Paternalistic Non-interventionism
The examples of Venezuela and Hong Kong
By John V. Walsh | Dissident Voice | October 20, 2019
The summer of 2019 has seen a series of events in Hong Kong beginning with two massive demonstrations that called for the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill to Macao, Taiwan and Mainland China. The demonstrations were peaceful and the bill was quickly “suspended” and labeled “dead” by the Hong Kong government and then withdrawn by summer’s end, meeting the demand of the demonstrations.
But that was not the end of the matter. Over the summer and to this day smaller demonstrations, of hundreds or at most a few thousand, broke out, mainly taking the form of marauding with Molotov cocktails and attacks on police stations, subway stations, police themselves and even on bystanders. Another four demands were added to the original demand to bury the extradition bill. Some, not the majority, called for the secession of Hong Kong from China of which it is legally a part.
But these events did not simply evolve internally in Hong Kong and the rest of China. Although internal forces were at work, the US government had a hand in these events.1 Unfortunately, this readily accessible material has barely been mentioned, if mentioned at all, in the US mainstream media. The most recent and in some ways most blatant examples of interference in the internal affairs of Hong Kong takes the form of the bipartisan “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act (HKHRD Act)” (H.R. 3289 and S. 1838, an identical bill in the Senate). On September 15 H.R. 3289 was passed in the House by a voice vote. By threat of sanctions and other economic and political measures, the HKHRD Act seeks to determine which laws the Chinese city of Hong Kong will legislate and which not. This is clearly interventionism on the part of the U.S. How would the US react to such threats from another country? How would the U.S. react if China informed us that it was going to put sanctions in place against the U.S. if we would did not change our laws that result in mass incarceration which is clearly racist in character?
Sadly, most peace activists in the US and the West have been silent on the US role in the Hong Kong riots. Or they have gone so far as to echo the narrative of events in Hong Kong put about by Pence, Pompeo, Pelosi and their ilk. For contrast, consider the situation in Venezuela where the US government, its proxies and the same chorus of politicians call for sanctions and other interventions. The peace community in general is clear on its opposition to US intervention of any sort in Venezuela whether from the machinations of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) or sanctions or attacks on Venezuela’s financial system or actual armed intervention. Why the difference between Venezuela and Hong Kong?
In both Hong Kong and Venezuela, the interventionists tell us that human rights are at stake and an alleged “tyranny,” the Maduro government in one case and the Carrie Lam/Xi Jinping governments in the other, must be fought. So that cannot be the difference in the attitude of progressives to the two cases. Wherein lies the difference?
Here is the difference. Hong Kong is a part of China which presents a real challenge to US global hegemony and a force in the world which may balance the unrestrained power of the US Empire. With the world’s largest economy in PPP-GDP terms since November 2014, now roughly 125% that of the US and growing 2-3 times faster even at its “slowed” rate, China will inevitably have great military and soft power since the latter grow out of economic power. China also serves as an economic anchor for the developing world, an anchor that provides a viable alternative to the economic and financial hegemony of the US Empire. China opens the possibility of a multipolar world where no single nation can dictate to the entire world.
In contrast Venezuela is no threat to US hegemony. It instills no fear in the imperial Elite; if Venezuela maintains its independence, the Empire can roll on pretty much as before. As a consequence, a stance against US intervention in Venezuela will not meet with intense opposition from the US imperial Elite and its minions. Non-intervention in the case of Venezuela is the proper course and should be supported and praised. But such opposition can fall within the ambit of a loyal imperial “opposition,” that is, a harmless opposition if it is not accompanied by nonintervention in cases like that of China’s city of Hong Kong.
“US Hands Off Venezuela” is principled if it is accompanied by “US Hands Off Hong Kong.” By itself “US Hands Off Venezuela” can be seen as a kind of token anti-Empire stance. Such tokenism treats Venezuela not as a part of a powerful worldwide struggle against US hegemony but as a harmless effort which the loyal imperial opposition deigns to help. In short it is Paternalistic Non-interventionism, and DemocracyNow! is one good example of Paternalistic Non-interventionism. The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity or the newsletter PopularResistance.org are good examples of principled non-interventionism.
One evidence of the difference between the two is that those who refuse to call for US Hands Off Hong Kong are also partisans for Russiagate, for US intervention in Syria and for US interference in Ukraine. (Or at the least they are silent on these issues.) Russia like China is a serious hindrance to the US drive for world hegemony and so the Paternalistic Non-interventionists cease to be non-interventionists when it comes to Syria, a state protected by Russia, or Ukraine, a country with which Russia must have good relations to live in peace.
Interventionism of the sort practiced by the NED in Hong Kong and the rest of China puts us on a road where antagonisms mount and ever sharper forms of conflict emerge with a major power rivaling the US. In short it puts us on a path to war since China is a full-fledged nuclear power now with a fully developed nuclear triad, that war could easily carry us to Armageddon.
At this moment “U.S. Hands Off Hong Kong” is the cutting edge of Principled Non-interventionism. Those who fail to take that stance, like the crew at DemocracyNow!, among many others, are at best Paternalistic Non-interventionists. They should make no claim to being antiwar or anti-Empire. They are not.
John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com. He writes about issues of war, peace and empire, and about health care, for Antiwar.com, Consortium News, Dissident Voice.org and other outlets. Now living in the East Bay, he was until recently Professor of Physiology and Cellular Neuroscience at a Massachusetts Medical School.
The American Deep State Would Sooner Sacrifice the Republic Than Lose Again to Donald Trump
By Robert Bridge | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 20, 2019
You’d really think the American people would have caught on by now. No sooner did Russiagate fizzle out like a wet firecracker did the Democrats, completely indifferent to the dire consequences, toss another incendiary into the public square. Sooner or later something has got to blow, and maybe it already did.
