US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will visit Israel tomorrow for discussions with its leadership about annexation, among other issues. After politically facilitating the annexation process for Israel, Pompeo is attempting, and failing, to divert attention away from the role the US played in the recent colonial decision.
During the meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and leader of the Blue and White Party Benny Gantz, Pompeo will just be “sharing views” on the annexation process. “I have said previously that this is a decision that the Israelis will make. I want to understand how the new leadership, the soon-to-be new government, is thinking about that,” Pompeo declared when asked about the purpose of the visit.
The so-called “deal of the century”, which Israel said it will implement unilaterally as benefits its political agenda, was described by Pompeo as meeting “the core requirements of both the Palestinians and the Israeli people.” The Palestinian leadership, albeit lacking any political vision, rejected the US-Israeli scheming. As Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas scrambles for peace conferences, Pompeo’s visit to Israel is set to consolidate the annexation plans, despite US rhetoric attempting to sound cautious.
In an exclusive interview with Israel Hayom, Pompeo echoed US Ambassador to Israeli David Friedman, saying that the decision to extend sovereignty over settlements in the occupied West Bank is “Israel’s decision”. This decision, however, falls within the parameters of the international law manipulation which the US concocted for Israel’s demands.
In November, Pompeo refuted international law as regards Israel’s settlement expansion. “Calling the establishment of civilian settlement inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace,” he had stated.
Further asserting Israel’s contempt for international law, Pompeo reiterated that Israel’s decision-making reigns supreme. The US, according to Pompeo, is merely aiding in purported clarification. “We have clarified what we believe international law permits. And we recognise Israel’s right to make its own decisions.”
Putting it briefly, the US is clarifying what international law means for Israel and now framing the politics as being solely an Israeli decision. The international community, on the other hand, remains largely silent on the planned land grab and dispossession of the Palestinian people. Warnings, which are what the UN has issued so far, hold no political sway over Israel’s violation of international law. EU countries France, Belgium, Ireland and Luxembourg are among the most prominent in advocating that Israel’s annexation of the occupied West Bank should be challenged. Yet there is also a considerable chance of the bloc capitulating to Israel as evidenced by the words of an unnamed senior EU official: “There is clearly a need to look at what annexation means in the context of international law and we do need to know our options.”
This lack of assertion is unfortunately a bonus point for Israel. So far there is little to suggest that the international community will take a harsher approach. While the US and Israel plan remains unhindered, the international community has not even been able to unequivocally articulate its definitive rejection of this latest phase in Zionist colonisation.
Before the outbreak of the Syrian conflict, Yasser Aslan used to teach programming. With the war and ever-dwindling economy, Yasser, the only breadwinner in the family of six, had to look for additional sources of income. Like thousands of other Syrians, he turned his car – a KIA Rio – into a taxi, and drove along the dangerous roads of Deir Ezzor province in an attempt to make the ends meet for himself, his wife and four daughters (15-years-old teenager and 4-years-old triplets).
Deir-Ezzor, as well as other eastern provinces of Syria, still suffers from small-scale yet lethal attacks carried out by remnants of ISIS terror group. The terrorists mostly target SAA and SDF checkpoints and patrols in the area, but civilians also fall victim to the attacks.
However, it was not ISIS activities that ultimately resulted in Yasser’s death. On May 1st, he and a passenger were driving through the area of Koniko oil facility that hosts a large US military base. As the car drew closer to the base, it unexpectedly came under fire. Yasser was fatally wounded in the head while the passenger survived and was taken prisoner by SDF.
Shortly after Yasser’s relatives were informed that his body was taken to a hospital in Jadid Baqara village. Posts on their social media pages blamed a “US sniper” for the death of their relative and friend, expressing outrage over the incident.
Although Yasser’s demise, most likely at the hands of US military personnel, was reported on-line, neither the Pentagon nor the International Coalition commented on the incident. The story gained no traction in the media. One report described the incident as a ‘clash with ISIS during which a civilian was killed’ without indication of the side responsible for his death.
US Attorney John Durham who is currently conducting an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe should take a look at a role played by Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation in sparking and fanning the Russiagate scandal, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel.
The newly released House Intelligence Committee’s transcripts shed some more light on Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor who apparently told then Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos in March 2016 that Moscow had “damning” Hillary Clinton emails. According to one of the transcripts, Mifsud was heard bragging he was a member of the Clinton Foundation.
Additionally, in a November 2017 interview with Italian newspaper La Repubblica the Maltese professor also admitted that he was in the organisation: “I am a member of the European Council on Foreign relations and you know which is the only foundation I am member of? The Clinton Foundation”. At the same time, Mifsud flatly denied that he had told Papadopoulos about the Clinton emails.
Mifsud & Downer Both Tied to Clinton Foundation
The exposure has prompted a lively debate among social media users, who recollected that following the controversial conversation with Mifsud, Papadopoulos had a drink with the Australian high commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer, also known for his ties with the Clinton Foundation.
Mifsud & Downer, a Clinton Foundation member & a major contributor. Of course, Alexander Downer is a close friend of Clintons & donated $25M of Australian tax dollars to the Clinton Foundation.
Coincidence or collaboration to overthrow a duly elected POTUS?
Following this historic meeting Downer approached the FBI to inform the bureau – in a breach of diplomatic protocols – that Papadopoulos somehow knew that the Russians “had dirt” on Hillary Clinton. This information became the trigger for launching the Crossfire Hurricane op against the Trump campaign on 31 July 2016.
“Mifsud was a small donor according to notoriously unreliable and materially false disclosures on the Clinton Foundation website”, says Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst who has been looking into the Clinton Foundation’s alleged fraud for several years. “I suspect he may have been involved with the ‘Clinton Global Initiative’, a forum where Clinton supporters (for the most part) interacted with connected globalists, in theory to promote smart giving, but in practice to advance substantial for-profit activities”.
Ortel expresses hope that US Attorney John Durham and his team appointed by AG William Barr to investigate the origins of Crossfire Hurricane operation “will examine Mifsud and every person and project claimed in particular by CGI, which seems to have been a forum where money traded for influence while hiding in plain sight”.
Former Australian diplomat and politician Downer seems to be a bigger fish, according to the analyst.
