US Paranoia Ramps Up Infowar on Russia
Strategic Culture Foundation | 03.08.2018
This week saw renewed effort by US politicians and media to ramp up the information war against Russia. The impetus came from the US-based social media network, Facebook, declaring that it had identified “coordinated political influence campaigns”.
Never mind that the internet giant admitted that it did not know the actual identify of the organizers, that did not stop US news media and senior Washington politicians jumping to conclusions that Russia was guilty (again) of interfering in US politics.
Facebook’s head of cybersecurity Nathaniel Gleicher was quoted as saying: “At this point in our investigation, we do not have enough technical evidence to state definitively who is behind it.”
Somehow this baseless information was miraculously turned into “evidence” pointing to Russian “malign activity”.
Mark Warner, a member of the US Senate Intelligence Committee, reacted to the non-issue with the following categorical words: “Today’s disclosure is further evidence that the Kremlin continues to exploit platforms like Facebook to sow division and spread disinformation.”
It’s rather astounding that a senior US lawmaker who is running the “intelligence community” can make such a preposterous assertion based on no facts.
Even the Trump White House, which is caught up in a web of contradictions, was impelled to jump to wrong conclusions. A spokesperson said President Donald Trump “will not tolerate foreign interference in our electoral process from any nation state or other malicious actors.”
It is a clear sign of how collectively paranoid the US political and media establishment have become whenever they make such wild extrapolations based on infantile innuendo and fatuous reasoning.
In the following editorial comment in a New York Times report it was stated: “Like the 2016 Russian interference campaign, the recently detected campaign sought to amplify divisive social issues, including through organizing real-world events.”
There is no credible evidence that Russia interfered in the US 2016 presidential election. None whatsoever. Moscow has repeatedly affirmed that it had nothing to do with US internal affairs. President Vladimir Putin reiterated the position earlier this month during his summit in Helsinki with Trump. Trump even appeared to agree, only to do a U-turn under fierce pressure from political opponents back home labelling him a “traitor”.
Nevertheless, in spite of no evidence, the NY Times, like the rest of the corporate American news media and politicians in Washington, has converted fiction into fact, which is then used to provide “evidence” to substantiate further fiction as fact.
Pertinent facts are excluded, however. Such as: Facebook is a global company with a claimed membership of two billion users – more than a quarter of the world’s population. Those figures indicate that the US population (310 million) represents only about 15 per cent of Facebook’s total users. Facebook seems to be happy to make billions of dollars in advertising profits from having all its non-US foreigners. But when some of those foreigners post messages or information concerning American politics and society then that is construed as “interference” in US affairs.
The point is that Facebook and other US-based social media platforms are global entities. They can’t have it both ways. If their predominantly foreign members want to join in conversations, agitation or even erroneous rumors, then that’s the way it is. It seems prissy and precious for American online capitalists and politicians to go into hissy fits about “foreign meddling”. It’s all the more ludicrous to extrapolate such activity to precisely “Kremlin influence campaigns”.
Another fact is that modern US politics and society is riven with divisions and acrimony over numerous issues that stem from its own inherent problems. President Trump is at war with large sections of the Congress and news media. The claims about “Russia collusion” are just a stalking horse with which to attack him.
In the wider US society there are growing bitter disputes between, for example, conservatives and liberals, far-right nationalists and anti-fascists, anti-immigration nativists and pro-immigration advocates, religious evangelicals and secularists, pro-war and anti-war, gun rights groups and abolitionists, pro-police and anti-police, climate-change “deniers” and environmentalists. The list goes on and on.
For US media and politicians to cite “internet organizers” taking up any one of these issues as “evidence” of “sowing division” in American society, and specifically to attribute that “effort” to “Russian interference”, is a case of living in spectacular denial about the onerous challenges confronting that nation – from within.
“Sowing division” in the US is an intrinsic function of its own erosion as a monstrously unequal society under a failing corporate-finance capitalist economy, which seems to only prop itself up by waging illegal wars around the world and demonizing “foreigners”.
Blaming Russia or any other “foreign actor” for its own internal failing and floundering is a denial by those – Washington politicians and news media – who do not want to be held to account democratically.
The alarming thing is that as the US mid-term elections in November approach over the next three months we can expect an intensification of the information war against Russia as a “malign actor”. That is a dangerous slippery slope descending into hysterical claims that Russia is committing “acts of war”. Already such unhinged claims have been made by certain US politicians and media pundits. As the social divisions in the US become ever more desperate, so too will the anti-Russia rhetoric from its paranoid politicians and news media.
The Real “Fake News” From Government Media
By Scott Lazarowitz | ActivistPost | July 31, 2018
Facebook has announced its campaign against “fake news.” But, according to some workers’ own admission, conservatives are being censored.
And Google also wants to censor “fake news.” But Google also was shown to treat conservative websites, but not liberal ones, as “fake news.”
The same thing seems to be going on with Twitter. And again, conservatives are complaining.
But who is to decide what is “fake news”? Who will be Facebook and Google’s sources for real news?
In 2013 the U.S. Senate considered a new a shield law to protect journalists. In the lawmakers’ attempts to narrow the definition of a journalist, some Senators including Sen. Dianne Feinstein only wanted to include reporters with “professional qualifications.”
“Professional” publications such as the New York Times, the “Paper of Record,” would apparently be protected.
