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Here is What the Horowitz Report Should Conclude

By Larry C Johnson – Sic Semper Tyrannis – November 24, 2019

You do not have to wait for the Horowitz report. I can give you a preview of what he should have found if he conducted an honest audit. The following is not my opinion. It is based on the flood of information that has come out over the past two and a half-years surrounding the plot to destroy the Presidency of Donald Trump. When you read these facts it is easy to understand how dishonest and corrupt the FBI were in presenting a FISA application to spy on Carter Page. Helen Keller could see this is wrong.

Let me take you through this piece-by-piece (except where noted I am quoting from the first FISA application).

Let’s start with the FBI claim that Carter Page was an “agent of a foreign government.”

The target of this application is Carter Page, a US person, and an agent of a foreign power, described in detail below. The status of the target was determined in or about October 2016 from information provided by the US Department of State.

What information did State supply? Information provided by the notorious Christopher Steele. The Washington Examiner’s Daniel Chaitin reported on this in May 2019:

Steele met Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec on Oct. 11, 2016, 10 days before the first warrant application was submitted, and admitted he was encouraged by a client, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to get his research out before the 2016 election on Nov. 8, signaling a possible political motivation. The meeting was described in notes taken by Kavalec that were obtained by conservative group Citizens United through open-records litigation. The notes show that Kavalec believed at least some of Steele’s allegations to be false.

Government officials told the Hill that Kavalec informed FBI Special Agent Stephen Laycock about the meeting in an email eight days before the FISA warrant application was filed. Laycock, then the FBI’s section chief for Eurasian counterintelligence, quickly forwarded what he learned to Peter Strzok, the special agent who was leading the Trump-Russia investigation.

There it is. Not an assumption. A fact. State passed a false report from Christopher Steele to the FBI and the FBI ran with it. A competent FBI Agent would have asked about the identity of the source of the information. Either the FBI failed to do this or it lied in the FISA application. The FBI had a responsibility to note that Steele was the sole source for the claim that Page was an “agent of a foreign power.”

The application reiterates its basis for this assertion:

This application targets Carter Page. The FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government to undermine and influence the outcome of the 2016 US Presidential election in violation of US criminal law.

This is based on the false report from Christopher Steele as well as “cooked” intelligence provided by CIA Director Brennan. Brennan was passing off a low level Russian bureaucrat as a high level source with direct access to Putin. That was a lie.

The application then tries to bolster the lie by attributing the FBI’s credulity by citing the US intelligence community (an ironic oxymoron).

In addition, according to an October 7, 2016 Joint Statement from the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security (Election Security Joint Statement), the USIC is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The Election Security Joint Statement states that the recent disclosures of e-mails on; among others, sites like WikiLeaks are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. According to the Election Security Joint Statement, these thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process; activity that is not new to Moscow – the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. The Election Security Joint Statement states that, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized these activities.

This was a lie. The US Intelligence Community aka USIC had made no such formal determination. If they had there would have been a written document. There was no written document and no evidence that “all 17 intelligence agencies” had coordinated and approved such a document. The Intelligence Community Assessment would not be published until January 2017 and only the FBI, the CIA and the NSA signed off on that piece of fantasy.

After stating that Carter was a Trump foreign policy advisor the FBI insists in the application:

The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #l’s campaign (i.e. Trump).

That belief was based on the bogus information passed to State Department by Christopher Steele. It was a lie. They had no evidence and, more importantly, obtained no validation as a result of spying authorized by this outrageous application.

The FBI continues with this charade by outlining Page’s previous cooperation in helping gather evidence that led to the indictment of two Russian intel officers in January 2015. Worth noting that Bill Priestrap, who was now running FBI’s Counter Intelligence operations from FBI Headquarters, was the supervising agent in that operation and knew all about the role Page played in helping get the Russians. But the FBI put this into the application merely to foster the perception that Carter had an in with the Russians.

The FBI then disingenuously introduces Christopher Steele (i.e., Confidential Human Source #1) as the source for evidence about Page’s supposedly nefarious activities:

According to open source information, in July 2016, Page traveled to Russia and delivered the commencement address at the New Economic School.7 In addition to giving this address, the FBI has learned that Page met with at least two Russian officials during this trip. First, according to information provided by an FBI confidential-human source (Source #1), reported that Page had a secret meeting with Igor Sechin, who is the President of Rosneft [a Russian energy company] and a close associate to Russian President Putin. [Steele] reported that, during the meeting, Page and Sechin discussed future bilateral energy cooperation and the prospects for an associated move to lift Ukraine-related Western sanctions against Russia.

This was a lie designed to bamboozle the FISA court Judge. When you look at the footnote for Christopher Steele, we catch the FBI in another monster lie:

and the FBI is unaware of any derogatory information pertaining to Source #1.

The FBI fired Steele as a compensated human source within days of this FISA application. Getting fired for leaking information to the press without the approval of the FBI is “DEROGATORY INFORMATION. Why did the FBI lie on this critical detail? Let us hope Horowitz addresses this.

The footnote related to Steele also contains this disingenuous whopper:

Source #1, who now owns a foreign business/financial intelligence firm, was approached by an identified US person, who indicated to Source #1 that a US-based law firm had hired the identified US person to conduct research regarding Candidate #l’s ties to Russia (the identified US person and Source #1 have a long-standing business relationship). The identified US person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified US person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #l’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified US person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.

The FBI knew that Glenn Simpson was working for Hillary Clinton. They failed to mention this. Instead, the FBI opted for the white lie of pretending that Steele, under Simpson’s guidance, was just doing opposition research. The FBI can pretend they were just incompetent, but we now know that they were fully aware of Simpson’s ties to the Clinton effort using the law firm as a cut-out.

The FBI continued feed out the lies of the Steele Dossier pretending they were verified facts:

Divyekin [who is assessed to be Igor Nikolayevich Divyekin] had met secretly with Page and that their agenda for the meeting included Divyekin raising a dossier or “kompromat” that the Kremlin possessed on Candidate #2 [i.e., Clinton] and the possibility of it being released to Candidate #l’s campaign.

This is an unverified claim. Regular Americans know it simply as another damn lie.