“As Australia’s foreign minister, Downer channeled millions of his taxpayers’ money towards international projects in the name of ‘Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative’ (and similar sounding variants) as well as ‘Clinton Climate Initiative’ starting in 2006”, Ortel elaborates. “None of these entities lawfully existed. And there has never been a proper accounting for these grants. Moreover, Downer and Australia signed multiple agreements with Bill Clinton and Ira Magaziner who held themselves out to be lawfully appointed representatives of the Clinton Foundation when they never were”.
According to the Wall Street analyst “Downer had and has much to lose from a Trump victory, so it is not surprising that he has apparently played such an important role attempting to frame Donald J. Trump and others who threaten to expose and punish crony globalists”.
“From the day Hillary announced her second presidential run, she and her backers did all they could to rig the primaries and then the general election”, he says. “Downer’s known and suspected actions, like Mifsud’s are not surprising. They likely gained and thought they would gain more from another Clinton presidency”.
Clinton Knew That Her Campaign Funded Dirt Digging on Trump
Hillary Clinton had either direct or indirect ties with many participants of the Trump-Russia saga, including Mifsud and Downer who initially sparked the so-called Russiagate scandal and Fusion GPS, the firm behind the infamous anti-Trump “dirty” dossier which played a crucial role in “justifying” FBI surveillance operations against Trump aides.
Citing newly released testimonies, American investigative journalist John Solomon reported on 11 May, that Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and Hillary Clinton had been aware that her campaign had funded opposition research and sought for dirt on Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.
“I think she was – she knew that we had an opposition research staff in-house”, Podesta said in a testimony. “We, the campaign, directly purchased some opposition research… I think that I only learned subsequently that the payments were made through Perkins Coie, 50 percent from the campaign, 50 percent from the DNC”.
Ortel is not surprised that Hillary Clinton appears to be deeply involved in how the Trump-Russia investigation started. According to him, the roots of the “Clinton corruption run deep”, starting in Arkansas where Bill Clinton served as a governor and attorney general.
“Once the Clinton’s moved to the White House, the scale of their corrupt and suspicious activities expanded to the national and international stages”, the Wall Street analyst presumes. “From 1997 onwards, a key instrument in swapping cash for influence has been the network of Clinton ‘charities’ that has never been properly regulated anywhere”.
He suggests that if one wants to understand why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seemed so “determined to impede or topple President Trump”, “Durham and his team must go back into history comparing sums that donors claim they sent towards the Clinton Foundation, with the Foundation’s public filings, submitted many places, under penalties of perjury”.
“Unlike the botched attempts to set perjury traps against Flynn and others, the Clinton Foundation public record, evident in plain sight includes multiple confessions of making false statements under oath”, the analyst highlights. May the long overdue indictments, prosecutions, convictions, fines and incarcerations soon begin”.
The long, destructive conspiracy theory known as Russiagate, the mother of them all, at last evaporates into thin air. No shred of it remains as of back-to-back disclosures over the past couple of weeks. Where does this leave us? What is to come of this momentous turn of events?
Among those not inclined toward hysteria or copious quaffs of Democratic Party Kool–Aid, it has long been a question how those who concocted and sustained the tales of Russian “meddling,” “collusion,” and mail hackery would manage their embarrassment — not to mention their potential legal liabilities — once their edifice-built-on-sand collapsed, as it was destined from the first to do.
The early signs are as some predicted: They will slither quietly off the stage without comment, they will deny their incessant, ever-vehement accusations, they will profess to weariness, they will insist there are more important things to think about now.
Here is a tweet from one Bob F published Saturday. Our Bob touches nearly all of the above-noted bases. His mentions of Matt Taibbi, Aaron Maté, and Jimmy Dore reference two journalists and a talk-show host who identified the fraud from the first and had the scruples not to surrender to the liberal totalitarianism we have suffered these past three years:
ok ok ok ok @aaronjmate and @jimmy_dore got one thing right in their lives. Can we move on from this shiny object that is Russiagate? Trump and the Republicans are looting this country. We could be very close to armed revolt. But let’s talk more about Russia Russia Russia.
Yes, Bob, lets. This is a brilliant specimen of the flaccid cowardice we’re now to witness many times over. Reassuringly enough, a modest twitter storm followed. Here is a reply from Kathy Woods, a consistently insightful commentator in Twitterland:
Move on? Hell no! I can’t stand Trump, but the Dems used the levers of the security state to perpetrate a fraud. They buried progressive momentum and brought us to the brink w/ Russia. It’s essential we completely expose this.
For good measure, here is another response to Big Bob, this one addressing his implicit assertion of Democratic Party virtue in the Age of Trump:
A) liberals never stopped russiagating so obviously it needs to continue to be debunked.
B) if you think the Democrats are not equally to blame for the looting, I got a bridge to sell you.
— David Warschauer???? (@rogersmithbigo) May 9, 2020
There is anger abroad as Russiagate finally unwinds, plainly. This is an excellent thing. And Ms. Woods is right: It is important to make the sun shine on what became, before the end, a scandal of historic proportions. There is a chance of achieving the “complete exposure” Woods asks for, but it remains a question, as of now, whether this will come to pass.
Two weeks ago the Justice Department made public documents showing that when, in January 2017, prosecutors wanted to close the collusion case against Michael Flynn, who briefly served as President Donald Trump’s national security advisor, because they found “no derogatory information” against him, Peter Strzok, the philandering F.B.I. agent later found to be shaping an “insurance policy” against a Trump victory in the 2016 election, cajoled them into keeping it open — absence of evidence be damned.
Two Other Developments
The Strzok revelations turned out to be prelude to the two other developments further demolishing the Russiagate narrative. Last Thursday Justice finally dropped its case against Flynn altogether. We now know he was the victim of a perjury trap when questioned about his contacts with Sergey Kislyak, Moscow’s ambassador to Washington in 2016. “Get him to lie so we can prosecute him,” was the FBI’s directive.
Yet worse, Flynn’s guilty plea was in response to prosecutors’ threats to indict his son if he pled otherwise. Tell me the difference, please, between this kind of stuff and the treatment of the accused in the postwar show trials in Eastern Europe.
