Special Report: Many American liberals who once denounced McCarthyism as evil are now learning to love the ugly tactic when it can be used to advance the Russia-gate “scandal” and silence dissent, reports Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The New York Times has finally detected some modern-day McCarthyism, but not in the anti-Russia hysteria that the newspaper has fueled for several years amid the smearing of American skeptics as “useful idiots” and the like. No, the Times editors are accusing a Long Island Republican of McCarthyism for linking his Democratic rival to “New York City special interest groups.” As the Times laments, “It’s the old guilt by association.”
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wisconsin, who led the “Red Scare” hearings of the 1950s.
Yet, the Times sees no McCarthyism in the frenzy of Russia-bashing and guilt by association for any American who can be linked even indirectly to any Russian who might have some ill-defined links to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, in the same edition that expressed editorial outrage over that Long Island political ad’s McCarthyism, the Times ran two front-page articles under the headline: “A Complex Paper Trail: Blurring Kremlin’s Ties to Key U.S. Businesses.”
The two subheads read: “Shipping Firm Links Commerce Chief to Putin ‘Cronies’” and “Millions in Facebook Shares Rooted in Russian Cash.” The latter story, which meshes nicely with the current U.S. political pressure on Facebook and Twitter to get in line behind the New Cold War against Russia, cites investments by Russian Yuri Milner that date back to the start of the decade.
Buried in the story’s “jump” is the acknowledgement that Milner’s “companies sold those holdings several years ago.” But such is the anti-Russia madness gripping the Establishment of Washington and New York that any contact with any Russian constitutes a scandal worthy of front-page coverage. On Monday, The Washington Post published a page-one article entitled, “9 in Trump’s orbit had contacts with Russians.”
The anti-Russian madness has reached such extremes that even when you say something that’s obviously true – but that RT, the Russian television network, also reported – you are attacked for spreading “Russian propaganda.”
We saw that when former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile disclosed in her new book that she considered the possibility of replacing Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket after Clinton’s public fainting spell and worries about her health.
Though there was a video of Clinton’s collapse on Sept. 11, 2016, followed by her departure from the campaign trail to fight pneumonia – not to mention her earlier scare with blood clots – the response from a group of 100 Clinton supporters was to question Brazile’s patriotism: “It is particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian-fueled propaganda, spread by both the Russians and our opponents about our candidate’s health.”
In other words, the go-to excuse for everything these days is to blame the Russians and smear anyone who says anything – no matter how true – if it also was reported on RT.
Pressing the Tech Companies
Just as Sen. Joe McCarthy liked to haul suspected “communists” and “fellow-travelers” before his committee in the 1950s, the New McCarthyism has its own witch-hunt hearings, such as last week’s Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google for supposedly allowing Russians to have input into the Internet’s social networks.
Executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.
Trying to appease Congress and fend off threats of government regulation, the rich tech companies displayed their eagerness to eradicate any Russian taint.
Twitter’s general counsel Sean J. Edgett told the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism that Twitter adopted an “expansive approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account.”
Edgett said the criteria included “whether the account was created in Russia, whether the user registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email address, whether the user’s display name contains Cyrillic characters, whether the user frequently Tweets in Russian, and whether the user has logged in from any Russian IP address, even a single time. We considered an account to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria.”
The trouble with Twitter’s methodology was that none of those criteria would connect an account to the Russian government, let alone Russian intelligence or some Kremlin-controlled “troll farm.” But the criteria could capture individual Russians with no link to the Kremlin as well as people who weren’t Russian at all, including, say, American or European visitors to Russia who logged onto Twitter through a Moscow hotel.
Also left unsaid is that Russians are not the only national group that uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is considered a standard script for writing in Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbo-Croatia and Ukraine. So, for instance, a Ukrainian using the Cyrillic alphabet could end up falling into the category of “Russian-linked” even if he or she hated Putin.
Twitter’s attorney also said the company conducted a separate analysis from information provided by unidentified “third party sources” who pointed toward accounts supposedly controlled by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), totaling 2,752 accounts. The IRA is typically described in the U.S. press as a “troll farm” which employs tech-savvy employees who combat news and opinions that are hostile to Russia and the Russian government. But exactly how those specific accounts were traced back to this organization was not made clear.
And, to put that number in some perspective, Twitter claims 330 million active monthly users, which makes the 2,752 accounts less than 0.001 percent of the total.
The Trouble with ‘Trolling’
While the Russia-gate investigation has sought to portray the IRA effort as exotic and somehow unique to Russia, the strategy is followed by any number of governments, political movements and corporations – sometimes using enthusiastic volunteers but often employing professionals skilled at challenging critical information or at least muddying the waters.
Couple walking along the Kremlin, Dec. 7, 2016. (Photo by Robert Parry)
Those of us who operate on the Internet are familiar with harassment from “trolls” who may use access to “comment” sections to inject propaganda and disinformation to sow confusion, to cause disruption, or to discredit the site by promoting ugly opinions and nutty conspiracy theories.
As annoying as this “trolling” is, it’s just a modern version of more traditional strategies used by powerful entities for generations – hiring public-relations specialists, lobbyists, lawyers and supposedly impartial “activists” to burnish images, fend off negative news and intimidate nosy investigators. In this competition, modern Russia is both a late-comer and a piker.
The U.S. government fields legions of publicists, propagandists, paid journalists, psy-ops specialists, contractors and non-governmental organizations to promote Washington’s positions and undermine rivals through information warfare.
The CIA has an entire bureaucracy dedicated to propaganda and disinformation, with some of those efforts farmed out to newer entities such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or paid for by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). NATO has a special command in Latvia that undertakes “strategic communications.”
Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project. Indeed, since the 1980s, Israel has pioneered many of the tactics of computer spying and sabotage that were adopted and expanded by America’s National Security Agency, explaining why the Obama administration teamed up with Israel in a scheme to plant malicious code into Iranian centrifuges to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program.
It’s also ironic that the U.S. government touted social media as a great benefit in advancing so-called “color revolutions” aimed at “regime change” in troublesome countries. For instance, when the “green revolution” was underway in Iran in 2009 after the reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Obama administration asked Twitter to postpone scheduled maintenance so the street protesters could continue using the platform to organize against Ahmadinejad and to distribute their side of the story to the outside world.
During the so-called Arab Spring in 2011, Facebook, Twitter and Skype won praise as a means of organizing mass demonstrations to destabilize governments in Tunisia, Egypt and Syria. Back then, the U.S. government denounced any attempts to throttle these social media platforms and the free flow of information that they permitted as proof of dictatorship.
Social media also was a favorite of the U.S. government in Ukraine in 2013-14 when the Maidan protests exploited these platforms to help destabilize and ultimately overthrow the elected government of Ukraine, the key event that launched the New Cold War with Russia.
Swinging the Social Media Club
The truth is that, in those instances, the U.S. governments and its agencies were eagerly exploiting the platforms to advance Washington’s geopolitical agenda by disseminating American propaganda and deploying U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, which taught activists how to use social media to advance “regime change” scenarios.
A White Helmets volunteer pointing to the aftermath of a military attack.
While these uprisings were sold to Western audiences as genuine outpourings of public anger – and there surely was some of that – the protests also benefited from U.S. funding and expertise. In particular, NED and USAID provided money, equipment and training for anti-government operatives challenging regimes in U.S. disfavor.
One of the most successful of these propaganda operations occurred in Syria where anti-government rebels operating in areas controlled by Al Qaeda and its fellow Islamic militants used social media to get their messaging to Western mainstream journalists who couldn’t enter those sectors without fear of beheading.
Since the rebels’ goal of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad meshed with the objectives of the U.S. government and its allies in Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, Western journalists uncritically accepted the words and images provided by Al Qaeda’s collaborators.
The success of this propaganda was so extraordinary that the White Helmets, a “civil defense” group that worked in Al Qaeda territory, became the go-to source for dramatic video and even was awarded the short-documentary Oscar for an info-mercial produced for Netflix – despite evidence that the White Helmets were staging some of the scenes for propaganda purposes.
Indeed, one argument for believing that Putin and the Kremlin might have “meddled” in last year’s U.S. election is that they could have felt it was time to give the United States a taste of its own medicine.
After all, the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin. And there were the U.S.-backed street protests in Moscow against the 2011 and 2012 elections in which Putin strengthened his political mandate. Those protests earned the “color” designation the “snow revolution.”
Time magazine cover recounting how the U.S. enabled Boris Yeltsin’s reelection as Russian president in 1996.
However, whatever Russia may or may not have done before last year’s U.S. election, the Russia-gate investigations have always sought to exaggerate the impact of that alleged “meddling” and molded the narrative to whatever weak evidence was available.
The original storyline was that Putin authorized the “hacking” of Democratic emails as part of a “disinformation” operation to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and to help elect Donald Trump – although no hard evidence has been presented to establish that Putin gave such an order or that Russia “hacked” the emails. WikiLeaks has repeatedly denied getting the emails from Russia, which also denies any meddling.
Further, the emails were not “disinformation”; they were both real and, in many cases, newsworthy. The DNC emails provided evidence that the DNC unethically tilted the playing field in favor of Clinton and against Sen. Bernie Sanders, a point that Brazile also discovered in reviewing staffing and financing relationships that Clinton had with the DNC under the prior chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
The purloined emails of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta revealed the contents of Clinton’s paid speeches to Wall Street (information that she was trying to hide from voters) and pay-to-play features of the Clinton Foundation.
A Manchurian Candidate?
Still, the original narrative was that Putin wanted his Manchurian Candidate (Trump) in the White House and took the extraordinary risk of infuriating the odds-on favorite (Clinton) by releasing the emails even though they appeared unlikely to prevent Clinton’s victory. So, there was always that logical gap in the Russia-gate theory.
President Donald Trump delivering his inaugural address on Jan. 20, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)
Since then, however, the U.S. mainstream narrative has shifted, in part, because the evidence of Russian election “meddling” was so shaky. Under intense congressional pressure to find something, Facebook reported $100,000 in allegedly “Russian-linked” ads purchased in 2015-17, but noted that only 44 percent were bought before the election. So, not only was the “Russian-linked” pebble tiny – compared to Facebook’s annual revenue of $27 billion – but more than half of the pebble was tossed into this very large lake after Clinton had already lost.
