IT’S OK WHEN BILL DOES IT!
Paul Joseph Watson | February 19, 2021
Trump’s China tweet ‘destructive & deceitful’ as there isn’t ‘ANY QUESTION’ Russia behind latest hacking scare, Adam Schiff claims
RT | December 20, 2020
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has joined Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in blaming Russia for a recent massive cyber attack. He also slammed President Donald Trump for the inconvenient suggestion China could have been the culprit.
“Based on what I’ve seen, I don’t think there’s any question that it was Russia,” Schiff, who is the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told MSNBC on Sunday, commenting on the hack.
The hacking operation in question targeted the SolarWinds Orion Platform, a network monitoring tool used by US government agencies and numerous corporations. There has been no evidence presented that Russia was behind the hack, but Pompeo alleged otherwise in a recent interview.
The president broke with his secretary of state on Saturday and called out “fake news media” for their anonymous reports pinning the hack on Russia. He also suggested China may have been behind the hack, tying it to his ongoing allegations of voter fraud in key swing states during November’s election.
Schiff, one of the president’s most vocal critics in the House and a supporter of evidence-free claims Russia colluded to influence the 2016 presidential election, called Trump’s tweets “uniformly destructive and deceitful and injurious” to the country’s “national security.”
In a previous tweet, Schiff called the president’s China accusation “another scandalous betrayal of our national security.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) also pushed back against the president on Sunday, accusing him of having a “blind spot” when it comes to Russia.
“What Russia has done is put in place a capacity to potentially cripple us in terms of our electricity, our water, our communications,” the senator told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
The Republican called for the cyber attack to be “met with a very strong response, not just rhetorical, important as that is, but also with a cyber response of like magnitude or greater.”
Similarly to 2016, the claim of a major Russian cyber attack on the US comes amid the expected transition of power at the White House – although President Trump continues his legal efforts disputing the election result over the alleged mass-scale voter fraud. When Trump assumed his post in January 2017, the stage had already been set for the worsening of relations with Moscow, which included dozens of Russian diplomats getting expelled by the Obama administration over the allegations of meddling in US affairs and over “hacking” of the election. As Trump’s term progressed, overshadowed by the failed ‘Russiagate’ investigation, initial hopes of a detente with Moscow have all but faded.
“Free Speech Is Being Weaponized”: Columbia Dean and New Yorker Writer Calls For More Censorship
By Jonathan Turley | December 11, 2020
We have been discussing how reporters, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and key advisers. This includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Now, Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. That’s right. A journalism dean and writer declaring that the problem is that free speech itself is allowing too much freedom on the Internet and other forums.
Coll’s comments came in a discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when he was asked by Kasie Hunt about the need for Big Tech to censor speech. Rather than defend the right of people to express themselves freely, Coll lashed out at companies like Facebook as “motivated, as all companies are, to make money” though at the same time is “acting like a public square.” He decried the failure to have more expansive regulation of free speech and showed little concern or merit for arguments from free speech advocates. Like Harvard academics who recently declared “China was right” about censorship, Coll just assumed that it was self-evident that too much free speech is a bad thing and that these companies need to protect people from harmful or false ideas.
“And yes, Facebook has moved somewhat. They’ve had a better election in 2020 than they did in 2016. They’ve learned to put some brakes on, you know, here and there, but you can’t get away from the fact that their mission is to connect everybody in the world. That’s what motivates Mark Zuckerberg and it’s his passion and he profoundly believes in free speech.”
What is most maddening is that Coll spoke on behalf of journalists in calling for less freedom:
“Those of us in journalism have to come to terms with the fact that free speech, a principle that we hold sacred, is being weaponized against the principle of journalism and what do we do about that,. As reporters, we kind of march into this war with our facts nobly shouldered as if they were going to win the day and what we’re seeing that is because of the scale of this alternative reality that you’ve been talking about, our facts, our principles, our scientific method–it isn’t enough. So what do we do?”
That used to be an easy question. What you do is allow free speech to combat bad speech. What you do is support the right of citizens and journalists to publish without censorship. What you do is to embrace the freedom of expression while reinforcing the need to use that freedom to counter disinformation. Instead, Coll is joining the forces seeking to silence or curtail the speech of others. You do not support free speech by calling for its curtailment. For free speech advocates, it is as compelling as saying that we needed to “save” villages by destroying them in Vietnam. Worse yet, he is doing it in the names of “good journalism.”
‘I want blood’: Rachel Maddow’s audience fired up by NYT story baselessly accusing ‘Russian hackers’ of attacking US hospital
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | November 30, 2020
Accusing Russia of hacking anything from the 2016 election to US cancer hospitals may be fun and games for MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, but when her audience responds by demanding apocalypse, the shtick stops being funny.