So one can conclude that the New York Times can be a source of “real” news for Facebook or Google, despite all the Times‘ errors, screw-ups, and corrections, right?
According to one NYT former reporter, the Times has been a “propaganda megaphone” for war. Also a partner with the CIA to promote Obama’s reelection bid.
Or CNN, “The Most Trusted Name in News” which wins its own “fake news” awards with its errors, screw-ups and corrections.
During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, there were collusions between then-CNN contributor and DNC operative Donna Brazile, who was outed by WikiLeaks in her giving candidate Hillary Clinton questions in advance for a CNN Town Hall.
Other emails that were leaked to WikiLeaks informed us that reporters obediently followed instructions from the Hillary Clinton campaign on how to cover the campaign. These include reporters from the New York Times such as Maggie Haberman who said the campaign would “tee up stories for us,” and Mark Leibovich, who would email Clinton flunky Jennifer Palmieri for editing recommendations.
And Politico reporter Glenn Thrush asked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for approval of stories on Clinton. Thrush was then hired by the New York Times. After Thrush was then suspended from NYT over allegations of sexual misconduct, the Times ended the suspension, stating that while Thrush had “acted offensively,” he would be trained to behave himself. Hmm.
But all this from the 2016 campaign reminded me of the “JournoLists,” the group of news journalists who participated in a private forum online from 2007-2010. The forum was to enable news reporters to discuss news reporting and political issues in private and with candor, but also, it was revealed, to discuss ways to suppress negative news on then-2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama.
For instance, according to the Daily Caller, some members of the group discussed their criticism of a 2008 debate in which Obama was questioned on his association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Nation‘s Richard Kim wrote that George Stephanopoulos was “being a disgusting little rat snake.” The Guardian‘s Michael Tomasky wrote that “we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy.”
Spencer Ackerman, then with the Washington Independent and now of the Daily Beast, wrote, “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
The Nation‘s Chris Hayes wrote, “Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.”
(But has Hayes criticized Obama’s assassination program, or Obama’s bombings or the blood on Obama’s hands? Just askin’)
In an open letter, according to the Daily Caller, several of the JournoList members called the ABC debate a “revolting descent into tabloid journalism,” because of the moderators’ legitimate questions on Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
So, in today’s Bizarro World, objectively questioning a candidate on a controversial issue is now “tabloid journalism,” but making things up like “Trump-Russia collusions” and repeating the propaganda over and over – that’s not “tabloid journalism.”
The JournoLists also included reporters from Time, the Baltimore Sun, the New Republic, Politico, and Huffington Post.
Now, are those the sources of “real news” that Facebook, Google and Twitter want to rely upon to combat “fake news”?
And who exactly were the “JournoLists” promoting? Obama?
Regarding Obama’s own crackdown on actual journalism, Fox News reporter James Rosen was accused by the feds of being a “co-conspirator” with State Department leaker Stephen Jin-Woo Kim in violating the Espionage Act. Rosen’s correspondences with Kim were seized by Obama’s FBI, along with Rosen’s personal email and phone records. The FBI also used records to track Rosen’s visits to the State Department.
Apparently, then-attorney general Eric Holder went “judge-shopping” to find a judge who would approve subpoenaing Rosen’s private records, after two judges rejected the request.
Commenting on James Rosen and the FBI’s abuse of powers, Judge Andrew Napolitano observed that “this is the first time that the federal government has moved to this level of taking ordinary, reasonable, traditional, lawful reporter skills and claiming they constitute criminal behavior.”
And there was the Obama administration’s going after then-CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, possibly for her reporting on Benghazi and Fast and Furious. Attkisson finally resigned from CBS news out of frustration with the company’s alleged pro-Obama bias and with CBS’s apparently not airing her subsequent reports.
In 2013 CBS News confirmed that Attkisson’s computers had been “accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions.” In 2015 Attkisson sued the Obama administration, claiming to have evidence which proves the computer intrusions were connected to the Obama DOJ.
In Attkisson’s latest lawsuit update, after her computer was returned to her following the DOJ Inspector General’s investigation, her forensics team now believes her computer’s hard drive was replaced by a different one.
Now back to “fake news.”
After Donald Trump locked up the Republican Presidential nomination in May, 2016, there were significant events in the next two months. Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele colluded to get opposition research on behalf of Hillary Clinton, the FBI applied for a FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign associates, and Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner had a possibly set-up meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.
Also within that same period, the DNC claimed that its computers were hacked but the DNC wouldn’t let FBI investigate. The Washington Post published an article claiming, with no evidence presented, that “Russian government hackers” took DNC opposition research on Trump.
It was very shortly after the November, 2016 Presidential election that the Washington Post published an article on a “Russian propaganda effort to spread ‘fake news’ during the election.” To escalate the media’s censorship campaign perhaps?
The campaign against “fake news” coincided with Obama minions at FBI, DOJ and CIA apparently panicking over a possible Trump presidency and their allegedly abusing their powers to attempt to take down Trump.
So the news media seem to be on a crusade to fabricate “Trump-Russia collusions” and repeat it over and over, and to vilify, ignore and squash actual investigative research and reporting on what exactly the FBI and DOJ bureaucrats have been doing. Call such real investigative reporting “fake news,” “conspiracy theory,” and so forth.
In the end, Facebook, Twitter and Google might want to reconsider relying on the mainstream news media led by the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, and instead include citizen journalists and non-government-sycophant media to provide news and information.
