and overtly anti-Putin, anti-Russian. Newsweek reported that Tillerson was against lifting Ukraine/Crimea sanctins when he first joined the Trump administration. Very soon after, Exxon was denied an exception to those sanctions to work with Russia on Arctic oil drilling. Tillerson just recently was against one of thee biggest, if not thee biggest, energy project Russia has with the Germany which is Nord Stream 2. Tillerson made the announcement with the Poles who want sanctions applied to Nord Stream 2. After a year or so, there is simply no evidence based on actual actions that points to anybody in the Trump administration being a Putin lackey. In fact just the opposite.
Also, Cenk before the article was an absolutely unhinged Russiangator conspiracy mongering. In one segment on youtube, Cenk attacked both Putin and Trump with a string of homophobic slurs that one would more likely find coming out of the mouth of a rabid gay basher. Last segment of Young Turks I ever watched.
Yep the meeting in the hotel, etc, are pure fabrications. And has anyone mentioned how hilariously stupid it is for a former “intelligence” guy like you to be questioning the integrity of the work or of Steele? To read your garbage Putin has more than he. What I can’t figure out is if the deep state was so dead set against Trump and his presidency why they allowed people like Comey to stay silent on his being investigated while trumpeting the HC stuff as opposed to bullhorning the Russiafgate stuff prior to the election, or how the Comey types not being part of the “deep state” conspiracy garbage that conduct would suggest fits into the conspiracy idiocy? And since when did isolated Russian citizens with no attachments to the gov take such an interest in the American elections that they’d do the demonstrated probing/hacking etc. Are Mueller’s indictments in the past and those to be presented in the future regarding such to be seen as fabricated and baseless, evidence-free garbage, and why is it unreasonable or illogical to contend that Putin/the KGB had their fingers in that pie? Unreasonable would be an expectation that they wouldn’t cover their tracks, no? You are as FOS as your https://www.mediamatters.org/tags/joseph-digenova dishonorable and shameful source, https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2016/01/06/benghazi-fabricator-demands-hillary-clinton-ind/207808 and still suffering from and reacting to this https://www.democracynow.org/2011/2/18/ex_cia_analyst_ray_mcgovern_beaten. I share your loathing of HC, but I don’t let it cloud my judgement or push me to become the embarrassment you now are to many of us.
When it comes to a sleazy Trump – Russia connection the onus is on Trump. That Trump is in hock to Russian financiers/mobsters is probably true. If Putin could leverage this to help Russia by, say, having the sanctions lifted, shouldn’t be a surprise. To conflate this relationship to the point where we are on the brink of war with Russia is a crazy mistake. If the Russians “suggested” Tillerson over Romney and Trump acquiesced that’s on Trump, not Russia. Again, if we want to get Trump and his cronies, by all means, go after his larcenous actions but the neo-conservtive establishment are taking advantage by pushing the Russia hacked our democracy bullshit – protesting way to much – in order to advance their agenda which is to keep selling arms and controlling the world’s resources to help their financiers/mobsters who are not in Russia but on Wall Street
Thanks, Ray!! I was shocked when I read Mayer’s article. I noticed she works hard to generate sympathy for Steele. Russiagate reminds me of old psychology research on peer pressure. All the “students” in a classroom were confederates except for one. Two lines are drawn on the blackboard. One is clearly longer than the other. When the teacher asks students which is longest all the confederates raise their hands when the teacher points to the shortest line. Eventually, the subject complies with everyone else’s sense of reality. I was raised by a psychopathic father and Russiagate reminds me of him. He lied to knock me off balance emotionally and intellectually, to control me, to cover his own pedophilia, and to turn everyone I loved against me. Psychopaths will do anything to “win” including massive mind control! AKA mindfuck! AKA MKULTRA!!!
I used to have great respect for Ray McGovern. He’s clearly gone over the edge and lost any sense of perspective, and any rational analytical ability. He’s wrong on every count, and he should be ashamed of himself.
Please provide some evidence to support your claim. I still have great respect for Ray McGovern, and rational analytical ability is always based on evidence. Is it possible your “perspective” is skewed by baseless MSM propaganda?
“Wrong on every count”? Could you be more specific, and tell us why he is wrong in each case?
How is it Mueller can’t find Trump guilty of something larcenous? Cenk did some devastating reports on this a while back. He ripped off all those Trump U students and has mobsters laundering money in his apartments. If they really wanted to go after Trump that’s where logic says to look and not at this nebulous, dangerous and obviously hard to prove Putin/Trump connection.
I don’t rule out the possibility that that in fact is what Mueller is doing.
Think about this a while. If Mueller goes after Trump’s economic record, how many others are open to the same accusation who could be found guilty if Trump is condemned? it would open the entire sham system to see we have given away trillions to these murderous scumbags. Trump is merely one example, and our banks and multi-nationals carry on in worse fashion.