As Americans experience the brutal whiplash of going from the Mueller probe to presidential impeachment in a matter of days, all pretensions of democratic procedure to guide the show trial have been tossed from the clown car. With the boot-licking media to back their every whim and fancy, the Democrats are dragging the Republic to the brink of destruction as they threaten to take down the 45th POTUS, and without a single witness in the dock.
Last month, Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said the identity of the shady whistleblower who revealed second-hand details of a call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be made public “very soon.” That claim looks set to be the fifth ‘Pinocchio’ awarded to Schiff in almost as many days.
On Sunday, the truth-impaired Senator said the whistleblower at the heart of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry might not testify in court over concerns about the individual’s safety. That pathetic excuse should incur the wrath of the mainstream media every bit as much as it has incurred the wrath of the Trump administration. Moreover, it cheapens the incalculable sacrifice that every whistleblower assumes when they attach their identities to explosive revelations; without their identity publicly known the claims do not carry the same weight. Unless the whistleblower is fully prepared to lose his career and risk jail time, much like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning and numerous others, a cloud of doubt will forever hang over the claims, and even more so in the Ukrainegate affair since we are talking about nothing more than hearsay.
Schiff’s notorious shiftiness didn’t end there. He actually cited Trump’s candidness in releasing the full transcript of the conversation as another reason as to why the ‘courageous’ whistleblower should enjoy full anonymity. This almost makes Trump himself appear as the whistleblower.
“Given that we already have the call record, we don’t need the whistleblower who wasn’t on the call to tell us what took place during the call,” Schiff said in an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. In other words, Trump was doomed to be damned if he released the transcript or he didn’t.
The Democrat’s determination to bring down Trump was confirmed earlier when Schiff was caught in yet another lie.
On September 16, the Democratic Senator told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he did not know the identity of the whistleblower. He repeated the same claim the next day when he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe that neither he nor his staff had “spoken directly with the whistleblower.” It is now known that his claims were bald-faced lies, and serious enough to bring the impeachment clown car to a screeching halt. Yet the rules of the game, as is proven time and time again, are always adjusted to suit the Democrats. In fact, the whistleblower may have committed a felony for failing to disclose in his or her official complaint that they had first brought the information to the attention of House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff.
Schiff has little to worry about, however, since the media does not react to Democratic transgressions with nearly the same amount of hysteria as it does with the Republicans, which explains why Trump is fighting a constant uphill battle.
This is where the push for impeachment is becoming a dangerous venture for the Democrats. The people are not stupid, and it does not require the shrewdest political tool to understand that the scales of justice are weighted heavily in favor of the Democrats. From Hillary Clinton escaping punishment for using her home computer to send classified government documents, to former Vice President Joe Biden bragging about arranging a billion-dollar quid pro quo with Kiev to sack Ukraine’s top prosecutor, who just happened to be investigating Biden’s son, Hunter, the Democrats rarely have anything to fear as far as justice is concerned. Yet this special status has certainly not gone unnoticed; with social media revolutionizing the ‘town square,’ the blatant hypocrisies and outright crimes are obvious to everyone.
Just as Russiagate was a conspicuous effort on the part of the Democrats and their lapdog media to deflect attention away from the contents of Clinton’s emails, not to mention the identity of the leaker (as opposed to the ‘Russian hackers,’ that is), Ukrainegate is a desperate attempt to focus attention on a harmless phone call between two state leaders so as to bury the news of corruption at the highest levels of the Obama administration, up to and including not only Joe Biden, but former Secretary of State John Kerry as well. In other words, we are talking about obstruction of justice on a mind-boggling scale, and which could only be pulled off with the full support of the mainstream media. A free-thinking, independent journalistic community would have called foul on such shenanigans long ago.
Lest anyone forget, the Democrats have been under investigation by Attorney General Bill Barr and federal prosecutor John Durham. These two are currently traveling the world in an effort to determine “the extent to which a number of countries, including Ukraine, played a role in the counterintelligence investigation directed at the Trump campaign during the 2016 election,” Justice Department spokesperson Kerri Kupec said in a statement on Sept. 25.
In fact, Barr and Durham’s ‘mission’ kicked off back in May, long before the smoke and mirrors of yet another Trump ‘transgression’ took front and center in living rooms across the country. Indeed, while every American has heard of the impeachment inquiry, few realize that the Democrats are under investigation for far greater crimes should they be found guilty, that is. Now, in the event that Barr and Durham attempt to present their findings to the public, the Democrats will scream in one persecuted voice that Trump is attempting to ‘obstruct justice,’ which will certainly be the greatest irony considering the source.
In other words, there are two vehicles – one filled with Democrats, the other Republicans – careening towards an intersection at a high rate of speed, and neither looks willing to yield to the other. This is the situation confronting America at the present time: a smashup of epic, deadly proportions, quite possibly on par with its first civil war. Such a seemingly inevitable event, however, would never have been remotely possible had the media been a fair and just provider of news and information as opposed to being an instigator and provocateur of the first order.
Now, should the Democrats get the impeachment they’ve been dreaming about ever since they lost the 2016 presidential election, at least 50 percent of the American public will understand full well that the scales of justice are tilted against them. That will be the moment when the United States is forced to confront its worst crisis in many years, simply because the Democrats have become so terrified of a longstanding political technology known as ‘free and fair elections.’
CIA Analysts Lawyer Up As Brennan, Clapper Ensnared In Expanding Russiagate Probe
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/19/2019
CIA analysts involved in the intelligence assessment of Russia’s activities during the 2016 US election have begun to hire attorneys, as Attorney General William Barr expands his investigation into the origins of the Russia probe, led by US Attorney John Durham.
