Russophobia digest: 5 top Russia scares launched by MSM this week
RT | July 22, 2018
Russia has lately been accused of numerous deadly sins, as politicians and media throw around scary-sounding but unverified stories and opinions. To help you plot a course in the roiling sea of Russophobia, RT has compiled a list.
With the Helsinki summit between US President Donald Trump and Russia’s Vladimir Putin hitting the news on Monday, this week didn’t wait to erupt in headline upon headline of Trump and Russia bashing, including the long-sought “proof” of the Kremlin’s interference in the US. Many of those were quickly adopted by the anti-Trump #Resistance for obvious political gain.
Putin ‘confirms’ he interfered in 2016 election
One bombshell that fell during the post-summit press conference in Helsinki, and one that the CNN immediately picked up, was Putin’s supposed first-hand confirmation that he had ordered interference in the 2016 presidential election to help Trump win. This proved to be a translation mistake.
Putin was responding to a question by a Reuters reporter, who asked whether he had wanted Trump to win in 2016, and whether he had dispatched any of his officials to help Trump win.
What Putin really said was yes, he did want Trump to win, because Trump was talking about normalizing the relations between the US and Russia. With the help of a faulty translation this transformed into a “Yes I did. Yes I did,” making multiple #Resistance fighters scream bloody murder online.
Trump ‘agrees’ to send US officials to Russia for questioning
Another memorable take-away from the press conference was Putin’s suggestion that Moscow be allowed to interview some of the persons of interests in Russian criminal investigations who are now in the US, and in exchange the FBI Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his Russiagate team would be granted the opportunity to question the Russians indicted on “meddling” charges. Since Trump did not dismiss that option out of hand, an outcry rose in the establishment media and officials, escalating to farcical suggestions online that the president was about to haul American citizens off to be tortured in the KGB cellars.
Central to this was former ambassador Michael McFaul, who Moscow believes may have facilitated the shady dealings of UK financier and tax dodger Bill Browder, wanted in Russia. Considering there are no charges against McFaul and no extradition treaty between the US and Russia, the worst that could have awaited the ex-envoy was an interview on American soil. Still, the Senate discussed the proposal to allow for the questioning of US officials by Russia, and voted it down 98-0.
‘Traitor’ Trump invites Putin to Washington
After the summit in Helsinki, which Trump hailed as a success and his opponents branded a disaster, the White House announced that the president was inviting Vladimir Putin to visit Washington DC this fall. While some might have seen it as a potential diplomatic breakthrough, the usual suspects could not forgive such a new level of “treason” on part of the POTUS.
Responses ranged from calling the planned diplomatic visit event the “fall of Democracy,” all the way through accusing Trump of choosing “Putin over the American people” and down to comparing it to George W. Bush inviting Osama bin Laden to the White House right after 9/11.
The most widely-publicized reaction was that of Trump’s own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, who was caught flat-footed by the news in the middle of a TV interview. His incredulous “say that again?” was promptly interpreted as a sign of resistance and an omen that he could soon be fired – so much so, that Coats later had to explain himself, admitting his reaction was “awkward,” but no disrespect was implied.
GOP Congressman Rohrabacher is a ‘Russian hire’
Browder, who resides in the US and deems himself a personal enemy of Putin, was speaking at the Aspen Security Forum this week along with numerous other adherents of the ‘Russiagate.’ Among other things, Browder accused Republican Dana Rohrabacher of being “on the payroll of Russia,” because of his lobbying to overturn the Magnitsky Act – a piece of legislation that led to sanctions against Russian officials accused of human rights violations. It began with Browder’s accusations against Moscow over the death of a member of his staff in a Russian jail.
Faced with a request for evidence, Browder downplayed the accusation, saying he didn’t really mean Rohrabacher was a full-blown Russian agent, just “under some type of influence by the Russian government.” In any case, Browder didn’t have the “bank transfers to prove it.”
Russia planted ‘honey trap’ Butina in GOP – and going to ‘war’ to get her back
Detained late last week in the US, Russian student and gun rights activist Maria Butina has been charged with being an unregistered Russian agent on American soil. The prosecution’s claims include her using sex to get into a position of influence with Republican officials. Russia believes the arrest is a political stunt, especially considering it was timed to the Helsinki meeting between Trump and Putin, while charges against Butina have been fabricated.
The Russian Foreign Ministry’s attempt to defend Butina online with a hashtag and a user pic change was met with a torrent of mockery, expletives and puns from the US establishment’s digital conscripts. One award-winning journalist went as far as equating the Foreign Ministry’s support campaign to a declaration of war. She clarified she had meant a “troll war,” but that didn’t spare her a few reminders by concerned commentators of what a real war actually looks like.
Read more:
US establishment rallies around martyr figure of ex-ambassador McFaul
Accused fraudster Browder claims GOP Congressman Rohrabacher is ‘on Russia’s payroll’
The Salisbury Poisonings: “Novichok” – The Odourless Nerve Agent That Stinks to High Heaven
By Rob Slane | The Blog Mire | July 20, 2018
Here is a little primer for the British Government on basic logic. Actions have consequences. What this means is that consequences must stem from actions. And the two must be connected. So far so good?
Let me give an example. If I spill boiling hot coffee on my foot, it will cause me pain and possibly even a blister. To flip that over, if I have a blister on my foot, you might ask me, “Oh, how did you get that?” If I told you that I spilt hot coffee on my foot, you would probably wince and say something like, “Ouch, that must have hurt.” And the chances are that you would be satisfied with my explanation. Why? Because boiling hot coffee split on the foot is quite capable of causing a blister.
But what if, in answer to your question of how I came to get the blister, I told you that I spilt some orange juice on my hand. Would you accept my answer? Would you wince and say, “Ouch, that’s gotta hurt”? Would you go away and say to others, “Poor guy, he spilt orange juice on his hand, and now he’s got a horrible blister on his foot”? Probably not!
Your reaction would probably be more along the lines of, “Huhhh??? You spilt orange juice on your hand, and you got a blister on your foot? What are you talking about?” And the reason for this reaction is that you understand that actions have consequences, and consequences stem from actions. And we all know that whereas spilling boiling hot coffee on the foot might well cause the foot to blister, spilling orange juice on your hand will not have that effect.
This is why the Government’s explanation of the Salisbury and Amesbury poisonings is so obviously false. It fails the test of basic logic. All of the pre-2018 literature on the substance known as A-234 (one of the strains of so-called “Novichok”) states that it is lethal, and most sources tell us that it is around 5-8 times more toxic than VX. What happens if you get some of it on you? One of its creators, Vladimir Uglev, has told us what happened after he got a tiny amount of this agent on his hand:
“‘I rinsed my hands with sulfuric acid and then put them under tap water,’ he said, adding it was the only way to survive. Another researcher who was contaminated in 1987 died of multiple illnesses five years later [my emphasis].”
The only way to survive? Sulfuric acid followed by lots of running water? Has there been any confirmation that after the Skripals and DS Bailey allegedly came into contact the substance, they immediately washed their hands with sulfuric acid and water? I haven’t come across this particular detail yet, but if anybody has, do let me know. And lest anyone says that the substance that the Skripals got on their skin might have been less potent than the substance Mr Uglev got on his hand, the OPCW report of 4th May claimed that traces of the substance, allegedly on the door handle, weeks after the incident, were of “high purity”.
So they got the same substance on their hands as Mr Uglev, yet whilst for him it meant:
Sulfuric Acid + Water or Face Instant Death
For Mr Skripal and his daughter it meant:
Feeding the Ducks + Drink + Meal
Mr Uglev is no friend of the current Russian Government, but in case anyone is not satisfied with his testimony, note that it was essentially backed up recently by Alistair Hay, Professor of Environmental Toxicology at the University of Leeds, who said this in relation to the more recent Amesbury case:
“A few millilitres would be sufficient to probably kill a good number of people and you could store that in a small ampoule, or it might be in a small container like for nail varnish.”