Maddow’s conspiracy theories about ‘Russian collusion’ and supposed hacking of the 2016 election that resulted in President Donald Trump have been a staple of MSNBC audiences over the past four years. She’s not giving up that routine now, even as the entire mainstream media machine has turned on a dime and insists that the 2020 election was flawless – since it resulted in Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, that is.
On Monday, Maddow cherry-picked a couple of quotes and linked a New York Times story – published last week – about ‘Russian’ hackers allegedly targeting the University of Vermont Medical Center last month.
The Times story is long on feelings and emotions of the medical personnel and cancer patients affected by the fact that the UVMC computers stopped working, but short on actual facts about the case. It works in a jab at President Donald Trump for firing head of the cybersecurity agency Chris Krebs – for disputing “baseless claims of voter fraud,” of course – even though that happened long after the alleged attack.
The story also notes that the FBI has requested the center administrators to refrain from commenting on the case – even to confirm or deny their own statements about alleged ransom requests. Absent the facts, the Times is happy to fill in the blanks by citing a private cybersecurity company, Hold Security.
Hold Security and its chief executive Alex Holden are the sole source for the claim that ‘Russian’ hackers were behind the alleged cyberattack on UVMC and other US hospitals – at least according to the Times, as well as the media coverage of the FBI’s warning in late October that Maddow referenced.
The whole thing sounds much like the debunked Times story about Russia allegedly paying “bounties” to the Taliban for killing US troops in Afghanistan, a June bombshell that was used to hammer Trump and oppose his efforts to end the endless US war there.
Even the Pentagon’s own denials didn’t make a difference; Maddow and her colleagues were “all in” on the bounties story being true. So was her audience, as evidenced by some of the replies to her tweet.
While much of the replies were in the same vein, there were some that crossed the line from partisanship into genocidal – and apocalyptic – calls for blood.
“Russia needs to finally be handled. They need to be knocked back into the stone age,” said one follower.
“I did not hate the leaders of the old Soviet Union as much as I hate the leaders of Russia right now. I want them to experience monumental, historic, unprecedented, apocalyptic pain for what they have done to us. I want blood,” said another.
Earlier this year, MSNBC’s lawyers defended Maddow against a defamation lawsuit by One America News (OANN) – whom she called “literally Russian propaganda” – by arguing her show isn’t news but opinion, and that her statement was “rhetorical hyperbole” that no reasonable person would understand as fact.
While that admission got Maddow and MSNBC off the legal hook, it raises the question of how many of her followers and their audience qualify as “reasonable” people – as the comments on her tweet about the Times story show anew.
No one, Maddow included, should be held legally liable for the content of their replies, obviously. It’s something beyond their control. But when a steady diet of propaganda, ‘insinuendo’ and conspiracy theories presented as facts creates an atmosphere that results in this sort of bloodthirst that’s on display, it doesn’t inspire confidence in her audience’s mental state.
Keep in mind that the politicians Maddow supports may soon end up with absolute power, if Trump’s claims about election fraud are really as “baseless” as the media claim. Also, don’t forget that the US and Russia have enough nuclear weapons between themselves to destroy all life on the planet. And that’s something people so obsessed with their feelings to be calling for “monumental, historic, unprecedented, apocalyptic pain” clearly haven’t given any thought.
So we’re racist because Biden didn’t get a landslide victory? That just shows how much the elite and the media hate Americans
By Tony Cox | RT | November 6, 2020
MSNBC host Joy Reid wants Americans to be ashamed for failing to deliver on the media’s false promises that Joe Biden would win the election easily, giving President Donald Trump the beating she thinks he deserves.
After five years of watching Trump’s alleged sins play out in the mainstream media, “it felt like a repudiation was coming,” MSNBC host Joy Reid said late Wednesday. When that failed to happen on election night, with swing-state races too close to call and the outcome heading for a legal battle, Trump’s strong showing only confirmed to her that America has “a great amount of racism, anti-blackness, anti-wokeness.”
“We know what this country is, but still part of you, I think part of your heart says, you know what, maybe the country’s going to pay off all of this pain, the children that were stolen, with a repudiation,” Reid said. “And as the night wore on and I realized and it sunk in, OK, that’s not happening, we are still who we thought, unfortunately.”
Van Jones, the CNN host and commentator, said essentially the same thing on election night, saying the results didn’t provide the “moral victory” that Democrats wanted after seeing children being taken away from their mothers at the border and black children being called “the n-word” at school under Trump’s leadership. “They want a moral victory tonight,” he said. “We wanted to see a repudiation of this direction for the country. And the fact that it’s this close, I think, it hurts, it just hurts.”
Reid and Jones are both black, and in their view, anything short of a dominating one-party rule by their preferred party can only mean that America is too racist to vote correctly. It can’t be that the pollsters and the mainstream media were incompetent and/or dishonest when they vastly underestimated voter support for Trump, just as they did in 2016.
