High Crimes and Misdemeanors – Not by Trump but Obama and Democrats
By Ajamu Baraka | Black Agenda Report | July 25, 2018
Increasing evidence emerges that confirms what ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern suggests was a classic off-the-shelf intelligence operation initiated during the last year of Obama’s presidency against the Trump campaign by employees of, and others associated with, the CIA, FBI, and the NS. Yet the public is being counseled to ignore possible proof of state misconduct.
The historic and unprecedented timing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of twelve Russia military intelligence officers on the eve of Trump’s meeting with Putin, was clearly meant to undercut Trump’s authority. This still did not pique the journalistic curiosity of an ostensibly independent press to at least pretend to question the possible motivation for these indictments at such a specific moment. Instead of critical questions, Democrats, along with the corporate liberal media, flipped the script and suggested that those questioning the allegations of Russian manipulation of the 2016 U.S. elections, which supposedly included the active or tacit support of the Trump campaign, was ipso-facto evidence of one’s disloyalty to the state — if not also complicit with implementing the Russia inspired conspiracy.
This narrative has been set and is meant to be accepted as veracious and impermeable to challenges. Powerful elements of the ruling class, operating with and through the Democratic party in an attempt to secure maximum electoral success, decided that Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia shall be the primary narrative to be utilized by Democrats — from the increasing phony opposition represented by the Sanders wing of the party, to the neoliberal, buck-dancing members of the Congressional Black Caucus. All are expected to fall in line and do the ruling class’s bidding.
When Trump met with the arch-enemy Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and didn’t declare war on Russia for conspiring against Clinton, charges of treason were splashed across the headlines and editorial pages of the elite press with some of the loudest denunciations coming from Black liberals.
Not being at war with Russia, at least not in the technical sense, was just one of those inconvenient facts that didn’t need to get in the way of the main objective, which was to smear Trump.
And while evidence of collusion continues to surface, it’s actually not between Trump and the Russians, rather it’s between intelligence officials in the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign. The latest revelation of this evidence was reported by John Solomon in, The Hill, a Washington insider publication. According to Solomon, former FBI attorney Lisa Page gave testimony to the House Judiciary committee that seemed to confirm the partisan intentions of Peter Strzok and other high officials in the agency.
Page was one of the authors of the infamous text messages between her and Peter Strzok (the two were also in a personal relationship at the time) while they both worked together at the FBI. The texts soon became the objective of endless speculation ever since they were revealed last summer. Exchanges shared between Strzok and Page during the 2016 campaign season, appear to point to Strzok’ participation in a vast conspiracy to gather intelligence on the Trump campaign and then to undermine his presidency on the unexpected chance of his election.
“There’s no big there there.”
Two days after Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named Mueller as special counsel, Strzok, who at that time was the lead investigator on the Russia probe texted, “There’s no big there there.”
Peter Strzok wasn’t just a minor bureaucrat with the bureau, as some outlets tried to imply in their coverage of the issue. He was the Chief of the FBI’s Counterespionage Section, and lead investigator into Clinton’s use of a personal server. He then led the FBI’s investigation of Russia interference as the Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Division until he was replaced in the summer of 2017.
Page confirmed that the no “there there” was in fact the quality of the Russia investigation. This means that a special counsel was appointed even though key FBI officials knew that there wasn’t anything there.
Page’s testimony provides strong confirmation that the decision by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to name Mueller as special counsel, who then brought in Strzok to lead the Russia-gate team, was not an objective, innocent affair. In actuality, it points to criminal use of the government’s counterintelligence capabilities to engage in a partisan manipulation of the electoral process.
Some liberals, and even some radicals, pose questions like, “Even if those officials engaged in questionable activity, why should that be of concern for progressive forces, especially since this presidency represents the forefront of a neo-fascist movement in the U.S?”
There are three interconnected reasons why progressives should be concerned:
First: The normalization of the assault on bourgeois democracy: If elements of the capitalist class, in coordination with the major intelligence agencies, can successfully conspire to undermine and/or control an individual duly elected by the processes of U.S. democracy, as flawed as it may be, what does it suggest for a strategy that sees the electoral arena as a primary space for advancing progressive candidates and oppositional movements?
The ruling class will go to great depths to maintain power: The fact that elements of the ruling class are prepared to undermine a member of their own class because that individual represents social forces that the financial and corporatist elite have determined are a threat to their interests must make us question “What would happen if a true radical was able to win high office? We are already seeing the effects as so-called progressives and radicals are aligning with and supporting these elements due to their shared hatred for Trump is still largely a reactionary approach that contains no long-term strategy for building and sustaining actual power.
Second: By aligning politically with the U.S. based transnational ruling class that sees Trump as a threat to their interests, liberals and some left forces have abandoned positions and left them to the radical right, with the objective result of providing support for the very same narrow, racist, U.S.-centric, and proto-fascist forces that liberals and the left claim to be opposed to.
The critique and rejection of NATO, supporting de-escalation of tensions with Russia, exposing hegemony of finance capital, revealing the anti-democratic nature of the European Union, opposing international “trade” agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership and trans-Atlantic Investment Partnership, demanding that U.S. forces withdraw from Syria and questioning the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading right-wing Wahhabism throughout the world, are now positions taken up by the right because the imperial left has aligned itself with the agenda of transnational capital and its imperialist objectives in lieu of presenting a people’s agenda.
Third: Consequently, the criticism of Trump’s foreign policies, including approaches on North Korea and Russia by Democrats, is coming from positions to the right of Trump! The result is a political environment in which the possibility of escalating military conflicts with Russia, Iran or even at some point with China, is becoming a more normalized and realistic possibility.
The Clinton News Network (CNN) along with MSNBC, the Washington Post and New York Times are desperately trying to salvage the underlying theme of the assault on the Trump administration: that it’s supposed collusion with foreign sources, specifically the Russians, may have had a significant impact on why Clinton lost the election. And they also hold that any deviation from that declaration by Trump and his administration are just attempts at obstruction of justice.