The prosecutor conducting the review, Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, has expressed his intent to interview a number of current and former intelligence officials involved in examining Russia’s effort to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, Brennan told NBC News. –NBC
NBC learned of the ‘lawyering up’ from three former CIA officials “familiar with the matter,” while two more anonymous leakers claim there’s tension between the Justice Department and the CIA over what classified documents Durham has access to.
With Barr’s approval, Durham has expanded his staff and the timeframe under scrutiny, according to a law enforcement official directly familiar with the matter. And he is now looking into conduct past Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, a Trump administration official said.
One Western intelligence official familiar with Durham’s investigation leaked that Durham has been asking foreign officials questions related to former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who was fed the rumor that Russia had ‘dirt’ on Hillary Clinton by a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud. While US media has sought to portray Mifsud as a Russian asset, the self-described member of the Clinton foundation has far stronger ties to the West.
According to congressional testimony given by Papadopoulos last October as well as statements he’s made over Twitter, the whole thing was an FBI setup – as a ‘woman in London, who was the FBI’s legal attache in the UK’ and “had a personal relationship to Bob Mueller after 9/11” was the one who recommended that he meet with Mifsud in Rome.
As the theory goes; Mifsud, a US intelligence asset, feeds Papadopoulos the rumor that Russia has Hillary Clinton’s emails shortly after he announces he’s going to join the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos repeats the email rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, who alerts Australia’s intelligence community, which notifies the FBI, which then launches operation “Crossfire Hurricane” during which the FBI sent multiple spies (including a ‘honeypot’) to infiltrate the Trump campaign. Notably, former FBI employee Peter Strzok flew to London to meet with Downer the day after Crossfire Hurricane was launched – while Strzok’s boss, Bill Priestap was in London the day before the Downer-Papadopoulos encounter.
And if this is all true, Durham has a lot to untangle – including the Clinton / DNC-funded Steele Dossier.
No Inquest for Dawn Sturgess
By Craig Murray | October 18, 2019
The killing of poor Dawn Sturgess was much the most serious of the events in Salisbury and Amesbury that attracted international attention. Yet nobody has been charged, no arrest warrant issued and no inquest held.
The inquest for Dawn Sturgess has today been yet again postponed, for the fourth time, and for the first time no new prospective date has been given for it to open. Alarmingly, the coroner’s office are referring press enquiries to Scotland Yard’s Counter Terrorism Command – which ought to have no role in an inquest process supposed to be independent of the police.
Congratulations to Rob Slane and to John Helmer for their excellent work in following this.
It appears very probable that the independent coroner’s inquiry process is going to be cancelled and, as in the case of David Kelly, replaced by a politically controlled “public inquiry” with a trusty or malleable judge in charge, like Lord Hutton of Kincora. This is because the truth of Dawn Sturgess’ death in itself destroys key elements of the government’s narrative on what happened in Salisbury.
Simply put, the chemical that killed Dawn Sturgess could not have been the same that allegedly poisoned the Skripals. Charlie Rowley is adamant that he found it in a packaged and fully sealed perfume bottle, in a charity bin. Furthermore he states that it was a charity bin he combed through regularly and it had not been there earlier, in the three months between the alleged attack on the Skripals and his taking it from the bin.
The government narrative that “Boshirov and Petrov” used that perfume bottle to attack the Skripals, then somehow resealed the cellophane, and disposed of it in the bin, depends on the Russians having a tiny plastic resealing technology concealed on them (and why bother?), on their taking a long detour to dispose of the “perfume” in a charity bin – the one method that guaranteed it being found and reused – and the “perfume” then achieving a lengthy period of invisibility in the bin before appearing again three months later.
Those are only some of a number of inconvenient facts. Perfume does not come as a gel; it cannot both have been applied as a gel to the Skripals’ doorknob and sprayed on to Dawn Sturgess’ wrists. Gels do not spray. Neither Porton Down nor the OPCW was able to state it was from the same batch as the chemical allegedly used on the Skripals’ house.
Then there is the fascinating fact that it took eleven days of intensive searching for a vial of liquid in a small modern home, for the police to find the perfume bottle sitting on the kitchen counter.
Nobody has been charged with the manslaughter or murder of Dawn Sturgess. There is still an international arrest warrant out for Boshirov and Petrov for the attack on the Skripals. Very interestingly indeed, this warrant has never been changed into the names of Chepiga and Mishkin.
From the moment I heard of the attack on Dawn Sturgess I worried that she – a person down on her luck and living in a hostel – was exactly the kind of person the powerful and wealthy would view as a disposable human being if her death fitted their narrative. The denial of an inquest for her, and the complete lack of interest by the mainstream media in the obvious nonsense of the official story that ties her to the Skripal poisoning, tends to confirm these fears. What Dawn Sturgess’ death tells us, beyond doubt, is that the government narrative is fake and the Skripal and Sturgess cases are two separate incidents. Which makes a local origin of the chemical very much more likely. No wonder the government is determined to avoid the inquest.
I was struck today that the tame neo-con warmongering “Chemical weapons expert” Hamish De Bretton Gordon, former head of the British Army’s chemical weapons unit, appeared on Sky News. He was being interviewed on use of white phosphorous by Turkey in Syria and repeatedly tried to deflect the narrative on to alleged chemical weapons use by Syrian government forces, arguing that the present crisis was the moral responsibility of those who opposed western military action against Assad. But what particularly struck me was that he appeared by Skype – from Salisbury. When you look at the British government’s own chemical weapons expertise, you are continually led back to Salisbury, perhaps not surprisingly given the location of Porton Down.
I am aiming to make a full documentary film on the Salisbury events entitled “Truth and the Skripals”, based around the questions raised on this blog. I shall be looking to launch crowdfunding for the documentary shortly, probably within the week.
