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Living in an Orwellian Dystopia

By Gilad Atzmon | May 3, 2018

It is puzzling to witness the speed and ferocity with which Britain is deteriorating  into an Orwellian nightmare.

The Evening Standard reported yesterday that “a London council worker has been suspended after being caught claiming Zionists ‘collaborated’ with the Nazis.”

Apparently Stan Keable was removed from his duties as an environmental enforcement officer for Hammersmith & Fulham Council after saying, “The Nazis were anti-Semitic. The problem I’ve got is the Zionist government at the time collaborated with them. They accepted the ideas that Jews are not acceptable here.”

Keable made the comments, shared in a clip on Twitter, at a  pro-Corbyn demonstration outside the Parliament. I guess that in Britain 2018 you can lose your job simply for expressing an opinion.

It seems that some British Jews are disturbed by parts of their history. They try to suppress any speech about the Haavara Agreement. Former London mayor Ken Livingstone was suspended from the Labour Party for mentioning that collaboration between Hitler and Zionism. And disturbingly, in the Labour Party’s discussion of Livingstone’s case the party general secretary, Iain McNicol, “made it clear in a letter to the former mayor that the case against him was not about the historical facts, but whether his conduct was ‘grossly detrimental’ to the party…” *

The Transfer (Haavara) Agreement between the Nazi regime and the Palestine Zionist leadership is an accepted historical fact. In his superb book, Final Solution, the British Jewish Historian David Cesarani examines the agreement and he quotes German Zionist voices that approved of the Nazi regime and even welcomed the Nuremberg Racial Laws because they pushed for segregation.  But evidentiary truth is not a  defence in Britain 2018. I guess this disregard for truth is just another symptom of our removal from the Athenian ethos.

Conservative MP for Chelsea & Fulham, Greg Hands, said: “I am shocked someone expressing hateful opinions could have a job meeting vulnerable tenants. The council leader should launch an inquiry into whether there are others of his ilk in the council.”

I can’t see a drop of hatefulness in Keable’s comment. But I would like to advise the conservative MP and other ignorant Tories that while the Haavara Agreement was signed as an attempt to save German Jews, the Conservative Government here in Britain did little for German Jews and other Jewish refugees.

Mike Katz, of the Jewish Labour Movement, said: “To try to twist the history of the Nazis to fit an anti-Zionist narrative is offensive.” It may be offensive but the Haavara Agreement and the collaboration between Zionist organisations and Nazi officials  from 1933 till the end of the war are part of Jewish history and political terrorism will not wipe out that history.

When contacted by the Standard, Mr Keable said: “I am sorry for any offence I may have caused. But the Nazi regime and the Zionist Federation of Germany collaborated, through the Haavara agreement, in the emigration of some 60,000 Jews to Palestine between 1933 and 1939.” He said he did not insinuate that Jews collaborated with the Nazis.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The Skripal Case and Bombing Syria: Six Things We Learned About Modern Britain

By Neil Clark | Sputnik | May 3, 2018

To have been in ‘democratic’ Britain for the past eight weeks has been quite an educational experience.

We’ve seen how the NeoCon Establishment works, how dissent is policed, and how ‘gas-lighting’ techniques are used to try and make us think we’re going crazy for questioning the ‘official narrative’ — a narrative which we know just by employing simple logic, doesn’t make sense.

Here’s a list of the most important things we’ve learnt- that’s if you weren’t aware of them already.

1. The presumption of innocence doesn’t apply to NeoCon targets.

Innocent until proven guilty? Not if you’re in the line of fire of the Endless War Lobby, comrade. Russia was accused of trying to poison the Skripals before a proper criminal investigation had even begun. The Syrian government was blamed for a chemical weapons attack, before we had independently verification that a chemical weapons attack had even taken place. The ‘Official Narrative’ on both cases has unravelled spectacularly. No ‘smoking gun’ evidence of either Russian involvement in the Skripal case or of the Douma CW attack has been produced. On the contrary, witnesses testified last week at The Hague that the Douma attack didn’t happen.

But we’re  expected not to notice — as the news cycle — conveniently for the accusers- moves on to other stories.

​2. Rupert Murdoch’s Times newspaper plays an utterly pernicious role in British public life. 

It was the Times which demanded action from Theresa May against Russia. It was the Times which  has demanded (repeatedly, and again after the Skripal incident) that  Ofcom acted against Russian media in the UK, such as RT. It was the Times, which accuses Russian media of peddling ‘fake news’, which reported Sergei Skripal as dead on its 12th March front page.

It was The Times which, on 14th March, falsely reported that ‘almost 40’ people had needed treatment in Salisbury, prompting Dr Stephen Davies, Consultant in Emergency Medicine to write to the paper stating ‘May I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.’

​It was The Times, which on the day the US/UK and France launched illegal attacks on Syria in response to the unverified chemical weapons attack at Douma, carried a front page attack on British academics who dare to challenge the War Party line on Syria. It was The Times which smeared other critics of western foreign policy as ‘Russian trolls’, including a peace campaigner from Finland who had been battling cancer.

​John Wight has called the Times, the in-house organ of the neocon Henry Jackson Society. Its days as Britain’s respected newspaper of record have certainly long gone.

​3. Britain is only what is called a ‘Democracy’.

Just think back to that Parliamentary debate on 14th March. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was attacked from his own side, for his cautious approach towards the government’s unproven claims about the Skripal case. To add insult to injury a number of Labour MPs then signed Early Day Motion 1071 – which stated ‘This House unequivocally accepts the Russian state’s culpability for the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal’. Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith showed her support for Theresa May by saying ‘We very much accept what the Prime Minister said.’ Corbyn, coming under enormous Establishment pressure did buckle, saying the Russian authorities ‘needed to be held to account’, even though later he still quite rightly insisted that ‘absolute evidence’ was needed.

