Russia deploys Iskander nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad: Report
Press TV – February 5, 2018
Russia has reportedly deployed advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missiles to its westernmost region of Kaliningrad that borders the Baltic countries of Poland and Lithuania, in an apparent move to counter US military buildup in the region.
RIA Novosti news agency quoted Vladimir Shamanov, head of the Russian lower house of parliament’s defense committee, as saying on Monday that Iskander missile systems had been sent to Kaliningrad, but did not say how many or for how long.
“Yes, they have been deployed,” the agency quoted Shamanov as saying. “The deployment of foreign military infrastructure automatically falls onto the priority list for targeting.”
Russia has previously deployed Iskander missiles to its Baltic enclave on a temporary basis for drills and as a response to the US military buildup near its western border.
The Iskander, a mobile ballistic missile system codenamed SS-26 Stone by NATO, has an operational range of up to 500 kilometers and can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads.
In a swift reaction to the Monday deployment, Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite claimed that the missiles were being stationed for a “permanent presence,” and accused Moscow of posing a danger to “half” of Europe’s capitals.
Russia is wary of NATO’s expansion on its doorsteps where the US-led military alliance has deployed around 4,000 troops, including four battle groups, to Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Poland in recent years.
Realizing that security threat under its nose, Russia has held several military drills to maintain preparedness, with the NATO countries having then referred to those drills as signs that Russia has aggressive and not defensive intentions.
Moscow calls NATO’s military buildup at its doorstep a threat to its national security and accuses the alliance of fear-mongering to justify larger defense expenditure by its member states.
Meanwhile, NATO — largely made up of Western European countries — accuses Russia of having a hand in a crisis in Ukraine, which Moscow denies.
Eastern Ukraine has been the site of a conflict since 2014, when the government in Kiev started a crackdown on pro-Russia protests in the country. Earlier that same year, the Crimean Peninsula, then Ukrainian territory, voted in a referendum to separate from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation. Western countries branded the subsequent unification as an “annexation” of the territory by Russia, and Ukraine soon confronted pro-Russia protests elsewhere — in its eastern Donbass region — with a heavy hand.
The crisis in the Donbass soon turned into an armed conflict, which has so far left over 10,000 people dead and more than a million others displaced. Western countries have blamed Russia.
Steele wrote memo based on information fed through Clinton campaign — released documents
RT | February 5, 2018
People close to Hillary Clinton were feeding information to Christopher Steele who compiled the Trump dossier on Trump’s alleged connections with Russia, according to a criminal referral filed by Republican senators.
A newly-released document from the Senate Judiciary Committee says Steele wrote an additional memo, besides the controversial dossier, using information that came from the Clinton campaign.
The newly-released memorandum is an unclassified and heavily-redacted version of the criminal referral targeting Steele, filed on January 4 by Republican Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham. It is addressed to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Director of the FBI Christopher Wray who Grassley and Graham are asking to investigate Steele.
The report reveals coordination between the extended Clinton circle and the Obama administration in an attempt to source damaging information about then-candidate Trump.
Steele was hired by private firm Fusion GPS in June 2016 to gather information on alleged links between Trump and Russia. His dossier, parts of which were leaked to the media before the elections, was the basis for the warrant to spy on Trump adviser, Carter Page, according to the memo released on Friday.
The report alleges that there was a circular flow of information between Clinton associates and Steele. A memorandum dated October 19, 2016 says that foreign sources provided the information to an unnamed associate of Hillary and Bill Clinton, who then gave the information to an unnamed official in the Obama State Department, who would then pass the information to Steele.
“It is troubling enough that the Clinton Campaign funded Mr. Steele’s work, but that these Clinton associates were contemporaneously feeding Mr. Steele allegations raises additional concerns about his credibility,” the report states.
“It appears that either Steele lied to the FBI and the British court, or that the classified documents reviewed by the Committee contain materially false statements,” the report states.
On January 4, Senators Grassley and Graham referred Steele to the FBI for further investigation after reviewing Justice Department documents that conflicted with Steele’s sworn court statements about the distribution of his research.
“Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging. The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn’t secret, and it should not take dramatic steps by Congress and the White House to get answers that the American people are demanding. There are still many questions that can only be answered by complete transparency. That means declassifying as much of the underlying documents as possible,” Grassley said in the release accompanying the document.