So, the storyline was transformed into some vague Russian scheme to exacerbate social tensions in the United States by taking different sides of hot-button issues, such as police brutality against blacks. The New York Times reported that one of these “Russian-linked” pages featured photos of cute puppies, which the Times speculated must have had some evil purpose although it was hard to fathom. (Oh, those devious Russians!).
The estimate of how many Americans may have seen one of these “Russian-linked” ads also keeps growing, now up to as many as 126 million or about one-third of the U.S. population. Of course, the way the Internet works – with any item possibly going viral – you might as well say the ads could have reached billions of people.
Whenever I write an article or send out a Tweet, I too could be reaching 126 million or even billions of people, but the reality is that I’d be lucky if the number were in the thousands. But amid the Russia-gate frenzy, no exaggeration is too outlandish or too extreme.
Another odd element of Russia-gate is that the intensity of this investigation is disproportionate to the lack of interest shown toward far better documented cases of actual foreign-government interference in American elections and policymaking.
For instance, the major U.S. media long ignored the extremely well-documented case of Richard Nixon colluding with South Vietnamese officials to sabotage President Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War peace talks to gain an advantage for Nixon in the 1968 election. That important chapter of history only gained The New York Times’ seal of approval earlier this year after the Times had dismissed the earlier volumes of evidence as “rumors.”
In the 1980 election, Ronald Reagan’s team – especially his campaign director William Casey in collaboration with Israel and Iran – appeared to have gone behind President Jimmy Carter’s back to undercut Carter’s negotiations to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran and essentially doom Carter’s reelection hopes.
There were a couple of dozen witnesses to that scheme who spoke with me and other investigative journalists – as well as documentary evidence showing that President Reagan did authorize secret arms shipments to Iran via Israel shortly after the hostages were freed during Reagan’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 1981.
However, since Vice President (later President) George H.W. Bush, who was implicated in the scheme, was well-liked on both sides of the aisle and because Reagan had become a Republican icon, the October Surprise case of 1980 was pooh-poohed by the major media and dismissed by a congressional investigation in the early 1990s. Despite the extraordinary number of witnesses and supporting documents, Wikipedia listed the scandal as a “conspiracy theory.”
Israeli Influence
And, if you’re really concerned about foreign interference in U.S. elections and policies, there’s the remarkable influence of Israel and its perceived ability to effect the defeat of almost any politician who deviates from what the Israeli government wants, going back at least to the 1980s when Sen. Chuck Percy and Rep. Paul Findley were among the political casualties after pursuing contacts with the Palestinians.
Then-Vice President George H.W. Bush with CIA Director William Casey at the White House on Feb. 11, 1981. (Photo credit: Reagan Library)
If anyone doubts how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has continued to pull the strings of U.S. politicians, just watch one of his record-tying three addresses to joint sessions of Congress and count how often Republicans and Democrats jump to their feet in enthusiastic applause. (The only other foreign leader to get the joint-session honor three times was Great Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill.)
So, what makes Russia-gate different from the other cases? Did Putin conspire with Trump to extend a bloody war as Nixon did with the South Vietnamese leaders? Did Putin lengthen the captivity of U.S. hostages to give Trump a political edge? Did Putin manipulate U.S. policy in the Middle East to entice President George W. Bush to invade Iraq and set the region ablaze, as Israel’s Netanyahu did? Is Putin even now pushing for wider Mideast wars, as Netanyahu is?
Indeed, one point that’s never addressed in any serious way is why is the U.S. so angry with Russia while these other cases, in which U.S. interests were clearly damaged and American democracy compromised, were treated largely as non-stories.
Why is Russia-gate a big deal while the other cases weren’t? Why are opposite rules in play now – with Democrats, many Republicans and the major news media flogging fragile “links,” needling what little evidence there is, and assuming the worst rather than insisting that only perfect evidence and perfect witnesses be accepted as in the earlier cases?
The answer seems to be the widespread hatred for President Trump combined with vested interests in favor of whipping up the New Cold War. That is a goal valued by both the Military-Industrial Complex, which sees trillions of dollars in strategic weapons systems in the future, and the neoconservatives, who view Russia as a threat to their “regime change” agendas for Syria and Iran.
After all, if Russia and its independent-minded President Putin can be beaten back and beaten down, then a big obstacle to the neocon/Israeli goal of expanding the Mideast wars will be removed.
Right now, the neocons are openly lusting for a “regime change” in Moscow despite the obvious risks that such turmoil in a nuclear-armed country might create, including the possibility that Putin would be succeeded not by some compliant Western client like the late Boris Yeltsin but by an extreme nationalist who might consider launching a nuclear strike to protect the honor of Mother Russia.
The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and “stop fascism.” But their contempt for Trump and their exaggeration of the “Hitler” threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons.
A Smokescreen for Repression
There also seems to be little or no concern that the Establishment is using Russia-gate as a smokescreen for clamping down on independent media sites on the Internet. Traditional supporters of civil liberties have looked the other way as the rights of people associated with the Trump campaign have been trampled and journalists who simply question the State Department’s narratives on, say, Syria and Ukraine are denounced as “Moscow stooges” and “useful idiots.”
The New York Times building in Manhattan. (Photo credit: Robert Parry)
The likely outcome from the anti-Russian show trials on Capitol Hill is that technology giants will bow to the bipartisan demand for new algorithms and other methods for stigmatizing, marginalizing and eliminating information that challenges the mainstream storylines in the cause of fighting “Russian propaganda.”
The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. “I don’t think you get it,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. “You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will.”
As this authoritarian if not totalitarian future looms and as the dangers of nuclear annihilation from an intentional or unintentional nuclear war with Russia grow, many people who should know better are caught up in the Russia-gate frenzy.
I used to think that liberals and progressives opposed McCarthyism because they regarded it as a grave threat to freedom of thought and to genuine democracy, but now it appears that they have learned to love McCarthyism except, of course, when it rears its ugly head in some Long Island political ad criticizing New York City.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
“It is absurd and an insult to argue that Russian propaganda efforts ‘deepen political and racial tensions in the United States,’ as proposed by Julia Ioffe in a recent article in the Atlantic.
“But the linking of the legitimate struggle of African/Black people in the United States against systemic oppression with ‘foreign’ influences has been a recurrent feature of the ideological and military containment strategy of the U.S. state ever since the Soviet Union emerged as an international competitor to the four hundred-year-old colonial/capitalist Pan-European project […]
“many black radicals gravitated to revolutionary Marxism, as both a critique of the Western capitalist dominance and a theory for disrupting that dominance.
“The complex and often contradictory relationship between Black radicals and the international communist movement did not, however, stop the U.S. state from suggesting that every oppositional movement on the part of African/Black people in the U.S. was communist inspired.
“From our agitation at the United Nations for human rights and against colonialism to what became known as the civil rights movement, the emerging national security state labelled our movement subversive and targeted our activists. Containment of the Soviet ‘threat’ abroad meant ideological and political containment domestically so that by the mid-fifties, targeted repression and the McCarthy hearings had the result of effectively de-internationalizing our movement for democratic and human rights and isolating various black radicals like Claudia Jones, W.E.B. Dubois, and Paul Robeson from the emerging civil rights movement.
“In fact, by the time of the Montgomery bus boycotts, most activists in the South were afraid to even mention the term human rights because it had been effectively associated with communist subversion and the Soviet Union.
“Today, the new McCarthyism is being led by centrist and liberal Democrats utilizing the almost comical notion that capitalist Russia possesses the power and influence to not only impact elections but also create racial tensions. And once again, Black opposition is being cast as somehow foreign influenced and, therefore, a security threat that justifies special targeted repression. […]
“It shouldn’t take a Ph.D. in social psychology or a deep understanding of psychological operations (psy-ops) to see the transparent lunacy of today’s McCarthyism. But in a culture where six capitalist multinational corporations control most of the news content, it is not surprising that the public’s attention would be diverted to the ongoing soap opera of Russiagate.”
Race, Repression and Russiagate: Defending Radical Black Self-Determination
By Ajamu Baraka
https://blackagendareport.com/race-repression-and-russiagate-defending-radical-black-self-determination
He Solved The DNC Hack. Now He’s Telling His Story For The First Time.
Less than a year before Marine Corps cyberwarrior Robert Johnston discovered that the Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee, he found they had launched a similar attack at the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
I don’t know why Mr. Parry keeps tilting at windmills. This article describes how a young genius who used to be in the Marines solved the mystery of the DNC leaks.
“associated with” – how much more certain can you be than that?
Johnston also investigated a hack of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
What more in the way of evidence is needed – a signed confession by Putin?
h**ps://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/he-solved-the-dnc-hack-now-hes-telling-his-story-for-the?utm_term=.dnneQEqjQ#.ly060emJ0
Now people are going to read stories like this:
CIA wrote code ‘to impersonate’ Russia’s Kaspersky Lab anti-virus company, WikiLeaks says
They’re going to wonder about the accuracy of all the fingers pointing at Putin and his gang.
Just remember this: Crowdstrike’s Robert Johnston had stellar grades in high school, and he was admitted into the Naval Academy in Annapolis. He wears glasses! A person like this could easily sort out the real from the fake.
It’s time Mr. Parry join the real world and admit that the Russians are responsible for everything from pimply adolescents to the spoiled milk I found in my refrigerator last week.
h**ps://www.rt.com/news/409376-cia-wrote-code-to-impersonate-kaspersky/
Regarding that last link, Mr. Parry may need to give some thought to adding the “rt.com” phrase to the forum “censor” software. Here’s why:
h**ps://www.rferl.org/a/russia-today-rt-justice-department-deadline-register-foreign-agent/28844886.html
He might be accused of being a foreign agent himself if he allows a REGISTERED entity to be posted here.
I’m pretty sure none of Israel’s tireless workers in the US are going to suffer any similar indignity.
