Exclusive: President Trump is getting mocked for “trusting” Vladimir Putin’s denial about “meddling” in U.S. politics — and not accepting Official Washington’s groupthink — but ridicule isn’t evidence, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
If the bloody debacle in Iraq should have taught Americans anything, it is that endorsements by lots of important people who think something is true don’t amount to evidence that it actually is true. If endorsements were the same as evidence, U.S. troops would have found tons of WMD in Iraq, rather than come up empty.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, on July 7, 2017. (Screen shot from Whitehouse.gov)
So, when it comes to whether or not Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year and slipped them to WikiLeaks, just because a bunch of people with fancy titles think the Russians are guilty doesn’t compensate for the lack of evidence so far evinced to support this core charge.
But the reaction of Official Washington and the U.S. mainstream media to President Trump saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed sincere in denying Russian “meddling” was sputtering outrage: How could Trump doubt what so many important people think is true?
Yet, if the case were all that strong that Russia did “hack” the emails, you would have expected a straightforward explication of the evidence rather than a demonstration of a full-blown groupthink, but what we got this weekend was all groupthink and no evidence.
For instance, on Saturday, CNN responded to Trump’s comment that Putin seems to “mean it” when he denied meddling by running a list of important Americans who had endorsed the Russian-guilt verdict. Other U.S. news outlets and politicians followed the same pattern.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a big promoter of the Russia-gate allegations, scoffed at what Trump said: “You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies?”
The Washington Post’s headline sitting atop Sunday’s lede article read: “Trump says Putin sincere in denial of Russian meddling: Critics call that ‘unconscionable.’”
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and another Russia-gate sparkplug, said he was left “completely speechless” by Trump’s willingness to take Putin’s word “over the conclusions of our own combined intelligence community.”
Which gets us back to the Jan. 6 “Intelligence Community Assessment” and its stunning lack of evidence in support of its Russian guilty verdict. The ICA even admitted as much, that it wasn’t asserting Russian guilt as fact but rather as opinion:
“Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents.”
Even The New York Times, which has led the media groupthink on Russian guilt, initially published the surprised reaction from correspondent Scott Shane who wrote: “What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”
In other words, the ICA was not a disposition of fact; it was guesswork, possibly understandable guesswork, but guesswork nonetheless. And guesswork should be open to debate.
Shutting Down Debate
But the debate was shut down earlier this year by the oft-repeated claim that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred in the assessment and how could anyone question what all 17 intelligence agencies concluded!
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)
However, that canard was finally knocked down by President Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence James Clapper who acknowledged in sworn congressional testimony that the ICA was the product of “handpicked” analysts from only three agencies – the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency.
In other words, not only did the full intelligence community not participate in the ICA but only analysts “handpicked” by Obama’s intelligence chiefs conducted the analysis – and as we intelligence veterans know well, if you handpick the analysts, you are handpicking the conclusions.
For instance, put a group of analysts known for their hardline views on Russia in a room for a few weeks, prevent analysts with dissenting viewpoints from weighing in, don’t require any actual evidence, and you are pretty sure to get the Russia-bashing result that you wanted.
So why do you think Clapper and Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan put up the no-entry sign that kept out analysts from the State Department and Defense Intelligence Agency, two entities that might have significant insights into Russian intentions? By all rights, they should have been included. But, clearly, no dissenting footnotes or wider-perspective views were desired.
If you remember back to the Iraq WMD intelligence estimate, analysts from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, known as INR, offered unwelcome dissenting views about the pace of Iraq’s supposed nuclear program, inserting a footnote saying they found it too difficult to predict the fruition of a program when there was no reliable evidence as to when – not to mention if – it had started.
DIA also was demonstrating an unusually independent streak, displaying a willingness to give due consideration to Russia’s perspective. Here’s the heterodox line DIA took in a major report published in December 2015:
“The Kremlin is convinced the United States is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab Spring and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”
So, not only did the Jan. 6 report exclude input from INR and DIA and the other dozen or so intelligence agencies but it even avoided a fully diverse set of opinions from inside the CIA, FBI and NSA. The assessment – or guesswork – came only from those “hand-picked” analysts.
It’s also worth noting that not only does Putin deny that Russia was behind the publication of the Democratic emails but so too does WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange who has insisted repeatedly that the material did not come from the Russians. He and others around WikiLeaks have strongly suggested that the emails came as leaks from Democratic insiders.
Seeking Real Answers
In the face of Official Washington’s evidence-free groupthink, what some of us former U.S. intelligence analysts have been trying to do is provide both a fuller understanding of Russian behavior and whatever scientific analysis can be applied to the alleged “hacks.”
Former CIA Director John Brennan at a White House meeting during his time as President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser.
Forensic investigations and testing of relevant download speeds, reported by members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), have undermined the Russia-did-it groupthink. But this attempt to engage in actual evaluation of evidence has been either ignored or mocked by mainstream news outlets.
Still, the suggestion in our July 24 VIPS memo that President Trump ask current CIA Director Mike Pompeo to take a fresh look at the issue recently had some consequence when Pompeo contacted VIPS member William Binney, a former NSA Technical Director, and invited him to explain his latest research on the impossibility of the Russians extracting the Democratic emails via an Internet hack based on known download speeds.
In typically candid terms, Binney explained to Pompeo why VIPS had concluded that the intelligence analysts behind the Jan. 6 report had been making stuff up about Russian “hacking.”
When news of the Binney-Pompeo meeting broke last week, the U.S. mainstream media again rejected the opportunity to rethink the Russia-did-it groupthink and instead treated Binney as some sort of “conspiracy theorist” with a “disputed” theory, while attacking Pompeo’s willingness to discuss Binney’s findings as “politicizing intelligence.”
Despite the smearing of Binney, President Trump appears to have taken some of this new evidence to heart, explaining his dispute with open-mouthed White House reporters on Air Force One who baited Trump with various forms of the same question: “Do you believe Putin?” amid the new jeering about Trump “getting played” by Putin.
Trump’s demeanor, however, suggested increased confidence that the Russian “hacking” allegations were the “witch hunt” that he has decried for months.
Trump also jabbed the press over its earlier false claims that “all 17 intelligence agencies” concurred on the Russian “hack.” And Trump introduced the idea of a different kind of “hack,” i.e., Obama’s political appointees at the heads of the agencies behind the Jan. 6 report.
Trump said, “You hear it’s 17 agencies. Well it’s three. And one is Brennan … give me a break. They’re political hacks. … I mean, you have Brennan, you have Clapper, you have [FBI Director James] Comey. Comey is proven to be a liar and he’s proven to be a leaker.”
Later, in deference to those still at work in intelligence, Trump said, “I’m with our [intelligence] agencies as currently constituted.”
While Trump surely has a dismal record of his own regarding truth-telling, he’s not wrong about the checkered record of the triumvirate of Clapper, Brennan and Comey.
Clapper played a key role in the bogus Iraq-WMD intelligence when he was head of the National Geo-spatial Agency and hid the fact that there was zero evidence in satellite imagery of any weapons of mass destruction before the Iraq invasion. When no WMDs were found, Clapper told the media that he thought they were shipped off to Syria.
In 2013, Clapper perjured himself before Congress by denying NSA’s unconstitutional blanket surveillance of Americans. After evidence emerged revealing the falsity of Clapper’s testimony, he wrote a letter to Congress admitting, “My response was clearly erroneous – for which I apologize.” Despite the deception, he was allowed to stay as Obama’s most senior intelligence officer for almost four more years.
Clapper also has demonstrated an ugly bias about Russians. On May 28, as a former DNI, Clapper explained Russian “interference” in the U.S. election to NBC’s Chuck Todd on May 28 with a tutorial on what everyone should know about “the historical practices of the Russians.” Clapper said, “the Russians, typically, are almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique.”
Brennan, who had previously defended torture as having been an effective way to gain intelligence, was CIA director when agency operatives broke into the computers of the Senate Intelligence Committee when it was investigating CIA torture.
Former FBI Director Comey is infamous for letting the Democratic National Committee arrange its own investigation of the “hacking” that was then blamed on Russia, a development that led some members of Congress to call the supposed “hack” an “act of war.” Despite the risk of nuclear conflagration, the FBI didn’t bother to do its own forensics.
And, by his own admission, Comey arranged a leak to The New York Times that was specifically designed to get a Special Prosecutor appointed to investigate Russia-gate, a job that fell to his old friend Robert Mueller, who has had his own mixed record as the previous FBI director in mishandling the 9/11 investigation.
There are plenty of reasons to want Trump out of the White House, but there also should be respect for facts and due process. So far, the powers-that-be in Washington – in politics, the media and other dominant institutions, what some call the Deep State – have shown little regard for fairness in the Russia-gate “scandal.”
The goal seems to be to remove the President or at least emasculate him on a bum rap, giving him the bum’s rush, so to speak, while also further demonizing Russia and exacerbating an already dangerous New Cold War.
The truth should still count for something. No one’s character should be assassinated, as Bill Binney’s is being now, for running afoul of the conventional wisdom that Trump – like bête noire Putin – never tells the truth, and that to believe either is, well, “unconscionable,” as The Washington Post warns.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA intelligence analyst for 27 years and is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
mcgovern is a huge disappointment to me. his principled stand during the iraq war has given way to being an apologist for by far the weakest president ever to disgrace the office. and to say that mockery proves nothing, while that by itself is true, it papers over the gravely serious problems that trump is presenting the US with
What guilt? One ‘Great Game’ or another has been afoot for eons. I mean, please…
Au contrare..in the US MSM it is evidence…of complete stupidity.
So you accuse Assange of being biased because he wanted to divulge Trump secrets as well as Clinton secrets? How does that add up?
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-atlantic-commits-malpractice-selectively-edits-to-smear-wikileaks-65ecd7c2468f
The MSM will stop at nothing to slander Assange.
The group think out here is every bit as bad as the government’s. The absolute refusal to consider anything that points to Russia, Trump or Wikileaks. Here is a post from The Intercept that is important.
WikiLeaks secretly offered help to Donald Trump’s campaign, in a series of private Twitter messages sent to the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr., gave ammunition to the group’s many detractors and also sparked anger from some longtime supporters of the organization and its founder, Julian Assange.
One of the most high-profile dissenters was journalist Barrett Brown, whose crowdsourced investigations of hacked corporate documents later posted on WikiLeaks led to a prison sentence.
Brown had a visceral reaction to the news, first reported by The Atlantic, that WikiLeaks had been advising the Trump campaign. In a series of tweets and Facebook videos, Brown accused Assange of having compromised “the movement” to expose corporate and government wrongdoing by acting as a covert political operative.
Brown explained that he had defended WikiLeaks for releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, “because it was an appropriate thing for a transparency org to do.” But, he added, “working with an authoritarian would-be leader to deceive the public is indefensible and disgusting.”
He was particularly outraged by an Oct. 21, 2016 message, in which Assange had appealed to Trump Jr. to let WikiLeaks publish one or more of his father’s tax returns in order to make his group’s attacks on Hillary Clinton seem less biased.
Mr. Boyce-
I read your AP article, and it reads like a spy thriller, but there is not a shred of hard evidence that it was Russia.
From the article:
“All three leak-branded sites have distanced themselves from Moscow. DCLeaks claimed to be run by American hacktivists. WikiLeaks said Russia wasn’t its source. Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be Romanian.”
They present not a shred of hard evidence to refute this. Vault7 releases show that the CIA can fake point of origin. William Binney has stated that if there was a hack, the NSA would have known it in real time, yet they have produced no hard evidence and have had months to do so. The FBI never even investigated the DNC server, and instead relied on very anti-Russian Crowdstrike. Binney and the Forensicator have shown that the so-called Russian evidence was cut and pasted after the original copying of the info onto a thumb drive. Nothing in your AP article refutes the info contained in this VIPS memorandum:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-evidence/
Furthermore, if you look at the bottom of the AP article, there is the following Editor’s note:
“Satter’s father, David Satter, is an author and Russia specialist who has been critical of the Russian government. Several of his emails were published last year by hackers and his address is on Secureworks’ list.”
Seems your source may not be very neutral.
I am sure you think of me as cynical, but there is a big difference between evidence and theater. Your AP article is the latter.
The MIC must have their evil Russian boogyman, and the MSM and the intelligence agencies carry their water.
ps:
Before you continue to trust the MSM, check out the following:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elgvr5Vb2m4
Thank you. At least you read the article and had a go at it.That places you in a small minority on this board. My paper’s wire story version has no editor’s note on Mr. Satter, although what you cite doesn’t discredit the reporter, IMO. There are two other reporters on the byline – Jeff Donn and Chad Day
What’s new here is: “…AP’s reconstruction – based on a database of 19,000 malicious links recently shared by cybersecurity firm Secureworks – shows how the hackers worked their way around the Clinton campaign’s top-of-the-line digital security to steal chairman John Podesta’s emails in March 2016.”
