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Twitter Says It’ll Censor Deepfakes And Basically Anything Else It Wants To Ahead Of 2020 Election

By Tyler Durden – Zero Hedge – 02/05/2020

Just days after banning Zero Hedge, Twitter has announced it’ll also be implementing new rules to address deepfakes and “other forms of synthetic and manipulated media” as we head closer to the 2020 election.

Because we can’t have a repeat of 2016, right?

The company said it is going to not allow users to “deceptively share synthetic or manipulated media that are likely to cause harm,” according to CNBC. The rules go into effect after March 5 this year, where the company will now label some Tweets containing synthetic or manipulated media.

Social media can, and will, have a profound effect on the state of the election heading into November this year. Altered media often shows up, with candidates words sometimes parroted or mocked in certain ads that seek to undermine them. Lawmakers have been trying to figure out a way to hold social media companies accountable for the spread of misinformation.

According to CNBC, last month the “House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce held a hearing where experts shared warnings of both deepfakes and potential over-regulation of tech platforms that host them.”

Twitter is now going to test media in three different ways to see if it meets parameters that violate its policy.

  • Is the media synthetic or manipulated?
  • Was it shared in a deceptive manner?
  • Is it likely the content will cause serious harm?

The article notes that if all three of these come back “yes”, that Twitter said it would be likely to remove the content.

But we’re willing to bet – and we know from experience – that Twitter is just going to remove the content it wants to, regardless. 

In fact, the new policy is broad enough that it’ll allow the company to even take action against “cheapfakes”, which are low-tech edits meant to deceive other users. And what example is immediately brought up in CNBC’s article? One video where a Twitter user simply slowed down a video of Nancy Pelosi:

The doctored video of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that circulated on social media last year, for example, would be an example of such amateur editing, since the video was simply slowed down to give the effect that her speech was slow and slurred. More sophisticated deepfakes can involve transposing a person’s face on a video of another person, for example, which could give false impressions of a person’s words or actions.

So we guess we won’t be seeing any videos of her tearing up the State of the Union Speech in slow motion.

Twitter also said that some world leaders would be exempt from some of its policy standards. They company said it’s because “it’s important for users to see and be able to debate their messages.” But we know it’s likely because Twitter doesn’t want to lose the traffic they drive and popularity they bring to the site.

Again it seems like a case of Twitter enabling itself for purely arbitrary and discretionary bans of whomever it wants, whenever it wants.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

Stop using Russia as chief ‘bogeyman’, let’s normalize relations – Putin spokesman to US politicians

By Bryan MacDonald | RT | February 6, 2020

After a few years of ‘Russiagate’, which bizarrely mutated into a Ukraine-inspired impeachment trial, now that Donald Trump has been declared ‘not guilty’ by the Senate, the Kremlin would like to move on.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, says it’s time for American politicians to stop using Russia as the main “bogeyman” in their internal battles. He added that as soon as Russian-American relations are taken off the domestic agenda in Washington, it should be possible to “normalize” relations between the two countries.

Asked to comment on the Senate’s verdict, Peskov noted that Russia “traditionally doesn’t like to interfere in the internal politics of the US,” but conceded the outcome of the trial was “quite easily predicted by anyone, not just specialists in American affairs.”

“For us, the main thing is that in their domestic political and election battles, Americans stop using Russia as the main bogeyman and, as it were, the primary demon of their political arena,” Peskov told reporters on Thursday morning. “For us, this is completely unacceptable.”

Some Russian politicians have publicly commented on the acquittal. The head of the Federation Council’s committee on international affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, believes the fallout will strengthen Trump’s position. And Senator Aleksey Pushkov believes it strengthens Trump’s chances of winning a second term, as reported by Izvestia.

Over the past four years, the levels of anti-Russia hysteria in the US shocked Russians, who broadly believed it belonged to the Cold War-era. The main culprit was cable television, and sections of the mainstream written press. For instance, MSNBC’s flagship ‘Rachel Maddow’ Show at one point dedicated more coverage to Russia than all other topics combined.

Much of Maddow’s scaremongering was based on the so-called ‘Steele Dossier’, an unverified, and largely discredited, document compiled by a former British spy. The Sunday Times, known to have good sources in British intelligence, recently reported that it was a “work of fabrication.”

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Why Both Republicans and Democrats Want Russia to Become the Enemy of Choice

By Philip Giraldi | Strategic Culture Foundation | February 6, 2020

One of the more interesting aspects of the nauseating impeachment trial in the Senate was the repeated vilification of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. To hate Russia has become dogma on both sides of the political aisle, in part because no politician has really wanted to confront the lesson of the 2016 election, which was that most Americans think that the federal government is basically incompetent and staffed by career politicians like Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell who should return back home and get real jobs. Worse still, it is useless, and much like the one trick pony the only thing it can do is steal money from the taxpayers and waste it on various types of self-gratification that only politicians can appreciate. That means that the United States is engaged is fighting multiple wars against make-believe enemies while the country’s infrastructure rots and a host of officially certified grievance groups control the public space. It sure doesn’t look like Kansas anymore.

The fact that opinion polls in Europe suggest that many Europeans would rather have Vladimir Putin than their own hopelessly corrupt leaders is suggestive. One can buy a whole range of favorable t-shirts featuring Vladimir Putin on Ebay, also suggesting that most Americans find the official Russophobia narrative both mysterious and faintly amusing. They may not really be into the expressed desire of the huddled masses in D.C. to go to war to bring true U.S. style democracy to the un-enlightened.

One also must wonder if the Democrats are reading the tea leaves correctly. If they think that a slogan like “Honest Joe Biden will keep us safe from Moscow” will be a winner in 2020 they might again be missing the bigger picture. Since the focus on Trump’s decidedly erratic behavior will inevitably die down after the impeachment trial is completed, the Democrats will have to come up with something compelling if they really want to win the presidency and it sure won’t be the largely fictionalized Russian threat.