11/09/2017 What an inside job of propaganda, laying another brick for tank treads to clank over as though a Fourth Reich assault on a down sized Russia, A.K.A., The Russian Federation, as this evening at an appropriate venue, Marines’ Memorial Theater, listened to Ex-Chair of the Democratic National Committee,Donna Brazile,tout her creep and dishonest book, “Hacks: The Inside Story of the Break-ins and Breakdowns That Put Donald Trump in the White House” that for her could be summarized as “Russia”, with “San Francisco Chronicle” Editor in Chief, Audre Cooper, on the nod raising cream puff questions hewing to the party line. Audience participation in raising telling questions was nil by design,except for one vetted written question that closed the meet, about a democratic candidate to run for POTUS in 2020, to which the former D.N.C. chair replied, “50” want to bees.
McCarthyism, as it is called, has to be reevaluated. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the availability of cold war documents it turns out that Joe McCarthy was correct in his main assertions that communist sympathizers in the State Department and other federal agencies worked tirelessly and successfully to deliver China to Mao and Yugoslavia to Tito. The Iron curtain contained the countries these agents delivered to Stalin.McCarthy’s problems were that he was a mid West Catholic. He was of the wrong religion representing the wrong region as Congress saw it.
What is happening now is not McCarthyism but a betrayal of the impartial watch dog role the media should play in a democratic society, along with the politicization of the FBI and the CIA. It is truly a witch hunt that has targeted innocent victims that the establishment feels threatened by. In fact they hate Trump is because he proved democracy can really work if the citizens use the power of the vote Democracy is a threat to the ruling establishment of Corporations, Wall Street, the banks and the military- industrial surveillance complex Even though Trump has done a 180 and now has embraced the perpetual war strategy of the neoconservatives he is still disliked for the fact that his win beat the establishment candidate. The very fact that he proved it can be done is a threaat to them.
This hysterical “Truther” troll shrieks that Rolling Stone magazine may be censored.
Notwithstanding “Truther” troll propaganda rhetoric, Rolling Stone “contributing editor” Thomas Dickinson doesn’t trouble himself with any actual journalism. It’s all about infotainment,
A champion of the so-called “resistance”, Dickinson foists his own propagandist “timeline” to distract from his conspicuous lack of jsubstantive investigation.
Dickinson breathlessly declares that George Papadopoulos is some sort of “key figure” in the purported “scandal”.
In fact, the real scandal of “Russia-gate” is increasing Israeli interference in the U.S. elections.
Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy resources.
Papadopoulos’ LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.
The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the neoconservative think tank in 2014.
In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications.
In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist movement embraced by the Israeli “settler” movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should focus on its “stalwart allies” Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to “contain the newly emergent Russian fleet”.
In another op-ed published in Ha’aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.
In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.
Israel’s coming planned military assault on Lebanon and Syria has a lot to do with natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.
Among its numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242, Israel annexed the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981.
Geopolitical researcher F. William Engdahl has discussed the energy resources in the Golan Heights, Israel, and Trump
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO30Mar2017.php
Engdahl notes “we might find ourselves in another war for oil in of all places the Golan Heights, this one a war involving Syria, Russia, Iran, Lebanon’s Hezbollah on one side and Israel and Rex Tillerson’s 68 nation ‘anti-ISIS coalition’ on the other side, another senseless war over control of oil.”
But “Truther” troll minds are not “open” to actual facts.
Hey, good point, Mild-ly Facetious!
Clear critical thinking must accompany free speech, however, and irrationality seems to have beset Americans, too stuck in the mud of identity politics. Can they get out? I have hopes that a push is coming from the new multipolar world Xi and Putin are advocating, as well as others (but not the George Soros NWO variety). The big bully American government, actually ruled by oligarchy, has not been serving its regular folks well, so things are falling apart. Seems like the sex scandals, political scandals especially of the Democrat brand, money scandals are unraveling to expose underlying societal sickness in the Disunited States of America.
It is interesting that this purge shakeup in Saudi Arabia is happening in 2017, one hundred years since the shakeup in Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution. So shake-ups are happening everywhere. I think a pattern is emerging of major changes in world events. Just yesterday I read that because “Russia-gate” isn’t working well, senators are looking to start a “China-gate”, for evidence of Trump collusion with Chinese oligarchs. Ludicrous. As Seer once said, “The Empire in panic mode”.
Patricia, thanks for the info on Sid Blumenthal, HRC and the selling of arms from Libya to ME jihadists, which seems to exonerate Chris Stevens from those dirty deeds and lays blame squarely at Blumenthal’s and Clinton’s doorstep; changes my thinking. And thanks to Robert Parry for continuing to push back at the participation of MSM and government players in the Orwellian masquerade being pulled on the sheeple.
Please don’t forget the 1917 Balfour Declaration.
Robert Parry You Nailed It!!!
I need to do a little research to see how far back you used the term “New McCarthyism” to describe the next cold war with Russia. It was about the same time the first allegations of a Trump-Russia conspiracy was floated by the MSM. I do not pretend to know how much airtime they spent covering their coverup for all that the MSM did to profit from SuperPacs. They have webed a weave that conspires to conceive to the tunes of billions of dollars spent to reprieve their intent to deceive us and distract us away from their investment in Donald Trump which was the real influence in the public spaces to gain mega profits from extorting the SuperPacs into spending their dollars to defeat the trumped up candidate they created and boosted. One has to look no further than the Main Stream Press (MSM) to find the guilty party with motive and opportunity to cash in on a candidacy which if not for the money motive would not pass any test of journalistic integrity but would make money for the Media.
The Russian Boogeyman was created shortly after the election and is an obvious attempt to shield and defend the actions of the MSM which was the real fake news covered in the nightly news leading up to the election which sought to get money rather than present the facts.
This is an example of how much power and influence the MSM has on us all to be able to upend a National election and turn around and blame some foreign Devil for the results of an election.
The Russians had little to do with Trumps election. The MSM had everything to do with it. They cast blame on the Russians and in so doing create a new Cold War which suits the power establishment and suitably diverts all of our attention away from their machinations to influence the last presidential election.
Win Win. More Nuclear Weapons and more money for the MIC and more money for all of the corporations who would profit from a new Cold War.
Profit in times of deceit make more money from those who cheat.
Things not talked about:
1. James Comey and his very real influence on the election has never entered the media space for an instant. It has gone down the collective memory hole. That silence has been deafening because he was the person who against DOJ advice reopened the investigation into Hillary Clinton and the Servergate investigation after it had been closed by the FBI just days before the election.
The silence of the media on the influence on the election by the reopening of James Comey’s Servergate investigation and how the mass media press coverage implicating Hillary Clinton (again) in supposed crimes (which never resulted in an indictment) influenced the National Election in ways that have never been examined by the MSM is a nail in the coffin of media impartiality.
Why have they not investigated James Comey? Why has the MSM instead created a Russian Boogeyman? Why was he invited to testify about the Russian connection but never cross examined about his own influence? Why is the clearest reason for election meddling by James Comey not even spoken of by the MSM?
This is because the MSM does not want to cover events as they happened but wants to recreate a alternate reality suitable to themselves which serves their interests and convinces us that the MSM has no part at all in downplaying the involvement of themselves in the election but wants to create a foreign enemy to blame.
It serves many interests. The MSM lies to all of us for the benefit of the MIC. It serves to support White House which will deliver maximum investments in the Defense Industry. It does this by creating a foreign enemy which they create for us to fear and be afraid of.
It is obvious to everyone with a clear eyed history of how the last election went down and how the MSM and the government later played upon our fears to grab more cash have cashed in under the present administration.
It is up to us to elect leaders who will reject this manipulation by the media and who will not be cowed by the establishment. We have the power enshrined in our Constitution to elect leaders who will pave the path forward to a better future.
Those future leaders will have to do battle with a media infrastructure that serves the power structure and conspires to deceive us all.
Gee, my father was born and raised in Russia. D’ya think I could get my name on the front page of the NYT? 15 minutes of fame! Gee-whiz, wowie!
If there is evidence, you should be able to provide some so that readers can analyze and discuss it.
Exactly what evidence has been provided that the Russian government manipulated the 2016 election?
Yes Joe. It is rather painful to watch as you said this Orwellian Tragedy playing out in the Country which has just about become a police state. For those of us who grew up admiring the Western Civilization starting with the Greeks and Romans, and then for its institutions enshrining Individual Rights; and its scientific, literary, and cultural achievements, it is as if it still happening in some dream, though it has been coming for some time now – more than two decades now at least. The System was not perfect but I think that it was good as it could get. The system had been in decline for four decades or so now.
From Robert Parry’s article:
“The warning from powerful senators was crystal clear. “I don’t think you get it,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, warned social media executives last week. “You bear this responsibility. You created these platforms, and now they are being misused. And you have to be the ones who do something about it. Or we will.”
Diane Feinstein’s multi-billionaire husband was implicated in those Loan and Savings scandals of Reagan and G.H.W. Bush Era and in many other financial scandals later on but Law did not touch him. He has a dual residency in Israel. These are very corrupt people.
Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Perle, Nulad-Kagan clan, Kristol, Gaffney . . . the list goes on; add Netanyahu to it. In the Hollywood Harvey Weinstein, Rob Reiner. and the rest . . . In Finance and wall Street characters like Sandy Weiss and the gang. The Media and TV is directly or indirectly owned and controlled by “The Chosen People”. So, where would you put the blame for all what is going on in this country, and all this chaos, death, and destruction going on in ME and many countries in Africa.
Any body who points out their role in it or utters a word of criticism of Israel is immediately called an anti-semite. Just to tell my own connections, my wife youngest sister is married to person who is Jewish (non-practicing). In all the relatives we have, they are closest to us for more than thirty five years now. They are those transgender common restroom liberals, but we have many common views and interests. In life, I have never differentiated people based on their ethnic or racial backgrounds; you look at the principles they stand for.
As I see it, this era of Russia-Gate and witch hunt is hundred times worse than McCarthy era. It seems irreversible. There is no one in the political establishment or elsewhere in Media or academia left for regeneration of the “Body Politic”. In fact, what we are witnessing here is much worse than it was in the Soviet Union. It is complete degeneration of political leadership in this country. It extends to Media and other institutions as well. People in Soviet Union did not believe the lies they were told by the government there. And there arose writers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Soviet Union. What is left here now except are these few websites?