I’m certainly willing to admit that the conclusive proof of Russian involvement is not in the article, but if not them, who? It is pretty clear that Democrats were being targeted by hackers, who succeeded beyond their wildest dreams in helping to derail the Clinton campaign.
I suspect that when Assange announced he had the emails (from a leak, not a hack) that the Intelligence agencies went into overdrive to concoct a story about “The evil Russians stole our election” to divert attention from the CONTENTS of those emails, and thus change the narrative. Guccifer 2.0 was likely created by the intelligence agencies, and the cut and paste job to implicate the evil Ruskies came from his stuff, not the original. The rest of their cast of characters and fairy tales from outfits like Secureworks and CrowdStrike are all cut from whole cloth. If you read the link from VIPS, and their other articles, they go into this in length. The original source of the emails was most likely a disgruntled DNC worker who saw them sabotaging the Sanders campaign. The real story is the DNC violated their charter, and Bernie Sanders should be President. The Deep State, of which Hillary and the DNC are willful participants, couldn’t tolerate a populist progressive President, and thus we have Russiagate. It is pure theater.
I will grant that there are hackers out there, and even Russian hackers. But the crux of the matter is who supplied Wikileaks. I choose to believe Julian Assange, William Binney, Ray McGovern, et. al. IMO they have impeccable reputations, and because they are troublesome to the Deep State, they have been slandered and demonized by the MSM. There are billions of dollars at stake that depend on the Russiagate narrative being sold successfully to the American public. They will stop at nothing.
OK, so you are saying it’s an inside job, and American elements are responsible for the stealing of Clinton campaign emails, right? So Secureworks, three AP reporters, and their editors are all wrong?
One of my problems is that so much of the new tech stuff is gibberish to me. I have a real hard time believing that a tech firm such as Secureworks doesn’t know at least something about what it has revealed. It’s fine that CN’s writers have expertise and write about the problems with intelligence gathering, but at what point does the evidence change their minds as to what’s happening? Perhaps they are wrong? Worth thinking about.
Still not getting any coherent reply to my inquiry: The AP article I posted earlier clearly states the method and timeline of Russian phishing and stealing of emails. Any factual or coherent replies about this?
Ray, you are teaching me to think and not to fall for MSM propaganda. Thanks! Would you, Bill, or Ed explain, what smacks of more propaganda, the alleged WikiLeaks tweets with Trump, Jr. Looks to me like the WikiLeaks account was hacked….
Hi Diana-
Please check out Caitlin Johnstone, especially this article:
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-atlantic-commits-malpractice-selectively-edits-to-smear-wikileaks-65ecd7c2468f
Ray McGovern long ago switched over to being a full-time buffoon.
Russia’s guilt has been so well established by the US intel agencies and the FBI that the defender of Russia, Trump, had to admit to being convinced of Russia’s guilt.
Donald J. Trump?Verified account
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Just out: The Obama Administration knew far in advance of November 8th about election meddling by Russia. Did nothing about it. WHY?
Full-time Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel) propaganda troll “fuster” hurls more abuse.
Li’l potty mouth “fuster” in action:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/11/01/israel-set-to-block-palestinian-unity/
hasbara?
you’re a fugging idiot as well as a liar
So there’s lots of cover for Russia here and hatred of Israel’s policies, which is pretty off-topic, but what the hell. I was reading the local paper last night, and they carried an astounding story from AP, of which I have not seen note on this blog;
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/inside-story-russians-hacked-democrats-emails-50913280
Maybe Messrs. Parry and McGovern would care to comment on an actual analysis of data that a tech firm gathered regarding Russian phishing, then stealing. The article ties in the timeline of data theft w/Trumpistas’ actions regarding “thousands of emails” from Clinton’s campaign.
I’m not sure why Russia gets a pass on this blog. I’m glad that journalists and close observers are skeptical of U.S. government actions, they certainly deserve closer scrutiny, but to presume that our election wasn’t interfered with is pretty far-fetched in view of what has happened in our elections since year 2000.
Predictably, comrade Wm. Boyce just is “not sure why” Israel doesn’t get a pass.
Predictably, the good comrade ascribes it to “hatred”.
Consortium News independent investigative journalists and close observers scrutinize the actions of numerous governments.
Interference by the pro-Israel Lobby certainly deserves much closer scrutiny.
To presume that our elections haven’t been interfered with by Israel is pretty far-fetched in view of what has happened in our elections since long before 2000.
The Russia-gate imbroglio is precisely designed to:
– distract journalists and observers from scrutiny of pro-Israel Lobby interference in American elections,
– deny Israeli espionage efforts in the United States, and
– discount Israel’s decades long “active measures” to influence U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East and increasingly, Russia.
In fact, it is Russian “interference” in Israeli-Saudi-US “regime change” efforts in the Middle East that accelerated efforts to disrupt, discredit, and destroy the Russian government.
But that’s “pretty off-topic” for the good comrade.
Predictably, comrade Wm. Boyce presents another “astounding story” from a “tech firm”.
So there’s lots of cover for Israel here with comrade Wm Boyce. But what the hell.
God, Thanks Abe. You’re a godsend to us here at CN.
Mr. Boyce, RE::
“I’m not sure why Russia gets a pass on this blog.”
While you are concerned about giving Russia a “pass”, I’m wondering – and I’m being serious about this – why we are such violent enemies of Russia, Iran, Syria and especially why are we favoring Sunni over Shia.
How can that make any sense?
I really know virtually nothing about the ME.
And yet, having read “The Kite Runners” which portrayed the Shia of Afghanistan as tragic underdogs to the dominant, more authoritarian Sunni, it is troubling that we are taking sides and even fomenting sectarian violence in order, it seems, to grab natural resources that don’t belong to us.
(Granted, in countries where the rulers are Shia the shoe is on the other foot if the ruling class discriminates against “the other”..
Interestingly, an Iraqi woman who was interviewed on TV after the catastrophic Iraq War said that she and her husband have a mixed marriage – one is Sunni and the other is Shia. She said that before the Iraq War they thought of themselves first as Iraqis, then as Bagdadians(?) and way down the line of their self image was Shia vs Sunni. That all changed when Bush Cheney et al perpetrated Shock and Awe on the people of Iraq. Sectarian violence is the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rice legacy.
So, we’re all kinda wondering
Evelync-
Same with you. Thank you for your clear vision, and your ability to speak it.
I’m unsure why Russia gets a pass on this blog, and you folks haven’t enlightened me. I post an AP article, looks pretty well researched, and you can’t refute it point by point, or, what…?
I’m no fan of Israel as our “ally.” But it has nothing to do with the Russians stealing emails and making them available to one side of the two-party American system. If you can’t connect things clearly, then you will never be understood.
Where are Mr. Parry and Mr. McGovern in this debate? They assert there is no Russian connection tin the matter, yet the evidence outruns them.
Who is Ray McGovern? Is there any doubt that presently constituted intelligence gurus believe that Russia interfered in the Presidential election? What has Putin done to achieve credibility?
Ray McGovern is an old lunatic and nothing more
Fairly convincing article.
Time will tell and bring out the truth. And for those who think they can play GOD, they will be exposed to a level that existence for them is like living in hell fire.
Those who read Consortium news and follow events closely KNOW the Russian hack meme is a Hoax. Unfortunately, the controlled MSM still continues to propagate this meme and the majority of misinformed citizens believe it. Bernays work continues to be useful. The Nazis used it successfully. Control the news and one controls the population so long as basic needs are met for the majority.
America is Humanity’s worst calamity and her main enemy, governed by idiotic, sick peoplee, obsessed by Money and Power, making what sould have been the best democratic system on the planet Earth, a New Nazi Empire. Meanwall, the USA have at their disposal the greatest military power that mankind has ever seen. The main worry, which nobody mention is this: What will happen if that fucken America’s capitalistic system collapse ? Idiotic Terrien ! Use your brain and try to figure it out. (This could be the ultimate apocalypse !). God may have realized than creating that human vermine was a dumb mistake and the best will be that those crazy humans self destruct themselves…Univers is so huge than other intelligent species exist somewhere. Let just hope than identic human dummies will not be reproduced…
Great article, Ray, thanks. Many insightful comments, too. Who’s behind bringing out Brennan and Clapper for another move in the chess game? Clinton? Obama? Gershman? We won’t find out.
Apparently the hypocrite liars are working on regime change in Hungary now, since Orban doesn’t play the game as they want. Huntsman as US ambassador to Russia shows the Deep State is working ahead of the Russia elections in 2018, as he worked in China to incite opposition in 2011.
And the project to remove Tillerson from State Dept is apparently moving ahead, since he’s not playing the game per Deep State. Pompeo being considered? Another fundamentalist Christian Midwestern hardline Russophobe, apparently, right in the mold of Pence. Maybe a believer in Armageddon, too?
The whole world know that for the last 70 years America has made troubles all over the planet in most countries. So what a big deal if some one make that Fucken America test some of her doing. Arrêtez de nous emmerder avec ce pays de “merde” que je connais mieux que vous (j’y ai vécu et travaillé pendant plus de 20 ans). Fuck America and all her prostitues collabos like that psychopathe Macron and most Europeen leaders. Let us embargo everything made in America, until the people of the USA (first victims of that crazy system) will have waking up and cleaning up the mess made by a tiny minority of US Citizen. We are sick of that US shit…
Please look into the fact that U.S. stopped R T Russian tv, Hank
Can we just get back to what the original investigation of Trump Tower was all about, the original that gave both parties political hacks a fright? The money laundering between Russian Oligarchs illegal Russian gains and how Trump who was broke and turned down by backers suddenly was worth 300 million $ to the good.
How the money laundering was done in collusion with N.Y., N.J. Conn. And Mass Jewish orthodox charities?
Let’s look back and remember the original Clinton’s Arkansas money laundering charges of bilking GUD. FHA, FHA, and Fanny Mae; an investigation that became about a Newish girls spotted blue dress. Old tactic and goes back further to McCain and Keaton 5.
Asia trip and the collapse of the USA theater of Trump-O-Nomics.
please enjoy…
http://marjoriecohn.com/robert-mueller-is-moving-toward-donald-trump/
isnt it clear that none of us are enamored by either trump or putin? we simply want an end to this nonsense that most certainly will lead to war!
I’m sold on Putin.Trump?
great point, stephen I kelley!
we seem to ignore that there are billions of people on this planet, any one of them, even thousands of miles away, could be found to be a reliable, trusted, friend and yet, it seems that some half baked secret agenda drives the narrative and the villain of the moment is used to drive us into supporting one misguided, violent, policy after another.
idiocy. why war?
Putin is a bully and punk who murders journalists and preys upon weak nations
Russia is not interested in any war with the US and neither is the US
standing up against Putin will NOT have any likelihood of leading to war
I was really pleased to find out that the mathematician of the NSA was asked to speak to Pompass, excuse me, Pompeo. GEE, an expert was asked to give facts and truth! The entire foundation of empire shook….. then continued their evil ways, thinking they are smarter. Thank you William, for the truth.
You have to admit that it’s pretty odd that a huge amount of the American public is consumed by some pretty marginal Russian disinformation claims, to create division in the American public with wedges issues like an anti- immigration protest in Twin Falls that never occurred, but the most obvious source of Russian interruption in the US political process are the quotes in the Steele dossier that are stated as coming directly from top Russian foreign ministry and intelligence officials!
But Trump is the one being played by evil Putin, in an operation that was completely unsuccessful in doing anything, a scenario that makes absolutely no sense as opposed to Russians playing Steele which makes a hell of a lot of sense In an operation that has succeeded in damaging the United States beyond the wildest dreams of any Russian.
Trump certainly knows whether he hired prostitutes to pee on a bed, and he knows if he’s been cultivated for five years. What is the theory whereby Trump is being played? If these things never happened, then why would Putin be able to trick Trump, by claiming he was not behind things that never happened?And if they did happen, what difference to Trump whether Putin knew about it beforehand or not?
“Steele’s first dossier installment, the June 20 document, cited a “senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure” and a “former top level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin.” It reported that “Russian authorities had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate, Donald TRUMP for at least 5 years” and that “the TRUMP operation was both supported and directed by Russian President Vladimir PUTIN.” Also citing a “senior Russian financial official” and a “close associate of TRUMP who had organized and managed his recent trips to Moscow,” the dossier said Russians had been feeding Trump “valuable intelligence” on Clinton “for several years.” The report also said “TRUMP’s (perverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton hotel, where he knew President and Mrs. OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform a ‘golden showers’ (urination) show in front of him.” The action was all captured by hidden cameras, the dossier said.”
yawn.
Starts with “The swamp” and ends with “The truth will out” . In this one post, _ackwardsevolution nails what is really going down. It shows posted at 6:59pm on my screen. Clear your mind and you will find peace in knowing exactly what is happening. We cannot get any CIA confessions regarding anything they have done since JFK. OSS starting in 1947; if some employee in it was 21 at that time, now they are 91 and could still answer some questions. We just might find out even more than we know now.