Then the FBI turns its attention to creating the propaganda meme that Donald Trump had cut a deal with Putin to lift all sanctions and hurt Ukraine. This is breathtaking in light of what we now know about real Ukrainian efforts to hurt Trump:

July 2016 article in an identified news organization reported that Candidate #1’s campaign worked behind the scenes to make sure Political Party #1’s platform would not call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight Russian and rebel forces, contradicting the view of almost all Political Party #l’s foreign policy leaders in Washington. The article stated that Candidate #l’s campaign sought “to make sure that [Political Party #1] would ot pledge to give Ukraine the weapons it has been asking for from the United States.” Further, an August 2016 article published by an identified news organization characterized Candidate #1 as sounding like a supporter of Ukraine’s territorial integrity in September (2015], adopted a “milder” tone regarding Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The August 2016 article further reported that Candidate #1 said Candidate #1 might recognize Crimea as Russian territory and lift punitive US sanctions against Russia. The article opined that while the reason for Candidate #l’s shift was not clear, Candidate #l’s more conciliatory words, which contradict Political Party #1’s official platform, follow Candidate #l’s recent association with several people sympathetic to Russian influence in Ukraine, including foreign policy advisor Carter Page.

This was false information (i.e., A LIE) being fed to a pliant media by Clinton campaign officials and supporters. And the FBI buys it hook line and sinker.

The FBI then brings Michael Isikoff into the act, who also is passing along information obtained from Christopher Steele. This is nothing but chutzpah by the Bureau. Shameful:

About September 23, 2016, an identified news organization published an article (September 23rd News Article), which was written by the news organization’s Chief Investigative Correspondent, alleging that US intelligence officials are investigating Page with respect to suspected efforts by the Russian Government to influence the US Presidential election.· According to the September 23rd News Article, US officials received intelligence reports that when Page was in Moscow in July 2016 to deliver the above-noted commencement address at the New Economic School, he met with two senior Russian officials. The September 23rd News Article stated that a “well-placed Western intelligence source” told the news organization that Page met with Igor Sechin, a longtime Putin associate and former Russian deputy minister who is now the executive chairman of Rosneft. At their alleged meeting, Sechin raised the issue of the lifting of sanctions with Page.

According to the September 23rd News Article, the Western intellig nce source also reported that US intelligence agencies received reports that Page met with another top Putin aide – Igor Divyekm,, a former Russian security official who now serves as deputy chief for internal policy and is believed by US officials to have responsibility for intelligence collected by Russian agencies about the US election.

The FBI is pretending that this is another source to corroborate Steele. It is not. It is Christopher Steele talking to Isikoff.

The FBI at least made the pretense of giving Carter Page a chance to deny the allegations and he did in the strongest terms possible:

On or about September 25, 2016, Page sent a letter to the FBI Director. In this letter, Page made reference to the accusations in the September 23rd News Article and denied them. Page stated thatthe source of the accusations is nothing more than completely false media reports and that he did not meet this year with any sanctioned official in Russia. Page also stated that he would be willing to discuss any “final” questions the FBI may have.

The rest of the application is blacked out and presumably contains the FBI’s explanation of why they believed Carter Page was lying. But it was the FBI who was lying. If those blacked out portions are declassified then we will almost certainly see that the FBI was claiming it had multiple sources contradicting Page when in fact, it only had one–Christopher Steele, a retired British intelligence officer.

I draw this conclusion based on the FBI’s stated conclusion in the application:

(U) As discussed above, the FBI believes that Page has been collaborating and conspiring with the Russian Government . . .Based on the foregoing facts and circumstances the FBI submits that there is probable cause to believe that Page [and others whose names are blacked out, probably Michael Flynn] knowingly engage in clandestine intelligence activities (other than intelligence gathering activities) for or on behalf of such foreign power, or knowingly conspires with other persons to engage in such activities and, therefore, is an agent of a foreign power as defined by 50 USC. § 1801(b)(2)(E).

The American people must wake up and understand how dishonest and stupid the FBI was in writing and submitting this baseless application to the FISA court. And we are not talking about low level flunkies who changed an email. Jim Comey signed off on these lies. Andrew McCabe signed off on this lies.

I will reiterate, if Inspector General Horowitz fails to highlight these clear and pervasive lies then it will be up to Attorney General Barr and Prosecutor John Durham to set things right.

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Deception | , , , | 3 Comments

State Department Shoots Itself in the Foot at Impeachment Hearings

By Peter Van Buren | We Meant Well | November 24, 2019

The State Department, where I worked 24 years as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO) and diplomat, reminds me a lot of my current hometown, New York City. Both places spend an inordinate amount of time telling outsiders how great they are while ignoring the obvious garbage piled up around them. It’s almost as if they’re trying to tell themselves more than others everything is OK.

Like NYC convincing itself the Broadway lights mean you won’t notice the wicked homeless problem and decaying infrastructure, the State Department fully misunderstands how it really appears to others. Across Facebook groups and internal channels, FSOs this week are sending each other little messages tagged #FSProud quoting Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s the closing soliloquy from her impeachment testimony. Yovanovitch’s testimony otherwise read like the HR complaint from hell, as if she was auditioning for a Disgruntled Employee poster child position to cap off her career. She had already been fired by the time the alleged impeachable act took place — during Trump’s July 25 phone call — and was stuck in a placeholder job far removed from Ukrainian policy. She witnessed nothing of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” the House is investigating, and basically used her time to complain she knew more than her boss did so he fired her.

At the end of her testimony Yovanovitch unfurled a large metaphorical flag and wrapped herself and the entire Foreign Service in it. Her lines had nothing to do with Ukraine, and were boilerplate recruiting prose about how FSOs are non-partisan servants of the Constitution, how everyone lives in harm’s way, yada yada. She name checked diplomats from forty freaking years ago held hostage in Iran, and rolled in a couple of CIA contractors when tallying up the “State” death toll in Benghazi. She omitted the we-don’t-talk-about-that-one-death of FSO Anne Smedinghoff in Afghanistan, whose 25-year-old life was destroyed participating in a propaganda photo-op.

This is the false idol image the State Department holds dear of itself, and people inside the organization today proudly christened Ambassador Yovanovitch as its queen. Vanity Fair summed it up better than the long-winded FSOs bleating across social media: “A hero is born as Yovanovitch gives voice to widespread rage at State. ‘I think people are feeling huge pride in Masha,’ says a former ambassador.” Yovanovitch uses her Russian nickname, Masha, without media comment because of course she does.

And that’s the good part. Alongside Yovanovitch, bureaucrat-in-a-bow-tie George Kent issued pronouncements against Trump people he never met who ignored his tweedy advice. Ambassador Bill Taylor leaked hoarded text messages with Trump political appointees. Taylor’s deputy, David Holmes, appeared deus ex machina (Holmes had a photo of Yovanovitch as his Facebook page cover photo until recently!) to claim back in the summer he somehow overheard both sides of a phone conversation between Trump and political appointee ambassador Sondland. Holmes eavesdropped on a presidential call and dumped it in the Democrats’ lap and now he’s non-partisan #FSProud, too.