Should this give us hope?
https://sputniknews.com/us/201711071058899018-trump-cia-meet-whistleblower-russian-hacking/
Trump ordered Pompeo to meet with Binney of VIPS re “Russian hacking.”
Is it time for the absurd Russia-gate narrative to finally be publicly deconstructed? Or is that asking too much?
I wish it wasn’t asking too much, but I suspect it is. If the NYT was reporting it, I’d feel better about our chances. But the Deep State controls the narrative, and thus controls Pompeo, Trump’s order notwithstanding. I hope I’m wrong.
After living in Europe much of the last three years we’ve recently returned to the U.S. I must say that life here feels very much like I’m living within a strange Absurdist theatre play of some sort (not that Europe is vastly better). Truth, meaning, rationality, mean absolutely nothing at this juncture here in the United States. Reality has been turned on its head. The only difference between our political parties runs along identity politics lines: “do you prefer your drone strikes, illegal invasions, regime change black-ops, economic warfare and massive government spying ‘with’ or ‘without’ gender specific bathrooms?” MSM refer to this situation as “democracy” while of course any thinking person knows we are actually living within a totalitarian nightmare. Theatre of the Absurd as a way of life. I must admit it feels pretty creepy being home again.
The current American Imperial performance of Caligula has less to do with Albert Camus’ existentialist critique of philosophical absolutism, and much more to do with Bob Guccione’s violent pornographic drama:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3CSsvtw-h0 [viewer discretion advised]
America is down to its last gold chain:
“Eighteen months of shooting, $17 million of Guccione’s money and many lawsuits later (both director Tinto Brass and screenwriter Vidal demanded to have their names taken off the picture), Caligula opened in late 1979. Or was meant to. Distributors refused to touch a movie stocked with brother-sister incest, bestiality, a scene of (simulated) anal fisting, one urination sequence and many, many languorous blow jobs. Guccione announced, ‘Fuck’em,’ and rented his own theater in Manhattan’s East Sixties. The reviews were murderous, the box office feeble (although the movie has since become Penthouse’s best-selling video). Guccione was unfazed. He began plans to film the second in a projected trilogy of sex epics, the story of Catherine the Great — although this time he would avoid the pitfall that had made Caligula, as Guccione delicately puts it, ‘not as good as it could have been.’ Guccione himself would direct.”
The Twilight of Bob Guccione
By John Colapinto
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/the-twilight-of-bob-guccione-20101021
Excellent article which should shed light on the misunderstandings manifested to manipulate and censor Americans.
Personally, it’s ludicrous to imply that Russia was the primary reason I could not vote for Hillary. My interest in Twitter peaked when Sidney Blumenthal’s name popped up selling arms in Libya. He was on The Clinton Foundation’s Payroll for $120K, while the Obama Administration specifically told HRC Sidney Blumenthal was not to work for the State Department.
Further research showed Chris Stevens had no knowledge of Sidney Blumenthal selling arms in Libya. Hillary NEVER even gave Chris Stevens, a candidate with an outstanding background for diplomatic relations in the Middle East, her email. Chris Stevens possessed a Law Degree in International Trade, and had previously worked for Senator Lugar (R). Senator Lugar had warned HRC not to co-mingle State Department business with The Clinton Foundation.
To add salt to the wound Hillary choose to put a third rate security firm in Libya, changing firms a couple of short weeks before the bombing. I think she anticipated the bombing, remarking “What difference does it make? ” at the congressional hearings.
If you remember Guccifer (that hacker) he said he’d hacked both Hillary and Sidney Blumenthal. He also said he found Sidney Blumenthal’s account more interesting.
That’s just one reason why I started surfing the internet. Sidney Blumenthal was a name that hung in the cobwebs of my memory, and I wanted to know what this scum-job of a journalist was doing!
Then there was Clinton Cash, BoysonTheTracks, Clinton Chronicles, the outrageous audacity of the Democrats Superdelegates voting before a single primary ballot had been cast, MSM bias to Hillary, Kathy Shelton’s video “I thought you should know.” and maybe around September 2016, wondering what dirty things Hillary had done with Russia since 1993?
So I guess it’s true. In the end after witnessing what has transpired since the election I would not vote for Hillary because she’d rather risk WWIII, than have the TRUTH come out why she lost.
I’m a lifelong Democrat. I was a Bernie supporter. But logic dictates my thinking. The Russia nonsense is cover for Hillary’s loss and a convenient hammer with which to attack Trump. Not biting. Bill Maher is fixated on this. The Rob Reiner crowd is an embarrassment. The whole thing is embarrassing. The media is inept. Very bizarre times.
Just a remark in passing (I appreciate Robert Parry’s work): Serbo-Croatia does not exist. There used to be Yugoslavia and the Serbo-Croatian language but now there is Serbia and Croatia.
Granted, it’s not the name of a country or a political entity, but why can’t it be used as a geographic term to refer to a region where that language is spoken? Geographers have many terms for regions that are not congruent with political boundaries. Most readers of this blog happen to live in the Anglosphere–no such country, but the word connotes a meaning. Then there are terms like “the Ukraine” (as opposed to “Ukraine”), Anatolia, Patagonia, the Levant, Latin America, etc. Pretty sure that’s how Parry intended the usage. I wouldn’t make the default assumption that he is just stupid.
So it looks like Hillary will be crossing Putin off her Xmas card list this year! I sometimes wonder if all we posters on here and other similar sites are on a list somewhere and when the day of reckoning comes, the list will be produced and we will have to account for our treasonous behaviour? Of course, one man’s treason is another man’s truth. I suppose in the end it boils down to the power thing. If you have a perceived enemy you can claim the need for an army. If you have an army you have power and with that power you can dispose of anyone who disagrees with you simply by calling them the enemy.
John, your post made me wonder whether I would be on a list of traitors. I’ve written three posts, starting yesterday, and tried to explain something about the background of Yuri Milner, mentioned in the article. After “your comment has been posted, thank you” nothing has appeared on this thread.
Well, once more: Milner is known to me as a well-educated physicist from Moscow State University, and the co-founder and financier of The Breakthrough Prize, handing out yearly awards to promising scientists, with a much larger sum than the humble Nobel Prize. The awarding ceremony is held in December in Silicon Valley.
Hi Lisa, I have just looked up Milner on Wiki and he appears to be into everything including investment in internet companies. He is the co-founder of the “break through prize” that you mention and seems to have backed face book and twitter in their start up. I don’t see why you posts haven’t appeared as anyone can look Milner up on Wiki and elsewhere in great detail. You don’t say where you have tried to post, but I would have thought on this site you would have no trouble whatever. If you have watched the last episode of ‘cross talk’ on RT you will see that anyone who as ever mentioned Russia in a public place is regarded as some kind of traitor. I guess you and me are due for rendition anytime now!! LOL
Hi John,
Naturally I had been trying to post on this site. First I tried three times in the comment space below all other posts, and they never went through. Only when I posted a reply to someone else’s comment, my reply appeared. Maybe some technical problem on the site.
My motive was to show that Milner is doing worthwhile things with his millions, even if he is an “evil Russian oligarch”. The mentioned prize has its own website: breakthroughprize.org. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) is a board member.
The prize is certainly a “Putin conspiracy”, as it has links to Russia. (sarc)
Possibly that’s the case. Disappearing-forever posts happen to me from time to time. For at least a while afterwards I cut/paste what I’m about to attempt to “post” to a WORD file before hitting the “post comment” button.
In any event, avoid links whenever possible. By cut/pasting the exact title of the piece you’re using as a reference, others can quickly locate it themselves without a link.
I guess these “Paradise Papers” were released just yesterday, i.e., Sunday the 5th. Somehow I didn’t get to it.
This is a great article which could be described as how “progressives” stopped worrying and learned to love McCarthyism, which could end in the same result as Dr. Strangelove, the subtitle of which is “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.”
:
The next trustworthy site that I went to had the story on Paradise papers. I then went to projekte sueddeutsche.de and explored. Seeing this and knowing the news that is discussed here on Consortium News, the title of a Supertramp lp came to mind: “Crisis? What Crisis?” So thank you to Realist for mentioning this.
A Soapbox Opera from that lp is a favorite.
Mr. Parry’s excellent writing of the important crimes that the main stream media has ignored is something that needs repeating constantly. His piece here is perfect, except for what Cratylus has pointed out. I also would like to mention for Realist: methinks you mean the Panama papers? If there is a Paradise papers set I sincerely would appreciate knowing what they are. Thanks.
Look again at that picture of George H.W. and Wm. Casey. This was taken approximately one month prior to the George H.W. family friend attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan.
Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any motive for GHWB to “do a Kennedy” on Reagan. But on the other hand, he and his buddies wouldn’t have lifted a finger to stop any such attempt, that much I’m sure about.
superb and much needed mythbusting! Thank you Mr.Parry and the brilliant team at Consortium, I hope people are donating generously.
**Tinfoil Hat**
You realize that when Congress begins investigating subversive Anti-American sites like this, any donations from Russia or China or Syria will be PROOF of Mr. Parry’s collusion with our sworn enemies. Look at how ten-thousandth-of-1% values at Facebook drove the neocon NYT and WP to slaver in triumph and joy.
Sad to see so many hypocrites here espousing freedom from McCarthyism while they continue to vote for capitalist candidates year in year out. Think about the fact that in 2010 when Citizens United managed to get the Supreme Court to certify corporations as people the fear among many was that this would open US company subsidiaries to be infiltrated by foreign money. I guess it is happening in spades with collusion between Russian money & Trump’s organization along with Facebook, Twitter & many others. How Mr. Parry can maintain that this parallels the 1950s anti-communist crusade is quite ingenuous. When libertarians, the likes of Bannon, Mercer, Trump et al, with their “destruction of the administrative state” credo are compared to the US communists of the 50s we know progressives have become about as disoriented as can be.
