Trump - Officially A Pawn & Intel Asset For Putin And The Russsians

The Traitor-in- Chief - Putin's Personal Puppet - who will do or say anything to provide cover for his master.

"The attempts by Giuliani and others to say 'oh no American involvement', is one hundred percent wrong. We now have it documented what transpired now on the Russian side, but we are within kissing distance of the final hook between the Russian government and the Trump campaign."

Harry Litman, former U.S. Attorney on All In last  night.


Even as the Trump protection media insist he is a king  -  e.g. Kimberly Strassel's WSJ op-ed Friday, that "King" Trump can cut taxes on his own without congress, and today's WSJ  editorial ('After The Strzok Stonewall', p. A12) that  Pete Strzok "stonewalled" so Trump can declassify any and all files  "to learn the truth of what really happened in 2016". In fact,  we already know what happened from the Mueller probe indictment of 12 officers from the GRU intelligence directorate,  yesterday. So the Trump protection alliance can spin all the BS it wants but no one with sense and an IQ over room temperature is buying it.  Trump supporters, voters excepted, who as Harvard Professor Harvey Mansfield put it, "come from the lower half of the IQ curve".(WSJ,  Weekend Interview, March 31).

Let's cut all the Foxite balderdash and cut to the chase: Anyone with more than air between their ears now KNOWS Trump is a goddamned traitor and deserves hanging from the nearest tree, especially if he now goes on to meet Vladimir Putin in secret. This isn't "hyperbole"  or unfair characterization but calling a spade a spade. It is straight unvarnished reality after the orange ape tried to cover for his Russkie collaborators by tossing out the "witch hunt" sound bite on being informed (2 days in advance of its public release) of the latest Mueller indictment.  This was of 12 Russian Military Intelligence officers for whom the names, ranks and roles were even specified . This,  barely 72 hours before the traitor was to hold his one -on- one with Putin.  And despite calls for Trump to cancel his coming secret meet with Putin, we know a traitor never surrenders his cover unless he's caught flat- footed, to the extent he can be hung without question.

True to a Traitor's form, instead of obeying the demands to cancel the covert Putin meeting, in which we'll have no remote idea what he's giving away, Trump doubled down his cover (see David Corn's take at end of post).  Rather than acknowledge the detrimental optics for a private Putin meet, like a true traitor he disparaged the news of the Mueller indictment at a press conference with Therese May;

"I think I have a very good relationship with President Putin.  I think we're being hurt very badly by this witch hunt, I would call it the rigged witch hunt. You know,  in the United States we have this pure stupidity but it makes it very hard to do something with Russia"

Oh, you mean like removing all sanctions imposed, without drawing scrutiny and hyper attention? Is that what's made 'very hard', Mr. Traitor?   Or, do you mean it will be very hard for Russia to help you win in 2020?   Hopefully, maybe by then you'll be hanging from the tallest tree in D.C.

As former assistant Watergate prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks put it on All In: "We have no witches here, but we do have a male WARLOCK and his head is almost in the noose. Along with his other warlocks.":

Interestingly,  Mueller's indictment -   the most detailed accusation by the American government to date of the Russian government’s 2016 election interference - came mere hours before Londoners protested the arrival of the treasonous orange maggot in their country,  with an inflatable Baby Trump blimp, e.g.



The Baby Trump captured everything odious about this degenerate, from his infantile, narcissistic nature, to his hideous orange hue via fake tanning creams,  to the incessant need to have his Twitter feed at hand. And his big open yap which never ceases bloviating bullshit and self inflation.

Meanwhile, Mueller's indictment revealed for the first time that a team of Russian Military Intelligence hackers- members of the GRU-  initiated their disruption efforts as early as March, 2016,  or 8 months before the election, and targeting 300 people. This was also around the same time Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos  learned from an Aussie diplomat the Russians possessed "dirt" on Clinton.