His testimony regarding the container is particularly useful, I’m sure, and is just the sort of thing that sets Professors apart from the rest of us. I mean, who knew that liquid can be stored in a container? But it’s the other part of it that is truly fascinating. He is of course correct to say that a few millilitres of military grade nerve agent is enough to kill many people – sulfuric acid and water notwithstanding. This is what it is designed to do. So doesn’t he think it mighty odd that it somehow didn’t do this, even thought it was apparently “high purity” and “military grade”? Furthermore, doesn’t he find it odd that underneath his claim, Public Health England once again advised people who thought they might have come into contact with it to:
“Wipe personal items such as phones, handbags and other electronic items with cleansing or baby wipes and dispose of the wipes in the bin (ordinary domestic waste disposal) … Please thoroughly wash your hands with soap and water after cleaning any items.”
Wot no sulfuric acid??? Or are they now making baby wipes with traces of sulfuric acid these days? Just in case.
Coming into contact with more than a few millilitres of high purity A-234, and then going to feed ducks, have a drink and eat a meal is no more plausible than the claim that spilling orange juice on the hand leads to blisters on the foot.
But this is not all. I have consciously avoided commenting much on the Amesbury case, and this for two reasons. Firstly, because the level of disinformation and propaganda around the case means that trying to keep up with it is nigh on impossible. But more importantly, it is because the second case is being used by the authorities to shore up the first case, by a very clever sleight of hand, as if the claims made in the first case have been proven. Which they haven’t.
I’ll show you what I mean. In her statement to the House of Commons in 14th March, Mrs May said the following:
“And there were only two plausible explanations. Either this was a direct act by the Russian State against our country. Or conceivably, the Russian government could have lost control of a military-grade nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others. [my emphasis]”
Since then, not only has the Government singularly failed to provide the evidence to back up either of these “plausible alternatives”, but it has become abundantly clear that there are actually a good many others. Yet on 5th July, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, stated the following to the House of Commons:
“The decision taken by the Russian government to deploy these in Salisbury on March 4th was reckless and callous – there is no plausible alternative explanation to the events in March other than the Russian state was responsible [my emphasis].”
See the sleight of hand? In March, there were apparently two plausible alternatives. Since then, neither of those alternatives has been backed up by any evidence whatsoever. Yet come 5th July, with the second case, the number of plausible alternatives is down to zero. There is one explanation, and one explanation alone. “Do not mistake me for a conjurer of cheap tricks,” said Gandalf to Frodo. “Do not mistake me for a person with integrity,” said Sajid Javid, conjurer of cheap tricks, to the House as he performed his sleight of hand.
Did no one in Parliament think to ask Mr Javid how the Government had managed to rule out “the other plausible alternative” between March and July? Did nobody demand to know what evidence they had discovered, which they haven’t told us about, to warrant this claim? Of course not. They never demanded to see any evidence of the two plausible alternatives back in March, and the likelihood that they might have developed some integrity and inquisitiveness in the four months following was slim. No, they accepted Mr Javid’s sleight of hand, his unsubstantiated claim dressed up as fact […]
I view the Amesbury case as a tragedy, in that Dawn Sturgess lost her life. But as far as the case itself is concerned, it seems to me to be something of a rabbit trail, with a mountain of disinformation – whether wittingly or unwittingly – which not only keeps us scratching our heads trying to figure it all out, but which is also being used to pretend that the official version of events in the first case has been proven. Which — I reiterate — it most certainly hasn’t.
Nevertheless, let’s debunk it where we can. I had understood from some of the original reports about Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley, that both of them had a “high dose” of “Novichok” on just one hand. I understood this to be the case because that’s what the authorities told us, although I am of course by now well aware that Rule Number One in this case is to take everything the authorities say with a bucket of salt:
“‘This means they must have got a high dose and our hypothesis is that they must have handled a container that we are now seeking.’ It is understood the couple each had nerve agent on one of their hands.”
What is a “high dose? Is it more than the tiny amount Vladimir Uglev got on his hands, which forced him to resort to washing it off with sulfuric acid immediately? Is it more than the few millilitres Alistair Hay says, “would be sufficient to probably kill a good number of people”?
I don’t suppose it matters now, however, because the “facts” have since changed. Apparently they now didn’t get it on one hand. No, Ms Sturgess apparently sprayed it on both wrists. Wrists, not hand. Two wrists, not one hand. Got that?
“Novichok victim Dawn Sturgess died after spraying perfume laced with the nerve agent onto both her wrists, her boyfriend, who was also exposed to the deadly substance, has revealed. They are believed to have stumbled upon the same batch of Novichok used to try to assassinate Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in nearby Salisbury in March.”
So it was the same batch of high purity A-234 that was found on Mr Skripal’s door handle – the type that Vladimir Uglev needed to cleanse immediately with sulfuric acid and water, but which sent Mr Skripal and Yulia off to feed the ducks etc? Remember the orange juice and the blister.
But there’s more. Mr Rowley’s brother, Matthew, who apparently spoke to Charlie, had this to say:
“He also mentioned that he vaguely recollects there being an odd ammonia-type smell from the perfume. We don’t know yet if he had direct contact with the nerve agent like Dawn appears to have done or whether it was after he had touched her.”
The ammonia-type smell is odd, in more ways than one. The pre-2018 scientific literature not only states that A-234 is far deadlier than VX (see here), and that its effects are rapid, usually within 30 seconds to 2 minutes (see here), but it also describes it, along with all nerve agents, as odourless (see here). But according to the latest narrative, it smelt of ammonia.
I think we have another orange juice on the hand and blister on the foot moment. If it’s odourless, it can’t very well smell of ammonia, can it? In fact, it can’t very well smell of anything, can it? It’s odourless, and odourless things don’t tend to smell of ammonia. Or anything else, come to that.
Ah, but maybe it was contaminated? Really? But didn’t the OPCW state that the stuff allegedly placed on Mr Skripals door handle – the stuff they touched before feeding the ducks, going to a pub and then going to a restaurant – was high purity? I believe they did. And this was the same batch? A batch of the stuff that certain experts were telling us could last for decades? From whence cometh the ammonia then? From the odourless “Novichok”, of course.
Folks, what we have is a substance with astonishing properties. It is lethal, but non-lethal. It is military grade, but not really military grade. It is fast acting, but slow working. It can be in the form of a gel, but morph into a liquid. It is odourless, and yet really smelly. Or are we to believe that after placing their high purity “Novichok” gel on the door handle, the assassins then spent time turning it into a liquid, which they then poured into an ammonia-laced perfume bottle? Oh, and then instead of legging it to Heathrow, they took a detour to go for a walk in the park, where they dumped the bottle of odourless but ammonia-smelling nerve agent on the floor. What do they teach them in Professional Assassin schools these days?
Hands to Wrists. Gel to Liquid. Odourless to Ammonia. Orange juice on the hand to blisters on the foot. It’s all the same to me.
From a purely logical point of view, I understand that this is all complete and utter nonsense. But I do wish I’d paid more attention in chemistry classes at school so I might at least be able to debunk it from that point of view. But alas it was not to be. However, since I know nothing about that side of things, I thought I’d ask someone who does. David Collum is a world-renowned Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Cornell University, with a PhD, MS and MA from Columbia University, and a BS from Cornell. I asked him what he thought of the claim being made in the UK media that Dawn Sturgess was poisoned by “Novichok” and this gave off an “an odd ammonia-type smell”. His answer, which I will leave you with, whilst not what you might call eloquent, was certainly to the point:
Russiagate Is Constructed of Pure Bullshit, No Facts
By Paul Craig Roberts • Institute For Political Economy • July 19, 2018
All day today the presstitute scum at NPR went on and on about President Trump, using every kind of guest and issue to set him up for more criticism as an unfit occupant of the Oval Office, because, and only because, he threatens the massive budget of the military/security complex by attempting to normalize relations with Russia. The NPR scum even got an ambassador from Montenegro on the telephone and made every effort to goad the ambassador into denouncing Trump for saying that Montenegro had strong and aggressive people capable of defending themselves and were not in need of sending the sons of American families to defend them. Somehow this respectful compliment about the Montenegro people was supposed to be an insult. The ambassador refused to be put into opposition to Trump. NPR kept trying, but got nowhere.