With the revelations about the role and activities of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, the Comey leak to the press, with the express purpose to create a pretext for the appointment of a special counsel, the placing of an FBI informant in the Trump campaign, the role of Andrew McCabe in covering up for his subordinates and leaking classified information to the press, the “primary narrative” of the Democrat party and liberals is starting to unravel.
Abuse of state power is nothing new.
This would not be the first time that powerful unelected elements in the state have moved to manipulate political outcomes based on an agenda that the public had no knowledge of or even to remove a president. People have forgotten or didn’t make the correct connection that the famous source of information that brought down Richard Nixon, Bernstein’s and Woodman’s “deep throat” was Mark Felt, the Associate Director of the FBI!
And like the question raised to Nixon and Watergate then, but will only be raised by the Black Agenda Report today is, “What did Obama know and when did he know it?”
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. His latest publications include contributions to Jackson Rising: The Struggle for Economic Democracy and Self-Determination in Jackson, Mississippi. He can be reached at: Ajamubaraka.com
The Silence of the Whores
By Craig Murray | July 25, 2018
The mainstream media are making almost no effort today to fit Charlie Rowley’s account of his poisoning into the already ludicrous conspiracy theory being peddled by the government and intelligence agencies.
ITV News gamely inserted the phrase “poisoned by a Russian nerve agent” into their exclusive interview with Charlie Rowley, an interview in which they managed to ask no penetrating questions whatsoever, and of which they only broadcast heavily edited parts. Their own website contains this comment by their journalist Rupert Evelyn:
He said it was unopened, the box it was in was sealed, and that they had to use a knife in order to cut through it.
“That raises the question: if it wasn’t used, is this the only Novichok that exists in this city? And was it the same Novichok used to attack Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
But the information about opening the packet with a knife is not in the linked interview. What Rowley does say in the interview is that the box was still sealed in its cellophane. Presumably it was the cellophane he slit open with a knife.
So how can this fit in to the official government account? Presumably the claim is that Russian agents secretly visited the Skripal house, sprayed novichok on the door handle from this perfume bottle, and then, at an unknown location, disassembled the nozzle from the bottle (Mr Rowley said he had to insert it), then repackaged and re-cellophaned the bottle prior to simply leaving it to be discovered somewhere – presumably somewhere indoors as it still looked new – by Mr Rowley four months later. However it had not been found by anyone else in the interim four months of police, military and security service search.
Frankly, the case for this being the bottle allegedly used to coat the Skripals’ door handle looks wildly improbable. But then the entire government story already looked wildly improbable anyway – to the extent that I literally do not know a single person, even among my more right wing family and friends, who believes it. The reaction of the media, who had shamelessly been promoting the entirely evidence free “the Russians did it” narrative, to Mr Rowley’s extremely awkward piece of news has been to shove it as far as possible down the news agenda and make no real effort to reconcile it.
By his own account, Mr Rowley is not a reliable witness, his memory affected by the “Novichok”. It is not unreasonable to conjecture there may also be other reasons why he is vague about where and how he came into possession of this package of perfume.
The perfume bottle is now in the hands of the Police. Is it not rather strange that they have not published photos of it, to see if it jogs the memory of a member of the public who saw it somewhere in the last four months, or saw somebody with it? The “perpetrators” know what it looks like and already know the police have it, so that would not give away any dangerous information. You might believe the lockdown of the story and control of the narrative is more important to the authorities than solving the crime, which we should not forget is now murder.
Graham, Menendez team up for bipartisan anti-Russia bill
RT | July 24, 2018
Senators Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Bob Menendez (D-New Jersey) are working on a draft law that would impose sanctions on Russian sovereign debt and demand Senate approval for US quitting NATO, among other things.
The two senators announced on Tuesday they will be introducing the new sanctions law “to ensure the maximum impact on the Kremlin’s campaign against our democracy and the rules-based international order.”
The US must make it clear it will “not waver in our rejection of [Russian President Vladimir Putin’s] effort to erode western democracy as a strategic imperative for Russia’s future,” Graham and Menendez said.
Although the bill is still being drafted, Graham and Menendez said it would include increased sanctions on Russian energy and financial sectors, “oligarchs and parastatal entities” and on sovereign debt as well as sanctions against “cyber actors in Russia.”
It will also establish a National Center to Respond to Russian Threats and a sanctions coordinator office at the State Department, demand reports on implementing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), and authorize financial aid to “bolster democratic institutions across Europe to defend against Russian interference.”
Last, but not least, the bill would impose a Senate approval requirement for US withdrawal from NATO.
Graham is an outspoken foreign policy hawk and long-time wingman of the Russia-obsessed Senator John McCain (R-Arizona). Last week, he called for the World Cup soccer ball, presented as a gift to President Donald Trump by his Russian counterpart at the summit in Helsinki, Finland to be examined for surveillance devices.
As the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Menendez is a powerful voice among the Democrats, who continue blaming Russia for the outcome of the 2016 US presidential election.
It is unclear how much support the Graham-Menendez bill will get in the Senate. However, CAATSA was approved 98-2 last year.
Just last week, the Senate voted 98-0 on a nonbinding resolution expressing the sense that the “United States should refuse to make available any current or former diplomat, civil servant, political appointee, law enforcement official or member of the Armed Forces of the United States for questioning by the government or Vladimir Putin,” in response to false reports that former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul would be “handed over” to Moscow.
The Burden Of Proof Is On The Russiagaters
By Caitlin Johnstone | Medium | July 23, 2018
I saw a Twitter thread between two journalists the other day which completely summarized my experience of debating the establishment Russia narrative on online forums lately. Aaron Maté, who is in my opinion one of the clearest voices out there on American Russia hysteria, was approached with an argument by a journalist named Jonathan M Katz. Maté engaged the argument by asking for evidence of the claims Katz was making, only to be given the runaround.
I’m going to copy the back-and-forth into the text here for anyone who doesn’t feel like scrolling through a Twitter thread, not because I am interested in the petty rehashing of a meaningless Twitter spat, but because it’s such a perfect example of what I want to talk about here.
Are you aware of what Russian agents did during the 2016 presidential election, by chance?