Once it was said that if you have a racist society, you get a racist government. In that light, if you have a criminal society…
For the record, Marcy Wheeler is skeptical of Mayer’s claims:
https://mobile.twitter.com/emptywheel/status/970657001968734208
(I haven’t read her other Russiagate writing, though.)
For one, Wheeler has never seemed to have read Bill Binney’s forensics on the DNC- and she’s done a hatchet job on Craig Murray. For example, you might read this:https://www.emptywheel.net/2017/11/07/about-the-timing-of-the-binney-meeting/. Like a porker trained to snuff out truffles she sometimes comes up with real nuggets, but on this issue she’s been missing a wheel- and doesn’t know it.
Yesterday, Zero Hedge called it “the Russia Maddow Show.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-06/how-us-establishment-lies-through-its-teeth-war-against-russia
After a year-long temper tantrum about election fraud, you would think that corporate media would rush to support Sen. Tulsi Gabbard’s Paper Ballot bill that was just introduced, which would be the most secure way to ensure integrity in upcoming elections. Let’s see if she gets invited to any news shows to promote it…
Smokescreen, smokescreen, smokescreen: Forgotten in all this happy horseshit is the very effective and illegal Republican efforts at minority voter disqualification (Crosscheck, voter id and gerrymandering). That is the real meddling.
We must remember that the emails-leaked not hacked- reveal the internal corruption of the Democrats in sandbagging Sanders; who polls show could have beaten Trump. But oh no The Hillary was entitled to the presidency; they couldn’t let anyone spoil that-except, it turns out, herself.
This whole sludge pit just distracts from the abysmal depths of corruption our political system has slid to. No wonder it is being hyped so enthusiastically by all the stakeholders, i.e. the two parties, the corporate media and the Deep State intelligence community.
Sanders keeps sandbagging himself.zionism is his doom.
Paul G: your perceptions are spot-on…In the end, the two parties worship at the same alter of American exceptionalism
Amy Goodman (Democracy Now, a moniker which now seems hypocritical) has most certainly been compromised descending into a tub of Russiagate kool aide. Aside from Ray’s reference she is now beating the one sided drums of the Syrian war with so called experts spouting the horrors of the Assad regime without fully explaining the role of ISIS in creating the horrific situation in E. Ghouta.
This sort of reporting, aside from being one sided, plays into the hands of the R2P’s; revealing her to be a superficial liberal void of in depth analysis; and probably concerned more with her viewership’s financial support than accuracy. Too bad she used to do some good work.
There is a petition at rootsaction in regards to DN: https://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/democracy-now-is-wrong-on-syria
Democracy Now has become completely controlled by George Soros Enough said.
Yesterday, coincidentally to Ray’s article, I was listening to KPFA on my car radio and as they were having a fund drive i switched over to NPA where Terry Gross was interviewing none other than Jane Mayer who was discussing her New Yorker article(and pushing her new book). The irony was that Mayer had previously published an exposé on the Koch brothers and Koch industries is now a major sponsor of NPA (a.k.a National Propaganda Radio). Afterwards I thought I’d do a “good citizen” deed and send Gross an e-mail with a link to one of CN”s articles refuting Russia-gate but no personal e-mail appears on NPR’s website. Instead, listeners can contact the program “Fresh Air”. It seems these purveyors of disinformation are now cocooned off by their handlers so that no dissenting opinion can reach them
The Kochs are pretty shrewd. Not content to just fund and foment the reactionary media and think tank nexus, they are moving into compromising “liberal” media. Maybe they appreciated NPR running interviews with CATO and Heritage people as well as neo-conservatives. Of course NPR has gotten so bad I call it “Fox News for liberals”.
One of my pet peeves with them has been the use of inappropriate affect. There is one in particular; but I have heard other presenters also describe horrific events in a cheery tone as if they were describing a picnic. They have some real “plastic fantastic” people on board.
Just over the last four or five days I’ve had two liberal minded friends/acquaintances condescend and assure me that Putin interfered in the 2016 Prez election. It’s getting nauseating, they lap up everything MSNDC feeds them and think themselves omniscient.
i know what you mean. A lot of the people I know in this mindset are still under the spell of the corporate press. They refuse to even consider reading any “alternative” press. I guess because they’re afraid it’s infiltrated by the Russian government.
As much as the Establishment says it wants Trump gone, he has been the greatest gift to their desire of controlling public perceptions and stifling decent they could have asked for.
I live in Rachel Maddow’s home area when she’s not in New York. She has a cult like following here. Consequently, if you dare question Russiagate, you will be met with utter contempt. The problem is the people who are convinced of their omniscience as you accurately put it, are almost guaranteed to have zero historical context with which to base their perceptions of current events. It makes them easy pickings for the Rachel Maddows of the world.