Nevertheless, someone should tell Congressman Adam Schiff, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, to shut up as he is becoming an international embarrassment. His “closing arguments” speeches last week were respectively two-and-a-half hours and ninety minutes long and were inevitably praised by the mainstream media as “magisterial,” “powerful,” and “impressive.” The Washington Post’s resident Zionist extremist Jennifer Rubin labeled it “a grand slam” while legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin called it “dazzling.” Gail Collins of the New York Times dubbed it “a great job” and added that Schiff is now “a rock star.” Daily Beast enthused that the remarks “will go down in history” and progressive activist Ryan Knight called it “a closing statement for the ages.” Hollywood was also on board with actress Debra Messing tweeting “I am in tears. Thank you Chairman Schiff for fighting for our country.”

Actually, a better adjective would have been “scary” and not merely due to its elaboration of the alleged high crimes and misdemeanors committed by President Trump, much of which was undeniably true even if not necessarily impeachable. It was scary because it was a warmongers speech, full of allusions to Russia, to Moscow’s “interference” in 2016, and to the ridiculous proposition that if Trump were to be defeated in 2020 he might not concede and Russia could even intervene militarily in the United States in support of its puppet. Schiff insisted that Trump must be removed now to “assure the integrity” of the 2020 election. He elaborated somewhat ambiguously that “The president’s misconduct cannot be decided at the ballot box, for we cannot be assured that the vote will be fairly won.”

Schiff also unleashed one of the most time honored but completely lame excuses for going to war, claiming that military assistance to Ukraine that had been delayed by Trump was essential for U.S. national security. He said “As one witness put it during our impeachment inquiry, the United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Schiff, a lawyer who has never had to put his life on the line for anything and whose son sports a MOSSAD t-shirt, is one of those sunshine soldiers who finds it quite acceptable if someone else does the dying. Journalist Max Blumenthal observed that “Liberals used to mock Bush supporters when they used this jingoistic line during the war on Iraq. Now they deploy it to justify an imperialist proxy war against a nuclear power.” Aaron Mate at The Nation added that “For all the talk about Russia undermining faith in U.S. elections, how about Russiagaters like Schiff fear-mongering w/ hysterics like this? Let’s assume Ukraine did what Trump wanted: announce a probe of Burisma. Would that delegitimize a 2020 U.S. election? This is a joke.”

Over at Antiwar Daniel Lazare explains how the Wednesday speech was “a fear-mongering, sword-rattling harangue that will not only raise tensions with Russia for no good reason, but sends a chilling message to [Democratic Party] dissidents at home that if they deviate from Russiagate orthodoxy by one iota, they’ll be driven from the fold.”

The orthodoxy that Lazare was writing about includes the established Nancy Pelosi/Chuck Schumer narrative that Russia invaded “poor innocent Ukraine” in 2014, that it interfered in the 2016 election to defeat Hillary Clinton, and that it is currently trying to smear Joe Biden. One might add to that the growing consensus that Russia can and will interfere again in 2020 to help Trump. Absent from the narrative is the part how the U.S. intervened in Ukraine first to remove its government and the fact that there is something very unsavory about Joe Biden’s son taking a high-paying sinecure board position from a notably corrupt Ukrainian oligarch while his father was Vice President and allegedly directing U.S. assistance to a Ukrainian anti-corruption effort.

On Wednesday, Schiff maintained that “Russia is not a threat … to Eastern Europe alone. Ukraine has become the de facto proving ground for just the types of hybrid warfare that the twenty-first century will become defined by: cyberattacks, disinformation campaigns, efforts to undermine the legitimacy of state institutions, whether that is voting systems or financial markets. The Kremlin showed boldly in 2016 that with the malign skills it honed in Ukraine, they would not stay in Ukraine. Instead, Russia employed them here to attack our institutions, and they will do so again.” Not surprisingly, if one substitutes the “United States” for “Russia” and “Kremlin” and changes “Ukraine” to Iran or Venezuela, the Schiff comment actually becomes much more credible.

The compulsion on the part of the Democrats to bring down Trump to avoid having to deal with their own failings has brought about a shift in their established foreign policy, placing the neocons and their friends back in charge. For Schiff, who has enthusiastically supported every failed American military effort since 9/11, today’s Russia is the Soviet Union reborn, and don’t you forget it pardner! Newsweek is meanwhile reporting that the U.S. military is reading the tea leaves and is gearing up to fight the Russians. Per Schiff, Trump must be stopped as he is part of a grand Russian conspiracy to overthrow everything the United States stands for. If the Kremlin is not stopped now, it’s first major step, per Schiff, will be to “remake the map of Europe by dint of military force.”

Donald Trump’s erratic rule has certainly dismayed many of his former supporters, but the Democratic Party is offering nothing but another helping of George W. Bush/Barack Obama establishment war against the world. We Americans have had enough of that for the past nineteen years. Trump may indeed deserve to be removed based on his actions, but the argument that it is essential to do so because of Russia lurking is complete nonsense. Pretty scary that the apparent chief promoter of that point of view is someone who actually has power in the government, one Adam Schiff, head of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Trump’s State of the Union address: half MAGA rally, half Resistance Protest, full-on reality TV drama

By Sarah Abed | February 6, 2020

Tuesday’s State of the Union dubbed “the launching of the great American comeback” came just a day after the Iowa caucuses in the 2020 presidential election and a day before Trump was acquitted of both articles of impeachment by the Senate. What could best be described as a reality TV drama on steroids, part MAGA rally and part Resistance protest with several theatrical performances that tugged at the heart strings and others that took exploitation and emotional manipulation to another level, this year’s SOTU had a little something for everyone.

The most talked about incident, however, was when Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi proceeded to rip a copy of President Trump’s speech while still on camera, as soon as he had finished his hour and a half long annual address. In what could be described as a wrestling match between the opposing parties US political divide was on full display for the world to mock.