LaRouche is 95, served in India (got up-close view of how the British Empire works), was friends with the OSS guys loyal to FDR and his Post-War vision, and saw how they were flushed down the toilet by Dulles practically the day FDR died. He can tell you a HELL of a lot…and has, for decades, on Executive Intelligence Review and LaRouchePAC. Ignore the news blackout on him and the character assassination ops against him (Mueller headed the “Get LaRouche” Task Force too, BTW), and go read for yourself. Make generous use of the Search Box and type in any subject: JFK, Permindex, FDR, Synarchists, Henry Luce, Cecil Rhodes, Round Table Group, Return of the Monarchs, etc… to discover the REAL history of the World.
Both Conventional Hasbara (overtly pro-Israel) and Inverted Hasbara (false flag “anti-Israel”) propagandists make generous use of Lyndon LaRouche’s so called “REAL history of the World” – an elaborate brand of “conspiracy theory” – to divert attention from the reality of Israeli influence on American foreign policy.
In a September 11, 2002 webcast, LaRouche stated: “The world is against the war. Just a pack of lunatics, in Israel and in the United States, are for it. Nobody else.”
LaRouche clearly identified “Likud warmongers” like Benjamin Netanyahu.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2002/eirv29n36-20020920/eirv29n36-20020920_052-the_pollard_affair_never_ended.pdf
Of course, the Likud warmongers in the United States are easy to spot. They give Netanyahu multiple standing ovations, and are constantly demanding more US aid and military action to “defend our ally” Israel.
However, LaRouche makes every effort to bury the key points of undeniable fact about Israeli influence in an immense pile of “alternative facts” and “conspiracy theory” bullshit about secret cabals of “Synarchists”.
In their research on the Israel Lobby. American political scientists John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt point out unwavering American support for Israel has jeopardized U.S. security: “one might assume that the bond between the two countries is based on shared strategic interests or compelling moral imperatives… neither of those explanations can account for the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel.”
Sure, the loquacious LaRouche bloviates “a HELL of a lot” about “conspiracy theory” and “the Plan” for global domination hatched by those sinister “Synarchists”.
And the Hasbara trolls sure would love it if everyone would just “go read” LaRouche, Bellingcat, the Washington Post, Facebook, Twitter, anything and everything other than fact-based research and real independent investigative journalism.
I’ve mentioned it previously and I will say it again. You are very correct in your assessment Annie. Again today you point out the fairness that has died in recent DC exchanges in this country. Articles do not get written anymore without slagging off President Trump. It is required! And oh so expected. If one does not include this in one’s piece, Adam Schiff will stick you on his Schiff-list.
And mocking Putin does not prove Trump’s innocence. How many bankruptcies, how many divorces, how many unpaid bills, how many wives, how many lawsuits does joe- six pack have? ,
You want to go after Trump, attack him on his Iran policy, his environmental policies, or lack there of, or his bellicosity when it come to North Korea. Who cares how many marriages, how many divorces.
98% of Trump’s tweets are obnoxious, untrue, or vulgar. But I had no problem with this one: “When will all the haters and fools out there realize that having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. There always playing politics – bad for our country. I want to solve North Korea, Syria, Ukraine, terrorism, and Russia can greatly help!”
Trump may not be very bright and he may not be very moral, but this is more sane than what we hear from both the mainstream media, our so-called “intelligence” agencies, and members of Congress.
It is beyond foolish to risk nuclear war with Russia, just to get rid of Trump, no matter how horrid he may be. Russian generals have already come to the conclusion that the U.S. is planning a preemptive strike. We need to cool things down. The truth of the matter is this: Saudi Arabia and Israel are far more dangerous countries than Russia, yet the United States gives them whatever they want. Russia would make an excellent ally.
What has happened to the party I once loved and identified with? Democrats with Russia-gate have lost all rationality. They have become the party of war, and they are playing right into the neocon dream of full-spectrum dominance of planet Earth by means of overwhelming military power.
Jared Kushner and the like
“…Saudi Arabia and Israel are far more dangerous countries than Russia…” Why suggest that Russia is any danger to us. How? If you have been following what has been going on with the democrats during these many years, decades really, they haven’t been the party you really once loved. Over time the party has been pushed to the right and under Bill Clinton they have practically gone off the cliff. Remember it was Bill Clinton who got NAFTA through, and overturned Glass Stegall which brought about the recession of 2007. Under Obama we overthrew Gaddafi, supported the Hunduran coup, and supplied weapons to Saudi Arabia to destroy the people of Yemen. Obama increased drone warfare, and on and on. The dems support the top 10% in the country, and have forgotten their base, the working man, many, many years ago. How do you think Trump got in, and the reps won both the Senate and the Congress? Both parties are beholden to corporate America and the military industrial complex. Better then the republicans, yes, but not by much. Just look at the fact they went along with side lining Sanders, since liberals in the party are marginalized. It’s all about money, but they will say the liberals aren’t living in the real world where money talks, and they’re right, and it controls everything.
Let me also say Larry, I don’t disagree with much of what you said.
I have no clue why the Neoliberal Dems have a gnat up their asses about Russia. I just tried googling the subject and found this translated review of a 500 page volume on the subject written by Swiss author, Guy Mettans, who examined the loooooong history on Russophobia:
http://arretsurinfo.ch/guy-mettans-book-on-russophobia-an-important-contribution-to-the-demystification-of-international-relations/
Towards the end of the book, per the well ordered review that summarizes it chapter by chapter, the review’s author Ivo Rens covers recent U.S. Russophobia. He includes a discussion on the tragedy of Ukraine and more from our recent history. The review is long, but, I think, well worth the read, starting with a never resolved religious schism between the Orthodox (Russian) and the Catholic (Western) mythology.
The constant drive of Russophobia is really tragic because Russians have suffered a lot and contributed a lot to the cultural arts and yet all we hear is PUTIN, PUTIN, PUTIN with no consideration whatsoever of the Russian people, an approach that seems par for the course for “ the best and the brightest” deciders on which latest policy fantasy secretly gets the big (taxpayer) bucks.
The statements in the article are fully backed by proven facts. Anybody looking at the thing realistically can see that it is all propaganda bullshit. The media and the deep state constitute a corrupt regime which has reached a critical mass to form a sort of dictatorship, a situation which has developed gradually during the 70 years since the CIA was formed and legality went out the window. “Russiagate” is the effort of this regime to complete consolidation of total power against an interloper who somehow managed to win an election despite all of the bullshit slung at him, with the phony dossier developed at the behest of the Clintons and the intelligence agencies as the spearhead. Unfortunately, Trump’s own attorney general either bottled out or was otherwise coopted to accept the formation of what is likely an extralegal parallel prosecution team, and all of the press is singing from the same choirbook, just as though there was a propaganda ministry running the show. The legacy press and spymasters make up this propaganda ministry.
This might sound old-fashioned in today’s era, but this article constitutes a genuine public service. As a veteran of the U.S.M.C., I am enormously grateful that we have a mind as sharp as Mr. McGovern’s, willing to risk belittlement by the elitist, pampered know-nothings of the Washington Press Corps in order to prevent a [possibly world] war.
If American citizens have to support a President when he takes the country to war, why shouldn’t we also have to support a President when he is trying to keep us out of a war?
Thanks for a full and clear analysis. However, there’s something a bit worse yet.
I don’t read RSN as often as I used to, because it’s become just a reflection of Hillary’s thinking that has become confused and passé. It represents Hillary and her followers’ thinking process. So, once liberal Juan Cole did an article today that, complete with their photos, used those two Deep State political thugs as his models of how to take down Trump. As I thought about it, it’s the old-as-the-hills Joe McCarthy trick, or the Stalinist one or that of any good fascist dictator: the accusation is the judgment. Proof, the kind of proof you are talking about is a thing of the past. The accusation is the cool Thing Of The Day.
America in its dream days provided a semblance of guilty after the trial. That’s no longer a necessary expense of money and time. What we’re seeing is America in the times of lynching. “Get him boys! He’s guilty as Hell! You can tell by the look on his face (or his color or church or language, etc., even by the color of his hair!!)
So the damage we have done by electing one of the two despicable possibilities with which we were presented is as of nothing compared to the deadly advancing of the system that put them there. The U.S. has finally been Incorporated and like most Corps es there’s no one person who is responsible. It’s all dead papers lying in a mountain of others in Delaware or Bermuda or Panama.
And even once democratic people have become soulless and avaricious beasts with Brennan and Clapper as models on the left side of the political spectrum.
Anonymot –
“So, once liberal Juan Cole did an article today that, complete with their photos, used those two Deep State political thugs as his models of how to take down Trump.”
I read the article by Juan Cole. Professor Juan Cole had been teaching political science at the University of Michigan for a very long time. It is just sickening to read the article. I simply wonder how a supposedly learned person like Juan Cole can write this piece of garbage based on statements of these two liars and culprits Brennen and Clapper.
It just shows how even the Academia has sunk deep into this very dirty swamp. The Ruling Establishment had been deep in this swamp since 2003, and before. Brennen, Clapper . . . they are psychopaths and are pushing for a nuclear war with Russia
If there are “deplorables” anywhere they are them. They have been the “steel fist” as David Talbot put it in his exceptional book, The Devil’s Chessboard. They were and are the hammerhead of the Deep State mindset in Washington.
And why has there been no more mention in the press that the NYT let out yesterday about the massive hacking of Clapper’s NSA?
Did you mean to write “the massive hacking BY Clapper’s NSA?”
Thank you Ray for excellent analysis. One question, while DNC email is nonesense, our president is breaking the emoluments clause left and right, possibility selling the US for mere billions. Any thought?
The big catch to the Clinton wing’s anti-Russian crusade: There is neither any logic behind the allegations, nor any evidence supporting them. Like Bush’s lies about “Iraq’s stockpiles of wmd,” the media’s role is to recite (daily) the keywords: “collusion,” “Russian interference,” etc. A little misinformation here, a little misinformation there. Never quite saying just what that “collusion” or “interference” was.
As for Trump, consider the possibility that he truthfully stated that there has been no evidence of Russian interference. Certainly, none has been presented to the public throughout 2017. Only allegations, working to build support for a catastrophic war.
“The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present. And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the street believes that the world will always be the same and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever.”
— Federico Garcia Lorca
INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’
The origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business, industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to transform the US military into Skynet.
https://www.opednews.com/populum/page.php?f=How-the-CIA-made-Google-by-Nafeez-Ahmed-Artificial-Intelligence_DARPA_Defense_Google-150127-533.html
Why is this important? Easy, the real threat is within our own country, within our own spy institutions.
bonfire of the vanities –
we murdered and injured our own thousands in construction of
the New World Order
and jerusalem was destroyed by Capitalistic Romans
in anticipation of the Caesar Dynasty Laurel & Wrap
of Honor W/the papacy being an equal opportunity Exploiter
of the faithful, who’re loyal to oft yearnings of the priests.
look for Spanish artist Goya and poet’s Lorca and Miguel Pinero
The Disclosure Movement is bringing forward hundreds of TopSecret clearance operatives: scientists, engineers, intel & military officers and non-coms, who no longer want to be part of the deception and coverup. The basic point of Law is that NO oath of secrecy applies to black ops that our elected government has not authorized and has NO CONTROL over…they are rogue, criminal operations, rendering oaths of secrecy null & void. Indeed, the time will come (supposedly is here already, but these operatives still have main control over MSM, so a news black-out ensues) when these criminals will be hunted down by U.S. Marshals, backed by military units in case they vigorously resist arrest, and brought to justice. It is such a huge, labyrinthine bureaucracy that NO ONE person is in charge of it, not even the President who mostly doesn’t know WTF is going on, in his name, falsely so.
Thank you, Ray!
I wish that Trump read the excellent Consortium essays that the rest of us read.
Matt – if Trump sent Mike Pompeo to speak with William Binney, it’s a good bet that someone close to him is reading it.
Ray McGovern and William Binney – great work!!!
Trump does not read.
I wish the mainstream media would “read the excellent Consortium essays that the rest of us read.” I wish Adam Schiff and Rachel Maddow would read it.”
The Democratic National Committee is all but finished. It’s collusion with elements of the nation’s security apparatus and MSM to manufacture and perpetuate a demonstrable lie is its downfall. Seth Rich is its key, but not the only one in this manufactured consent.
Between now and the next presidential election, the lawsuits should start rolling over this — unless we are hit with another “distraction” type of event like what just happened in LV. Sadly, Trump’s AG stands in the way and shows he is willing to throw the “deplorables” (Trump’s base) under the bus.
The 2020 election will all be ENTIRELY about “trust” and “evidence/proof” to back up that candidate’s “trustworthiness” to lead.