Adroit points Ms. Gagnon. Keep up the good fight.
Not to come off as smug or self-righteous but every once in a while I think the only sane folks left are people who write for CR or comment on CR.
This draws attention to the extent to which political views are formed by social pressure and social rewards. The first goal in persuasion is to determine whether the audience hopes for social rewards or other benefits from a rich or powerful person, or from a social or work group that will shun them and deny benefits if they disagree. “We’re Republicans” or “we’re Democrats” is a warning to their fellows against dissent, a threat, and a claim to benefits from, or leadership of the group. I recall Rhesus monkeys behaving much the same way with an unusual visitor among their cages.
Drew Hunkins,
I wonder if your liberal minded friends/acquaintances ever cared to know What U.S. has been doing for the last seventy years, interfering in elections in countries all over the world, overthrowing democratically elected governments, and their leaders, and taking care some of those leaders for good.
And here we are talking about 13 Russian private citizens buying ads worth about $50,000 on social media outlets, mostly after 2016 election. The total annual advertising revenue of these companies Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others is in hundreds of billions of dollars. It is really a laughable joke, if it were not the case that they are demanding action from Trump; start a war with Russia over it. It is sickening, and nauseating as you said.
These corporate liberals and their other accomplices have turned this country into a lunatic asylum. Amy Goodman, Cenk Uygur, and most of these so called progressive liberals have become part of the swamp in Washington. Trump is a cash cow they are going to go on milking and at the end, in a year or two, in all probability there is not going to be any sites like CN allowed – all dissenting voices will be muzzled.
while I have no use for the neocon/neo liberal apologists at The New Yorker and Cenk Uygur, the Russia gate things is demonstrably much larger than the limited examinations provided by Consortium news.It’s kind of moved on to places like Qatar for instance…
Will, “larger” does not mean better evidence or argument, which you will find among intelligent dissenters.
To offer a useful alternative viewpoint, it is best to offer links, quotes, and/or careful observations.
Even the incorrect view is valuable when well argued and evidenced. Otherwise, those whose conclusion proves correct have not themselves been correct in method or intent.
Demonstrate.
Will Trump call for grand jury investigations that DiGenova advocates? Those who see his independent streak, if it exists, as dangerous have boxed I’m in and hopes that he would articulate alternate foreign policies, public and private, have all but vanished. Like any bad investment, many of us keep hoping that it isn’t what it really is, that the real Trump will emerge, one rational, articulate and gutsy. Oh well,. Enjoyed reading DiGenova’s speech at Hillsdale College. Somehow, someone has to strike a telling blow against the corruption that has steadily grown in our political system. Telling is the key word.
I wish Trump would fire Sessions and name Joseph DiGenova as his new Attorney General. He has the bonefides and he would not only DRAIN the Swamp on the 7th Floor of The Hoover Building. He would build a glorious new Justice Department based on TRUTH, JUSTICE and the American Way (what ever THAT is! :)
Honest analysis like this, from someone with the experience needed for credibility, is sadly hard to come by these days.
For roughly 25 years, I’ve observed the Clintons and their associates from inside the federal government and without. It strikes me as laughable that anyone would expect the Clinton camp (or, indeed, any government elite) to hire an investigator likely to provide a full and honest report about a critic, be that a political opponent or whistleblower. It just isn’t done.
The most fundamentally important thing for the general American public to understand about Russiagate is that this is just the latest play in an American Empire project that dates back to around 2003-2005, when Putin rejected the Boris Yeltsin-era policies of Russian integration with the Wall Street/London/Brussels economic hegemon. The two key historical events that mark the beginning of this era are
(1) Putin’s rejection of ExxonMobil’s bid for a controlling interest in Yukos, the major Russian oil company, which would have reduced Russia to the status of a subject of the American Empire, with no control over its own natural resources.
(2) Putin’s arrest of the Russian oligarch with the closest ties to Wall Street, i.e. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which by comparison would be like the US throwing Warren Buffett and Bill Gates in jail for tax evasion; Putin also exiled the two oligarchs who had worked closely with the US to engineer Yeltsin’s political comeback in the 1996 Russian election, Gusinsky and Berezovsky. (Berezovsky is also interesting as he is a plausible suspect in the Litvinenko polonium poisoning story).
At that point, the American Empire project opened up the eastern Europe energy wars, attempting to control pipeline access to Europe, the goal being to cut off Russian pipelines while building new pipelines to regimes in Central Asia and the Middle East that were Empire members in good standing.