Pelosi’s attempts to downplay or justify her actions by saying “it was the courteous thing to do considering the alternatives”, didn’t do much to stifle the bipartisan condemnation she received. The disgraced 79-year-old Democratic leader’s bold nonverbal message speaks more of her inability to effectively handle the pressures that come with this coveted position than any sort of resistance message she was hoping to send to the Left. Some have even called for her to resign as House Speaker.

On Wednesday, US President Donald J. Trump became the third US president in history to be impeached by the House and acquitted by the Senate. Ending the impeachment process and almost guaranteeing him a second term, the president was acquitted during the Senate trial on both articles of impeachment.

The only Republican that voted in favor of convicting President Trump was Mitt Romney of Utah. Romney is also the only Senator in US history to vote to remove a president from his own party in an impeachment trial. Romney voted “guilty” on article 1, for abuse of power, and “not guilty” on article 2, for obstruction of Congress. On the Senate floor Romney said that he supports a lot of what President Trump has done but his promise before God was to apply impartial justice and to put his feelings and political biases aside. What did Romney benefit from his vote? Nothing, aside from maybe a little favor with the liberals.

After two months of what Trump referred to as a “witch hunt”, the fact-finding and closed-door depositions were followed by public hearings in December.  Now with the acquittal a disgraceful chapter in the Democratic Party’s book has closed and with it any chance of Trump being forced out of office before his term is over.

Democrats have essentially gifted Trump his next presidency on a silver platter. One can’t help but wonder how incredibly inept and poorly executed their plans have been since the 2016 election. The “he is not my president” crowd led by the white coat mafia is spiteful and undeniably biased. These individuals wouldn’t dare criticize the previous administrations many faults, some of which led us into wars that have cost millions of people their lives but they will eagerly scrutinize the current administrations every word and deed, and regardless if it’s to the nations benefit or not, they will trash it.

The left claims to be working in the best interest of the average American but has essentially created the perfect storm which not only gives President Trump’s his highest job approval ratings since he took office in 2017, which according to Gallup polls has risen to 49% but inflates his already enormous ego. Why is it that war crimes and crimes against humanity which were committed by the Obama administration never warrant a mention? If Democrats had a just bone in their body, they would have named and shamed previous President’s just as they have done to the current administration but that’s never going to happen.

It’s hard to tell what’s worse, the Left who is blinded by hate and is willing to burn the country down to get rid of President Trump or the Right which considers Trump their Lord and Savior and chooses to live in ignorant bliss and blindly accepts whatever Emperor Trump and his administration dish out.

Anyone who hasn’t been brainwashed into thinking either of the two parties have our best interest at heart can see that both parties are flawed and suffer from the inability to effectively discern fact from fiction or put biases aside and focus on America first.

However, in this political circus, at least since 2016 till 2024 it looks like the Republicans are on top and the Democrats, by their own doing, are digging themselves into a deeper grave by the day.

Now to say that the Left and Right can’t agree on anything would be an exaggeration. During the State of the Union address there were a few nauseating moments where both sides seemed in sync. One such rare show of solidarity came when both sides eagerly applauded the failed US-puppet Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido. Guaido isn’t the legitimate president of Venezuela, but like a scene out of a zombie movie, President Trump introduced the stiff CIA-backed puppet and the crowd went wild with applause.  Braindead attendees rose in unison to give him a standing ovation. Had Guaido and his US sponsors not failed miserably to unseat President Nicholas Maduro, Guaido wouldn’t currently be on tour trying to garner support leading him to the White House.

If the Left truly cared about the US’s domestic and foreign policies and wanted to bring about any meaningful change, they need to bring more to the table than just boycotts and protests, to be taken seriously.

February 6, 2020 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , | Leave a comment

Step to nuclear doomsday: US puts low-yield nukes on submarines to counter made-up Russian ‘strategy’

By Scott Ritter | RT | February 5, 2020

The US has deployed “low-yield” nuclear missiles on submarines, saying it’s to discourage nuclear conflict with Russia. The move is based on a “Russian strategy” made up in Washington and will only bring mass annihilation closer.

In a statement released earlier this week, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood announced that “the US Navy has fielded the W76-2 low-yield submarine launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warhead.” This new operational capability, Rood declared, “demonstrates to potential adversaries that there is no advantage to limited nuclear employment because the United States can credibly and decisively respond to any threat scenario.”

The threat underpinning justification for this new US nuclear deterrent had its roots in testimony delivered to the House Armed Services Committee in June 2015 by US Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work, who declared that “Russian military doctrine includes what some have called an ‘escalate to deescalate strategy’ – a strategy that purportedly seeks to deescalate a conventional conflict through coercive threats, including limited nuclear use.”

However, any review of actual Russian nuclear doctrine would have shown this to be a false premise. Provision 27 of the 2014 edition of ‘Russian Military Doctrine’ states that Russia “shall reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy. The decision to use nuclear weapons shall be taken by the President of the Russian Federation.”

Russian threat, made in America

Despite this, the concept of ‘escalate to deescalate’ as official Russian military doctrine had become ingrained in official US nuclear doctrine by 2018, with the publication of the US Defense Department’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Moscow, the 2018 NPR claimed, “threatens and exercises limited nuclear first use, suggesting a mistaken expectation that coercive nuclear threats or limited first use could paralyze the United States and NATO and thereby end a conflict on terms favorable to Russia. Some in the United States refer to this as Russia’s ‘escalate to deescalate’ doctrine.”

In response to this “made in America” Russian threat, the 2018 NPR identified a requirement to modify a number of submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with low-yield nuclear warheads to strengthen US nuclear deterrence by providing US military commanders with a weapon that addresses “the conclusion that potential adversaries, like Russia, believe that employment of low-yield nuclear weapons will give them an advantage over the United States and its allies and partners.”

As was the case with Robert Work’s 2015 congressional testimony, the 2018 NPR did not provide the source for the existence of a Russian ‘escalate to deescalate’ doctrine, except to note that it originated in the US – not Russia. Nonetheless, based upon the 2018 NPR, President Donald Trump requested that the Defense Department acquire a new low-yield nuclear warhead for the Trident SLBM, setting in motion a process which culminated in the recent announcement that this new warhead had reached operational capacity.