Given the MSM’s unwavering support of the Comey-Clapper-Brennan trio , I wasn’t too surprised to find that one anagram of that name combination is : ” Penmen Rep Crony Cabal “.
One other , which is simply strange : ” Napalm Pence Boner Cry “
The Swamp warns us of “fake news”.
Aren’t the Swamp (Comey, Brennan, Clapper, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC) the very people responsible for the fake news?
The Swamp goes after Trump for collusion with Russia.
Aren’t the Swamp the very people who were in collusion with Russia? Didn’t Hillary Clinton, while Secretary of State, hand over 20% of U.S. uranium to the Russians (Uranium One)? Wasn’t the Clinton Foundation the beneficiary of $145 million because of this?
Who was the F.B.I. Director while this was going on, who had information about the bribes? Mueller! You know, Mr. Special Counsel!
And didn’t Comey (who took over as F.B.I. Director after Mueller) leak information for the explicit purpose of putting Mueller in a position to investigate Trump?
Isn’t this like putting the foxes in control of investigating themselves? If Mueller truly wanted to do a full investigation, he would surely have to indict himself, Comey, Rosenstein, Clinton, Lynch, and the list goes on.
Those who are screaming “fake news” and “Russia collusion” are the very people who are guilty. While they are busy pointing their fingers at others in order to deflect attention away from themselves, the long finger of justice is starting to point back at them.
The truth will out.
backwardsevolution – Very good comments. I thought you would like this positive analysis of Trump’s visit to Asia on M.K. Bhadrakumar Blog. Bhadrakumar, retired Indian diplomat, writes for Asia Times.
1.Trump holds the line on foreign policy dated Nov. 14,2017 and
2. APEC signals US’ waning influence in Asia dated Nov. 13, 2017
The link is: blogs.rediff.com/mkbhadrakumar/
Hi, Dave P. Thanks for the links; they were interesting. If anyone has sold the U.S. out, it has been the U.S. multinationals who practically gave their technology to China (the only way they could do business there). They took U.S.-developed technology (much of it paid for by the American public) and essentially gave it away – for free – to China. And China was very protective about allowing exports into their country. Talk about having it all their way!
I often say that China would still be back in the Stone Age if not for the sell-out of the U.S. multinationals. To have gotten up to speed on their own, it would have taken China decades to catch up. It pains me to hear people speak about how China will be the world leader when they had little to do with it. The Chinese elite have stolen from the Chinese people and polluted the country in order to do it.
Both the U.S. and Chinese elite have benefited from the symbiotic relationship. China’s development has been as a result of direct collusion between the elites from both countries. The U.S. people will be the losers.
Trump is trying to bring some jobs back, as a country run on a service industry isn’t going to cut it. The globalists are fighting him on this. They’d rather the U.S. turn into a Third World country, so long as they get to keep raking in the dough and paying no tax.
If the American people really understood what has gone on, how their country has been sold out (by both the left and right), they would be up in arms. Thank goodness the bought-and-paid-for media keeps a lid on this information and protects the elite.
Heads should roll.
Hi backwards. Unlike all previous Great Powers, China truly is willing to work towards win-win cooperation with us and invest in our Reconstruction, and PARTNER with us, in developing the rest of the World. China is more Confucian than Communist these days. The old Silk Road was a way to tie together great powers in mutually beneficial commerce, where Defense was only concerned with keeping the old Silk Road clear of brigands and highway robbers. One does not survive as a Great Power for five thousand years without getting most policy issues right. Read what Confucius says. THIS is more the guiding light these days in China, than Mao’s Red Book. We’re at the Dawn of a second Renaissance, in our partnering with China (Russia too). We’ve just signed 253 billion$ in business deals with China, and this is just the beginning. It’ll be trillion$ before too long. War is lose-lose. China knows this. We’re learning real fast.
backwardsevolution –
It is not China only. We built up S. Korea and Japan as well – gave all our technology to them. And Germany too. All these four countries are the main competitors of U.S. now and have big trade imbalance with us.
It is time to close the bases abroad, and spend that money at home to rebuild Industrial Infrastructure and a good health care system. It is the only way. But as you know this country is mostly run by Financial and Media Oligarchs, most of them are Zio-Neocons and Globalists. So, prospects do not look very good.
I meant 15th century not 13th – sorry about that.
That was wonderful, Ray! It’s getting forwarded to everyone. Keep saying it and maybe some day the truth will not only “out” it will actually stick around. I hope it doesn’t take too long, but beliefs in the past took a long time to disappear. Remember Astronomer Bruno? If memory serves, he was burned at the stake for saying Earth was not the center of the universe when the whole western world knew it was. Galileo was imprisoned and then silenced for much the same thing. Most people in the 13th century believed the world was flat, and I’m sure almost as many still believed even after Columbus found a new continent. News travels faster these days, but it still could take a decade before truth sticks to the ground- a decade we don’t really have.
Thank you too, for your words about Bill Binney. I felt sick when I saw some of the things said about him – especially on MSNBC – Rachel didn’t even bother to tell her adoring audiences that Binney actually wrote some of the code the NSA uses and that he is one of the most highly respected technicians the NSA has had. I cannot imagine what goes through the heads of the pundits at MSNBC – they are all very smart and well educated, but something has happened to their souls. Anyone who can lie night after night to thousands or maybe millions, has sickened their soul to the point where it has probably shriveled up and died.
Please tell Mr. Binney that there are many thousands who honor what he has tried to do.
I second your request. I’ve felt sick at Binney being demeaned and scapegoated.
Russia is not the problem..
https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-israel-and-saudi-arabia-conspire-to-seize-control-of-the-middle-east/5617913
We have met the problem: us.
However, mocking Trump, mostly by the left, and the the extremists within his own party, like McCain, undermines everything he says, including his statement about Putin. It is one thing to be critical of his policies, but the left uses words like sociopath, lunatic, racist, and so on, so when he says something that has validity his statement can be easily dismissed and attacked. Even articles that appear on this site, no matter the topic, find it necessary to throw in some nasty comment that more or less describes him as some kind of “nut job.”
Let’s be nice to the Donald? After all he means well? Seriously??
If he starts a nuclear war, he really didn’t mean to???
You misunderstand what I said. No one is saying you cannot be critical of his policies, but when the left engages in name calling of the most vicious kind it has repercussions, and one of those repercussions is that his statement that he believes Putin when he says that Russia didn’t interfere in the US elections, which I also believe to be true, he becomes an easy target to attack and dismiss. What I said is not difficult to understand.
I should have added that now he finds it necessary to backtrack his statement a bit, by saying that he believes the CIA’s assessment of things. Of course the CIA might really get back at him if he said otherwise, as Senator Shumer acknowledged recently. As Chris Hedges said, he is the symptom, but not the disease destroying this country.
What you refer to as “vicious name calling” that is “sociopath, lunatic, racist” – what if those terms are accurate descriptions of Trump that people need to be aware of? And Trump may be a symptom, as Hedges points out, but he is a “symptom” with his finger on the thermonuclear button!
mike k – it’s not Trump who is the guilty party. After all, he wanted to cooperate. If there is a war, it is the Swamp who will cause it.
Why are you in favor of the Swamp, mike?
Good comeback!
And Pence is at home in the Swamp, as long as the Swamp feeds him stories of Armageddon and how Israel must lead the charge to the Glory of The Return. THIS is how America has been drafted to serve the Empire as the Roman Legions. Trump wants to cut this crap out, make deals, do business with Russia and China, to our benefit and the benefit of the entire World. This is how a real businessman thinks, unlike those other business “Oligarchs” with delusions of playing “Emperor of the World”.
Annie – I think you’re bang on with your comments. The Swamp are fighting for their very lives, and this is a fight to the death. Good on you for seeing it.
Thanks!
Keep up, Tyler. It was a leak, not a hack–a rapid download to a flash drive–by a disaffected insider working for the DNC. Binney’s group made this clear many months ago. There is even a name attached to the most likely suspect, now deceased, which you can easily discover.
I read the forum, and the reply to the dissenters by Binney, Folden, McGovern et al. seems to me to be the most believable. Binney and Folden are obviously the most tech-savy of the group, and their refutations are detailed.
I read this as well, and it seems a bit of a stretch. They are grasping at alternate scenarios that make little sense. I’ll stick with Binney’s take on what went down.
Want hard evidence that the Russia-gate narrative is true? Just apply the old dictum that money talks and bullshit walks. According to American intelligence agency fables, the Russians keep huge stables of hackers and trolls employed to secretly spy upon and publicly attack American interests. It is claimed they work in massive structures covering square blocks of real estate in St. Petersburg. Purportedly spy satellites have captured thousands of these operatives coming and going from work each day. That constitutes a lot of sleazy characters that can potentially be bought off with bribe money.
Why doesn’t the CIA simply offer a $10 million (chump change to them) payout and a villa in Boca Raton to any such Russian operative who defects to America with the rock solid evidence needed to definitively embarrass Putin before the whole world and give Washington the pretext it salivates for to start World War III (and obviate involving Israel or Saudi Arabia in the process). Surely there must be dozens of would-be Edward Snowden’s living in the hell hole called the Russian Federation and working as slave labor for the modern day Hitler ensconced in the Kremlin.
Besides the “money talks” bit, the other truism that should someday soon snare Comrade Putin in his own web of deceit (if the 17 spook agencies are speaking God’s truth) is the repeated observation that eventually “the truth comes out.” Somebody will spill his guts for free, out of integrity or out of stupidity, sooner or later. I mean, consider all the sexual harassers amongst America’s own elites that have at long last been snagged (just within the past week!) and are now awaiting delayed justice. (Never mind that’s mostly unsubstantiated hearsay too.) The latter scenario is what the big thinkers in Washington must be waiting for. By then their coveted war will have come and gone and no one who cares about the truth will still be alive.
“The Washington Post’s headline: “Trump says Putin sincere in denial of Russian meddling: Critics call that ‘unconscionable.’”
Well, here is a Q for The Washington Post’ editors: What are the names of the “critics?” – Kagans? The dishonorable Brennan and Capper? The neo-Nazi friend McCain (Tokyo Rose)? Or perhaps The WaPo did not get a memo about Dm. Alperovitch’ (of CrowdStrike fame of fraud) visceral Russophobia? The presstitutes are mixed with Israel-firsters (who are livid about the Syria’s save sovereignty and the stopped slaughter of Syrians) and with MIC profiteers – this mix make the WaPo’s selected critics. Kind of a smelly company.
Thank you, Ray!
And thanks for this link to Coleen Rowley’s excellent article:
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/06/06/russia-gates-mythical-heroes/
“If you want to know just how sorry relations in between Russia and the United States have become, look for the current Ambassador to Russia. America’s closest connect with Moscow via appointment by President Donald Trump, Jon Huntsman Jr. is the son of billionaire businessman Jon Huntsman Sr. of the Huntsman Corporation. […]
“The former Governor of Utah (2005-2009), the billionaire’s son has served in the administrations of five U.S. presidents. He was even a presidential candidate, some of you will remember. Interestingly, for all his high level positions and connections […] a dreadful Washington think tank and the foreign policy numb skulls at the Atlantic Council. […]
First and foremost, the key people of the Atlantic Council as former President Barack Obama took office, they soon migrated to key positions in that (notorious) administration. The names James L. Jones, Chuck Hagel, Susan Rice, Brent Scowcroft, and Anne-Marie Slaughter should ring bells for those tuned in to U.S. regime change and covert ops. Now President Trump’s administration is filling up with the same brand of people who have ruined international relations for the last thirty years. But Huntsman’s associations with murderous policymakers goes all the way back to the Nixon administration when his father was “in” the game. Henry Kissinger was an early influence according to some, and
“The Atlantic Council is a front organization bent on ‘twisting’ foreign nations to fall in line with the globalist doctrine. Funded by an array of corporate and foreign interests, the think tank also gets contributions from 102 corporations (PDF), 16 foreign nations in some form of conflict with Russia, and NATO. The list of Atlantic Council corporate and state donors can also be found here, via the council’s ‘honor roll’ of funding sources here, and a cross reference of those companies’ interests where Russia are concerned will also prove fruitful. But where the Atlantic Council gets its money from is not nearly as meaningful as what the think tank does with the money. America’s All-American boy from the U.S. State Department in residence in Moscow oversees the efforts of some of Russia’s worst ever enemies. And not ‘just’ enemies, but some of the most malicious and mediocre imaginable. Now let me link up the top of the globalist food chain with the bottom. Enter Nonresident Senior Fellow, and Digital Forensic Research Lab (don’t laugh out loud) guru Elliott Higgins (of Bellingcat MH17 fame) The think tank former NATO boss Anders Fogh Rasmussen called the ‘pre-eminent think tank’, has invented a scientific sub-discipline and deployed the world’s biggest Russophobes to man it. So, Trump just threw a gigantic doggie do in the Russian swimming pool of policy there in Moscow. By sending the guy who empowers the guy who partnered with the Atlantic Council to co-author the report Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin’s War in Ukraine, Trump has spit in the face of just about any Russian who can read, not to mention the country’s president. […]
“The Obama White House destroyed good relations in between America and Russia. The regime change and conflict scenarios played out from Libya to Ukraine put the world under the threat of global annihilation once again. And this, after a hopeful world watched and waited for global peace and prosperity. Now the Trump administration sets the same chess pieces in place previous administrations did. No one reading this will recall that it was Jon Huntsman Jr. who was accused of inciting a revolt when he was the Ambassador to China in 2011. It was then that Huntsman made a controversial appearance at the site of a planned pro-democracy protest in Beijing, the so called ‘Jasmine Revolution’ intended to spur large scale ‘Arab Spring’ like movement in China. Huntsman was captured on video at the Wangfujing shopping area, where a major demonstration was called for. Now he’s the head of the subversives like Higgins who made their names propping up the false narratives against Russia. And to make matters worse, Huntsman made no bones about assuring the U.S. Senate of his ‘intentions’ by proclaiming; ‘There is no question that the Russian government interfered in the U.S. election last year’ during his confirmation hearings.