Hillary Clinton Pitches Conspiracy Theory That Tulsi Gabbard, Jill Stein Are Russian Assets
By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 10/18/2019
Hillary Clinton is still peddling election-related conspiracy theories, this time hinting that 2020 Democratic contender Tulsi Gabbard is being ‘groomed’ to split the Democratic vote as a third party candidate, thus handing the election to President Trump.
Speaking with former Obama 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe on his podcast, “Campaign HQ with David Plouffe,” Clinton said – without mentioning Gabbard by name: “I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
Of course, that’s “assuming Jill Stein will give it up – because she’s also a Russian asset,” Clinton continued.
Earlier in the interview, Clinton hinted that the Trump 2020 campaign is still in “contact with the Russians,” and that “we have to assume that since it worked for them, why would they quit?”
“Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s dream,” Clinton added. “I don’t know what Putin has on him – whether its both personal and financial, I assume it is. But more than that, there’s this bizarre adulation Trump has for dictators.”
Clinton also insisted that Russia “did affect the outcome of the election” in 2016, despite the DOJ concluding otherwise.
Incredible!
Jeffrey Epstein Again Disappears From View, but What About Mossad?
By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 17, 2019
I have long argued that pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was clearly an intelligence agent and that he was most likely working for the Israeli external service Mossad. My belief was based on the nature of his activity, which suggested that he was able to blackmail important Americans using the sex tapes that he had been able to make at his Manhattan mansion. Put that together with the existence of his fake Austrian passport, as well as former Miami federal attorney Alexander Acosta’s comments and it would seem that an intelligence connection is a sine qua non.
Acosta was particularly damning. When asked “Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” he replied “…that I had just one meeting on the Epstein case.” He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told to back off,” that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.”
The answers to those remaining questions about Epstein are still lacking even though he is gone, but one fears that the authorities will be disinclined to further investigate a dead man. It appears that no one in the various investigative agencies or the mainstream media has been interested in what Acosta meant, even though it would be simple enough to ask him. Who told him to back off? And how did they explain it? And then there is Epstein’s Austrian passport. Was the document fake or real, with a real name and photo substitution or alternation of both picture and name? How did he get it? Austrian passports are highly desirable in intelligence circles because the country is neutral and its holders can travel just about everywhere without a visa.
What Epstein did and how he did it was an intelligence operation in support of Mossad. There is no other viable explanation for his filming of prominent politicians and celebrities having sex with young girls. Recruiting and running American movers and shakers like Bill Clinton, with his 26 trips on the Lolita Express, former Governor Bill Richardson, or former Senator George Mitchell are precisely the types of “agents of influence” that the Mossad would seek to coerce or even blackmail into cooperation.
Other compelling evidence for a Mossad connection came from Epstein’s relationship with Ghislaine Maxwell, who reportedly served as his key procurer of young girls. Ghislaine is the daughter of Robert Maxwell, who died or possibly was assassinated in mysterious circumstances in 1991. Maxwell was an Anglo-Jewish businessman, very cosmopolitan in profile, like Epstein, a multi-millionaire who was very controversial with what were regarded as ongoing ties to Mossad. After his death, he was given a state funeral by Israel in which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence listened while Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”
Israel and high-profile Jewish players also have continued to turn up like bad pennies in the Epstein case, but no one seems to be interested in pursuing that angle. Epstein clearly had contact with former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak and Epstein patrol Les Wexner also had close ties to the Jewish state and its government.
And now, finally more evidence of the relationship has surfaced even though the mainstream media appears to have lost all interest in the subject. A recent interview given by a former high-ranking official in Israeli military intelligence has inter alia made the claim that Epstein’s sexual blackmail enterprise was from the beginning an Israel intelligence operation involving the entrapment of powerful individuals and politicians in the United States and also abroad.
In an interview with Zev Shalev, former CBS News executive producer, the retired senior executive for Israel’s Directorate of Military Intelligence, Ari Ben-Menashe, claimed not only to have first met Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged procuress, Ghislaine Maxwell, in the 1980s, but that both Epstein and Maxwell were already working with Israeli intelligence prior to that time.
Ben-Menashe, was himself involved in the notorious Iran-Contra arms deals. He claimed that he had been introduced to Jeffrey Epstein by Robert Maxwell in the mid-1980s while Maxwell’s and Ben-Menashe’s were themselves working on Iran-Contra “… he [Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group …. I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies [Foreign Editor of the Maxwell-Owned Daily Mirror], it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” Ben-Menashe’s account has been corroborated independently by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, describing how Maxwell, Davies and Ben-Menashe arranged the transfer and sale of military equipment and weapons from Israel to Iran on behalf of Mossad and the CIA during that time period.
Ben-Menashe, who would have absolutely nothing to gain by lying, described how Maxwell stated during the introduction that “your Israeli bosses have already approved” of Epstein. Maxwell was involved in an major intelligence network in Israel “which included the then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon…” and was well placed to know that of which he spoke.
Will the three simultaneous investigations currently taking place even seek to ask the right questions now that the target of the investigation is gone and the new Ben-Menashe information has surfaced? Given the high stakes in the game, quite likely there will be a cover-up both of how Epstein lived and how he died and, most importantly, whom he worked for. Unfortunately, but predictably, the media and the inside the Beltway chattering class have lost interest in the story and we the public will most likely never learn what Epstein was all about. Just another instance of Israel spying on the United States… ho hum.
The New York Times’ Preemptive Reporting on James Comey
By Ray McGovern • Consortium News • October 13, 2019
James Comey Would Like to Help: The former F.B.I. director wants an end to the Trump presidency. And yes, he knows you might think he caused it” is the headline atop an instructive article on Sunday by Matt Flegenheimer of The New York Times. His article makes clear the Times remains determined to support former FBI Director James Comey and sustain the discredited Russiagate narrative they share to the point of helping Comey and his partners avoid possible time in prison.