As a former Wall Street Journal editor I can say with complete confidence that NPR crossed every line between journalism and advocacy and no longer qualifies as a 501c3 tax-exempt public foundation.
The NPR assault on President Trump was part of an orchestration. The same story appeared in the Washington Post, long-believed to be a CIA asset. Most likely, it has appeared throughtout the presstitute media.
The ability of the military/security complex to control the explanations given to Americans, about which President Eisenhower warned Americans in 1961 to no effect, has produced an American population, a large percentage of which is brainwashed.
For example, in Caitln Johnston’s column, linked below, Kurt Eichenwald, who, in my opinion, is either a brainwashed idiot or a Deep State troll, says that the bottom line is that you either believe “our intelligence community,” which most definitely did not conclude what Eichenwald says they have concluded, “or you support Putin. You are either a patriot, a traitor or an idiot.”
Note that Eichenwald defines a patriot, as do the Democrats, many Republicans, the entirety of the US print and TV media and NPR, as a person who believes the self-serving lies issuing from the military/security complex in support of the $1,000 billion dollars annually taken from unmet US taxpayer needs to put in the pockets of the mega-rich for “defending” American from an orchestrated, but otherwise nonexistent, threat. If you don’t support this theft from the American people, you are, according to Eichenwald, “a traitor or an idiot.”
Caitlain Johnstone tells us how utterly stupid Americans are to fall for the line that it is treason to seek peaceful relations with a nuclear power that can destroy us. This means that presidents John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan were treasonous. This is the official position of the American presstitute media, the Democratic Party, and the military/security complex. It is also the position of a fake entity that misrepresents itself as “the American left.”
This utterly absurd position that to pursue peace is to commit treason is precisely the position that the corrupt American print and TV media and NPR represent. It is the position of the Democratic Party. It is the position of the Republicns in Congress, such as the warmongers John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are owned by the military/security complex.
Every American who believes the line that reducing tensions with Russia is treasonous is preparing nuclear Armageddon for themselves, their friends and families, and for the entire world.
Caitlin tells it to you like it is: https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/russiagate-is-like-9-11-except-its-made-of-pure-narrative-ab96fa38ee48
“Democratic Institutions?” – 10 Lessons from history that will destroy your trust in the CIA
Did everyone urging us to trust the CIA forget this happened? Or do they just want us to?
By Kit | OffGuardian | July 20, 2018
In the hysterical wake of the Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki, President Donald Trump was roundly criticised in the media for taking the side of a “hostile state” over his own intelligence agencies. The Guardian referred to Mueller as a “heroic marine” who Trump disbelieved in favour of a “Russian dictator”.
In the past, when Trump has criticised the FBI, CIA or NSA he has been accused of “undermining faith in our institutions”. He’s been blamed for a collapse of trust in the government. But was this trust ever earned?
At every corner, we are urged to simply believe what we are told. Whether it is about believing Porton Down and MI6 about “novichok”, or believing the White Helmets about Sarin, or believing the FBI about “collusion”, we are presented with no facts, just assertions from authority. Those who question those assertions are deemed “bots” at best or “traitors” at worst.
Well here, fellow traitors, are the Top Ten reasons to question anything and everything the CIA – or any intelligence agency – has ever told you.
10. OPERATION PAPERCLIP – we’ll start with an oldie but a goody. In 1945, as the allies were advancing on Berlin from both sides, American Army Intelligence (this was before the CIA were founded) were “capturing” (read: recruiting) over 1,600 Nazi scientists and engineers. Most famous of them was Werhner von Braun… sorry, SS Sturmbannführer von Braun.
Whilst Allied soldiers died in the name of defeating fascism, the CIA’s predecessors were actively recruiting Nazis to come and build bombs for them.
9. OPERATION NORTHWOODS – The original, and important, precedent for accusations that the CIA et al. might engage in false-flag attacks. Operation Northwoods was a joint CIA/Pentagon proposal designed around the idea of escalating a war with Cuba by stoking public anger:
The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming it on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.
The idea was vetoed by President Kennedy. Fifty years later, the CIA and Pentagon still very much exist, but there’s no longer a Kennedy there to veto their more psychopathic ideas. Funny how that worked out.
8. ALLENDE COUP – In 1970 Salvador Allende was elected to the Chilean Presidency. A Physician and dedicated socialist, Allende was the first socialist president elected in South America. The Nixon-lead government of the United States immediately implemented “economic warfare” (as they do, to this day, against Cuba, Venezuela and others). The economic warfare did not work, and in 1973 Allende’s socialist party increased their parliamentary majority.
In response, the US “assisted” (read: instructed) the Chilean military in carrying out a coup. Allende allegedly shot himself, and Augusto Pinochet was placed in power as the first dictator in Chile’s history. Pinochet was a fascist who executed Chilean “subversives” by the thousand… and was the darling of Western leaders.
7. MOSADDEGH COUP – I could just copy-and-paste the above paragraph and the change the names for this entry. In 1953, the Prime Minister of Iran – Mohammad Mosaddegh, a democratic socialist – wanted to audit the income of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company with an eye to limiting foreign control of Iran’s oil. Within a few months, a joint US/UK operation – Operation Ajax – had removed Mosaddegh’s elected government and turned over full control of the state to the Shah. He was a brutal absolute monarch, but the question of Western control of Iran’s enormous oil reserves wasn’t raised again under his leadership.
6. OPERATION MOCKINGBIRD – A CIA operation that you could deduce existed, even if were not proven…. and it is proven. Mockingbird was the CIA project to coerce, train, control or plant CIA-friendly journalists in major news networks all across the country and in every medium. It’s existence is no longer disputed, thanks to FOIA releases of internal memos.
Mockingbird was allegedly shut down in 1976 – just after its existence was leaked – then CIA director George HW Bush claiming:
… effective immediately, CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full-time or part-time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station.”
If you’re willing to stake anything on the word of a Bush, well, good luck with that. It’s a decision that flies in the face of historical evidence.
Remember this one when you hear about the need to trust the CIA from some pundit on CNN or MSNBC.
5. MASS SURVEILLANCE – It’s not really talked about much these days – what with the vast majority of the media and huge sections of the supposedly “anti-establishment” progressive left marching in-step with the Deep State – but the NSA spied on the whole world. The whole world. We know this to be true because an employee of the Deep State – Edward Snowden – leaked the information.
When challenged on this issue, representatives of the NSA and CIA lied. They lied to the public, and they lied to congress. When they were proven to have lied, they carefully qualified their lies.
A qualified lie is still a lie.
There is no indication they have stopped this illegal surveillance, but they may have passed laws to make it legal.
4. NAYIRAH – A classic of “atrocity propaganda”, Nayirah should be required reading material for anybody looking top hop on a pro-war bandwagon. Nayirah – who originally gave only her first name – was a fifteen year old girl who testified in front of the United States Congress. She claimed to be a volunteer from at a Kuwaiti hospital, and to be an eye-witness to Iraqi soldiers throwing Kuwaiti babies out of incubators and leaving them to die:
I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital with twelve other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. The other women were from twenty to thirty years old. While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying.
It was later revealed, not only that her full name was Nayirah al-Sabah and she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador, but that she had never volunteered at a hospital and had seen no babies, soldiers or incubators. The whole thing was a fiction. A fiction paid for by the “Citizens of Free Kuwait”, an NGO (and obvious CIA front) set up to lobby the US to intervene in the Iraq-Kuwait war.