“Trump could not have done a worse job of improving relations with Russia if he’d sent wild man John McCain to represent America in Moscow.”
Jon Huntsman Jr. and Why America-Russia Relations Will Remain Stuck?
By Phil Butler
https://journal-neo.org/2017/11/13/jon-huntsman-jr-and-why-america-russia-relations-will-remain-stuck/
Trump is mocking the world on behalf of Israel by appointing notorious “friend” of Israel John Huntsman, Jr. as US Ambassador to Russia.
Huntsman enjoys a great “partnership” with Israel.
Like Trump, Huntsman listens “very carefully” to “what leadership in Israel has to say” about matters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HUDbD2PW2o
For example, back in 2011, in response to a question about Israel’s expansion of settlements in illegally occupied Palestinian territory, Huntsman exclaimed, “what we can do during this time of uncertainty is to stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel and remind the world what it means to be a friend and ally of the United States. This we have not done in a very long time and, so long as there is not any blue sky between United States and Israel, it doesn’t matter what plays out in the region.”
Donald Trump’s purported deviation from official Washington’s groupthink was a propaganda scam engineered by the pro-Israel Lobby from the very beginning.
Trump received the “Liberty Award” for his contributions to US-Israel relations at a 3 February 2015 gala hosted by The Algemeiner Journal, a New York-based newspaper, covering American and international Jewish and Israel-related news.
“We love Israel. We will fight for Israel 100 percent, 1000 percent.”
VIDEO minutes 2:15-8:06
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiwBwBw7R-U
After the event, Trump did not renew his television contract for The Apprentice, which raised speculation about a Trump bid for the presidency. Trump announced his candidacy in June 2015.
Trump’s purported break with GOP orthodoxy, questioning of Israel’s commitment to peace, calls for even treatment in Israeli-Palestinian deal-making, and refusal to call for Jerusalem to be Israel’s undivided capital, were all stage-managed for the campaign.
Cheap theatrics notwithstanding, the Netanyahu regime in Israel has unconditional support from the Trump regime.
1000-percent “great friend of Israel” Trump and “the generals” are no doubt prepared to “fight for Israel” when Israel launches its upcoming invasion of Lebanon and Syria.
Thank you for publishing this breath of fresh air in a highly toxic environment. The official and “informed” narrative is virtually unsupported by anything approaching convincing evidence. I would like to point out that the Steele “Dirty Dossier,” which is a cornerstone of the case for alleged collusion and Russian interference is, when you actually read it, not very convincing. In fact, the Dossier contains a multitude of factual errors, conclusions not based in evidence, suppositions masquerading as facts, and all the standard errors that underlay Russia!Russia!Russia!
There are three main problems with the Dossier, as is shown here: https://jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/all-the-standard-errors-that-underlie-russiarussiarussia-in-one-place/
1) the Dossier portrays Paul Manafort as a stealthy secret agent of Russia backed by faceless Russians – in fact, Manafort is the least likely person any rational spy would ever choose as a secret Kremlin agent of influence. In fact, Manafort was first publicly outed as having done a lot of business with Russians by his biggest Russian client, Oleg Deripaska, when that Russian ex-client sued him in open court and then publicly accused the Trump’s Campaign Manager of defrauding him just as the campaign was getting under way. Meet the stealthy secret agent for the Russians, Paul Manafort.
2) the other key figure in the Steele Dossier is Carter Page, a NY energy analyst who the dossier portrays as running around trying to arrange Russian handoffs of “dirt” on Hillary to Manafort just as Manafort was being outed by his biggest Russian ex-client. Carter Page also just happened to have been an FBI Informant who testified in court in 2014 as “MALE-1” in an espionage case brought against a Russian SVR foreign intelligence officer working at the UN. The FBI then busted and closed down the SVR residence in NY. Ever since, the Russians surely knew who Carter Page was all along, but the only ones who can’t seem to figure it out are The New York Times, MSNBC, and “experts” on like Mr. Sypher. Page was wearing a FISA authorized wire and exchanged emails with Papadolous, another energy analyst embedded in the Trump campaign. A DOJ Press release after the March, 2016 conviction similarly describe FBI “UCE-1” who actually handed off the bugged binders as an energy analyst whom the Russian attempted to recruit. Meet the very stealthy Russian secret agent, Carter Page and his side-kick, George Papadopoulos.
3) the Dossier presupposes the Russians are hapless fools who employed Manafort as a deeply buried secret agent, and that Russian Intel had no idea who Carter Page was when he was recorded coordinating dirty tricks on the Democrats with George Papadopoulos inside the Trump campaign while the two racked up frequent flyer miles to Moscow during the campaign.
Ray, I strongly recommend you and all your readers read the above-linked article.
Since your post goes into some detail about Manafort and Page so well leveymg I will say this; how does all of this dirt gathering on a politicial opponent work when one candidate’s collecting dirt on another candidate is seemly okay, while the other candidate supposedly doing the same dirt collection on their opponent is not okay. I mean how is it that Hillary is allowed to get the goods on the Donald by hiring Agent Steele in order for him to submit undisclosed Russian officials accounts of Trump’s dirty doings while he visited Moscow, but Trump’s people are suspected of treason for them attempting to hear some dirt on Hillary from some other Russians who may not have even been officially Russian Officials? The hypocrisy of these parallel universes of the Hillary verses the Trump fiasco goes rolling along never the less, even if good logic of assessing the comparisons seems to be denied.
My guess is that this is a creation of John Brennan’s, and that by attacking Trump for colluding with Putin is for Brennan a twofer. Get Trump, get Putin. I personally don’t see the brilliance in this Plan, because while this Russia-Gate narrative works inside the continental U.S. the rest of the world ain’t buying it, so what’s the point? Russians aren’t going to overthrow Putin, and Trump seems to somehow keep rolling along.
We are living in the final hours of the American Empire, and from here on in it would appear that chaos will rule the hour.
Hi Joe-
I saw Brennan and Clapper on TV last night, and I swear you could see the hate oozing out of them, like they were Star Wars characters of the evil empire. I also have to say that the picture of Trump with the Saudi’s King Salman gathered around that glowing orb reminds me of the scene in Lord of the Rings with Saruman looking into his crystal ball. Real life imitating Hollywood!
Hey Skip Hollywood has a ways to go to catch up with Washington. Joe
DID ISRAEL AND BELLINGCAT DUPE TRUMP ON SARIN ATTACK?
Fake “independent investigative journalist” Eliot Higgins proudly notes that the OPCW-JIM report on Syria “lists open sources in the annexes, many of which were examined in an October 2017 Bellingcat article, along with witness statements and evidence provided by witnesses to Bellingcat”
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/mena/2017/11/09/fresh-evidence-sarin-use-syrian-government-forces-opcw/
It’s clear that the OPCW did little to no actual investigation, preferring to rely on Bellingcat “open source” shenanigans.
The 4 April 2017 Khan Shaykhun incident in an Al Qaeda controlled area of Idlib was obviously perpetrated for maximum propaganda effect to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the Chemical Weapons Convention, that entered into force and becoming binding international law on 29 April 1997.
Disinformation produced by fake “chemical weapons expert” Dan Kaszeta and fake “journalist” Higgins made its way into the 11 April 2017 Trump White House’s “assessment” of the Khan Shakhun incident.
ISRAELI CLAIMS LAUNDERED BY BELLINGCAT
Kaszeta proceeded to back evidence-free “Israeli intelligence” claims about Syria.
A 19 April 2017 Israeli “assessment” presented by anonymous military officials included claims that Syrian military commanders has ordered the Khan Shaukun attack with President Assad’s knowledge and “estimates” that Syria still has “between one and three tons” of chemical weapons.
The Associated Press report on the Israeli military briefing included an interview with Kaszeta, who said the Israeli estimate appeared to be “conservative”. Kaszeta claimed that “One ton of sarin could easily be used to perpetrate an attack on the scale of the 2013 attack. It could also be used for roughly 10 attacks of a similar size to the recent Khan Sheikhoun attack”.
Back in 2013, Kaszeta backed similar evidence-free claims by Israeli defense officials.
The U.S. Intelligence Community is responsible for gathering and analyzing the intelligence necessary to conduct foreign relations and national security activities.
The ability of the President and the Secretary of Defense to understand and respond to specific threats as quickly as possible is severely compromised by the production of “Government Assessment” documents based on inaccurate information.
Of urgent concern is the body of information used to manufacture US and European “Government Assessment” documents.
“OPEN-SOURCE INTELLIGENCE” OUT-SOURCED TO BELLINGCAT
The United States Government’s assessment of the Khan Shaykhun chemical incident relied heavily on “videos”, “social media reports” and “journalist accounts” from Higgins and Bellingcat.
Open-source intelligence (OSINT) is defined by both the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), as “produced from publicly available information that is collected, exploited, and disseminated in a timely manner to an appropriate audience for the purpose of addressing a specific intelligence requirement.”
OSINT is intelligence collected from publicly available sources. In the Intelligence Community, the term “open” refers to overt, publicly available sources (as opposed to covert or clandestine sources).
The US Intelligence Community’s open-source activities (known as the National Open Source Enterprise) are dictated by Intelligence Community Directive 301 promulgated by the Director of National Intelligence.
The “Government Assessment” political documents employed by the White House in August 2013 and July 2014 appear to have relied on an extra-governmental species of “open source intelligence” largely supplied by bloggers based in the United Kingdom.
Assessments of chemical use in Syria in 2013 (Brown Moses blog) and the downing of Flight MH17 and its aftermath in 2014 (Bellingcat blog) were supplied by UK citizen Higgins of Leicester.
Higgins’ collaborator Kaszeta, a US-UK dual national based in London, provided additional claims of “chemical attacks” in Syria for both the Brown Moses and Bellingcat blogs.
Since 2013, Kaszeta and Higgins have continued to make ever more dramatic claims about “chemical attacks” in Syria.
“FIRST DRAFT” PROPAGANDA COALITION
Following the Khan Sheikhoun incident, Kaszeta was cited as a go-to “expert” by the “First Draft” coalition of war propaganda “partners” that includes the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, UK Guardian, CNN. Time magazine, Washington Post. NPR, Germany’s Die Welt and Deutsche Welle, Business Insider, Popular Science, Asia Times and the Associated Press all published the claims of Kaszeta.
Not content with merely quoting Kaszeta, BBC News online went so far as to publish an essay authored by Kaszeta titled “Syria ‘chemical attack’: What can forensics tell us?” At the end of his BBC News essay, in a furtive effort to quickly “tie the whole narrative together”, Kaszata mentioned that “In 2013, the chemical hexamine, used as an additive, was a critical piece of information linking the Ghouta attack to the government of President Assad.” This intriguing tidbit linked to a December 2013 New York Times article quoting Kaszeta’s own claims about the “very damning evidence” of hexamine.
However, Kaszeta’s claims about a hexamine “smoking gun” were already debunked back in 2014.
Analysis of all primary and secondary evidence relating to the 21 August 2013 chemical incident at Ghouta indicates it was carried out by Al Qaeda terrorist forces (Al Nusra Front or Jabhat al Nusra, also known as the Jabhat Fateh al Sham).
Analysis of evidence relating to the 4 April 2017 chemical incident at Khan Shaykhun indicates it was carried out by Al Qaeda terrorist forces (Hay’at Tahrir al Sham, the latest rebranding of Al Nusra).
Higgins and Kaszeta have vigorously backed the narrative of an air-dropped chemical bomb in Idlib. However, none of Kaszeta’s articles on Bellingcat, nor any of the numerous citations of Kaszeta by mainstream media, address the complete absence of evidence of an aerial bomb.