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has noted that the Founders generally viewed the freedom of the Press to apply to every citizen to print, publish or express accounts of events. We really need to highlight that kind of old-fashioned, honest journalism.
Why US’ sanctions “bill from hell” on Russia should worry India
By M K Bhadrakumar | Indian Punchline | August 3, 2018
A fortnight after the Helsinki summit on July 16, US-Russia relations are set to take a turn for the worse. In an unprecedented move, White House fielded a joint media briefing by America’s top national security team on Thursday to highlight that Russia is continuing to make pervasive attempts to interfere in the upcoming mid-term elections in the US in November.
One of the top security czars who gave the briefing, National Intelligence Agency director Dan Coats said starkly, “We acknowledge the threat, it is real, it is continuing, and we’re doing everything we can to have a legitimate election. It is pervasive, it is ongoing, with the intent to … drive a wedge and undermine our democratic values.” Importantly, Coats alleged that the Kremlin was involved in the meddling effort which reached into the Kremlin itself.
He said, “Russia has used numerous ways in which they want to influence, through media, social media, through bots, through actors that they hire, through proxies – all of the above, and potentially more. We also know the Russians tried to hack into and steal information from candidates and government officials alike.” (Transcript)
The briefing served three purposes: one, to reject the denials of meddling that Russian President Vladimir Putin maade to President Trump at Helsinki; two, to neutralize the public criticism in the US that Trump has not been unequivocal on the issue; and, three, to give warning to Moscow.
The briefing coincided with a ‘bipartisan’ legislation that was introduced into the US Congress on Thursday to impose stiff new sanctions on Russia and combat cyber crime. The bill includes restrictions on new Russian sovereign debt transactions, energy and oil projects and Russian uranium imports, and new sanctions on Russian political figures and oligarchs. Interestingly, the proposed legislation underscores strong support for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressly forbids the Administration from taking the US out of the alliance without two-thirds of the US Senate voting in favor of any such effort.
The senators who tabled the legislation said in a statement that the proposed new sanctions would target “political figures, oligarchs, and family members and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Vladimir Putin.” According to some reports, the bill would also require a report to be assembled on the personal net worth and assets of Putin. Quite obviously, Putin himself is in the crosshairs.
Putin’s spirited defence of Trump at their joint press conference in Helsinki on the Russia collusion inquiry has provoked this furious backlash from America’s political class. In such a backdrop, another summit between Trump and Putin in a near future seems highly improbable. A visit by Putin to the White House in the autumn is simply out of the question. The US-Russia ties will remain very tense, too.
On the other hand, in a deceptive show of flexibility that will be keenly noted in New Delhi, US Congress has approved a legislation empowering the president to waive penalties against countries that buy weapons from Russia – provided, of course, Washington is convinced that such countries are seeking closer ties with the US. The US Defence Secretary James Mattis had pleaded with the US Congress for such Russia-sanction-waiver authority that would help countries such as India, which had traditional defence relations with Russia but are now trying to “pull away from the Russian orbit,” (as he put it.)
Evidently, the legislation on waivers is a self-serving move, enabling US arms manufacturers to continue to expand business opportunities in the Indian market. Under the new legislation, the president must nonetheless certify that India is both reducing arms imports from Russia and is expanding defense cooperation with the US, thereby making itself eligible for the waiver from sanctions. In effect, it becomes a tool for Washington to insert itself into the India-Russia defence cooperation as an interested party and to incrementally leverage Indian decisions with a view to atrophy the longstanding cooperation.
Clearly, the US interference in the India-Russia relationship is poised to intensify in the period ahead. If the proposed new sanctions “bill from hell” (tabled on Thursday) gets passed by the US Congress, which is to be expected, energy cooperation between India and Russia will also come under the American scanner. There is a strong business dimension to these US moves insofar as arms exports and energy cooperation also happen to be two thrust areas of export to India. Simply put, Washington hopes to roll back India’s defence and energy cooperation with Russia and seize the resultant business opportunities to boost its own exports to the Indian market.
In strategic terms, the US intention is to undermine the so-called “special privileged strategic partnership” between Russia and India, which would in turn erode the latter’s strategic autonomy and incrementally draw India into the American orbit as an ally.
Senate passes $38 billion to Israel – next step House of Representatives
By Alison Weir | If Americans Knew | August 2, 2018
The Senate yesterday passed a bill to give Israel $38 billion over the next 10 years. The legislation, heavily promoted by AIPAC, was adopted in a voice vote. The bill is “S.2497 – United States-Israel Security Assistance Authorization Act of 2018.
This amounts to approximately $23,000 for each Jewish Israeli family of four.
The bill also mandates that NASA work with the Israeli Space Agency, despite accusations of Israeli espionage – In 2015 a Caltech scientist revealed that the Chair of Israel’s National Committee for Space Research had illegally acquired classified information.
Also yesterday, the Senate voted a Defense bill that provides $550 million to Israel.
While Israeli media have reported on the legislation, mainstream U.S. news media have failed to inform Americans about the money to Israel.
AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, issued a statement saying: “AIPAC appreciates the leadership of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-TN) and Ranking Member Robert Menendez (D-NJ) along with the authors of the bill, Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Chris Coons (D-DE).”
The bill is currently also making its way through the House of Representatives. If the House passes it, as expected, it will be sent to President Trump to sign into law.