In late August, the Department of Justice decided to let Comey off with a slap on the wrist for leaking to the Times, through an intermediary, highly sensitive information from his talks with President Donald Trump. At that juncture, it was already a no-brainer to warn that the victory lap Comey chose to run was clearly premature.
Consequential leaks to the media by a former FBI director are serious enough. Now, however, we are talking about possible felonies. Comey is standing in such deep kimchi that he may drown — despite how tall he is, and despite preemptive puff pieces protesting a purity of the caliber of Caesar’s wife. This time, even with the Establishment media and Comey’s accomplices offering fulsome praise for him, there’s serious doubt whether he can wangle a Stay-Out-Of-Jail Card.
Why do they appear to be running so scared?
In Horror of Horowitz
Over the last year and a half, Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has been investigating how Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, and three deputy attorneys general (Rod Rosenstein, Sally Yates, and Dana Boente) thought they could get away with signing applications for surveillance of former Trump associate Carter Page without disclosing that, as McCabe later testified, the application was based largely on the shabby, unverified “Steele dossier” paid for by the Democrats.
Providing incomplete, misleading information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is a felony.
No problem, these top law enforcement officials probably thought at the time. Who would find out about their misconduct after Hillary Clinton — the odds-on favorite — became president? There would be encomia and promotions for help rendered, not indictments.
But now all of the above are squirming, and there is a paper trail. Only one of the FISA application signers is still in a key position to help from the inside — Boente. He was not demoted to working in the file room. He is the FBI general counsel, that is, its top attorney.
Is it About to Hit the Fan?
According Horowitz, Attorney General William Barr has had his draft IG report for over a month. Horowitz has said that his team “reviewed over one million records and conducted over 100 interviews, including several of witnesses who only recently agreed to be interviewed.” The team is “finalizing” the report prior to releasing it publicly.
Some pundits are now suggesting that the DOJ IG report may be published as early as this Friday.
Hold onto your hats.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Forget privacy abuses, liberals call to DeleteFacebook after learning Zuckerberg met with conservatives
By Helen Buyniski | RT | October 15, 2019
Facebook’s history of abusing users’ trust by sharing their private data with corporate partners and government spooks pales in comparison to its CEO’s decision to sit down with prominent conservatives, for some.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been meeting with conservative commentators, journalists, and politicians in “small, off-the-record dinners” and “informal talks,” Politico revealed on Monday, sending shockwaves through the internet. He reportedly discussed “free expression, unfair treatment of conservatives, fact checking, partnerships, and privacy” with prominent right-wing critics of Facebook, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Washington Examiner correspondent Byron York, and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
This, the mainstream media and many liberals on social media have declared, is an outrage. The hashtag #DeleteFacebook was trending for most of Monday as Woke Twitter finally realized the fourth-richest man in the US, who infamously called Facebook users “dumb f***s,” was an unworthy trustee of their digital lives. Just kidding – they were upset that the platform had become yet another tool of white supremacy.
“The fear is that Zuckerberg is trying to appease the Trump administration by not cracking down on right-wing propaganda,” an anonymous “cybersecurity researcher and former government official based in Silicon Valley” told Politico, giving voice to the fears of many in the Democratic Party. Last week, the platform refused 2020 presidential frontrunner Joe Biden’s campaign’s request to remove a Trump campaign ad accusing Biden of promising Ukraine $1 billion to fire a prosecutor investigating the gas company that had hired his son. While Facebook promised that any “viral hoax” shared by a politician would be “demoted” and displayed alongside a fact-check, it pointed to a recently-revised policy against fact-checking “political speech” as the reason its hands were tied, leaving the Biden campaign – and the #Resistance – fuming.
Wounded liberals took to Twitter to voice their displeasure with Zuckerberg’s secret meetings, accusing Facebook of “poisoning our democracy” even as they made excuses for why they couldn’t delete Instagram or WhatsApp, both of which are owned by Facebook.
Zuckerberg sitting down with conservatives is an odd straw to have break the camel’s back, to be sure. Facebook users sat quietly by when it emerged that the platform had shared their private data, including messages sent to other users, with over 150 corporate “partners” without their knowledge or consent. There was no user uprising when the platform was discovered to be collaborating with phone companies to rate customers’ “creditworthiness” based on their profiles. #DeleteFacebook didn’t trend when the platform quietly suspended tens of thousands of apps for violating users’ privacy and admitted it would be unable to catch all of the other perpetrators, or when a Facebook lawyer made the jaw-dropping claim that users have no expectation of privacy at all.
Facebook notoriously collaborates with the US government to remove accounts both domestically and abroad, and works with the Israeli government to stifle the free speech of Palestinians, many of whom get their news exclusively through Facebook. A recent EU court ruling paved the way for Facebook to be weaponized by European countries to remove so-called “hate speech” by users halfway around the world. And Facebook has even struggled to play down complaints that it exploits children by luring them into spending wads of their parents’ cash on online games.
None of these offenses rankled #Resistance Twitter as much as a friendly (off-the-record) dinner with Tucker Carlson. Users attacked the “hateful, dangerous platform” as “irresponsible” and slammed it for “undermining democracy.” But even liberals have admitted, when polled about other issues, that Facebook content favors the Democratic Party, and formeremployees have admitted to suppressing conservative posts. Wouldn’t it be ironic if the company that has abused its users in every way imaginable was finally kicked to the curb for listening to their complaints and trying to change?