By the time this fiction was revealed it was too late, and the US had launched Operation Desert Storm…. which was, of course, the entire point of the exercise.
Remember this, when you hear about Assad gassing children or bombing kittens.
3. COINTELPRO – The FBI’s long running (and sometimes illegal) COunter INTELligence PROgram, COINTELPRO was a series of domestic projects carried out by the FBI (with cooperation from other agencies), over decades, with the aim of “surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations”.
These political organizations included anti-Vietnam protestors, civil rights groups (including both MLK and Malcolm X), socialists, Communist Party USA, environmental groups and feminist organizations.
The brief for these “disruptions” came straight from J. Edgar Hoover who wanted the FBI to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise Neutralize” people he perceived to be enemies of the state. The capital N in “neutralise” is no accident, as the FBI was implicated in the deaths of several Black Panther leaders, including Fred Hampton.
COINTELPRO didn’t just involve undermining left-wing groups, but also creating right-wing groups:
The FBI also financed, armed, and controlled an extreme right-wing group of former Minutemen, transforming it into a group called the Secret Army Organization that targeted groups, activists, and leaders involved in the Anti-War Movement, using both intimidation and violent acts.
Whether this was done to actually push a right-wing agenda, create a fake threat to step up police powers, or just sow division and chaos, is unclear. But it definitely happened.
Much like MKUltra (below), COINTELPRO was “officially shut down”, not long after the public found out it existed. However, the accidental outing of undercover policeman at a rally in Oakland, and recent relaxation of the laws limiting the FBI’s powers, means that COINTELPRO – or a modern successor – is very likely still a thing.
The aim of COINTELPRO was to “Neutralize” anti-establishment political figures – the vast majority of targets were left wingers – through “smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media”. Remember that when you see Rand Paul called a “traitor” on twitter, or read about “Russian collusion”, or see Jeremy Corbyn branded an anti-Semite.
Remember that it is proven that the Deep State – our trusted intelligence agencies – pay people to plant false stories and discredit political opponents.
2. PROJECT MKULTRA – It might sound like something from a 70s sci-fi TV series, but it is unfortunately real. MKUltra was a series of (illegal) experiments carried out by the CIA from 1953 until it was *cough* “officially halted” in 1973 (just after its existence was leaked). The experiments were wide-ranging, achieved varied levels of success, but pretty uniformly brutal and unethical. They included, but were not limited too:
– Giving LSD to unsuspecting soldiers to see what happened.
– Mass hypnosis and mass suggestion
– Torture studies
– Studies on the effect of verbal and/or sexual abuse
We’ll never know the full range of studies, or how they were carried out, because in 1973 Richard Helms, then director of the CIA, ordered all MKUltra files destroyed. Only a fraction of them survive, thanks to FOIA requests, but it’s reasonable to assume they destroyed the worst parts and kept the more quote-unquote innocent files.
The CIA were not unique in this regard either, MKUltra was their baby – but there were parallel projects in other quarters of the deep state. Army Intelligence had Edgewood Arsenal, whilst the Department of Defense had Project 112. All these projects were “officially halted” in the early 70s… just around the time the public found out they existed.
The CIA (et al.) have strongly denied that these experiments and projects have ever been continued in any way, shape or form…but if you’d asked them in 1969, they would have denied they had ever taken place at all.
1. THE IRAQ WAR – This might not be the most callous, the most dangerous, the most recent, the most secret or the most insidious of the items on this list, nevertheless it is – must be – number one… because it is the most brazen.
The war was started in the name of “weapons of mass destruction” that everyone – everyone – knew never existed. They all knew the truth, but they lied.
The President lied, the vice-president lied, the secretary of defence lied, the secretary of state lied. The Prime Minister lied, the defence minister lied, the foreign minister lied. They lied to the press, the people and the UN.
The CIA, the NSA, the FBI – then headed by the “heroic marine” Robert Mueller – they lied too. The press repeated these lies, without question (see: Operation Mockingbird). They weren’t “misinformed”, they weren’t “mistaken”. They lied, they lied repeatedly – and provably – and they did it in order to start a war, make money, take control, spread influence.
One million Iraqis died.
Our ruling class is peopled with psychopaths and war criminals, who have so little regard for the people they lie to they recycle the same childishly simple falsehoods to further their evil agenda again and again and again. They tried the same in Libya… it worked again. They tried again in Syria… luckily, it didn’t work there.
Our “democratic institutions” lie to start wars. There’s no reason to think they aren’t doing – or wouldn’t do – the same thing about Iran, North Korea… or Russia.
That’s our list, and there’s really only one lesson you can take away from it:
These people, agencies and institutions deserve no trust, have earned no trust and have abused every micron of trust ever placed in them. To suggest we have a duty to believe them – or that they have ever done anything to serve the public good – is to live in a dream world.
This list is not a full catalogue of Deep State crimes, it would be 1,000s of entries long if it were, but these ten are important. They’re important because they are admitted, proven and beyond debate. They are important because they show the many facets of dishonesty, hypocrisy and abuses of power that Intelligence agencies engage in, and they are important because they form the best riposte to the disingenuous clamour for “trust” in our “democratic institutions”.
Never trust the CIA, they have proved they don’t deserve it.
Here comes the Mali mission media manipulation
By Yves Engler · July 17, 2018
For the military, shaping media coverage of deployments is what roasting a marshmallow is to a summer camper’s S’mores; there isn’t one without the other.
Even before beginning a small “peacekeeping” mission, the Canadian forces have an elaborate media strategy.
At the end of June, Chief of the Defence Staff Jonathan Vance brought journalists with him on a visit to Mali. They toured the facilities in Gao where an advance team was preparing for Canada’s UN deployment to the African nation. An Ottawa Citizen headline described Vance’s trip as part of an effort at “selling the public on the Mali mission.”
The tour for journalists was followed by a “technical briefing” on the deployment for media in Ottawa. “No photography, video or audio recording for broadcast purposes” was allowed at last week’s press event, according to the advisory. Reporters were to attribute information to “a senior government” official. But, the rules were different at a concurrent departure ceremony in Trenton. “Canadian Armed Forces personnel deploying to Mali are permitted to give interviews and have their faces shown in imagery,” noted the military’s release.
None of these decisions are haphazard. With the largest PR machine in the country, the military has hundreds of public affairs officers that work on its media strategy. “The Canadian Forces (CF) studies the news media, writes about them in its refereed journals — the Canadian Army Journal and the Canadian Military Journal — learns from them, develops policies for them and trains for them in a systematic way,” explains Bob Bergen, a professor at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military and Strategic Studies. ”Canadian journalists simply do not access the Canadian Forces in the scholarly fashion that the military studies them. There are no peer-reviewed journals to which they contribute reflections on their success or failure as an industry to cover the 1991 Persian Gulf War or the 1999 Kosovo Air War.”
While the tactics have varied based on technologies, balance of power and type of conflict, the government has pursued extensive information control during international deployments, which are invariably presented as humanitarian even when motivated by geostrategic and corporate interests. There was formal censorship during the First World War, Second World War and the Korean War. In recent air wars the military largely shut the media out while in Afghanistan they brought reporters close.
Air wars lend themselves to censorship since journalists cannot accompany pilots during their missions or easily see what’s happening from afar. “As a result,” Bergen writes, “crews can only be interviewed before or after their missions, and journalists’ reports can be supplemented by cockpit footage of bombings.”