Mueller released the indictment day before Trump's planned secret sit down with Putin, obviously as a warning shot over Trump's bow, to behave himself. Or else.  According to the indictment:

"On or about July 27, 2016, the conspirators attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts on a domain hosted by a third party provider and used by Clinton's personal office. They also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign. '

Most interesting, this happened on the very same day Traitor Trump appeared in front of the media cameras and pleaded with Russia to hack Hillary's emails.  In front of millions, the Orange Turd had baldly blurted:

"I will tell you this, Russia if you're listening, I hope that you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. You will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens."

So Trump, in full public view, asked Russia to hack his political opponent.  Did this just come out of the blue as a brain fart blurt? Not at all, given we know Russia has been funding Trump since the late 1980s.  On account of that funding and other Kompromat materials (e.g. the piss video revealed in the Steele dossier), we know Donnie Dotard is  Putin's puppet,  with multiple strings that can be puled at will.

As per The New Republic (Aug./Sept. 2017, . p. 29):

"A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, or even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money .....Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics....It's entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters."

 And his July 27 invitation to hack Hillary's emails disclosed he was also by then (likely even before) a convenient gopher, puppet and collaborator to the Russkies, who he hoped would help deliver the White House via enough electoral votes in key swing states. Hell, it's been known since earlier this year that Mueller's investigators have been asking witnesses if Trump was advised to make the comment about the Clinton emails from someone outside his campaign.  So Trump tried to coordinate the release of the emails to do the most damage to Clinton, and the GRU provided him with all the material.

In the indictment (see  end of post) we now know one GRU unit engaged in active cyber operations by stealing information, while a second, different unit was responsible for disseminating the stolen information.  Much of this was done via the entity known as "Guccifer 2.0" - who then passed the information on to Wikileaks.

I admit that at the time the initial  (DNC) hacking incidents were exposed (two days before the Clinton email hacks), I wasn't 100 percent convinced it was the Russians, I posted about it (e.g. July 25th, 2016) and wrote at the time:

There was a "claim" - still no evidence - by a DNC -hired bunch of "experts" ('CrowdStrike") that the DNC's email system was breached by "Russian hackers". Even if true, and I haven't seen anything to convince me yet, this doesn't mean the Russian government or Putin was behind it. Further, people need to read this before they jump on that suspicious political meme bandwagon:

http://www.csoonline.com/article/3084594/security/dnc-hacker-slams-crowdstrike-publishes-opposition-memo-on-donald-trump.html

So, until the illustrious 'CrowdStrike' team can provide firm evidence that Guccifer 2.0 was in fact Russian or the "Russian hackers" I will withhold accepting the DNC claim."
  
However, I now believe the case has been made and the details in the indictment have convinced me (at last) we can blame the Russkies for those early hacks.  Also, that Wikileaks was collaborating as when they responded to Guccifer 2.0", i.e.:

"Send any new material (stolen from the DNC) here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact then what you are doing."

That single statement totally altered my perceptions of Wikileaks, from a respectable group  of global citizens out to get the truth (as when they exposed the horrific videos of U.S. helicopter gunships slaughtering civilian Iraqis some 10 years ago), to a detestable bunch of vermin cooperating to undermine a U.S. election.

We now return to the core issue: Was the  July 27, 2016  televised Trump invitation to the Russkies a signal sent to the GRU to launch its hack attack? We don't know, but it sure appears there's enough 'smoke' to infer a fire, one started by the Donald.

According to journalist David Corn, appearing on All In last night, made these remarks concerning the Mueller indictments:

"What this is is a reminder of reality.  Trump and his minions have kept saying this didn't really happen, so in a lot of ways this is an indictment of Donald Trump, of all the people who said the Russia attack never happened. Here we have it in granular detail.  Read between the lines of this iindictment and there's the other half of the equation. That throughout the campaign, and while the attack was going on, Donald Trump and his lieutenants were saying it's not happening. Even when he was briefed by U.S. intelligence he came out and said, 'nope, nothing happening, could be a 400 pound guy, we don't know that it's Russia'

Well, now we know it's Russia. Now we know while they were doing this he was providing cover, he was covering up what they were doing, which was for his benefit. "

In other words, Trump - aka "the Donald" - is effectively a Russian intelligence asset and blatant actor on Putin's behalf, to undermine the U.S. national security interests. This is by way of enabling meddling in our elections to propel Trump to power and act as said agent on Putin's behalf, as well as disrupting friendly alliances and kowtowing to autocrats and dictators - especially Putin.