[To take action regarding the bill go here]
From previous IAK reports:
It appears that giving Israel this money would violate several U.S. laws:
• It would violate two amendments to the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act, known as the the Symington and Glenn Amendments, that ban support for countries engaged in clandestine nuclear programs. (More information here.)
• It would violate the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to countries guilty of human rights violations.
In the past Israel has used U.S. aid in ways that violated the Arms Export Control Act (AECA), which prohibits re-export of U.S.-origin defense and dual-use technology, which Israel has repeatedly done. Israel has also been charged with using U.S. weaponry illegally.
Despite this – and despite the fact that Israel has killed 150 and injured 16,000 Palestinian men, women, and children in the past four months – the aid bill has 71 co-sponsors: 36 Democrats and 35 Republicans.
The bill is being heavily promoted by AIPAC, which pioneered it, and other pro-Israel organizations.
Among the co-sponsors are some progressive Senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, even though polls show that only 19 percent of liberal Democrats support Israel over Palestinians.
Despite the record breaking quantity of money, almost no mainstream U.S. media have informed Americans of the bill.
The aid package was first negotiated by the Obama administration, which largely submitted to Israeli demands. The Forward reported at the time: “When Yaakov Nagel, Israel’s acting national security adviser, was tasked with heading the team negotiating a new 10-year military aid package with the United States, Prime Minister Netanyahu set forth the guidelines: ‘If you reach $3.5 billion a year, you’ll get a gold medal,’ Nagel recalled Wednesday, hours before signing the agreement in Washington. ‘If you get $3.3 billion you’ll get a silver medal; and if you get $3.1 billion you’ll get the bronze.’”
Senate sponsors of the bill:
Sponsor:
Co-Sponsors:
Sen. Coons, Christopher A. [D-DE]*
Sen. Casey, Robert P., Jr. [D-PA]
Sen. Blumenthal, Richard [D-CT]
Sen. Cardin, Benjamin L. [D-MD]
Sen. Capito, Shelley Moore [R-WV]
Sen. Gillibrand, Kirsten E. [D-NY]
Sen. King, Angus S., Jr. [I-ME]
Sen. Bennet, Michael F. [D-CO]
Sen. Murphy, Christopher [D-CT]
Sen. Whitehouse, Sheldon [D-RI]
Sen. Cortez Masto, Catherine [D-NV]
Revolving Door: How Security Clearances Perpetuate Top-Level Corruption in the United States
By Philip M. GIRALDI | Strategic Culture Foundation | 02.08.2018
President Donald Trump is threatening to take away the security clearances of a number of former senior intelligence and security officers who have been extremely critical of him. Most Americans were unaware that any ex-officials continued to hold clearances after they retired and the controversy has inevitably raised the question why that should be so. Unfortunately, there is no simple answer.
A security clearance is granted to a person but it is also linked to “need to know” in terms of what kind of information should or could be accessed, which means that when you are no longer working as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency you don’t necessarily need to know anything about China’s spying on the United States. Or do you? If you transition into a directorship or staff position of a major intelligence or security contractor, which many retirees do, you might need to retain the qualification for your job, which makes the clearance an essential component in the notorious revolving door whereby government officials transit to the private sector and then directly lobby their former colleagues to keep the flow of cash coming.
At top levels among the beltway bandit companies, where little work is actually done, some make the case that you have to remain “well informed” to function properly. The fact is that many top-level bureaucrats do retain their clearances for those nebulous reasons and also sometimes as a courtesy. Some have even received regular briefings from the CIA and the office of the Director of National intelligence even though they hold no government positions. A few very senior ex-officials have also been recalled by congress or the White House to provide testimony on particular areas of expertise or on past operations, which can legitimately require a clearance, though in such cases one can be granted on a temporary basis to cover a specific issue.
The problem arises when former officials use their clearances as bona fides to enhance their marketability for non-clearance jobs in the media or corporate world, particularly when those individuals are criticizing current government policies and behaving in a partisan fashion regarding specific candidates for office. Donald Trump was especially assailed by former officials John Brennan, James Clapper, Michael Hayden and Michael Morell before the 2016 election, all of whom continue to attack him currently, most particularly for the recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. During the 2016 campaign, Morell, who openly supported Hillary Clinton and is the designated intelligence on-air contributor for CBS news, deliberately linked the fact that he was ex-CIA Acting Director to his assertion that Trump was somehow an “unwitting agent of the Russian Federation” to establish his credibility. That type of activity should be considered abusive and an exploitation of one’s former office.
Morell left CIA in June 2013 and by November was a senior counselor with Beacon Global Strategies. According to the firm’s website, Beacon Global Strategies is a government and private sector consulting group that specializes in matters of international policy, foreign affairs, national defense, cyber, intelligence, and homeland security. Morell may know little about those issues as they have evolved in the past five years, but citing his clearance gives him credibility for knowledge that he might not really possess and also gives him direct access to former colleagues that he can lobby to obtain government contracts.
Former CIA Director John Brennan, who famously voted for the Communist Party candidate for US president in 1976, has also profited greatly from his government service, becoming rich from his board memberships. He sits on the board of directors of SecureAuth + CORE Security and also on the board of The Analysis Corporation. More important in terms of his public profile, he is the “Intelligence Consultant” for NBC News and MSNBC and appears regularly.