Leaked to Buzzfeed in January 2017, Steele’s dossier contains unverified allegations that Russia holds information on Trump which it’s using to blackmail the US president. It further alleges sustained and close working contacts between Trump aides and Kremlin representatives, with Russia “feeding Trump and his team valuable intelligence on his opponents” for years prior to 2016. The allegations have not been proven.
As alleged in the ‘Nunes memo‘, this dossier “formed an essential part” of the FISA probable cause order obtained by the FBI from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in 2016 to spy on Trump adviser Carter Page. The warrant was extended three times, also on the basis of the Steele dossier.
Nunes Memo Details Weaponization of FISA Court for Political Advantage
By Kenneth Whittle | Disobedient Media | February 4, 2018
On Friday, the much anticipated “Nunes Memo” was finally released to the general public. Disobedient Media previously reported on the push to prevent the memo from being released. While there is much contained in the four pages, the most glaring issue contained in the memo is the FBI’s willful concealment of pertinent details of which they were required by law to turn over to the FISA court when seeking the initial surveillance warrant on Carter Page, a former volunteer foreign policy adviser for the Trump campaign.
According to the memo, former director James Comey signed three FISA applications on behalf of the FBI. Additionally, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former Deputy Attorney General Dana Boente, and acting Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, each signed one or more applications on behalf of the DOJ.
Under 50 U.S.C. § 1805(d)(1), a FISA order on an American citizen must be renewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) every 90 days. In order to protect the rights of Americans, each subsequent renewal requires a separate finding of probable cause. This means that the in order to be granted a renewal, the government is required to produce all material and relevant facts to the court, including any information which may be potentially favorable to the target of the FISA application.
On four separate occasions the Obama administration essentially claimed before the FISA court that Page had betrayed his country by working for a hostile foreign nation, and therefore it was necessary that the government violate his Fourth Amendment rights. However, in this case, the government purposely withheld relevant information from the government not once, but four separate times.
According to the memo, at no time during the initial application process for the warrant to surveil Page, or in any of the three renewals of that application, did the government disclose to the FISA Court the nature of their relationship with Christopher Steele, his relationship with the Democratic National Committee (DNC), or his relationship with the Clinton campaign. Instead, the memo simply, yet vaguely states that, “Steele was working for a named U.S. person.”
Instead, the government purposefully withheld information from the court that the “dossier” compiled by Steele was done so on behalf of the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign. It was further withheld from the court that the DNC had paid Steele over $160,000 for his work in compiling this “dossier”, and that the money was funneled to Steele through the law firm Perkins Coie, which represents both the Hillary Clinton campaign as well as the DNC in legal matters. According to the National Review, the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid at least $9.1 million to Perkins Coie from mid-2015 to late 2016.
The government further held from the court the fact that the FBI had authorized payments to Steele. According to the New York Post, in October 2016 the FBI contracted to pay Steele $50,000 to “help corroborate the dirt on Trump.”
In March of 2017, CNN also reported that the FBI had entered into an arrangement with Steele, whereby they agreed to cover all of his expenses.
While it is extremely disconcerting that the government willfully concealed the existence of their financial relationship with Steele, a foreign national, what is more troubling is the fact that the government used tax payer dollars to do so. In other words, every single American who did not vote for Hillary Clinton, whether they voted for Trump or a third party candidate or did not vote at all – were forced to finance the Clinton campaign-funded opposition research.
In other words, the public’s tax dollars were spent on creating fake “evidence” to tie Trump with Russia, a false narrative that put the planet at heightened risk for nuclear war, for the sake of the Clinton’s hurt feelings.
Why the media refuses to mention or cover this fact, this author does not know. But this is an extremely important fact that every American, whether left, right, up, down, should remember, as it is the perfect example of the corruption which exists within our tax payer-funded institutions, which we are told to have nothing but the utmost respect for.
According to the memo, in an effort to corroborate Steele’s dossier, the FBI extensively cited a September 23, 2016, Yahoo News article by Michael Isikoff, titled “U.S. intel officials probe ties between Trump adviser and Kremlin”, which focuses on Page’s July 2016 trip to Moscow. However, when presenting this article to the court the FBI falsely assessed that Steele did not provide this information directly to Isikoff. Meaning that the FBI was aware that the article they presented to the court was not corroborating evidence from a separate source, because the information in the article was provided to Isikoff by Steele himself. In fact, as the memo points out, Steele himself has stated in British court filings that in September 2016 he met with Yahoo News, as well as several other outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the New Yorker.