Their words are condemning, especially in the case of Reid’s: “we are still who we thought, unfortunately.” We, as in America, are still as racist and reprehensible as we thought because we don’t vote Democrat in sufficient proportion. We don’t hate Trump sufficiently for sticking his thumb in the eye of the ruling class and obnoxiously leading the nation as a populist. This is the same Bad Orange Man who won’t start fake wars, won’t kiss the ring of the CIA-Pentagon intelligence-military complex, won’t play by the rules of corrupt establishment politicians, won’t cower when the press calls him a racist and won’t support globalist trade and environmental deals.
Reid and Jones didn’t get the landslide they were looking for because voters were too busy again repudiating the ruling class and its media mouthpieces to repudiate Trump. They were too busy rejecting the people who brought us NAFTA, spied on us, transferred our manufacturing jobs to China, depressed our wages with illegal immigration, and squandered our blood and treasure in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc.
And they especially repudiated the liars who roll out the dreaded R words – ‘racism’ or ‘Russia’ – whenever someone needs to be silenced.
Contrary to leftist doctrine, most support for Trump isn’t about cultish followers who can’t be brought out of their trance long enough to come to grips with reality. A large portion of Trump supporters understand that he is a deeply flawed individual. He’s not righteous, his personality can be maddening, and he’s too easily baited into nonsensical arguments that distract from his agenda. But unlike the Joy Reids of the world – and their directors – he apparently loves America and its people.
It’s not only white people who notice the difference. CNN exit polls showed that support for Trump among Hispanic voters increased by 15-19 percentage points from 2016’s level in Florida, Georgia and Ohio. And Biden won just 80 percent of the black male vote, down from Hillary Clinton’s 82 percent in 2016 and Barack Obama’s 87-95 percent in 2008 and 2012. Trump also won 35 percent of the Muslim vote, compared with 15 percent support in that segment in 2016.
Those voters obviously didn’t believe the media mantra that Trump is a raging white supremacist. Or did they? The race hustlers have explanations for that, too, as it turns out. MSNBC contributor Eddie Glaude argued that black and Hispanic men are guilty of “sexism and patriarchy,” just like white men.
Young Turks commentator Aida Rodriguez took the psychoanalysis to another level. “Many people showed up to support Trump because let’s keep it real, a lot of people of color hate themselves,” she said. “They want to identify with upward mobility, and to them, that means white is right.”
But Glaude quickly brought the indictment discussion back to the real culprits: White people. “This is a story about how whiteness still animates the core of this country, along with selfishness, because we know who this man is. This race shouldn’t be this tight,” he said.
Reid made similar comments on election night, saying the results raised “real questions about what America is at the end of the day and whether what Trump is, is more like the American character than people ever, ever wanted to admit.”
These attacks on the character of voters were more of the same from ruling-class ‘elites’ who show only contempt for Americans and Americanism. Americans voted for Barack Obama, twice, and yet they’re reminded daily of how racist they are – ironically, by bigots and liars.
Reid was outed in April 2018 for anti-gay, anti-Muslim posts that she had made years earlier on her blog. She responded by alleging that someone had hacked her former blog and planted the offensive material years ago without her noticing. Her lawyer said the FBI was investigating, and MSNBC stood by her. Months later, she apologized for the posts without mentioning the hacking allegations or the FBI probe.
So these are our moral superiors, we’re told. It doesn’t matter how many times they’re wrong, how many times they’re false or how many times they appear to behave like enemies of the American people. Any failure to agree with their politics can only be explained by the rest of us being morally disgusting, or as Hillary Clinton would say, “deplorable.”
Is it any wonder that the feeling is mutual?
Tony Cox is a US journalist who has written or edited for Bloomberg and several major daily newspapers.
Journalism’s New Propaganda Tool: Using ‘Confirmed’ to Mean its Opposite
By Glenn Greenwald | The Intercept | September 5, 2020
One of the most humiliating journalism debacles of the Trump era played out on December 8, 2017, first on CNN and then on MSNBC. The spectacle kicked off on that Friday morning at 11:00 a.m. when CNN, deploying its most melodramatic music and graphics designed to convey that a real bombshell was about to be dropped, announced that anonymous sources had provided the network with a smoking gun proving the Trump/Russia conspiracy once and for all: during the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump, Jr. had received a September 4 email with a secret encryption key that gave him advanced access to WikiLeaks’ servers containing the DNC emails which the group would subsequently release to the public ten days later. Cable news and online media spontaneously combusted, as is their wont, in shock, hysteria and awe over this proof that WikiLeaks and Trump were in cahoots.