On the same day the Justice Department dropped the charges against Flynn, the House Intelligence Committee released documents showing that the FBI had no evidence that Russia pilfered the Democratic National Committee’s email archives by hacking into its servers in mid–2016. The FBI had none because CrowdStrike, the patently corrupt cyber-security firm on which it (inexplicably) relied, never gave it any: It had none, either — contrary to its many claims otherwise.
The taker of cake here is that the documents also show that the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by the inimitable (thank goodness) Adam Schiff, knew there were no grounds to allege Russian involvement in what wasn’t a hack by anyone, but a leak, probably by someone with direct access to the DNC’s servers.
No evidence anywhere along the line of collusion, none of Russians stealing mail. There is a simpler way to put this: No Russiagate.
In truth, there has been evidence aplenty of the Russiagate fraud for some time, due in part to the researches of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, VIPS, of which McGovern is a principal. The problem has been to secure official acknowledgement of three years’ worth of wrongdoing. We now have it, even if it arrives with no admission whatsoever of responsibility.
Enter Perception Management
Now come the lies, the dissembling, and the media’s “perception management.” Tucker Carlson, the Fox News presenter, offered a funny-but-not-funny catalog of the liars who now stand exposed, none more thoroughly than the egregious Schiff, who ought to resign over this, and Evelyn Farkas, another Obama-era holdover with absolutely no regard for the truth. Loretta Lynch, Obama’s A–G, will also have things to answer for, assuming answers for her misconduct are required of her.
Among the press and broadcasters, it has been a spinfest this past week — led, naturally, by The New York Times, given no one in the media dares venture a syllable for which the Times has not signaled prior approval. The paper’s report on the dismissal of the Flynn case marked the judgment down as “the latest example of Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation.” I lost count of the mentions of Flynn’s “lying” and “guilty plea” after nine. No reference to the perjury trap set for Flynn, or the threat to indict his son.
The Times ran two further pieces hatcheting Flynn and Barr in Saturday’s editions, here and here, and a straight-out character assassination of Flynn on Sunday, casting him as some kind of pathological split personality. The Gray Lady doth protest too much, in my view.
The press vastly over-invested in the Russiagate narrative from the first, and now appears set to throw yet more money after all the bad. This is not a good sign. It suggests that our troubled republic simply cannot accept its errors, leaving us unable to learn from them. This is why America in its post-democratic phase cannot self-correct. It is why we have no assurance that another Russiagate, in whatever form, will not be visited upon us.
“Attorney General William P. Barr’s efforts to chisel away at the results of the Russia investigation”? Absolutely. We have to hope he gets somewhere. Committed Russiagaters now take to charging that Barr is corrupting an otherwise snow-white Justice Department. Say what? Given all we now know, this starts to tip into the zone of black humor.
Barr and his investigators are fully armed as of last week. They have all they need to get to the bottom of this dark ocean. They have it in their power to bring to justice the three architects of the Russiagate scam when it was in motion — ex–C.I.A. Director John Brennan, ex–Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, ex–F.B.I. Director James Comey — for what amounted to an attempt to depose a president in a bloodless coup. These are the Democratic Party’s answer to former President Richard Nixon’s infamous “plumbers,” if you ask me.
Whether Barr and his investigators get the task done is to a great extent a matter of politics and bureaucratic warfare that will at best be partially visible to us in coming months. It is a question of how far he will be permitted to go.
Succeed or fail, the record is at least and at last straight.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for theInternational Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, author and lecturer. His most recent book is “Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century” (Yale).
As the Beatles once put it, “I read the news today, oh boy…” One might argue that the “oh boy” has been part and parcel of one’s morning media review ever since 9/11, but depending on one’s own inclinations, the daily content might well be considered particularly depressing over the past several years. As regular readers of Unz.com will already know, my particular perception is that the American “special relationship” with the Jewish state has been a disaster for the United States and for the entire Middle East region, to include even Israel itself. Israel has used the uncritical U.S. support it has enjoyed since the time of Lyndon Johnson to pursue unwise policies vis-à-vis its neighbors that have drawn Washington into conflicts that would have been avoided. It has meanwhile exploited the power of its formidable domestic lobby to bleed the U.S. Treasury of well over $100 billion in direct grants plus three times that much in terms of largely hidden trade and co-production arrangements approved by a subservient Congress and endorsed by a controlled media.
In return, the United States has wound up with a “best friend and ally” that has spied on the U.S., stolen its technology, corrupted its government processes and lied consistently about its neighbors to create a casus belli so Americans can die in pointless wars rather than Israelis. The Lavon Affair and the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty reveal that Israel’s government will kill Americans when it suits them to do so, knowing full well that the sycophants in Washington and the Jewish dominated media will hardly whimper at the affront.
Over the past three years Donald J. Trump has delivered on his promise to be the “best friend in Washington that Israel has ever had.” He appointed his own bankruptcy lawyer and arch Zionist David Friedman as U.S. Ambassador, a man who clearly sees his mission as promoting Israeli interests rather than those of the United States. Israel has illegally exploited an American green light to declare all of Jerusalem its capital and Trump has obligingly moved the U.S. Embassy to suit. The Jewish state, which has inevitably declared itself legally to be “Jewish” and no longer anything like a democracy, has also illegally annexed the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and is now preparing to assimilate much of the formerly Palestinian West Bank. Expulsion of nearly all remaining Palestinians, even the ones who are Israeli citizens, will no doubt come next and has in fact been called for by some Jewish politicians. The extreme Israel-philia embraced by the White House and Congress has, inter alia, meant unrelenting hostility towards both Iran and Syria, neither of which poses any real threat or challenge to the American people or to any genuine U.S. interests.
Friedman has even distorted the State Department’s use of the English language, the “occupied” West Bank is now referred to as “disputed” or “contested.” Friedman, who has disregarded existing U.S. law by contributing to Israel’s illegal settlements, has consistently served as an apologist for Israeli snipers shooting unarmed demonstrators in Gaza and for his much beloved rampaging settlers destroying the livelihoods of Palestinian farmers.