What’s more, in an article published on January 12, 2017, Isikoff reports on a story by the Wall Street Journal in which Christopher Steele is identified as the author of the infamous dossier, and even notes that Steele was an “FBI asset”. However, what is most striking about this article is the fact that despite receiving the underline information which served as the basis for his own article in September, Isikoff pretends have not known that Steele was the source of the dossier.
Even more interesting is the close relationship Isikoff had with the DNC during the 2016 Presidential election. According to an email from the DNC released by Wikileaks, Isikoff attended the “Open World Society’s forum” as the guest of DNC official Ali Chalupa. In the email, Chalupa states that she was invited to the forum to speak specifically about Paul Manafort, the former campaign manager for Donald Trump. Chalupa goes on to state that she has been working with Isikoff for the past few weeks and that at the event, she was able to get him “connected him to the Ukrainians.” She adds:
“I invited Michael Isikoff whom I’ve been working with for the past few weeks and connected him to the Ukrainians. More offline tomorrow since there is a big Trump component you and Lauren need to be aware of that will hit in next few weeks and something I’m working on you should be aware of.”
According to the memo, Steele’s relationship with the FBI as a source continued until late October 2016, when he was terminated for what the FBI defines as the most serious violations, “an unauthorized disclosure to the media of his relationship with the FBI”. This unauthorized disclosure occurred in an October 30, 2016, Mother Jones article by David Corn, the reporter who broke the infamous Mitt Romney “47 Percent” story.
Again, the FBI did not notify the court that Steele was leaking information to media outlets, or that he was terminated by the FBI after doing so for the second time.
Before and after his termination, Steele maintained contact with then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, whose wife, Nellie Ohr, was employed by Fusion GPS. Ohr would later tell the FBI in an interview in September 2016, that Steele had stated that he, “was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.”
Lastly, the memo also reveals that the Steele dossier was so crucial to the investigation, that Deputy Director McCabe testified in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information. This admission by the former Deputy Director is damning, as it proves that, if it were not for the Clinton campaign and DNC funded dossier created by a foreign national, there would have been no surveillance of Page, and ultimately there would have never been a special counsel appointed.
At the end of the day, every American, regardless of their position on the political spectrum, should be worried about the fact that the FBI and DOJ sought and were granted a warrant to spy on an opposing political campaign based on a document that the FBI itself had neither verified or corroborated. If the FISA court does in fact employ strict “safeguards” and procedures in order to ensure that the rights of American citizens are not being systematically violated, how is it that the FBI and DOJ were able to obtain a surveillance warrant based on unverified allegations? And why did Congress overwhelmingly vote to reauthorize Section 702?
‘Now Is the Moment’: Russia Urges US to Resume Dialogue on Missile Defense
Sputnik – February 5, 2018
MOSCOW – Russia and the United States should resume their dialogue on missile defense in light of the growing relevance of the subject, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said.
“I would like to emphasize the growing relevance of the missile defense topic. Let me remind you that an indestructible connection between strategic offensive arms and missile defense is noted in the preamble of the current Reduction of Strategic Offensive Arms Treaty. There has been no substantial dialogue with the Americans on this matter for a long time. Now is the moment when it should be resumed,” Ryabkov said in an interview with the newspaper Izvestia.
The Russian diplomat stressed that in order to overcome the impasse in Russian-US relations, it was necessary to cooperate in a number of areas, including economic and regional crises.
“This agenda, in our opinion, includes issues of maintaining and ensuring of strategic stability… It also considers the work on regional crises… as well as economic interaction,” Ryabkov noted.
At the same time, the Russian minister stressed that the Russian-US talks on the crisis in eastern Ukraine’s Donbass region had not achieved workable solutions so far. Yet, Ryabkov expressed hope that both sides would find a “scheme” that would be acceptable for both Kiev and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk Republics.
On Friday, the US Defense Department published the country’s new Nuclear Posture Review, which devoted great attention to the development of Russia’s nuclear capability.
In 2014, relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated over Moscow’s alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict and Crimea’s reunification with Russia in 2014 following a referendum.