Voices of reason fall on deaf ears

In response to President Trump’s request, a letter, signed by a laundry list of notable American statesmen, politicians and military officers, including former Secretary of State George Schultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General James Cartwright, was sent to the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, stating that there was no need for this new “low yield” warhead. The letter furthermore noted that the premise of this warhead — the so called ‘escalate to deescalate’ Russian doctrine — was derived from a “false narrative” combining non-existent Russian intent with an equally fictitious “deterrence gap” that could only be filled by the new nuclear weapon. This letter fell on deaf ears.

At a meeting of the Valdai Club in October 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed the issue of Russian nuclear doctrine, prompted by questions raised by the publication of the 2018 NPR. “There is no provision for a pre-emptive strike in our nuclear weapons doctrine,” Putin declared. “Our concept is based on a reciprocal counter strike. There is no need to explain what this is to those who understand, as for those who do not, I would like to say it again: this means that we are prepared and will use nuclear weapons only when we know for certain that some potential aggressor is attacking Russia, our territory…[o]nly when we know for certain — and this takes a few seconds to understand — that Russia is being attacked we will deliver a counter strike. This would be a reciprocal counter strike. Why do I say ‘counter’? Because we will counter missiles flying towards us by sending a missile in the direction of an aggressor.”

There’s no such thing as ‘limited’ nuke use

In a 1982 article published in Foreign Affairs entitled ‘Nuclear Weapons and the Atlantic Alliance’, four senior American statesmen (McGeorge Bundy, George F. Kennan, Robert S. McNamara and Gerard C. Smith) who had a hand in crafting US nuclear policy declared that “No one has ever succeeded in advancing any persuasive reason to believe that any use of nuclear weapons, even on the smallest scale, could reliably be expected to remain limited.”

This fact holds as true today as it did when the article was written. Perhaps there is no better voice to emphasize this point than Russian President Vladimir Putin, again addressing the 2018 Valdai Conference.

“Of course, [the decision to launch nuclear weapons in defense of Russia] amounts to a global catastrophe, but I would like to repeat that we cannot be the initiators of such a catastrophe because we have no provision for a pre-emptive strike. Yes, it looks like we are sitting on our hands and waiting until someone uses nuclear weapons against us. Well, yes, this is what it is. But then any aggressor should know that retaliation is inevitable, and they will be annihilated.”

“And we as the victims of an aggression, we as martyrs would go to paradise while they will simply perish because they won’t even have time to repent their sins.”

The Trump administration would do well to ponder these words as they embrace the false deterrence of the new “low yield” nuclear-armed Trident SLBM. The fact of the matter is it deters nothing, and only invites global annihilation.

Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, served in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 served as a Chief Weapons Inspector with the UN in Iraq. Mr. Ritter currently writes on issues pertaining to international security, military affairs, Russia and the Middle East, and arms control and nonproliferation. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

Also on rt.com:

US says it won’t rule out nuclear first strike, because allies wouldn’t trust it otherwise

February 5, 2020 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

DNC Loses Public Trust in Primary Process on Very First Day

By Caitlin Johnstone | February 5, 2020

After a 2016 presidential primary race riddled with scandals, all of which worked against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of anointed establishment favorite Hillary Clinton, the 2020 Democratic presidential primary elections officially began with a massive scandal working against Bernie Sanders to the advantage of an establishment favorite.

The 2020 Iowa caucuses turned out to have been designed to depend on the use of a new, untested app with extensive ties to establishment insiders and to the Pete Buttigeig campaign, and because of problems using this app as of this writing we are still waiting on the full results of the election. The Iowa Democratic Party has bizarrely released a partial result with 62 percent of 99 counties reporting, which just so happens to have favored the campaign of a Mr. Peter Buttigeig, who in the sample came out on top in delegates despite coming in second in votes. [After 71 percent of the vote counted Buttigieg was still ahead on Wednesday morning.]

According to an Iowa precinct chair, the problems using the app (developed by the aptly named Shadow, Inc) included literally switching the numbers entered into it on the final step of reporting results.

“A precinct chair in Iowa said the app got stuck on the last step when reporting results,” CNN reports. “It was uploading a picture of the precinct’s results. The chair said they were finally able to upload, so they took a screenshot. The app then showed different numbers than what they had submitted as captured in their screenshot.”

It doesn’t actually matter anymore who really won Iowa at this point; the damage is already done. Iowa is a sparsely populated state with an insignificant number of delegates; nobody campaigns there for the delegates, they campaign to make headlines and generate excitement and favorable press for themselves in the first electoral contest of the presidential primary race. This has already happened, and with Buttigeig first declaring victory before any results were in, followed by his delegate count lead announced hours later, the favorable press has predominantly gone his way.

Even if Sanders turns out to have won the delegate count as well, this will already have happened. He will have already lost the opportunity to start off the primary contest with a win and a rousing victory speech. In every way that matters, he has already been robbed, by extremely shady establishment dealings, in the very first electoral contest of the race.

The very first. Berners are already as outraged as they were at the height of the 2016 DNC scandal, which was still months out from this point in the race. They’re already getting screwed over, and it’s just getting started.

I see many people blaming this on incompetence, some in bad faith and some in good, but in either case there is no legitimate reason to do that anymore. It has been my experience that if someone seems to be totally incompetent but every “oopsie” they make just happens to end up benefiting them, it’s manipulation you’re dealing with, not incompetence. Some people are happy to look dumb if they can get what they want. If you watch their actions and ignore their words, a very revealing pattern shows up immediately.

This is all extremely blatant, and the feelings it brings up in people are completely legitimate. Yet narrative managers like Neera Tanden and Shannon Watts are telling everyone they’re just like Trump if they suspect the Democratic establishment is again doing the thing it did just four years ago.