CNN has ensured that no videos of the festivities are available on YouTube for anyone to watch. That’s because the claim was completely false in its most crucial respect. CNN misreported the date of the smoking gun email Trump, Jr. received: rather than being sent to him on September 4 — ten days prior to WikiLeaks’ public release, thus enabling secret access — the email was merely sent by a random member of the public after the public release by WikiLeaks (September 14), encouraging Trump, Jr. to look at those now-public emails.
Though the original false report cannot be viewed any longer (except in small snippets from other networks, principally Fox, discussing CNN’s debacle), one can view the cringe-inducing video of CNN’s Senior Congressional Correspondent Manu Raju explaining, after the Washington Post debunked the story, that “we are actually correcting” the reporting, doing his best to downplay what a massive blunder this was (though the whole thing is fantastic, my favorite line is when Raju says, with no small amount of understatement: “this appears to change the understanding of this story,” followed by: “perhaps the initial understanding of what this email was, perhaps is not as significant based on what we know now”: perhaps):
The CNN page which originally published the blockbuster story contains this rather significant correction at the top:
Washington (CNN) Correction: This story has been corrected to say the date of the email was September 14, 2016, not September 4, 2016. The story also changed the headline and removed a tweet from Donald Trump Jr., who posted a message about WikiLeaks on September 4, 2016.
So mistakes happen in journalism, even huge and embarrassing ones. Other than some petty schadenfreude, why is this worth remembering? The reason is that that sorry episode reflects a now-common but highly corrosive tactic of journalistic deceit.
Very shortly after CNN unveiled its false story, MSNBC’s intelligence community spokesman Ken Dilanian went on air and breathlessly announced that he had obtained independent confirmation that the CNN story was true. In a video segment I cannot recommend highly enough, Dilanian was introduced by an incredibly excited Hallie Jackson — who urged Dilanian to “tell us what we’ve just now learned,” adding: “I know you and some of our colleagues have confirmed some of this information: what’s up?” Dilanian then proceeded to explain what he had learned:
That’s right, Hallie. Two sources with direct knowledge of this are telling us that Congressional investigators have obtained an email from a man named “Mike Erickson” — obviously they don’t know if that’s his real name — offering Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump, Jr. access to WikiLeaks documents… It goes to the heart of the collusion question….. One of the big questions is: did [Trump Jr.] call the FBI?
How could that happen? How could MSNBC purport to confirm a false story from CNN? Shortly after, CBS News also purported to have “confirmed” the same false story: that Trump, Jr. received advanced access to the WikiLeaks documents. It’s one thing for a news outlet to make a mistake in reporting by, for instance, mis-reporting the date of an email and thus getting the story completely wrong. But how is it possible that multiple other outlets could “confirm” the same false report?
It’s possible because news outlets have completely distorted the term “confirmation” beyond all recognition. Indeed, they now use it to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means, thereby draping themselves in journalistic glory they have not earned and, worse, deceiving the public into believing that an unproven assertion has, in fact, been proven. With this disinformation method, they are doing the exact opposite of what journalism, at its core, is supposed to do: separate fact from speculation.
CNN ultimately blamed its anonymous sources for this error, but refused to out them by insisting that it was a somehow a good faith mistake rather than deliberate disinformation (how did multiple “good faith” sources all “accidentally misread” an email date in the same way? CNN, in the spirit of news outlets refusing to provide the accountability and transparency for themselves that they demand from others, refuses to this very day to address that question).
But what is clear is that the “confirmation” which both MSNBC and CBS claimed it had obtained for the story was anything but: all that happened was that the same sources which anonymously whispered these unverified, false claims to CNN then went and repeated the same unverified, false claims to other outlets, which then claimed that they “independently confirmed” the story even though they had done nothing of the sort.
It seems the same misleading tactic is now driving the supremely dumb but all-consuming news cycle centered on whether President Trump, as first reported by the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, made disparaging comments about The Troops. Goldberg claims that “four people with firsthand knowledge of the discussion that day” — whom the magazine refuses to name because they fear “angry tweets” — told him that Trump made these comments. Trump, as well as former aides who were present that day (including Sarah Huckabee Sanders and John Bolton), deny that the report is accurate.
So we have anonymous sources making claims on one side, and Trump and former aides (including Bolton, now a harsh Trump critic) insisting that the story is inaccurate. Beyond deciding whether or not to believe Goldberg’s story based on what best advances one’s political interests, how can one resolve the factual dispute? If other media outlets could confirm the original claims from Goldberg, that would obviously be a significant advancement of the story. … Full article
CNN & Fox cut Rand Paul’s anti-war speech at RNC as he calls out Biden for backing wars in M. East, Serbia
RT | August 26, 2020
Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Kentucky) speech at the Republican National Convention was butchered by major cable networks, with CNN cutting it completely and Fox replacing the anti-war part with an interview.