During the bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999 the CF blocked journalists from filming or accessing Canadian pilots flying out of Aviano, Italy. They also refused to provide footage of their operations. While they tightly controlled information on the ground, the CF sought to project an air of openness in the aftermath of the Somalia scandal. For 79 days in a row a top general gave a press conference in Ottawa detailing developments in Yugoslavia. But, the generals often misled the public. Asked “whether the Canadians had been targeted, whether they were fired upon and whether they fired in return” during a March 24 sortie in which a Yugoslavian MiG-29 was downed, Ray Henault denied any involvement. The deputy chief of Defence Staff said: “They were not involved in that operation.” But, Canadians actually led the mission and a Canadian barely evaded a Serbian surface-to-air missile. While a Dutch aircraft downed the Yugoslavian MiG-29, a Canadian pilot missed his bombing target, which ought to have raised questions about civilian casualties.
One reason the military cited for restricting information during the bombing campaign was that it could compromise the security of the Armed Forces and their families. Henault said the media couldn’t interview pilots bombing Serbia because “we don’t want any risk of family harassment or something of that nature, which, again, is part of that domestic risk we face.”
During the bombing of Libya in 2011 and Iraq-Syria in 2014-16 reporters who travelled to where Canadian jets flew from were also blocked from interviewing the pilots. Once again, the reason given for restricting media access was protecting pilots and their families.
Since the first Gulf War the military has repeatedly invoked this rationale to restrict information during air wars. But, as Bergen reveals in Balkan Rats and Balkan Bats: The art of managing Canada’s news media during the Kosovo air war, it was based on a rumour that antiwar protesters put body bags on the lawn of a Canadian pilot during the 1991 Gulf War. It likely never happened and, revealingly, the military didn’t invoke fear of domestic retribution to curtail interviews during the more contentious ground war in Afghanistan.
During that war the CF took a completely different tack. The CF embedding (or in-bedding) program brought reporters into the military’s orbit by allowing them to accompany soldiers on patrol and stay on base. When they arrived on base, senior officers were often on hand to meet journalists. Top officers also built a rapport with reporters during meals and other informal settings. Throughout their stay on base, Public Affairs Officers (PAOs) were in constant contact, helping reporters with their work. After a six-month tour in Afghanistan PAO Major Jay Janzen wrote: “By pushing information to the media, the Battalion was also able to exercise some influence over what journalists decided to cover. When an opportunity to cover a mission or event was proactively presented to a reporter, it almost always received coverage.”
In addition to covering stories put forward by the military, “embeds” tended to frame the conflict from the perspective of the troops they accompanied. By eating and sleeping with Canadian soldiers, reporters often developed a psychological attachment, writes Sherry Wasilow, in Hidden Ties that Bind: The Psychological Bonds of Embedding Have Changed the Very Nature of War Reporting.
Embedded journalists’ sympathy towards Canadian soldiers was reinforced by the Afghans they interviewed. Afghans critical of Canadian policy were unlikely to express themselves openly with soldiers nearby. Scott Taylor asked, “what would you say if the Romanian military occupied your town and a Romanian tank and journalist showed up at your door? You love the government they have installed and want these guys to stay! Of course the locals are smiling when a reporter shows up with an armoured vehicle and an armed patrol.”
The military goes to great lengths to shape coverage of its affairs and one should expect stories about Canada’s mission in Mali to be influenced by the armed forces. So, take heed: Consume what they give you carefully, like you would a melted chocolate and marshmallow-coated graham wafer.
Iran rejects Israeli claim of stealing nuclear data as ‘laughably absurd’
Press TV – July 19, 2018
Iran has dismissed as “laughably absurd” an Israel-fabricated scenario, in which the agents with the regime’s Mossad spy agency are claimed to have spirited away loads of “secret documents” on the country’s nuclear work from a site in southern Tehran.
Alireza Miryousefi, a spokesman for Iran’s diplomatic mission to the United Nations, was responding to recent reports by The New York Times and other news outlets about the details of Mossad’s purported operation near the Iranian capital in the rather Hollywood-style scenario.
The scenario was initially unveiled by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is widely known to have a penchant for theatrics. Netanyahu went live on television in late April for yet another dubious show against Iran and put on display what he claimed to be records from a secret warehouse in Tehran.
Netanyahu claimed Israeli agents had managed to break into the warehouse in an overnight raid and bring back “half a ton of the material” consisting of 55,000 pages and another 55,000 files on 183 CDs.
The Israel premier’s vaudeville — which came only days before the US announced its withdrawal from the 2015 multilateral nuclear deal with Iran — was meant to persuade the world that Iran has been lying about its nuclear program, without providing even a single piece of evidence.
The New York Times published an article on July 15, in which it elaborated on the purported Mossad operation, which it claimed lasted for over six hours.
Reacting to the report, Miryousefi once again rejected Israel’s claims in a statement and said, “It’s almost as if they are trying to see what outlandish claims they can get a Western audience to believe.”
“Iran has always been clear that creating indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction is against what we stand for as a country, and the notion that Iran would abandon any kind of sensitive information in some random warehouse in Tehran is laughably absurd,” he added.
Netanyahu’s April 30 show was so cheaply theatrical that it was quickly held up to ridicule inside Iran and abroad, with observers raising serious questions about the purported Mossad raid.
Back then, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called the Israeli premier “the boy who can’t stop crying wolf is at it again,” recalling a similar anti-Iran rant by Netanyahu at the UN General Assembly in 2012– during which he used a cartoon bomb in an attempt to portray the Islamic Republic as a threat.
Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi also said that Netanyahu was playing a baseless childish and naive game against Iran.
The Israeli leader was back then involved in an intense lobbying campaign aimed at dissuading Washington and the other parties to the Iran deal from supporting the landmark agreement, officially dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
Except in the US, Netanyahu’s claims, however, fell on deaf ears.
Reacting to the show hours later, the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said on May 1 that Netanyahu’s presentation failed to question Tehran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal and that any such claims should solely be assessed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
The IAEA — which uses strict mechanisms to monitor the technical aspect of the JCPOA’s implementation — has repeatedly confirmed Iran’s full commitment to its side of the bargain.
The latest New York Times piece comes as Iran and its other parties in the deal — Russia, China, France, Britain plus Germany — are engaged in a diplomatic process aimed at working out ways to keep the JCPOA in place despite Washington’s pullout in May.
Israel’s nukes, not Syria: Man kicked out from Trump-Putin summit says AP misquoted him
Security removes Sam Husseini before the Putin-Trump press conference in Helsinki. © Lehtikuva/Antti Aimo-Koivisto / Reuters
RT | July 18, 2018
Political activist and writer Sam Husseini, who was ousted from a joint media conference by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, accuses the media of lying about his goal at the event. He had a question about Israel’s nuclear arsenal.
Husseini, a contributor to The Nation who also wrote for a number of major media outlets as well as the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), was evicted from a media conference held by the two presidents on Tuesday in Helsinki.
The news agency Associated Press (AP) quoted him as saying that he had a question “on Syria’s nuclear policy” and the nuclear arsenals of the United States and Russia.
Husseini says AP misquoted him and that he wanted to hear Putin’s and Trump’s opinion on Israel’s clandestine nuclear arsenal, the existence of which the Jewish state neither acknowledges nor denies.
In further tweets Husseini called the AP story by Jari Tanner a “piece of garbage” that has spread to other media outlets. He added his ousting from the event was falsely attributed by many to Russian officials, while in fact the decision was made by Finnish security. The statement even made it to his Wikipedia page.
Indictment of 12 Russians: Under the Shiny Wrapping, a Political Act
U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, released the indictment of 12 Russians days before President Trump was due to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
By Scott Ritter | TruthDig | July 15, 2018
With great fanfare, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Friday released a 29-page indictment, a byproduct of the ongoing investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Ostensibly, this indictment cemented the government’s case against the Russians and punched a hole in the arguments of those, like President Trump, who have been labeling Mueller’s investigation a “witch hunt.” This, of course, is precisely what Rosenstein and Mueller hoped to achieve through their carefully timed, and even more carefully scripted, indictment.
