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More Lies About the White Helmets

Is resettling a terrorist front group in the West a good idea?

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • August 7, 2018

When is a terrorist group not a terrorist group? Apparently the answer is that it ceases to be terrorist when it terrorizes someone who is an enemy of the United States. The most prominent recent example is the Mujaheddin e Khalq (MEK), a murderous Iranian Marxist cult which assassinated five Americans in the 1970s as part of its campaign against the Shah’s government. It was removed from the State Department terrorist list in 2012 by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton after it had promised not to kill any more Americans but really because it had bought the support of prominent politicians to include Elaine Chao, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, and John Bolton. It also had the behind the scenes endorsement of both the Israeli Mossad and CIA, both of whom have been using it in their operations to kill Iranians and damage the country’s infrastructure. Someone high up in the federal government, perhaps Hillary or even President Obama himself, must have decided that terrorists who kill only Iranians deserve a get out of jail free card from the State Department.

There are other examples of cynical doublespeak from the Syrian conflict, including labeling rebels against the Damascus government “freedom fighters” when in reality they were as often as not allied with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Al-Nusra or even with ISIS. Frequently they received training and weapons from Washington only to turn around and either join Al-Nusra and ISIS as volunteers or surrender their weapons to them.

But perhaps there is no bigger fraud making the rounds than the so-called White Helmets. The recent media coverage derives from the documentary The White Helmets, which was produced by the group itself and tells a very convincing tale promoted as “the story of real-life heroes and impossible hope.” It is a very impressive piece of propaganda, so much so that it has won numerous awards including the Oscar for Best Documentary Short last year and the White Helmets themselves were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. More to the point, however, is the undeniable fact that the documentary has helped shape the public understanding of what is going on in Syria, describing the government in Damascus in purely negative terms.

The fawning Hollywood and Congressional depictions of the group go something like this: “the White Helmets are an ‘heroic’ impartial non-government humanitarian volunteer group that engages in ‘first response’ emergency rescue and medical treatment for all those who have been impacted by the fighting in Syria. The Syrian government hates the group because it assists victims of the fighting who are either rebels or living in rebel held areas. Recently, with the Syrian Army closing in on the last White Helmet affiliates still operating in the country, the Israeli government, assisted by the United States, staged an emergency humanitarian evacuation of the group’s members and their families to Israel and then on to Jordan.”

Virtually all the mainstream media coverage of the White Helmets is bogus, but by far the most ridiculous account of the Exodus from Syria came from the BBC. For those who are not familiar with it, the BBC, which once upon a time had a reputation for journalistic integrity, has become one of the worst pro-government propaganda shills of all time. Reading its articles is even worse than having a similar go at The Washington Post, which is the prime newspaper exemplar of fake news and phony journalism pretending to be a respectable news source in the United States. Let’s face it, Donald Trump has a point. Nearly all of the mainstream media lies persistently these days but some sources are worse than others. People complain about Fox, and rightly so, but CNN is the absolute pits when it comes to slanting its coverage, as is MSNBC.

BBC’s article is entitled Syria conflict: White Helmets evacuated by Israel. It makes the following statements, many coming directly from Israeli official sources, regarding the White Helmets, its activities and the group’s relationship to some governments, to include Britain:

  • “The IDF said they had ‘completed a humanitarian effort to rescue members of a Syrian civil organization and their families’, saying there was an ‘immediate threat to their lives.’ The transfer of the displaced Syrians through Israel was an exceptional humanitarian gesture.”
  • “Although Israel is not directly involved in the Syria conflict, the two countries have been in a state of war for decades. Despite the intervention, the IDF said that ‘Israel continues to maintain a non-intervention policy regarding the Syrian conflict.’”
  • “A statement from Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt said: ‘White Helmets have been the target of attacks and, due to their high profile, we judged that, in these particular circumstances, the volunteers required immediate protection. We pay tribute to the brave and selfless work that White Helmet volunteers have done to save Syrians on all sides of the conflict.’”
  • “Their official name is the Syrian Civil Defense and it began in early 2013 as an organization of volunteers from all walks of life, including electricians and builders. Its main task soon became to rescue civilians in war zones in the immediate aftermath of air strikes, and it says its volunteers have saved the lives of more than 100,000 people during the civil war.”

The BBC story could have been written by the White Helmets themselves or by their press department. Or alternatively by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. First of all, the Israelis do not do humanitarian gestures. They helped bail out the White Helmets at the request of the U.S. because capture by the Syrians would have produced embarrassing revelations about how the group was funded and what its affiliation with terrorists was all about. And Israel’s denial of involvement in Syria is nonsense, unless one considers demonstrated collaboration with the terrorist groups punctuated by nearly weekly bombing and missile attacks to be non-involvement.

The British too are into the deception up to their eyeballs. The comment by Hunt and Mordaunt is complete fabrication regarding what the White Helmets represent. The same goes for the BBC account of how the group developed, which comes directly from the White Helmet’s own propaganda division as amplified by Hollywood and the U.S. and U.K. governments.

Just as important as what is said about the White Helmets’ activities is the exclusion of a great deal of credible negative reporting on the group. The carefully edited scenes of heroism under fire that have been filmed and released worldwide conceal the White Helmets’ relationship with the al-Qaeda affiliated group Jabhat al-Nusra and its participation in the torture and execution of “rebel” opponents. Indeed, the White Helmets only operate in rebel held territory, which enables them to shape the narrative both regarding who they are and what is occurring on the ground.

Exploiting their access to the western media, the White Helmets thereby de facto became a major source of “eyewitness” news regarding what was going on in those many parts of Syria where European and American journalists were quite rightly afraid to go. It was all part of a broader largely successful “rebel” effort to manufacture fake news that depicts the Damascus government as engaging in war crimes directed against civilians, an effort that led to several attacks on government forces and facilities by the U.S. military.

The White Helmets travel to bombing sites with their film crews trailing behind them. Once at the sites, with no independent observers, they are able to arrange or even stage what is filmed to conform to their selected narrative which consistently promotes tales of government atrocities against civilians to encourage outside military intervention in Syria and bring about regime change in Damascus. The White Helmets were, for example, the propagators of the totally false but propagandistically effective claims regarding the government use of so-called “barrel bombs” against civilians.

Peter Ford, British Ambassador in Damascus from 2003-2006, recently described the group in an audio interview saying, “The White Helmets are jihadi auxiliaries. They are not, as claimed by themselves and by their supporters… simple rescuers. They are not volunteers. They are paid professionals of disinformation.” He noted particularly the large size of the organization’s “press department”, saying, “This gives us an idea what the priority is for this very dubious organization… All their activities are directed at mobilizing Western opinion behind the jihadis with whom they associate. They co-locate their centers with the Al-Qaeda organization known as Al-Nusra and with other militant groups such as Jaish al-Islam. They have in the past been shown associating with and waving the flags of ISIS.”