Gary, I agree . I think of Isadore Feinstein Stone. I respect journalism, and real reporters, but what we have now, even on CN , is truly an echo chamber. Sometimes, CN publishes something progressive, but mostly it is now, Mr. Parry’s opinion on why we should treat Russia with kid gloves. Does Robert Parry have info we do not know about? I want peace for everyone, The country of Russia is not a problem, Putin and Trump are problems.
Tina –
You always mean well in your comments. However, I do not understand what Russia or it’s leader Putin has done to our country U.S. Yes, there is lot of oligarchs money from Russia still floating around in the World. Russians/Putin took care of a few of them like Khodorkovsy, Guzinsky, Berezovky and there was lot of hue and cry in “The West” branding Putin as new Stalin. In fact, Soros and others plan to make Khodorkovsy President of Russia after the regime change there.
Russians still have their oligarchs problem. And U.S. has too. And many other countries as well. We better leave Russians and the rest of the World alone and take care of problems in this country.
Regarding Trump, I still think that it is better that he is the President. Hillary would have been even worse. Of course, the way the things are going, it is hard to tell what is going to happen in the future.
It’s got less to do with “capitalism” than it does about POWER: “power” could give a rip about any particular “economic” system as long as it didn’t threaten it.
I don’t support the System, so no votes for ANY of its offerings.
i realize that many well intentioned people are upset that trump is president(as well as i am!!). but my god! can they not see that this anti russia hysteria is only designed to whip up support for war with russia(and even risk nuclear annihilation of the planet?!!) not to mention rationalization for clinton’s defeat?? my god! lets fight trump on the substance of his attack on the common man and not this crap!
I do like CN. I do not believe that everyone who questions the Trump government is a post McCarthy zealot , looking for Russians under each seat cushion. Robert Parry, the world has changed since the 1950’s. You do realize that Vladimir Putin is only 64 years old. He got educated (professionally) in East Germany 1986 through 1990. He was a KGB agent. He saw his country emasculated by Boris Yeltsin ,in the 1990’s. He promised , his country would never be so debased again. He has a point. The cold war is over, but Putin is not one to forgive and forget.
by educated, I meant real life experience, not formal university
Keep in mind that forgiving the US for anything is pretty fruitless, in which case it’s a good idea not to forget its trickery (that it’s always in play).
NewsFlash!!! TINA TELLS ROBERT PARRY “THE WORLD HAS CHANGED SINCE THE 1950’s”
On March 9, 1954, Edward R. Murrow and a news team at CBS produced a half-hour See It Now special titled “A Report on Senator Joseph McCarthy”.
Murrow interspersed his own comments and clarifications into a damaging series of film clips from McCarthy’s speeches. He ended the broadcast with a warning:
“As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves–as indeed we are–the defenders of freedom, what’s left of it, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies, and whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn’t create the situation of fear; he merely exploited it, and rather successfully. Cassius was right: ‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars but in ourselves.'”
CBS reported that of the 12,000 phone calls received within 24 hours of the broadcast, positive responses to the program outnumbered negative 15 to 1. McCarthy’s favorable rating in the Gallup Poll dropped and was never to rise again.
Thank you.
In The Fifties (1993), American journalist and historian David Halberstam addressed the noxious effect of McCarthyism:
“McCarthy’s carnival like four year spree of accusation charges, and threats touched something deep in the American body politic, something that lasted long after his own recklessness, carelessness and boozing ended his career in shame.” (page 53)
Halberstam specifically discussed how readily the so-called “free” press acquiesced to McCarthy’s masquerading:
“The real scandal in all this was the behavior of the members of the Washington press corps, who, more often than not, knew better. They were delighted to be a part of his traveling road show, chronicling each charge and then moving on to the next town, instead of bothering to stay behind and follow up. They had little interest in reporting how careless McCarthy was or how little it all meant to him.” (page 55)
You correctly write that «the United States intervened in the 1996 Russian election to ensure the continued rule of the corrupt and pliable Boris Yeltsin».
The irony is that a few years later Yeltsin chose Putin as his successor, and presumably the ‘mericans gave him a hand to win his first term.
How extremely sad it is to see the USA going totally nuts.
“The Democrats, the liberals and even many progressives justify their collusion with the neocons by the need to remove Trump by any means necessary and “stop fascism.” But their contempt for Trump and their exaggeration of the “Hitler” threat that this incompetent buffoon supposedly poses have blinded them to the extraordinary risks attendant to their course of action and how they are playing into the hands of the war-hungry neocons.”
And they are driving more and more actual and potential Dem Party members away in droves, further weakening the party and depriving it of its most intelligent members. Any non-senile person knows that this is all BS and these people are not only turning their backs on the Dem Party but I think many of them are being driven to the right by their disgust with this circus and the exposure of the party’s critical weaknesses and derangement.
It would seem that everyone on the US telivision , newspaper and internet news has mastered the art of hand over mouth , gasp and looking horrified every time Russia is mentioned.
It looks to me that the US is in the middle of another of it´s mid life crises. Panic reigns supreme every where. If it was not so sad it would be funny. i was born in the 1940s and remember the McCarthy witch hunts and the daily shower of people jumping out of windows as a result of it. As a Canadian I could not get over, even though I was just a teenager back then, just how a people in a supposedly advanced country could be so collectively paniced. I think back then it was just a scam to get rid of unions and any kind of collective action against the owners of the country, and this time around I think it is just a continuation of that scam, to frighten people into subservience to the police state. I heard a women on TV today commenting on the Texas masscre, she said ” The devil never sleeps”, well in the USA the 1/10 of 1% never sleeps when it comes to more control, more pwoer and more wealth, in fact I think they are after the very last shekle still left in the pockets of the bottom 99.9 % of the population. Those evil Russians are just a ploy in the scam.
“Israel is another skilled player in this field, tapping into its supporters around the world to harass people who criticize the Zionist project.”
Yes, very well organized.
In fact virtually every synagogue is a center for organizing people to harass others who are exercising their First Amendment rights to diseminate information about Israel’s occupation of Palestine. The link below is to a protest and really, personal attack, against a Unitarian minister in Marblehead, Mass., for daring to screen the film ““The Occupation of the American Mind, Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States.” In other words, for daring to provide an dissenting opinion and, simply, to tell the truth. Ironic is that the protesters’ comment actually reinforce the basic message of the film.
No other views on Israel will be allowed to enter the public for a good airing and discussion and debate. The truth about the illegal Israeli occupation will be shouted down, and those who try to provide information to the public on this subject will be vilified as “anti-semites.” Kudos to this minister for screening the film.
http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/screening-of-film-sparks-protest-in-marblehead/article_0b075cbc-c2ae-5d46-916a-24eed79d30cd.html
http://cdn.field59.com/SALEMNEWS/ebb60114f782c4213f068bf0a39a4a46451ed871_fl9-360p.mp4
The Occupation of the American Mind: Israel’s Public Relations War in the United States (2016) examines pro-Israel Hasbara propaganda efforts within the U.S.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LD7mOyfclIk
This important documentary, narrated by Roger waters, exposes how the Israeli government, the U.S. government, and the pro-Israel Lobby join forces to shape American media coverage in Israel’s favor.
Documentary producer Sut Jhally is professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, and a leading scholar on advertising, public relations, and political propaganda. He is also the founder and Executive Director of the Media Education Foundation, a documentary film company that looks at issues related to U.S. media and public attitudes.
Jhally is the producer and director of dozens of documentaries about U.S. politics and media culture, including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land: U.S. Media & the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict.
The Occupation of the American Mind provides a sweeping analysis of Israel’s decades-long battle for the hearts, minds, and tax dollars of the American people – a battle that has only intensified over the past few years in the face of widening international condemnation of Israel’s increasingly right-wing policies.
Abe –
The interview of Roger Waters on RT is one of the best I have seen in a long while. I wish some other artists get the courage to raise their voices.
The link to the Roger Waters interview is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7jcvfbLoIA
This Roger Waters interview is worth watching.
In the beginning, “Russiagate” was about alleged actions by Russian secret services. Evidence for these allegations has never emerged, and it seems that the Russiagate conspiracy theorists largely gave up on this part (they still sometimes write about it as if it was an established fact, but since the only thing in support of it they can adduce is the canard about the 17 intelligence services, it probably is not that interesting any more).
Now, they have dropped the mask, and the object of their hatred are openly all Russian people, anyone who is “Russian linked” by ever having logged in to social networks from Russia or using Cyrillic letters. If these people and their media at least recognized the reality that they are now a particularly rabid part of the xenophobic far right in the United States…
But when people daily spew hate against anything and anyone “Russia linked” and still don’t recognize that they have gone over to the far right and even claim they are liberal or progressive, this is completely absurd.
McCarthyism, as terrible as it was, at least originally was motivated by hatred against a certain political ideology that also had its bad sides. But today’s Russiagate peddlers clearly are motivated by hatred against a certain ethnicity, a certain country, and a certain language. I don’t think there is any way to avoid the conclusion that with their hatred against anyone who is “Russia linked”, they have become right-wing extremists.
Let’s be honest. Most Americans think McCarthy is a retail store. No education. And they think Russia is the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, Trump is in Japan to start war with N. Korea to hide the blemishes or the canker on his ass.
America is rapidly collapsing.
Yes, the latest “big fish” outed yesterday as an agent of the Kremlin was the U.S. Secretary of Commerce (Wilbur Ross) who was discovered to hold stock in a shipping company that does business with a Russian petrochemical company (Sibur) whose owners include Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law (Kirill Shamalov). Obviously the orders flow directly from Putin to Shamalov to Sibur to the shipping company to Ross to Trump, all to the detriment of American citizens.
From RT (another tainted source!): “US Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross Jr. has a stake in a shipping firm that receives millions of dollars a year in revenue from a company whose key owners include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law and a Russian tycoon sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department as a member of Putin’s inner circle,” says the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), the main publisher of the Paradise Papers. After the report was published, some US lawmakers accused Ross of misleading Congress during his confirmation hearings.” Don’t go mistaking the “International Consortium of Investigative Journalists for “Consortium News.” These guys are dedicated witch hunters, searching for anyone with six degrees of separation to Vladimir Putin and his grand plan to thwart the United States and effect regime change within its borders.