Last week Senator Rand Paul met with President Trump and recommended that Brennan’s security clearance be revoked. He argued that Brennan, Trump’s most aggressive critic, has been using his credentials to provide credibility when he calls meeting with Russia’s president “treasonous” and describes the president as “wholly in the pocket of Putin.” Clearance holders also more generally use their privileged access to “secret information” to leverage speaking and television network pundit fees. In other words, Brennan and the others are using their security clearances to enhance their incomes, monetizing their access to classified information to enhance their value.
It is by no means clear whether Trump will revoke the clearances of Clapper, Brennan, Morell and Hayden. As he is the legal source of all government clearances he has the power to do so. An equitable solution on the clearance issue more generally speaking would be to cancel all security clearances on the day when one leaves government service unless there is a direct and immediate transition to a private sector position that absolutely requires such a qualification. That would be fair to lower level employees seeking a second source of income and it would also eliminate many of those who are merely cashing in on their presumed access. As it is a rational solution it is very unlikely that it will be entertained by either the White House or by Congress.
‘Hilarious & paranoid’: Lavrov laughs at idea that Russia uses memes to destroy US democracy
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. May 2018 © Grigoriy Sisoev / Sputnik
RT | August 2, 2018
The idea that Moscow is swaying elections and bringing down US democracy by ‘meme-sharing’ is preposterous, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said. The accusations hurled at Russia by the US lawmakers left him baffled.
“It’s just hilarious when I hear that funny pictures can undermine American democracy,” Lavrov told reporters on Thursday, answering RT correspondent’s question about the latest US Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on alleged Russian interference in US domestic affairs.
Experts, brought as witnesses to testify before the Senate on Wednesday, spoke about Russia allegedly using the “less news, more memes” approach online to divide the US public. This led the lawmakers to raise concerns over how Russian “meme-sharing” affects American voters.
“I think that’s just paranoia that goes off the scale,” Lavrov chuckled, saying that talk of weaponizing memes only makes the Senators themselves look bad. “It’s not respectable for American lawmakers to make a sensation out of nothing.”
US politicians consistently accused ‘Russian trolls’ of waging a coordinated campaign to influence elections in the country – something Moscow denies. During repeated hearings in Congress, lawmakers failed to provide any concrete evidence that the alleged nefarious online activity was tied to Russia, and to present data on the effects such a campaign might have caused.
In fact, last year, tech giants Facebook, YouTube and Twitter told Senators that the content allegedly produced by “Russian operatives” made up a tiny fraction of their feeds.
Politics in bad faith: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez campaigns in Michigan
By Andre Damon | WSWS | July 31, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, visited Southeast Michigan this past weekend. Her primary victory last month over New York Congressman Joe Crowley has made her, virtually overnight, a leading spokesperson for the Democratic Party.
Ocasio-Cortez appeared at rallies in Detroit, Flint and Ypsilanti, as part of a statewide tour in support of Abdul El-Sayed, a former Detroit health department official running for governor of Michigan.
Ocasio-Cortez speaks at Wayne State University in Detroit
Ocasio-Cortez has been lionized in the press as the leader of a radical wave sweeping over the Democratic Party. Given the location of her events—including Detroit, the poorest large city in America, and Flint, which has been devastated by a lead water crisis—anyone taking her and the DSA’s pretenses to “socialism” seriously might have expected to hear bold proposals for tackling America’s rampant social inequality.
But when it came time for her to speak, what followed was a torrent of evasive and dishonest platitudes. She began her remarks at Wayne State University in Detroit:
My fingers are tingling right now because I know that this room is not just a rally, not just an audience, or even just a community; this is movement. Movement cannot be stopped, movement is like a wave; that energy cannot be contained, and Abdul, like many others, is just the crest, is just the foam at the tip of that wave. This is a movement so much bigger than just one person, there is no one person that is the future, there is a people that is the future.
To see such statements in print is to confirm the impression they produce on the listener: So much hot air.
America needs a “salt of the earth government,” Ocasio-Cortez went on, because, “We know that what is right in one place is what is right in all places.” And so on and so forth.
Like Barack Obama, whom she acknowledges as an inspiration, Ocasio-Cortez revels in seemingly profound motivational statements that are, upon the slightest examination, shown to be devoid of content. Her speeches are a variant of Obama’s slogan: “Yes we can.” She makes no effort to explain why Obama’s “Yes we can” was turned into eight years of “No we can’t.”
She continued, “The future of this nation and the future of this party is working class, the future of this party is working people, the future of this party is the marginalized, it is women, it is gender-extended people, it is people of color, it is the affirmation of justice, that is the future of this party.”
This invocation of the working class, mixed with appeals to other “identities,” is in bad faith, because the entire purpose of her campaign, and of the existence of the DSA, is to promote the Democratic Party, which, along with the Republicans, is a party of the corporate and financial oligarchy.
The Democrats are currently in the midst of a ferociously right-wing campaign centered on denunciations of Trump for “betraying” the country to Russia. In the midterm elections, the Democrats are fielding an unprecedented number of former members of the CIA and the military, which reflects their position as the preferred party of dominant sections of the military-intelligence apparatus.
Ocasio-Cortez’s inability to say anything genuinely oppositional, let alone radical, is bound up with her political role. She has quickly been absorbed into the Democratic Party establishment, and her rhetoric conforms to its politics. In promoting a right-wing party, her “left-wing” gloss is reduced to empty slogans.