The group is currently largely funded by a number of non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as governments, including the United States, Britain and some European Union member states. The U.S. has directly provided $23 million through the USAID (US Agency for International Development) as of 2016 and almost certainly considerably more indirectly. Max Blumenthal has explored in some detail the various funding resources and relationships that the organization draws on, mostly in Europe and the United States.

Perhaps the most serious charge against the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in the atrocities, to include torture and murder, carried out by their al-Nusra hosts. There have been numerous photos of the White Helmets operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating over the bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group’s jihadi associates regard the White Helmets as fellow “mujahideen” and “soldiers of the revolution.”

So Israel’s celebrated rescue of the White Helmets was little more than a theatrical performance intended to perpetuate the myth that the al-Assad government was thwarted in an attempt to capture and possibly kill an honorable non-partisan group engaged in humanitarian relief for those caught up in a bloody conflict seeking to oust a ruthless dictator. The reality is quite different. The White Helmets were and are part and parcel of the attempt to overthrow a legitimate government and install a regime friendly to western, American and Israeli interests. For Israel in particular the ongoing chaos in Syria was and is part of its plan for dividing all of its neighbors into warring ethnicities and sects, making them less viable as threats to the Jewish state.

The 800 White Helmets rescued reportedly will be resettled in the U.S., Britain and Germany. One hopes those coming to America can end up in Los Angeles, where they would presumably mingle with Hollywood big shots and the usual snowflakes while working on their next documentary. As some of them are most certainly radical Jihadists, it will be interesting to observe exactly how that will play out.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

August 7, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Neocons Demand ‘Crushing’ Sanctions on Russia

By Ron Paul | August 6, 2018

You can always count on the neocons in Congress to ignore reality, ignore evidence, and ignore common sense in their endless drive to get us involved in another war. Last week, for example, Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-NC), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), and others joined up to introduce what Senator Graham called “the sanctions bill from hell,” aimed at applying “crushing” sanctions on Russia.

Senator Graham bragged that the bill would include “everything but the kitchen sink” in its attempt to ratchet up tensions with Russia.

Sen Cory Gardner (R-CO) bragged that the new sanctions bill “includes my language requiring the State Department to determine whether Russia merits the designation of a State Sponsor of Terror.”

Does he even know what the word “terrorism” means?

Sen Ben Cardin (D-MD) warns that the bill must be passed to strengthen our resolve against “Vladimir Putin’s pattern of corroding democratic institutions and values around the world, a direct and growing threat to US national security.”

What has Russia done that warrants “kitchen sink” sanctions that will “crush” the country and possibly designate it as a sponsor of terrorism? Sen. Menendez tells us: “The Kremlin continues to attack our democracy, support a war criminal in Syria, and violate Ukraine’s sovereignty.”

There is a big problem with these accusations on Russia: they’re based on outright lies and unproven accusations that continue to get more bizarre with each re-telling. How strange that when US Senators like Menendez demand that we stand by our NATO allies even if it means war, they attack Russia for doing the same in Syria. Is the Syrian president a “war criminal,” as he claims? We do know that his army is finally, with Russian and Iranian help, about to defeat ISIS and al-Qaeda, which with US backing for seven years have turned Syria into a smoking ruin. Does Menendez and his allies prefer ISIS in charge of Syria?

And how hypocritical for Menendez to talk about Russia violating Ukraine’s sovereignty. The unrest in Ukraine was started by the 2014 US-backed coup against an elected leader. We have that all on tape!

How is Russia “attacking our democracy”? We’re still waiting for any real evidence that Russia was involved in our 2016 elections and intends to become involved in our 2018 elections. But that doesn’t stop the propagandists, who claim with no proof that Russia was behind the election of Donald Trump.

These Senators claim that sanctions will bring the Russians to heel, but they are wrong. Sanctions are good at two things only: destroying the lives of innocent civilians and leading to war.

As I mentioned in an episode of my Liberty Report last week, even our own history shows that sanctions do lead to war and should not be taken lightly. In the run-up to US involvement in the War of 1812, the US was doing business with both France and the UK, which were at war with each other. When the UK decided that the US was favoring France in its commerce, it imposed sanctions on the US. What did Washington do in response? Declared war. Hence the War of 1812, which most Americans remember as that time when the British burned down the White House.

Recent polls show that the majority of Americans approve of President Trump’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among Republicans, a vast majority support the meeting. Perhaps a good defeat in November will wake these neocon warmongers up. Let’s hope so!

August 7, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Debunking A Century of War Lies

corbettreport | Aug 6, 2018

In the modern age of democracy and volunteer armies, a pretense for war is required to rally the nation around the flag and motivate the public to fight. That is why every major conflict is now accompanied by its own particular bodyguard of lies. From false flag attacks to dehumanization of the “enemy,” here are all the examples you’ll need to help debunk a century of war lies.

WATCH ON BITCHUTE / DTUBE / ODYSEE / DOWNLOAD THE MP4 VIDEO

TRANSCRIPT AND MP3: https://www.corbettreport.com/warlies/

August 6, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , | Leave a comment

MSNBC’s top ‘Russia expert’ thinks Putin was KGB director

RT | August 6, 2018

MSNBC’s resident ‘Russia expert’ has demonstrated the depth of his knowledge by falsely referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a former director of the KGB.”

Speaking to host Bill Maher on Friday, Malcolm Nance unleashed a host of wacky ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theories – President Trump was convinced to run for president by Russia’s top oligarchs; Trump and Putin have a plan to steal the 2020 election “already hashed out;” and the terrible twosome used their recent Helsinki summit to plot the division of the Western world between them.

Nance, a 20-year Navy veteran cryptologist and private intelligence consultant, went on to call Vladimir Putin “a former director of the KGB.”

While Putin was briefly appointed to head the KGB’s successor agency, the FSB, in 1997, he was a mid-level KGB officer before entering politics. Working in communist East Germany from 1985 to 1990, Putin eventually resigned from the agency as communist hardliners launched a coup d’etat attempt against President Gorbachev in 1991, with Putin siding with the reformist leader.

At no point in his career did Putin lead or come close to leading the KGB.

Putin’s brief stint in charge of the FSB could have caused the mix-up, and Nance would be forgiven for the mistake, except he describes himself as an expert on all things Russian, and regularly appears on MSNBC to push the Trump-Russia collusion narrative. He’s even written two books about it: ‘The Plot to Hack America,’ and most recently ‘The Plot to Destroy Democracy,’ a New York Times bestseller.

In ‘The Plot to Destroy Democracy’ – published two weeks before Trump’s much-criticized meeting with Putin – Nance connects a web of unrelated dots to make the claim that Putin and Trump are conspiring to create an “Axis of Autocracy,” all with no hard evidence. Publishers Weekly called the book “an unconvincing exaggeration of genuine misconduct into cartoonish supervillainy.”

With US mainstream media pushing Russia-hate around the clock since Trump’s election, it’s no wonder that Nance’s conspiracy-mongering and “cartoonish supervillainy” landed him in front of the camera on one of the nation’s most virulently anti-Trump networks.