In a clear attempt to weasel out of his traitorous transgression, Ross stated “In a separate interview with CNBC,… that Sibur [which is NOT the company he owned stock in] was not subject to US sanctions.” ‘A company not under sanction is just like any other company, period. It was a normal commercial relationship and one that I had nothing to do with the creation of, and do not know the shareholders who were apparently sanctioned at some later point in time,’ he said.” Since when can we start allowing excuses like that? Not knowing that someone holds stock in a company that does business with a company in which you own stock may at some later point in time become sanctioned by the all-wise and all-good American federal government?
I can’t wait till they make the first Ben Stiller comedy based on this fiasco twenty years from now. It will be hilarious slap-stick, maybe titled “Can You Believe these Mother Fockers?” President Chelea Clinton of our great and noble idiocracy will throw out the first witch on opening day of the movie.
Robert Parry has described “the New McCarthyism” having “its own witch-hunt hearings”.
In fact “last week’s Senate grilling of executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google” was merely an exercise in political theatre because all three entities already belong to the “First Draft” coalition:
http://fortune.com/2016/09/13/facebook-twitter-join-first-draft-coalition/
Formed by Google in June 2015 with Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council’s Bellingcat as a founding member, the “First Draft” coalition includes all the usual mainstream media “partners” in “regime change” war propaganda:
the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, the UK Guardian and Telegraph, BBC News, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab and Kiev-based Stopfake.
In a remarkable post-truth declaration, the “First Draft” coalition insists that members will “work together to tackle common issues, including ways to streamline the verification process”.
In the “post-truth” regime of US and NATO hybrid warfare, the deliberate distortion of truth and facts is called “verification”.
The Washington Post / PropOrNot imbroglio, and “First Draft” coalition “partner” organizations’ zeal to “verify” US intelligence-backed fake news claims about Russian hacking of the US presidential election, reveal the “post-truth” mission of this new Google-backed hybrid war propaganda alliance.
The Russia-gate “witch-hunt” has graduated from McCarthyism to full Monty Pythonism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3jt5ibfRzw
You get the gold star for best comment today.
Hysterical demonization of Russia escalated dramatically after Russia thwarted the Israeli-Saudi-US plan to dismember the Syrian state.
With the rollback of ISIS and Al Qaeda terrorist proxy forces in Syria, and the failure of Kurdish separatist efforts in Iraq, Israel plans to launch military attacks against southern Lebanon and Syria.
South Front has presented a cogent and fairly detailed analysis of Israel’s upcoming war in southern Lebanon.
Conspicuously absent from the South Front analysis is any discussion of the Israeli planned assault on Syria, or possible responses to the conflict from the United States or Russia.
Israeli propaganda preparations for attack are already in high gear. Unfortunately, sober heads are in perilously short supply in Israel and the U.S., so the prognosis can hardly be optimistic.
“Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
Over time, IDF’s military effectiveness had declined. […] In the Second Lebanon War of 2006 due to the overwhelming numerical superiority in men and equipment the IDF managed to occupy key strong points but failed to inflict a decisive defeat on Hezbollah. The frequency of attacks in Israeli territory was not reduced; the units of the IDF became bogged down in the fighting in the settlements and suffered significant losses. There now exists considerable political pressure to reassert IDF’s lost military dominance and, despite the complexity and unpredictability of the situation we may assume the future conflict will feature only two sides, IDF and Hezbollah. Based on the bellicose statements of the leadership of the Jewish state, the fighting will be initiated by Israel.
“The operation will begin with a massive evacuation of residents from the settlements in the north and centre of Israel. Since Hezbollah has agents within the IDF, it will not be possible to keep secret the concentration of troops on the border and a mass evacuation of civilians. Hezbollah units will will be ordered to occupy a prepared defensive position and simultaneously open fire on places were IDF units are concentrated. The civilian population of southern Lebanon will most likely be evacuated. IDF will launch massive bombing causing great damage to the social infrastructure and some damage to Hezbollah’s military infrastructure, but without destroying the carefully protected and camouflaged rocket launchers and launch sites.
“Hezbollah control and communications systems have elements of redundancy. Consequently, regardless of the use of specialized precision-guided munitions, the command posts and electronic warfare systems will not be paralysed, maintaining communications including through the use of fibre-optic communications means. IDF discovered that the movement has such equipment during the 2006 war. Smaller units will operate independently, working with open communication channels, using the pre-defined call signs and codes.
“Israeli troops will then cross the border of Lebanon, despite the presence of the UN peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon, beginning a ground operation with the involvement of a greater number of units than in the 2006 war. The IDF troops will occupy commanding heights and begin to prepare for assaults on settlements and actions in the tunnels. The Israelis do not score a quick victory as they suffer heavy losses in built-up areas. The need to secure occupied territory with patrols and checkpoints will cause further losses.
“The fact that Israel itself started the war and caused damage to the civilian infrastructure, allows the leadership of the movement to use its missile arsenal on Israeli cities. While Israel’s missile defence systems can successfully intercept the launched missiles, there are not enough of them to blunt the bombardment. The civilian evacuation paralyzes life in the country. As soon IDF’s Iron Dome and other medium-range systems are spent on short-range Hezbollah rockets, the bombardment of Israel with long-range missiles may commence. Hezbollah’s Iranian solid-fuel rockets do not require much time to prepare for launch and may target the entire territory of Israel, causing further losses.
“It is difficult to assess the duration of actions of this war. One thing that seems certain is that Israel shouldn’t count on its rapid conclusion, similar to last September’s exercises. Hezbollah units are stronger and more capable than during the 2006 war, despite the fact that they are fighting in Syria and suffered losses there.
“Conclusions
“The combination of large-scale exercises and bellicose rhetoric is intended to muster Israeli public support for the aggression against Hezbollah by convincing the public the victory would be swift and bloodless. Instead of restraint based on a sober assessment of relative capabilities, Israeli leaders appear to be in a state of blood lust. In contrast, the Hezbollah has thus far demonstrated restraint and diplomacy.
“Underestimating the adversary is always the first step towards a defeat. Such mistakes are paid for with soldiers’ blood and commanders’ careers. The latest IDF exercises suggest Israeli leaders underestimate the opponent and, more importantly, consider them to be quite dumb. In reality, Hezbollah units will not cross the border. There is no need to provoke the already too nervous neighbor and to suffer losses solely to plant a flag and photograph it for their leader. For Hezbollah, it is easier and safer when the Israeli soldiers come to them. According to the IDF soldiers who served in Gaza and southern Lebanon, it is easier to operate on the plains of Gaza than the mountainous terrain of southern Lebanon. This is a problem for armoured vehicles fighting for control of heights, tunnels, and settlements, where they are exposed to anti-armor weapons.
“While the Israeli establishment is in a state of patriotic frenzy, it would be a good time for them to turn to the wisdom of their ancestors. After all, as the old Jewish proverb says: ‘War is a big swamp, easy to go into but hard to get out’.”
Israeli Defense Forces: Military Capabilities, Scenarios for the Third Lebanon War
https://southfront.org/israeli-defense-forces-military-capabilities-scenarios-for-the-third-lebanon-war/
Having lived through the McCarty period and though young, I had a friend who won a Pulitzer for his series on the McCarthy method & team, I am convinced we’re not only there, but perhaps past McCarthy. Why? Because McCarthy had only a one-string fiddle, Russia’s Communism. I was debating for women’s rights such as abortion and adultery-free divorce rights, yet I’m appalled by the female McCarthy spirit of condemnation of every testosterone overdosed male in sight. Those who went too far, obviously merit going to court or being privately reported to authorities, but the mere accusation now happening is a Hillary-inspired irrationality. We are beyond just moving to a fascist state, we’re up to our eyeballs IN one.
I joined the NAACP in the Forties, yet the nature of the Black Lives Matter people will not advance the cause of African Americans. The ActUp style outing of LGBT people will not improve their status as a group.
Essebtiall, the hot breath of a totally authoritarian government is upon us and it has a terrible odor.
Just one minor mistake, Mr. Parry:
> Also left unsaid is that Russians are not the only national group that uses the Cyrillic alphabet.
> It is considered a standard script for writing in Belarus, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Serbo-Croatia and Ukraine
There is no region called “Serbo-Croatia”, of course. You must be thinking of the “Serbo-Croatian” language — which officially does not exist any more, either, being replaced by two separate languages, Serbian and Croatian, of two countries, Serbia and Croatia. Serbian uses the Cyrillic alphabet, while Croatian uses the Latin alphabet. (This was the main distinguishing feature when they were considered one language in one country, as well.)
That region of the former Yugoslav state with Serbo-Croatian native language has been referred to historically and in scholarship as Serbo-Croatia.
In the 20th century, the pluricentric Serbo-Croatian language served as the official language of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (when it was called “Serbo-Croato-Slovenian”), and later as one of the official languages of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Serbo-Croatian was standardized in the mid-19th-century Vienna Literary Agreement by Croatian and Serbian writers and philologists, decades before a Yugoslav state was established. From the very beginning, there were slightly different literary Serbian and Croatian standards, although both were based on the same Shtokavian subdialect, Eastern Herzegovinian.
Thus the Serbo-Croatian language was conceived as a unified language in 1850. By the end of the nineteenth century, the joint language had several grammars, an orthographic manual, and dictionaries.
The breakup of the Yugoslav federation affected language attitudes, so that social conceptions of the language separated on ethnic and political lines.
Language has a role in historical-political individualization: constructing collective identities and establishing ethnic boundaries in relation to political borders.
There are variable and frequently multiple language-identity links in the South Slavic world. Various attempts at unification and separation, mostly driven by different brands of nationalism, employed languages and borders mainly to divide rather than to connect.
The Serbo-Croatian language came to be manipulated as a weapon in the Yugoslav wars of succession. With the Yugoslav Federation’s demise it was officially split up into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin as distinct national languages. Nevertheless, Serbo-Croat remaining a viable linguistic entity.
Serbo-Croatian also called Serbo-Croat, Serbo-Croat-Bosnian, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, or Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian, is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro.