The United States, as well as the European Union, has imposed several rounds of sanctions on Russia’s energy, banking, defense and other sectors, as well as on a number of Russian officials. Moscow has responded with countermeasures against the Western countries that targeted it with sanctions.
Russia Can’t Confirm US Fulfilled Limits on Strategic Arms Within START Treaty
Sputnik | 05.02.2018
The Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that it can’t confirm that the US fulfilled its limits on strategic arms within Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START).
The ministry also reaffirmed Russia’s commitment to the treaty and urged to continue the search for solutions to the existing problems around the document.
“The Russian Federation urges the United States to continue to constructively search for mutually acceptable solutions to the problems related to the conversion and exclusion of arms from the categories provided for in the New START Treaty, as well as any other issues that may arise in the context of implementing the provisions of the New START Treaty,” the statement, issued by the ministry read.
The ministry further noted that Russia had fully fulfilled its commitments under the treaty, signed by Washington and Moscow in 2010, and would send an official notification to the US side soon.
“The Russian Federation has fully fulfilled its obligations to reduce strategic offensive arms… In the near future, the United States will receive an official notification confirming these figures,” the ministry’s statement read.
According to the ministry, Russia has reduced its strategic arms down to 527 units of deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBMs) and deployed heavy bombers, while the warheads on the above-mentioned arms totaled 1,444 units. At the same time, the number of deployed and non-deployed launchers of ICBMs and SLBMs, and deployed and non-deployed heavy bombers have been cut down to 779 units.
The statement by the Russian Foreign Ministry comes after US State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said earlier in the day that the US was looking forward to continuing implementation of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed by Washington and Moscow in 2010.
Gene Sharp: The “father” of Colour Revolutions has died, but methods live on
Vesti – translated by Inessa Sinchougova | February 4, 2018
On January 31, the Boston Professor Gene Sharp died aged 91. In his youth, he refused to serve in the American army and fight in Korea. He was jailed for 9 months, after which Sharp left the United States and lived in Europe for nine years.
Sharp became known for writing of instructions for the political destruction of states. He was called a modern day philosopher, but rarely appeared at philosophical meetings. He was called a political technologist, but he never led any group and rarely participated directly in anything to do with revolutions. That’s if we don’t count that government power in various countries was overthrown by his textbooks.
The most famous work is “From dictatorship to democracy”; 198 methods of nonviolent actions. For example – number 22 – undressing in protest, 124 – boycotting of elections, 161 – non-violent psychological exhaustion of the opponent. Although not everything in Sharp’s writing is so non-violent – point 148 is rebellion.
The “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004 is a classical implementation of the recommendations of Gene Sharp. Without any imagination whatsoever. Earlier, Professor Sharp’s know-how was implemented in the “bulldozer revolution” in Yugoslavia, when protesters on a bulldozer stormed a television station.
Later, Sharp’s ideas were implemented in the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan, “Rose Revolution” in Georgia, “Jasmine Revolution” in Tunisia in 2010-2011 . Egypt and the “Arab Spring” also utilised Sharp’s technology.
To generalize, the main goal in any “color revolution” is to create a point of public discontent in a limited space and claim that this crowd of people, is “the people”, out and about revolting in a “grass-roots” movement.
An attempt at a colour revolution was also tried in Russia in the winter of 2011-1012 – with white ribbons, prior to the presidential elections. Sharp himself made a remark to the “negligent pupils” – “It’s a real false start, the organizers of the rally were too quick. You can’t do it before the elections take place,” Sharp said in an interview.
Later, Sharp had founded the Boston Einstein Institution, which had very few employees. Yet it was financed very generously – these funds financed protest movements in countries where the United States required regime change. Sharp’s money came primarily from the National Endowment for Democracy, which is maintained by the Congress, and from the International Republican Institute (director – John McCain).
Why does America participate in “color revolutions”? It’s simple – it solves military tasks by non-military means, destroys states and puts the country’s resources in the service of the United States. People as a result of the revolution generally live worse than before the uprising.
“This is military technology, but a substitute for war and other violence,” Sharp said.
Sharp’s work was also engaged in the Soviet Union – technologies of collapse were similar. As we now understand, the same methods were utilised in the countries of Eastern Europe – take at least “Solidarity” in Poland in the late 80’s.