The 2008 Georgian-Russia war (instigated by Condi Rice, Chevron Director) was one of the first major salvos in this game. The Syrian regime change game c.2010 instigated by Hillary Clinton was directly related to Assad taking the Russian Gazprom / Iranian pipeline deal over the one promoted by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and Israel and the US. The Ukrainian coup effort led by Victoria Nuland was about controlling the Russian gas pipelines to Europe. See Robert Parry on how US media covered that coup attempt:
https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/13/the-mess-that-nuland-made/
This latest Russiagate story, based on dishonest claims about who leaked the DNC and Podesta emails to Wikileaks and “social media manipulation” of American public opinion, is just more of the same.
As far as the Republicans, they’re the Party of Fossil Fuel executives, and the Democrats, they’re the Party of Wall Street shareholders, and these (along with the arms contractors, the telecoms, the power utilities, the pharmaceuticals, etc.) are the powers behind the throne, the main financial beneficiaries of the Empire project (which does nothing to help ordinary citizens, quite the opposite, as job outsourcing to neocolonial outposts shows).
So if you ask, “who does Rex Tillerson work for” the answer is ExxonMobil, Chevron, etc.; if you ask, “who does Hillary Clinton work for” the answer is Goldman Sachs, Blackrock, JP Morgan, etc.
I’d guess Cenk Uygur and Jane Mayer understand all this, but just want Trump out and see this as a political opportunistic moment to do so, and they also believe the Obama neoliberal route is preferable to the Bush neoconservative route, but I don’t see any of them thinking seriously about a post-imperial multipolar world, which is certainly coming down the pike; it’s as certain as the downfall of the Soviet Union under its own weight of corruption and incompetence was.
Excellent comments! Definitely not nonsense.
Great piece! Thanks.
nonsense factory,
You have illuminated many points extremely well. I want to add that there is much more to it than oil and gas pipelines, and all that. It is the panic of The West of losing hegemony in the World after almost five centuries of complete domination in the World, and plundering their resources. The West does not want to accept the multi-polar World.
Then there is this Full Spectrum Dominance and PNAC, the American ideology. These two are the main factors that is behind all these Wars and Mayhem in the World. In response to Iraqi parliament asking that all foreign troops should leave Iraq, the Secretary General of NATO Stoltenberg’s statement today that NATO will stay in Iraq.
This is an exceptionally clear, concise history of the ongoing war that Washington has been waging against Russia and its interests during the entirety of Putin’s leadership, and an equally impressive outlining of the true nature of the factions vying for power in DC. The contest is over pure, naked power that has absolutely nothing to do with freedom, democracy, what is right, wrong, moral or immoral, nor even over anything that can be factually established as having actually taken place.
By Mr. Factory’s spot-on analysis, Wall Street is vying with the Oil Patch for the coveted power to rule the entire world, every last square inch of it, which means, at least as a first step, taking down the ostensibly elected president at any cost. This objective may still be considered payback for Bushdaddy’s unanticipated loss of the presidency to Slick Willy and the subsequent eight-year hunting of the president during the 90’s, culminating in an unsuccessful impeachment trial, probably deterred in the late stages by a handful of GOP moderates like Arlen Spector who worried that an overthrow of the government on charges unrelated to performance of duty might be perceived as bad form by the public. The “politics of personal destruction” as the phenomenon was called at the time has never abated, it’s only grown more virulent, with little or no regard to collateral damage to the collective well-being of the country.
As is frequently stated by many, the real objective of the Mueller witch hunt is to provide ammunition for Trump’s impeachment, not to get to any truth or punish Russia for doing what the spooky minions of our Deep State engage in routinely 24/7/52/365. The “truth” is made up as they go along and Russia is punished irrespective of its deeds. This struggle for dominance by the two major political factions, now defined mostly on the basis of tribalism rather than their nearly identical ideology or tactics, has so escalated that, I think, if the Democrats sweep the congressional elections this November, as the polls presently suggest, and seize the majority in both chambers, impeachment proceedings are a surety, and votes for and against removal from office will not be contingent in the slightest upon any actual evidence. It will be a raw power play with the last pretenses of objectivity, fairness and justice in the halls of American governance just thrown into the swale, as in any other kleptocracy run by organised crime.
Great insight. Of course we all know that the Iraq war was all about oil. There have been many respected military analysts such as Michael T Clare who have written books like Clares’ “Blood and Oil” which outline the mechanics of strategy and tactics the US uses to secure the free flow of petroleum to the US. The premise of the book is we have decided to be the policemen of the World in order to ensure that the flow of oil to our country will never be interrupted. His other book “Resource Wars” had similar conclusions.
Rupert Murdoch said that he supported the invasion of Iraq because oil at $35 a barrel was better than any tax break. Do we have to wonder why Fox news watchers revealed in a poll that 87% of them believed that Saddam Husein was responsible for 9/11?