Since the breakup of Yugoslavia, Bosnian likewise was established as an official standard in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and there is an ongoing movement to codify a separate Montenegrin standard. Serbo-Croatian thus generally goes by the ethnic names Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and sometimes Montenegrin and Bunjevac.
Serbo-Croatian has four mutually intelligible standard varieties. South Slavic dialects historically formed a continuum. The turbulent history of the area, particularly due to expansion of the Ottoman Empire, resulted in a patchwork of dialectal and religious differences. Due to population migrations, Shtokavian became the most widespread in the western Balkans, intruding westwards into the area previously occupied by Chakavian and Kajkavian (which further blend into Slovenian in the northwest). Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs differ in religion and were historically often part of different cultural circles, although a large part of the nations have lived side by side under foreign overlords. During that period, the language was referred to under a variety of names, such as “Slavic”, “Illyrian”, or according to region, “Bosnian”, “Serbian” and “Croatian”, the latter often in combination with “Slavonian” or “Dalmatian”.
Even though much of this post is accurate, in my view (although one wades into South Slavic ethnolinguistic controversies at one’s peril!), the starting point is not: “Serbo-Croatia” is not a standard term, even for linguists, and Mr. Parry would do well to correct it to “Serbia.”
Clearly, since I’ve published one book by a Russian, one by a now-deceased US ex-pat living in Russia, and have our catalog made available in Russia via our international distributor, I am a traitor to the US. If you add in my staunch resistance to the whole Russiagate narrative AND the fact I post links to stories in RT America, I’m doomed.
I wish I could think I’m being wholly sarcastic.
You are not alone. Many of us live outside the open air prison and feel the same way
Yes, similar thoughts have crossed my mind. Our minds who read CN and RT!
Bob,
You are one of the very few critical journalists today willing to print objective measures of the truth, while the MSM spins out of control under the guise of “protecting America” (and their vital sources), while at the same time actually undermining the very principles of a working democracy they sanctimoniously pretend to defend. It makes me nostalgic for the McCarthy era, when we could safely satirize the Army-McCarthy Hearings (unless you were a witness!). I offer the following as a retrospective of a lost era.:
Top-Ten Criteria for being a Putin Stooge, and a Chance at Winning A One Way Lottery Ticket:to the Gala Gitmo Hotel:
:
(1) Reading Consortium News, Truth Dig, The Real News Network, RT and Al Jeziera
(2) Drinking Starbucks and vodka at the Russian Tea Room with Russian tourists (with an embedded FSS agent) in NYC.
(3) Meeting suspicious tour guides in Red Square who accept dollars for their historical jokes.
(4) Claiming to catch a cell phone photo of the Putin limousine passing through the Kremlin Tower gate.
(4) Starting a joint venture with a Russian trading partner who sells grain to feed Putin’s stable of stallions. .
(5) Catching the flu while being sneezed upon in Niagara Falls by a Russian violinist.
(6) Finding the hidden jewels in the Twelfth Chair were nothing but cut glass.
(7) Reading War and Peace on the Brighton Beach ferry.
(8) Playing the iPod version of Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers” through ear buds while attending mass in Dallas, TX..
(9) Water skiing on the Potomac flying a pennant saying “Wasn’t Boris Good Enough?”
(10) Having audibly chuckled even once at items (1) – (9). Thanks Bob, Please don’t let up!
Howard,
I chuckled loudly more than once – but luckily, no one heard me! No witnesses!
So you are acquainted with the masterpiece “12 chairs”? Very suspicious.
I’ve heard that’s Mel Brooks favorite among his own movies.
I always find it exasperating when I have to remind the waiter at the diner to bring Russian dressing along with the reuben sandwich, but these days I wonder if my loyalty is being tested.
David G –
They will change the name of dressing very soon. Remember 2003 when French refused to endorse the invasion of Iraq. I think they unofficially changed the name of “French Fries” to “Freedom Fries”.
It is just the start. The whole History is being rewritten – in compliance with Zionist Ideology. Those evil Russkies will be shown as they are!
i too chuckled!!!! This was a spot on article for me. All of the political establishment in Washington DC is corrupt. to the core…as i the country when viewed through the lens of reality .
It was never my impression that Cold War liberals opposed McCarthy or the anti-Communist witch hunt. Where they didn’t gleefully join in, they watched quietly from the sidelines while the American left was eviscerated, jailed, driven from public life. Then the liberals stepped in when it was clear things were going a little too far and just as the steam had run out of McCarthy’s slander machine. At that point figures like Adlai Stevenson, Hubert Humphrey and John F. Kennedy found the path clear for their brand of political stagecraft. They were imperialists to a man, something they proved abundantly when given the chance. Liberals supplanted the left in U.S. life- in the unions, the teaching profession, publishing and every other field where criticism of the Cold War and the enduring prevalence of worker solidarity across international lines threatened the new order. So it’s no surprise that liberalism is the rallying point for a new wave of repression. The dangerous buffoon currently occupying the White House stands as a perfect foil to the phony indignation of the liberal leadership- Schumer, Pelosi et al.. The jerk was made to order, and they mean to dump him as their ideological forebears unloaded old Tail Gunner Joe. In fact, Trump is so odious, the Democrats, their media colleagues and major elements of the national security state believe that bringing down the bozo can be made to look like a triumph of democracy. Of course, by then dissent will have been stamped out far more efficiently than Trump and his half-assed cohorts could have achieved. And it will be done in the name of restoring sanity, honoring the constitution, and protecting everyone from the Russians. I was born in the fifties, and it looks like I’m going to die in the fifties.
Truman started it. And he used it very well.
THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE AND ORIGINS OF “”McCARTHYISM
By Richard M. Freeland
This book argues that Truman used anti-Communist scare tactics to force Congress to implement his plans for multilateral free trade and specifically to pass the Marshall Plan. This is a sound emphasis, but other elements of postwar anti-Communist campaigns are neglected, especially anti-labor legislation; and Freeland attributes to Truman a “”go-soft”” attitude toward the Soviets, which is certainly not proven by the fact that he restrained the ultras Forrestal, Kennan, and Byrnes — indeed, some of Freeland’s own citations confirm Truman’s violent anti-Soviet spirit. The book concludes that by equating dissent with disloyalty, promoting guilt by association, and personally commanding loyalty programs, “”Truman and his advisors employed all the political and programmatic techniques that in later years were to become associated with the broad phenomenon of McCarthyism.”” Freeland’s revisionism is confined and conservative: he deems the Soviets most responsible for the Cold War and implies that “”subversion”” was in fact a menace.
https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/richard-m-freeland/the-truman-doctrine-and-origins-of-mccarthyism/
Wow, Tom Hall, you really know what and how to write.
Bravo.
Tom Hall –
Your comments are right on the spot. Every word speaks for itself. The last sentence is very touching – and very true.
American hysteria must be realised as nothing but projection. Since US is engaged in constant wars, coups, murder, they’re are doomed to interpret others’ behavior as a murderous inclination.
The case of America’s Cold War (and today’s anti-Russian hysteria) paranoia is easily understood. Since America was the first and so far, the only country to use the atomic bomb against other people, it was the Americans who were actually caught in a cold war Pre-TSD. They simply projected their collective murderous tendencies onto the Russians.
It goes without mentioning, that the more cruel one is, the more subjected to terror one is.
Moreover, the more cruel practices a nation is engaged in, the more subjected to the politics of fear the nation would be. This simple formula may throw some light over the incestuous bond between America and Israel. Applying devious expansionist tactics, the two countries are sinking into dark deadly thought on the verge of collective paranoia. This collective paranoia maintains the hegemony of the one and only axis of evil around: i.e., Global Zionism and Neocons.
In general, Americanism can be realised as an urge to formulate a general agenda based on self-inflicting fright. This is why US must maintain terror in order to sustain its power.
While many in the world are convinced that U.S.’ behavior is the outcome of moral bankruptcy, I insist that the American identity is emerging as a pathological psychotic case. The moral bankruptcy, thus, is a mere symptom of a deep mental disorder.
Being in a psychotic state, the Israelis indeed enjoy their symptoms, from us they just need some brief attention. They basically need our approval.
They really want us to believe that what they’re doing, they’re doing for our behalf and in our name.
For those who still fail to see it, we are dealing here with a severe mad case of a State that is reaching the very peak of its collective psychotic phase. For those who tend to forget, this mentally disordered national entity possesses a nuclear arsenal, and it has its belly full of deadly intentions.
How do you explain all the connections between Trump acolytes and Russia and their lying about it. I think they’ve all lied about their contacts. Why would they do that?
I lived through the real McCarthyism and, so far, this isn’t close to what happened then.
Probably because they are corruptly involved. Thing is, the higher priority is to avoid another decades-long cold war risking nuclear war. Do you remember how many close calls we had in the last one?
I’m more suspicious of Trump than most here, but even I think we need some priorities. Far more extensive corruption of a similar variety keeps occurring and no one cares, as Mr. Parry points out here yet again.
As for McCarthyism, whatever the current severity, the result is unfolding as a new campaign against dissenting voices on the internet. That’s supremely not-okay with me.
Right. Just because we don’t yet have another fulll-fledged HUAC happening doesn’t mean severe perils aren’t attached to this new McCarthyism. Censorship of dissent is supremely not-okay with me as well.
That class of people lie as a matter of course; it’s standard procedure. If you exacerbate it by adding on the anti-Russia hysteria that was spewed out by the Democrats before the ink was dry on the ballots, what possible reason would they have for being truthful?
The insanity of the entire “Russian hacking” narrative has been revealed over and over, including this past weekend when +/-100 Clinton loyalists published a screed on Medium saying Donna Brazile had been taken in by Russian propaganda.
I have come to expect just about anything when it comes to Russia-Gate, but I was taken aback by the Hillary bots’ accusation that videos of Hillary stumbling and others showing her apparently having a fit of some kind and also needing to be helped up the steps to someone’s house–which were taken by Americans and shown by Americans and seen by millions of shocked Americans—were driven by Russia-Gate.