The record is appalling, thank you Mr. Trump, but, to return to the “news today,” an article that appeared last Thursday in the Jerusalem Post still had the power to make me spill my cup of coffee in disbelief. The headline read “Friedman: Second Trump term could take U.S.-Israel ties to next level.” I was not sure if I wanted to read the piece at all as I feared that it would probably mandate transferring the U.S. Treasury Department to Jerusalem and placing the Pentagon under the control of Benjamin Netanyahu. Meanwhile, we Americans would be required to cross through checkpoints when traveling between states and would only be able to find Untermensch work growing cabbages on a sprawling network of kibbutzes.
As it turned out, of course, the Friedman interview with Jerusalem Post journalists was all about Israel, not the United States, even though there was some vague nonsense about the Trump so-called peace plan munificently ending most conflict in the Middle East region and thereby benefiting Americans. Friedman began with “We need to maximize mutual benefits of the relationship in ways I don’t think have happened before. The only limits are one’s imagination as to where we can go.” If Friedman meant that the U.S. has not reaped any of the “mutual benefits” he is undoubtedly correct, but somehow I don’t think that was his intention. And there certainly has been a lot of imagination in the convoluted and often hidden Israeli Lobby schemes to bilk the American taxpayer over the course of the past 75 years.
Friedman characterized the situation before the Embassy move as “We were applying a double standard to Israel, relative to every other country in the world. We were telling Israel, you don’t have the right to choose your capital city… And it’s not just any capital; it’s Jerusalem.” Wrong, Dave. The problem with Jerusalem is that the Jewish state wanted its capital on land that it controlled but did not own under international law and through the agreements that led to the founding of Israel. Pretending that there is some special right through divine providence doesn’t change that one bit.
Friedman also had the interesting sidebar comment that illustrated just how warped the Trump view of Israel actually is. Apparently, Friedman and the president-elect had discussions on moving the Embassy prior to inauguration day “with some officials predicting that he was going to announce the move the same day as his inauguration on January 20, 2017. That didn’t happen, Friedman said, because first conversations were needed in all of the different government offices – State Department, the Pentagon and more.” That Trump was willing to highlight and promote a major pander to the Israel Lobby on the very day he was inaugurated is more than just telling, it is bizarre.
Symbols are apparently also dear to the heart of David Friedman. “Americans who support Israel understand the significance of Jerusalem. It’s what the Statue of Liberty, the Lincoln Memorial, Plymouth Rock and Valley Forge are… Because America was founded on those types of principles, Americans profoundly understand the importance of Jerusalem to the State of Israel.” Friedman added that retaining symbols like Hebron, which is in the Jewish people’s “biblical DNA” is also an important element in the Trump “peace plan.”
Whoa, David, it’s convenient to cite the American experience to justify what Israel is doing but the United States at least ostensibly was founded on the principle that “all men are created equal.” Israel is by law an apartheid state based on religion. And when last I checked Hebron was a predominantly Palestinian city under military occupation to protect the settler interlopers who are working hard to drive out the original residents. It is the site of the 1994 Ibrahimi Mosque massacre of Palestinian worshippers carried out by Brooklyn-born Jewish fanatic Baruch Goldstein. Twenty-nine Palestinians were killed. Yes, “biblical DNA” seems to fit just right if one considers the fate of the Canaanites.
And Friedman had something to say about the planned July 1st Israeli annexation of “West Bank settlements, biblical sites and the Jordan Valley.” He provided a Trump Administration green light saying “We will be ready to address this issue if Israel is ready. Ultimately, as Secretary Pompeo said, it’s Israel’s decision. They have to decide what they want to do.” According to Friedman, the Trump administration’s “vision for peace” would allow Israel to directly annex 30% of the West Bank and exercise control over most of the remainder, which would include “all settlements and the entire Jordan Valley.” The Palestinians would have no control over water resources or even their own airspace. Mapping the precise details is currently subject to “judgment calls in Israel’s court.” Note that all the critical decision making is by Israel with the full backing of the United States. The peace plan has been rightly characterized as a complete surrender to Israeli interests with the Palestinians having no say in the outcome.
Friedman also described the importance of sending a clear message to the Palestinians blaming them for everything to include the denial of basic human rights, which is in fact an Israeli specialty. “If you tell the Palestinians that no matter what happens, no matter how recalcitrant you are, no matter how malign your activities are, no matter how you fail to observe basic human rights for your own people – with all that, you still get to veto the rights of the Jewish people and the State of Israel and their unquestionable capital… it’s just the wrong signal.”
And where to go from here? Friedman opines that “the equation of U.S.-Israel relations needs to be flipped. Rather than Americans seeing themselves as helping Israel, they must realize how much Israel can do for the U.S. – for example, by putting groundbreaking Israeli innovations on the market in the U.S. first.” Sure, steal the technology, re-engineer it, and then quietly arrange sweetheart trade deals through one’s co-religionists to sell it back to the suckers in the United States.
The Jerusalem Post interview concludes with Friedman’s prediction that “Should Trump be reelected, there will be many more opportunities for deepening the connections between the U.S. and Israel.” If that is all true, we Americans might as well surrender our sovereignty right now and save ourselves the pain of going through another corrupt presidential election.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
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.
“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?
House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.
The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber crime investigations unit.
Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.
The following excerpts from Henry’s testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:
Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? … when would that have been?
Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). … There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.
Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?
Mr. Henry: There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence … but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. …
Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?
Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network.
Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you’ve indicated. …
Mr. Henry: “We didn’t have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.
In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic: “Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn’t see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw.”
Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike’s “belief” that Russia hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: “There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, but the — what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we’d seen associated with the Russian state.”
Not Transparent
Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in the word “exfiltration.”
The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or (2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.
As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not hacked — by Russia or anyone else.
Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and its cooperating foreign intelligence services.
Henry testifies that “it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”
This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers “set up” selected emails for transfer to an external storage device — a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any “exfiltration” over that network.
Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPS member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: “WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive.”
The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment
There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the DNC.
But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant and demonstrably true:
(1) In introductory remarks on “cyber incident attribution”, the authors of the ICA made a highly germane point: “The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation — malicious or not — leaves a trail.”
(2) “When analysts use words such as ‘we assess’ or ‘we judge,’ [these] are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. … Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.” [And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure, as was the case with the ICA.]
The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of Holy Writ to the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” (it was a rump effort prepared by “handpicked analysts” from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.
Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks, in an apparent effort to cover his own derriere.
Obama: “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”
So we ended up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point. What Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know—or professed not to know—exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack, and then a leak.
From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that “the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks” rested on thin gruel.
In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their “high-confidence” findings.
Clapper replied: “I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.” Pretty sure?
Comey briefs Obama, June 2016 (Flickr)
Preferring CrowdStrike; ’Splaining to Congress
CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks. It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s struggle with separatists supported by Russia. A Voice of America report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.
Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee there were “multiple requests at different levels” for access to the DNC servers.
“Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw,” he said. Comey described CrowdStrike as a “highly respected” cybersecurity company.
Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. “Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that’s involved, so it’s the best evidence,” he said.
Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:
BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate — did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?
COMEY: In the case of the DNC, … we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn’t get direct access.
BURR: But no content?
COMEY: Correct.
BURR: Isn’t content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?
COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks — the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.
In June last year it was revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.
By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble, as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week — whether the abuses of FISA, misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.
Schiff: Every Confidence
But No Evidence
Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled.
Thursday’s disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin “collusion,” [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of “Russian hacking” of the DNC.
[See: “The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate” republished today.]
Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally about evidence that Russia “hacked” the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta “think tank,” The Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: “You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?” I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the few minutes needed to watch it.
Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr’s dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.
Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to prevail this time?
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing ministry of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A former CIA analyst, his retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
Over the last several months, Americans have witnessed an increase in media propaganda regarding the “dangers” of “anti-vaxxers,” the “proven science of vaccines,” and the “tragedies” that ensue from the failure to vaccinate. That propaganda blitz has resulted in massive hysteria stemming from similar levels of ignorance.
Also resulting from the push by Big Pharma-funded corporate media outlets is the emotional and panicked campaign of pro-vaxxers, vaccine pushers, and adherents to the relatively recent new religion of “scientism” – the religious belief in anything labeled as science or scientific, regardless of whether or not that concept directly contradicts observable reality and experience or even regardless of whether or not it is actually scientific.
The so-called vaccine debate – which is not truly a debate since a debate requires the participation of two opposing sides – is generally nothing more than a shouting and shaming campaign against parents who have come to the conclusion that vaccines are not safe, effective, or neither.
Indeed, it is the unbridled emotion of the pro-vaccine camp that has been provoked and subsequently harnessed into a powerhouse of vitriol and social pressure that is then presented as a public health crisis. The howling of the trendy masses, glued to their televisions, sitcoms, and NPR, is then presented as an organic public outcry in the media, resulting in the conveniently timed response of politicians and lawmakers.
Of course, with the creation of the false debate, there is also the political polarization of the issue – the left must be pitted against the right – in a typical but tried and true method of divide and conquer strategy.
Originally, holding questions regarding the safety or effectiveness of vaccinations was something that bridged political boundaries. Granted, the individuals who held these views were a minority. However, those numbers were growing and could be found in the midst of liberals and conservatives, libertarians and socialists, and even those completely unaligned to any ideology.
Now, however, that is beginning to change. The Big Pharma companies that fund the mainstream media and the political parasites infecting the federal and state capitols have managed to turn this debate into a partisan issue.
The propaganda campaign has been successful among members of all political denominations, but particularly so among the left. This is because the left is made up of a population that is well-trained to believe anything presented to them under the guise of science in much the same way as the right who are designed to believe anything presented in a religious context.
The result of this massive absorption of indoctrination is that we have the passage of bills mandating that children be vaccinated by force of law in California and even the attempt to force adults to be vaccinated as well.
With mandates coming out of California, North Carolina, and Vermont, clearly there is a nationwide agenda at foot.
But while those on the left continue to attack Koch Industries and ALEC for funding a number of horrific economic policies and divisive domestic campaigns, painting any idea they oppose coming from the Republican camps as a “Koch-funded” program (it often is), the reality is that the leftists are the biggest dupes in the vaccine game.
This is because, while leftists hawk vaccines and pride themselves on their obedience to doctors and “scientists,” they are doing nothing more than falling into line with a massive Koch-funded and ALEC-facilitated propaganda campaign.
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
For those who may not be familiar with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the council is considered a “non-profit organization” made up of Conservative state legislators and corporate private sector “partners.” This mixture of government officials and corporate agents then meet regularly, replete with funding from major corporations all across the world to discuss, plan, write, and submit legislation that is beneficial to the corporations.
In one sense, ALEC is a massive corporate lobbying firm. In another, however, ALEC is much more, since much of the legislation submitted by the attentive congressman is actually written for the Senator or Representative by the agents of the organization. It is an organization that provides funding and direction (marching orders) for Congressmen, particularly those at the state level.
While slimy billionaires like George Soros act as the guiding force behind much of the American left, ALEC and KOCH Industries tend to fill the same void for the right; although, in truth, most of the corporations that make up ALEC are those who also fund Democratic candidates. Presentation, however, in a carefully crafted political theatre like the United States, is paramount.
For decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council has been a force in shaping conservative policies at the state level. Today, its impact is even more pervasive. Its legislative ideas are resonating in practically every area of state government, from education and health to energy, environment and tax policy. The group, which brings together legislators with representatives from corporations, think tanks and foundations to craft model bills, has rung up an impressive score. Roughly 1,000 bills based on ALEC language are introduced in an average year, with about 20 percent getting enacted.
For three decades, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the meeting’s host, has brought together corporations (including Pfizer (PFE), AT&T (T), and ExxonMobil (XOM)) and state legislators to write what it calls model bills—pieces of legislation the industries would like to become law. Often this means protecting favored tax treatment or keeping regulations at bay. ALEC has also approved model bills on social issues, including gun control and voter registration. The bills then get passed around among the 1,800 mostly Republican legislators who are ALEC members. They introduce the model bills about 1,000 times a year in state capitols around the country, the group says. About 200 become law. ALEC pays for the meetings through membership fees (called donations) that corporations pay. The legislators receive travel stipends (called scholarships) to attend the meetings. ALEC is registered with the IRS as a nonprofit that provides a public service, not as a lobbyist that seeks to influence.