If such extremely shady shenanigans had occurred in Russia or Venezuela, within minutes Mike Pompeo would have been holding a press conference demanding a new election under UN supervision and an international coalition of sanctions. It’s hilarious how America is constantly staging coups, implementing sanctions and arming violent militias on the basis that their government has an illegitimate democratic process, yet its own most important electoral proceedings would make any third world tin pot dictator blush.

And don’t give me that crap about how Democratic Party primaries are separate from the U.S. electoral system and therefore don’t undermine American democracy; of course they do. If your country has a rigidly enforced two-party system and one of those parties has bogus internal elections, then you do not have any degree of democracy in your country. Saying “Well if you don’t like our rigged primary process you can vote for the other corrupt warmongering pro-establishment party” is not democracy.

The difference between a true totalitarian dictatorship and America is that the totalitarian dictatorship enforces one political belief system which supports the status quo, whereas in America you get the freedom of choice between two political belief systems which support the status quo. The entire system is stacked to ensure the continued rule of the oligarchs, spooks and warmongers who really run things behind the two-handed sock puppet show of the official elected government.

The U.S. doesn’t attack and undermine nations when they lack “freedom” or “democracy”, they attack and undermine them when they refuse to bow to the demands of the power establishment which controls the U.S. government and its allies.

The sooner people wake up to this, the better. In Iowa, things couldn’t have gone worse for those responsible for keeping people asleep.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Follow her work on Facebook, Twitter, or her website.

February 5, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

US uneasy as Iraq gets new prime minister

By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | February 5, 2020

In happier times, Washington and Tehran might well have zeroed in on Mohammed Tawfik Allawi as their consensus candidate for the post of Iraq’s prime minister.

Why not? He was opposed to Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship — although, unlike most Shia politicians who fled from Saddam’s tyranny, he never lived in Iran but chose UK.

However, unlike his famous (notorious) cousin Iyad Allawi who also lived in exile in the UK and whom the US handpicked to head the first government during its occupation (2004-2005), Mohammed Allawi didn’t work for the western intelligence.

Even detractors dare not say that he ever was on Tehran’s payroll. In fact, he wasn’t — unlike another famous relative Ahmed Chalabi.

Yet, although part of Iraqi Shia aristocracy, he was sensible enough as an aspiring Iraqi politician to have good rapport with Iran.

Mohammed Allawi is said to be deeply religious and yet is secular-minded. He twice resigned from former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s cabinet protesting against the latter’s “sectarian agenda and political interference”.

There is no conceivable reason why the US cannot be happy that Iran has failed at this crucial juncture in regional politics to insert an ‘yes man’ as the head of the new government in Baghdad.

But prioritising Iraq’s stability more than anything else, Tehran welcomed Mohammed Allawai’s appointment. On the contrary, even after five days since President Barham Salih gave him the appointment letter, Washington is holding back.

American think tankers wired into the US establishment have run down Mohammed Allawi as a mere frontman of Moqtada Al Sadr’s Sairoon coalition and its rival, the Fatah alliance led by Hadi Al Amiri. They anticipate that he is doomed to fail.

The heart of the matter is that there is much angst in the American mind that Mohammed Allawi, once confirmed as prime minister by the Iraqi parliament, may not only restructure US-Iraqi relations, but eventually take the winds out of the sails of the so-called protests whom Washington and its regional allies have inserted since October into the Iraqi body polity as an extra-constitutional centre.

Today, the US’ capacity to influence the Iraqi political elite — a vast unwieldy network of politicians, Shia political parties, security forces, militias, and religious figures that make up Iraq’s muhasasa (sectarian power-sharing) political system — stands much diminished. Clawing its way back up the greasy pole is difficult.

Thus, the protest movement in Iraq, which is now entering its fourth month, has come to be the principal instrument for Washington (and its Saudi and Emirati allies) to surreptiously advance the broader geopolitical confrontation with Iran that is being played out within the country.

The Iraqi protest movement bears striking similarity with Hong Kong’s, which too had brought the local government down on its knees. In Iraq too, it is a remarkably young movement made up almost entirely of adolescents or youth below the age of 25 and a significant female participation.

The movement has an inchoate programme that keeps mutating — ranging from electoral reforms to eradication of corruption — amidst the artistic graffiti, rap videos, and citizen journalism as modes of political activism and civic engagement.

The Iraqi protest movement too has no unified leadership and yet through its abstract calls for the removal of the current political elite it has worked to insert itself as a factor in the decision-making over the prime minister’s nomination. Some hidden forces are evidently pulling the strings from behind, as in Hong Kong.

The outgoing Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi bitterly complained in the Iraqi parliament on January 5 that in two telephone conversations, the US President Donald Trump had threatened him with precisely such protests to overthrow him if he didn’t comply with US demands.

POTUS allegedly threatened to position US marine snipers “atop the highest buildings,” who will target and kill protesters and security forces alike in an attempt to pressure the Prime Minister.

Therefore, it is hugely significant that the Iraqi protestors have rejected Mohammed Allawi’s appointment. Iraq is now at a political impasse. In essence, Washington will do everything in its power to prevent the new government from settling in.

In Hong Kong, the turmoil began subsiding once the US-China trade deal was signed. In Iraq, everything depends on the negotiation of the terms of engagement with the US. The amorphous nature of the protest movement means that it may meet with sudden death as well.

The Trump administration hopes to salvage relations with Baghdad and smother the Iraqi demand for American troop withdrawal. The top US commander in the Middle East Gen. Frank McKenzie visited Baghdad on Tuesday to set the ball rolling.

In a longer perspective, US hopes that the Sadrists could be exploited as a powerful driver of placing the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) structure under real controls of the government.

But there’s a caveat. As a seasoned American analyst puts it, “Moqtada also believes he has a role to play as a ‘guide’ focused on ‘social justice’… While unlikely to be a ruler in the mould of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Moqtada is also unlikely to be a ‘quietist’ cleric in the style of Sistani. Something in-between is more likely, raising parallels with Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah. This is not a comparison that should reassure (Washington).”