The fact that his original areas of expertise are related to the Middle East and terrorism, as journalist Max Blumenthal pointed out, matters little. What does matter is that Nance can leverage his military experience to lend a sheen of credibility to the ‘Russiagate’ story.

With mainstream news media making all kinds of outlandish claims – that Russians write Trump’s tweets; Trump has been a KGB agent since 1987; Kanye West is a Kremlin operative – Nance has found himself a lucrative niche. With his career depending on hysteria, why let the facts get in the way of a good soundbite?

August 6, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Chomsky on Regime Change in Nicaragua

By Roger Harris | CounterPunch | August 3, 2018

With patented angst, Noam Chomsky opined on President Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua to an agreeing Amy Goodman: “But there’s been a lot of corruption, a lot of repression. It’s autocratic, undoubtedly.”

Earlier in their DemocracyNow! interview, the main talking points were established via a video clip of a dissident former official from Ortega’s Sandinista Party: Ortega’s “entire government has been, in essence, neoliberal. Then it becomes authoritarian, repressive.”

Left out of this view is why the US has targeted Nicaragua for regime change. One would think that a neoliberal regime, especially if it were authoritarian and repressive, would be just the ticket to curry favor with Washington.

In Chomsky’s own words, Nicaragua poses a threat of a good example to the US empire:

Since Ortega’s return election victory in 2006, Nicaragua had achieved the following, according to NSCAG, despite being the second poorest country in the hemisphere:

+ Second highest economic growth rates and most stable economy in Central America.

+ Only country in the region producing 90% of the food it consumes.

+ Poverty and extreme poverty halved; country with the greatest reduction of extreme poverty.

+ Reaching the UN Millennium Development Goal of cutting malnutrition by half.

+ Free basic healthcare and education.

+ Illiteracy virtually eliminated, down from 36% in 2006.

+ Average economic growth of 5.2% for the past 5 years (IMF and the World Bank).

+ Safest country in Central America (UN Development Program) with one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America.

+ Highest level of gender equality in the Americas (World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Report 2017).

+ Did not contribute to the migrant exodus to the US, unlike neighboring Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala.

+ Unlike its neighbors, kept out the drug cartels and pioneered community policing.

Nicaragua targeted by the US for regime change

Before April 18, Nicaragua was among the most peaceful and stable countries in the region. The otherwise inexplicable violence that has suddenly engulfed Nicaragua should be understood in the context of it being targeted by the US for regime change.

Nicaragua has provoked the ire of the US for the good things its done, not the bad.

Besides being a “threat” of a good example, Nicaragua is in the anti-imperialist ALBA alliance with Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and others. The attack on Nicaragua is part of a larger strategy by the US to tear apart regional alliances of resistance to the Empire, though that is not the whole story.

Nicaragua regularly votes against the US in international forums such as challenging retrograde US policies on climate change. An inter-ocean canal through Nicaragua is being considered, which would contend with the Panama Canal. Russia and China invest in Nicaragua, competing with US capital.

The NICA Act, passed by the US House of Representatives and now before the Senate, would initiate economic warfare designed to attack living conditions in Nicaragua through economic sanctions, as well as intensify US intelligence intervention. The ultimate purpose is to depose the democratically-elected Ortega government.

Meanwhile, USAID announced an additional $1.5 million “to support freedom and democracy in Nicaragua” through non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to overthrow the democratically elected government and “make this truly a hemisphere of freedom.” That is, freedom for the US empire.

Holding Nicaragua to a higher standard than our own government

Although Chomsky echoes the talking points of the USAID administrator Mark Green about “Ortega’s brutal regime,” he can’t quite bring himself to accept responsibility for regime change. Chomsky despairs, “it’s hard to see a simple way out at this point. It’s a very unfortunate situation.”

Chomsky is concerned about corruption, repression, and autocracy in Nicaragua, urging the democratically elected president to step down and run for re-election. Need it be mentioned that Chomsky chastised leftists who did not “absolutely” support Hillary Clinton? It is from this moral ground that the professor looks down on Nicaragua.

These charges of corruption and such are addressed by long-time solidarity activist Chuck Kaufman:

+ The World Bank, IMF, and EU countries have certified Nicaragua for its effective use of international loans and grants; funds were spent for the purposes they were given, not siphoned off into corruption.

+ Kaufman asks, “why a police force that in 39 years had not repressed the Nicaraguan people would suddenly go berserk,” while videos clearly show the violence of the more militant opposition.

+ Ortega won in 2006 with a 38% plurality, in 2011 with 63%, and 72.5% in 2016. The Organization of American States officially accompanied and certified the vote. Kaufman notes, “Dictators don’t win fair elections by growing margins.”

Alternatives to Ortega would be worse

Those who call for Ortega’s removal need to accept responsibility for what comes after. Here the lesson of Libya is instructive, where the replacement of, in Chomsky’s words, the “brutal tyrant” and “cruel dictator” Qaddafi has resulted in a far worse situation for the Libyan people.

Any replacement of Ortega would be more, not less, neoliberal, oppressive, and authoritarian. When the Nicaraguan people, held hostage to the US-backed Contra war, first voted Ortega out of office in 1990, the incoming US-backed Violeta Chamorro government brought neoliberal structural adjustment and a moribund economy.

The dissident Sandinistas who splintered off from the official party after the party’s election defeat and formed the MRS (Sandinista Renovation Movement) are not a progressive alternative. They are now comfortably ensconced in US-funded NGOs, regularly making junkets to Washington to pay homage to the likes of Representative Iliana Ros-Lehtinen and Senator Marco Rubio to lobby in favor of the NICA Act. Nor do they represent a popular force, garnering less than 2% in national elections.

When the MRS left the Sandinista party, they took with them almost all those who were better educated, came from more privileged backgrounds, and who spoke English. These formerly left dissidents, now turned to the right in their hatred of Ortega, have many ties with North American activists, which explains some of the confusion today over Nicaragua.

The world, not just Ortega, has changed since the 1980s when the Soviet Union and its allies served as a counter-vailing force to US bullying. What was possible then is not the same in today’s more constrained international arena.

Class war turned upside down

Kevin Zeese of Popular Resistance aptly characterized the offensive against the democratically elected government of Nicaragua as “a class war turned upside down.” Nicaragua was the most progressive country in Central America with no close rival. Yet some North American left intellectuals are preoccupied with Nicaragua’s shortcomings while not clearly recognizing that it is being attacked by a domestic rightwing in league with the US government.

Noam Chomsky is a leading world left intellectual and should be acclaimed for his contributions. His incisive warning about the US nuclear policy is just one essential example. Nevertheless, he is also indicative of a tendency in the North American left to accept a bit too readily the talking points of imperialist propaganda, regarding the present-day Sandinistas.