Now, when the United States once again would like to destroy Russia, Sharp’s tactics are also useful. Let us turn again to its numbered points: 89th – tightening of credit/loans, 96th – international trade embargo, 154th – deterioration of international diplomatic relations.
But the original Sharp recommendations are similarly growing obsolete – he could never have imagined the new subversive opportunities through the power of the Internet, technologies able to process large databases – big data, sanctions and all sorts of “enemy lists” of America, the use of terrorist armies to overthrow a disliked leader. For America, this is also “not war”, which means that it is also a “non-violent” method for achieving military tasks.
Sharp has died, but his legacy lives on and is snowballing new methods.
Teacher on Leave After Allegedly Assaulting Student Who Refused to Stand for Pledge of Allegiance
By Jon Queally | Common Dreams | February 3, 2018
A teacher in Colorado this week was suspended after it was alleged that she assaulted a young child who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance—a troubling example of educators who refuse to acknowledge that students have the right to refuse participation in the daily ritual still found in many U.S. schools.
According to CBS News:
A teacher with Colorado’s Boulder Valley School District was placed on paid administrative leave following an alleged incident at the middle school, the school district said Thursday. CBS Denver confirmed the Lafayette Police Department is investigating reports that teacher allegedly assaulted a student who refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.
Karen Smith, [the school’s] physical education teacher, was placed on leave Thursday.
The school’s principal, Mike Medina, sent a letter home to parents Thursday evening notifying them there had been an “incident” involving Smith but said he could not elaborate.
Last year, as Splinter News reported at the time, a teacher in New Jersey was suspended after he bragged about failing students who refused to participate in the pledge.
“They refused to stand, saying ‘they didn’t have to[.]’ I told them that is true and that what makes this country great is ‘that I didn’t have to pass them either,'” Steven Solomon, the teacher, confessed. He was later suspended for his actions.
Though many public schools in the country continue to treat standing as the pledge as compulsory, the U.S. Supreme Court has said forcing students to do so is a violation of their constitutionally-protected rights. The court, as the ACLU explains in an on-line manual directed at students, “has held that it is just as much a violation of your First Amendment rights for the government to make you say something you don’t want to say as it is for the government to prevent you from saying what you do want to say.” All students, the civil liberties group says, “have a right to remain silently seated during the pledge.”
In a 2009 column that appeared on Common Dreams, entitled ‘The Pledge of Allegiance Is Un-American,” Michael Lind put it this way: “In a republic, the people should not pledge allegiance to the government; the government should pledge allegiance to the people.”
‘We are going to win’: Trump can’t do anything about FBI despite GOP memo – former CIA official
RT | February 4, 2018
The FBI need not worry despite the release of the GOP memo alleging the FBI’s surveillance abuse against Donald Trump, because the Bureau has been in the game much longer than the current president, says an ex-CIA analyst.
“I know how this game is going to be played. We are going to win,” Philip Mudd, a former CIA analyst told CNN, referring to a brewing conflict between Trump and America’s security services following the recent release of the GOP document.
Mudd, who also served as a deputy national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia on the US National Intelligence Council, added that despite the declassification of the document which outlines abuses by the FBI and the US Justice Department, Trump can’t do anything about the “hundreds of agents” working on the case of his alleged collusion with Russia. Apparently, Trump’s just not powerful enough.
“They [the FBI] are going to be saying (I guarantee it): You [Trump] think you can push us off this [investigation] because you can try to intimidate the [FBI] director? You better think again, Mr. President. You have been around for 13 months. We have been around since 1908,” Mudd said.
He also noted the security services’ reaction to the memo, saying: “FBI people are ticked.” He also described accusations of corruption issued against the FBI by no less than the US head of state himself, as “an attack on [its] ability to conduct an investigation with integrity.”
Former CIA counterterrorism official Phil Mudd: The FBI people "are ticked" and they'll be saying of Trump, “You’ve been around for 13 months. We've been around since 1908. I know how this game is going to be played. We're going to win" https://t.co/5x39x20g3e pic.twitter.com/fByOLNrh0I
— CNN (@CNN) February 2, 2018
The four-page GOP file that has caused a stir within the US political establishment was initially commissioned by the House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-California) in mid-January. Trump authorized its release on Friday.
The document chronicles how the FBI and the DOJ obtained a warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page entirely on the basis of the so-called “Steele dossier” paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign through the Democratic National Committee.