This offers two benefits: Corporate members can deduct yearly dues, which run up to $25,000—more if they want to sponsor meetings; and ALEC doesn’t have to disclose the names of legislators and executives who attend. That’s important, because if ALEC operated with complete openness it would have difficulty operating at all. ALEC has attracted a wide and wealthy range of supporters in part because it’s done its work behind closed doors. Membership lists were secret. The origins of the model bills were secret. Part of ALEC’s mission is to present industry-backed legislation as grass-roots work. If this were to become clear to everyone, there’d be no reason for corporations to use it.
While ALEC has pushed a number of bills regarding divisive wedge issues (it has to keep up its conservative veneer), it focuses mostly on economic issues promoting free market, Austrian school, deregulation, free trade, and other policies supported by major banks and corporations.
But ALEC is also a major pusher of laws regarding medical issues – not merely in the context of the American healthcare system, but also in the context of personal choice.
Despite all the rhetoric of ALEC and its puppets in Congress, the position of the organization and its puppets is not necessarily in favor of personal choice. This much has been made clear in the form of mandates and force of law, particularly in the area of vaccination.
Below are a very small few of pharmaceutical companies that are part of ALEC’s operations.
Astellas Pharma Inc.
Bayer
Dupont (Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals)
Eli Lilly
Endo Pharmaceuticals
Express Scripts
GlaxoSmithKline
Hoechst- Roussell Pharmaceutical Corporation
Hoffman La-Roche
Imperial Chemical Industries Pharmaceuticals
Johnson & Johnson
Mylan Pharmaceuticals
Novo Nordisk
Pharmacia and UpJohn
Purdue Pharma
Pfizer
Solvay Pharmaceutical
Takeda Pharmaceutical
TEVA Pharmaceuticals
TogetherRX Access (made up of ABBVIE, GSK, Janssen, Lifescan, Pfizer, Stiefel, Viiv Healthcare, Vistakon Pharmaceuticals)
The UpJohn Co.
These names are only a small few of the myriad of pharmaceutical companies, vaccine manufacturers, and other interested parties who are listed as members of ALEC. Many of these companies are concealed even further by a veil of umbrella “organizations” acting as front operations.
ALEC And Vaccines
With such a massive list of major pharmaceutical companies amidst ALEC’s ranks, it should come as no real surprise that ALEC would be one of the driving forces behind the recent spate of “mandatory vaccine bills” popping up all across the country. Indeed, its motto should be “Personal Choice For Corporations. Government Enforced Mandates For People.”
Remember, it was ALEC that crafted the “model” legislation “Immunization of Minors On TANF,” legislation that would have required parents on TANF assistance to require proof that their children were fully vaccinated according to the “recommended” levels. If those families did not show proof of their child’s vaccination, those families would lose their TANF benefits.
While exemptions were left intact in this “model” legislation, ALEC has stepped up its attack on parental rights by going after the exemption status in later bills.
For instance, consider the attempt to remove Vermont citizens’ rights to a philosophical exemption to vaccination known as SB 199, a bill that caught many in Vermont by complete surprise. Of course, when one takes a look at the key players and possible motivations, it becomes more obvious as to how this bill came to be and why.
S199 was introduced in the state Senate by Kevin Mullin, who is VT chair of the Pharma-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and was introduced in the state House by Representative George Till, M.D., at the request of Harry Chen, M.D., Vermont’s Health Commissioner. Dr. Chen, who was a Vermont state representative and former chair of the Vermont House Health Care Committee for four years, has publicly downplayed vaccine risks.
S199 was supported by the VT Dept. of Health and state government supported institutions, such as the University of Vermont, as well as medical trade associations that receive money from pharmaceutical corporations selling vaccines in the U.S., including the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), March of Dimes, Every Child by Two and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Other organizations endorsing elimination of the philosophical exemption included the Vermont Academy of Family Physicians, Fletcher Allen, Vermont Association of Hospitals and Health Systems, Voices for VT Children, Vermont Pharmacists Association, Rutland Medical Center, and Vermont Medical Society.
Here ALEC’s Vermont chairman, Republican Sen. Kevin Mullin, introduced S.199, a bill seeking to end the “philosophical exemption” in the childhood vaccine laws. A Republican introducing a health care bill, one that removes a parent’s rights, one that obliges all children to participate in a health care plan. … An ugly duckling if ever there was one! Just doesn’t look like all the rest.
The duckling looks even uglier in the light of Vermont’s exemplary health statistics. We rank right up there on general health, low incidence of infectious diseases, and low child mortality. What’s the problem, what motivates such a bill? Well, several corporations have recently publicly cut their ties with ALEC over ALEC’s Stand Your Ground gun laws, underscoring the reality that ALEC is funded by corporations, and we may guess has their interests at heart more than your child’s well-being.
One might be tempted to argue that the vaccine bill submitted in Vermont was merely an anomaly. That is, one would be tempted to make this argument if the Vermont bill was the only such bill submitted and supported by ALEC and its members.
In California, the infamous and fascist SB 277 which unfortunately became law was introduced by another vaccine fanatic and high priest of the religion of scientism, Richard Pan. Ben Allen, however, the second State Senator to introduce the legislation into the California state Senate is himself connected to ALEC. As Maureen Cruise of LA Progressive wrote in regards to Allen’s funding,
Among other wealthy conservative donors are William E. Oberndorf, a California billionaire investor who funds conservative causes such as the privatization of education which he promotes via the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). He has contributed to the Karl Rove PAC and to Jeb Bush and the GW Bush Foundation. The Fisher Family of Gap and a dozen other corporations are fans of privatization of the public sector and charter schools.
Oberndorf, the ALEC big wig, is a major donor of Allen.
Cruise also points out that a sizable portion of Allen’s campaign contributions come directly from pharmaceutical interests.
A similar story is discovered in North Carolina, where notoriously arrogant and corrupt Senator Jeff Tarte – in between fits of whining and rage – introduced a bill that would have removed all vaccine exemption rights (except for medical exemptions) from parents and children, including homeschool children.
As if his last name did not accurately describe his disposition, Senator Tarte was one of the main sponsors of the NC bill SB 346, a bill that would have eliminated the “religious exemption” clause in the recommended vaccine schedule for children entering NC public schools. He was also a main contender for the title of worst public relations interaction with a constituent in the state of North Carolina in the last several years.