Only a few sentences of her speech touched on actual policy. “The future of this party is improved and expanded Medicare for all,” she declared. For Abdul El-Sayed, “Medicare for all” means a statewide health care system paid for by workers from their own paychecks, one which his website boasts will exempt a substantial number of businesses from health care contributions.
Abdul El-Sayed
Such campaign promises are meaningless anyway. Obama declared himself a “proponent of a single payer universal health care program” in 2003, before going on to implement the “Affordable Care Act,” a reactionary attack on health care that shifts the burden from corporations and the state to workers by requiring individuals to purchase private insurance. This was cynically packaged as a major social “reform.”
Of particular note in the rallies to which Ocasio-Cortez spoke was the absence of any reference to foreign policy or the slightest hint of opposition to war. In fact, it was as if the rest of the world did not exist.
When a WSWS reporter asked the candidates at the post-rally press briefing in Detroit, “Do both of you support withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East and Africa?” El-Sayed gave an evasive non-answer: “We’ve got to make sure that we are focused on a foreign policy that articulates what we all can do when we come together around a more peaceful world.”
A staffer immediately attempted to conclude the briefing. When the reporter restated the question, “Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, are you anti-war? Do you support withdrawing all US troops from the Middle East?”
She replied, “I’m sorry, I’m here to support Abdul.”
The press conference immediately concluded, and the candidates were whisked away. (The next day, another WSWS reporter asked Ocasio-Cortez the same question at a rally in Ypsilanti, Michigan. She gave the same rehearsed answer.)
After the conclusion of the press conference, a WSWS reporter asked a high-level Ocasio-Cortez staffer, “What does she think the tax rate on the top income bracket should be?” He said he could not answer that question, because “She’s just focused on getting candidates with a similar program elected right now.”
In other words, Ocasio-Cortez can’t even commit to an explicit policy of raising taxes on the wealthiest section of society. In the spectrum of traditional American politics, this places her “democratic socialism” somewhere on the left wing of the 1960s-era Republican Party. Her inability to make any statement in opposition to war likewise put her to the right of both major Democratic nominees in the 1968 presidential primaries, who ran on an anti-war program.
The events make clear the political function of the Democratic Socialists of America. Far from creating a politically independent socialist movement, the DSA functions as an adjunct of the Democratic Party, providing candidates whose programs are largely indistinguishable from the rest of the party and are compatible with the agenda of the “CIA Democrats.”
The political role of Ocasio-Cortez and a slew of similar, DSA-backed candidates is to put a “left-wing,” “progressive,” youth-oriented, and multicultural gloss on a right-wing, pro-war party.
US Senators Introduce Sanctions Bill, Targeting Russia’s Sovereign Debt, Energy
Sputnik – 5 02.08.2018
New legislation introduced in the US Senate would require Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to determine whether Russia should be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism.
A bipartisan group of US senators on Thursday introduced a new package of punitive measures aimed at Russia. A proposed bill includes new sanctions against Russia’s political figures, restrictions on energy investments and limitations connected with uranium imports.
The harshest part of the new bill calls for the sanctioning of Russian sovereign debt.
Six US Senators said in a press release that the legislation “will increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Russia’s continued interference in our elections, malign influence in Syria, aggression in Crimea, and other activities.”
According to Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, “the current sanctions regime has failed to deter Russia from meddling in the upcoming 2018 mid-term elections.”
“Our goal is to change the status quo and impose crushing sanctions and other measures against Putin’s Russia until he ceases and desists meddling in the US electoral process, halts cyberattacks on US infrastructure, removes Russia from Ukraine, and ceases efforts to create chaos in Syria,” he added.
Congress passed the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) in July 2017 in response to allegations that Russia sought to influence the 2016 US presidential election. The Trump administration has been widely criticized for not doing enough in response to Moscow’s alleged activities in 2016; however, the White House claimed otherwise, saying that Trump has been tougher on Russia than any previous administration.
Relations between Russia and the United States rapidly deteriorated following the crisis in Ukraine in 2014. Washington introduced several rounds of anti-Russia sanctions after Crimea’s reunification with Russia and the latter’s alleged involvement in the ongoing Ukraine conflict. Russia has refuted all the accusations and issued retaliatory economic restrictions.
US Congress Passes $716Bln Defense Spending Bill for 2019
Sputnik – 01.08.2018
WASHINGTON – The US Senate on Wednesday passed the $716 billion National Defense Authorization Act for the fiscal year 2019. The measure passed with an 87-10 vote and now heads to US President Donald Trump’s office to be signed into law.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed the measure in a 359-54 vote. The measure also funds the Trump administration’s request for Ukraine, which included $250 million for lethal defensive items.
In addition, the bill adds $150 million to accelerate US efforts to field a conventional prompt strike capability before fiscal year 2022, in response to the critical advances Russia and China have made in developing their prompt strike hypersonic weapons.
The bill also funds the Trump administration’s request for $6.3 billion for the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI) to further increase the number of US troops in Europe and deter what it calls “Russian aggression.” The bill, in addition, prohibits military-to-military cooperation with Russia.
The bill obligates US Defense Secretary James Mattis to submit a plan to Congress to ban Turkey from acquiring the F-35 aircraft to punish it for purchasing Russian S-400 air defense systems and for detaining US Pastor Andrew Brunson.
The bill will also include Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) waivers for India, Vietnam and Indonesia.