Senator Paul, who frequently crossed swords with Donald Trump when both were vying to become the Republican presidential candidate in the 2016 race, admitted during his speech that he did not always agree with the president, but said that Trump’s desire to put an end to the “endless wars” far outweighs their differences.
“I’m supporting President Trump because he believes as I do, that a strong America cannot fight endless wars, we must not leave our blood and treasure in the Middle East quagmire,” Paul said.
Calling Trump “the first president in a generation to seek to end war rather than to start one,” Paul went on to attack what he called the “disastrous record of Joe Biden,” pointing out that as a senator, Biden voted to give then-President George W. Bush the authority to use force in Iraq.
“I fear Biden will choose war again. He supported the war in Serbia, Syria, Libya. Joe Biden will continue to spill our blood and treasure.”
Paul’s anti-war message, however, did not reach CNN viewers, with the cable network instead airing an interview with CNN political contributor and host Van Jones.
Fox News, which snubbed most of the first night of the convention, opting for its usual programming instead, replaced parts of Paul’s speech with host Tucker Carlson interviewing Donald Trump Jr. live on air.
MSNBC also interspersed Paul’s speech with insights from host Rachel Maddow, who attempted to fact-check Paul on his claim that Trump was “bringing our heroes home.”
Maddow claimed that the total number of personnel deployed overseas has even grown under Trump’s watch, although Paul appeared to refer primarily to deployments in hot spots in the conflict-ridden Middle East.
After he became the Democratic presidential candidate, Biden called his Iraq vote in October 2002 a “mistake,” arguing that by siding with the hawks, he wanted, not to launch a war, but rather “to prevent the war from happening.” Biden insists that, by untying Bush’s hands, he believed the administration would have been able to put more pressure on the UN Security Council and late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
Despite being a strong advocate for the US bombing campaign in Yugoslavia in 1999, Biden also extended his condolences to the victims of the raids while visiting Belgrade, Serbia in August 2016.
MSNBC hires former FBI attorney Lisa Page as legal analyst
RT | June 6, 2020
Lisa Page, the FBI lawyer whose leaked anti-Trump text messages with another federal agent indicated deep-seated bias in the Russiagate probe, has been hired as an analyst at MSNBC, drawing jeers and praise alike.
Announcing the move on Friday, MSNBC said Page had been brought on as a national security and legal analyst after making her debut on the channel’s ‘Deadline: White House’ program. Wasting little time before weighing in on the decision, President Donald Trump deemed it a “total disgrace!”
Page rose to fame in 2017 after a series of text messages with FBI agent Peter Strzok – with whom she was then having an affair – were leaked, showing the two bureau employees disparaging Donald Trump, who had not yet won the Oval Office at the time. In one of the messages, Strzok told Page that “we can’t… risk” a Trump presidency, describing an “insurance policy” that was apparently meant either to guarantee he never got elected or to have a back-up plan in case he did. Due to his apparent bias, Strzok was removed from the special counsel probe into Trump’s alleged ties to Moscow following the leaks, while Page later left the bureau on her own accord.
Much like the president, critics online have also castigated MSNBC for the hiring decision, with some poking fun at her credentials as a “non-partisan” and “impartial” analyst.
Page is not the first MSNBC hiree to feature prominently in the Trump-Russia probe following the 2016 election, with jobs also handed to Obama-era CIA Director John Brennan and Andrew Weissmann – who the New York Times described as former special counsel Robert Mueller’s “pit bull.”
Court rejects OAN suit over MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s claim about ‘Russian propaganda’
‘Rhetorical hyperbole’ and NOT FACT
© Global Look /ZUMA Press /Michael Brochstein
RT | May 23, 2020
A US judge dismissed a defamation lawsuit by One America News Network against MSNBC over Rachel Maddow’s claims that OAN was “literally” Russian propaganda, ruling that her segment was merely “an opinion” and “exaggeration.”
OAN sued the liberal talk show host and MSNBC for defamation, demanding over $10 million in damages, back in September 2019. The lawsuit was based on the July 22 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show, where Maddow launched a scathing broadside against the conservative television network, labeling it “the most obsequiously pro-Trump right wing news outlet in America” and “really literally paid Russian propaganda.”
In the segment, Maddow cited a story by The Daily Beast’s Kevin Poulsen about OAN’s Kristian Rouz, who has previously contributed to Sputnik as a freelance author. Toeing the general US mainstream line on the Russian media, be it Sputnik or RT, Poulsen branded the Russian news agency “the Kremlin’s official propaganda outlet” and said Rouz was once on its “payroll.”
Shortly after MSNBC’s star talent peddled the claim, OAN rejected the allegations as “utterly and completely false.” The outlet, which is owned by the Herring Networks, a small California-based family company, said that it “has never been paid or received a penny from Russia or the Russian government,” with its only funding coming from the Herring family.