Democrats, many mainstream media outlets, and a number of former and current FBI and DOJ officials fiercely resisted its publication. It also triggered a social media storm and sent Trump critics into meltdown. And of course, some even ‘found’ a Russian trail in these developments.
“Nunesburgers” & denial from the MSM while Politico blames Putin
OffGuardian | February 4, 2018
The “Nunes” Memo isn’t political dynamite but it could be the final blow to the whole ridiculous and virtually fact-free Russiagate narrative. It confirms the Steele dossier is a scam, and demonstrates the lies employed to get approval for spying on Trump’s team, it shows the vindictive bias in the establishment towards an elected official.
But, of course, the mainstream media and various paid opinion-makers are not admitting that. In fact there’s a chorus of evasion and distraction and frantic meme-creation right now, from bots spamming talking points, and “#nunesburger” hashtags to avowedly serious opinion pieces claiming it’s all a “half-baked conspiracy theory”… blah… blah…
There’s no shortage of examples of just how eerily lockstep the various strands of the campaign are, but here’s one of the “serious” ones to mull over. Politico’s The Nunes Memo & Putin’s Long Game.
Here’s the text with our annotations:
Ever since the U.S. intelligence community discovered the Russian operation to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and aid President Donald Trump’s victory, some Republicans have been laboring to undermine investigations into the attack and discredit the intelligence agencies that discovered it.
It’s almost touching how, right from the off, they bravely opt to simply ignore the fact that the Russia hack narrative is now probably doomed. Like a first class passenger on the Titanic, deeply in denial, they are sitting, hat slightly askew, sipping tea and admiring the view while the deck beneath them tilts and slides. Don’t think about the facts, Politico readers, think about the mean people who wanted you to know the facts!
Those efforts reached a new crescendo (sic) on Friday, when House Republicans released a partisan memo alleging anti-Trump bias at the FBI with approval from Trump, who declared on Twitter that both the FBI and Department of Justice are corrupt.
Well, first can someone tell them what “crescendo” means? Secondly, isn’t it interesting how the Memo only “alleges” anti-Trump bias, even though it contains and refers to clear proof of same. Contrast with the above claim of certitude about “Russian interference” in the face of no proof whatsoever.
But that turmoil, some were quick to point out, is exactly what Putin wanted all along.
In the nick of time the Titanic passengers have managed to grab something to keep them afloat. A lifebuoy with “Putin” written on it in scary red letters. Reality averted.
“The latest attacks on the FBI and Department of Justice serve no American interests – no party’s, no president’s, only Putin’s,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in a statement Friday. “Our nation’s elected officials, including the president, must stop looking at this investigation through the warped lens of politics and manufacturing partisan sideshows. If we continue to undermine our own rule of law, we are doing Putin’s job for him.”
Someone could tell McCain that the rule of law is undermined by people breaking the law and getting away with it – not by revealing the fact to the public. But they probably wouldn’t dare.
For more than a year, Trump has consistently cast doubt on the assessments of intelligence agencies he now leads, arguing that “the deep state” is stacked against him.
The Memo (which Politico hasn’t yet quoted or linked to) proves Trump was right. But let’s not waste time on details like that.
Facing an investigation that reached into his own administration, and potentially into the Oval Office, the president chose to fire his FBI director, James Comey last May, and since then has repeatedly hinted that he might try to do the same to others.
That may include deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, who oversees special Russia counsel Robert Mueller. “You figure that one out,” Trump said when asked Friday if he still had confidence in Rosenstein after reading the memo.
The cumulative effect of it all, intelligence veterans said, was to diminish trust in government institutions—thereby weakening the U.S.
To sum up their point here if we may – it’s not the fact US officials have been caught lying and manipulating and conspiring against elected representatives that diminishes trust in government institutions – it’s the fact people insist on talking about it
“We have to remember what Putin’s goal in this whole endeavor was,” said Ned Price, a former CIA officer and NSC spokesperson under President Barack Obama. “It was at its core to divide the American people and pit us against each other.”
“This is exactly what he had hoped and it has succeeded beyond his wildest expectations,” he said of the memo. “This memo just play right into that… This is exactly what Putin had in mind.”