Readers can believe what they will, I believe this guy should be hung.

[Read the indictment here.]

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/elizabeth-preza/80167/he-doesn-t-read-ex-us-ambassador-to-russia-details-putin-s-strategic-advantage-over-trump-ahead-of-

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/cody-fenwick/80138/a-moment-in-american-history-ex-gop-lawmaker-argues-muellers-latest-charges-should-make-us-fearful-of-

Excerpt:

"The president has known for days about this and he did not pivot in the press conference today to change his message nor is he changing the meeting," he continued. "And what Americans should feel today — and I say this carefully — but we should feel fear. The Department of Justice today issued a statement on behalf of the United States government saying that one of our greatest adversaries in the world, Russia, had intelligence agents interfere with our elections. ... We should be fearful about the allegation. We should be fearful about the statement of facts. At the end of the day, we should be fearful we have a president who has known about this and did not change his behavior."

AND:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/chiara-giaccari/80153/the-trump-putin-helsinki-summit-why-a-meeting-behind-closed-doors
 

Proxy Battle In France Ends With Blowout Of The "French Trump"

French voters celebrate Emmanuel Macron's win yesterday - and many in Europe and the U.S. breath a sigh of relief.

All of Europe and many in the U.S. held their breath yesterday to see if the far right populist surge that began with Brexit, then Trump's election in the U.S. could be stopped. Squaring off was a former centrist investment banker Emmanuel Macron, against the "French Trump" - as many French voters called Marine Le Pen.  And what might have ended in a Le Pen victory and ultimately a "Frexit", instead saw an electoral blowout with Macron winning 66 percent to 34 percent. 

Not so much touted or noted was the extent to which the French runoff election had turned into a cage match battle between Trump and Barack Obama - but via proxies (Macron and Le Pen) representing Obama-style centrism and right wing Trumpism, respectively. Indeed, seeing the risk to the European Union, Obama had come right out for common sense and a video of Obama endorsing Emmanuel Macron for President was pinned to the top of Macron’s FB page. The video was vintage POTUS 44,  all intelligence and maturity.

Unlike the bombastic, toddler-esque Trump with his three-year old's vocabulary (in tweets and in person)  and perverted, Cheshire cat smirk, Obama fixed the camera with his trademark sober, sympathetic gaze stating in his coherent style:

“I’ve always been grateful for the friendship of the French people, and for the work we did together when I was President of the United States,.  I'm not planning to get involved in many elections now that I don’t have to run for office again. But the French election is very important to the future of France and the values that we care so much about.”

Obama's endorsement emphasized that the French runoff result "mattered to the entire world" which it did. This is because a Le Pen victory would have reinforced the nationalist, anti-immigrant position of the U.S. Trumpites even as Trump would have slobbered all over her win in overblown tweets.  As it was, the boy in a man's job had to eat humble pie and at least make it look like he approved of Macron's lopsided win. He doesn't and you can bet your sweet bippy on that. He probably ripped most of his orange hair out last night.

Trump himself had earlier "cavorted" with Le Pen - even inviting her to Trump Tower, see e.g.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38600560


 He fully embraced her agenda,  noting the similarities in position such as her anti-Islamic, anti-immigration and closed borders stance as well as de facto keeping France for the French.  Recall also that Le Pen, leader of the National Front, was one of the first to congratulate Trump on his fake news- driven, Wikileaks -Hillary email hacked victory in November. Also,  Le Pen's nativist, nationalistic message carried echoes of Trump's anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric. Trump, in turn,  had praised Le Pen’s tough stance on immigration and borders, which many of her critics had decried as racist.