So they led us by the nose to war, secured their oil and regrouped to pass legislation which gave them the best tax break ever. Turns out they can have their cake and eat it too.
Currently the media is urging Trump to do “something” about the “something” that Russia did while warning him that just because the intelligence got it wrong on Iraq, past instances of intelligence agencies telling lies to support war should not influence Trump’s judgement on the current set of intelligence against Russia. They argue that the set of circumstances is not the same and Trump is foolish to compare Iraq with Russia as far as bad intelligence information goes.
But it is the same. It is the same intelligence misinformation delivered to Congress which has them investigating Trump for failing to play along with the war mongers. The NY Times in an Op Ed by the editorial board on 2/18/2018 published a story “Stop Letting the Russians Get Away With It, Mr. Trump” which was triumphant over the Mueller indictments even though the indictments revealed no collusion between the Trump Campaign and Russians. The Editorial Board chastised Trump and said, “For starters, he could impose the sanctions on Russia that Congress overwhelmingly passed, and that he signed into law, last summer. Of course, this would require him to overcome his mysterious resistance to acting against Russia and to focus on protecting his own country.”
Based on what? No evidence? The Russian government was not indicted by Mueller. Why are they insisting Trump enacts new sanctions and enforces previous sanctions against Russia when the Russian government is not even mentioned in the Mueller indictments?
Trump could just as easily be described as a president erecting a firewall protecting Russia against unsubstantiated allegations despite the uproar to “do something” against Russia risking his popularity in a windstorm of anti Russia media stories because no allegations or indictments outlined in the Mueller Indictments are against Russia and to take such actions would be unfounded at the present time based on the lack of evidence.
But no, Instead the media despite any evidence condemn Trump for not tying Russia up to a stake and piling a heap of wood at the base and lighting it on fire despite no revelations from Mueller that the Russian government was behind it or that members of the Trump campaign or Trump administration knew anything about Russian influence by a single corporation and 13 Russian citizens who were employed by the corporation to buy ads and post information on the internet which were designed to portray Hillary Clinton in a negative light and Donald Trump in a positive light.
So who is responsible for fake news? The NY Times or Russia? Possibly both or just one but based on the historical record the NY Times is certainly a chief suspect in the light of its past history of sponsoring lies which led up to the Iraq war.
The warnings and exclamations by the NY Times that they were right all along by claiming that Mueller’s indictments prove their case ignore much of the text of the indictments.
The NY Times spins Muller’s conclusion that only “unwitting” members of the Trump campaign who knew nothing about the concealed identities of Russians who concealed their true identities into a new allegation by the NY Times
The new allegations by the NY Times follows.
Mr. Trump’s defenders, desperate to exculpate him, seized on a single word — “unwitting””. “unwitting” — that the indictments describe certain “members, volunteers and supporters of the Trump campaign involved in local community outreach” who had interacted with the Russians.
I am fairly sure that if you are unwittingly deceived by any person or persons you are not a member of a “conspiracy” if the concealed identity persons who contact you are hiding their identity but yet have some relationship to you. If that were the case we would lock up everyone who had a contact with a spy claiming they were colluding with spies.
Instead what is revealed is that after a year of investigations the best that Mueller can come up with is that unwitting members of Trumps campaign had some contacts with Russians with concealed identities who were impersonating US citizens.
That is the reason for lack of evidence that there are no indictments against the Russian government or indictments based on alleged “collusion” with the Russian government by any person affiliated with the Trump campaign or administration in the indictments handed down by Mueller.
But you would not get that impression based on the fake stories in the fake media.
This insane article by the Editorial Board of the NY Times fits the definition of a witch trial and is about as fair.
Very good points. I noticed in the news today that Ukraine is nationalizing all of Gazprom’s assets in their country. Guess that is their answer to paying their debts to Gazprom. Back in the days of Sparta and Persia – Sparta borrowed a huge amount of money from Persia to build warships. When they couldn’t pay them back – they began a war with Persia and won. We will see how this one turns out.
I am of the opinion that it would make the most sense to allow eastern Ukraine to be their own country with ties to Moscow. Russia would get the buffer that they want – and the war with the fascists in Kiev would end.
There is a huge change coming. It appears that we do not have very many leaders who can think beyond the end of their noses. We will see how it all turns out.
jesus, that’s enough with russia you guys. ok we get it, the media overdo it but so do you. every other article for the last 6 months is about russia and putin. we get it. move on…
Just move on to nuclear war?
Consortium News can “move on” as you say, but our political establishment will not. Russiagate is far too valuable. It helps feed our military machine and will ultimately be used to crush dissent. The political establishment got caught with their pants down in 2016 with the popularity of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. They’re not going to let that happen again.