In fact, on Tuesday, Sadr supporters took control of the iconic Tahir Square building in Baghdad and evicted the protestors ensconced there.

The bottom line is that although the level of emotion in the Sadrist discourse about American forces in Iraq is no more acute as it used to be a decade ago, it still remains a deeply held conviction of the movement, from Moqtada himself to the militant cadres, that the presence of foreign military forces should not become a proforma reality of Iraqi life.

February 5, 2020 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s deal will go ahead, because there is no real PA opposition to it

By Lama Khater | MEMO | February 4, 2020

After Mahmoud Abbas’s speech about Donald Trump’s “deal of the century”, there was optimism that it would lead to something new on the ground from the PA. At the very least, that it would help to manage the relationship between the Palestinian factions.

Several days have now passed and nothing has happened to match the seriousness of the situation. Abbas’s speech at the Arab League summit in Cairo was weak, suggesting that we can expect more of the same tweaked slightly to suit the PA leader’s media performance. None of this has any impact on the political world, nor does it set the stage for action to face the risks arising from the deal if Israel starts to implement it unilaterally.

There is no point in threatening to cut off the security relationship with Israel while the PA prisons are still filled with young Palestinians on charges of forming cells to resist the occupation. Nor is there any point in announcing a boycott of America while the Director of the CIA was in Ramallah for a meeting with senior PA security officials Majed Faraj and Hussein Al-Sheikh.

What more does the Trump administration and Israel want from the PA for it to maintain security cooperation? Regardless of how serious any political estrangement and boycott is, will Trump or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu care about the insults and condemnation voiced by the PA against their plans? They know exactly what they want from the PA and they know that the authority will not give up its security role in the West Bank, where most of the effects of the deal will be felt. The PA is not only continuing its security role to please the US and Israel, which may result in its toppling, but also because this is in total alignment with Abbas’s approach, to which he still clings despite all that has happened. He still thinks that armed resistance to the Israeli occupation is “terrorism” and a future “State of Palestine” must be demilitarised. Does any sane person dream of a demilitarised state in a troubled world, believing it to be worthy of the efforts needed for its creation, and that it will be both viable and sustainable?

The details of the deal make it clear that the two-state solution is an illusion, and that there is no place for a Palestinian state inside historic Palestine or alongside Israel; the facts imposed on the ground by the occupation made this obvious many years ago. However, in exposing it clearly, Trump has put the ball firmly in the PA-Fatah court; the Fatah leadership is now required to take a progressive stand when its anger dies down. So far, it has done nothing in terms of internal reconciliation or ending the monopoly over Palestinian decision-making; it is not ready to back down from its catastrophic mistakes against the national cause and Palestinian people. Is it that hard to admit that the path followed by Fatah has led us to this position? If we concede that it was a political endeavour that was justified at the time, why do we continue to stick to it now in our current position, and make statements about ending security cooperation with Israel, which we know to be a lie?

With such hesitation, weakness and failure to implement even a single bold measure, what does the PA believe will prevent the deal from being implemented, especially as many of its stipulations already exist in practice? There is no doubt that the PA’s fruitless efforts will not stop this from happening, because what is needed at this moment are practical decisions that surprise the Israelis and go beyond formalities, public relations and speeches.

The move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018 was a test to see what the Palestinian response would be to the deal when announced in full. The official response was muted, with no significant changes to security cooperation or anything like that. Israel and the US are now well aware that whatever they do, no red lines will be crossed, simply because the PA is so weak in enforcing them. We can expect the deal to be implemented, unilaterally or otherwise, following which the future will be more dangerous for the people of Palestine.

February 4, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

UAE, Israel officials conspiring against Iran at secret White House meeting

Press TV – February 5, 2020

The US, Israel and the UAE held a secret meeting at the White House to conspire against Iran, a report reveals.

According an Axios report on Tuesday, the secret meeting was held on December 17, 2019.

The sit-down, which involved a nonaggression pact between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv, was referred to as an attempt to forge closer ties between the two.

The Israeli team was led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, and the UAE was represented by Yousef al-Otaiba, the country’s envoy to the US, who maintains close ties with Emirati Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed.

The American officials engaged in the process were national security adviser Robert O’Brien, his deputy, Victoria Coates, and US special envoy for Iran Brian Hook.

In a tweet on December 21, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed pointed to what he called “Islam’s reformation,” adding that, “an Arab-Israeli alliance is taking shape in the Middle East.”

The tweet was responded by the Israeli premier a day later, urging Abu Dhabi to remain reticent over the matter for now.

“The UAE Foreign Minister, Abdullah bin Zayed, spoke about a new alliance in the Middle East: An Israeli-Arab alliance. … I can only say that this remark is the result of the ripening of many contacts and efforts, which at the moment, and I emphasize at the moment, would be best served by silence,” Netanyahu said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting.

The UAE-Israel alliance comes as no surprise in the wake of the Muslim country’s support for the US so-called “peace” initiative between Israel and Palestinians, dubbed “deal of the century.”

Rejected by Palestinians and the world’s Muslim population, the deal recognizes Jerusalem al-Quds as the “undivided capital” of the Zionist regime.

It also amounts to violation of the fundamental rights of the Palestinians by disregarding UN resolutions and international law.

Washington has previously voiced support for closer ties between its allies in West Asia, namely the Israeli regime, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

As a senior White House official put it, “while the United States would certainly welcome expanding relationships between our critical allies and partners in the Middle East, we’re not going to detail private diplomatic conversations, nor do we have anything to announce.”

February 4, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Israel pushing for ties with Morocco in exchange for US recognition of its rule over Western Sahara

MEMO | February 4, 2020

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been discussing a three-way agreement that would see the United States recognise Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara in exchange for having Rabat take steps to normalise ties with Tel Aviv, Israeli broadcaster Channel 13 reported.