In their bid to win the case, Maddow herself, MSNBC, Comcast Corporation and NBCUniversal Media did not address the accusation itself – namely, that her claim about OAN was false – but opted to invoke the First Amendment, insisting that the rant should be protected as free speech.
Siding with Maddow, the California district court defined Maddow’s show as a mix of “news and opinions,” concluding that the manner in which the progressive host blurted out the accusations “makes it more likely that a reasonable viewer would not conclude that the contested statement implies an assertion of objective fact.”
“The statement constitutes opinion and rhetorical hyperbole protected under the First Amendment.”
The court said that while Maddow “truthfully” related the story by the Daily Beast, the statement about OAN being funded by the Kremlin was her “opinion” and “exaggeration” of the said article.
While the legal trick helped Maddow to get off the hook without ever trying to defend her initial statement, conservative commentators on social media wasted no time in pointing out that dodging a payout to OAN literally meant admitting that Maddow was not, in fact, news.
The Case of General Michael Flynn: The Use of Law as a Political Weapon
By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | May 20, 2020
The audacious corruption of the FBI and the US Department of Justice (sic) is demonstrated by their frame-up of the three-star general, former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and National Security Adviser to President Donald Trump.
US Department of Justice (DOJ) documents that the department was forced to turn over to General Michael Flynn’s attorney reveal that the FBI found no wrongdoing by Flynn in its investigation of him and recommended the investigation be closed. Corrupt FBI official Peter Strzok, a leader of the anti-Trump cabal in the FBI, intervened. Strzok convinced the official managing the investigation not to close the case as it was the wishes of the “7th floor” (top FBI officials) to keep the case open. In the absence of evidence against Flynn, released FBI documents prove that the FBI leadership decided to frame General Flynn. The documents reveal that the FBI’s plan is “to get him (Flynn) to lie so we can prosecute him or get him fired. . . . we should try to frame them in a way we want.” General Flynn was forced to incriminate himself with a guilty plea. Otherwise, the corrupt DOJ prosecutors threatened to indict Flynn’s son.
When this proof of egregious government misconduct came to light, the DOJ had no choice but to drop the case against General Flynn. Otherwise it would be clear that law in the US is a weapon in the hands of government. This would mean that control of government would be a life and death matter for the two political parties as it is in Ecuador and Bolivia where incoming presidents arrest or attempt to arrest outgoing presidents.
But we didn’t hear a word about the frame-up of General Flynn from the corrupt presstitutes. On May 7 the editorial board of the New York Times published the largest and most egregious collection of lies in the entire history of the disreputable organization. The editorial— “Don’t Forget, Michael Flynn Pleaded Guillty. Twice.” —claimed the lies coerced from Flynn proved Flynn’s guilt, and that Attorney General William Barr is a “personal fixer for the president” and used the Department of Justice to protect friends and to go after political enemies.
The New York Times has it backwards. Going after political enemies is precisely what the Obama Regime’s concocted case against General Flynn (and Trump) was all about. Remember, it was General Flynn who said on television that it was a “willful decision” of the Obama Regime to send the mercenary jihadists to attack Syria, a decision Obama made in the face of contrary advice by General Flynn, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. When Flynn revealed this, it blew up the fake news story spread by the Obama Regime and the presstitutes that the Obama-supported invasion of Syria by CIA mercenaries was an uprising by Syrian moderates fighting for democracy. Flynn’s blood is blood that the corrupt Obama Regime wanted very badly.
Obama’s role in the frame-up of Flynn and the orchestration of the Russiagate hoax is now coming to light, making the former president nervous. On May 10 the Wall Street Journal editorial board asked if Obama’s nerves are getting in the way of his judgment:
“Barack Obama is a lawyer, so it was stunning to read that he ventured into the Michael Flynn case in a way that misstated the supposed crime and ignored the history of his own Administration in targeting Mr. Flynn. Since the former President chose to offer his legal views when he didn’t need to, we wonder what he’s really worried about.”
The Democrats’ frame-up of General Flynn and their two attempted frame-ups of President Trump show an extraordinary audacity and a corruptly compliant FBI and DOJ. They thought that they could get away with it, and, of course, they had all the help possible from the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and the rest of the presstitute scum for whom lies are the currency of their fake news realm. The presstitutes have made clear that the US media is devoid of integrity.
After high officials such as James Clapper, Susan Rice, Samatha Power, and others repeatedly claimed evidence of Trump and Flynn’s guilt, when under oath their story changed 180 degrees. Here is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper:
“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.”
Susan Rice, Obama’s incompetent National Security Adviser, and Samatha Power, Obama’s Russia-baiting ambassador to the UN, along with the rest of the disreputable Obama cabal, have admitted that they saw no specific evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia. The entire thing was an orchestrated hoax that proves beyond all doubt that the Democrat Party and the US media are corrupt beyond redemption.