In some ways this is the most ridiculous thing in the article. Why would any sane person – Putin or anyone else – want America to be more divided, unstable and terrifying than it already is? To the rest of the world, even its supposed friends, America is the psycho next door with the drinking problem, the chainsaw and the cupboard full of illegal firearms. No one wants this guy getting all riled up about anything. Because they don’t want to wake up with their house on fire and their kids dead in the yard.
The memo “is simply an attempt to cast aspersions on the whole investigation,” said Robert Litt, a former general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who now works for Morrison and Foerster.
This is rather like saying proving someone guilty of child abuse is an “attempt to cast aspersions” on their parenting. And they still haven’t mentioned or quoted the contents of the Memo.
“To the extent that Putin’s goal is to weaken us an emphasize our internal division, which was certainly one of the conclusions that the intelligence community reached, yes absolutely [he succeeded],” Litt added. “This is increasing partisanship and division and making it more difficult to bring to light what they’re actually doing. … I would’ve thought that there would have been a considerably greater level of bipartisan concern about what the Russians have done.”
Hey – you know another way they could have thwarted that damn Putin? Their intelligence agencies could have not lied and cheated and plotted in the first place.
But for Trump, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes and other Republicans, Friday was a day of triumph.
“The Committee has discovered serious violations of the public trust, and the American people have a right to know when officials in crucial institutions are abusing their authority for political purposes,” Nunes wrote on Friday, accompanying the release of the memo his staff drafted.
“I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,” Trump declared.
Politico focuses on what Nunes said as if the only thing that mattered was the fact he was triumphing over the Dems. They completely avoid even considering the fact the words happen also to be true. Truth is a thing. It happens. It can be measured. Remember when that used to matter? Oh but wait – Politico is about to discuss the contents of the Memo!…
The memo, however, showed little that was new. A dossier compiled by a former British intelligence operative, who was funded in part by Clinton’s campaign, was part of the basis for the investigation, the memo says. But that was already known. And other elements of the investigation were underway independent of the dossier, the memo acknowledged.
… No, false alarm. It looked momentarily as if they were going to discuss the contents of the Memo, but it turns out they don’t need to, because there’s nothing new in it! Nope. Nothing here you haven’t seen before. Move along.
But wait – if the Memo doesn’t matter why did so many people not want it published? Why is it “dividing” anyone? If the Memo doesn’t matter then why is it just what Putin wants?
And if the Memo doesn’t matter and contains nothing new why won’t Politico quote a single line of it? Or even link to it?
And they don’t. Not once in the entire piece. What Politico is saying, with pure Doublethink, is the Memo is completely worthless, useless, empty and boring and a fiendish, cunning plot by Vladimir Putin to divide America and undermine public faith in its institutions. And most of the people who read it will believe these two things with ease. Because being an American Liberal these days requires complete removal of your sense of the ridiculous.
This last bit is interesting though:
Nonetheless, conservative media — including some outlets which were handed the memo before it became public — rejoiced.
Former House Speaker and Trump confidant Newt Gingrich suggested that the memo would ultimately undermine Mueller’s investigation.
“This memo will lead to more releases of more material and it will go on and on,” Gingrich told POLITICO. “We will be shocked at how deep the sickness was. … Why would you think Mueller is anything different? He’s just part of the same mess.”
Are we going to see a Memo war of attrition? Will this signal an avalanche of mutually destructive dirt from all sides? This could be a time for popcorn and a comfy chair.
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The Vaccine Mafia: Pfizer’s Former Chief Toxicologist Proves How Toxic Substances Were Unlawfully Sold to Us as a Solution for COVID-19
By Helmut Sterz
Former Pfizer chief toxicologist Helmut Sterz presents a critical examination of the development, approval, and global rollout of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines—particularly those produced by Pfizer/BioNTech. The Vaccine Mafia details the failure of pharmaceutical companies, regulatory authorities, politicians, and international organizations to follow established scientific and ethical standards during the pandemic. Drawing on the author’s decades of experience in pharmaceutical toxicology, Sterz reveals the many ways the vaccines’ inadequate or omitted preclinical safety testing put the world’s population at risk.
Sterz demonstrates how “emergency” approvals allowed manufacturers to bypass long-standing international guidelines governing toxicity testing, especially with regard to reproductive and cancer risks. They also allowed governments and health authorities to ignore or conceal evidence of serious adverse effects that occurred, including myocarditis, reproductive harm, and other long-term health risks.
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