Netanyahu has been trying in recent months to make the US promote his plan, as it will raise the chances for him getting a high-profile public visit to Morocco as well as being a major diplomatic achievement for Morocco’s King, Mohammed VI.

In addition, the report claimed, US President Donald Trump can gloat of having advanced ties between Israel and an Arab state, should the deal go through.

However, the spread of sovereignty of Morocco on Western Sahara was a deal always strongly opposed by former national security adviser John Bolton.

Following Bolton’s departure in September, Netanyahu reportedly began raising the matter again with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

It’s been more than 40 years since Morocco claimed sovereignty over Western Sahara, after it occupied large swathes of the area in 1975 as Spain withdrew from the area and later annexed the territories in a move not recognised internationally.

According to the publication, contacts between the two countries intensified after a secret meeting between Netanyahu and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Morocco Nasser Burita during the UN General Assembly in September 2018.

That meeting was the result of a back channel established between Bourita and Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Meir Ben-Shabbat, reported Arutz Sheva.

It also reported that Netanyahu wanted to reach an agreement before the April elections of 2019, but the plan was dismissed after the media got information about the secret visit of Ben-Shabbat to Morocco.

Though the countries have no formal relations, Morocco has long maintained informal but close intelligence ties with Israel and Israelis are allowed to visit there.

Last week, Morocco received three Israeli reconnaissance drones as part of $48 million arms deal, to counter extremist groups and fight rebel movements in the Western Sahara, French website Intelligence Online reported.

February 4, 2020 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | Leave a comment

Democrats’ Dubious Impeachment Subtext of Treason

By Michael Tracey | Real Clear Politics | January 28, 2020

Less than 72 hours before Donald Trump was impeached last month, the House Judiciary Committee released a behemoth 658-page report outlining the rationale for the final articles produced by the Democratic majority. It would be interesting to conduct a secret ballot asking members of Congress — and indeed, members of the media — to confide whether they actually read the report before the vote took place. Based on the woefully incomplete public discussion of what this impeachment really entails, one has to conclude that few, if any, bothered.

Because if they did read it, they’d know these impeachment articles were never strictly about punishing Trump for mentioning Joe Biden on a phone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky. That’s the popular bite-sized depiction of Trump’s purported wrongdoing, but by the House Judiciary Committee’s own telling, the scope of their impeachment went far beyond just that one narrow allegation — and is fraught with highly ideological assumptions that have so far gone largely ignored.

Even if the Senate trial fails to result in a conviction (as is exceedingly likely) the long-term implications of what the House of Representatives has already ratified by way of its impeachment vote in December are highly ominous.

For instance — and the fact that this has been overlooked is especially mind-blowing — the first article alleges that Trump “betrayed the Nation.” Grave stuff. No president has ever been impeached for “betraying the Nation” before. What does this mean, exactly? The Judiciary Committee report helpfully provides a definition of the relevant terms. In a section describing what they believe constitutes “impeachable treason,” the Democratic majority writes, “At the very heart of ‘Treason’ is deliberate betrayal of the nation and its security.” There’s that phrase: “betrayal of the nation.” According to the drafters of the impeachment articles, then, Trump has been effectively impeached for treason — except the drafters presumably recognized that inserting the word “treason” in the actual text might prove a tad controversial. So instead they just heavily insinuate it, and confirm that they are charging the president with treason in supporting materials that few will ever read.

“Such betrayal would not only be unforgivable,” the report’s explication of treason reads, “but would also confirm that the President remains a threat if allowed to remain in office. A President who has knowingly betrayed national security is a President who will do so again. He endangers our lives and those of our allies.” This language is then imported into the impeachment articles almost verbatim: “Wherefore President Trump, by such conduct, has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to national security and the Constitution if allowed to remain in office.”

So let’s be clear on what was done here. The Democrats set forth a definition of treason in their lengthy impeachment report, and then inserted that same definition into the final impeachment articles — except without using the actual word “treason” in the text. This would seem like a rather significant development, but most of the media discussion has blithely glossed over it.

Having established that treason was a central element of the impeachment articles, a number of troubling implications become clearer. First, in order to have engaged in treason, one must have acted to further the interests of a nation with which the U.S. is in a state of war — thereby “endanger[ing] our lives and those of our allies,” in the words of the report’s authors. Clearly, the “ally” in this scenario is Ukraine, and the “adversary” is Russia. The designation of Russia as an “adversary” is sourced to what the impeachment report’s authors describe as the official “national security policy” of the United States. (Underpinning the logic of the entire impeachment exercise is the notion that Trump defied so-called “official” U.S. foreign policy — a characterization attributed to witness George Kent in the report — as if presiding over “official” policy is the purview of unelected members of the national security state bureaucracy, not the elected president.)

The report’s authors cite impeachment witness Tim Morrison, the former National Security Council operative under Trump, as saying: “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that they can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.” (Adam Schiff directly cited this quote during one of his trial soliloquies.) Central to the reasoning behind these impeachment articles, then, is the presumption that the U.S. is engaged in direct hostilities with Russia, and taking any steps to interrupt these hostilities — such as temporarily withholding (but not actually rescinding) future dispersals of military aid — constitutes a treasonous betrayal of the American people. Only in the minds of the most hardened and conspiratorial Cold Warriors does that prospect have even the slightest plausibility.

And the idea, asserted almost in passing by the report’s authors, that the lives of Americans are “endangered” by the temporary withholding of military aid to Ukraine is of course another incredibly fraught proposition, seeing as it conflates U.S. national security with that of Ukraine. Assuming that sending lethal weaponry into Ukraine’s eastern provinces actually does enhance its long-term national security (another disputed premise), the concept that U.S. and Ukrainian interests are one and the same is not some objective statement of fact but a highly ideological proposition devised to justify an interventionist U.S. policy. An illuminating challenge for these pro-impeachment advocates would be to go to Ohio and ask voters whether they believe their security interests are interchangeable with those of Ukraine. After the blank quizzical stares set in, the advocates might come to realize that this belief is a fairly niche one.