The alleged “Sarin bomb” hole in the road in Idlib has been photographed numerous times from multiple angles. The size, depth and shape of the hole are clear evidence that it was not produced by a falling object such as an air-dropped bomb.
ISRAELI CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Israel is allied with Saudi Arabia and GCC backers of the Al Qaeda terrorists who have conducted numerous Chemical Weapons (CW) attacks in Syria.
Israel possesses the means, the motive, and abundant opportunity to supply Sarin nerve agents and other chemical weapons to the Al Qaeda forces in Syria for the purpose of staging false flag chemical attacks.
The Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR), an Israeli government defense research facility near Tel Aviv, develops offensive chemical and biological weapons including Sarin.The IIBR facility was involved in an extensive effort to identify practical methods of synthesis for nerve gases (such as Tabun, Sarin, and VX) and other chemical weapons compounds.
The 26 April 2017 French “National Evaluation” included evidence free claims of a “Clandestine Syrian chemical weapons programme” based on “allegations” of Syrian “chemical use” laundered by Higgins and Kaszeta. The French purportedly based their conclusions on “analysis” of the 29 April 2013 chemical incident at Saraqeb, also in Al Qaeda controlled Idlib.
BBC News video report of the Saraqeb incident described the smell at the scene as being very strong. The strong odor of alleged aerial “grenades” was described in a statement from the BBC video: “These are smelly, and a lot of them were used.”
Another lengthy statement from the BBC report on the 2013 Saraqeb incident: “I was not present then, but the FSA members came here and said that those chemicals were dropped on the southwestern side of the town. The injuries varies from bad to minor. The symptoms include constriction of the pupil, forth around the mouth, complete loss of consciousness as result of (inhaling) the smoke. The smoke was smelly, and the guy who rushed to help the victims lost consciousness when he got to the site.”
Based on 3 confirmed incidents of Al Qaeda controlled “eyewitness” tales of “strong smells” during alleged “air attacks” we can debunk any claims that Sarin is being described in these so-called “bomb” incidents.
NO SARIN “BOMB”
When pure, Sarin is odorless. When impure or contaminated, Sarin may have a slightly fruity odor, similar to a weak ethyl acetate solution.
Neither pure nor impure Sarin produce a “horrible, suffocating smell”. Sarin is not capable of “producing strong smells”. Impure Sarin does not smell “like rotten eggs”, “overpowering”, “like cooking gas”, or “like rotten food” as claimed by purported “eyewitnesses”.
With the September 6 release of the report by the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria, Eliot Higgins of Bellingcat produced an article reviewing “multiple allegations related to the use of Sarin as a chemical weapon”. Higgins insisted that the incidents have been “under-covered” when in fact the claims about alleged attacks have been debunked in most instances.
Both the improvisational nature and specific timing of the alleged chemical incidents indicates that the Al Qaeda affiliate terrorist forces in Syria have used staged incidents and chemical use allegations to gain tactical advantage in the conflict.
Higgins predictably ignores this, and treats every terrorist allegation as flat fact.
HIGGINS WORKS FOR ATLANTIC COUNCIL
In their zeal to propagate the story of Higgins as a courageous former “unemployed man” now busy independently “codifying social conflict data”, Google and other “First Draft” coalition propaganda organs neglect to mention Higgins’ role as a “research fellow” for the NATO-funded Atlantic Council “regime change” think tank.
Despite their claims of “independent journalism”, Eliot Higgins and the team of disinformation operatives at Bellingcat depend on the Atlantic Council to promote their “online investigations”. The Atlantic Council donors list includes:
– US government and military entities: US State Department, US Air Force, US Army, US Marines.
– The NATO military alliance
– Large corporations and major military contractors: Chevron, Google, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BP, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Northrup Grumman, SAIC, ConocoPhillips, and Dow Chemical
– Foreign governments: United Arab Emirates (UAE; which gives the think tank at least $1 million), Kingdom of Bahrain, City of London, Ministry of Defense of Finland, Embassy of Latvia, Estonian Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Defense of Georgia
– Other think tanks and think tankers: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Nicolas Veron of Bruegel (formerly at PIIE), Anne-Marie Slaughter (head of New America Foundation), Michele Flournoy (head of Center for a New American Security), Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings Institution.
Higgins was principal co-author of the Atlantic Council “reports” on Ukraine and Syria. Damon Wilson, Executive Vice President of Programs and Strategy at the Atlantic Council, a co-author with Higgins of the report on Ukraine, effusively praised Higgins’ effort to bolster anti-Russian propaganda.
Wilson stated, “We make this case using only open source, all unclassified material. And none of it provided by government sources. And it’s thanks to works, the work that’s been pioneered by human rights defenders and our partner Eliot Higgins, uh, we’ve been able to use social media forensics and geolocation to back this up.” (see Atlantic Council video presentation minutes 35:10-36:30)
However, the Atlantic Council claim that “none” of Higgins’ material was provided by government sources is an obvious lie.
Higgins’ primary “pieces of evidence” are a video depicting a Buk missile launcher and a set of geolocation coordinates that were supplied by the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior via the Facebook page of senior-level Ukrainian government official Arsen Avakov, the Minister of Internal Affairs.
Given the preponderance of evidence of Higgins and Bellingcat “open source” deception, and links to Israel, we should be asking a lot more than whether or not Trump was duped.
Are Higgins and the Atlantic Council working in support of an Israeli-Saudi-US Axis “hybrid war” against Russia, Syria and Iran?
What can you said Ray that deserved Trump from office?Who is deserved?hrc?biden?pence?Maybe Putin?yeah.I’ve vote Putin.Hooyah! sic.
The whole job of the CIA, FBI, NSA is lying. These folks have absolutely nothing to do with the truth. That anyone would believe them about anything is only a testament to that person’s profound ignorance and gullibility.
KHAN SHAYKHUN – AN ISRAELI CHEMICAL WEAPONS ATTACK?
Israel is a legitimate suspect in false-flag chemical attacks in Syria delivered by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), Russian-made aircraft, or both.
The April 2017 alleged air attack at Khan Shaykhun may have involved either a Polish or Israeli operated Su-22 aircraft, an Israeli drone attack, or both aircraft and UAV.
In response to the Khan Shaykhun attack, Raytheon Tomahawk land-attack missiles launched from US Navy vessels in the eastern Mediterranean targeted Al-Shayrat air base near Homs, Syria.
Israeli sources indicate that 14 of the Syrian Air Force’s approximately 40-strong fleet of Sukhoi Su-22M (export designation of the Su-17) aircraft were destroyed in the attack, with damage to the air base’s two main runways.
The Israeli-Saudi-US Axis has used terrorist forces, including Al Qaeda and ISIS terrorist supplied via NATO-member state Turkey, to degrade Syrian military capabilities, possibly in preparation for a direct attack on Syria by Israel.
Israel has widely announced that its plans for an upcoming military attack on both Lebanon and Syria.
According to US sources, Russia and Israel were notified about the attack on the Shayrat air base shortly before the cruise missiles hit their targets.
ISRAELI AND POLISH SU-22 AIRCRAFT
The Su-22 aircraft was designed as a high speed, medium range, low level ground attack / recce aircraft. Very rugged, reliable, and easy to maintain, these aircraft are the main striking arm of the Syrian Air Force. Su-22 squadrons are based near Damascus, at T4 near Homs and at Shayrat.
Since the second half of 2012, Syrian Air Force Su-22s have been involved in combat operations against the Al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist forces in Syria, that have been supplied mainly via NATO-member state Turkey.
NATO-member Poland is a major operator of Su-22 combat aircraft. Israel also possesses multiple Su-22 aircraft used for a variety of purposes.
Poland and Israel have extensive cooperation in developing upgrades package for the Su-22 largely based on Israeli avionics. Israel also developed and delivered ‘smart munitions’ for the Su-22.
ISRAELI SARIN NERVE GAS
Israel obtained operational nuclear weapons capability by 1967, with the mass production of nuclear warheads occurring immediately after the Six-Day War. The US Congress Office of Technology Assessment has recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared chemical warfare capabilities, and an offensive biological warfare program.
Israel signed but has not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). A 1983 a report by the CIA stated that Israel had undertaken a program of chemical warfare that included both “offensive and protective areas”. CIA identified a “CW nerve agent production facility and a storage facility” at the Dimona Sensitive Storage Area in the Negev Desert. Citing Israel’s “well-developed Israeli chemical industry”.
The Israel Institute for Biological Research (IIBR) in Ness Ziona was identified as a headquarters for Israel’s chemical weapons program.
190 liters of dimethyl methylphosphonate, a CWC schedule 2 chemical used in the synthesis of sarin nerve gas, was discovered in the cargo of El Al Flight 1862 after it crashed in 1992 en route to Tel Aviv. Israel insisted the material was non-toxic, was to have been used to test filters that protect against chemical weapons, and that it had been clearly listed on the cargo manifest in accordance with international regulations. The shipment was from a U.S. chemical plant to the IIBR under a U.S. Department of Commerce license.
In 1993, the U.S. Congress Office of Technology Assessment WMD proliferation assessment recorded Israel as a country generally reported as having undeclared offensive chemical warfare capabilities. Former US deputy assistant secretary of defense responsible for chemical and biological defense Dr. Bill Richardson said in 1998 “I have no doubt that Israel has worked on both chemical and biological offensive things for a long time… There’s no doubt they’ve had stuff for years.”
ISRAELI DRONE ATTACKS USING CHEMICAL WEAPONS
In addition to Israel’s known arsenal of both nuclear weapons and chemical warfare agents, including sarin nerve gas, Israel has extensive resources and infrastructure for producing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The threat posed by unmanned aerial vehicles and Israel has already materialized on the battlefield. The current ability of Israel to mount a lethal chemical weapons attack through a drone is very high.
Israeli drones clearly have the capacity to deliver both conventional explosives and chemical warfare agents.
Israel’s UAV capability and possession of sarin nerve gas make Israel the primary regional suspect in chemical weapons attacks in Syria.
Insufficient evidence of an “air dropped” munition at the alleged “impact site”, a shallow hole dug in the asphalt of a road in in Khan Shaykhun, indicates that another mechanism was used for the dispersal of sarin from this location.
While an improvised ground detonation scenario has been presented, UAV dispersal of sarin would better account for the absence of aerial munition evidence.
Drone dispersal of sarin would allow for highly targeted contamination of pre-selected areas, like a hole dug in the middle of a road, while keeping terrorist forces in the surrounding area safe from exposure to the lethal sarin.
Israeli-Saudi-US axis support for terrorist forces in Syria has been verified.
Local (embedded with Al-Qaeda) or remote-controlled dispersal of sarin by UAV can easily be coordinated with a conventional aerial attack under either of two scenarios:
– a Syrian military flight operating in accordance with the de-confliction regime
– a false flag Israeli or Polish Su-22 attack staged parallel to a Syrian military flight
Given Israel’s declared upcoming attack on Lebanon and Syria, and the ongoing potential of Israeli attack on Iranian forces in Syria or Iran itself, all of which may drag military forces into a catastrophic conflict, all scenarios for military escalation must be considered.
It is incumbent on veteran intelligence analysts to examine all reasonable scenarios.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have neglected to address a prime suspect in the Khan Shaykun incident.
Where is the VIPS assessment of Israeli sarin, UAV capabilities, and Russian aircraft operations?
Late last night, here on the other side of the planet (@ the Aegean), I watched with horror on seeing the sheer & utter degradation of learned discourse in America in the form of a yet one more vulgar and ghastly CNN program (“State of the Union”) concerning #Russiagate featuring two consummate morons: viz., John Brennan and James Clapper. But I was able to find just a little consolation this morning when I remembered that there do exist in the US a number of the finest minds going — William Binney and Ray McGovern, among them. In a number of interviews this past week, notably a splendid and lengthy one @ rt. com, Bill Binney opined that the CIA’s Pompeo had asked to speak with him recently at Trump’s behest because, simply put, in so many words, the US intelligence agencies were not being truthful in what they had had to say and what they actually knew (or had real means of ascertaining, with some degree of certainty, by virtue of their mass surveillance). I would like to go further, however, and suggest that Pompeo’s undertaking to meet and talk with Binney for an hour or more testifies, by implication, to the fact that, actually, the CIA and NSA and FBI have no idea as to the identity of the DNC/Podesta hacker(s) / leaker(s) — i.e., their #putinoid impeachment of Russia, Russia, Russia as the true culprit notwithstanding. For surely, had Pompeo actually been in possession of authentic evidence and was truly wise as to the provenance of the Wikileaks plus Guccifer 2.0 documents, then, when Trump urged him to meet with Binney to learn more, he would have respectfully but preemptively declined saying he simply had no need to do so as he already knew a lot better — that he had reason enough to feel perfectly confident and supremely certain as to the sinister role of the Russians, not just in a hack of the DNC but of all the existing election technologies. Of course, this does not exclude the possibility that Pompeo deferred to Trump’s exhortation to go meet with Binney simply so as to avoid bad blood; or even, mala fide, to simply play along with Binney with the goal of finding out just how much this detractor and his VIPS confreres might know that could definitively blow the lid off the dildo #Russiagate conspiracy theory and sink the parallel state.