Move on to what ? Friends whom I thought were sensible and well-informed are posting articles attacking Trump for not “doing something” about Russia. Doing what? Put our new nuclear policy into play (using nukes is justified if the enemy engages in cyberwar)? Articles like this unfortunately are swamped by the tsunami of anti-Russia “reporting,” and it’s hard to see how this has a good ending.
Helen maybe tell your friends, as I will tell mine, that Trump should do another ABM Treaty. You may also tell your friends to put the blame for Russia advancing their nuclear weapon program, due to the Project for the New American Century mantra whereas Dick Cheney was the lead runner with that ball. So the U.S. canceling the ABM Treaty back in 2002 is thoroughly a Bush/Neocon project. What our friends must do, is they must join people such as ourselves, and demand that our U.S. Government replace these Neocon’s with diplomats who would provide the world with a Soft U.S. Diplomacy. This could work, but first we have to come to grips with where we are at now, and to how we may peacefully go forward. After all this is what the world has been waiting for. Good luck with your friends, as I will need that luck with mine. Joe
Here ya go John, here is an item getting no news coverage by any media what so ever. It’s important to know as well….enjoy. Joe
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/07/injustice-at-sea-the-irradiated-sailors-of-the-uss-reagan/
i don’t know what this link have to do with anything bro. all i’m saying is that these people here see nothing wrong with russia, period. in a recent article, the one about msnbc, they complain that it has devoted too much time on russia/gate and not enough on yemen. very true and i agree. but how much time have they devoted on the killings of thousands of civilians by the russians in syria? where are the articles about ghouta? this not about russia/gate. to them putin can do/has done no wrong. this site is clearly on the take by some russian loby. rt couldn’t have done a better job.
Okay, I sincerely wanted to offer you a change of pace. I agree this Russia, Russia, Russia, stuff is all to annoying. Again I wasn’t trying to be a wise guy with you I thought I could throw you a life saver, because sometimes we all need a little diversity away from the noise. Joe
joe, saying that russia did not at all interfere in the us elections is like saying the us did not interfere in the ukrainian uprising or even the dictatorships of central america. it would be naive, to put it mildly, to suggest that america, russia, china, india among others, do not intervene / interfere in other countries’ elections, they do not engage in regime change campaigns, they don’t outright topple governments. the question here is not “if” but to “what extent”. and i must agree that it has been overestimated and the hand overplayed by the media, but two wrongs do not make one right! doing just the same thing here, you reduce your standards to that of cnn.
the other point i tried to make about this site is that, regardless russia’s interference or not, c n are treating putin as a saint and russia as the bastion of political freedom and democracy. show me one single article in this site critical of him. show me one single article critical of him. he is the powerful and just ivanhoe that we should not only respect but also fear. just read the very recent article about putin’s speech on russian tv a few days ago. the conclusion by c n was that the us and international media purposely downplayed his announcement as per russia’s new and improved weapons and doubted not only their capabilities that their very existence. and although they doubted their own knowledge on weaponry as well, they concluded that ( i paraphrase) why would a realist like putin lie about something so important. they (c n) even when so far as to credit putin with a flawless background of telling the truth about matters of national secutity!
we are talking here about a speech that was in effect part of his re-election campaign!! surely he wouldn’t lie
You are right John about everything. When it comes to Putin I realize he is no saint, although I only read his speeches and seen a few interviews and he comes off more stable than most leaders, as our politicians sound like chicken hawks who are going to get everybody killed. We here probably should be more critical of Putin, but alongside our own collection of politicos Putin seems like a safer bet. Joe
” this site is clearly on the take by some russian loby.”
Care to provide any evidence? Other than a string of talking points.
Take a shot at drawing a clear connection between Assange and Putin and how the 2016 election was sabotaged in a substantive and meaningful way by them.
The stage is yours, best of luck.
No. Don’t move on as long as the MSNBCers and CNNers and NYTimesers and WashingtonPosters and HuffPoers and DailyKosers keep up with the non-stop McCarthyism of Russiagate.
We need someone, somewhere, to keep calling all this the bullshit it is.
Here we are going into our second year of these breaking news allegations, and so far we have nothing. Where others would have given up we Americans continue to claim there is a there there to it, but when we pull off another blanket there is still nothing there. I don’t know if pundits are being recruited to attack the Russians with these dead end allegations, but the high cost of blackmail, or career advancement in DC must have skyrocketed.
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/03/the-new-yorker-attempts-but-fails-to-boost-the-steele-dossier.html#more
I was about to post this link myself. Neither Jane Mayer nor Cenk Uygur have been on my reading list, so I know nothing at all about them. After a bit of searching Jane Mayer appeared to have a very respectable background, so why did she decide to jump off the deep end?