In bombing Syria on 14th April, Theresa May not only refused to recall Parliament, she also ignored public opinion which showed only 20% in favour of air strikes. In a genuine democracy that would have ruled out action. But May treated public opinion with utter contempt. That wonderful passage from ‘The Comments of Moung Ka’ by the Edwardian comic writer Saki springs readily to mind.

‘The people of Britain are what is called a Democracy’ said Moung Ka. ‘A Democracy?’ questioned Moung Thwa. What is that?’

‘A Democracy’ broke in Moung Shooglay eagerly, ‘is a community that governs itself according to its own wishes and  interests by electing accredited representatives who enact its laws and supervise and control their administration. It’s aim and object is government of the community in the interests of the community’.

‘Then’, said Moung Thwa, turning to his neighbour, ‘If the people of Britain are a Democracy -‘

‘I never said they were a Democracy’, interrupted Moung Ka placidly.

‘Surely we both heard you!’, exclaimed Moung Thwa.

‘Not correctly, said Moung Ka; ‘I said they are what is called a Democracy’.

4. The ‘free press’ doesn’t act as you’d expect a ‘free press’ to act. 

The striking thing about the Skripal case and Syria bombings from a journalist’s point of view has been the uniformity of the media coverage.

Right-wing papers like the Telegraph and liberal ones like The Guardian have taken exactly the same stance ie anti-Russian and anti-Syrian government. Whether its because of DSMA-Notices (see 6, below), or not, there’s been no proper questioning of the UK government’s claims about Salisbury — and not much on Syria either. Investigative journalism? What’s that?

The mainstream media is actually less diverse in its opinions now (on the things that really matter) than at the time of the Iraq war where publications like the New Statesman (now a ‘centrist’ Blairite organ), spoke out strongly against intervention. If you want a different perspective on Skripals and Syria you have had to tune in to Russian media, such as Sputnik and RT, and that of course is threatened by the NeoCon Thought Police, who want everyone to be singing from the same pro-war hymn sheet.

5. The role of the security services in the promotion of ‘official narratives’ is very important.

Every time a wheel has come off the Skripal narrative, we’ve been fed information to bolster it from ‘official sources’. After the head of Porton Down said that the  laboratory there was unable to confirm that the nerve agent allegedly used to poison the Skripals came from Russia, the line was pushed that ‘intelligence-led assessments’ pointed to Russian guilt. Could we see these ‘assessments’? Of course not! We just have to believe that they’re there. Then as the ‘nerve agent placed on the door handle’ theory began to gain a head of steam we were told that ‘British Intelligence’ had ‘evidence’ that Russia had been testing the nerve agent on door handles prior to 3rd March. Could we see this ‘evidence’? No, of course not.

Alex Thomson of C4 News reported on 12th March that a ‘D-Notice’ had issued by the UK authorities to stop the media from fully identifying Sergei Skripal’s MI6 handler who lived nearby.

​Were other DSMA-Notices issued too regarding the reporting of Salisbury? If it was so clear that Russia did it, why would they bother?

6. The British public aren’t mugs (or sheep).

​Despite all the propaganda, all the hysterical headlines, all the blatantly biased coverage, the British haven’t bought it. Literally or metaphorically. Inside the Tent gatekeepers have relentlessly attacked those brave individuals who have questioned the official narratives, but its these individuals- smeared as ‘crackpots’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ who the public are turning to for their analysis. Compare the number of retweets the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray gets when he publishes on the Skripal case, with those who try and denigrate him. My own Twitter following has increased by several thousands since early March. Citizen Halo got a big boost in followers after she was smeared by The Times. After the lies told about Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya people no longer tamely accept what the NeoCon Establishment tells us. We’re at an  ‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ moment in British politics where more and more people have found the courage to say out loud ‘The Emperor has no clothes!’. The elite have been lying to us and they know that we know they’ve been lying. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter

Support his AntiStalker Legal Fund (vs. a Times journalist)

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Gavin Williamson wants YOU in the Army Reserves to fight Russia in the fake news wars!

RT | May 1, 2018

If you’re a reporter or a computer geek, then Gavin Williamson wants you to help him in the war on fake news. The UK defense secretary issued to a call to arms to tech and communications experts to fight the cyber propaganda war.

Williamson has called on those with IT or cyber skills to join the UK’s reserve forces to help end the Russian “age of disinformation,” arguing they can “change the narrative” with tech skills that are “more relevant today than anything else.”

In an interview with The House magazine, set to be published later in the week, Williamson said that the reserves need to come up with ways to get the private sector more involved in encouraging people to join the reserve forces.

The secretary argued that army recruitment should be about “looking to different people who maybe think, as a journalist: ‘What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?’

“They are more relevant today than anything else, having those skills, whether it be journalists, those people with amazing cyber and IT skills, those people with the ability to really understand about getting messages across.”

Williamson said the armed forces need the next generation for a new approach to fight ever-changing modern warfare. “We have to start changing the armed forces in terms of actually attracting those people as well,” he said. “Sometimes people see the armed forces as being quite traditional in terms of its approach. But in this disinformation age, this cyber-age – people often look at cyber as something that’s separate. Actually, it’s completely relevant to every other different part of our services.”

Williamson once again compared tactics used by Russian ‘internet trolls’ to Nazi propaganda, saying in March that it “completely distorts the narrative of what people think about things… effectively the Lord Haw-Haws of the modern era”.

The defense chief has made his feelings about Russia very clear in the past. He previously told Russia to “go away and shut up” following the chemical attack against the Skripals. In January, he was accused of fear mongering after warning that Russia could kill “thousands and thousands” of Brits, “creating total chaos within the country.”