William Binney was hammered on MSNBC and CNN without the slightest doubt of his villainy. That’s irresponsible journalism. Cheers for your integrity and honesty, Ray.
The ICA was not “guesswork”, it was boldface lie.
Exactly!
And the only reasonable reaction to unsubstantiated US allegations is to consider them lies.
Boy the Democratic Party is really pushing hard on this fake ‘Russia did it’ narrative – must be their 2018 mid-term election strategy.
The reason the democrats do this is because it is their only hope to keep the donors happy and so they can put up another shill for the PTB in 2020. They realize if they fail, the populists may take over, and the billionaire donors will flee en masse. The entire purpose of the CIA (Capitalism’s Invisible Army) is to support Western Based multi-national corporations in their raping of the rest of the world. Clinging to a unipolar world with the USA as enforcer is their only game plan, even if it leads to WWIII. To get an idea of how scary it is, read this:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48185.htm
They are about to get us all killed.
Thanks for this. The Saker is one of the most important people you can read when it comes to the Ukraine and Russia.
You can find his articles at:
http://thesaker.is
Stop the Empires war on Russia!!!!
As always, a first-rate post by Ray McGovern. And as always, my reaction to the neocon-manufactured Russiagate hoax is another big yawn. The first time I heard the wild Russiagate accusations, my reaction wasn’t so much to demand evidence as to admire whomever was gutsy enough to expose Clinton’s incriminating emails. What an enormous public service! After all, who can incriminate Clinton more convincingly than Clinton herself, via her own emails? As to who the heroic whistleblower cum hacker/leaker might be, all the reliable evidence after a year of hysterical finger-pointing, smears, and innuendo, points to Seth Rich. (Julian Assange confirmed this indirectly when he offered a reward for the apprehension of Rich’s killer).
The fact that the neocon-owned (mostly) corporate news media wants us to believe that it’s somehow reprehensible or criminal to publish the truth about Clinton should tell Americans that the ones orchestrating all the hysteria constitute the real threat to US democracy.
I think you are right, that Seth Rich is a big missing link.
Joe, you’re so right about that. Seth Rich’s murder is the key to all of this. One can only hope that this one decent, honest young man was the bridge too far for TPTB. Thanks Joe for fighting the good fight.
Thought you should know…
Actually, speculation is that Tulsi Gabbard leaked, not Seth Rich. Gabbard is bad, bad news.
Take a look, from Stan Goff, an army veteran who worked with the late Mike Ruppert.
“This game-perspective and electoral fetishism are responsible for the increasing background noise about Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard as the next Bernie Sanders?—?that is, as a presidential candidate for 2020. The politics of tokenism is irresistible within the framework of political game-theory; and Gabbard is seen by her acolytes as checking several boxes at once: female, person of color (she’s part Samoan, and her father?—?a State Senator known for his vocal homophobia?—?is a part-Samoan convert to Hinduism), and here’s the kicker . . . a military veteran. And her endorsement of Sanders has enamored her to many former Sanders supporters who have not looked more deeply into her record or asked questions about her motivations. I, for one, have caught the fetor of opportunism from her from the moment she caught the Sanders wave; and I believe she understands what the left should understand. The age demographic?—?the arrow of time?—?is on the side of the left.”
https://medium.com/@pplswar/tulsi-gabbard-is-not-what-you-think-she-is-86771a49d387
Thanks for the warning Danny, and with what you wrote I now have no one in DC I can rely on.
The – “Russia, Russia, Russia, Putin, Putin, Pooookeeeemoooon!” – frenzy is simply the latest version of the “magic bullet” fantasy used to make Oswald the sole assassin of JFK, the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident that “wasn’t” that was used to justify the Vietnam War, the “weapons of mass destruction” nonsense used to invade Iraq, among other historical deep state lies regurgitated ad nauseum by the MSM. In other words it is the Big Lie of the moment used to shape the public mind and political reality while having no basis WHATSOEVER in said reality. Its hard to imagine that even Stalin at the peak of his power could have presided over a more servile and amoral media than currently propagandize us daily in the U.S.
Pols in Washington and talking heads on the MSM handle the word “liar” as if it were a live grenade. They all know that lying is the common currency in DC, but nobody wants to call the spade a spade. I guess it is inevitable that this culture of inveterate LIARS choose to lie about their lying. It’s as if no one must speak the forbidden word of truth, namely that you sir or madam are a LIAR!
A few months ago I debated a liberal friend on local public access cable TV (Madison, WI, WYOU). The topic was “Putin and the Left.”
I took the side that Putin’s been demonized relentlessly and that he definitely should not be the focus of the left in America; if anything, to a certain extent, Putin’s an an ally against Washington-Zio aggression. Among many other things, I pointed out how most life indicators have gone in a positive life-affirming direction for the majority of Russian citizens under Putin, that Putin is acting as somewhat (somewhat) of a bulwark to Washington-Zio imperialist aggression, and that Putin is rightfully deeply concerned over the NATO build up on Russia’s border regions.
My opponent took the view that Putin’s little more than an oligarchic thug who’s running a gas station masquerading as a country. During the debate he cited recent Russophobic books that received highly positive reviews in the NY Times and WaPo. (A red flag to be sure.) He mentioned how “Russia invaded Ukraine” and that “Russia annexed Crimea.” He also said Putin only jailed certain oligarchs so that he could then be in bed with a different group of oligarchs to enrich himself, yada yada yada. He went so far as to cite Putin’s childhood and how Putin apparently was a bully as a boy.
Of course during the rebuttal portion I countered that Russia did not invade Ukraine, it was a Western orchestrated putsch in which the beleaguered Russian ethnic population of the Eastern Ukraine took up arms to defend themselves against rightest/fascist Ukrainian forces. I also vehemently objected to the whole notion that Putin “annexed Crimea” by pointing out that the vast, vast majority of Crimean citizens voted to secede from Ukraine. My opponent objected (citing his NY Times favorably reviewed book) that Crimeans did not overwhelmingly vote to rejoin Russia, that if anything probably only 50% of the Crimean population desired reunification with Russia. I countered that 90% of Crimeans voted to secede.
Some folks will not give up their preconceived notions about anything.
I often wonder why people persist in believing something that has no basis in facts, but only assumptions and hearsay. I meet people, supposedly educated, who are unable to let go of their ignorance, which they have acquired over many years. ;)
My son mentioned to me that the human brain lights up in either the “reptilian center” or the “pleasure center” – sorry I can’t remember the scientific name for that area, but it’s not the area where reasoning or logic would dominate – when a person is defending an ideological position, such as political party preferences……
I’ve read a bit about this but haven’t yet found a scientific account that is written for a layperson on this.
So it seems that once someone has accepted a mythology, then one will swallow hard and defend absurdity to the death, lol.
As a species, therefore, we’re in trouble.
The exception to the rule are the Galileo’s or people who are capable of refusing to take anything at “face value” but will subject themselves to ridicule, shame, disparagement or even torture to defend an “unpleasant” truth.
Scientists who were murdered for publicly sharing their now accepted research :
Michael Servetus
Hypatia
Antoine Lavoisier
Giordano Bruno
https://www.famousscientists.org/7-scientists-who-died-violently/
Galileo was threatened with torture and imprisoned
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
Copernicus was attacked for his work:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
“I took the side that Putin’s been demonized relentlessly and that he definitely should not be the focus of the left in America”…”My opponent took the view that Putin’s little more than an oligarchic thug who’s running a gas station masquerading as a country.”
These statements aren’t mutually exclusive.
The debate came down to essentially perspective and priorities.
That liberals in the U.S. are putting so much emphasis on Putin’s supposed thuggery this perspective diverts attention from much more pressing matters that the left in America should be focused on: national healthcare for all, cordial relations with Moscow, bringing back manufacturing, instituting a massive federal jobs program, calling for debt forgiveness, advocating a raise in the minimum wage to a family supporting wage, reforming the Dem Party to an authentic populist party (or perhaps replacing it altogether), etc.
Of course all the absurd accusations against the Kremlin regarding the supposed election ‘hack’ are used to delegitimize Trump and vilify Putin. That the Russian people have made vast, vast gains on so many life-indicators under Putin is something my opponent conveniently ignored. One can be sure that if the 1990s oligarchs were still in power today none of the positive life-affirming changes would have accrued to the Russian people like they have under Putin’s admin.
Putin’s no panacea, but he’s nowhere near the demon American liberals, militarists and Ziocons are making him out to be. Not even close.
We need to go after Trump for the right reasons, not for this phony made up election nonsense.
Fitzgerald’s ingenious quote is now more relevant than ever: ‘the mark of a true intellect is being able to keep two competing views in one’s mind simultaneously and still be able to function.’
It’s not helpful for the left in America to foment Russophobia, it can lead to nuke war.
The same, snarky, know-it-all groupthink prevailed during the Yugo wars in the 1990’s. Just as impervious to facts, just as willing to believe the assertions of proven liars, and conveniently just as useful to the West‘s warmongers.
Why doesn’t Julian Assange reveal who provided the emails to WikiLeaks? He continues to state that it was not Russia that was responsible for this.
I find this ONE piece of the puzzle left out, extremely concerning.
When I’ve asked this question in the past, I’ve been met with some interesting reactions, but more so the excuse that Wiki would lose credibility if it revealed its sources.
But with the potential for nuclear war with Russia as well as Putin being the blame when in fact it was not Russia, and with mainstream media lies repeated over and over..
Why? WHY doesn’t Julian reveal the source. This would be OVER in a heart beat if he would come forward.
And as the US and NATO continue their build up of military troops on the Russian border, the urgency for Julian to reveal his source grows by the day.
Because the ability to induce whistleblowers would be over just as rapidly. He could only ask that the source seek protections and reveal that himself, and may have done so.
Why? …because that would be the end of Wikileaks and Assange’s credibility. Assange may lead but does not “own” Wikileaks, an organization of dedicated individuals whose core principle is to protect and never to reveal sources. No whistleblower would ever trust Wikileaks if that principle were violated …nor is it Assange’s obligation to prevent war. Isn’t it enough that he has been denied his freedom as an enemy of the dark forces that control the U.S. state?
Both Russia and China are being threatened by the US/NATO build-up of forces around them, but they are fully capable of defending themselves. The defeat of ISIS in Syria aided by Russian precision bombing proves that the US Military (with its surrogates) is incapable of prevailing with its tactics of endless destruction. The threat of nuclear war is still counterbalanced by the fear of MAD, and US generals know that Russian subs could easily deliver crushing blows to the US mainland (besides the ability to disable US warships at sea).
This battle will be waged mainly on the economic front. It’s now obvious the Western banksters are desperately trying to avoid having their Petrodollar protection racket overthrown, but this is inevitable.
If Julian knows that his source was from a “leak” (and according to Binney and McGovern a “leak”, as I understand it, means a download onto a thumb drive directly inserted into the port of a computer as opposed to an electronic REMOTE “hack” ) and if Julian can and does prove this to be true, then there’d be a witch hunt for whoever did the (hard wired) download. This would ultimately expose the source and break wikileaks’ promise to protect sources, ending their credibility forever.
Binney, as I understand it, worked on the electronic technology that enabled the intelligence services to collect data from electronic transmissions. He said once during an interview that he had asked his bosses whether they wanted to be able to detect a thumb drive hard wired collection “leak” and they said “NO”. McGovern and Binney have said that if there were a “hack”, the technology exists for the intelligence services to the hack and prove it. Since that has not occurred, the inference is that it was an undetectable “leak”.
If I understand all this correctly, then it seems that Assange should not need to expose his source. By inference and an honest public analysis it seems that a thumb drive sourced leak from a DNC computer or from someone whose computer had access to the files of a DNC computer has more credibility than a hack.
That said, I’ve been hoping that Assange might have a way around his dilemma without exposing his source……probably very wishful thinking…..
sorry if I’m unnecessarily repeating what is well known……..
Kelli – this is about as close to the truth as Julian Assange can go, and no doubt he only went there because Seth Rich was no longer alive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp7FkLBRpKg
He did not say that Seth Rich WAS the source of the leak, but it is implied.
And maybe Assange doesn’t know for sure that it WAS Seth Rich who leaked the emails (as Craig Murray, the British ex-ambassador, was the person who was handed the flash drive in Washington, D.C. and who got it to Assange). And even if it might have been Seth Rich who downloaded the emails, maybe it was a third person who delivered the flash drive to Craig Murray.
And let’s just assume that for a fact Assange DOES know it was Seth Rich. Even if he did come out and state this, what makes you think that the media and the intelligence agencies aren’t going to skewer him and label him a “conspiracy theorist” anyway?