Interesting the major political events (scandals?) of the last few years have all criss-crossed the State Department: Clinton’s emails and Foundation shenanigans, the Steele Dossier and many things Russiagate, and now impeachment and Ukraine. And never mind two major Democratic presidential candidates-in-waiting, Clinton and Kerry, had a home there. That’s an awful lot of partisanship for an organization bragging about being non-partisan.

Gawd, I need to wash my hands. I am #FSProud that in my 24 years as a diplomat I never perjured myself, or claimed to or actually eavesdropped on someone else’s phone call, then spoon fed the info months later to my boss on TV to take down a president mid-campaign, all the while accepting cheers that I was non-partisan, and thinking my role as a snitch/boot licker was going to help people vision my organization as honorable.

FSOs see themselves as Marvel superheroes who will take down the Bad Orange Man. The organization flirted with the role before; a 2016 mid-election “dissent” was designed to force the winner into war in Syria. Then another “dissent” by State strayed close to insubordination opposing Trump’s so-called “Muslim Ban.” Everyone remembers the Department’s slow-walking the release of Hillary Clinton’s emails (after helping hide the existence of her private server for years.) The State Department turned a blind eye to Secretary Clinton’s nepotism hiring her campaign aides as State employees (remember Huma?), and use of America’s oldest cabinet position to create B-roll of herself helping women around the globe ahead of her soiled campaign. Hillary of course was handed the Secretary job itself by Barack Obama as a treat for dropping out of the race in 2008.

Maybe the State Department’s overt support for Candidate Clinton did not make clear enough what happens when the organization betrays itself to politics.

While FSOs are gleefully allowing themselves to be used today to impeach Trump, they fail to remember nobody likes a snitch. No matter which side you are on, in the end nobody will trust you, Democrat or Republican, after seeing what you really are. What White House staffer of any party will interact openly with his diplomats, knowing they are saving his texts and listening in on his calls, waiting? State thinks it is a pit bull waiting to bite on its master’s command when in fact it is an organization that has betrayed its golden nonpartisan glow and is out of control. Hey, in your high school, did anyone want to have the kids who lived to be hall monitors and teacher’s pet as their lunch buddies?

The real problems go much deeper, and are either the cause of or a reflection of the current state of things, or a little of both. A Government Accountability Office report showed more than one fourth of all Foreign Service positions were either unfilled or filled with below-grade employees. At the senior levels 36 percent of positions were vacant or filled with people of lower rank and experience pressed into service. At the crucial midranks, the number was 26 percent unfilled.

The thing is the report is from 2012, and showed similar results to one written in 2008. The State Department has danced with irrelevancy for a long time and its efforts to be The Resistance as a cure today feel more like desperation than heroism. State’s somnolent response, even during the legendary Clinton and Kerry years, to what should have been a crisis call (speculate on what the response might be to a report the military was understaffed by 36 percent) tells the tale. As the world changes, State still has roughly the same number of Portuguese speakers as it does Russian among its FSOs. No other Western country uses private citizens as ambassadors over career diplomats anywhere near the extent the United States does, doling out about a third of the posts as political patronage mainly because what they do doesn’t matter. The Secretary of State hands out lapel buttons reading “Swagger“; imagine a new Secretary of Defense doing the same and then being laughed out of office.

FSOs wade in the shallowest waters of the Deep State. Since the 1950s the heavy lifting of foreign policy, the stuff that ends up in history books, mostly moved into the White House and National Security Council. The increasing role of the military in America’s foreign relations further sidelined State. The regional sweep of the AFRICOM and CENTCOM generals, for example, paints State’s landlocked ambassadors weak.

State’s sad little attempt during the Bush years to stake out a new role in nation building failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan, and failed in Haiti. The organization’s Clinton-Kerry era joblet promoting democracy through social media was a flop. Trade policy has its own bureaucracy outside Foggy Bottom. What was left for State was reporting, its on-the-ground viewpoint that informs policy makers. Even there the intelligence community has eaten State’s sandwiches with the crusts cut off lunch — why hear what some FSO thinks the Prime Minister will do when the NSA can provide the White House with real time audio of him explaining it in bed to his mistress? The uber revelation from the 2010 Wikileaks dump of documents was most of State’s vaunted reporting is of little practical value. State struggled through the Chelsea Manning trial to convince someone actual harm was done to national security by the disclosures. Some nine years later there hasn’t even been a good book written from them.

That leaves for the understaffed Department of State pretty much only the role of concierge abroad, the one Ambassadors Taylor, Yovanovitch and their lickspittles Kent and Holmes complained about as their real point during the impeachment hearings. Read their testimony and you learn they had no contact with principals Trump, Giuliani, and Pompeo (which is why they were useless “witnesses,” they didn’t see anything first hand) and bleated about being cut out of the loop, left off calls, not being on the inside. They testified instead based on overheard calls and off screen voices. Taylor complained he had to contact the NSC, not State, to find out if policy had changed, and whined Pompeo ignored his reports.

Meanwhile, America’s VIPs need their hands held abroad, their motorcades organized, and their receptions handled, all tasks that fall squarely on the Department of State. That is what was really being said underneath it all at the impeachment hearings. It is old news, but it found a greedy audience as it was repurposed to take a whack at Trump. State thinks this is its moment to shine, but all that is happening is a light is being shined on the organization’s partisaness and pettiness in reaction to its own irrelevance.

Nice bow tie on George Kent though, shows he’s “with it.”

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , | 1 Comment

Trump in Wonderland: Off With His Head?

By Martin Sieff | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 25, 2019

Donald Trump’s millions of detractors without doubt see him as The Mad Hatter: But, no: He’s Alice. The President of the United States has disappeared down the rabbit hole and he’s in Wonderland – Complete with a Red Queen (Nancy Pelosi) shouting “Off with his head!”

The great mistake foreign observers make observing the latest farce in Washington is assuming that there must be some order, rationality and linear logic behind it. There is none. It is Politics According to the Marx Brothers

This is a show trial – incompetently planned and directed with hundreds of crazed scriptwriters: The Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee, their staffs and the salivating Mainstream US Media are writing and rewriting the script as they go along.

If one is to believe the Mainstream Media, who avidly take this bizarre cartoon seriously, enough evidence has already been established to clearly convict Trump of seeking to push an inquiry into the prima facie evidence of corruption on the part of the son of a former vice president and the leading Democratic presidential candidate.