Obviously, Brazile, like millions of voters, saw these films and made appropriate inferences: that Hillary’s basic health and stamina were a question mark. Of course, Hillary also offered Americans nothing in her campaign rhetoric. She came across as the mother-in-law from hell.
Was it also a Russia-Gate initiative when Hillary hid from her supporters on election night and let Podesta face the screaming sobbing supporters? Too much spiked vodka or something?
Our political stage in the USA is a madhouse.
Evil spawn of Satan that Hilary is, she doesn’t come any where near my mother-in-law for sheer spite and the ability to turn you into a quivering jelly with just one state!!
These people probably have “connections” with a relatively large number of people, and only very small fraction of the people they have contact with are probably Russians.
Now, since the extremist xenophobic idea that contact with *any* Russians is a scandal has taken hold in the United States, people are probably not too eager to mention these contacts in these atmosphere of extreme xenophobic anti-Russian hatred in today’s United States. Furthermore, people who have contact with large numbers of people probably really have difficulties remembering and listing these all.
Today’s political atmosphere in the United States probably has a lot in common with the Soviet Union. There, people got in trouble if they had contacts with people from Western, capitalist countries – and if they were asked and did not mention these contacts in order to avoid problems, they could get in trouble even more.
I think it is absolutely clear that no one who takes part in this hateful anti-Russian campaign can pretend to be liberal or progressive. The kind of society these xenophobes who detest pluralism and accuse everyone who has opinions outside the mainstream of being a foreign agent is absolutely abhorrent, in my view.
You are not paying attention.
Their contacts are with Russian business and maybe the Russian mob, not the Russian mob. There is really not question that Trump and his cronies are crooks, but they are crooks in the US and in all the other countries where they do business, not just Russia. I’m sure Mueller will be able to tie Trump directly to some of the sleeze. But there is no evidence that the Russian government is involved in any of it. “Russia-gate” implies Russian government involvement, not just random Russians. There is no evidence of that and moreover the logic is against.
Mr. Cash…. I think George Papadopoulis, Trump’s young Aide, was an inside mole for neocon pro-Israel interests. Those interests needed to knock the unreliable President Trump out of the way to get the “system” back where it belonged – in their pocket. Papadopoulis, on his own, was rummaging around making Trump/Russian connections that finally ended with the the William (Richard?) Browder (well-known Washington DC neocon)/Natalia Veselnitskaya/Donald Trump, Jr. fiasco. The Trumps knew nothing of those negotiations, and young Trump left when he realized Natalia was only interested in Americans being allowed to adopt Russian children again and had no dirt on Hillary.
In the meantime, Trump Jr. was connected with an evil Russian (Natalia), William Browder was able to link the neocon-hated Trump Sr with neocon-hated, evil Russians (who currently have a warrant out for Browder’s arrest on a 15 [or 50?] million dollar tax evasion charge), and neocons have a good chance of claiming victory out of chaos (as is their style and was their intent for the Middle East [not Washington DC!] in the neocon Project For a New American Century – 1998). Clinton may have lost power in Washington DC, but Clinton-supporting neocons may not have – thanks to George Papadopoulis. We shall see. Something tells me the best is yet to come out of the Mueller Investigations.
You are seeing it clearly Bill. This site was once a go-to-source for investigative journalism. Now it is a place for opinion screeds, mostly with head buried in the sand about the blatant Russian manipulation of the 2016 election. The dominant gang of posters here squash any dissent and dissenting comments usually get deleted within a day. I don’t understand why and how it came to be so, but the hysterical labeling of Comey/Mueller investigations as McCarthyism by Parry has ruined his sterling reputation for me.
If this “Russian manipulation” was as blatant as everyone keeps telling me, how come it’s all based on ridiculous BS instead of evidence? Where’s the beef?
Unable to substantiate anything you say nor argue against anything said here, you disgrace yourself. Do you think anyone is fooled by your repeated lie that you are a disaffected former supporter of this site? And you made the “Stygg” reply above.
So you’re old enough to have lived through the original McCarthyism and you’ve learned basically nothing in that time. Pathetic and sad.
Great essay.
But one disagreement. I may agree with Trump on very, very few things, among them getting rid of the horrible TPP, one cornerstone of Hillary’s pivot; meeting with Putin in Hamburg; the Lavrov-Tillerson arranged cease-fire in SE Syria; the termination of the CIA’s support for anti-Assad jihadis in Syria; a second meeting with Putin at the ASEAN conference this week; and in general the idea of “getting along with Russia” (a biggie) which Russia-gate is slowing to a crawl as designed by the neocons.
But Trump as an “incompetent buffoon” is a stretch albeit de rigueur on the pages of the NYT, the programs of NPR and in all “respectable” precincts. Trump won the presidency for god’s sake – something that eluded the 17 other GOP primary candidates, some of them considered very”smart” and Bernie and Jill, and in the past, Ralph Nader and Ron Paul – and the supposedly “very smart” Hillary for which we should be eternally grateful. “Incompetent” hardly seems accurate. The respectable commentariat has continually underestimated Trump. We should heed Putin who marveled at Trump’s seemingly impossible victory.
Why did we ever believe that the democrat party was a defender of free speech? These bought and paid for tools of the economic elites are only interested in serving their masters with slavish devotion. Selfishness and immorality are their stock in trade; betraying the public their real intention.
Thanks to Mr. Parry for this very fair and complete review of the latest attempts to generate a fake foreign enemy. The tyrant over a democracy must generate fake foreign enemies to pose falsely as a protector, so as to demand domestic power and accuse his opponents of disloyalty, as Aristotle and Plato warned thousands of years ago.
It is especially significant that the zionists are the sole beneficiaries of this scam as well as the primary sponsors of the DNC, hoping to attack Russia and Iran to support Israeli land thefts in the Mideast. It is well established that zionists control US mass media, which never examine the central issue of our times, the corruption of democracy by the zionist/MIC/WallSt influence upon the US government and mass media. Russia-gate is in fact a coverup for Israel-gate.
Those who would like to petition the NYT to make Robert Parry their senior editor may do so here:
https://www.change.org/p/new-york-times-bring-a-new-editor-to-the-new-york-times?recruiter=72650402&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink
While Mr. Parry may prefer independence, and we all know the NYT ownership makes it unlikely, and the NYT may try to ignore it, it is instructive to them that intelligent readers know better journalism when they see it. A petition demonstrates the concerns of a far larger number of potential or lost subscribers.
I watched the C-Span ‘Russian/2016 Election Investigation Hearings’ in horror, as each congressperson grilled the Hi-Tech executives in a way to suggest that our First Amendment Rights are now on life support, and our Congress is ready to pull the plug at any moment. I thought, of how this wasn’t the America I was brought up to believe in. So as I have reached the age in life where nothing should surprise me, I realize now how fragile our Rights are, in this warring nation that calls itself America.
When it comes to Israel I have two names, Jonathan Pollard & the USS Liberty, and with that, that is enough said.
This week’s congressional hearings on “extremist content” on the Internet mark a new stage in the McCarthyite witch hunt by congressional Democrats, working with the intelligence agencies and leading media outlets, to legitimize censorship and attack free speech on the Internet.
One after another, congressmen and senators goaded representatives of Google, Twitter and Facebook to admit that their platforms were used to sow “social divisions” and “extremist” political opinions. The aim of this campaign is to claim that social conflict within the United States arises not from the scale of social inequality in America, greater than in any other country in the developed world, but rather from the actions of “outside agitators” working in the service of the Kremlin.
The hearings revolved around claims that Russia sought to “weaponize” the Internet by harnessing social anger within the United States. “Russia,” said Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, promoted “discord in the US by inflaming passions on a range of divisive issues.” It sought to “mobilize real Americans to sign online petitions and join rallies and protests.”
The McCarthyite witch hunts of the 1950s sought to suppress left-wing thought and label all forms of dissent as illegitimate and treasonous. Those who led them worked to purge left-wing opinion from Hollywood, the trade unions and the universities.
Likewise, the new McCarthyism is aimed at creating a political climate in which left-wing organizations and figures are demonized as agents of the Kremlin who are essentially engaged in treasonous activity deserving of criminal prosecution.
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/11/03/pers-n03.html
Thanks for the informative link Danny.
Watching this Orwellian tragedy play out in our American society, where our Congress is insisting that disclaimers and restrictions be placed upon suspicious adbuys and editorial essays, is counterintuitive to what we Americans were brought up to belief. Why, all my life teachers, and adults, would warn us students of reading the news to not to believe everything we read as pure fact, but to research a subject before coming to a conclusion toward your accepting an opinion to wit. And with these warnings of avoiding us being suckered into a wrong belief, we were told that this was the price we were required to pay for having a free press society. This freedom of speech was, and has always been the bedrock of our hopes and wishes for our belief in the American Dream.
Danny there was a time not to long ago, I would have said of how we are ‘moving towards’ to us becoming a police state, well instead replace that prediction of ‘moving towards’ to the stark reality to be described as ‘that now we are’, and there you will have it that we have finally arrived to becoming a full blown ‘police state’. Little by little, and especially since 911 one by one our civil liberties were taken away. Here again our freedom of speech is being destroyed, and with this America is now where Germany had been in the mid-thirties. America’s own guilty conscience is rapidly doing some physiological projections onto their imaginary villain Russia.
All I keep hearing is my dear sweet mother lecturing me on how one lie always leads to another lie until the truth will finally jump up and bite you in the ass, and think to myself of how wise my mother had been with her young girl Southside philosophy. May you Rest In Peace Mum.
Yankees chicks are coming home to roost. So many peoples rights and lives had to be extinguished for Americans to have the illusion of pursuing their happiness, well, what goes around comes around.
Joe, my reply to your comments got posted way down near the end of comments.
Gee wiz Adam Schiff…you make it sound as if signing petitions and rallying to causes and civil protests are unamerican or something. And Russians on the internet are harnessing social anger!
Pathetic.
These jerks who would have us believe they are interested in “saving” democracy or stopping fascism have sure got it backward.
Joe, Allow me please, respectfully, to add Mordecai Vanunu — Israel’s own Daniel Ellsberg — to your two names.