No, Assange is doing the right thing by protecting his sources. He knows that even if he did come out with the truth, he’d be vilified.
The truth is going to come out, but not through Assange.
“This would be OVER in a heart beat if he would come forward. ”
No, it wouldn’t.
It is up to them to come up with real evidence as they are the accusers.
See Assange’s Dutch TV interview in which he de facto says Seth Rich gave him the leak. Also Assange posted a $15,000 reward for Seth Rich’s murderer.
Also what’s his name ex British ambassador to Uzbekistan (Craig Murray?) state he carried the leak from a Park in D.C. to Wikileaks in Britain.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK RAY
Today on “Mourning Joe” Jeremy Bash performed an amazing verbal slight of hand by using the terms “17 agencies” and “intelligence agencies” without actually stating, but implying, that all 17 agencies produced the assessment. Richard Haas was also there to clutch pearls with the rest of the team.
The fact that the United States meddles in every other election on the planet is never discussed. Of course, our intentions are pure and our means are always above reproach. And if these elections don’t go our way, we often resort to invasion, assassination, or the ever-popular color revolution. The goal always being the nullification of the popular election results if they run counter to the tenets of the permanent governing class here in the United States.
We are now simply applying these same principles and approaches learned abroad to the recent unexpected election results here at home. Popularism is the numero uno enemy of the Deep State. Seeing it running wild in the Executive Branch is very distressing because, even if the popularism in question is really a lie to get elected, it demonstrates deep dissatisfaction with the status quo.
Lacking the “normal” means to upend elections aboard and having been caught flatfooted here at home, the architects of this domestic revolutionary movement have decided that branding Trump a traitor is more than enough to remove him from office, so far with very limited success.
The question is how far will they go if pressed having already sacrificed their credibility in the current effort to prove collusion?
RinoDino,, that thought has occurred to me as well. Since we can do it abroad, why not at home. You wrote:
“We are now simply applying these same principles and approaches learned abroad to the recent unexpected election results here at home.”
Those who concoct these programs abroad have the arrogance to think they can overthrow an elected government using the same tactics right here in America. Little thought is given by the thoughtless media and the Washington crowd of what such a program means to our democracy, although the erosion already with great piles of money is serious enough.
Not a historian but as a witness to elections since 1952, there has never been anything quite like it. I seldom read what is put out by the media but it is instructive to read the comments posted. The are hysterical in a serious sense and sound like the gathering of a lynch mob.
Thank you Ray McGovern and Robert Parry for your steadfast reporting in against all odds. There is a significant new article in OffGuardian this morning that goes very far toward explaining all of the disinformation since the Khobar Towers attack by Eric Zuesse, which I will link. It finally looks like we’re about to be exposed to the truth…
https://off-guardian.org/2017/11/12/why-robert-mueller-was-selected-to-be-the-special-prosecutor/
Once one grasps the total story of the assembly of the mujahideen by Zbigniew Brzezinski and their morphing into Al Queda; and then blaming Iran rather than Al Quedia for terrorism, it becomes much clearer how we arrived at this moment.
I read that article by Eric Zuesse, and I not only thought of how revealing it was that the Iranians were not behind the Khobar Towers bombing, but of how badly our MSM is in the pocket of the ZioNeocon establishment. For crying out loud Bob, what is the truth? Joe
Really, Joe… But I think that we’re about to find out.
Re: “the truth” on the Khobar Towers, also please see Andrew Bacevich (I know you’ve quoted him on CN also). In his 2016 book “America’s War for the Greater Middle East – Please see pages 142:
“Then, in June 1996, terrorists attacked Khobar Towers…………..With a swiftness that recalled the Stark episode, U.S. and Saudi officials fingered Iran as the perpetrator, a mutually convenient verdict……..Subsequent evidence suggested Al Qaeda may have been responsible……”
Then on pages 204-205 from Bacevich’s book:
“……….another vehicular bomb, this time in Dhahran, ripped apart the Khobar Towers……………………….Less than fully cooperative Saudi authorities steered a team of U.S. investigators led by FBI Director Louis Freeh to the conclusion that Hezbollah, acting on Iran’s behalf, had organized the attack. In fact, all of those involved in the attack were Saudi’s (footnote 8/26/15 David Kirkpatrick article in NYT)…………………………………………………………………………….
In 2007, for example, William Perry, secretary of defense at the time of the Khobar Towers bombing, recanted his previous views, opining that the attack ‘was probably masterminded by Osama Bin Laden’………………………………”
Best, of course, to read the Bacevich’s complete work, cause, for brevity I removed a lot.
The pages 204-205 are in the chapter titled “Phony War”
Well said, Ray. On these issues, it’s incredibly hard to find people with an open thought, but keep plugging away at it, and I will, too.
From the article: “Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and a big promoter of the Russia-gate allegations, scoffed at what Trump said: “You believe a foreign adversary over your own intelligence agencies?”’
The answer, a toss up but mostly favoring a “foreign adversary”. Too, foreign adversary is our description despite an empty bank of solid reasons as to why Russia should be labeled a foreign adversary. That is, if we’re talking about the national interest, not the interests of the attackers.
Phil Girardi, a former intelligence office and head of the Council for the National Interest recently commented about the attitude of former associates still working for the CIA. He said he was surprised at the vehemence of their anti-Russian attitude. It helps to explain why these guys and gals are knee-jerkers when it comes to Russia. It must be particularly galling to them as to why Putin doesn’t take the bait they and Washington are constantly dangling in front of him.
A point that escapes all the proponents of Russia Gate is the open knowledge that we are doing the same to Russia and just about every country on the planet. Although there is no hard evidence, as Mr. McGovern points out, would it really be surprising if they did? And if they did, why help the guy everyone took for granted was going to lose.
We just do not like to look in the mirror, afraid of what we will see.
“why help the guy everyone took for granted was going to lose?”
Indeed. This is the self defeating aspect of Russia-Gate. As the truth slowly trickles out that this is indeed a witch hunt to remove Trump and as Putin says, do regime change in Russia, both presidents are only strengthened and more popular with their supporters as a result. They gain credibility while the liars merely reveal their weakness. ‘Tis a tangled web they weave. And now they have become the prey that can’t extricate itself.
Take a look at the chart of the deep state.
http://www.softpanorama.org/Skeptics/Political_skeptic/Elite_theory/deep_state.shtml
It is also very ironic that the US secret agencies now express “confidence” in speculation accusing Russia of election tampering, whereas after the JFK assassination, they ignored Russia despite Oswald being a double agent or of wavering loyalties.
In both cases, the secret agencies wanted to get rid of a president who contradicted their fearmongering about Russia. Apparently the need to prove one’s loyalty in these agencies requires “confidence” in the witch above all, as the basis of all funding.
Here is a fascinating look at yet another Washington-based obsession with Russia that has not been covered by the MSM:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/11/russia-us-air-force-and-tissue-samples.html
Apparently, Washington just can’t get its fill of all things Russian.
It seems we’ve taken Gen. Jack D. Ripper’s warning (below) to heart , and have decided to conduct a preemptive “first strike”.
Base Commander Ripper : “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.”
If ever there were a case of a drip, drip, drip campaign of telling the same lie over, and over again, this Russian hacking or it destroying American democracy is it.
“A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth”. Joseph Goebbels
Joe, I wonder sometimes how calmly the Russian president Putin and his colleagues have been taking all this crap of lies, and insults hurled at them for quite a few years now. It is like the criminals have put the innocents in the dock and throwing stones at them. The Russians have not hit back. The only explanation comes to my mind is that the EU Vassal States are full fledged partners of U.S. in this. But the Europeans are Russia’s neighbors. With this whole gang knocking at their doors, Russia is doing all it can somehow come to some conciliation with their Western European neighbors. We know in real life how hard it is to live with hostile neighbors. They can make your life miserable in number of ways – if not able to make you leave.
It seems like Russia can defend itself if attacked. However, no matter how much they push them, it is not right for them to hit back. And that they want to live as a part of European Community peacefully next to them. What are your thoughts about it?
The ZUSA has been called finally a main sponsor of terrorism – with the accompanying documented facts.
The terrible stench of immorality and lies and sheer supremacist stupidity (ziocon brand) cannot be dismissed anymore: http://theduran.com/breaking-russian-fm-lavrov-says-us-presence-syria-violates-geneva-agreements/
“–The US actively aids ISIS by evacuating terrorists from zones where their forces are being eliminated by Syrian troops and their allies
–The US fails to fire upon ISIS terrorists when given a clear and safe opportunity
–The always illegal presence of the US in Syria violates the Geneva Agreements which as recently as the weekend, the US committed itself to uphold
–Syria is being prohibited from exercising its right to liberate the entirety of its legally recognized territory because of the illegal US presence in Syria
–The US proxy militias under the charge of Kurdish militants are part of these wider problems”
In short, “support the troops!” for Israel’s interests…
Dave I feel that the American instigation program to bring Russia down, is a ticking time bomb. I worry about the crowd in Washington who want to strike Russia now before Russia gets any bigger with their military armament. I’m not worried about Russia, in as much as I’m worried about American jingoism. Russia seems to be all about having patience, and that kind of opponent is always an opponent worth being cautious of.
When growing up Dave, did you ever witnessed the kid who was mild and meek beat the tar out of the bully? Wasn’t it always the odds of winning the fight favored the mean spirited bully, but in the end the meek kid won the fight? If you can picture this American bully tactic hovering over the Russian meek kid as a schoolyard fight, then you will see it as I see it. Smart money would be placed on the meek kid, because beating the odds will allow you to win big. Joe
Yes, Joe. I only hope that we do not come to this fight. And somehow cooler heads may prevail. But reading this article by Juan Cole, that supposedly Middle Eastern scholar at the University of Michigan, and other writings by once so called left liberals, it seems like that just about the whole country is sick with this Russian hysteria disease. Now, The West Europeans along with U.S. want to ban Russians from 2018 Winter Olympics alleging that they are confirmed dopers, just like they are confirmed hackers.
The presidential elections in Russia are coming in March 2018. I believe that It is part of strategy/ plan of “The West” to disturb the elections to make regime change in Russia.
It is complete degeneration of the Ruling Elite and the Academia as well. Just about in every way, the Truth has been turned on its head. Everydirection you look, the whole Political Establishment is immersed deep in cesspool of filthy lies. We sure live in an Orwellian World here now.
The American elite are only showing their ignorance.
great article.. most of the mess the article complains about needs to be in the courts..
1. endorsements, are not evidence and often are meant to be highly misleading
2. elected members of government and media, hold special places in the American society demanding that our laws and constitution hold criminally and civilly responsible any elected person or paid member of the media who endorses, without a proper foundation, something.
3. Lying by members of the appointed (bureaucratic and military) government has become commonplace but they lie as servants to the elected. So the elected to whom they are responsible should be held culpable; arrest the persons in each house of congress assigned oversight authority for the area the lying person and the person in the white house who has charge of the department that the liar works, as well as the director of the agency for whom the person works and allow the criminality of a liar extend to all who have authority from top to bottom.
4. Intelligence is a criminally integrated globally corrupt enterprise, no one should rely on anything from them.
5. Israel, and many other nations, have a history of meddling in the affairs of our nations.
6. On October 27, 2017 the High Court, in Australia, ruled that four senators and one lower house member—Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader Barnaby Joyce—were ineligible to stand in the 2016 federal election because [the Senators and members] held dual citizenship. The court enforced the most literal interpretation of the 1901 Constitution, which proscribes anyone from standing for parliament if they hold “allegiance” to a “foreign power” or are “entitled” to the “rights and privileges of a foreign power.” WSWS.org
7. Make all persons who run for one of 527 elected, salaried positions in the USA sign agreements to amend the U. S. Constitution with the same language in appears in the Australian Constitution (language in 6 above) to the US Constitution except replace “parliament” with congress, executive and judicial branches of government.
2. elected members of government and media, hold special places in the American society demanding that our laws and constitution hold criminally and civilly responsible any elected person or paid member of the media who endorses, without a proper foundation, something.
Very bad idea. American judges and juries are not immune to prejudice and such a vague law would be enforced with 100% bias. Those that deem consortiumnews.com to be a fake news source are more powerful, in terms of influence on the legal system, than those who do not.
In reply to (2,3): Legal responsibility requires knowing complicity and definite perjury vs. bad judgment, difference of opinion, etc. The problem with accountability of elected/appointed officials is control of mass media and election funding by money.
In reply to (4) that intelligence is a “criminally integrated globally corrupt enterprise,” this requires restriction of their operations, and multiple diverse internal and external oversight entities, and until then their product is indeed of unknown utility.
In reply to (6,7) on Constitutional amendments to require independence of candidates for Congress from influence of a foreign power, the independence must be from economic influence as well as declared loyalties. This requires restriction of funding of elections and mass media to limited individual contributions, and monitoring of officials and the families and associates during their lives for corrupt influence.