Is this supposed to be criminal or shocking? What is Trump even accused of doing? He is accused of cautiously investigating the possibility of corruption in a sensitive and clearly unstable US ally whose government openly tried to influence the 2016 US presidential election (as Russia did NOT!)

Indeed, top Ukrainian government officials before the 2016 vote openly published opinion articles in the most prestigious US outlets viciously attacking candidate Donald Trump and calling for the election of his opponent Hillary Clinton.

Far from endangering the security of Ukraine and withholding US aid, Trump has unwisely approved a flood of lethal US weapons, most especially Javelin missiles for Kiev.

This massive arms transfer gravely increases the potential threat to the breakaway provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk. It therefore also automatically ratchets up the threat of direct war between the United States and Russia – a danger of inconceivable horror that the “Hate Trump!” and “Hate Russia!” fanatics in Washington are insanely blind to.

The metaphor of the Gadarene Swine is repeatedly overused: But only because it works. It is true. The Hate Trump fanatics in the US Congress and in the US Media are stampeding the human race towards an annihilating nuclear war that nobody else remotely wants.

Trump in a very basic way has no one to blame but himself for this horrendous state of affairs in Wonderland. He surrounded himself with Russia-hating Armchair Warriors from Fiona Hill to John Bolton and Kurt Volker. So he should not be surprised that to a man – and woman – they have betrayed him.

Trump did not try to roll back the dark influence of the Deep State, the Jabberwock monster of his Wonderland. So he should not be surprised that now the Deep State Jabberwock is once again trying to eat him.

Former US Ambassador to Kiev Marie Jovanovich and former National Security Council official Alexander Vindman both consistently and relentlessly supported the illegal gangster regime in Kiev which only took power by a violent coup in 2014 by toppling the democratically elected president of the nation.

Yet Jovanovich and Vindman have never been held to account for their double standards and betrayal of their primary loyalty to the government of the United States. They know they are safe: They live in Wonderland, where treason is patriotism and loyalty to the law and Constitution of the Nation is the most unforgivable of crimes.

For it is the Elected President of the United States who sets all foreign policy: Or at least is supposed to. And it is the diplomatic and security apparatus of the United States that is presumed to implement that policy loyally and without questioning it.

Also, all ambassadors explicitly serve at the pleasure of the president and Trump should have fired Jovanovich as soon as he took office. She had been appointed by his predecessor Barack Obama, with the blessing of his own foreign policy guru, Polish-American and Russia-hating former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to implement a policy that Trump was explicitly elected to abandon – reckless, potentially highly dangerous unconditional US support for the unstable coup government in Kiev.

But none of this matters: We are Inside the Beltway and Down the Rabbit Hole. We are in Washington. And Washington is Wonderland. Lewis Carroll and his Alice would have understood immediately.

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

The Real Bombshell of the Impeachment Hearings

By Ron Paul – November 25, 2019

The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a “smoking gun” witness providing irrefutable evidence of quid pro quo. It’s not that President Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Biden’s son and a Ukrainian oligarch.

The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia.

Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest!

Take Lt. Colonel Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with first-hand evidence that President Trump had committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.” He brought a complaint against the President because he was worried that Trump was shifting US policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government!

He didn’t think the US president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine.

According to his testimony, Vindman’s was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.”

“Consensus views of the interagency” is another word for “deep state.”

Vindman continued, “While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didn’t think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia!

Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” put together by then-CIA director John Brennan’s “hand-picked” analysts, she asserted that, “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.”

And who gets to decide US foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the US President, according to government bureaucrat Fiona Hill. In fact, Hill told Congress that, “If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention.”

Who was Fiona Hill’s boss? Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who no doubt agreed that the president has no right to change US foreign policy. Bolton’s the one who “explained” that when Trump said US troops would come home it actually meant troops would stay put.

One by one, the parade of “witnesses” before House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff sang from the same songbook. As US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland put it, “in July and August 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid, as the Ukrainians needed those funds to fight against Russian aggression.”

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans in large majority voted to continue spying on the rest of us by extending the unpatriotic Patriot Act. Authoritarianism is the real bipartisan philosophy in Washington.

Copyright © 2019 by RonPaul Institute

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Militarism | | 1 Comment

How to Predict the Future – #PropagandaWatch

corbettreport | November 25, 2019

I predict that “foreign interference” will replace “the devil made me do it” as the new excuse for everything. But how did I divine this vision? From a crystal ball? Not quite. Find out the secret of how to predict the future in this week’s edition of #PropagandaWatch.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Watch this video on BitChute / DTube / Minds.com / YouTube

SHOW NOTES:

FBI Protected Voices Initiative

Larken Rose on the Immorality of Voting

The Last Word on Voting

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Finally Charged and Lacking a Mandate to Govern, Netanyahu’s Days are Numbered

By Jonathan Cook – The National – November 25, 2019

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.

There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.

Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. After a decade in power, he has developed an almost cult-like status among sections of the public.

The honorable thing would be for Netanyahu to step down quickly, given that the two elections he fought this year ended in deadlock. Both were seen primarily as plebiscites on his continuing rule.

He is now the country’s caretaker prime minister, in place until either a new government can be formed or an unprecedented third election is held.

His departure would end months of governmental near-paralysis. The path would then be clear for a successor from his Likud party to negotiate a deal on a right-wing unity government with rival Benny Gantz, a former army general.

Gantz’s Blue and White party has made it a point of principle not to forge an alliance with Netanyahu.

Previous experience, however, suggests that Netanyahu might prefer to tear the house down rather than go quietly. If he is allowed to press ahead with another election in March, he is likely to stoke new levels of incitement against his supposed enemies.

Until now, the main target of his venom has been a predictable one.

During the April and September campaigns, he railed relentlessly against the fifth of Israel’s citizenry who are Palestinian as well as their elected representatives in the Joint List, the third largest faction in the Knesset.

Shortly before last Thursday’s indictment was announced, Netanyahu was at it again, holding an “emergency conference”. He told supporters that a minority government led by Gantz and propped up from outside by the Joint List would be a “historic national attack on Israel”. The Palestinian minority’s MPs, he said, “want to destroy the country”.

Such a government, he added, would be an outcome “they will celebrate in Tehran, in Ramallah and in Gaza, as they do after every terror attack”.

This repeated scaremongering had an obvious goal: rallying the Jewish public to vote for his far-right, now overtly anti-Arab coalition. The hope was that he would win an outright majority and could then force through legislation conferring on him immunity from prosecution.