There is a disconnect between Chomsky’s urging Nicaraguans to replace Ortega with new elections and his longtime and forceful advocacy against US imperialist depredations of countries like Nicaragua. Such elections in Nicaragua would not only be unconstitutional but would further destabilize a profoundly destabilized situation. Given the unpopularity and disunity of the opposition and the unity and organizational strength of the Sandinistas, Ortega would likely win.

Most important, the key role of Northern American solidarity activists is to end US interference in Nicaragua so that the Nicaraguans can solve their own problems.

The rightwing violence since April in Nicaragua should be understood as a coup attempt. A significant portion of the Nicaraguan people have rallied around their elected government as seen in the massive demonstrations commemorating the Sandinista revolution on July 19.

For now, the rightwing tranques (blockades) have been dismantled and citizens can again freely circulate without being shaken down and threatened. In the aftermath, though, Nicaragua has suffered unacceptable human deaths, massive public property damage, and a wounded economy with the debilitating NICA Act threatening to pass the US Senate.

Roger Harris is on the board of the Task Force on the Americas, a 32-year-old anti-imperialist human rights organization.

August 4, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why US’ sanctions “bill from hell” on Russia should worry India

By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | August 3, 2018

A fortnight after the Helsinki summit on July 16, US-Russia relations are set to take a turn for the worse. In an unprecedented move, White House fielded a joint media briefing by America’s top national security team on Thursday to highlight that Russia is continuing to make pervasive attempts to interfere in the upcoming mid-term elections in the US in November.

One of the top security czars who gave the briefing, National Intelligence Agency director Dan Coats said starkly, “We acknowledge the threat, it is real, it is continuing, and we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election. It is pervasive, it is ongoing, with the intent to … drive a wedge and undermine our democratic values.” Importantly, Coats alleged that the Kremlin was involved in the meddling effort which reached into the Kremlin itself.

He said, “Russia has used numerous ways in which they want to influence, through media, social media, through bots, through actors that they hire, through proxies – all of the above, and potentially more. We also know the Russians tried to hack into and steal information from candidates and government officials alike.” (Transcript)

The briefing served three purposes: one, to reject the denials of meddling that Russian President Vladimir Putin maade to President Trump at Helsinki; two, to neutralize the public criticism in the US that Trump has not been unequivocal on the issue; and, three, to give warning to Moscow.

The briefing coincided with a ‘bipartisan’ legislation that was introduced into the US Congress on Thursday to impose stiff new sanctions on Russia and combat cyber crime. The bill includes restrictions on new Russian sovereign debt transactions, energy and oil projects and Russian uranium imports, and new sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs. Interestingly, the proposed legislation underscores strong support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressly forbids the Administration from taking the US out of the alliance without two-thirds of the US Senate voting in favor of any such effort.

The senators who tabled the legislation said in a statement that the proposed new sanctions would target “political figures, oligarchs, and family members and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Vladimir Putin.” According to some reports, the bill would also require a report to be assembled on the personal net worth and assets of Putin. Quite obviously, Putin himself is in the crosshairs.

Putin’s spirited defence of Trump at their joint press conference in Helsinki on the Russia collusion inquiry has provoked this furious backlash from America’s political class. In such a backdrop, another summit between Trump and Putin in a near future seems highly improbable. A visit by Putin to the White House in the autumn is simply out of the question. The US-Russia ties will remain very tense, too.

On the other hand, in a deceptive show of flexibility that will be keenly noted in New Delhi, US Congress has approved a legislation empowering the president to waive penalties against countries that buy weapons from Russia – provided, of course, Washington is convinced that such countries are seeking closer ties with the US. The US Defence Secretary James Mattis had pleaded with the US Congress for such Russia-sanction-waiver authority that would help countries such as India, which had traditional defence relations with Russia but are now trying to “pull away from the Russian orbit,” (as he put it.)

Evidently, the legislation on waivers is a self-serving move, enabling US arms manufacturers to continue to expand business opportunities in the Indian market. Under the new legislation, the president must nonetheless certify that India is both reducing arms imports from Russia and is expanding defense cooperation with the US, thereby making itself eligible for the waiver from sanctions. In effect, it becomes a tool for Washington to insert itself into the India-Russia defence cooperation as an interested party and to incrementally leverage Indian decisions with a view to atrophy the longstanding cooperation.

Clearly, the US interference in the India-Russia relationship is poised to intensify in the period ahead. If the proposed new sanctions “bill from hell” (tabled on Thursday) gets passed by the US Congress, which is to be expected, energy cooperation between India and Russia will also come under the American scanner. There is a strong business dimension to these US moves insofar as arms exports and energy cooperation also happen to be two thrust areas of export to India. Simply put, Washington hopes to roll back India’s defence and energy cooperation with Russia and seize the resultant business opportunities to boost its own exports to the Indian market.

In strategic terms, the US intention is to undermine the so-called “special privileged strategic partnership” between Russia and India, which would in turn erode the latter’s strategic autonomy and incrementally draw India into the American orbit as an ally.

August 3, 2018 Posted by | Economics, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

Revolving Door: How Security Clearances Perpetuate Top-Level Corruption in the United States

By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 02.08.2018

President Donald Trump is threatening to take away the security clearances of a number of former senior intelligence and security officers who have been extremely critical of him. Most Americans were unaware that any ex-officials continued to hold clearances after they retired and the controversy has inevitably raised the question why that should be so. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer.

A security clearance is granted to a person but it is also linked to “need to know” in terms of what kind of information should or could be accessed, which means that when you are no longer working as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency you don’t necessarily need to know anything about China’s spying on the United States. Or do you? If you transition into a directorship or staff position of a major intelligence or security contractor, which many retirees do, you might need to retain the qualification for your job, which makes the clearance an essential component in the notorious revolving door whereby government officials transit to the private sector and then directly lobby their former colleagues to keep the flow of cash coming.

At top levels among the beltway bandit companies, where little work is actually done, some make the case that you have to remain “well informed” to function properly. The fact is that many top-level bureaucrats do retain their clearances for those nebulous reasons and also sometimes as a courtesy. Some have even received regular briefings from the CIA and the office of the Director of National intelligence even though they hold no government positions. A few very senior ex-officials have also been recalled by congress or the White House to provide testimony on particular areas of expertise or on past operations, which can legitimately require a clearance, though in such cases one can be granted on a temporary basis to cover a specific issue.

The problem arises when former officials use their clearances as bona fides to enhance their marketability for non-clearance jobs in the media or corporate world, particularly when those individuals are criticizing current government policies and behaving in a partisan fashion regarding specific candidates for office. Donald Trump was especially assailed by former officials John Brennan, James Clapper, Michael Hayden and Michael Morell before the 2016 election, all of whom continue to attack him currently, most particularly for the recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the 2016 campaign, Morell, who openly supported Hillary Clinton and is the designated intelligence on-air contributor for CBS news, deliberately linked the fact that he was ex-CIA Acting Director to his assertion that Trump was somehow an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation” to establish his credibility. That type of activity should be considered abusive and an exploitation of one’s former office.