A report from the National Audit Office found the number of full-time military personnel was 8,200 people short of the required level. There is also a 26% shortfall in the number of intelligence analysts.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

James Comey’s Forgotten Rescue of Bush-Era Torture

By James Bovard | Mises Wire | May 1, 2018

“Here I stand, I can do no other,” James Comey told President George W. Bush in 2004 when Bush pressured Comey – who was then Deputy Attorney General – to approve an unlawful antiterrorist policy. Comey, who was FBI chief from 2013 to 2017, was quoting a line reputedly uttered by Martin Luther in 1521, when he told Holy Roman Emperor Charles V that he would not recant his sweeping criticisms of the Catholic Church. Comey’s quotation of himself quoting the father of the Reformation is par for the self-reverence of his new memoir, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

MSNBC host Chris Matthews recently declared, “James Comey made his bones by standing up against torture. He was a made man before Trump came along.” Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria, in a column declaring that Americans should be “deeply grateful” to lawyers like Comey, declared, “The Bush administration wanted to claim that its ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were lawful. Comey believed they were not… So Comey pushed back as much as he could.”

Martin Luther risked death to fight against what he considered the heresies of his time. Comey, a top Bush administration policymaker, found a safer way to oppose the worldwide secret U.S. torture regime widely considered a heresy against American values. Comey approved brutal practices and then wrote some memos and emails fretting about the optics.

Comey became Deputy Attorney General in late 2003 and “had oversight of the legal justification used to authorize” key Bush programs in the war on terror. At that time, the Bush White House was pushing the Justice Department to again sign off on an array of extreme practices that had begun shortly after the 9/11 attacks. A 2002 Justice Department memo had leaked out that declared that the president was entitled to ignore federal law in approving extreme interrogation techniques. Photos had also leaked from Abu Ghraib prison showing the stacking of naked prisoners with bags over their heads, mock electrocution via a wire connected to a man’s penis, guard dogs on the verge of ripping into naked men, and grinning U.S. male and female soldiers celebrating the bloody degradation. A confidential CIA Inspector General report had just warned that post-9/11 CIA interrogation methods may violate the international Convention Against Torture.

Rather than ending the abuses, Comey repudiated the memo. Speaking to the media in a not-for-attribution session on June 22, 2004, Comey declared that the 2002 memo was “overbroad,” “abstract academic theory,” and “legally unnecessary.” Comey helped oversee crafting a new memo with different legal footing to justify the same interrogation methods.

Comey twice gave explicit approval for waterboarding, which sought to break detainees with near-drowning. This practice had been recognized as a war crime by the U.S. government since the Spanish American War.

Comey wrote in his memoir that he was losing sleep over concern about Bush administration torture polices. But losing sleep was not an option for detainees because Comey approved sleep deprivation as an interrogation technique. Detainees could be forcibly kept awake for up to 180 hours until they confessed their sins. How did this work? At Abu Ghraib, the notorious Iraqi prison, one FBI agent reported seeing a detainee “handcuffed to a railing with a nylon sack on his head and a shower curtain draped around him, being slapped by a soldier to keep him awake.”

Comey also approved “wall slamming” – which, as law professor David Cole wrote, meant that detainees could be thrown against a wall up to 30 times. Comey also signed off on the CIA using “interrogation” methods such as facial slaps, locking detainees in small boxes for 18 hours, and forced nudity. When the secret Comey memo approving those methods finally became public in 2009, many Americans were aghast – and relieved that the Obama administration had repudiated Bush policies.

When it came to opposing torture, Comey’s version of “Here I stand” had more loopholes than a reverse mortgage contract. Though Comey in 2005 approved each of 13 controversial extreme interrogation methods, he objected to combining multiple methods on one detainee. It was as if Martin Luther grudgingly approved of the Catholic Church selling indulgences to individually expunge sins for adultery, robbery, lying, and gluttony but vehemently objected if all the sins were expunged in one lump sum payment.

In 2014, the Senate Intelligence Committee finally released a massive report, Americans learned grisly details of the CIA torture regime that Comey helped legally sanctify – including death via hypothermia, rape-like rectal feeding of detainees, compelling detainees to stand long periods on broken legs, and dozens of cases of innocent people pointlessly brutalized. Psychologists aided the torture regime, offering hints on how to destroy the will and resistance of prisoners. The only CIA official to go to prison for the torture scandal was courageous whistleblower John Kiriakou.

If Comey had resigned in 2004 or 2005 to protest the torture techniques he now claims to abhor, he would deserve some of the praise he is now receiving. Instead, he remained in the Bush administration but wrote an email summarizing his objections, declaring that “it was my job to protect the department and the A.G. [Attorney General] and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.” A 2009 New York Times analysis noted that Comey and two colleagues “have largely escaped criticism [for approving torture] because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.” In Washington, writing emails is “close enough for government work” to convey sainthood.

When Comey finally exited the Justice Department in August 2005 to become a lavishly-paid senior vice president for Lockheed Martin, he proclaimed in a farewell speech that protecting the Justice Department’s “reservoir” of “trust and credibility” requires “vigilance” and “an unerring commitment to truth.” But Comey perpetuated policies that shattered the moral credibility of both the Justice Department and the U.S. government. Comey failed to heed another Martin Luther admonition: “You are not only responsible for what you say, but also for what you do not say.”

James Bovard is the author of ten books, including 2012’s Public Policy Hooligan, and 2006’s Attention Deficit Democracy. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, and many other publications.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Supplies Ukraine with Lethal Weapons to Escalate Conflict and Bury Hopes for Peace

By Arkady SAVITSKY | Strategic Culture Foundation | 03.05.2018

Washington has confirmed the delivery of FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missile systems to Kiev. Ukrainian personnel started training with the new weapons on May 2.

The aid package approved in March specified 210 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 37 Javelin launchers. Since 2014, the US has provided over $850 million to bolster Ukraine’s security. Although the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 allocates $350 million for this purpose, this is the first time Kiev has received lethal weapons from Washington. Shipments of Barrett M107A1 rifles are next.