The indictment was made public at a time when the FBI is under increasing scrutiny for the appearance of strong anti-Trump bias on the part of some of its senior agents. This purported bias in turn generated rational concerns on the part of the president’s supporters that it possibly influenced decisions related to investigations being conducted by the FBI into allegations of collusion between persons affiliated with the campaign of then-Republican candidate Trump and the Russian government. The goal of this alleged collusion was to interfere in the American electoral processes and confer Trump an advantage against his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.
It also comes on the heels of a concerted effort on the part of the president and his political supporters to denigrate the investigation of Mueller and, by extension, the judgment and character of Rosenstein, who, since the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions from the Russian investigation, has been giving Mueller his marching orders. Indeed, several conservative members of the House of Representatives are mulling the impeachment of Rosenstein, claiming he is refusing to cooperate with Congress by denying them access to documents related to the investigation that certain members of Congress, at least, deem relevant to their constitutionally mandated oversight function.
While the impeachment of Rosenstein is highly unlikely and the likelihood of the FBI being found guilty of its investigations being corrupted by individual bias is equally slim, in the world of politics, perception creates its own reality and the Mueller investigation had been taking a public beating for some time. By releasing an indictment predicated upon the operating assertion that 12 named Russian military intelligence officers orchestrated a series of cyberattacks that resulted in information being stolen from computer servers belonging to the Democratic Party, and then facilitated the release of this information in a manner designed to do damage to the candidacy of Clinton, Rosenstein sought to silence once and for all the voices that have attacked him, along with the Department of Justice, the FBI and the Mueller investigation, as a participant in a partisan plot against the president.
There is one major problem with the indictment, however: It doesn’t prove that which it asserts. True, it provides a compelling narrative that reads like a spy novel, and there is no doubt in my mind that many of the technical details related to the timing and functioning of the malware described within are accurate. But the leap of logic that takes the reader from the inner workings of the servers of the Democratic Party to the offices of Russian intelligence officers in Moscow is not backed up by anything that demonstrates how these connections were made.
That’s the point of an indictment, however—it doesn’t exist to provide evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, but rather to provide only enough information to demonstrate probable cause. No one would, or could, be convicted at trial from the information contained in the indictment alone. For that to happen, the government would have to produce the specific evidence linking the hacks to the named Russians, and provide details on how this evidence was collected, and by whom. In short, the government would have to be willing to reveal some of the most sensitive sources and methods of intelligence collection by the U.S. intelligence community and expose, and therefore ruin, the careers of those who collected this information. This is something the government has never been willing to do, and there is much doubt that if, for some odd reason, the Russians agreed to send one or more of these named intelligence officers to the United States to answer the indictment, this indictment would ever go to trial. It simply couldn’t survive the discovery to which any competent defense would subject the government’s assertions.
Robert Mueller knew this when he drafted the indictment, and Rob Rosenstein knew this when he presented it to the public. The assertions set forth in the indictment, while cloaked in the trappings of American justice, have nothing to do with actual justice or the rule of law; they cannot, and will never, be proved in a court of law. However, by releasing them in a manner that suggests that the government is willing to proceed to trial, a perception is created that implies that they can withstand the scrutiny necessary to prevail at trial.
And as we know, perception is its own reality.
Despite Rosenstein’s assertions to the contrary, the decision to release the indictment of the 12 named Russian military intelligence officers was an act of partisan warfare designed to tip the scale of public opinion against the supporters of President Trump, and in favor of those who oppose him politically, Democrat and Republican alike. Based upon the media coverage since Rosenstein’s press conference, it appears that in this he has been wildly successful.
But is the indictment factually correct? The biggest clue that Mueller and Rosenstein have crafted a criminal espionage narrative from whole cloth comes from none other than the very intelligence agency whose work would preclude Rosenstein’s indictment from ever going to trial: the National Security Agency. In June 2017 the online investigative journal The Intercept referenced a highly classified document from the NSA titled “Spear-Phishing Campaign TTPs Used Against U.S. And Foreign Government Political Entities.” It’s a highly technical document, derived from collection sources and methods the NSA has classified at the Top Secret/SI (i.e., Special Intelligence) level. This document was meant for internal consumption, not public release. As such, the drafters could be honest about what they knew and what they didn’t know—unlike those in the Mueller investigation who drafted the aforementioned indictment.
A cursory comparison of the leaked NSA document and the indictment presented by Rosenstein suggests that the events described in Count 11 of the indictment pertaining to an effort to penetrate state and county election offices responsible for administering the 2016 U.S. presidential election are precisely the events captured in the NSA document. While the indictment links the identity of a named Russian intelligence officer, Anatoliy Sergeyevich Kovalev, to specific actions detailed therein, the NSA document is much more circumspect. In a diagram supporting the text report, the NSA document specifically states that the organizational ties between the unnamed operators involved in the actions described and an organizational entity, Unit 74455, affiliated with Russian military intelligence is a product of the judgment of an analyst and not fact.
If we take this piece of information to its logical conclusion, then the Mueller indictment has taken detailed data related to hacking operations directed against various American political entities and shoehorned it into what amounts to little more than the organizational chart of a military intelligence unit assessed—but not known—to have overseen the operations described. This is a far cry from the kind of incontrovertible proof that Mueller’s team suggests exists to support its indictment of the 12 named Russian intelligence officers.
If this is indeed the case, then the indictment, as presented, is a politically motivated fraud. Mueller doesn’t know the identities of those involved in the hacking operations he describes—because the intelligence analysts who put the case together don’t know those names. If this case were to go to trial, the indictment would be dismissed in the preliminary hearing phase for insufficient evidence, even if the government were willing to lay out the totality of its case—which, because of classification reasons, it would never do.
But the purpose of the indictment wasn’t to bring to justice the perpetrators of a crime against the American people; it was to manipulate public opinion.
And therein lies the rub.
The timing of the release of the Mueller indictment unleashed a storm of political backlash directed at President Trump, and specifically at his scheduled July 16 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. This summit was never popular with the president’s political opponents, given the current state of affairs between Russia and the U.S., dominated as they are by events in Syria and Ukraine, perceived Russian threats against the northern flank of NATO, allegations of election meddling in the U.S. and Europe, and Russia’s nuclear arsenal. On that last point, critics claim Russia’s arsenal is irresponsibly expanding, operated in violation of existing arms control agreements, and is being used to underpin foreign policy objectives through the use of nuclear blackmail.
President Trump has publicly stated that it is his fervent desire that relations with Russia can be improved and that he views the Helsinki summit as an appropriate venue for initiating a process that could facilitate such an outcome. It is the president’s sole prerogative to formulate and implement foreign and national security policy on behalf of the American people. While his political critics are free to criticize this policy, they cannot undermine it without running afoul of sedition laws.
Rosenstein, by the timing and content of the indictment he publicly released Friday, committed an act that undermined the president of the United States’ ability to conduct critical affairs of state—in this case, a summit with a foreign leader the outcome of which could impact global nuclear nonproliferation policy. The hue and cry among the president’s political foes for him to cancel the summit with Putin—or, failing that, to use the summit to confront the Russian leader with the indictment—is a direct result of Rosenstein’s decision to release the Mueller indictment when he did and how he did. Through its content, the indictment was designed to shape public opinion against Russia.
This indictment, by any other name, is a political act, and should be treated as such by the American people and the media.
(Photo credit Internet Education Foundation / CC BY 2.0)
Conspiracy Humor and Irony in the Trump-Russia Brouhaha
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | July 18, 2018
New York Times : Mr. Trump raised a series of largely irrelevant conspiracy theories — none of which were directly related to the evidence of Russian hacking activity.
Washington Post : And with that, yet another President Trump conspiracy theory is thoroughly repudiated by the Russia investigation.
Chicago Tribune : On Monday, Trump also resurrected several debunked conspiracy theories about his opponent Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.
Time: President Donald Trump gave a not-so subtle nod to an online conspiracy theory about the 2016 hacking of the Democratic National Committee.
NBC: President Donald Trump on Monday promoted two conspiracy theories and raised questions about his former Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s email server.