Now he appears to have run out of time. After three years of investigations and much foot-dragging, the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, has finally charged him.

According to the Israeli media, Netanyahu turned down opportunities for a plea bargain that would have seen him resign in return for avoiding jail time.

According to the most serious allegation, he is accused of granting media tycoon Shaul Elovich benefits worth $500 million in exchange for favourable coverage.

Weighed against the crimes he and other Israeli leaders have perpetrated over many decades against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, the offences he is indicted for seem relatively minor.

Nonetheless, if found guilty, Netanyahu faces a substantial prison sentence of up to 10 years. That makes the stakes high.

All the signs now are that he will switch his main target from Israel’s Palestinian minority to the legal authorities pursuing him.

His first response to the indictment was to accuse the police and state prosecutors of an “attempted coup”, claiming they had fabricated the evidence to “frame” him. “The time has come to investigate the investigators,” he urged.

As one Blue and White official told the veteran Israeli reporter Ben Caspit: “Netanyahu will not hesitate to sic [unleash] his supporters on those institutions of government that represent the rule of law. He has no inhibitions.”

Technically the law allows a prime minister to continue serving while under indictment and before a trial, which is still many months away. Assuming Netanyahu refuses to resign, the courts will have to rule on whether this privilege extends to a caretaker leader unable to form a new government.

Netanyahu is therefore likely to focus his attention on intimidating the supreme court, already cowed by a decade of tongue-lashing from the Israeli right. Critics unfairly accuse the court of being a bastion of liberalism.

But bigger dangers may lie ahead. Netanyahu needs to keep his own Likud party in line. If its members sense he is finished, there could be a rapid collapse of support and moves towards an attempt to overthrow him.

The first hints of trouble emerged on Saturday when Gideon Saar, Netanyahu’s most likely challenger in Likud, accused him of “creating an atmosphere of chaos” by denigrating the legal authorities.

After the failure by both Gantz and Netanyahu to put together a coalition, the task was passed last week to parliament. Its members have just over a fortnight left to see whether one of their number can rally a majority of MPs.

This brief window could provide an opportunity for Saar to move against Netanyahu. On Sunday he submitted an official request for the Likud party to hold a snap leadership race.

Observers fear that to allay this danger, Netanyahu might consider not only inflaming his base but also setting the region alight with a conflict to rally the rest of the public to his side and make his removal impossible.

In fact, the Israeli media reported that shortly before September’s election, he had tried to pull precisely such a stunt, preparing a war on Gaza to justify postponing the ballot.

He was stopped at the last minute by Mandelblit, who realised that the cabinet had been misled into approving military action. Netanyahu had allegedly concealed from them the fact that the military command was opposed.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has stoked severe tensions with Gaza by assassinating Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu Al Atta. Last week he launched airstrikes on Iranian positions in Syria.

When Olmert was being investigated for corruption in 2008, Netanyahu sagely warned of the dangerous confusion of interests that might result. “He will make decisions based on his own interests of political survivability rather than the national interest,” he said.

And that is precisely the reason why many in Israel are keen to see the back of Netanyahu – in case his instinct for political survival trumps the interests of stability in the region.

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | 3 Comments

MH17: Five years of one-sided propaganda and investigation from the Dutch government’s JIT team

By Sonja van den Ende | November 25, 2019

Five years ago on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky while flying over Eastern Ukraine. It was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All 283 passengers (mainly Dutch) and 15 crew members on board were killed. It was immediately claimed that Russia was responsible, something that Russia vehemently denies. Much has been written and argued, but now the team of Bonanza Media made some independent research that resulted in the documentary; Call For Justice MH17 , which was shown on the 26th October 2019 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The JIT (Joint Investigation Team) of the Netherlands, says it has four suspects and they ought to be tried at a court in the Netherlands, five years after the crash. They didn’t  consider the investigative documentary Call For Justice MH17 to be part of the evidence, in fact they didn’t bother to look at  it or send at least a member of the JIT team when the documentary was presented in the Hague, also the regular Dutch main stream media (MSM) was absent at the presentation.

A lot of questions remain, especially the non-professional inquiry of the Dutch Government, conducted by the so-called JIT team. On November 21 2019, the Dutch police issued a warrant, the so-called “MH17 Witness Appeal November 2019 ,“ to be read on the website of  the Dutch Police. It claims the team had deciphered telephone talks between the Donbass – East Ukrainian leaders, the Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu and Putin’s aide Vladislav Surkov. But why now, 5 years after the crash? Where is the logic here?

In June 2015 the JIT already released the Trial information according to which four suspects, Igor GIRKIN, Sergey DUBINSKIY, Oleg PULATOV and Leonid KHARCHENKO, will be prosecuted for their alleged involvement in the downing of flight MH17. The criminal proceedings will take place before the district court in The Hague, to be held in the Schiphol Judicial Complex. The first court session will be held on March 9, 2020, from 10:00 AM (Central European Time). And the Dutch Government is well aware that the suspects will most likely not attend the trial.

In 2014 and 2015 the Dutch Government in cooperation with the JIT team and the Dutch police released some intercepted so-called phone calls allegedly between the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile Brigade (AAMB) from Kursk in the Russian Federation, the suspect Kharchenko and a certain suspect caled “Ryazan”.  Based on this information the JIT claims;  The JIT does have evidence from other sources (which they don’t reveal) that at that time, Russian soldiers of the 53rd Brigade from Kursk were present near the border with Eastern Ukraine.

Presented as evidence, was a chat from a soldier, he served at the 53rd AAMB located in Kursk, his chat  with Anastasia, persumably his girlfriend, is seen by the JIT as evidence, meager evidence. Also, they retrieved some photographs of the 53rd AAMB where soldiers are to be seen. But they were not in Ukraine, they were at the border in the Russian Federation, this evidence is pure “speculation” and most likely not fit for evidence in a trial.

Also, their so-called evidence on Vladislav Surkov, a high official at the Russian Government and Putin’s aide is a sham. The only evidence they have is a newspaper article where the Prime Minister Aleksander Borodai of the Republic of Donetsk mentioned that Vladislav Surkov, a high official at the Russian Government, “is of great support to the Donetsk People’s Republic” and “truly our man in the Kremlin”. Based on this and the above mentioned evidence they speculate that the leaders of Donetsk shot down Malaysian Flight 17, with help of the Russian Federation!