The news has come at a time when the “anti-terror operation” (ATO) in the separatist Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has just ended (on April 30), to be replaced by a joint-forces operation (JFO). The regular military, the security forces (the SBU), the police, the national guard, and the border service will all be united under one command. The SBU had been in charge before what is being called the Donbas “reintegration law” was signed and took effect in late February. The US supports the idea of bringing in UN peacekeepers who will be deployed under the terms demanded by Kiev.

From now on, the talks between Volker and Surkov will be seen in a different light, because Washington is no longer a mediator, but rather an accomplice who is fueling the conflict. With such explicit US support, Kiev will double down on its military solution. Corruption is rampant in Ukraine. It will be no surprise if the weapons fall into wrong hands and are used against the US military somewhere outside of Europe.

The weapons deliveries are always followed by military instructors who come in to provide local training. It being gradually sucked into an armed conflict that has absolutely nothing to do with America’s national security. After all, Ukraine is a European headache. The US Navy is already present in Ochakov. Their military presence so close to Russia’s borders cannot go unnoticed by Moscow. Washington will be responsible for the consequences. Russia has not deployed its military along the American border. Nor has it sent weapons to any US neighbors.

The Javelins have been shipped to a country that has just been slammed for its human-rights violations in a report drafted by the State Department. Many international organizations have sounded the alarm over the abuse of power in Ukraine, which has just become a recipient of American military aid. There is nothing US officials love more than lecturing others on freedom, democracy, and human rights. Those are their words. Deliveries of lethal weapons to one of the most corrupt countries in the world are their deeds. The Javelins sent to Ukraine will swell the power of the oligarchs who are raking in fortunes thanks to their cozy relationships with the powers that be. The conflict in the Donbas is being used to distract public attention from worsening domestic problems.

Washington is turning a blind eye to the abuse of power in that country because Kiev has agreed to relinquish its own national sovereignty and allow itself to be turned into a tool of US foreign policy. It has recently joined an anti-Russia bloc of three nations and was rewarded by being granted an official status in NATO.

Every move has consequences. Russia can easily supply the self-proclaimed republics in eastern Ukraine with the Kornet anti-tank system, which is militarily superior to the Javelin. The Russian weapon has proven itself effective on the battlefield even against state-of–the-art tanks such as the Israeli Merkava IV. Moscow can supply the republics with weapons and electronic warfare systems in greater quantities for the simple reason that it does not have to ship that equipment across the Atlantic Ocean and all of Europe. And now that the US has crossed the red line, Russia’s hands are free.

In theory Russia could recognize the republics as independent states, once the Minsk II accords have been forgotten and war preparations are in full gear. If their governments invite Russian forces in, in order to guarantee their own security, Moscow will act strictly in accordance with international law by agreeing to those requests.

The Javelins will not change anything. Those weapons systems are not powerful enough to give Ukrainian troops the crucial advantage they will need to ensure a victory. But the move will certainly inflame tensions, making the lives of ordinary Ukrainians worse, not better. They need political and economic reforms, not new weapons. The last thing Europeans want is the resumption of war in Ukraine. But the weapons are there. The warnings have been ignored and there is no turning back. The repercussions will be destructive. From this moment forward Washington must bear the responsibility for whatever goes wrong.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Militarism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , | Leave a comment

Tapper-Clapper Leak Proves Media, Intelligence ‘Collaborated’ to Make Russiagate

Sputnik – May 3, 2018

Former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper, who landed a job at CNN in August 2017 after leaving the government, leaked information to CNN’s Jake Tapper regarding the infamous Steele dossier and its salacious allegations against then-candidate Donald Trump – then denied his actions to Congress under oath.

The leak, and the cover up, shows the “collaboration between the media and the intelligence community in building up Russiagate,” Max Blumenthal, a journalist and bestselling author, told Radio Sputnik’s Loud & Clear.

​The dossier, which was first published in January by BuzzFeed, includes allegations that Russian authorities “had been cultivating and supporting US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump for at least five years.”

In addition, the dossier states that the Kremlin “had been feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, for several years.” The document, which was created by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, also makes claims about sexual acts between Trump and Russian sex workers, among other things.

On Friday, the US House Intelligence Committee released a 253-page report stating that Clapper leaked details of the dossier to Tapper. Clapper initially declined discussing the dossier information with the journalist, but later admitted to it. The committee’s report also states that there was “no evidence” of collusion between Trump campaign associates and Russia.

“When initially asked about leaks related to the International Committee Assessment in July 2017, former DNI Clapper flatly denied ‘discussing the dossier [compiled by Steele] or any other intelligence related to Russia hacking of the 2016 election with journalists,'” the report reads.

The report also states that Clapper “subsequently acknowledged discussing the dossier with CNN journalist Jake Tapper and admitted that he might have spoken with other journalists about the same topic.”

Blumenthal explained that the dossier was the catalyst for the Russiagate scandal.

“I think this should be a bigger scandal than it is,” he told hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou.

“James Clapper — when he was the DNI — oversaw both the CIA and the FBI. There was a dossier going around in [January 2017] in Washington that everyone was talking about but hadn’t been reported on. It was the dossier produced by Christopher Steele, which is the basis for the Russia narrative. Clapper and the intelligence community wanted the dossier out there. On January 6, Clapper sends James Comey, who is then the FBI director, to brief Trump on the dossier. Meanwhile, Clapper leaks the story to Tapper. Tapper and his team at CNN report that Trump was the subject of a two-page dossier by an unnamed British agent,” Blumenthal said.