Another under-analyzed element of the impeachment articles is the assertion that Trump’s actions with regard to Ukraine “were consistent with [his] previous invitations of foreign interference in United States elections.” The objective here, then, is to emphasize that the Ukraine matter must not be understood as a standalone episode, but part of a broader pattern that heightens the urgency of impeachment. What are these “previous invitations of foreign interference”? The Judiciary Committee report again provides an answer.

“These previous efforts include inviting and welcoming Russian interference in the 2016 United States Presidential election,” the report reads. So we are now back to the Mueller investigation, which was widely presumed to have been discarded. Far from it: the report’s authors state that Trump’s conduct vis-a-vis the 2016 election confirms that there are “sufficient grounds” for impeachment. Past instances of “inviting and welcoming Russian interference” include the infamous Trump wisecrack on July 27, 2016 about Hillary Clinton’s private email server (“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing”). They also include Trump exclaiming, “I love WikiLeaks!” on the campaign trail and the allegation that members of the Trump campaign “were maintaining significant contacts with Russian nationals.” (Yes, Russian “nationals” are supposed to be seen as sinister, even if such “nationals” have no connection to any government body.) There is even a reference to George Papadopoulos and his purported discussion with Joseph Mifsud about “dirt” related to Hillary Clinton.

These were all core tenets of the Mueller investigation and they were all exhaustively analyzed, and summarily debunked as constituting any illicit or conspiratorial relationship between Trump and Russia. But Democrats in their zeal still managed to smuggle Mueller back in. When Nancy Pelosi proclaimed that impeachment was never fundamentally about Ukraine, but about Russia — exclaiming “All roads lead to Putin” as her justification for the endeavor — she wasn’t kidding.

Again, Democrats who voted for these impeachment articles voted not simply to punish Trump for soliciting an investigation of Biden. Rather, they also voted to impeach him for committing treason at the behest of Russia. And in turn, they ratified a number of extremely fraught New Cold War assumptions that have now been embedded into the fabric of U.S. governance, regardless of what the Senate concludes.

It’s crucial to emphasize that this is the first impeachment in American history where foreign policy has played a central role. As such, we now have codified by way of these impeachment articles a host of impossibly dangerous precedents, namely: 1) The U.S. is in a state of war with Russia, a nuclear armed power; 2) the sitting president committed treason on behalf of this country with which the U.S. is in a state of war; 3) the president lacks a democratic mandate to conduct foreign policy over the objections of unelected national security state bureaucrats.

Is the reality of what was done here going to set in any time soon?

February 4, 2020 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | | Leave a comment

Railroaded Again: ‘Technical Glitch’ in Democratic Party Voting App Deprives Sanders of Iowa Victory

21WIRE | February 4, 2020

It’s amazing to think how the entire American media and political Establishment has been banging on ad nauseum for the last four years running, telling the public that the biggest threat to the integrity of their fragile western democracy and fleeting freedoms – was the Russians.

We’re now told that the Democratic Party’s opening act for the 2020 Presidential Elections – the Iowa Caucuses, has descended into chaos after the release of voting results from the state’s precincts was delayed due to “inconsistencies in voter data” which was meant to be reported accurately via a new digital mobile app commissioned by esteemed members of the party’s elite high committee.

Normally, Iowa results are released a few hours after the polls close, but this year that didn’t happen.

Numerous internal party arguments have now broken out, with opposing camps attacking different people, all but guaranteeing more in-fighting and controversy in what is already turning out to be the ultimate internecine war.

The biggest loser here, clearly, is front-runner Bernie Sanders, who has been deprived of the certain momentum he would have had with the announcement of a resounding victory in Iowa.

As a result of the chaos, more marginal candidates like Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg are now claiming to have ‘won’ the state, although it will be hard to tell who is speaking truth and who is trying to take advantage of the chaos in order to artificially inflated their performance.

As of this morning, voters are still waiting for Final results, and even then, those may be contested now that confidence in the system has been shaken.

The ‘glitch’ came about after Democratic Party activists manning some 1,700 precincts had downloaded the new app on their smart phones in order to submit voter data from the caucus sites, over to the party’s central headquarters. It’s still unknown exactly how the app distorted the voting results, and will no doubt be the subject of much argument and speculation in the coming days and weeks.

The firm behind the shady app is called Shadow Inc, owned by the Democratic Party nonprofit group Acronym. As it turns out, many of the people behind this new election technology are former Hillary Clinton staffers.

This may just be a coincidence, but it is certain to fuel existing distrust and skepticism among Democrat voters, especially in light of the previous exposure of how the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign had colluded with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) operatives to prevent candidate Bernie Sanders from winning his party’s nomination.

None of this should come as any surprise to voters who have been raising the alarm about voting fraud and voting irregularities for decades. But this situation is unprecedented.

Many suspected a scandal was afoot on Sunday, after it was announced that the traditional benchmark Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa Democratic caucus goers – would not be released as per normal on Saturday night. Apparently, the poll was shelved due to the efforts the Pete Buttigieg’s campaign who claimed the poll was ‘unfair.’ Buttigieg was seen to be in discussions with operatives at CNN at this time. Their operation to submerge polling results damaged front-runner Bernie Sanders who was expecting to capitalize on announcements of a wide lead going into the Caucuses.

For Sanders campaigners, it seemed that the fix was in. Only, they never imagined how bad things would get on Monday evening.

Just days before this, Hillary Clinton, still reeling from her 2016 epic loss, took to national media to attack the Sanders campaign in a move which many believe is part of a wider DNC establishment level effort to undermine front-runner Bernie sanders – who Clinton and Biden operatives believe is too far left for the Democratic Party and has ‘no chance’ to beat Donald Trump’s re-election bid come November.

Make no mistake about it: as of this morning, public confidence in the Democratic Party has hit an all-time low.

February 4, 2020 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception | , | Leave a comment

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