Furthermore, the Dutch JIT team calls the Russian Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu an important  suspect. According to the regular Dutch MSM and the JIT team (it shows that the regular MSM in the Netherlands is not doing any investigation and their journalism is a scam) Minister Shoygu gave direct orders to shot down the MH17. They make many mistakes in their regular MSM quoting the Audio evidence where Borodai allegedly speaks to “someone” saying that Surkov is “truly”our man”, but no word in the audio is mentioned about Sergey Shoygu. He gave the orders they claim, which is totally baseless and why would the Russian Government want to shoot down a passenger plain on purpose?

They also claim that the BUK TELAR 53, was sent by the AAMB from Kursk to Ukraine and this BUK TELAR 53 was used to shot down the MH17, the above mentioned suspects by the JIT were, according to the JIT, all involved in one way or another in the MH17 downing.  Pure speculation, I would call it.  Stories in the regular Dutch MSM, especially De Telegraaf were based on merely  “non-investigating ” evidence and inadequate information. I would like to state that none of the so-called regular newspapers went to Ukraine to do any independent investigation on the ground, only the JIT team was present, no Russians, no Malaysians. That fact brings you to the conclusion that it is and was a one-sided investigation, resulted in most likely “fake” propaganda news from the regular MSM and the Dutch Government. The only investigation, on the ground, comes from the documentary makers of BONANZA.

Conclusion

The investigation and the trial can be called a “sham”. Their evidence is meager and most likely no court would prosecute based on their founding. The latest developments show that it is has not been taken seriously: witnesses to the shooting of flight MH17 could be offered a new life in Australia to protect them from reprisals if they come forward with information, or be promised relocation, witness protection in return for information. Also, it is well-known that after the collapse of the former Soviet Union (USSR), which Ukraine was a part of, BUK’s and other military equipment were left in Ukraine. I remember well when there were many scandals about “plutonium and depleted uranium” left behind.

As I stated in my previous article, the Dutch National Navigation Authority (a governmental institution) should never have allowed a civil commercial airplane to fly above a war-zone and therefore, to my opinion, this should be investigated as well, why they failed to give a warning? Also, the investigitions should focus on Malaysian Airlines, and the reason why they decided to fly over a war-zone. These questions were never raised by the Dutch Government and the JIT team.

So remains the questions why now? Five years after the tragic accident. A new President in Ukraine, perhaps?

After  the tragic accident, the Dutch together with the UK played a big role in the new “Hybrid” war (to be comparable with the “Cold-war”) towards Russia, they indoctrinated their citizens about the “evil” Putin and Russia. But things are changing in the big “outside” world and the current Dutch Government led by Mark Rutte, is not trustworthy anymore. A former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Halbe Zijlstra, lied  about his visit to the Dacha of President Putin and the lies he told the Dutch people were out of proportion. If the Government lies about this, we can conclude that the investigation of the JIT team and the Dutch Government into the MH17 is perhaps based on fiction and lies, to calm down the Dutch people. After all, they called out for justice on MH17 and Russia is an easy “scapegoat”.

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

US harassing Iran on behalf of Israel

Press TV – November 25, 2019

A political analyst says the latest move by the US to call on social media networks to block the accounts of Iran’s leaders is part of Washington’s usual pattern of “harassing Iran on behalf of Israel.”

Brian Hook, special US representative for Iran, has recently urged Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to block the accounts of Iranian government leaders over an Internet blackout that began in the country following riots over fuel price hikes.

Tehran says it had to restrict access to the Internet to prevent “saboteurs” from using online services like navigation and maps to coordinate their activities in large cities across the country.

The government nevertheless has begun reestablishing Internet connectivity after around 100 of the ringleaders of the riots were apprehended.

In an interview with Press TV on Sunday, Walt Peretto said “this latest move by the State Department follows the usual pattern of the US harassing Iran on behalf of Israel and their New World Order overlords and the rest of global organized psychopathy.”

He said the US cannot invade “a nation like Iran that remains strong and independent,” so “instead, they harass them with rhetoric and propaganda, sanctions, nuclear agreements that they renege on.”

He went on to say that “hypocrisy and lies are as common as breathing with the officials in the State Department and White House.”

“On one hand the US has a mainstream media that is completely Zionist run, while independent sources of information particularly on social media and YouTube are harassed and often censored when truthful information becomes an irritant to the globalist overlords.”

“In the minds of the general public that receives its news and information from mainstream sources, the US is actually fighting censorship by reprimanding Iran for reacting in the way it chose in order to quell destructive protests, when in fact censorship is standard everyday practice in the US mainstream media and now harassment and censorship is increasingly becoming a problem with independent media based mostly on the internet. There is nothing that the globalist psychopaths fear more than the dissemination of the truth,” he stated.

November 25, 2019 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , | 3 Comments

World Jewish Congress: Billionaires, Oligarchs, Global Influencers for Israel

Billionaire Mikhael Mirilashvili and his son Yitzhakis with Israeli minister Yaffa Deri.
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | November 24, 2019

The World Jewish Congress (WJC), which calls itself “The Representative Body of over 100 Jewish Communities Worldwide,” held its annual gala at the Pierre hotel in New York City on Nov. 6.

It bestowed its annual Theodor Herzl Award (named after Israel’s founding father) on former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley for her work on behalf of Israel. Some previous awardees have been Joe Biden and Henry Kissinger.

One of the WJC’s main issues is support for Israel. Among its many activities in this realm, it collaborates with the Israeli government to defend Israel from criticisms of its human rights abuses and discriminatory system.

The WJC defines many factual statements about Israel to be “antisemitic,” and labels legitimate opposition to Israeli violence and oppression against Palestinians “antisemitism.” As a result, its top issue, combating “antisemitism,” often consists of efforts to suppress information about Israel’s oppression of Palestinians and to combat efforts on behalf of Palestinian human rights.

At one of its recent international conferences to oppose this newly defined “antisemitism,” US Special Envoy Elan Carr proclaimed that every law enforcement office and every prosecutorial agency throughout the world must “force everybody who has even a hint of antisemitism to undergo a tolerance program.” … continue

November 24, 2019 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , , | 7 Comments

US to launch new media network to provide Chinese diaspora with ‘alternative’ news

© Reuters/Yuri Gripas; GLP/ZUMA Press/ChinaFotoPress/Wu Junsong
RT | November 24, 2019

The US-funded broadcasters Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are about to join forces to establish a new media structure, tasked with providing Chinese citizens with an ‘alternative’ to their own state media, a report claims.

Against the background of a seemingly never-ending US-China trade war, Washington has, apparently, decided to reach out to some ordinary Chinese people and to provide them with no less than a brand new “alternative” to their domestic state media, which, it says, only promote Beijing’s “narratives, values and misinformation.”