These Scrubbed Reports Reveal New Secrets Into the Prince Andrew-Jeffrey Epstein Relationship
Graphic by Claudio Cabrera
By Whitney Webb | MintPress News | October 14, 2019
While the Jeffrey Epstein scandal has largely faded from media coverage in the United States, it has continued to attract attention abroad, particularly in the United Kingdom in connection with Epstein’s long-standing association with Prince Andrew, the Duke of York and the Queen’s son.
The Epstein-Prince Andrew relationship has long been a fascination of the U.K. press, with numerous articles dating back to the early 2000s detailing the most outrageous aspects of their relationship. Prior to that, Epstein had also garnered attention from U.K. newspapers regarding his association with Ghislaine Maxwell, whose reputation in the U.K. is rather notorious, as was that of her father, Robert Maxwell.
Yet, since Epstein’s arrest in July, many of these older articles on Epstein and Maxwell, as well as those focusing on the Epstein-Prince Andrew relationship, have disappeared from the archives of several prominent U.K. media outlets that reported on these relationships years ago.
Several of these articles, though largely scrubbed from the internet, were recently obtained by MintPress and a review of their contents makes the likely motive behind their disappearance clear: several articles not only reference Epstein’s connection to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence years before the first investigation into Epstein’s exploitation of minors had even begun, but also reveal surprising aspects of Prince Andrew’s involvement with Epstein that strongly suggest that the Prince partook in illicit sexual activities with minors to a much greater extent than has previously been reported.
New, disturbing details of Prince Andrew’s early links to Epstein
Since Epstein was arrested the first time in 2006 and even more so after he was arrested again this past July, those named in press reports as his associates have made every effort to distance themselves from the accused pedophile and sex trafficker. For this reason, press reports that discuss Epstein long before there was any hint of the larger scandal are particularly important for understanding the true nature of Epstein’s past associations with the rich and powerful.
In light of what is now known about Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation and sex trafficking activities, several reports from the late 1990s and early 2000s contain details long since forgotten regarding Epstein’s relationship with Prince Andrew.
One particularly censored article that appeared in London’s Evening Standard in January 2001, for instance, gives several indications regarding the apparent entrapment of Prince Andrew as part of Epstein’s sexual blackmail operation, which is now known to have been connected to intelligence — specifically Israeli military intelligence, according to recent revelations in the case.
The article, written by Evening Standard journalist Nigel Rosser, quotes a personal friend of both Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein as saying the following about their friendship with Prince Andrew:
A screenshot from a now-deleted 2001 Evening Standard article
Another friend of Maxwell and Epstein made similar claims that appear in the same article:
A screenshot from the same Evening Standard article
The article further describes Epstein and Prince Andrew as having a “curious symbiotic relationship,” adding that “wherever Ghislaine is seen with Prince Andrew, Epstein isn’t far behind.”
These quotes are particularly telling now that it is a matter of record that Epstein was seeking out rich and powerful individuals and entrapping them with minors for the purpose of blackmail. The fact that personal friends of Epstein and Maxwell at the time openly stated that their “manipulative” relationship with Prince Andrew was “very premeditated” and “probably being done for Epstein” strongly suggests that not only was the Prince entrapped, but that this type of entrapment activity was known to occur among those who were close to Epstein and Maxwell at the time.
Prince Andrew — as a member of the Royal Family, which is very protective of its social reputation, as well as the U.K. envoy for investment and trade — certainly fits into the category of people that Epstein entrapped on behalf of intelligence: rich, politically powerful, wary of damaging their social reputation, and thus susceptible to blackmail.
Notably, the year this article was published (2001), is the same year that Epstein’s most well-known accuser and victim, Virginia Giuffre (then Virginia Roberts), claims that she was introduced to Prince Andrew by Maxwell and Epstein and forced to have sex with the Prince on at least three occasions. She has also claimed that Epstein would subsequently instruct her to describe the encounters in order to learn compromising information about the Prince’s sexual habits and preferences. Her claims regarding Epstein’s trafficking of her, specifically to Prince Andrew, have since been largely corroborated by photographic evidence, flight logs, and public records.
This undated photo released by Virginia Giuffre shows Prince Andrew posing with a young Giuffre, Ghislaine Maxwell is shown in the background
While it appears that Prince Andrew was deliberately entrapped as part of Epstein’s intelligence-linked sexual blackmail operation, the article further suggests that Andrew’s involvement with the minors exploited by Epstein went far beyond his alleged three encounters with Giuffre.
Rosser quotes a friend of Prince Andrew’s ex-wife Sara Ferguson as saying that Andrew “used to be smart when he came back from abroad… He’s started having a girl massage him… He even travels abroad with his own massage mattress.”
During this same time period, Epstein and Maxwell also introduced Prince Andrew to “sex aid entrepreneur” Christine Drangsholt during a trip to Mar-a-Lago and describes Andrew traveling to Los Angeles, where he was seen “flirting… with a group of young girls,” and to Phuket, Thailand where he “wandered around the sex bars in the area’s red light district.” The Los Angeles trip saw Andrew accompanied by artist and close friend of Michael Jackson, Bruce Livingstone Strong, and Ghislaine Maxwell accompanied Andrew to Thailand.
The mentions of massages from a “girl” and Andrew traveling around with Maxwell and Epstein while bringing along “his own massage mattress,” are particularly striking given what is now known about Epstein’s sex trafficking and sexual blackmail operation. Court documents, police reports, and other evidence have since made it clear that “massage” was the code word Epstein and his co-conspirators used for sex with the minors he exploited and massage tables and sex toys were frequently present together in the rooms of his various residences where he forced underage girls to engage in sexual acts with him and others.
Most notable of all is the fact that claims of Prince Andrew receiving “massages” from girls during his trips with Epstein and Maxwell were published in January 2001, at least two months before Virginia Giuffre states that she was first introduced to and forced to have sex with the Prince in March of 2001. This means that the claims of Epstein- and Maxwell-brokered “massages” refer to at least one other girl, strongly suggesting that Andrew’s involvement with minors exploited by Epstein is greater than has been recently acknowledged.