— Jonathan M. Katz 🐱 (@KatzOnEarth) July 19, 2018
Katz: Are you aware of what Russian agents did during the 2016 presidential election, by chance?
Maté: I’m aware of what Mueller has accused Russian agents of — are we supposed to just reflexively believe the assertions of prosecutors & intelligence officials now, or is it ok to wait for the evidence? (as I did in the tweet you’re replying to)
Katz: Why are you even asking this question if you’re just going to discard the reams of evidence that have supplied by investigators, spies, and journalists over the last two years?
Maté: Why are you avoiding answering the Q I asked? If I can guess, it’s cause doing so would mean acknowledging your position requires taking gov’t claims on faith. Re: “reams of evidence”, I’ve actually written about it extensively, and disagree that it’s convincing.
Katz: Yeah I’m familiar with your work. You’re asking for someone to summarize two years of reporting, grand jury indictments, reports from independent analysts, give agencies both American and foreign, and on and on just so you can handwave and draw some vague equivalencies.
Maté: No, actually I’ve asked 2 Qs in this thread, both of which have been avoided: 1) what evidence convinces you that Russia will attack the midterms 2) are we supposed to reflexively believe the assertions of prosecutors & intel officials now, or is it ok to wait for the evidence?
Katz: See this is what you do. You pretend like all of the evidence produced by journalists, independent analysts and foreign governments doesn’t exist so you can accuse anyone who doesn’t buy this SF Cohen Putinist bullshit you’re selling of being a deep state shill.
Maté: Except I haven’t said anything about anyone being a “deep state shill”, here or anywhere else. So that’s your embellishment. I’m simply asking whether we should accept IC/prosecutor claims on faith. Mueller does lay out a case, that’s true, but no evidence yet.
Katz: No. You should not accept a prosecutor’s claims on faith. You should read independent analyses, evidence gathered by journalists and other agencies, and compare all it to what is known on the public record. And you could if you wanted to.
Katz continued to evade and deflect until eventually exiting the conversation. Meanwhile another journalist, The Intercept‘s Sam Biddle, interjected that the debate was “a big waste of” Katz’s time and called Maté an “inverse louise mensch”, all for maintaining the posture of skepticism and asking for evidence. Maté invited Katz and Biddle to debate their positions on The Real News, to which Biddle replied, “No thank you, but I have some advice: If everyone has gotten it wrong, you should figure out who really did it! If not Russia, find out who really hacked the DNC, find out who really spearphished American election officials. Even OJ pretended to search for the real killer.”
Biddle then, as you would expect, blocked Maté on Twitter.
If you were to spend an entire day debating Russiagate online (and I am in no way suggesting that you should), it is highly unlikely that you would see anything from the proponents of the establishment Russia narrative other than the textbook fallacious debate tactics exhibited by Katz and Biddle in that thread. It had the entire spectrum:
Gish gallop — The tactic of providing a stack of individually weak arguments to create the illusion of one solid argument, illustrated when Katz cited unspecified “reams of evidence” resulting from “two years of reporting, grand jury indictments, reports from independent analysts, give agencies both American and foreign.” He even claimed he shouldn’t have to go through that evidence point-by-point because there’s too much of it, which is like a poor man’s Gish gallop fallacy.
Argumentum ad populum — The “it’s true because so many agree that it is true” argument that Katz attempted to imply in invoking all the “journalists, independent analysts and foreign governments” who assert that Russia interfered in a meaningful way in America’s 2016 elections and intends to interfere in the midterms.
Ad hominem — Biddle’s “inverse louise mensch”. You have no argument, so you insult the other party instead.
Attempting to shift the burden of proof — Biddle’s suggestion that Maté needs to prove that someone else other than the Russian government did the things Russia is accused of doing. Biddle is implying that the establishment Russia narrative should be assumed true until somebody has proved it to be false, a tactic known as an appeal to ignorance.
I’d like to talk about this last one a bit, because it underpins the entire CIA/CNN Russia narrative.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
~ Sagan
“What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
~ Hitchens
“We have to believe that Russia is attacking our democracy because the TV and the CIA told us to.”
~ Russiagaters— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 22, 2018
As we’ve discussed previously, in a post-Iraq invasion world the confident-sounding assertions of spies, government officials and media pundits is not sufficient evidence for the public to rationally support claims that are being used to escalate dangerous cold war tensions with a nuclear superpower. The western empire has every motive in the world to lie about the behaviors of a noncompliant government, and has an extensive and well-documented history of doing exactly that. Hard, verifiable, publicly available proof is required. Assertions are not evidence.
But even if there wasn’t an extensive and recent history of disastrous US-led escalations premised on lies advanced by spies, government officials and media pundits, the burden of proof would still be on those making the claim, because that’s how logic works. Whether you’re talking about law, philosophy or debate, the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim. A group of spies, government officials and media pundits saying that something happened in an assertive tone of voice is not the same thing as proof. That side of the Russiagate debate is the side making the claim, so the burden of proof is on them. Until proof is made publicly available, there is no logical reason for the public to accept the CIA/CNN Russia narrative as fact, because the burden of proof has not been met.
This concept is important to understand on the scale of individual debates on the subject during political discourse, and it is important to understand on the grand scale of the entire Russia narrative as well. All the skeptical side of the debate needs to do is stand back and demand that the burden of proof be met, but this often gets distorted in discourse on the subject. The Sam Biddles of the world all too frequently attempt to confuse the situation by asserting that it is the skeptics who must provide an alternative version of events and somehow produce irrefutable proof about the behaviors of highly opaque government agencies. This is fallacious, and it is backwards.
I understand why skeptics are eager to come up with counter-narratives which contradict the 2016 Russian hacking allegations, but remember: that’s not how the burden of proof works. You don’t need to prove the Russians didn’t do it, the US government needs to prove that they did.
— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) July 16, 2018
There are many Russiagate skeptics who have been doing copious amounts of research to come up with other theories about what could have happened in 2016, and that’s fine. But in a way this can actually make the debate more confused, because instead of leaning back and insisting that the burden of proof be met, you are leaning in and trying to convince everyone of your alternative theory. Russiagaters love this more than anything, because you’ve shifted the burden of proof for them. Now you’re the one making the claims, so they can lean back and come up with reasons to be skeptical of your argument. Empire loyalists like Sam Biddle would like nothing more than to get skeptics like Aaron Maté falling all over themselves trying to prove a negative, but that’s not how the burden of proof works, and there’s no good reason to play into it.