At least that’s what a report in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post (SCMP) claims. The report suggests that Voice of America and Radio Free Asia plan to work together to create a totally new “digital brand” operating 24/7 in Mandarin on social media, on the internet and through various other broadcasting platforms.

The new network is reportedly expected to focus particularly on Chinese youth, both in China and beyond. The news comes as the US Agency for Global Media – a newly founded governmental entity tasked with coordinating the work of all of the US’ state-funded media – proudly reported about the growing demand for that sort of content in China, saying that the number of people tuning in weekly to VOA and RFA rose by more than six percent in total in 2018.

It is, however, unclear how exactly a network, which will reportedly be called ‘Global Mandarin,’ would be different from the existing US state-funded Mandarin-language broadcasters. Neither is it clear how many personnel would be involved in its operations and how exactly it is going to promote “freedom and democracy.”

In any event, this new “alternative” media source, which would be no doubt tasked with “advancing the goals of US foreign policy” just like Radio Free Asia or Radio Free Europe, would need to get through China’s firewall first.

The SCMP report suggests the budget of the proposed new network could be between $5 million and $10 million for the first year – a meager sum. Compared with the $43 million Radio Free Asia had at its disposal in 2018, for example.The network’s supposed future name does not make the situation any easier as well as it –alongside with a relevant internet domain – is currently taken by an online school of Chinese language.

It is not the Washington’s first attempt to conquer the minds of its geopolitical adversaries, though. Two years ago, Voice of America together with another government-funded media outlet – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty launched a 24/7 Russian-language news channel broadcasting from the Czech Republic with a very similar stated goal of providing “an alternative to disinformation” in Russia and neighboring countries.

November 24, 2019 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | | 1 Comment

Anti-Russian sanctions based on fraudster’s tales? Spiegel finds Magnitsky narrative fed to West by Browder is riddled with lies

RT | November 24, 2019

British investor Bill Browder has made a name for himself in the West through blaming Moscow for the death of his auditor, Sergey Magnitsky. Der Spiegel has picked apart his story and uncovers it has major credibility problems.

For years Browder – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s self-proclaimed “enemy number one” and head of the Hermitage Capital Management fund – has been waging what can only be described as his personal anti-Russian campaign.

The passionate Kremlin critic relentlessly lobbied for sanctions against Russian officials everywhere from the US to Europe – all under the premise of seeking justice for his deceased employee, who died in Russia, while in pre-trial detention, where he’d been placed while accused of complicity in a major tax evasion scheme.

Browder, who was himself sentenced in absentia by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion, and was later found guilty of embezzlement as well, presented Magnitsky as a fearless whistleblower who exposed a grand corruption scheme within the Russian law enforcement system, and who was then mercilessly killed out of revenge.

The investor has succeeded in feeding this narrative to the Western governments and the mainstream media alike, prompting the US to adopt the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which allowed the US to sanction numerous Russian officials and businessmen over alleged human rights violations. Some American allies, including Canada and the UK, later followed suit and passed similar motions, which either allowed the sanctioning of Russian officials or called on their governments to do it.

Yet, the businessman, who has over the years donned the mantle of a human rights campaigner, does not plan to stop at that and is now lobbying for an EU-wide equivalent of the Magnitsky Act, which would allow the banning of Russian officials from the bloc’s countries and the freezing of their accounts.

On the tenth anniversary of the auditor’s death, the German weekly Der Spiegel has decided to take a closer look at Browder’s story about Magnitsky. And the paper found out that the narrative doesn’t quite flow as smoothly as Western politicians and the MSM would like it to.

No hero

The whistleblower image Browder has built for Magnitsky starts splitting at the seams from the very beginning, as Browder appears to be dishonest, even in minor details like his claim that Magnitsky was his lawyer, Der Spiegel’s Benjamin Bidder reveals in his investigative bombshell.

The problem is that he was not. The man was an auditor, who was hired by Browder’s company as a tax specialist and then worked in this capacity for years with the US-born British investor. Browder himself had to admit this fact when he was questioned in a US court while seeking to make the US impose sanctions on yet another group of Russian entrepreneurs.

Magnitsky’s role as a whistleblower also comes into question as the deceased auditor’s former lawyer confirmed to Der Spiegel’s Bidder that his client had, in fact, been summoned by Russian investigators to provide testimony in a tax evasion case that opened at least months before he came up with his corruption allegations.

Other documents obtained by Der Spiegel, including Magnitsky’s unpublished emails, also suggest that Magnitksy acted not of his own volition but on the instructions of Browder’s senior lawyer, at a time when the Russian authorities had already been investigating dubious letterbox companies Browder supposedly had used in his tax evasion scheme for years.

Finally, the records of Magnitsky’s interrogation, released by Browder’s own people on the internet and seen by Der Spiegel, show that he’d never explicitly accused Russian police officers Artyom Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov, whom Browder declared to be the masterminds behind the supposed corruption affair, and ultimately behind the auditor’s murder.

This fact was also implicitly confirmed by a UK court, which issued a ruling on a libel lawsuit filed by Karpov against Browder in 2012. Although the court ruled that Karpov simply had no prior reputation to defend in the UK and rejected his claim, it still called Browder a “storyteller,” arguing that he could not even come “close to substantiating his allegations with facts.” The British media, however, presented the verdict as a resounding victory for Browder.

No murder

The German weekly also found similar inconsistencies in the story of the auditor’s supposed murder, as told by Browder. In his claims, the businessman constantly refers to a report by the Moscow Public Monitoring Commissions (PMC) – an independent, non-governmental body consisting of rights advocates that conducted its own thorough investigation into Magnitsky’s death.

Browder maintains that Magnitsky was deliberately murdered. Yet, the commission’s report, which is still freely available on its website, contains no claim of this sort. The commission does decry the harsh jail conditions which the auditor was kept in, and accuses the Russian authorities of failing to fulfil its duty to protect his life. However, it says nothing of murder.

It is not just the text of this report that Browder has apparently distorted, though. In August, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued a ruling on Magnitsky’s case, ordering Russia to pay his widow and mother €34,000 ($38,000) in damages.

Browder was quick to hail this decision as “destroying the Russian government’s narrative” and proving that “the Russian government murdered Magnitsky.” However, it would seem Browder’s own narrative was dealt a blow instead.

The ECHR never even mentioned the word “murder” in its ruling. Instead it said that Russia basically failed “to protect Mr Magnitsky’s right to life” by providing inadequate medical care and failed “to ensure an effective investigation into the circumstances of his death.”