CNN: Trump has made a lot of the conservative conspiracy theory that there’s an entrenched “deep state” out to get him even though he leads the government.
*****
Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Indictment Against 12 Russians (which many in the mainstream media have accepted as gospel)
COUNT ONE: Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States).
COUNT TEN: Conspiracy to Launder Money.
COUNT ELEVEN: Conspiracy to Commit an Offense Against the United States).
Horror in Helsinki: Trumputin Strikes Again
By Michael Howard | American Herald Tribune | July 18, 2018
Something very extraordinary has just taken place—something unprecedented in American history. A sitting president, one Donald J. Trump, has committed treason against the United States. Don’t take my word for it. This is being documented by our nation’s most important political thinkers. New York Times headline from regular columnist Charles Blow: “Trump, Treasonous Traitor.” Quote from a column by regular New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman: “There is overwhelming evidence that our president … is deliberately or through gross negligence or because of his own twisted personality engaged in treasonous behavior.” Tweet from former CIA Director John Brennan: “[Trump’s meeting with Putin] was nothing short of treasonous.”
And for those whose tastes are a bit more lowbrow (not that the brows of the NYT and the CIA are especially high), here’s a front page headline from the venerable New York Daily News : “Open Treason: Trump Backs Enemy Putin Over U.S. Intel.” Not only treason, then, but open treason. The worst kind.
I know it’s trendy nowadays to play fast and loose with the Constitution, but—call me pedantic—it might be instructive to consult the much-cited document on this particular subject. Article III Section 3 states the following: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Note the use of the word “only”—the Founders had very specific ideas in mind about what constituted treason, namely waging war against the U.S. and/or aiding and abetting its enemies. “Enemy” meaning a state with which we are at war, and the U.S. is, despite routinely bombing seven countries (probably the number is higher now; it’s hard to keep track), not officially at war with anyone, least of all Russia. Therefore, charges of treason in the context of Trump’s Helsinki gambit are rather untenable, and more than a little hysterical. But don’t tell that to Charles Blow’s Twitter followers.
There’s no point singling out one of the hundred manic articles about the Trump-Putin summit to pick apart: they’re all exactly the same. In a nutshell: Trump refuses to acknowledge the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia “attacked” our country by hacking into the DNC’s emails; Trump refuses to say anything negative about Vladimir Putin; Trump is helping Moscow to splinter NATO; Trump refuses to condemn Russian aggression; Trump is a Kremlin puppet doing Moscow’s bidding; and so on and so forth.
Needless to say these are all specious arguments. Asked recently about America’s collective panic over Russia’s alleged interference in our presidential election, Noam Chomsky responded: “That has most of the world cracking up in laughter.” It doesn’t take a scholar to understand why. The United States is the world champion when it comes to meddling in the domestic affairs of foreign countries. But we don’t just meddle: we engineer military coups and install mass-murdering dictators or, when that’s not feasible, simply overthrow undesirable governments using unilateral military force. Examples abound. In 1953 the CIA, in tandem with MI6, orchestrated a coup against Iran’s first democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh, who had intolerable plans to nationalize his country’s oil industry. The coup was a success, restoring the despotic shah to his erstwhile throne where he remained until 1979, when he was chased into exile by the Islamic Revolution. The following year, Guatemala’s leftist president Jacobo Arbenz was deposed by another CIA-authored coup, Operation PBSUCCESS, paving the way for a series of ultraviolent dictatorships.
A mere three months into his presidency, and acting in accordance with the imperialist Monroe Doctrine, Jack Kennedy went after Fidel Castro’s revolutionary government in Cuba using CIA-sponsored militants. The Bay of Pigs failed miserably, but Uncle Sam was not to be deterred: “Operation Mongoose” was soon set in motion, and countless attempts on Castro’s life were made, all unsuccessful.
Sensing that CIA black ops might not be sufficient to neuter the movement for independence in Vietnam—and, more importantly, to discourage other countries in the region from adopting similar dangerous ideas—the U.S. government opted for full-scale military invasion, killing over three million people and decimating most of the country.
Skipping ahead a couple decades, the CIA armed, trained and financed the Contras, a terrorist gang in Nicaragua whose duty it was to take down the leftist Sandinista government. This particular affair is notable for the fact that, in 1986, the U.S. government was found by the International Court of Justice to be, inter alia, “in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to intervene in the affairs of another State” and “in breach of its obligation under customary international law not to use force against another State.” It was thus ordered by the court to pay an “interim award” of $370.2 million to the Republic of Nicaragua, with the total sum of reparations to be determined at a later date. The U.S. simply ignored the court’s ruling and continued supporting the terrorists.
Nicaragua to this day isn’t free from U.S. harassment. The country’s current political crisis, characterized by violent neoliberal opposition to President Daniel Ortega’s popular leftist government (Ortega won the 2016 election with over seventy-two percent of the vote), is supported by U.S. policy, with the National Endowment for Democracy—funded by the U.S. Congress—channeling millions of dollars to Ortega’s political opposition over the last five years. The reason for this is simple. As Kevin Zeese and Nils McCune wrote in Counterpunch:
Nicaragua has set [an example] for a successful social and economic model outside the US sphere of domination. Generating over 75% of its energy from renewable sources, Nicaragua was the only country with the moral authority to oppose the Paris Climate Agreement as being too weak…. The FMLN government of El Salvador, while less politically dominant than the Sandinista Front, has taken the example of good governance from Nicaragua, recently prohibiting mining and the privatization of water.
If the oligarchs in Nicaragua manage to pull off a coup, you can bet your bottom dollar Trump and co. will offer their full-throated support, as Obama and co. did following the 2009 military coup in Honduras, now one of the most dangerous and repressive countries in the world, and a leading source of those pesky migrants flooding the southern U.S. border.
Simply put, Washington is incapable of minding its own business. Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia, Venezuela, Indonesia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran … they all know it all too well. If you step out of line, you get whacked. Iraq, Libya and Syria have been taught the ultimate lesson—they’ve all been pulverized. Iran may yet receive the sledgehammer treatment as well, given that various non-military means of destabilization and subversion have failed to bear fruit, and especially given that the hawkish theocrats governing Israel, along with their mouthpieces in Washington, would like nothing more than to see the mullahs blown to bits.
So yes, it’s easy to see why, in Chomsky’s words, “Russia-gate”—even if we grant that its core allegations are factual—“has most of the world cracking up in laughter.”
Nearly as laughable is the claim, made over and over again, that Trump is a “Russian asset.” Anyone leveling this charge is either a fool or a demagogue. Those amenable to it should put on their thinking caps for a moment. Would a Russian asset impose a series of damaging sanctions on Russian companies and individuals, including those accused of human rights abuses, as Trump has done? Would a Russian asset expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the U.S. in retaliation for a nerve agent attack on a former double agent in Britain that may or may not have been ordered by Moscow, as Trump did? Would a Russian asset twice order the (illegal) use of military force against the Syrian government, Russia’s ally, risking direct military confrontation with Russia, in retaliation for dubious chemical weapons attacks, as Trump did? Would a Russian asset void the Iranian nuclear accord of which Russia is strongly in favor, as Trump did? Would a Russian asset approve the sale of missiles to Ukraine’s stridently anti-Russian government, knowing those weapons will likely be used against pro-Russian counterrevolutionary fighters in the east, as Trump did? Would a Russian asset demand that NATO member states, most if not all of them adversarial toward Russia, increase their defense spending, as Trump did?
Ah, yes, but Trump has never said anything mean about Putin! True enough, but then has he ever criticized el-Sisi, whose security forces massacred over eight-hundred political protestors in the streets of Cairo in 2013? How about Mohammed bin Salman, whose air force daily bombs hospitals, weddings, funerals, mosques and schools in Yemen? Rodrigo Duterte, whose drug war includes widespread summary executions? George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al, who invaded two countries and instituted torture centers around the world? Trump has never had an unkind word for any of the forgoing thugs. Most strikingly, he’s offered only fulsome praise for “Bibi” Netanyahu, whose crimes are too numerous to record here. If Trump’s an “asset,” he’s plainly Israel’s.