Until hard, verifiable proof of Russian election interference and/or collusion with the Trump campaign is made publicly available, we are winning this debate as long as we continue pointing out that this proof doesn’t exist. All you have to do to beat a Russiagater in a debate is point this out. They’ll cite assertions made by the US intelligence community, but assertions are not proof. They’ll cite the assertions made in the recent Mueller indictment as proof, but all the indictment contains is more assertions. The only reason Russiagaters confuse assertions for proof is because the mass media treats them as such, but there’s no reason to play along with that delusion.
There is no good reason to play along with escalations between nuclear superpowers when their premise consists of nothing but narrative and assertions. It is right to demand that those escalations cease until the public who is affected by them has had a full, informed say. Until the burden of proof has been met, that has not even begun to happen.
Moon-Strzok No More, Lisa Page Spills the Beans
By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | July 23, 2018
Former FBI attorney Lisa Page has reportedly told a joint committee of the House of Representatives that when FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok texted her on May 19, 2017 saying there was “no big there there,” he meant there was no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.
It was clearly a bad-luck day for Strzok, when on Friday the 13th this month Page gave her explanation of the text to the House Judiciary and Oversight/Government Reform Committees and in effect threw her lover, Strzok, under the bus.
Strzok’s apparent admission to Page about there being “no big there there” was reported on Friday by John Solomon in The Hill based on multiple sources who he said were present during Page’s closed door interview.
Strzok’s text did not come out of the blue. For the previous ten months he and his FBI subordinates had been trying every-which-way to ferret out some “there” — preferably a big “there” — but had failed miserably. It is appearing more and more likely that there was nothing left for them to do but to make it up out of whole cloth, with the baton then passed to special counsel Robert Mueller.
The “no there there” text came just two days after former FBI Director James Comey succeeded in getting his friend Mueller appointed to investigate the alleged collusion that Strzok was all but certain wasn’t there.
Strzok during his public testimony earlier this month.
Robert Parry, the late founder and editor of Consortium News whom Solomon described to me last year as his model for journalistic courage and professionalism, was already able to discern as early as March 2017 the outlines of what is now Deep State-gate, and, typically, was the first to dare report on its implications.
Parry’s article, written two and a half months before Strzok texted the self-incriminating comment to Page on there being “no big there there,” is a case study in professional journalism. His very first sentence entirely anticipated Strzok’s text: “The hysteria over ‘Russia-gate’ continues to grow … but at its core there may be no there there.”(Emphasis added.)
As for “witch-hunts,” Bob and others at Consortiumnews.com, who didn’t succumb to the virulent HWHW (Hillary Would Have Won) virus, and refused to slurp the Kool-Aid offered at the deep Deep State trough, have come close to being burned at the stake — virtually. Typically, Bob stuck to his guns: he ran an organ (now vestigial in most Establishment publications) that sifted through and digested actual evidence and expelled drivel out the other end.
Those of us following the example set by Bob Parry are still taking a lot of incoming fire — including from folks on formerly serious — even progressive — websites. Nor do we expect a cease-fire now, even with Page’s statement (about which, ten days after her interview, the Establishment media keep a timorous silence). Far too much is at stake.
As Mark Twain put it, “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” And, as we have seen over the past couple of years, that goes in spades for “Russia-gate.” For many of us who have looked into it objectively and written about it dispassionately, we are aware, that on this issue, we are looked upon as being in sync with President Donald Trump.
Blind hatred for the man seems to thwart any acknowledgment that he could ever be right about something—anything. This brings considerable awkwardness. Chalk it up to the price of pursuing the truth, no matter what bedfellows you end up with.
Courage at The Hill
Page: Coughs up the meaning of ‘there.’
Solomon’s article merits a careful read, in toto. Here are the most germane paragraphs:
“It turns out that what Strzok and Lisa Page were really doing that day [May 19, 2017] was debating whether they should stay with the FBI and try to rise through the ranks to the level of an assistant director (AD) or join Mueller’s special counsel team. [Page has since left the FBI.]
“‘Who gives a f*ck, one more AD [Assistant Director] like [redacted] or whoever?’” Strzok wrote, weighing the merits of promotion, before apparently suggesting what would be a more attractive role: ‘An investigation leading to impeachment?’ …
“A few minutes later Strzok texted his own handicap of the Russia evidence: ‘You and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely, I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there.’
“So the FBI agents who helped drive the Russia collusion narrative — as well as Rosenstein’s decision to appoint Mueller — apparently knew all along that the evidence was going to lead to ‘nothing’ and, yet, they proceeded because they thought there was still a possibility of impeachment.”
Solomon adds: “How concerned you are by this conduct is almost certainly affected by your love or hatred for Trump. But put yourself for a second in the hot seat of an investigation by the same FBI cast of characters: You are under investigation for a crime the agents don’t think occurred, but the investigation still advances because the desired outcome is to get you fired from your job. Is that an FBI you can live with?”
The Timing
As noted, Strzok’s text was written two days after Mueller was appointed on May 17, 2016. The day before, on May 16, The New York Times published a story that Comey leaked to it through an intermediary that was expressly designed (as Comey admitted in Congressional testimony three weeks later) to lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Hmmmmm.
Had Strzok forgotten to tell his boss that after ten months of his best investigative efforts — legal and other—he could find no “there there”?
Comey’s leak, by the way, was about alleged pressure from Trump on Comey to go easy on Gen. Michael Flynn for lying at an impromptu interrogation led by — you guessed it — the ubiquitous, indispensable Peter Strzok.
In any event, the operation worked like a charm — at least at first. And — absent revelation of the Strzok-Page texts — it might well have continued to succeed. After Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein named Mueller, one of Comey’s best buddies, to be special counsel, Mueller, in turn, picked Strzok to lead the Russia-gate team, until the summer, when the Department of Justice Inspector General was given the Strzok-Page texts and refused to sit on them.