In keeping with the trend of recent events, however, Tarte is also a member of the ALEC organization, a feather in his cap that he was not shy in advertising in his weekly newsletter. Tarte not only is a member, but an active participant taking part in speaking events and even a seat on the ALEC Education Council.
Conclusion
The goal of forced vaccination has been in existence for quite some time, going back to a number of elite think tanks decades ago and the halls of pharmaceutical companies. Major pharmaceutical companies, for many obvious (or should be obvious ) reasons would also like to mandate vaccination. Increased profits from the vaccine sales and the treatment of resulting disease, as well as the cover-up of vaccine risks by a population free of a control group are but a few of the reasons such corporations are supporting the vaccine mandates.
After all, as Bertrand Russell stated as far back as 1953,
Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .
But, while the push to mandate vaccines for children and adults is by no means an ALEC-centric conspiracy, this recent push for such laws was indeed formulated in ALEC councils.
For this reason, it is highly ironic that the political left should be the half of the paradigm that takes up the charge for mandatory vaccination laws. After all, it is the left (at the lower levels) who seems to live by the motto “If ALEC supports it, we oppose it.” This time, all it took was some clever propaganda, trendy nudging, and social shaming and the left was marching right behind ALEC as militantly as if they were Republicans all along.
The entire vaccine debate can scarcely even be labeled a debate. It is an exercise in social shaming, shouting down opposing views, and religious devotion to television and anyone wearing a lab coat or claiming to be an expert.
With the culprit behind the recent mandatory vaccine/eliminate exemption push now revealed, it is time to begin working toward repealing these laws and making sure that no similar bill is ever politically viable.
CNN botched the ‘death’ of Kim Jong-un, covered up for Chris Cuomo after he broke quarantine, and published lies about Elon Musk, and that’s just in the past month, but now it’s here to tell you which news networks are credible!
This week Vanity Fair kicked up a flurry of controversy when after citing those pesky ‘anonymous sources,’ it claimed Donald Trump Jr secretly bought a stake in the right-leaning One America News Network. The owner of the network, Charles Herring, quickly jumped in to quash the claims and denied any such deal had gone through, as well as demanding that a retraction be made.
As of now, no retraction has yet been published, but CNN – ever the opportunist willing to engage in partisan shenanigans – jumped in to create even more controversy. In an article titled ‘Meet OAN, the little-watched right-wing news channel that Trump keeps promoting,’ the cable network boldly claims that OAN “arguably has more in common with a state-run propaganda network than a credible news organization.”
Without being too up to date with OAN’s brand of news and unable to speak on the quality of their reporting, one thing I do know for certain is that CNN is in absolutely no position to call another news agency ‘propaganda,’ or to question its credibility.
In 2017, three journalists resigned after a story falsely claimed Anthony Scaramucci was linked to a Russian investment fund. That same year, CNN pushed the narrative that Trump Jr received early access to WikiLeaks documents only for it to turn out they had the email dates wrong. Once again, keeping busy in 2017 it seems, the network stated the GOP was making rape pre-existing conditions in its healthcare alterations. A blatant falsehood that even fact-checking sites acknowledge as such.
None of that even begins to touch on the many such incidents before or since, let alone the ones at the top of this article. Let us also not forget Russiagate, the biggest conspiracy theory of our time, and something the network threw all its weight behind. Yet audaciously they write that two of OAN’s prominent personalities are “far-right agitators who have a history dabbling in conspiracy theories.”
Uh huh.
On the topic of ‘agitators,’ CNN’s Don Lemon showed his true colors when in January he broke into uncontrollable fits of laughter as panelists on his show mocked not just Trump, but a stereotypical southern bumpkin whom they see as the president’s voter base. They implied such people hate reading, spelling, and geography, all while Mr Lemon spilled his juice and snorted and chuckled along.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to most people reading this, but CNN is a hypocritical, bulls**t-spewing blight on the entire medium of news media as a whole. That it is considered the powerhouse that it is goes a long way towards showing that the average news watcher either doesn’t care about facts, or they’re too tied up in their own political biases to notice the snake oil being squirted into their eyes.
OANN is fake news, says the network that released a story 2 weeks ago that Kim Jong Un was dead https://t.co/S5EJrhgHA6
Speaking of looks, CNN took pettiness to a new level when it criticized OAN’s visual style, saying “it doesn’t even offer viewers compelling television with professional graphics.”
I guess they just expect everyone to have 3D holographic airplanes to pull out whenever a Malaysian flight goes missing. But at that point it’s not news, it’s just fancy and mindlessly hollow television. Something CNN excels at.
Sophia Narwitz is a writer and journalist from the US. Outside of her work on RT, she is a primary writer for Colin Moriarty’s Side Quest content, and she manages her own YouTube channel. Follow her on Twitter @SophNar0747
In litigation challenging a Texas law blocking state agencies from hiring companies boycotting Israel, the Fifth Circuit ordered dismissal of the case Monday but declined to decide if the law is constitutional.
Bahia Amawi, a Palestinian U.S. citizen, had worked for the Pflugerville Independent School District for nearly a decade as a speech therapist for kindergarteners when the school district offered to renew her contract for the 2018-2019 school year.
She refused due to a new clause in the contract requiring her to certify that she does not boycott Israel nor would she do so while working for the school district.
Texas joined 25 other states with similar legislation when lawmakers passed House Bill 89 and Republican Governor Greg Abbott signed it in 2017.
The so-called “No Boycott of Israel” bill’s sponsor, Representative Phil King, R-Weatherford, told news outlets in 2017 he introduced the legislation because as a Christian he felt his religious heritage is linked to Israel and the Jewish people, America’s national security depends on having Israel as an ally in the Middle East, and Texas has a large Jewish population and does a lot of business with Israel.
Amawi sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Pflugerville ISD in Austin federal court in May 2018, claiming HB 89 violates her First Amendment free speech rights.
She said in court filings she refuses to buy Sabra brand hummus due to its connections with Israel and only buys Palestinian olive oil. Sabra is owned by the Israeli company Strauss, which has publicly stated it donates food to the Israeli Defense Forces.