The United States and NATO have significantly increased their presence in Eastern Europe since the eruption of the Ukrainian crisis in 2014. Moscow has repeatedly voiced its protest over the military buildup, saying that it will undermine regional stability and result in a new arms race.
Trump Duped by Saudis on Iran Oil Sanctions – Tehran Official
Sputnik – 01.08.2018
President Trump’s offer of “no preconditions” talks with Iran’s comes as a surprise break from months of escalating rhetoric in the wake of his walkout from the landmark Iran nuclear deal.
US President Donald Trump has apparently been hoodwinked by Saudi Arabia into believing that the kingdom will be able to make up for a projected drop in Iranian oil exports after the US sanctions take effect in November, Iran’s Press TV reported citing the head of the country’s OPEC governor.
“It seems President Trump has been taken hostage by Saudi Arabia and a few producers when they claimed they can replace 2.5 million barrels per day of Iranian exports, encouraging him to take action against Iran,” Hossein Kazempour Ardebili said.
US Back and Forth on Iran Oil Trade
The White House said last month that Saudi Arabia’s King Salman had promised Trump to raise oil production and that the kingdom had two million barrels per day of spare capacity to boost output to offset a decline Iranian oil supplies.
Iran insists that President Trump’s hope that certain oil producers can fill the gap created as a result of cutting off Iranian oil supplies is based on a “miscalculation.”
Late last month, a senior US State Department official said that countries buying Iranian oil should bring their Iranian crude imports down to zero by the time Washington re-imposes sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s banking and petroleum sectors.
Washington later backed off a bit with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying in July that the United States might grant waivers to countries seeking relief from sanctions the US has threatened to impose.
Trump’s U-Turn on Iran
On Monday, President Trump said he would be willing to meet his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani without preconditions to discuss how to improve ties, but Tehran flatly turned down Trump’s offer dismissing it as worthless and “a humiliation” after he acted to re-impose sanctions on Tehran following the withdrawal from the 2015 landmark nuclear deal.
“Sanctions and pressures are the exact opposite of dialogue,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Tuesday.
Trump’s overture towards Iran came a week after he threatened the country with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before,” in an all caps tweet.
On May 8, President Donald Trump said he was withdrawing the US from the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran and promised to impose the “highest level” of sanctions on the country’s energy, petrochemical and financial sectors despite objections from Europe as well as Russia and China — the other parties to the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
VIPS to Trump: Intel on Iran Could be CATASTROPHIC
As drums beat again for war — this time on Iran—-the VIPS’ warning is again being disregarded as it was before the Iraq debacle and this time VIPS fear the consequences will be all-caps CATASTROPHIC.
August 1, 2018
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Intelligence on Iran Fails the Smell Test
Mr. President:
As the George W. Bush administration revved up to attack Iraq 15 years ago, we could see no compelling reason for war. We decided, though, to give President Bush the benefit of the doubt on the chance he had been sandbagged by Vice President Dick Cheney and others. We chose to allow for the possibility that he actually believed the “intelligence” that Colin Powell presented to the UN as providing “irrefutable and undeniable” proof of WMD in Iraq and a “sinister nexus” between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
To us in VIPS it was clear, however, that the “intelligence” Powell adduced was bogus. Thus, that same afternoon (Feb. 5, 2003) we prepared and sent to President Bush a Memorandum like this one, urging him to seek counsel beyond the “circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic.”
We take no satisfaction at having been correct — though disregarded — in predicting the political and humanitarian disaster in Iraq. Most Americans have been told the intelligence was “mistaken.” It was not; it was out-and-out fraud, in which, sadly, some of our former colleagues took part.
Five years after Powell’s speech, the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee minced few words in announcing the main bipartisan finding of a five-year investigation. He said: “In making the case for war, the Administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed.”
Iran Now in Gunsight
As drums beat again for a military attack — this time on Iran, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and other experienced, objective analysts are, by all appearances, being disregarded again. And, this time, we fear the consequences will be all-caps CATASTROPHIC — in comparison with the catastrophe of Iraq.
In memoranda to you over the past year and a half we have pointed out that (1) Iran’s current support for international terrorism is far short of what it was decades ago; and (2) that you are being played by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims about Iran’ they are based on intelligence exposed as fraudulent several years ago. Tellingly, Netanyahu waited for your new national security adviser to be in place for three weeks before performing his April 30 slide show alleging that Iran has a covert nuclear weapons program. On the chance that our analysis of Netanyahu’s show-and-tell failed to reach you, please know that the Israeli prime minister was recycling information from proven forgeries, which we reported in a Memorandum to you early last spring.
If our Memorandum of May 7 fell through some cracks in the West Wing, here are its main findings:
The evidence displayed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on April 30 in what he called his “Iranian atomic archive” showed blatant signs of fabrication. That evidence is linked to documents presented by the Bush Administration more than a decade earlier as “proof” of a covert Iran nuclear weapons program. Those documents were clearly fabricated, as well.
In our May 7, 2018 Memorandum we also asserted: “We can prove that the actual documents originally came not from Iran but from Israel. Moreover, the documents were never authenticated by the CIA or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).”
Iran: Almost Targeted in 2008
There was a close brush with war with Iran a decade ago. Bush and Cheney, in close consultation with Israel, were planning to attack Iran in 2008, their last year in office. Fortunately, an honest National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007 concluded that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon in 2003, and that key judgment was made public. Abruptly, that NIE stuck an iron rod into the wheels of the juggernaut then speeding downhill to war.