A Timeline
Here’s a timeline, which might be helpful:
2017
May 16: Comey leak to NY Times to get a special counsel appointed
May 17: Special counsel appointed — namely, Robert Mueller.
May 19: Strzok confides to girlfriend Page, “No big there there.”
July: Mueller appoints Strzok lead FBI Agent on collusion investigation.
August: Mueller removes Strzok after learning of his anti-Trump texts to Page.
Dec. 12: DOJ IG releases some, but by no means all, relevant Strzok-Page texts to Congress and the media, which first reports on Strzok’s removal in August.
2018
June 14: DOJ IG Report Published.
June 15; Strzok escorted out of FBI Headquarters.
June 21: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces Strzok has lost his security clearances.
July 12: Strzok testifies to House committees. Solomon reports he refused to answer question about the “there there” text.
July 13: Lisa Page interviewed by same committees. Answers the question.
Earlier: Bob Parry in Action
Journalist Robert Parry
On December 12, 2017, as soon as first news broke of the Strzok-Page texts, Bob Parry and I compared notes by phone. We agreed that this was quite big and that, clearly, Russia-gate had begun to morph into something like FBI-gate. It was rare for Bob to call me before he wrote; in retrospect, it seemed to have been merely a sanity check.
The piece Bob posted early the following morning was typical Bob. Many of those who click on the link will be surprised that, last December, he already had pieced together most of the story. Sadly, it turned out to be Bob’s last substantive piece before he fell seriously ill. Earlier last year he had successfully shot downother Russia-gate-related canards on which he found Establishment media sorely lacking — “Facebook-gate,” for example.
Remarkably, it has taken another half-year for Congress and the media to address — haltingly — the significance of Deep State-gate — however easy it has become to dissect the plot, and identify the main plotters. With Bob having prepared the way with his Dec.13 article, I followed up a few weeks later with “The FBI Hand Behind Russia-gate,” in the process winning no friends among those still suffering from the highly resistant HWHW virus.
VIPS
Parry also deserves credit for his recognition and appreciation of the unique expertise and analytical integrity among Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and giving us a secure, well respected home at Consortium News.
It is almost exactly a year since Bob took a whole lot of flak for publishing what quickly became VIPS’ most controversial, and at the same time perhaps most important, Memorandum For the President; namely, “Intelligence Veterans Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence.”
Critics have landed no serious blows on the key judgments of that Memorandum, which rely largely on the type of forensic evidence that Comey failed to ensure was done by his FBI because the Bureau never seized the DNC server. Still more forensic evidence has become available over recent months to be soon revealed on Consortium News, confirming our conclusions.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and, in retirement, co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
GOP Senators Graham, Rubio Call for Further ‘Heavy-Handed’ Sanctions on Russia
Sputnik – July 22, 2018
US Senators Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are calling for new sanctions to be imposed on Russia, citing — as always — allegations of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential elections. According to Graham, the new sanctions must be imposed before the second meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“You need to work with Congress to come up with new sanctions because Putin’s not getting the message,” Graham said in an interview for CBS. “We need new sanctions, heavy-handed sanctions, hanging over his head, and then meet with him.”
Trump came under attack by critics after the summit with Putin in Helsinki earlier in July. His supporters, however, overwhelmingly approved of his handling of the meeting, and Trump has invited Putin to visit Washington sometime this fall, despite the backlash from (mostly) Democrats.
Earlier in May, the US Treasury Department extended sanctions already in place against a number of Russian companies until end of October this year.
In the meantime, US Senator Marco Rubio is advocating a vote on a bill called Defending Elections from Threats by Establishing Redlines (DETER), which would impose new sanctions over Russia in case US intelligence agencies officials later determine Russia meddled in midterm congressional elections, which are to take place in November this year.
“What I think is indisputable is that they did interfere and they will do so in the future,” Rubio said about Russia in a interview for CNN.
“If our bill passes and the director of national intelligence says they interfered in 2018, these very tough sanctions will hit them. So Putin knows going in what the price of doing so is.”
The bill will also make imposing new sanctions more automatic, requiring simply a report by the US Director of National Intelligence to Congress that election meddling took place. As per the bill, the DNI’s word would make imposing sanctions mandatory. The sanctions would be triggered within 10 days after any meddling is said to have been found.
The bill has been backed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who called it a potential step Congress could take to “push back against Russia,” Reuters reports. Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer also called for sanctions, as well as for other deterrents.
US oil and gas industry companies are lobbying against tougher sanctions on Russia, fearing the sanctions might jeopardize their investments in the world’s biggest oil producing country.
Following the 2016 election that swept Trump into the Oval Office, the US intelligence community claimed Russia interfered in the contest through cyber-attacks and messaging on social media networks, with an aim to boost Trump’s candidacy.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied that Russia tried to influence the presidential election, and the claims have been met with skepticism by some in the US.
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’
More US Elites Calling for Sedition Against Trump Admin: For Them and America, It Won’t End Well
21st Century Wire | July 21, 2018
With every passing day, it gets worse. A new psychological disorder has swept through the halls of mainstream media, think tanks and academia. It’s called Putin-Trump Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTTSD), and it is spreading rapidly across every inch of the American political landscape.
As with any disorder or impairment, the first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. In the case of PTTSD, that hasn’t happened yet. As a result, many formerly well-qualified journalists and academics have fallen off the edge by willingly joining in with the hysteria.
The latest member of this unfortunate club is Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award winner, Tim Weiner, who in his recent Reuters piece, figures that because Donald Trump has questioned the official US Intelligence community (IC) conspiracy theory on Russian meddling in US politics, that the President is inviting their revenge. It’s almost as if Weiner and other IC court scribes are foreshadowing something similar to that whole “Bay of Pigs Thing” which is said to have befallen another US President many decades ago. Make no mistake, between then and now, this is the very same Establishment, or Deep State speaking to us, and it’s not a political admonishment – it’s a threat.