Morell left CIA in June 2013 and by November was a senior counselor with Beacon Global Strategies. According to the firm’s website, Beacon Global Strategies is a government and private sector consulting group that specializes in matters of international policy, foreign affairs, national defense, cyber, intelligence, and homeland security. Morell may know little about those issues as they have evolved in the past five years, but citing his clearance gives him credibility for knowledge that he might not really possess and also gives him direct access to former colleagues that he can lobby to obtain government contracts.

Former CIA Director John Brennan, who famously voted for the Communist Party candidate for US president in 1976, has also profited greatly from his government service, becoming rich from his board memberships. He sits on the board of directors of SecureAuth + CORE Security and also on the board of The Analysis Corporation. More important in terms of his public profile, he is the “Intelligence Consultant” for NBC News and MSNBC and appears regularly.

Last week Senator Rand Paul met with President Trump and recommended that Brennan’s security clearance be revoked. He argued that Brennan, Trump’s most aggressive critic, has been using his credentials to provide credibility when he calls meeting with Russia’s president “treasonous” and describes the president as “wholly in the pocket of Putin.” Clearance holders also more generally use their privileged access to “secret information” to leverage speaking and television network pundit fees. In other words, Brennan and the others are using their security clearances to enhance their incomes, monetizing their access to classified information to enhance their value.

It is by no means clear whether Trump will revoke the clearances of Clapper, Brennan, Morell and Hayden. As he is the legal source of all government clearances he has the power to do so. An equitable solution on the clearance issue more generally speaking would be to cancel all security clearances on the day when one leaves government service unless there is a direct and immediate transition to a private sector position that absolutely requires such a qualification. That would be fair to lower level employees seeking a second source of income and it would also eliminate many of those who are merely cashing in on their presumed access. As it is a rational solution it is very unlikely that it will be entertained by either the White House or by Congress.

August 2, 2018 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

VIPS to Trump: Intel on Iran Could be CATASTROPHIC

As drums beat again for war — this time on Iran—-the VIPS’ warning is again being disregarded as it was before the Iraq debacle and this time VIPS fear the consequences will be all-caps CATASTROPHIC.

August 1, 2018

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Intelligence on Iran Fails the Smell Test

Mr. President:

As the George W. Bush administration revved up to attack Iraq 15 years ago, we could see no compelling reason for war. We decided, though, to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on the chance he had been sandbagged by Vice President Dick Cheney and others. We chose to allow for the possibility that he actually believed the “intelligence” that Colin Powell presented to the UN as providing “irrefutable and undeniable” proof of WMD in Iraq and a “sinister nexus” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

To us in VIPS it was clear, however, that the “intelligence” Powell adduced was bogus. Thus, that same afternoon (Feb. 5, 2003) we prepared and sent to President Bush a Memorandum like this one, urging him to seek counsel beyond the “circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”

We take no satisfaction at having been correct — though disregarded — in predicting the political and humanitarian disaster in Iraq. Most Americans have been told the intelligence was “mistaken.” It was not; it was out-and-out fraud, in which, sadly, some of our former colleagues took part.

Five years after Powell’s speech, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee minced few words in announcing the main bipartisan finding of a five-year investigation. He said: “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”

Iran Now in Gunsight

As drums beat again for a military attack — this time on Iran, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and other experienced, objective analysts are, by all appearances, being disregarded again. And, this time, we fear the consequences will be all-caps CATASTROPHIC — in comparison with the catastrophe of Iraq.

In memoranda to you over the past year and a half we have pointed out that (1) Iran’s current support for international terrorism is far short of what it was decades ago; and (2) that you are being played by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims about Iran’ they are based on intelligence exposed as fraudulent several years ago. Tellingly, Netanyahu waited for your new national security adviser to be in place for three weeks before performing his April 30 slide show alleging that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program. On the chance that our analysis of Netanyahu’s show-and-tell failed to reach you, please know that the Israeli prime minister was recycling information from proven forgeries, which we reported in a Memorandum to you early last spring.

If our Memorandum of May 7 fell through some cracks in the West Wing, here are its main findings:

The evidence displayed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30 in what he called his “Iranian atomic archive” showed blatant signs of fabrication. That evidence is linked to documents presented by the Bush Administration more than a decade earlier as “proof” of a covert Iran nuclear weapons program. Those documents were clearly fabricated, as well.

In our May 7, 2018 Memorandum we also asserted: “We can prove that the actual documents originally came not from Iran but from Israel. Moreover, the documents were never authenticated by the CIA or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”

Iran: Almost Targeted in 2008

There was a close brush with war with Iran a decade ago.  Bush and Cheney, in close consultation with Israel, were planning to attack Iran in 2008, their last year in office.  Fortunately, an honest National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 concluded that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003, and that key judgment was made public.  Abruptly, that NIE stuck an iron rod into the wheels of the juggernaut then speeding downhill to war.

The key judgment that Iran had stopped work on a nuclear weapon was the result of the painstakingly deliberative process that was customarily used, back in the day, to produce an NIE. After that process — which took a full year —  the Nov. 2007 NIE was approved unanimously by all U.S. intelligence agencies.

(In other words, it was decidedly NOT a rump “assessment” like the one cobbled together in a couple of weeks by “handpicked” analysts from three selected, agenda-laden agencies regarding Russian meddling. We refer, of course, to the evidence-impoverished and deceptively labeled “Intelligence Community Assessment” that the directors of the FBI, CIA, and NSA gave you on January 6, 2017. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department intelligence bureau were among the other 13 agencies excluded from that “Intelligence Community Assessment.”)

As for the Bush/Cheney plans for attacking Iran in 2008, President George W. Bush, in his autobiography, Decision Points, recorded his chagrin at what he called the NIE’s “eye-popping” intelligence finding debunking the conventional wisdom that Iran was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.  Bush added plaintively, “How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

Mr. President, we do not know whether a fresh National Intelligence Estimate has been produced on Iran and nuclear weapons — or, if one has been produced, whether it is as honest as the NIE of Nov. 2007, which helped prevent the launch of another unnecessary war the following year. We stand on our record. In sum, if you believe that there is credible evidence that Iran has an active secret nuclear weapons program, we believe you have been misled. And if you base decisions on misleading “intelligence” on Iran, the inevitable result will be a great deal worse than the Bush/Cheney debacle in Iraq.

For the Steering Group

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)

Sen. Richard H. Black, 13th District of Virginia; Colonel US Army (ret.); former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Pentagon (associate VIPS)

Kathleen Christison, Senior Analyst on Middle East, CIA (ret.)

Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Larry C. Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter-terrorism officer

Michael S. Kearns, Captain, Wing Commander, RAAF (ret.); Intelligence Officer & ex-Master SERE Instructor

Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

David MacMichael, Capt., USMC (ret.); former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council

Ray McGovern, former US Army Infantry/Intelligence Officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)

Gareth Porter, author/journalist (associate VIPS)

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)

Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned in opposition to the war on Iraq)

August 1, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu Got it Wrong Again: No Nuclear Arms in Iran and No Yazdi Cake in Alaadin!