When the case against Flynn was dropped as a result of the damning evidence of egregious government misconduct in framing a senior official of the US government, the corrupt prosecutors who had prosecuted the innocent Flynn all resigned in a huff, pretending that it was Barr, not them, who used the Department of Justice for self-interested political purpose.
Two Georgetown University law professors, Kean K. Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer, totally discredited themselves and the Obama contingent in the DOJ, by alleging in the New York Times that the dropped charge against Flynn has resulted in the “utter demoralization” of “the law enforcement community.” In other words, for these law professors and “the law enforcement community” for which they claim to speak, dropping a case consisting entirely of an orchestrated frame-up, a contrived perjury trap, and threats against family members is demoralizing. The professors are so thoroughly dishonest that they use the lies coerced from Flynn—the price of his “cooperation with the investigation” in order that his son would not also be framed-up—as “evidence” of Flynn’s guilt and proof of the political use of the Justice Department by Trump and Barr in dropping the contrived case.
The frame-up of Flynn is not acknowledged by the law professors as political use of the Justice Department.
Instead the law professors describe the vindication of an innocent man on the basis of undeniable evidence as political use of the Justice Department.
If this is the kind of law Georgetown University teaches, the law school should be promptly shut down.
The question that demands an answer is how do people as corrupt and devoid of integrity as Comey, Mueller, and Strzok get into top FBI positions?
Former Obama Official Criticized After Classified Testimony Contradicts Her Public Statements
By Jonathan Turley | May 11, 2020
The long-delayed release of testimony from the House Intelligence Committee has proved embarrassing for a variety of former Obama officials who have been extensively quoted on the allegedly strong evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign and the Russians. Figures like James Clapper, who is a CNN expert, long indicated that the evidence from the Obama Administration was strong and alarming. However, in testimony, Clapper denied seeing any such evidence. One of the most embarrassing is the testimony of Evelyn Farkas, a former Obama Administration official who was widely quoted in her plea to Congress to gather the evidence that she knew was found in by the Obama Administration. In her testimony under oath Farkas repeatedly stated that she knew of no such evidence of collusion.
Farkas, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia/Ukraine/Eurasia, was widely quoted when she said on MSNBC in 2017 that she feared that evidence she knew about would be destroyed by the Trump Administration. She stated:
“was urging my former colleagues, and, frankly speaking, the people on the Hill… Get as much information as you can, get as much intelligence as you can, before President Obama leaves the administration, because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people that left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy . . . the Trump folks, if they found out how we knew what we knew about their, the staff, the Trump staff’s dealing with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried, because not enough was coming out into the open, and I knew that there was more.”
MSNBC never seriously questioned the statements despite the fact that Farkas left the Obama Administration in 2015 before any such investigation could have occurred. As we have seen before, the factual and legal basis for such statements are largely immaterial in the age of echo journalism. The statement fit the narrative even if it lacked any plausible basis.
Not surprisingly, the House Intelligence Committee was eager to have Farkas share all that she stated she “knew about [“the Trump folks”], their staff, the Trump’s staff’s dealing with Russian” and wanted to get “into the open.” After all, she told MSNBC that “I knew that there was more.”
She was finally put under oath in the closed classified sessions and there was nothing but classified crickets. Farkas was repeatedly asked to share that information that electrified the MSNBC hosts and audience. She repeatedly denied any such knowledge, telling then Rep. Trey Gowdy (R, S.C.), “I didn’t know anything.”
Gowdy noted that Farkas left the Obama administration in 2015 and asked “Then how did you know?” She repeated again “I didn’t know anything.”
Gowdy then asked “Well, then why would you say, we knew?”
Gowdy later asked, getting to the point “You also didn’t know whether or not anybody in the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia, did you?”
“I didn’t,” Farkas responded.
MSNBC has said nothing about its prior headline story being untrue. Indeed, the media has barely acknowledged that the new documents reinforce that there was never any evidence of collusion and ultimately the allegations were rejected by the Special Counsel, Congress, and inspectors general.
For her part, Farkas has moved on. She is running for Congress. She is still citing her role in raising “the alarm” about Russian collusion:
“After I left the Obama administration, I campaigned to help elect Secretary Clinton as our next President. When Russians interfered in that election, I was among the first to sound the alarm and urge Congress to take action. And I haven’t let up since then.”
She was indeed one of the first but it proved to be a false alarm based on nonexistent knowledge. Does that matter anymore?
Russiagate returns: MSM ecstatically exploit evidence-free NYT claim Moscow ‘helping Trump in 2020’
By Nebojsa Malic | RT | February 21, 2020
The same media that flogged the insane ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory for years are resurrecting that particular dead horse, in what appears to be an effort to stop the White House from cleaning up the US intelligence community.