According to Weiner, by not accepting the biased opinion (not based on actual findings, but on opaque sources and methods) and official conspiracy theories, the claim the Russian government played some role in the US 2016 Presidential Election, the President is guilty of treason for what CNN and other media outlets have described this past week as, “throwing the US Intel and LEO agencies under the bus”.
Granted, it’s not such a big surprise to see this piece by Weiner after reading his short bio at the footer of this Reuters article which says that all of Weiner’s establishment awards have been “for reporting and writing on American intelligence.” Translated: the establishment are happy with Weiner’s depiction of their shady and highly illegal operations ‘to protect America’ and therefore he’s been rewarded by being granted ‘access’ to the dark clandestine corridors of power. Can a functionary of the establishment really call himself a journalist if his main concern to preserving the image of that institution? Weiner is not alone. Today the TV and airwaves are full of intelligence experts whose main purpose is to make the agencies look good, or at least not too bad. Maybe if Weiner could call himself a real journalist, he’d be attacking the US Intelligence monolith right now for their role in helping to launder a fictional defamation dossier on the current US President, as well as making-up a series of lies about imaginary ‘Russian plots’, or for lying about NSA Spying, or illegal US torture policy. Let’s not forget to mention a slew of fabricated intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction – all of which have been promulgated by many of the leading partisan US Intel voices currently shrieking about Trump-Russia collusion, namely James Clapper and John Brennan, and the other disgraced mandarins like FBI Director James Comey, who used informants to gather information on the Trump campaign and who presided over federal surveillance of a US presidential campaign, as well as Clinton-linked FBI deputy head Andrew McCabe, and partisan FBI operative Peter Strzok, along with the insane rhetoric of other ‘intelligence’ persons like the war-mongering lunatic Mike Morrel, and so many others. Rather than “protect and serve” the American people, these men have instead made a concerted effort to serve themselves and protect their own political interests. Like so many others in their privileged positions, if Weiner pivoted and decided to do the job of a real journalist, then he would no longer be granted the prized ‘access’ required to maintain his own inflated position within the government-military-media complex. But play the role of court scribe and you will be surely rewarded with a job for life, just ask the cast of CNN.
The problem for these elite scribes now is that after losing their collective marbles over Trump-Russian intrigue, is that many of these former intellectuals will ever be taken seriously again. They’ve sacrificed their reputations as thinkers in favor of partisan solidarity.
Below is award-winning writer Tim Weiner’s desperate lunge at Donald Trump, a veritable festival of Deep State virtue-signalling to the establishment on whom he depends on to maintain his own lofty status within the Washington’s keep:
Trump has attacked U.S. intel agencies. Expect them to strike back.
The foundations of American national security are under assault. The battle lines are drawn. On one side stand the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency. On the other: the commander-in-chief of the United States.
Donald Trump’s appalling performance in Helsinki was a subversive act. He rejected the conclusion of American intelligence that his election was aided by a hydra-headed act of political warfare controlled by the Kremlin. He did so with a wink and a smile for the smirking autocrat who led the attack.
Trump called the investigation of the Russian operation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller “a disaster for our country.” He accepted Vladimir Putin’s denial that anything of the kind ever happened. Trump likewise leapt at and embraced Putin’s cynical and empty proposal to cooperate with Mueller – “an incredible offer,” he said. The likelihood of Moscow’s spies willingly sharing secrets with the FBI is nil.
The display of fealty to Moscow was indelible. Then Trump tried to erase it. Back in the White House on Tuesday, he said he didn’t say what he meant or mean what he said.
In Helsinki it was “President Putin… said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” Disavowing himself, reading from a script the day after, Trump demurred: “I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t.’” Rather like a groom at the altar saying: “I don’t.”
It was an utterly unconvincing excuse. Trump consistently has denied everything about the “Russia hoax” and attacked the institutions and individuals investigating the conspiracy to subvert American democracy – in particular, the American intelligence community. He has compared intelligence officers to Nazis and derided FBI agents as corrupt.
Intelligence agencies should never have allowed this fake news to “leak” into the public. One last shot at me. Are we living in Nazi Germany?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017
But they have the power to strike back. For two years now, high-ranking veterans of American intelligence have sounded the alarm about Trump in the starkest language possible.
In August 2016 the former acting CIA director Mike Morell wrote this in a New York Times op-ed: “In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” Five days before the election, writing in the Washington Post, former CIA and NSA chief Mike Hayden used a Russian term: polezni durak, a useful fool, “manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.” Hours after Helsinki, former CIA director John Brennan described Trump’s performance as “nothing short of treasonous.” Former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in May 2017, tweeted: “All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall.”
Here, Weiner makes two fatal assumptions:
I’ve been reporting and writing about intelligence and national security for three decades. I’m convinced that the threat of an American “deep state” died with J. Edgar Hoover. The former FBI director died six weeks before the June 1972 Watergate break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters – the 20th-century precursor of the Russia hack.
Educated readers will have already picked these up, but in case you missed it, his two fatal assumptions (or obfuscations) are:
- There is no Deep State
- Russia hacked the DNC
Despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary, both of these two talking points keep getting passed around and recycled ad nauseam. The second point is backed-up by the long-debunked establishment lie that “all 17 Intelligence Agencies agree” that Russia hacked/influenced the outcome of the US election. As with so many like him, instead of calling out the lie, Weiner leans on it.
Rather than acknowledge why so many Americans (and the world) have lost all faith in the so-called “intelligence community,” establishment stenographers are instead doubling-down by crowing about the IC’s impeccable credentials and patriotic virtues. This is just one example of many throughout history, of institutional depravity brought on by decades of denial and corruption. Even when caught red-handed, gatekeepers will still cry and invoke victimhood. In this case, that means blaming Trump and ‘the Russians’ for their own sordid and well-earned reputation.
Concerned with his own social desirability and career access, Weiner joins in the huddle, feigning the victimization of the poor “Intelligence Community” and thus, dutifully defending the establishment line.
You can read the rest of Weiner’s Deep State soliloquy here.
Like Tennessee Rep. Steve Cohen and others, what Weiner has done here is not just declaring political war on the President of the United States. These operatives are using their privileged access to the corporate media airwaves to openly call for a sedition against a sitting US President.