By Heba Morad | American Herald Tribune | July 31, 2018

In the latest English-language video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asks the world to help Iran’s imaginary character Fatemeh in her struggle with the claimed hardships in her country, Iran.

Israeli media outlets circulated a video that Netanyahu had released on Sunday night; an English-language video on social media calling on the world to allegedly help Iranians improve their lives, claiming that the government is oppressing the people. In the video, Netanyahu addresses the camera and tells the story of an imaginary 15-year-old girl called Fatemeh.

Fatemeh, Netanyahu claims, has different hardships to deal with. Netanyahu tries to describe in detail his imaginary friend in Tehran, and concludes by saying that although Fatemeh is fictitious, this is the true story of “millions of Iranians”.

However, when he arrives to a point where he says that “She stops at her favorite bakery in the Aladdin mall to eat cake yazdi but there’s a nation-wide strike,” he makes a big mistake, and makes a fool out of himself.

It seems that Netanyahu’s Mossad and Hasbara teams have failed once again in providing him with the required information to carry out his psychological warfare against Iran; a country that has chosen to have an independent identity and beliefs. They failed to tell him that the Alaadin Mall does not have ANY CONFECTIONARY shop, and that it is a mall, or what they call in Iran “a passage” that sells mobile phones.

Netanyahu failed to know a small detail that can be easily figured out; the Alaadin passage is the most famous of phone malls in Iran, how can the Prime Minister miss out on that point? And if this is the case with Alaadin, this triggers questions on the precision and accuracy of the information related to other stories cooked up by the Israelis on Iran, more precisely Iran’s nuclear deal. Is it that all information Israel and the US have been providing on Iran’s nuclear activity is only as accurate as those on Fatemeh’s cake-craving?

Israel and the US have been claiming that Iran has been seeking a nuclear weapon for years, imposed sanctions on the country, threatened to attack Iran multiple times at the time they are the two regimes that own the largest number of nuclear warheads. Iran has never attacked any other country or state actor. Even Iran’s support to the Assad government in Syria was upon an official invitation from the Syrian government to help curb the Daesh or ISIS terrorists that have committed heinous crimes of inhumanity against the innocent Syrian people. Now if we want to dive into the details we will need an elaborate explanation on bloopers or confessions that were made live on air through different media outlets by US and Israeli generals and officials, like that of General Flynn who acknowledged that the US has been supporting terrorist groups in Syria.

Iran had over and again assured that it seeks no nuclear arms and that all its activity was for peaceful purposes. Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei has also issued a religious verdict stating that it is forbidden in Islam to seek nuclear weapons, which was acknowledged by the Obama government at a certain point. So, today after Netanyahu’s silly mistake some Iranian activists through social media platforms reassured that young and old know that Alaadin passage sells nothing but mobile phones and accessories. Are they also accused of lying just like the Iranian government has been accused of being untruthful about its nuclear program?

One cannot but say the truth. Yes, Iran does have some issues, just like any other country across the globe. But the Iranian government is, also like other governments trying to carry out reforms and resolve issues. There is no Utopia on this planet, is there one? The US and the Israeli apartheid regime have been putting their utmost efforts to hammer the government and put pressure on Iran and its people. Nevertheless, they should have tried a bit harder maybe or been more careful about the source of their information. At the end of the day, Iran does not seek nuclear weapons just like there is no confectionary shop in the mobile phones passage!

August 1, 2018 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

Matthew d’Ancona and his fake news

Steel City Scriblings | July 30, 2018

Matthew d’Ancona, in yesterday’s Guardian, is concerned about the threat to democracy from fake news. He wants to see ‘social media giants’ …

… legally redefined in a new, third category that radically enhances their accountability for the content they host, without imperilling free political discourse. Striking the right balance in this jurisprudential task will not be easy. But who expected it to be?

He also wants …

… a new system of “credible annotation of standards, so that people can see, at a glance, the level of verification of a site” – essentially, kitemarking of the sort that is standard in almost every other sector of consumption.

I am less sure that the government should “initiate a working group of experts” to oversee this process. If there is one thing worse than what the committee describes as the “wild west” of today’s digital prairies, it is anything that even resembles a Ministry of Truth, or an Oftruth regulator. Better that independent charitable bodies perform this grading task – gaining the public’s trust incrementally, as the admirable Full Fact and other fact-checking organisations have done in recent years.

Matthew d’Ancona being on the liberal wing of British Conservatism, that last paragraph is to be expected. He sees the dangers, earnest democrat that he is, of state censorship but believes, credulous liberal that he is, these can be averted by a few judicious mechanisms of the classic ‘checks and balances’ sort. I’m not going to argue with him on that. With bigger fish to fry, I’ll confine myself to pointing out that his ‘admirable’ Full Fact is led by Mayborn Group CEO and Tory Party donor Michael Samuel, while so many of those ‘other fact-checking organisations’ have on closer inspection proved to be at best self righteous – and self appointed – custodians of truth; at worst risibly tainted.1

d’Ancona’s complacency is neither the inevitable nor exclusive product of a costly education and privileged lifestyle, but is nurtured and at every turn reinforced by both. How do you think the man would respond to the question put to one similarly placed, the BBC’s Andrew Marr, in a 1996 interview with Noam Chomsky?

The media are selling privileged audiences. These are big businesses, big corporations selling privileged audiences to other corporations. Now what picture of the world would a rational person expect to come out of such a structure?

Marr had no answer and I don’t suppose d’Ancona has either. Neither man is a liar; both are the successful products of an ideological matrix upheld, confirmed and reaffirmed in those myriads of conversations and everyday acts which define – if we don’t ask about the nature of power – ‘common sense’ and what is ‘moderate’. It’s through such conversations and acts that normality is most thoroughly demarked, lines most durably drawn between ‘moderate’ and ‘extreme’. But those conversations and acts do not take place in a vacuum. They arise within particular social relations of class division, their heavy ideological lifting done in the education, entertainment2 and news industries.

Specifically here, many read a superficially broad spectrum of media views on small to middling matters – Mail at one end, Guardian at the other – as proof of an ‘open’ society whose forms of democracy they take at face value. Others call that spectrum a slit-window view on the world, a painfully limited vista constrained not by Truth – though that can’t be entirely bypassed: it has in normal times to be accommodated – nor yet by blunt censorship. Liberal media do indulge in crude onslaughts of the kind directed at Corbyn, Assad and Putin. They do not, however, make a habit of telling outright lies. To do so entails risks only undertaken when the alternatives pose an unusually stubborn impediment to ruling class3 interests. In the main, liberal media lie by omission. (When did you last read a Guardian or Independent piece on how those who took the decision to invade Iraq and demolish Libya have profited from their reconstruction? When did such media last run a piece on the extent of Syria’s privatisation? Come to that, when will we get a fearless Guardian investigation of the implications, as ad revenues fall, of growing donor dependence on American liberals well to the right of Britain’s?) And they spin with scant regard for consequence, as with the demonisation of Assad and Putin by daily repetition of unproven allegations to the point where inflammatory claim4 can no longer be distinguished – ‘no smoke without fire’  – from proven fact.