The only notion I can come up with involves her husband, a gentlemen who is a high-ranking but low-profile employee of the Neocon York Times – William B. Hamilton. Perhaps he was an agent in getting her to “drink the Kool-Aid”. Both Mr. McGovern and the Moon of Alabama blogger suggest the article was a disaster, so I’m inclined to believe them.
OT. Hey, Zach, are you a poli sci prof at NAU? If so, let’s talk.
Cenk was once pretty solid, particularly during the Bush years, but it became very apparent that the Clinton tentacles were reaching deep into The Young Turks, his popular news show. Last year, he received a $20 million buyout from Clinton’s associates, which removed any doubt of what happening to his show. Jimmy Dore is a spin-off of TYT who still has integrity intact and is quite good.
At this point, the only uncompromised Turkish – American pundit remaining is Sibel Edmonds, who makes it clear that Cenk is controlled opposition.
Deniz: not to split hairs but i believe Sibel Edmonds is more specifically an Iranian-Azerbaijani, fluent in both Farsi and Turkish. Funny that you should mention her as for a while I thought you may be the same person as you use her middle name “Deniz”.
Thanks BobH, I consider that a very big, but vastly underserved compliment.
Sibel is a Turkish name as is Deniz, her mother is Turkish and her mannerisms are quintessentially Turkish more so than Iranian; so, I officially claim her as a Turk.
Incidentally, so is Baklava.
AHHH, Deniz…well it is evident that you both manifest the supreme sagacity of any culture!
“Jimmy Dore is a spin-off of TYT who still has integrity intact and is quite good.”
Jimmy has a standing joke that people sell out for big salaries but he tells the truth and has a low salary- but if someone wants to make him rich he’ll start lying for them.
Is not it interesting that the presstituting Jane Mayer and Cenk Uygur have referenced some of the worst liars and fabricators? — Dearlove? Really?
The whole “progressive” pack, led by the wealthy presstitute Maddow, has been racing towards a supreme prize in dishonesty. Let them compete. This only makes their colors more obvious.
I can’t stand to listen to Maddow or any of her ilk, but I do enjoy knowing they are digging themselves deeper and deeper into the “Russia hacked the DNC” narrative so that when Assange or Kim Dotcom or SOMEONE comes forward with hard evidence that Seth Rich stole the DNC data with a freakin’ flash drive and sent it to Assange, all that filthy, lying DIRT will come piling in on them burying them with all their propaganda and lies.
Ef ‘em all.
And as far as Cenk goes, 20 Million dollar endowments go a long way in determining a faulty opinion.
The New Yorker recently published a decent piece by Mayer on our lovely vice president; I thought it must have been an accident as the New Yorker seems to be fulfilling every requirement of “bought journalism” whenever they publish articles on international affairs.
https://www.rt.com/usa/420653-sipher-russophobic-tweet-backlash/
Joe thanks. No kidding! But I sense a state of desperation, please read this by Craig Murray on the other side of the pond, especially the long, vibrant commentary. Much is happening this morning…
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk
Bob was there any particular article I was suppose to look at? Although each titled article I saw looked rather panicked. Let me know. Joe
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-07/dnc-hack-involved-russian-agents-within-democratic-party-unreleased-steele-memo
This is to important to pass up.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/07/the-cult-of-authority/
Joe, agreed. “The Cult of Authority” was just what I needed after my shock of seeing/hearing the “debate” between James Risen and Glenn Greenwald with Jeremy Scahill as moderator. They’ve all gone “over.” I was particularly shocked by G. Greenwald, who has always been a solid journalist, sliding over to “Russiagate.” Could barely believe my ears. It hurt a lot. When he didn’t say Assange said, many times, that there was no hacking, but rather a leak directly from the DNC, Glenn became a person I thought I’d never see. RR
Glenn didn’t slide over to Russiagate. He was clear in the debate that there is no evidence that the Russian government has done anything. The only thing he admitted was that some trolls at the St. Petersburg click bait factory posted stuff but that there is no proof they had any connection to the Russian government and no proof of collusion. There weren’t even discussing, at that point, the wikileaks disclosures, so his ‘admission” was not ‘sliding’ on that.
Glenn participated in the debate to call pure, 100 percent bullshit crap on Risen’s ‘dangerous’ (Glenn’s word for it) accusation of treason, even if Trump had colluded. Glenn was very upset about that and took Risen to task who had the same dumb-faced reaction all these Russiagaters have to logic. He basically admitted Glenn was right on that but then said, “But I still disagree.”
Any respect I had for Risen has gone down the drain and Glenn is responsible for that. So enough with the attacks on Glenn.
Thank you Miranda.
Joe,
Very good article by CJ Hopkins. Being a writer, he can really feel the pulse of the Society in his articles. After reading the comments and the linked articles, it seems like the Western Society itself is becoming like a members of a cult. Remember all the cults here; Moonies, followers of all these Yogies, and then this reverend Jim Jones and Jonestown in Guyana. And there were this deprogramming of Moonies and all that.