Other recently reported information has added to the likelihood that Prince Andrew engaged in illicit activities with more minors than Virginia Giuffre. For instance, the FBI recently expanded its probe into Epstein’s sex trafficking network to include a specific focus on the Prince’s role. The FBI has claimed that they are reviewing claims regarding Prince Andrew made by other Epstein victims aside from Giuffre, but did not specify the nature of those claims.
Ghislaine Maxwell’s open secret
Media reports cite Prince Andrew and Ghislaine Maxwell as having developed a close relationship at least by February 2000, when Andrew had spent a week at Epstein’s controversial New York penthouse at 9 East 71st Street. One report published in 2000 by London’s Sunday Times claimed that the two were introduced by Andrew’s ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, often referred to as “Fergie” in the press, and further claims that this introduction had taken place several years prior. Epstein is alleged to have first been introduced to Andrew via Maxwell in 1999.
Years after this introduction was made, Jeffrey Epstein would provide financial assistance to Ferguson at Prince Andrew’s behest by paying Ferguson’s former personal assistant £15,000, allegedly in order to allow for “a wider restructuring of Sarah’s £5 million debts to take place,” according to The Telegraph.
Oddly, by April of that year, Maxwell and Prince Andrew were spotted by their fellow diners at a posh New York restaurant holding hands, prompting both the Prince and Maxwell to claim that their relationship was merely “platonic.” However, a separate report from 2007 in the Evening Standard refers to Maxwell as one of Prince Andrew’s former girlfriends.
Within a year of their close relationship having become public, Andrew and Ghislaine were reported to have gone on eight different vacations together, of which Epstein accompanied them for five. Andrew also brought Maxwell and Epstein to celebrate the Queen’s birthday in 2000 as his personal guests.
Several reports from this period also provide interesting insight into Maxwell’s business activities and private life. One article from 2000, published in London’s Sunday Times, states that “for all her high-profile appearances on Manhattan’s A-List merry-go-round, she [Maxwell] is secretive to the point of paranoia and her business affairs are deeply mysterious.” It goes on to say that Maxwell “has been building a business empire as opaque as father’s” — referencing Robert Maxwell’s business empire, which included multiple front companies for Israeli intelligence — and adds that “her office in Manhattan refuses to confirm even the nature or the name of her business.”
On her relationship with Epstein, it states that “he’s always kept her secrets, no one knows what their relationship is really about.” An article from 2001 claims that Maxwell’s Manhattan lifestyle, her New York residence and her vehicles were all purchased by Epstein and that she was employed as his “consultant” while also acting as his social organizer and interior designer.
One report on Maxwell — which was published by the Evening Standard in 2003, years before Epstein was first publicly revealed to be exploiting minors — contains very telling information about Maxwell’s work for Epstein. It states “Ghislaine has risen, largely thanks to property developer Epstein bankrolling her, to become queen of the billionaires’ social circuit,” adding that “Jeffrey only likes billionaires or very young women and uses Ghislaine as his social pimp.” It then discusses “rumors” that Maxwell was hosting “bizarre parties at her house to which she invites a dozen or so young girls, then brandishes a whip and teaches them how to improve their sexual techniques.”
Given what is now known about Maxwell’s role as Epstein’s procurer of underage girls and her role in “training” them in sexual techniques, this passage — again from 2003 — reveals that Epstein’s and Maxwell’s dark acts were pretty much an open secret for years prior to Epstein’s first arrest in 2007.
Jeffrey Epstein, spy and property mogul?
One recurring theme in many of these older reports from the U.K. is their mention of Epstein’s alleged ties to both U.S. and Israeli intelligence. For instance, Nigel Rosser’s 2001 article contains the following passage:
A screenshot from a now-deleted 2001 Evening Standard article
Another article, published in 1992 in the U.K.’s Mail on Sunday, describes “rumors” that linked Epstein to the CIA and the Mossad and claimed that he had worked as “a corporate spy hired by big businesses to uncover money that had been embezzled.” In addition, an article published in 2000 in London’s Sunday Times also states of Epstein that “nobody knows whether he’s a concert pianist, property developer, CIA agent, a math teacher or a member of Mossad.”
A screenshot from a now-deleted 2000 Sunday Times article
Notably, these rumors of Epstein’s links to intelligence have since been confirmed. The CIA-Mossad links to Epstein were detailed in a recent MintPress investigative series and several mainstream media reports have corroborated Epstein’s time as a self-described “financial bounty hunter” who hunted down embezzled funds and also hid stolen money for powerful people and governments.
Another odd commonality among these now-scrubbed articles on Epstein from the 1990s and early 2000s is that the majority of them refer to Epstein not as a “financier” or “hedge fund manager,” as has become common in more recent reports, but as a “New York property developer” and even as a “property mogul.”
For instance, the 2001 Evening Standard article introduces Epstein as an “immensely powerful New York property developer and financier” with an “intensively secret business life” who “owns properties all over the country [the U.S.].” It also states that Epstein had made millions from “his business links with the likes of Bill Gates, Donald Trump and Ohio billionaire Leslie Wexner” during the 1990s and beyond.
A screenshot from a now-deleted 2001 Evening Standard article
Wexner, in addition to his other close financial ties to Epstein, was involved in several Manhattan real estate deals with Epstein and Epstein’s brother Mark while Donald Trump was then best known for his career as a New York property developer and real estate mogul. Trump is also cited in a separate article from January 2001 as being good friends with both Prince Andrew and his ex-wife. In addition, this article’s claim regarding Epstein’s most notable “business links” in 2001 contradicts Bill Gates’ recent assertions that he never had any business relationship with Epstein and did not meet with him until 2013. Notably, Gates’ former chief scientific adviser was recently named as an alternate executor for Epstein’s will and Gates appears on the flight logs of Epstein’s now-infamous private plane. Gates, one of the world’s richest men, has since claimed that he only had met with Epstein in order to meet other wealthy people and to discuss “philanthropy.”