All in all, the media delirium over Trump’s humdrum meeting with Putin pushes us ever further into the political Twilight Zone. Soon a fanatical opposition to all things Russian will serve as a litmus test for Democratic presidential candidates. Just as the GOP uses gays and guns to energize an otherwise disaffected base, so the Democrats will use this new and more dangerous form of McCarthyism. All this is by design: they understand they can’t rely on their actual policies, created for and by our corporate masters, to secure votes. Hence the diversionary tactics, all of which are beginning to merge into a rabid Russophobia—one that, if allowed to inform policy-making at the highest levels of government, may well get us all vaporized. In the words of Allen Ginsberg: America this is quite serious.
Nicaragua Defeats The Not-So-Soft Coup
teleSUR | July 17, 2018
On July 19, hundreds of thousands of people from across Nicaragua will converge on the capital Managua to celebrate the 39th anniversary of their historic 1979 defeat of the Somoza dictatorship. The event takes place as the authorities continue to liberate communities blockaded by roadblocks operated by armed opposition activists whose not-so-soft coup attempt against the Sandinista government, begun on April 18, has failed. Ever since April 21, when President Daniel Ortega called for a process of National Dialogue to peacefully resolve opposition demands, Nicaragua’s political opposition and their allies have worked to sabotage talks for a negotiated solution. They have regularly staged extremely violent provocations falsely seeking to portray the government as being wholly responsible for the crisis and demanding President Ortega’s resignation.
Early in July, the opposition reneged on an agreement to dismantle the roadblocks their armed supporters have used since late April to try to destroy the country’s economy and intimidate the general population. On July 9, the government declared it would no longer permit the opposition to abuse the population’s basic rights to peace and security, stating: “Faced with the daily suffering imposed on Nicaragua’s families, who since April 18 have suffered violence from terrorists who have murdered, tortured and kidnapped hundreds of citizens, the same terrorists that have burned and destroyed hundreds of families’ homes, public buildings, small- and medium-sized businesses, such that the state is bound to act in accordance with the law to guarantee the right of its citizens to live in peace, with security and respect for the human rights enshrined in our political constitution, in the charters of international organizations and in human rights conventions.”
Opposition Violence
Subsequently, Nicaragua’s national police have worked with local communities around the country to clear the opposition roadblocks. In Jinotepe, they set free hundreds of trucks and their drivers held hostage by opposition gangs for over a month. In many places, it has been possible to negotiate agreements to remove the roadblocks peacefully. Elsewhere, the process has involved violence and casualties provoked by very well-armed activists and associated paid criminals resisting the authorities’ efforts to restore freedom of movement. On July 13 in Managua, two opposition activists were killed during the clearance of blockades in and around the National Autonomous University.
Elsewhere, on July 12, opposition activists from roadblocks operated by Francisca Ramirez and Medardo Mairena’s anti-Canal movement infiltrated an opposition peace march in the town of Morrito, on the eastern shore of Lake Nicaragua, on the highway to the Rio San Juan. They attacked a police post and the local municipal office, murdering four police officers and a primary school teacher, wounding four municipal workers and kidnapping nine police officers. Subsequently, that evening the police officers were set free, six of them with injuries.
Tortured & Murdered
In Masaya, opposition activists tortured, murdered and burned police officer Gabriel Vado Ruiz and would have done the same to another police officer, Rodrigo Barrios Flores, had he not escaped from his captors after enduring two days of torture and abuse. Although the extreme violence of the armed opposition activists has been responsible directly and indirectly for almost all the loss of life and injuries during the crisis, international news media and human rights organizations continue to falsely blame the government for virtually all the deaths and people injured. Amnesty International and fellow coup apologists such as Bianca Jagger and SOS Nicaragua, along with their allies in corporate media such as the Guardian, Telegraph, Washington Post, New York Times, Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, all cover up very serious human rights violations by the opposition activists during the failed attempted coup against Nicaragua’s legitimate government.
However, abundant audiovisual and photographic material exists providing irrefutable evidence of systematic human rights violations practiced by Nicaragua’s political opposition. From the the start, on April 18, the armed opposition offensive has manipulated legitimate peaceful protest so as to give cover to a very deliberate campaign of violence and deceit, promoting a climate of fear and casting blame on the government so as to create a psychosis of hatred, polarizing Nicaraguan society. The campaign’s objective is to make impossible a negotiated solution to the crisis provoked by the political opposition. Over the weekend of July 13-15, events in Nicaragua showed how refined the techniques of psychological warfare have become.
Misrepresenting & Exaggerating
The political opposition have used social media to misrepresent and exaggerate events, create incidents that never happened and obliterate their own criminal terrorist attacks. For example, the crisis in Nicaragua began with a fake ‘student massacre’ that never took place. Now Nicaragua’s opposition have faked attacks on a church in Managua, exaggerated casualties during the clearance of opposition thugs from the national university and covered up their own deliberate murders of police in Morrito and Masaya, as well as their gratuitous attacks on peaceful Sandinista demonstrators. In the national university, the opposition gangs also set fire to a classroom module and destroyed a preschool facility on the university campus.
Right from the start of the crisis, the opposition have expertly staged phony scenes of students taking cover from gunfire and used those images to justify their own savage attacks, like those in which they burned down pro-government Nuevo Radio Ya and CARUNA, the rural cooperatives’ savings and loan institution. Photographs show opposition journalists and photographers filming opposition activists pretending to be attacked, but despite the obvious fakery, those false stories get published uncritically in international corporate and alternative media. Nicaragua provides a textbook case study bearing out the work of analysts such as Cuba’s Randy Falcon, who has emphasized how new technologies exponentially multiply the digital reproduction of longstanding conventional propaganda motifs.
Propaganda Ploys
In Nicaragua, the government has in several cases negotiated agreements to clear armed opposition roadblocks, only to find that the opposition refuse to honor the agreements. The extremist political opposition are desperate to keep up their violence so as to sabotage efforts at National Dialogue and project the false image of a repressive government without popular support. Large demonstrations across the country supporting the government’s efforts for peace show exactly the reverse is true. Majority national opinion in Nicaragua is well aware of the opposition’s propaganda ploys and false claims.
Within Nicaragua, the opposition hardly bother to conceal their invention and artifice because their false political theater is staged almost entirely to impress overseas opinion. Their sinister cynical theater aims to set the scene for the Organization of American States to change its previously moderate position on Nicaragua and give the U.S. government an institutional pretext on which to intensify sanctions against Nicaragua’s government and its people. Even so, despite probable opposition attempts to sabotage it, July 19 will be a massive celebration of the coup’s defeat and a categorical vindication of President Daniel Ortega’s Sandinista government’s efforts for peace in Nicaragua.
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Israeli Foreign Ministry projects Palestinians as the Zionists, Ashkenazis as indigenous
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Are the Jews indigenous to Palestine?
By David Miller | Al Mayadeen | August 3, 2022
There is a rising tide of claims from apologists for the crimes of Zionism that they have been misunderstood. Palestinians might be indigenous to Palestine, but the Jews definitely are. What is called the ‘Israel-Palestine’ conflict, they say, is competition over the same small piece of land by two rival groups of indigenous people. But are the Jews indigenous to the Levant? And what are the consequences of the argument?
In fact, most of the power structure of the Zionist state is dominated by Ashkenazi Jews who have no ancestral link to Palestine. Overall despite very significant financial and infrastructural contributions from Western European countries (especially the US, UK and France, for example via the Rothschild family), Eastern European Ashkenazim have been at the centre of the Zionist power structure since the early years of the 20th Century. … continue
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