Chomsky, with his gift for framing subtle truths and complex observations in simple but never simplistic terms, raises the issue of that ideological matrix more than once in his BBC interview with Andrew Marr. When Marr asks with incredulity if Chomsky supposes he and his colleagues profess beliefs not sincerely held but calculated to advance their careers, Chomsky responds:

No, I am sure you believe everything you say. What I am saying is that if you believed something different, you wouldn’t be sat in that chair interviewing me.

Neatly put. Similarly, the owlish Mr d’Ancona wouldn’t be sat where he is but for his touching faith that the core aim of his various media employers is to pursue truth, as opposed to selling privileged audiences to other big corporations. To be a useful idiot you have to be, well, useful.

* * *

  1. See for instance this Spiked piece, which asks “Who exactly will judge which news is ‘real’ and what’s ‘fake’, and decide whether the world’s citizens are ‘properly informed’? While ensuring ‘those in positions of power are held accountable’ is a laudable aim, the question remains: accountable to whom? The people in a democratic system? Or our self-appointed ‘fact-checkers’ in a software package. And perhaps most pointedly – who will the fact-checkers be accountable to?”
  2. While education and news media are routinely and rightly decried by capitalism’s critics, I’m coming firmly to the view that the cumulative effect of decades of soft propaganda from TV and cinema is every bit as vital to its ideological underpinnings. That near infinite accumulation of subtexts, seldom intended as propaganda – rather, as Giving The Public What it Wants – is all the more effective for that ‘innocence of intent’ in its nurturing of deeply orientalist assumptions of Western and especially American beneficence. And of Arab and Slavic villainy for villainy’s sake.
  3. My concise definition of a ruling class is its monopoly ownership of some essential of wealth creation. Under capitalism this is the big money and production infrastructure without which wealth cannot be produced. Of course there is far more to say, but all else derives from this one central reality.
  4. Of all the charges to be laid at the doors of BBC, Guardian and Independent, none is graver than that their coverage of Russia, Syria and Ukraine – and mix, on Yemen, of near silence with unsubstantiated claims of Iranian backed Houthis – has the effect, regardless of intent, of promoting the high tech and highly lucrative delivery of death to the near defenceless peoples of the global south.

July 31, 2018 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

The Yellow Peril Comes to Washington

Following the Israeli model?

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • July 31, 2018

So President Donald Trump reckoned on Monday that the United States Intelligence Community (IC) just might be wrong in its assessment that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election but then decided on Tuesday that he misspoke and had the greatest confidence in the IC and now agrees that they were correct in their judgment. But Donald Trump, interestingly, added something about there being “others” that also had been involved in the election in an attempt to subvert it, though he was not specific and the national media has chosen not to pursue the admittedly cryptic comment. He was almost certainly referring to China both due to possible motive and the possession of the necessary resources to carry out such an operation. Indeed, there are reports that China hacked the 30,000 Hillary Clinton emails that are apparently still missing.

Just how one interferes in an election in a large country with diverse sources of information and numerous polling stations located in different states using different systems is, of course, problematical. The United States has interfered in elections everywhere, including in Russia under Boris Yeltsin. It engaged in regime change in Iran, Chile, and Guatemala by supporting conservative elements in the military which obligingly staged coups. In Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces invaded and overthrew the governments while in Libya the change in regime was largely brought about by encouraging rebels while bombing government forces. The same model has been applied in Syria, though without much success because Damascus actually was bold enough to resist.

So how do the Chinese “others” bring about “change” short of a full-scale invasion by the People’s Liberation Army? I do not know anything about actual Chinese plans to interfere in future American elections and gain influence over the resulting newly elected government but would like to speculate on just how they might go about that onerous task.

First, I would build up an infrastructure in the United States that would have access to the media and be able to lobby and corrupt the political class. That would be kind of tricky as it would require getting around the Foreign Agent Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), which requires representatives of foreign governments operating in the United States to register and have their finances subject to review by the Department of the Treasury. Most recently, several Russian news agencies that are funded by the Putin government have been required to do so, including RT International and Sputnik radio and television.

The way to avoid the FARA registration requirement is to have all funding come through Chinese-American sources that are not directly connected with the government in Beijing. Further, the foundations and other organizations should be set up as having an educational purpose rather than a political agenda. You might want to call your principal lobbying group something like the American Chinese Political Action Committee or ACPAC as an acronym when one is referring to it shorthand.

Once established, ACPAC will hire and send hundreds of Chinese-American lobbyists to Capitol Hill when Congress is in session. They will be carefully selected to come from as many states and congressional districts as possible to maximize access to legislative offices. They will have with them position papers prepared by the ACPAC central office that explain why a close and uncritical relationship with Beijing is not only the right thing to do, it is also a good thing for the United States.

As part of the process, new Congressmen will benefit from free trips to China paid for by an educational foundation set up for that purpose. They will be able to walk on the Great Wall and speak to genuine representative Chinese who will tell them how wonderful everything is in the People’s Republic.

Congressmen who nevertheless appear to be resistant to the lobbying and the emoluments will be confronted with a whole battery of alternative reasons why they should be filo-Chinese, including the thinly veiled threat that to behave otherwise could be construed as politically damaging anti-Orientalist racism. For those who persist in their obduracy, the ultimate weapon will be citation of the horrors of the Second World War Rape of Nanking. No one wants to be accused of being a Rape of Nanking denier.

The second phase of converting Congress is to set up a bunch of Political Action Committees (PACs). They will have innocuous names like Rocky Mountain Sheep Herders Association, but they will all really be about China. When the money begins to flow into the campaign coffers of legislators any concerns about what China is doing in the world will cease. The same PACs can be used to fund billboards and voter outreach in some districts, allowing China to have a say in the elections without actually having to surface or be explicit about whom it supports. Other PACs can work hard at inserting material into social websites, similar to what the Russians have been accused of doing.

And then there is the mass media. Using the same Chinese-American conduit, you would simply buy up controlling interests in newspapers and other media outlets. And you would begin staffing those outlets with earnest young Chinese-Americans who will be highly protective of Chinese interests and never write a story critical of the government in Beijing or the Chinese people. That way the American public will eventually become so heavily propagandized by the prevailing narrative that they will never question anything that China does, ideally beginning to refer to it as the “only democracy in Asia” and “America’s best friend in the whole wide world.” Once the indoctrination process is completed, the Chinese leadership might even crush demonstrators with tanks in Tiananmen Square or line up snipers to pick off protest leaders and no congressman or newspaper would dare say nay.