Donald and Melania Trump with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell at the Mar-a-Lago club, Palm Beach, Florida in 2000. Photo | Davidoff Studios
Another article in the Evening Standard refers to Epstein as a “property mogul.” Several other articles — such as a 2000 article from Australia’s Sunday Mail, a 1995 article from Australia’s Sun Herald, and a 1995 article from the U.K.’s Mail on Sunday — also refer to Epstein as chiefly a “property developer.” Interestingly, references to Epstein as a property developer continued to occur (though less frequently) after his first arrest in 2007 and then again after his recent arrest this past July, yet oddly only in non-U.S. newspapers. Another article states that Ghislaine Maxwell had sold property on Epstein’s behalf and was also involved in the New York real estate market.
While several articles in the early 2000s describe Epstein as both “property developer” and “financier,” even earlier articles about Epstein refer to him exclusively as a “property developer.” For instance, the 1992 article in the Mail on Sunday cited above referred to Epstein as “a shadowy, almost maverick New York property developer” and noted that, even then, Epstein appeared “to have an inexhaustible supply of money and yet no one seems able to answer the question of precisely what the source.”
As will be revealed in an upcoming MintPress investigative series, these references allude to Epstein’s shady business activities in the New York and Palm Beach real estate markets from the mid-1980s to the late-1990s that were used to launder massive amounts of money for organized crime and intelligence. It is likely for this reason that Epstein’s real estate activities during this period have been so deliberately ignored by the U.S. press, even though other aspects of his financial activities were heavily scrutinized in recent months.
Indeed, in examining Epstein’s involvement in real estate markets, particularly in New York, it becomes clear that those activities have no shortage of controversial tie-ins to the current U.S. presidential administration as well as major New York power players involved in suspect financial activity immediately prior to the September 11 attacks as well as the 2008 financial crisis. All of those connections and more will be explored in MintPress’ upcoming investigative series on the financial crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and their broader implications.
Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
Retracted Ocean Warming Paper & the IPCC
A new UN report relies on discredited research – and on academics who conceal vital information
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | October 14, 2019
Last Halloween, the Washington Post ran a dramatic headline: Startling new research finds large buildup of heat in the oceans, suggesting a faster rate of global warming.
This story was huge news worldwide. Fortune magazine quoted Laure Resplandy, the Princeton University oceanographer who was the research paper’s lead author. “The planet warmed more than we thought,” she said. “It was hidden from us just because we didn’t sample it right.”
In fact, the problem wasn’t hiding in the ocean, but in the paper’s own mathematical calculations. Within days Nic Lewis, a UK private citizen and math whiz, had published the first of four detailed critiques of the paper’s statistical methodology (see here, here, here, and here).
We’re told that research published in prestigious scientific journals is reliable, and that peer review is meaningful. Yet 19 days after those Halloween headlines, the journal announced the authors had acknowledged a number of errors.
Two weeks ago, presumably after months of attempting to rescue the paper, the journal threw in the towel and retracted it wholesale.
What happened in between? The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a 1,200-page report about oceans. Chapter 5 of that report cites this now-retracted research (see pages 5-27 and 5-183 here).
In fairness, this single citation may just be a typo. There’s a good chance the IPCC meant to cite a different 2018 paper, in which Resplandy was also the lead author.
But the matter doesn’t end there. The UK-based Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is now pointing out that a crucial conclusion of the IPCC’s report relies heavily on a second paper titled How fast are the oceans warming?
Written by Lijing Cheng and colleagues John Abraham, Zeke Hausfather, and Kevin Trenberth, it was published in January 2019 in Science. The journal calls it a ‘Perspective,’ because rather than being a research paper, it’s more of an argument.
In three places, the Halloween research is cited to support its conclusions. Nowhere do Cheng and his colleagues acknowledge that the statistical methodology of the Halloween research had already been torn to shreds, that the paper’s authors had already conceded it was flawed.
The bottom line? Chapters 4 and 5 of the IPCC’s ocean report rely on the 2019 Cheng ‘Perspective.’ The Cheng ‘Perspective’ relies on research that has now been officially retracted.
The even worse bottom line? Lijing Cheng – an academic who concealed vital information in an article published in Science this year – was intimately involved in the preparation of the IPCC’s ocean report. He was a lead author for Chapter 1. He was a contributing author for Chapters 3 and 5. And he helped draft the Summary for Policymakers.
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From the Archives
British Intel Tried to Make N Irish Gang ‘Shoot Up’ School, Documentary Claims
Sputnik – 23.02.2019
A new documentary, based on an interview with a self-confessed member of the Glennane Gang, gives some insights into allegations that British military intelligence was behind a shocking murder plot to cause the situation in Northern Ireland to “spiral out of control”.
In a documentary, Unquiet Graves: The Story of the Glennane Gang, John Weir, a former officer from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), alleges that British intelligence tried to persuade paramilitary group Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) to attack a Catholic primary school at Belleeks in County Armagh.
Weir claimed that the UVF was urged to kill children and teachers in retaliation for the 1976 Kingsmill massacre, in which gunmen stopped a minibus carrying twelve workmen and shot them; only one person survived despite having been shot 18 times.
“The plan that was decided on was to shoot up a school in Belleeks”, he said, adding that the British intelligence plot was to make the situation in Northern Ireland “spiral out of control”. … continue
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