It even concluded that Magnitsky’s arrest “was not arbitrary, and that it was based on reasonable suspicion of his having committed a criminal offence” – though it did also say there was no “justification” for his lengthy pre-trial detention.

Buying into convenient narrative

In his investigative report, Der Spiegel’s Benjamin Bidder eventually concludes that, although Magnitsky might have fallen victim to some “gruesome injustice,” his image is still far from that painted by Browder in his efforts to pit Russia and the West against each other.

“A question arises whether there has ever been a perfidious political murder plot or the West simply was made to buy into the lie of a fraudster.”

The journalist says that Browder’s “justice for Magnitsky” campaign might have, in fact, been part of his own “personal revenge” on Russia, one that uses the auditor’s fate as fuel for an “argumentative perpetual motion” that helps the businessman himself stay afloat in the sea of Western politics.

Yet, there is another question that needs to be asked: Why did Western politicians and the media support Browder’s narrative so eagerly, without even fact-checking it first? The answer is simple.

According to Bidder, Browder is “so successful because his narrative seems to fit perfectly with the devastating image” that Russia has in the West, making it much more convenient for the media to just toe the line instead of questioning it.

Also on rt.com:

Tycoon who pushed Magnitsky Act warns EU minister that opposing Russia-bashing is ‘career ruining’

CNN enlists help of fraudster Browder & Integrity Initiative ‘experts’ to fan Russia meddling claims in UK

November 24, 2019 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Bereft of soft power, India stands diminished in Hindu Kush and Central Asia

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | November 24, 2019

The dichotomy between the regime policy and public opinion is nowhere near as sharp as in the world of diplomacy. And nowhere in the contemporary situation is this maxim so sharply visible as in the dalliance of the West Asian oligarchies with Israel. The romance began at least a decade ago — perhaps, more — but it still remains an illicit affair.

Israel would have liked an open relationship. It has a lot to gain thereby. But that’s possible only when pigs fly. The reason is that the authoritarian rulers of Muslim Middle East are acutely conscious of the so-called ‘Arab Street’. This may seem a paradox — that oligarchies need to be mindful of popular opinion — but, in actuality, they do not enjoy such a big leeway as one imagines to trample upon public opinion to the extent that strong elected leadership would have.

When they defy or ignore public opinion, it must be for weighty reasons — mostly, when existential issues are involved such as the regime’s survival, for instance. Israel doesn’t fall into that exceptional category — it is not as if without a relationship with Israel, the Arab oligarchies would face extinction. The dalliance between the Arab regimes and Israel is characterised by pragmatism rather than principles or critical imperatives. So long as Israel lacks any ‘soft power’ in its Arab neighbourhood and the ‘Arab Street’ views it negatively, the hands of the authoritarian rulers are tied. They can go only thus far, and no further. In turn, it severely limited the relationship.

The Indian leadership should realise the limitations of pragmatic external relations in diplomacy. There is no gainsaying the fact that India’s ‘soft power’ is depleting at an alarming rate. The acolytes of the Modi government do not seem to care and even those amongst the few amongst them who are erudite enough to comprehend the significance of what is happening tend to put on an air of defiance or studied indifference — or worse still, become polemical.

The External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s recent remark that Imperial Britain divested India of $44 trillion is a typical remark. Faced with the quandary of searing criticism in Britain regarding the J&K situation, he takes a de tour to malign Britain. (How this round figure of $44 trillion has been arrived at is another matter — even if one doesn’t want to get into the modernisation of India under British rule that made the evolution of the Indian state as a political entity possible.)

Today, ‘soft power’ is no longer in vogue in the Indian diplomatic toolbox. The obsession with ‘macho’ image is so overpowering. Under the Modi government, the accent on ‘soft power’ began with a bang in 2014 and is quite visibly ending after five years with a whimper.

A number of mistakes have been made during the past 5-year period that dented India’s ‘soft power’ (which one doesn’t want to go into there). But it is the appalling situation in the Kashmir Valley that dealt a body blow to India’s image.

An opinion is steadily gaining ground in the Muslim countries in India’s ‘extended neighbourhood’ that the Modi government is adopting state policies that are decidedly ‘anti-Muslim’. Even the elites in friendly countries such as Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia or Turkey, who are by no means ‘Islamist’ tend to see Kashmir as a ‘Muslim issue.’

A recent opinion piece in the influential US magazine Foreign Policy is entitled Kashmir Could Wreck India’s Reputation Among Afghans. It is a nuanced analysis — by no means ‘anti-Indian’ — of how Afghan public opinion, which is traditionally friendly, is discernibly getting disenchanted with India’s repression of Kashmiri Muslims.

This is a depressing scenario, because ‘soft power’ has been historically the bedrock of India-Afghan relations, and for that reason, Delhi under successive governments right from 1947, placed great emphasis on people-to-people relations between the two countries.

Certainly, our diplomacy will be by far diminished if the Afghans perceive us as no different from Pakistan — pursuing cold, pitiless geopolitical objectives in their country. It is small comfort that Afghans will probably continue to view India as a ‘stabilising factor’.

To quote Hari Prasad, the author of the article, “The positions of political actors in Afghanistan have ranged from neutral to explicitly pro-India, primarily for India’s support for the Afghan government as well as anti-Pakistan animus. But our discussions with journalists and Afghans in the region show the popular reaction is decidedly more nuanced. Many working-class Afghans, drawing from their own experiences of conflict and oppression, identify with Kashmir’s Muslims.”

The analysis makes the foreboding conclusion: “Afghans are closely watching the actions of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in Kashmir and throughout the region. That should be a reality check for New Delhi; its courting of Afghan opinion can only go so far. India may have the funding and power to shape public opinion and support in Afghanistan, but it will take much more to overcome growing mistrust.”   

If the changing perceptions regarding India are such in Afghanistan, can it be any different in the Central Asian region? The people in the steppes are, if anything, far more deeply immersed in Islamic culture, ethos and identity than Afghans, given the historical reality that their region was also the cradle of Islam in its golden era.

The Uzbeks, for instance, take great pride that Babur set out from Fergana, which, incidentally, has a museum dedicated to Babur. One of the most evocative historical monuments in Kabul is the Bagh-e Babur (Garden of Babur), the final resting place that the great emperor chose for himself — rather than Agra.

Even if Delhi were to build half a dozen parliament buildings in Kabul, Afghans will continue to treasure the Bagh-e Babur as the living monument to their abiding links with India.

November 24, 2019 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , | Leave a comment

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