When the political classes and media are sufficiently under control, it would then be time to move to the final objective: the dismantling of the United States Constitution. In particularly, there is that pesky Bill of Rights and the First Amendment guaranteeing Free Speech. That would definitely have to go, so you round up your tame Congress critters and you elect a president who is also in your pocket, putting everything in place for the “slam-dunk.” You pass a battery of laws making any criticism of China both racist and felonious, with punitive fines and prison sentences attached. After that success, you can begin to dismantle the rest of the Bill of Rights and no one will be able to say a word against what you are doing because the First Amendment will by then be a dead duck. When the Constitution is in shreds and Chinese lobbyists are firmly in control of corrupted legislators, Beijing will have won a bloodless victory against the United States and it all began with just a little interference in America’s politics alluded to by Donald Trump.

Of course, dear reader, all of the above might be true but for the fact that I am not talking about China at all and am only using that country as a metaphor. Beijing may have spied on the U.S. elections but it otherwise has evidenced little interest in manipulating elections or controlling any aspect of the U.S. government. And even though I am sure that Donald Trump was not referring to Israel when he made his offhand comment about “others,” the shoe perfectly fits that country’s subjugation of many of the foreign and national security policy mechanisms in the United States over the past fifty years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently boasted about how he controls Trump and convinced him to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement.

The real mystery, if there is one, is why no American politician has either the guts or the integrity or perhaps the necessary intelligence to substitute Tel Aviv for Moscow and to call Israel out like we are currently calling out Russia for actions that pale in comparison to what Netanyahu has been up to.

To be specific, there is no evidence that Russia ever asked for favors from Trump’s campaign staff and transition team but Israel did so over a vote on its illegal settlements at the United Nations. Is Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Congress interested? No. Is the media interested? No.

Israel, relying on Jewish power and money to do the heavy lifting, has completely corrupted many aspects of American government and, in particular, its foreign policy by aggressive lobbying and buying politicians. All new members of Congress and spouses are taken to Israel on generously funded “fact finding” tours after being elected to make sure they get their bearings straight right from the git-go. Israel’s nearly total control over the message on the Middle East coming out of the U.S. mainstream is aided and abetted by the numerous Jewish editors and journalists who are prepared to pump the party line. The money to do all this comes from Jewish billionaires like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson, who have their hooks deep into both political parties. Meanwhile, the ability of America’s most powerful foreign policy lobby AIPAC to avoid registration as a foreign agent is completely due to the exercise of Jewish power in the United States which means in practice that Israel and its advocates will never be sanctioned in any way.

Israel is eager to have the United States fight Iran on its behalf, even though Washington has no real interest in doing so, and all indications are that it will be successful. Though it is a rich country, it receives a multi-billion-dollar handout from the U.S. Treasury every year. When its war criminal prime minister comes to town he receives 26 standing ovations from a completely sycophantic congress and now the United States has even stationed soldiers in Israel who are “prepared to die” for Israel even though there is no treaty of any kind between the two countries and the potential victims have likely never been consulted regarding dying for a foreign country. All of this takes place without the public ever voting on or even discussing the relationship, a tribute to the fact that both major parties and the media have been completely co-opted.

And now there is the assault on the First Amendment, with legislation currently in Congress making it a crime either to criticize Israel or support a boycott of it in support of Palestinian rights. When those bills become law, which they will, we are finished as a country where fundamental rights are respected.

And what has Russia done in comparison to all this? Hardly anything even if all the claims about its alleged interference are true. So when will Mueller and all the Republican and Democratic baying dogs say a single word about Israel’s interference in our elections and political processes? If past behavior is anything to go by, it will never happen.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.

July 31, 2018 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

The Germans have a Russian hacking story after all

By Frank Sellers | The Duran | July 30, 2018

Two German broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, are claiming that they have become the victims of a new Russian cyber attack. The attack is being reported as being the work of a Russian hacking group known as ‘Sandworm’. Reports are saying that the attack occurred in June, but has no clue about what the hackers were after, or whether any sensitive information was stolen. Additionally, the ‘Sandworm’ hacking group is also suspected of having ties to the Kremlin, and played a role in the attack on the US DNC servers during the 2016 US Presidential election. Sandworm is also billed as having hacked the Swiss labs which were tasked with analyzing the sample of Novichok that was reportedly used to poison former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on March 4th in Salisbury, UK.

Deutsche Welle reports:

Two of Germany’s largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, have been attacked by a Russian hacking group, according to reports. It remains unclear what the group’s intention was or whether any sensitive data was stolen.

A Russian hacking group known as “Sandworm” targeted Germany’s two largest public broadcasters, ZDF and WDR, according to German media reports on Friday.

Security officials told German weekly Der Spiegel that hackers had managed to compromise the broadcasters’ networks in June. Although the cyberattack was detected relatively quickly, it remains unknown what the group was after or whether any sensitive data was compromised.

ZDF confirmed the attack on Friday, adding that only 10 computers on its network were affected. WDR decline to comment for “security reasons.”

Sandworm is a hacking group believed to be run by Russia’s military intelligence service, GRU. According to US federal investigators, the group is suspected of also being behind the attack on the US Democrats’ computer servers during the 2016 presidential election.

The group first appeared in 2013 and, according to German intelligence, has targeted NATO servers, several western telecom companies and Ukrainian energy suppliers.

Earlier this year, the German government admitted that its computer network had been compromised via a piece of malware. The Russian hacking group APT28 is believed to have been behind the attack.

German intelligence warns key institutions

Germany’s intelligence service (BND) had warned two weeks ago of the potential cyber threats facing several key bodies, including the country’s public broadcasters and media companies.

The BND also said that the Spiez Laboratory in Switzerland, which specializes in chemical weapons research, was also among Sandworm’s targets. Its Swiss lab had been tasked with analyzing the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok that was used to poison former Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.

A spokesperson for Spiez Laboratory said officials had encountered one phishing attack, sent via a document used in a workshop. However, the institute itself had not been affected.

With the claim about Russians hacking the Budestag falling apart, as I reported earlier, the Germans needed a victim story to sell to the public. Germans have been the victims of Russian hackers, and since the last story didn’t pan out, here’s another one! This one even comes with an attack from a suspected hacking group that we are being told has Kremlin ties, and we are also being told that they tried to derail the Skripal investigation. What’s more, it’s some of the same fellows who hacked the DNC servers! So we can see, then, that the Russians are hacking all of kinds of things, trying to cover their tracks, and that includes hacking the Germans. But so far, after a month, there is no intel suggesting that the malicious Russian hackers managed to get their hands on any ‘sensitive data’, which makes us wonder whether they have some state secrets or something on their servers, have they been in cahoots with Julian Assange and Wikileaks, perhaps? Did the Russians manage to get access to it? Should we be worried that the Russians now have information which compromises the security of Germans and the EU in general? So far, we don’t know, but we do know that the German media which claims it was hacked by the Russians is reporting that it has been hacked by the Russians. So far, an independent investigation isn’t being reported to verify the attack or its origin, or the scope thereof.

July 30, 2018 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

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