“The next thing you know, Buzzfeed releases the entire dossier. Trump calls it fake news and the whole blow-up with the press begins on January 9. Russiagate goes to a whole other level. Tapper is going on Twitter and talking about the veracity of the document. You can see the collaboration between the media and the intelligence community in building up Russiagate,” Blumenthal added.

On Monday, George Washington University Law professor Jonathan Turley said on “Fox & Friends” that there is a “serious issue here.”

“Clapper has already admitted that he did speak with CNN. Now, he is insisting he didn’t speak to any media until January 20, but he indicated he spoke to CNN in early January. CNN reported that high-level people had confirmed the information and if one of those individuals is Clapper, it is a serious problem. He could be accused, again, of perjury,” Turley said.

This is not the first time that Clapper has run into issues with Congress.

In 2013, he apologized for telling Congress that the National Security Agency does not collect data on Americans. He later said his statement was “clearly erroneous.”

See Also:

Clinton Team Was ‘Feeding’ Allegations to Trump’s Dossier Author – Released Memo

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Congress Again Fails to Discover Collusion to Subvert the 2016 Election

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 03.05.2018

There have been a number of developments in the endless inquiry into possible collusion between the Russian government and Donald Trump to manipulate perceptions and voting relating to the two presidential candidates in the November 2016 election. In particular, it has been alleged that the Russians were, with the connivance of some in the Trump team, able to obtain information damaging to Hillary Clinton while also misusing social media to send a message critical of the Democratic Party candidate.

“Russiagate” was born out of a desire to explain how Trump was able to defeat the Establishment candidate Clinton and it quickly focused on emails in possession of Wikileaks and meetings of Trump associates with Russians as a plausible explanation for the electoral result. The media opined that “It had to be the Russians,” who also had motive in their recognizing that Clinton was the stronger candidate whose harsh and steely glare was focused on the various crimes and misdemeanors alleged to be committed by Kremlin President Vladimir Putin in places like Ukraine and Georgia, not to mention Syria. Clinton’s campaign message was that she was prepared to do something about Putin while Trump was instead arguing that a good relationship with Moscow was a sine qua non for American foreign policy.

There are currently three investigations proceeding simultaneously looking into the Russian-Trump collusion, though one of them has finally come to an end. The House of Representatives’ Intelligence Committee investigation has concluded that there was no evidence that there had been “collusion, conspiracy, or coordination between the Trump campaign and the Russians” to influence or subvert the outcome of the election. The committee did, however, accept that there had been Russian “active measures” interference, apparently based largely on assumptions about WikiLeaks and the alleged activities of employees of Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency on social media sites.

However, no evidence was produced by the committee to support the claim of Kremlin interference, described as an influence campaign having “strategic objectives for disrupting the US election,” and it is to be presumed that the judgement is based on suspicions regarding Russian behavior as well as assessments produced by administrators of the social sites themselves which revealed sketchy and often contradictory evidence based on presumed political ads purchased by the various Russian entities. Even the US media admits that the Facebook ads had little or no real impact on the election while claims that Democratic Party emails were either hacked or stolen by Russian agents or proxies have never been demonstrated.

Nor is there any actual evidence in the Congressional report that anyone in the Kremlin was trying to help Donald J. Trump get elected and it is interesting to note that many of the allegations about insinuations of foreign involvement in the election can be traced back to former senior intelligence figures who were themselves active in the Clinton campaign.

The House judgment was immediately attacked by the media and also by the outnumbered Democrats on the committee, claiming that the “premature” decision to end the investigation was political, to bail out an under-pressure president, but no one has produced any evidence suggesting that the contacts between Russians and Americans, “ill-advised” as some of them were, led to any deliberate or incidental electoral malfeasance. The Democrats and their allies in the media merely assert that more digging and additional otherwise unidentified witnesses would have produced the desired result.

Meanwhile, the investigation continues at the offices of the Robert Mueller Special Counsel and also at the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has proportionately more Democrats on board than does the corresponding committee at the House of Representatives. Senator Mark Warner has already warned that the work of his committee will continue, presumably until their either find something or have to finally admit that there is nothing to find.

Concerning Mueller there are daily newspaper reports explaining how his noose is tightening around President Trump, though no one quite explains credibly how that is so. What is clear so far is that Donald Trump is a highly immoral man by most standards and that a lot of his friends, if not criminals, were engaged in activity that might easily be described as sleazy. But sleazy does not exactly equate to a deliberate attempt to fix a national election and subvert the Constitution of the United States of America.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , | Leave a comment

Guns vs. butter at Wuhan meeting

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | May 2, 2018

The anxiety syndrome in the American write-ups on the Wuhan summit is truly tragi-comic. An analyst at the Brookings Institution confidently predicted even before the summit between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping that the event was much ado about nothing. The US government-funded Voice of America in an analysis has now arrived at the same conclusion, after the summit. Why are these American analysts in such tearing hurry to debunk the Wuhan meeting?

It’s geopolitics, stupid! The prestigious Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released a report today which says amongst other things that India’s defence spending rose by 5.5 per cent to US$63.9 billion in 2017, overtaking that of France as one of the world’s top five military spenders. The report estimates that one of the main motivations behind India’s plans to expand, modernise and enhance the operational capability of its armed forces lies in its tense relations with China.

From the US perspective, the situation is ideal to advance the business interests of America’s vendors of weaponry. Last year, business deals worth $15 billion were chalked up. Any improvement in India-China relations will profoundly hurt American interests. Fueling India-China tensions is a major objective of the US’ regional strategy.

Alas, there are Indians too who are eagerly serving the US interests. A prominent Chinese expert on South Asia recently wrote (in the context of the Wuhan meeting), “Many strategic elites in India are financially backed by the West and hence speak for Western countries.” It is a national shame, but true.

Be that as it may, these guys are missing the plot. Prime Minister Modi’s recent decisions to improve India-China relations, adjust India’s neighborhood policies and to rebalance India’s ties with the major powers are linked to his political agenda. Of course, the good part is that this agenda is also in the national interests.