But, from all this programming/brainwashing of the people for the last two years, it seems like these Western Societies are looking more like Jones Cult followers. I doubt very much these Societies, I mean the followers, can be deprogrammed easily. We remember what happened at Jones town. It is not too far-fetched to think that the nuclear annihilation may be what is in store for the humanity on this beautiful planet.
We are in our second year of nothing because the media have brainwashed everyone who never believed Trump could win that given enough time and money Mueller will reveal the awful “truth” about Trump and Russia. The usual analogies offered are “peeling the onion” and “building it brick by brick.” And anyone who doubts this is “stupid” and/or “a Trump supporter.”
It was classic “public relations” in action, and it has all those who want to kill the electoral college and allow the popular vote winner to be president breathlessly hanging onto every overblown and deliberately misinterpreted snippet of “proof” that emerges with the unwavering belief Donald Trump will be wearing an orange jumpsuit before the end of the year.
Here is an article that explains how America’s long-term relationship with fake news goes all the way back to the Second World War:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/07/americas-long-history-of-fake-news.html
As politicians know only too well, the peddling of fake news in the United States is a phenomenon that has great potential to sway public opinion.
Who needs Russian trolls/bots when we have the CIA and Co.??!!
The umpteenth serving of the pro-Putin line. The spooks are still being spooked, which suggests that whatever deep, dark secret is in Russiagate has not yet come to light. I would certainly urge considerable scepticism in regard to anthing emanating from a former CIA agent.
Again, Thank you Ray McGovern. I love your analogy about being “lost in the woods” it is certainly easy for those of us who are naive about the world of the “Deep State” but I will go out on a limb here, prepared to be made a fool of, and say from the very moment I saw the interview of Joseph E. diGenova, who I did not know until this reportage was Council for The Church Committee, I believed him.
I will link that interview for readers like myself to judge.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48711.htm
Keep up the good work, we desperately need it at this point. Thank You.
And especially this:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-21/brazen-plot-exonerate-hillary-clinton-and-frame-trump-unraveling-says-former-fed
Regulars here please see Greg Maybury’s piece linked below and you will see what I truly think is the best word and graphic combination of The Truth available in the digital media. If this level of sophistication could be combined with advanced and secure commentary; I think a new era of Journalism could evolve…
http://poxamerikana.com/2018/03/07/all-fire-and-fury-in-ukraine/
So did I, and I’d suspected it for a long time.
Not sure how this part discredits Dearlove in any way?:
“Dearlove explained to Blair that President George W. Bush had decided to attack Iraq for regime change and that the war was to be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” Dearlove added matter-of-factly, “The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”
The discredit would be of those who did not report a manufactured excuse for war. Dearlove might have considered this to be his duty to his people, as UK would otherwise be drawn into war crimes. He might have leaked the information to whatever news media would publish it. A recommendation of Steele from Dearlove might well commend “superb” conformity rather than truthfulness.
The discredit would be of those who did not report a manufactured excuse for war. Dearlove might have considered this to be his duty to his people, as UK would otherwise be drawn into war crimes. He might have leaked the information to whatever news media would publish it. A recommendation of Steele from Dearlove might well commend “superb” conformity rather than truthfulness.
You feel matter-of-fact liars are credible ? He did not tell the truth to anyone but his partner in the lying.
Contrast what Dearlove failed to do with what Katherine Gun did. (See, for example, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/03/katharine-gun-iraq-war-whistleblower ) It is ironic that Hollywood is making a movie about Ms. Gun while perpetuating the same agenda and myths that Gun exposed.
I should not have associated the producers of the upcoming film with the Hollywood stereotype (e.g., of such films as “Zero Dark Thirty”), since the script had been circulating in Hollywood for years before it was picked up. (For another article on the film see: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/31/katharine-gun-observer-iraq-war-whistleblower-hollywood-film-official-secrets )
Hopefully, this film will change the public’s perception about whistleblowers and the faking of intelligence to create a pretext for war.
speaking of whistleblowers and the faking of intelligence, imo they don’t get much better or much closer to 9-11 than susan lindauer (second u.s. citizen to be prosecuted under the patriot act, spent a year in a military prison, threatened with a chemical lobotomy):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnn-jn_cvLo
In the meantime no one seems to question why IRAQ was on the U.S. hit list when they “knew” that 15 of the 19 “hijackers” were Saudi Arabian?
I never understood why the Saudi royalty were allowed to fly out of Los Angeles and JFK when the rest of our countries planes were GROUNDED??!!
Since the moment the first plane hit the WTC until NOW nothing has made any freakin’ sense.