“Russia is aiding President Trump in the 2020 election, intelligence officials told lawmakers,” the New York Times blared on Thursday, adding that President Donald Trump berated the acting Director of National
How nice of the Times to prove Trump’s (alleged) point, then – and with a story that relies entirely on anonymous, unverifiable sources no less. It’s just like the early 2017 stuff about the “Trump-Putin dossier” on which the president-elect was briefed by FBI chief Jim Comey and DNI James Clapper, only for this to immediately leak to the #Resistance press, and set the stage for years of “Russian collusion” investigations.
Sure, the ‘Russiagate’ nonsense failed to stop Trump from getting elected or being sworn in, just like it failed to provide a pretext for his impeachment, so the Democrats had to make one up with the Ukraine phone call. That doesn’t mean they can’t try again, though!
MSNBC – which never recanted its Russiagate reporting – immediately blared the Times report as breaking news. CNN went a step further, calling on Clapper to comment on the story – yes, the very same former spook who brazenly lied to Congress about spying on Americans, co-authored the infamous “intelligence community assessment” claiming Russia was meddling in the 2016 election, and claimed Russians were “genetically driven” to subvert the US.
In what surely speaks volumes by itself, the story was uncritically amplified by the Washington Post’s chief fact checker.
Notice that all of this is happening just a day after nearly every single mainstream Western outlet outright misinterpreted a quote – in exactly the same way – from a court hearing about WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, because it fit their narrative about “Russian meddling.”
This new alleged “bombshell” also comes a day after Trump named trusted envoy Richard Grenell to oversee the ODNI – Clapper’s old beat – causing much wailing and gnashing of the teeth among the #Resistance and NeverTrumper types.
Could it be that they’re just a tiny bit nervous Grenell might clean house of all the “resistance” types that have acted for years on the self-righteous conviction that they, not the elected president, should run US policy? Folks like Clapper, Comey, CIA chief John Brennan, or the “whistleblower”-who-must-not-be-named who initiated the Ukrainegate fiasco, for example.
While normal, sane people may think that ‘Russiagate’ was a failure – and on its face, it was – it did actually manage to accomplish two major things. One was to validate the Trump Derangement Syndrome of the mainstream media and the Democrats, eventually encouraging them to believe they could actually impeach him. We all know how that ended.
The other, and perhaps more important, was to provide cover for all the people involved in the spying on Trump’s campaign, illegal FISA wiretaps and “unmaskings” of names, perjury traps, trumped-up prosecutions, letting Hillary Clinton off the hook for private email server use, and whatever actually happened to the DNC computers that got blamed on Russia.
Those people now have lucrative book deals or cushy jobs in the media and think tanks, rather than being charged with plotting a coup and being locked up in a federal penitentiary – even as they bleat how “no one is above the law.” Funny how Washington works, isn’t it?
Nebojsa Malic is a Serbian-American journalist, blogger and translator, who wrote a regular column for Antiwar.com from 2000 to 2015, and is now senior writer at RT. Follow him on Twitter @NebojsaMalic
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Book Review
When Ben Bradlee and James Angleton Obstructed Justice
By Jacob G. Hornberger | FFF | March 5, 2021
… As Peter Janney detailed in Mary’s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace, an excellent book that I highly recommend, Mary’s murder had all the characteristics of a highly professional hit job along with a very sophisticated frame-up of an innocent man.
By the time the secrets surrounding the discovery and the destruction of Meyer’s diary were disclosed, the statute of limitations had presumably run on such crimes as obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, perjury, and conspiracies to commit these crimes. … Read full article
Aletho News Original Content
Three Mile Island, Global Warming and the CIA
By Aletho News | January 9, 2012
There appears to be something about launching bombs or missiles from afar onto cities and people that appeals to American military and political leaders. In part it has to do with a conscious desire to not risk American lives in ground combat. And in part, perhaps not entirely conscious, it has to do with not wishing to look upon the gory remains of the victims, allowing American GIs and TV viewers at home to cling to their warm fuzzy feelings about themselves, their government, and their marvelous “family values”. Washington officials are careful to distinguish between the explosives the US drops from the sky and “weapons of mass destruction” (WMD), which only the officially-designated enemies (ODE) are depraved enough to use. The US government speaks sternly of WMD, defining them as nuclear, chemical and biological in nature, and “indiscriminate” (meaning their use can’t be limited to military objectives), as opposed to the likes of American “precision” cruise missiles. This is indeed a shaky semantic leg to stand on, given the well-known extremely extensive damage to non-military targets, including numerous residences, schools and hospitals, even from American “smart” bombs, in almost all of the bombings listed below.
Moreover, Washington does not apply the term “weapons of mass destruction” to other weapons the US has regularly used, such as depleted uranium and cluster bombs, which can be, and often are, highly indiscriminate. … continue
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