Take India-China relations. The Voice of America is stupid to assume that the Wuhan meeting was about border tensions. No doubt, it is important that peace and tranquility prevails on the border with China. The Doklam standoff was an eye-opener for the political leadership. Hence the “strategic guidance” to the military issued from Wuhan (which is actually an order from the civilian leadership to the generals) to defuse confrontations during patrols in accordance with existing protocols and mechanisms. The military people may not like it, but that’s how a democracy prioritizes butter over guns.

Clearly, Modi’s top priority is about Chinese investments in India. The drivers of the Indian economy in our establishment played a decisive role in bringing about the strategic shift in the thinking toward China – and in preparing for the Wuhan meeting.

The fact of the matter is that China is already positioning itself as among India’s top investors. In 2017, despite Doklam, China tripled its investment to $2 billion. Bilateral trade touched $84.44 billion in 2017, which is an increase of 18.63% over 2016. (By the way, Indian exports to China went up by 40%.) This year, bilateral trade in the first quarter already hit $22.1 billion, up 15.4% year on year. In April, the two countries signed over 100 trade agreements, worth $2.38 billion, when a Chinese trade delegation visited India.

According to a report in Forbes magazine recently, India is courting Chinese companies to bridge its infrastructure deficit. Last year, China’s Sany Heavy Industry planned an investment of $9.8 billion in India, while Pacific Construction, China Fortune Land Development and Dalian Wanda planned investments of more than $5 billion each. Earlier this year, the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank approved funding of $1 billion for projects in India.

Meanwhile, Chinese investors have been pouring money into sectors outside the remit of government agencies. In 2015, Alibaba invested $500 million in Snapdeal and $700 million in Paytm. In 2016, Tencent invested $150 million in Hike, a messaging app, and a consortium of Chinese investors paid $900 for media.net. In 2017, Alibaba and Tencent announced or closed deals valued close to $2 billion—Alibaba’s second tranche of $177 million in Paytm, $150 million in Zomato, $100 million in FirstCry and $200 million in Big Basket. Tencent’s investments included $400 million in Ola, $700 million in Flipkart and a second round of investment in Practo. Last year, China’s drug giant Fosun Pharma acquired a 74% controlling stake in India’s Gland Pharma for $1.1 billion. Chinese smartphone makers Xiaomi, Huawei and Oppo all are operating manufacturing plants in India, and have had great successes in Indian market, too.

These plain facts may not be significant enough for our ‘China hands’, but they are a compelling reality for the PMO and North Block. Let me quote from the report in the Forbes magazine:

  • Seemingly, there’s a shared belief in both countries (India and China)  that a position of hostility undermines their interests, and stabilizing relations at a time of global uncertainty will yield economic dividends. India’s competitive edge in information technology, software and medicines, and China’s strengths in manufacturing and infrastructure development make the two sides natural partners…

By the way, it is yet to sink in that the single most far-reaching outcome of the Wuhan meeting could be that India is sidestepping the CPEC controversy and is moving on to join hands with China in the construction of the so-called Five Nations Railway Corridor connecting Xinjiang with Iran. It is a prestigious flagship project of the so-called Silk Road Economic Belt, which was proposed by President Xi Jinping in 2013. Conceivably, this could be the first step in a long journey. China has shown great interest in developing economic corridors to India across Nepal and Myanmar.

To be sure, Modi travelled to Wuhan with the “big picture”. Read a perspective on the Wuhan summit featured in the CNBC entitled China and India are trying to write a new page of the world economy, here.

May 3, 2018 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Did John Bolton Leak Intelligence to Sabotage a Trump-Kim Deal?

By Gareth Porter | TruthDig | April 30, 2018

The still-unscheduled Donald Trump-Kim Jong Un summit offers the opportunity for a denuclearization deal that would avoid a possible nuclear war, but that potential deal remains vulnerable to a hostile corporate media sector and political elites in the United States. At the center of this hostility is national security adviser John Bolton, who’s not just uninterested in selling a denuclearization deal to the public. He’s working actively to undermine it.

Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that he leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank sympathetic to his views in order to generate media questioning about the president’s announced plan to reach an agreement with North Korea’s leader.

Bolton made no secret of his visceral opposition to such a deal before Trump announced that Bolton would become national security adviser, arguing that Kim Jong Un would never let go of his nuclear weapons, especially since he is so close to having a real nuclear deterrent capability vis-a-vis the United States.

Even after meeting Trump on March 6 to discuss joining the administration, Bolton was not expecting the announcement of a Trump-Kim summit. Trump tweeted about progress in talks with North Korea that day, but when asked about such talks in an interview with Fox News later that same day, Bolton dismissed the whole idea. He portrayed Kim’s willingness to have discussions as aimed at diverting Washington’s attention from Pyongyang nearing its goal of having a “deliverable nuclear weapon.”

After the Trump-Kim summit was announced on March 9, Bolton made a tactical adjustment in his public stance toward talks with Kim to avoid an open conflict with Trump. He started suggesting in interviews that Trump had cleverly “foiled” Kim’s plan for long, drawn-out talks by accepting the proposal for a summit meeting. But he also urged Trump to assume a stance that would guarantee the meeting would fail.

In an interview with Fox News on the day of the summit announcement, Bolton suggested a peremptory demand by Trump to Kim: “Tell us what ports should American ships sail in, what airports American planes can land to load your nuclear weapons.” And in a second interview with Fox that day, Bolton suggested that Trump demand that Kim identify the ports and airfields to be used to “dismantle your nuclear program and put it at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where Libya’s nuclear program lives.” Bolton’s invocation of the Libyan example of giving up a nuclear weapons program was an ostentatious way of conveying his intention to keep open the option of using force to overthrow Kim’s regime.