Amawi testified she is part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel, based on South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement, in support of her family living in Palestine, who she claims is subject to curfews imposed by the Israeli government that last for weeks and prevent Palestinians from buying groceries and going to doctor’s appointments and block their children from attending school.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, an Obama appointee, granted an injunction after consolidating Amawi’s case in January 2019 with a parallel challenge brought by four men, two of whom are of Middle Eastern descent and claim two Texas school districts denied them work as debate coaches because they refused to agree not to boycott Israel.
John Pluecker, an Arabic translator who joined the BDS movement in support of his Palestinian friends, said the University of Houston refused to pay him for translating an essay after he crossed out the anti-boycott clause in the contract. He sued the University of Houston Board of Regents.
His co-plaintiff George Hale said in court filings he came to sympathize with the Palestinian people’s plight while living with them in Bethlehem from 2008 to 2016.
Hale sued the Texas A&M University System’s board of regents, alleging a school official threatened to fire him from his job as a public radio journalist at Texas A&M University-Commerce if he did not sign the pro-Israel clause in his contract.
After Paxton, the school districts and the board of regents appealed to the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans asking it to vacate Pitman’s injunction in spring 2019, Governor Abbott signed an amendment of HB 89. House Bill 793 modified the law so it no longer applies to sole proprietorships, only to businesses worth more than $100,000 with 10 or more employees.
Though the challengers argue the amendment did not moot their claims because Texas school districts continue to enforce the anti-boycott clause, the Fifth Circuit disagreed Monday.
“We have decided that this appeal is moot because, twelve days after the district court’s ruling, Texas enacted final legislation that exempts sole proprietors from the ‘No Boycott of Israel’ certification requirement,” Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Grady Jolly wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel.
He continued: “The plaintiffs are all sole proprietors. Because they are no longer affected by the legislation, they lack a personal stake in the outcome of this litigation.”
Jolly, a Reagan appointee, declined to weigh in on the merits of the challengers’ constitutional claims.
The panel vacated Pitman’s order and remanded the case to him to enter a judgment dismissing the lawsuits.
Edgar Saldivar, with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, represented Pluecker, the Arabic translator. He said the litigation was successful despite the dismissal order.
“The Fifth Circuit ruling today simply affirms that the legislature’s retreat means Mr. Pluecker, the other plaintiffs, and other Texans whose livelihood is dependent on government contracts can no longer be forced to disavow their First Amendment right to boycott,” he said. “The government cannot impose ideological litmus tests or tell Texans what issues they may or may not support as a condition of hiring.”
One of lead plaintiff Amawi’s attorneys, Gadeir Abbas with the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., indicated another challenge of the Texas law could be coming.
“The Fifth Circuit’s decision means the Texas legislature’s efforts to avoid an inevitable judicial reckoning about these illegal anti-BDS laws that punish people for exercising their First Amendment rights succeeded – for the moment. But these laws invite challenges, and we expect to see more litigation of this anti-BDS law,” he said.
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond Monday afternoon to a request for comment on the order.
The biggest news story of 1988 was the destruction of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland that killed 270 people. The US government falsely informed the world that Libya was responsible for an act of terrorism. It was later proven that Iran funded the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in retaliation for the shoot down of Iran Air Flight 655 by a US Navy warship five months earlier. The US government knew that Iran was responsible but blaming Iran for an eye-for-an-eye retaliation would demonstrate that a regional power can hit back at a superpower.
_____________________________
“Sea of Lies”; Newsweek ; July 13, 1989.; revealed that the USS Vincennes was not under attack when it shot down an Iranian airliner; https://www.newsweek.com/sea-lies-200118
“Secret CIA testimony identifies real Lockerbie mastermind”; a 2013 documentary aired by the popular British Channel 4 News that reveals Libya was not responsible; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26Gon…
Despite the fact Scottish courts freed the accused Libyans, the official story remains that Libya was responsible, as evidenced by Wikipedia placing well-documented alternative theories in a separate section as “conspiracy theories.”; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_…
Newly declassified congressional transcripts from the Russia investigation include testimony from former Obama administration defense official, Evelyn Farkas, who testified under oath that she lied in an MSNBCinterview when she claimed to have evidence of “the Trump staff dealing with Russians,” and said that the Obama administration was “trying to also get information to the hill” because the incoming Trump administration would try to hide the (nonexistent) evidence.
During closed-door testimony on June 26, 2017, however, Farkas – who was the Clinton campaign’s senior foreign policy adviser – admitted she had nothing.
In an exchange with former Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), Farkas is pressed on why she said ‘we’ when she said ‘if they found out how we knew what we knew about their staff dealing with Russians.’
Farkas’ response: I didn’t know anything.
In fact, Farkas – who is currently running for a Housee seat in the 17th congressional district of New York – shouldn’t have known anything, because she resigned from the Obama administration in September 2015.
… how did this non-resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, gain knowledge of intelligence regarding members of Trump’s team and their relations with Russia, when she was the senior foreign policy advisor for Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton?
Farkas was the prime driver behind the anti-Russia phobia inside the Pentagon during the Obama years — shilling hard for the Ukraine — requesting that the President send them anti-tank missiles — which, essentially, would mean outright war with Russia. – iBankCoin
Given all we now know, Occam’s razor suggests that Farkas, while working for the Clinton campaign, was fully aware of the work of Christopher Steele – the former UK spy paid by the Clinton campaign (through their lawyers and Fusion GPS) to fabricate the infamous dossier used by US intelligence to paint Donald Trump as an agent of Russia.
That said, who exactly did she mean by “we” during that interview? And who was scrambling to leak evidence to the hill?
Based on the MSNBC interview, Farkas obviously knew something. But instead of going down that particular rabbit hole during congressional testimony, she thought the best option was to simply say she lied.
How powerful is the Rothschild banking family? How did they amass their fortune? Just how rich are they? Do they secretly control the world? Sputnik explores. … continue
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He suggests that if one wants to understand why Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seemed so “determined to impede or topple President Trump”, “Durham and his team must go back into history comparing sums that donors claim they sent towards the Clinton Foundation, with the Foundation’s public filings, submitted many places, under penalties of perjury”.