The key judgment that Iran had stopped work on a nuclear weapon was the result of the painstakingly deliberative process that was customarily used, back in the day, to produce an NIE. After that process — which took a full year — the Nov. 2007 NIE was approved unanimously by all U.S. intelligence agencies.
(In other words, it was decidedly NOT a rump “assessment” like the one cobbled together in a couple of weeks by “handpicked” analysts from three selected, agenda-laden agencies regarding Russian meddling. We refer, of course, to the evidence-impoverished and deceptively labeled “Intelligence Community Assessment” that the directors of the FBI, CIA, and NSA gave you on January 6, 2017. The Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department intelligence bureau were among the other 13 agencies excluded from that “Intelligence Community Assessment.”)
As for the Bush/Cheney plans for attacking Iran in 2008, President George W. Bush, in his autobiography, Decision Points, recorded his chagrin at what he called the NIE’s “eye-popping” intelligence finding debunking the conventional wisdom that Iran was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon. Bush added plaintively, “How could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”
Mr. President, we do not know whether a fresh National Intelligence Estimate has been produced on Iran and nuclear weapons — or, if one has been produced, whether it is as honest as the NIE of Nov. 2007, which helped prevent the launch of another unnecessary war the following year. We stand on our record. In sum, if you believe that there is credible evidence that Iran has an active secret nuclear weapons program, we believe you have been misled. And if you base decisions on misleading “intelligence” on Iran, the inevitable result will be a great deal worse than the Bush/Cheney debacle in Iraq.
For the Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
William Binney, former NSA Technical Director for World Geopolitical & Military Analysis; Co-founder of NSA’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (ret.)
Sen. Richard H. Black, 13th District of Virginia; Colonel US Army (ret.); former Chief, Criminal Law Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, Pentagon (associate VIPS)
Kathleen Christison, Senior Analyst on Middle East, CIA (ret.)
Bogdan Dzakovic, former Team Leader of Federal Air Marshals and Red Team, FAA Security (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)
Larry C. Johnson, former CIA and State Department Counter-terrorism officer
Michael S. Kearns, Captain, Wing Commander, RAAF (ret.); Intelligence Officer & ex-Master SERE Instructor
Linda Lewis, WMD preparedness policy analyst, USDA (ret.) (associate VIPS)
Edward Loomis, NSA Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)
David MacMichael, Capt., USMC (ret.); former Senior Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Council
Ray McGovern, former US Army Infantry/Intelligence Officer & CIA analyst; CIA Presidential briefer (ret.)
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council & CIA political analyst (ret.)
Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (ret.)
Gareth Porter, author/journalist (associate VIPS)
Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)
Robert Wing, former Foreign Service Officer (associate VIPS)
Ann Wright, Colonel, US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned in opposition to the war on Iraq)
Featured Video
Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War /John Mearsheimer
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New Book
The Garlic Book — 2026
Lies are Unbekoming | November 5, 2026
What The Garlic Book shows
The book is in four parts.
Part One, The Record, treats the history of garlic as evidence. From the clay garlic bulb placed in an Egyptian grave nearly six thousand years ago, through the Ebers Papyrus, through Hippocrates, Dioscorides, Pliny and Galen, the Arab physicians under Avicenna, the medieval herbals, Culpeper, and the plague years, to the last era in which Western physicians prescribed garlic as a matter of course, which ran from 1850 to 1945. It closes with the living traditions that never stopped using it, and with the folklore of charms, vampires and the evil eye.
Part Two, The Chemistry and the Evidence, sets out what is known about why a clove has no smell until it is cut, and why the order of crush, rest and heat changes the medicine. It then reads the clinical evidence against the historical record — bacteria, blood and vessels, cancer epidemiology, metals and fatigue — and names the trials that went against garlic as directly as the trials that went for it, including the 2007 Stanford trial funded by the US National Institutes of Health which found that raw garlic, garlic powder and aged garlic extract moved LDL cholesterol no more than placebo did. It then turns to onion, garlic’s closest relative, and reads the newer evidence published since 2015, before closing with the whole of the record through the terrain lens.
Part Three, Why Medicine Set It Aside, asks the question directly. One chapter contrasts the pharmaceutical model of isolating a single active compound with the folk model of combining whole plants, and reports what the garlic evidence says about which model works better. One chapter examines the economics of research on a plant that cannot be patented. One chapter — Fire Cider — tells the story of a folk preparation whose name was taken into a United States trademark by a Massachusetts company in 2012, and won back by three herbalists in 2014 who documented forty years of prior use through Rosemary Gladstar and her students into the older tradition.
Part Four, Garlic in Practice, is the working manual — the kitchen pharmacy, traditional uses by body system, a full chapter on safety and interactions, and a complaint-by-complaint practical guide. The book closes with The Trial That Was Never Run — a one-chapter reading of the whole evidential architecture.
At the back: two appendices (a traditional list of uses, and a preparation quick-reference), a full bibliography, and a live index.
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Revive Iran’s MOU Deal or Face a Forever War /John Mearsheimer
- Kafr Qasim at 70: The massacre Israel still hasn’t owned up to
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- NATO’s “Nordic model” brings Arctic confrontation closer to Russia’s nuclear bases
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- Sunset on the Quality of Western Propaganda: Arrival of the Dr Strangelove Moment
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- If Americans Knew
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