Bolton was staking his opposition to negotiations with Kim primarily on the argument that North Korea would simply exploit such negotiations to complete its testing of a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). But former CIA Director Mike Pompeo got a concrete commitment from Kim to end all tests during their meetings in Pyongyang on April 7-8, which Kim then announced officially on April 20.

Pompeo’s report on Kim’s commitment, coming just before Bolton’s first day in the White House on April 9, immediately vitiated Bolton’s chief argument against a denuclearization agreement. But Bolton had another argument to fall back on. When a Fox News interviewer asked him on March 6 about a possible nuclear testing freeze, Bolton replied, “A freeze won’t work. The only inspections system that you could have with any prospect of finding out what they’re up to would have to be so intrusive it would threaten the stability of the regime.”

As an argument that a testing halt wouldn’t work, that comment was nonsensical: The United States has no intrusive inspections to detect a test of a long-range North Korean missile or of a nuclear weapon. But Bolton could use the need for an intrusive inspection system that North Korea would resist as an argument against a denuclearization agreement. He was well aware that in 2008, Vice President Dick Cheney forced Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to change the agreement she had reached with North Korea in October 2007 to require an intrusive verification system at a different stage of implementation—before the United States had taken North Korea off the terrorism list and ended the application of the Trading with the Enemy Act rather than after that, as had been originally agreed. North Korea refused to accept the new verification demand and then denounced the agreement in late 2008.

Within a few days of Bolton taking over as national security adviser, someone leaked intelligence to a Washington think tank on a North Korean facility allegedly intended to produce nuclear-grade graphite, a key component of nuclear reactors. The leak resulted in a post by David Albright, the executive director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), on April 20 with satellite images of what he identified as a North Korean nuclear-grade graphite plant. Albright wrote that a “knowledgeable government official” had identified the site of the factory on the Yalu River, which divides North Korea from China.

Albright suggested that the factory “violates the spirit of the upcoming summit processes with the United States and South Korea.” And he concluded that any agreement with North Korea “must contain its verifiable commitments not to proliferate nuclear goods and abide by internationally recognized strategic export control regimes.”

But Albright presented no evidence that the building under U.S. intelligence surveillance had any bearing on negotiations on denuclearization. His report made it clear that analysts had only suspicions rather than hard evidence that it was for nuclear-grade graphite, referring to “the suspect site” and to “the suspect facility.” Albright also admitted that nuclear-grade graphite is a “dual use” material, and that an existing North Korean facility produces it for components of domestic and foreign ballistic missiles, not for nuclear plants.

Albright nevertheless implied that nuclear-grade graphite is produced and traded covertly. In fact, it is sold online by trading companies such as Alibaba like any other industrial item.

On April 21, despite the absence of any real link between the “suspect facility” and a prospective denuclearization agreement, The Washington Post published an article by intelligence reporter Joby Warrick, based on Albright’s post, that suggested such a link. Warrick referred to a “suspected graphite production facility” that could allow North Korea’s “weapons program” to “quietly advance while creating an additional source of badly needed export revenue.”

Adopting Bolton’s key argument against a denuclearization agreement, Warrick wrote, “It is unclear how the United States and its allies would reliably verify a suspension of key facets of North Korea’s nuclear program or confirm that it has stopped selling weapons components to partners overseas.” North Korea has “a long history of concealing illicit weapons activity from foreign eyes,” Warrick argued, adding that, unlike Iran, it “does not allow inspectors to visit its nuclear facilities.”

But Warrick failed to inform readers that North Korea had allowed 24-hour, 7-day-a-week inspections of their nuclear facilities from the time the agreed framework was adopted in 1994 until December 2002, after Bolton had successfully engineered the George W. Bush administration’s open renunciation of that Clinton administration agreement. And in the negotiations in 2007-08, Pyongyang only had objected to the U.S. demand for intrusive inspection—including military sites—before the United States had ended its suite of hostile policies toward North Korea.

The graphite factory episode would not be the first time Bolton had used alleged intelligence to try to block a negotiated agreement. In early 2004, Bolton, as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, was determined to prevent the British, French and German governments from reaching an accord with Iran that would frustrate Cheney’s plan for an eventual U.S. military option against Iran. Bolton gave satellite images of Iran’s Parchin military complex to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) claiming that they were appropriate for certain kinds of nuclear weapons testing, as Seymour Hersh later reported. Bolton demanded that the IAEA inspect the sites, evidently hoping that Iran would refuse such an intrusive inspection and allow the Bush administration to accuse Iran of hiding covert weapons activities.

But the IAEA failed to refer to the satellite images of Parchin in two 2004 reports on Iran. Then the State Department provided them to ABC News, which reported that a State Department official “confirmed the United States suspects nuclear activity at some of [Parchin’s] facilities.” But the ABC report also quoted a former senior Department of Defense official who specialized in nuclear weapons as saying the images did not constitute evidence of any nuclear weapons-related activities. Iran let the IAEA inspect 10 Parchin sites in two separate visits in 2005. Taking environment samples in each case, the inspectors found no evidence of nuclear-related activity.

Bolton’s hopes of keeping the option of U.S. war on Iran flopped in 2004, but he still believes in a first strike against North Korea, as he urged in an op-ed in late February. And he can be expected to continue to use his position in the White House to try to keep that option open as he did with Iran in 2004, in part by covert leaks of information to allies outside the government.

May 2, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Did Trump and the CIA Strike a Deal on the JFK Records?

By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | May 2, 2018

Did President Trump grant the CIA an additional 3 1/2 years of secrecy on its JFK assassination-related records because he truly believed that “national security” was at stake? Or did Trump grant the CIA’s request for continued secrecy as part of a negotiated bargain that Trump reached with the CIA?