Where are our military folks ? The Commander in Chief is in the hands of our enemy! https://t.co/3eF7OLKEdN
— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) July 16, 2018
So after two long years of conspiracy theorizing about Russian plots and sinister capers, it’s easy to see how on a domestic political level this culture of hysteria is mostly motivated by partisan politics; one faction lost their access to power and opportunities to another rival faction. On a wider systematic level however, this fissure has revealed the existence of a bona fide Deep State whose thread is woven right through the civil service, intelligence agencies and corporate media, and whose paid functionaries have clearly demonstrated a rigid propensity for group think. Call it what you like; ‘closing ranks’, or a collective survival reflex, but it’s difficult to deny this undeclared entity that moves in unison and with a clarity of purpose – a raison d’etre of self-preservation.
But what should really worry onlookers is the level of desperation and pure lunacy we are seeing at present. Here’s a perfect example which is by no means an isolated one – where former Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks went so far as to compare the recent Trump-Putin Summit as the equivalent of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Sept 11th Attacks. Watch:
“His performance today will live in infamy as much as the Pearl Harbor attack or Kristallnacht.”
– Fmr. Watergate Prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks on Trump’s comments at the Helsinki summit pic.twitter.com/pp5YuNw1pi
— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) July 17, 2018
This is way beyond unhinged, with the problem now being that one cannot simply ‘walk-back’ this level of debased discourse. Rather than facing the truth of the situation, the legions of dishonest and self-serving plutocrats are showing their true faces. Where can American politics go from here? There’s really only one answer: into the ground.
An American Rapture
What we are witnessing is a political rapture which may result in a more unstable rather than stable political landscape moving forward in the short-term. It’s possible that what will emerge afterwards will not be the same establishment it was prior to 2016, and where power may be temporarily dispersed rather than consolidated. Power will no longer remain locked inside the binary two party power-sharing arrangement. Elites will have to negotiate with a whole range of splintered factions on both sides of the old paradigm. This means there will be an intense scramble for power over key nodes of the political economy, especially in government agencies, and of course in the area media and communication. Fueled by their disdain of Trump and fetish with all things Russian, partisan elites are now rummaging for the scraps of power, and they will happily cannibalize the country, its institutions, and even the US Constitution in order to take what they truly believe is rightfully theirs. This scramble for the spoils of political war may leave America worse off than it was before this current upheaval. Just look at how the phony ‘fake news’ crisis was spurred on by the corporate media and its Silicon Valley partners. Although it was based on an alarmist false premise, the ‘fake news’ crisis has still used as a catalyst to enact more control and censorship over free speech and expression on social media platforms. That censorship has triggered moves to develop other new platforms where millions of users are decoupling from Facebook and Twitter’s digital data plantations.
Those who are able to rise above the partisan hysteria will become self-actualized free agents through this American rapture. Those who cannot will remain in the stone age, relatively speaking.
As things become uglier and more disjointed, the vaunted “intelligence community” and their loyal lap-dogs in the “free press”, will only have themselves to blame for that.
Perhaps America’s only chance for salvation is to overcome its self-induced PTTSD condition.
Maybe Eli Lilly or Bayer can come up with a pill for that.
US Oil Companies Allegedly Lobbying Congress Not to Ramp Up Russia Sanctions
Sputnik – 21.07.2018
With this week’s US-Russia summit in Helsinki setting off a new wave of media speculation about Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US election, the US Congress is mulling a new round of sanctions against Moscow.
The US oil industry, which is already feeling the pinch of Washington’s sanctions imposed upon Russia, is pushing against tighter sanctions on Moscow. They fear the new restrictions could impact their investments in the world’s biggest oil producing country, Reuters reported, citing congressional sources on Friday.
The US Congress is mulling over a bill which, if passed, would toughen sanctions on Russia if it transpires that Moscow’s alleged meddling in the US election had gone even further than initially believed, the agency wrote.
Even though most of the sources Reuters spoke to refused to name the companies coming out against new sanctions on Russia, one Senate aide said that the US-Russia Chamber of Commerce was raising concerns about the legislation.
The Texas-based chamber, which is a non-profit organization, brings together leading US oil and gas companies, such as Exxon Mobil, who has previously opposed anti-Russian sanctions, and Chevron.
Opponents claim sanctions unfairly penalize US firms while allowing their foreign rivals such as Royal Dutch Shell and BP to operate in Russia.
The Chamber and company representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
This year ExxonMobil will exit some joint oil ventures with Russia’s Rosneft citing Western sanctions first imposed in 2014 and further expanded by the US Congress in 2017.
Bending under pressure, ExxonMobil and its affiliates said they would abide by the legislators’ demands.
On June 17, 2018, Paul Ryan, Speaker of the US House of Representatives, said that Congress was ready to consider a new package of anti-Russian sanctions over Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 US election – a claim Russia has repeatedly denied.
Mass Dementia in the Western Establishment
By Diana Johnstone | Ron Paul Institute | July 21, 2018
Where to begin to analyze the madness of mainstream media in reaction to the Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki? By focusing on the individual, psychology has neglected the problem of mass insanity, which has now overwhelmed the United States establishment, its mass media and most of its copycat European subsidiaries. The individuals may be sane, but as a herd they are ready to leap off the cliff.
For the past two years, a particular power group has sought to explain away its loss of power – or rather, its loss of the Presidency, as it still holds a predominance of institutional power – by creation of a myth. Mainstream media is known for its herd behavior, and in this case the editors, commentators, journalists have talked themselves into a story that initially they themselves could hardly take seriously.
Donald Trump was elected by Russia?
On the face of it, this is preposterous. Okay, the United States can manage to rig elections in Honduras, or Serbia, or even Ukraine, but the United States is a bit too big and complex to leave the choice of the Presidency to a barrage of electronic messages totally unread by most voters. If this were so, Russia wouldn’t need to try to “undermine our democracy”. It would mean that our democracy was already undermined, in tatters, dead. A standing corpse ready to be knocked over by a tweet.