Consider the following tweets that Trump sent out the week before October 26, 2017, when the 25-year deadline set by the JFK Records Act was set to expire:

October 21: “Subject to the receipt of further information, I will be allowing, as President, the long blocked and classified JFK FILES to be opened.”

October 25: “The long anticipated release of the #JFKFiles will take place tomorrow. So interesting!

Notice something important here: Trump makes no mention of any request by the CIA for continued secrecy. How likely is it that the CIA had not made such a request prior to that week? Not likely at all. It is inconceivable that the CIA would wait until October 26, rush into Trump’s office and declare, “Mr. President, we totally forgot about the deadline set 25 years ago and we need an additional time to review the records.” (As an interesting aside, notice that neither Trump, the CIA, nor the National Archives has disclosed to the public any written request by the CIA or any other federal agency for continued secrecy of the JFK assassination-related records.)

There is another possible explanation for what was going on during the week of October 26. As I pointed out my October 27, 2017, article “The JFK Cover-Up Continues,” the possibility exists that Trump was negotiating with the CIA and taking the matter to the brink with his two tweets — that is, that Trump knew that continued secrecy was critically important to the CIA but that he wanted something in return. You know, The Art of the Deal.

If that is what was happening, then Trump was likely communicating to the CIA with his tweets, “Give me what I want or I release the records.” That would mean that at the last minute the CIA caved and gave Trump what he wanted, which would explain why Trump suddenly changed his mind on October 26 and granted another six months of secrecy, contrary to what his two tweets indicated he would do immediately prior to that October 26 deadline.

What was something that would have been important to Trump that the CIA could have given him? As I indicated in my October 27 article, what would have been important to Trump would have been an exoneration in the Russia investigation, at the very least with respect to Congress and maybe, hopefully, even with respect to the investigation being conducted by the special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller. As part of the deal, Trump would have demanded that the CIA exercise its considerable power and influence to bring one and hopefully both investigations to a satisfactory conclusion.

Why only six months of secrecy back in October? Because as I indicated in my October 27 article, Trump would have wanted a guarantee that the CIA would live up to its end of the bargain. If the CIA didn’t deliver at its end, Trump could still order a release of the records in April. If the CIA delivered, Trump could grant its request for additional secrecy when the April deadline came.

On April 26, the day that the six-month extension expired, Trump granted the CIA another 2 1/2 years of secrecy. Maybe it’s just a coincidence but one day later, April 27, the House Intelligence Committee released its final report exonerating Trump in its investigation into the Russia brouhaha.

May 2, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

US Court Finds Iran Liable for 9/11

By Kit Knightly | OffGuardian | May 2, 2018

A US court has just handed down the verdict that the Islamic Republic of Iran owes the families of those who died on 11th September 2001 6 billion dollars in damages.

It behooves us to point out that no one, anywhere, ever accused Iran of being behind the 9/11 attacks for over a decade afterwards. The attempt to shift the blame to Iran has been a slow developing situation. The idea was first floated by James Woolsey, former head of the CIA, in 2015.

The official position of the United States government is that 19 people (15 Saudi Arabians, 2 Egyptians, 2 Emiratis and a Lebanese man) hijacked the planes and flew them into their targets. Whether or not you subscribe to this view, the introduction of Iran as some kind accomplice is a massive contradiction. One that makes very little sense.

This isn’t the first time a civil case has attempted to attribute blame for 9/11. A similar civil case was brought against Saddam Hussein, during the build up to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Hopefully this verdict doesn’t presage yet another war in the Middle East.

Perhaps the most telling part is that Saudi Arabia, the country allegedly home to 15 of the 19 people allegedly guilty of the crime, remains untouchable. No sanctions. No rebukes. They’re not on the “state sponsor of terrorism” list (Iran is). A case brought against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, filed by a different group of victims’ families and blaming them for 9/11, was thrown out of court.

Is “guilt for 9/11” simply a weapon to be deployed against anyone America deems an enemy? How much respect for the victims, or their families, does that show? How much respect for the truth?

Certainly, this verdict will get far more press coverage than the new petition, filed on behalf of a third group of victims’ families, demanding a new investigation of 9/11.

May 2, 2018 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Testing Newest B61 Nuclear Gravity Bomb

Sputnik – May 2, 2018

The US Air Force has conducted more than two dozen engineering, development and guided flight tests of the new B61-12 guided nuclear gravity bomb, a US Air Force general said May 1.

The service has “already conducted 26 engineering, development and guided flight tests,” Lt. Gen. Jack Weinstein told Military.com, adding that the program was “doing extremely well.” The new version of the B61 gravity bomb is said to be more than three times more accurate than its predecessors, according to the news outlet.

The 12th version of the B61 bomb, originally designed in 1963, will have a new capability that its cousins don’t: underground penetration so it can strike fortified command and control centers. Its explosive yield is estimated at 50 kilotons, or roughly four times the power of the bomb the US used to destroy the Japanese city of Nagasaki in August 1945.

The B-2 Spirit and eventually the B-2’s companion stealth bomber, the futuristic B-21 Raider, will carry the gravity nuke.

Service officials are working to integrate the B-61 gravity bomb with the F-35 Lightning II, as documented in the latest US nuclear posture review. In 2015, the aircraft flew with a B61-12 to test how it would vibrate in the aircraft’s internal weapons bay.

The nuclear posture review also calls for modernizing the air-launched cruise missile and intercontinental ballistic missile components of the nuclear triad. Right now, the US nuclear triad consists of the submarine-launched ballistic missiles, strategic bombers — which carry both gravity bombs and cruise missiles — and land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The B-52, F-16 and F-15 are also capable of carrying nuclear payloads, though it is unclear if the service will put the latest B61-12 nuclear weapon on these older legacy aircraft.

May 2, 2018 Posted by | Militarism | | Leave a comment

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