Even if, as is alleged without evidence, an army of Russian bots (even bigger than the notorious Israeli army of bots) was besieging social media with its nefarious slanders against poor innocent Hillary Clinton, this could determine an election only in a vacuum, with no other influences in the field. But there was a lot of other stuff going on in the 2016 election, some for Trump and some for Hillary, and Hillary herself scored a crucial own goal by denigrating millions of Americans as “deplorables” because they didn’t fit into her identity politics constituencies.
The Russians could do nothing to build support for Trump, and there is not a hint of evidence that they tried. They might have done something to harm Hillary, because there was so much there: the private server emails, the Clinton foundation, the murder of Moammer Gaddafi, the call for a no-fly zone in Syria … they didn’t have to invent it. It was there. So was the hanky panky at the Democratic National Committee, on which the Clintonite accusations focus, perhaps to cause everyone to forget much worse things.
When you come to think of it, the DNC scandal focused on Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not on Hillary herself. Screaming about “Russian hacking the DNC” has been a distraction from much more serious accusations against Hillary Clinton. Bernie Sanders supporters didn’t need those “revelations” to make them stop loving Hillary or even to discover that the DNC was working against Bernie. It was always perfectly obvious.
So at worst, “the Russians” are accused of revealing some relatively minor facts concerning the Hillary Clinton campaign. Big deal.
But that is enough, after two years of fakery, to send the establishment into a frenzy of accusations of “treason” when Trump does what he said he would do while campaigning, try to normalize relations with Russia.
This screaming comes not only from the US mainstream, but also from that European elite which has been housebroken for seventy years as obedient poodles, dachshunds or corgis in the American menagerie, via intense vetting by US trans-Atlantic “cooperation” associations. They have based their careers on the illusion of sharing the world empire by following US whims in the Middle East and transforming the mission of their armed forces from defense into foreign intervention units of NATO under US command. Having not thought seriously about the implications of this for over half a century, they panic at the suggestion of being left to themselves.
The Western elite is now suffering from self-inflicted dementia.
Donald Trump is not particularly articulate, navigating through the language with a small repetitive vocabulary, but what he said at his Helsinki press conference was honest and even brave. As the hounds bay for his blood, he quite correctly refused to endorse the “findings” of US intelligence agencies, fourteen years after the same agencies “found” that Iraq was bursting with weapons of mass destruction. How in the world could anyone expect anything else?
But for the mainstream media, “the story” at the Helsinki summit, even the only story, was Trump’s reaction to the, er, trumped up charges of Russian interference in our democracy. Were you or were you not elected thanks to Russian hackers? All they wanted was a yes or no answer. Which could not possibly be yes. So they could write their reports in advance.
Anyone who has frequented mainstream journalists, especially those who cover the “big stories” on international affairs, is aware of their obligatory conformism, with few exceptions. To get the job, one must have important “sources”, meaning government spokesmen who are willing to tell you what “the story” is, often without being identified. Once they know what “the story” is, competition sets in: competition as to how to tell it. That leads to an escalation of rhetoric, variations on the theme: “The President has betrayed our great country to the Russian enemy. Treason!”
This demented chorus on “Russian hacking” prevented mainstream media from even doing their job. Not even mentioning, much less analyzing, any of the real issues at the summit. To find analysis, one must go on line, away from the official fake news to independent reporting. For example, the Moon of Alabama site offers an intelligent interpretation of the Trump strategy, which sounds infinitely more plausible than “the story.” In short, Trump is trying to woo Russia away from China, in a reverse version of Kissinger’s strategy forty years ago to woo China away from Russia, thus avoiding a continental alliance against the United States. This may not work because the United States has proven so untrustworthy that the cautious Russians are highly unlikely to abandon their alliance with China for shadows. But it makes perfect sense as an explanation of Trump’s policy, unlike the caterwauling we’ve been hearing from Senators and talking heads on CNN.
Those people seem to have no idea of what diplomacy is about. They cannot conceive of agreements that would be beneficial to both sides. No, it’s got to be a zero sum game, winner take all. If they win, we lose, and vice versa.
They also have no idea of the harm to both sides if they do not agree. They have no project, no strategy. Just hate Trump.
He seems totally isolated, and every morning I look at the news to see if he has been assassinated yet.
It is unimaginable for our Manichean moralists that Putin might also be under fire at home for failing to chide the American president for US violations of human rights in Guantanamo, murderous drone strikes against defenseless citizens throughout the Middle East, the destruction of Libya in violation of the UN mandate, interference in the elections of countless countries by government-financed “non-governmental organizations” (the National Endowment of Democracy), worldwide electronic spying, invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention the world’s greatest prison population and regular massacres of school children. But the diplomatic Russians know how to be polite.
Still, if Trump actually makes a “deal”, there may be losers – neither the US nor Russia but third parties. When two great powers reach agreement, it is often at somebody else’s expense. The West Europeans are afraid it will be them, but such fears are groundless. All Putin wants is normal relations with the West, which is not much to ask.
Rather, candidate number one for paying the price are the Palestinians, or even Iran, in marginal ways. At the press conference, asked about possible areas of cooperation between the two nuclear powers, Trump suggested that the two could agree on helping Israel:
“We both spoke with Bibi Netanyahu. They would like to do certain things with respect to Syria, having to do with the safety of Israel. In that respect, we absolutely would like to work in order to help Israel. Israel will be working with us. So both countries would work jointly.”
In political terms, Trump knows where political power lies, and is counting on the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, which recognizes the defeat in Syria and the rising influence of Russia, to save him from the liberal imperialists – a daring bet, but he does not have much choice.
On another subject, Trump said that “our militaries” get along with the Russians “better than our politicians.” This is another daring bet, on military realism that could somehow neutralize military industrial congressional complex lobbying for more and more weapons.
In short, the only chance to end the nuclear war threat may depend on support for Trump from Israel and the Pentagon!
The hysterical neoliberal globalists seem to have ruled out any other possibility – and perhaps this one too.
“Constructive dialogue between the United States and Russia forwards the opportunity to open new pathways toward peace and stability in our world” Trump declared “I would rather take a political risk in pursuit of peace than to risk peace in pursuit of politics.”
That is more than his political enemies can claim.
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Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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