Obama's appearance three days in advance of the runoff in support of Macron should not have surprised anyone who knew anything of the two leaders.  As Emily Schultheis noted in The Atlantic last month, Obama and Macron’s campaigns shared plenty of similarities. Like Obama, Macron relied on a large and seemingly unprecedented grassroots campaign composed of thousands of volunteers across the country. Both Obama's and Macron's campaigns were centered on moving their countries in a progressive direction—Macron’s slogan being En Marche, or “Onward!,”  (named after the party he formed 3 years ago), while Obama relied on the slogans “Change We Can Believe In” and, for his reelection campaign, “Forward.”

So, in the end - even though Le Pen made a late, half-hearted effort to distance herself from Trump-  it wasn't enough. Trump or no Trump,  her extremist positions  didn't sit well with French voters who were not bamboozled by fake news or hacks (one even coming hours before election day but which Macron's campaign had laid traps for) . Given two ballots in  hand-  one with Le Pen's name on it, one with Emmanuel Macron's -  French voter's by nearly 2 to 1 dumped the former into dust bins and cast the latter.  Today's post-mortem news (CBS Early Show) was that millions of Le Pen ballots were left in trash cans in the voter precincts. Today, with those tossed ballots hopefully disclosing her in history's dust bin, the world is breathing easier.

But some pundits are asserting it was merely a Le Pen defeat not one for far Right populism. Indeed, despite Macron's blowout, Le Pen scored a historic high for the French far Right. Even after a  campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken almost 11m votes, double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002.  Recall, old man Jean-Marie was the one who said the Holocaust was a "small detail of history".

In addition, the anti-immigration, anti-EU National Front's supporters have asserted that the party now has a central place as an opposition force in France. They might, but that may depend on future elections. As it was the French runoff election turnout was the lowest in more than 40 years. Almost one-third of voters chose neither Macron nor Le Pen, with 12 million abstaining and 4.2 million spoiling ballot papers. In many ways it mirrored our own 2016 election when many voters decried "two horrible choices",

But maybe what we have to start asking ourselves is why we so often end up with these "horrible" choices. Is it our electoral process? Or is it the very choices we make at each stage of extended campaigns, including primaries? Would making voting easier help, such as using mail ballots like we do here in Colorado? At the very least that should enable higher voter turnout, though that is the one thing the U.S. far Right doesn't want, so convinced are they that "voter fraud" is the primary evil - never mind it is actually voter suppression.

For now the world of the sane breathes easier, but the vast fake news realm of the insane, angry and unsettled remains and no one can write it off for the long term.  This was but one battle in a long bruising war that isn't settled yet, not by a long shot.

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/72663/nos-felicitations-macron

Excerpt:

"The fact that racist nationalist Le Pen could summon more than a third of the French vote is cause for worry about the future. Xenophobia toward Muslims has played a part. More responsible are widening inequality and mounting job insecurity – coupled with a growing sense that the political-economy is rigged in favor or the privileged and out of touch with average working people.

The French haven’t suffered the same degree of economic stresses as have Americans in recent decades – France’s social safety net is still relatively intact – which may explain why they didn’t elect Le Pen while we elected Trump. But France, like most modern political economic systems, is heading in America’s direction under the guise of business “flexibility” and austerity economics."

Clapper & Spymasters Expose Trump As A Fool And A Fraud

"For a President not to be prepared to listen to the myriad of intelligence agencies - from defense intelligence to the CIA - is absolutely mindless" - VP Joe Biden yesterday.

Note the use of Biden's term "mindless" in the above quote which actually may be way too generous. It implies a person mentally vacant for a given task at hand, or job, say like an Alzheimer's victim. But there are many reasons to believe Donald J. Trump isn't mindless, he is simply using his mind in devious ways to undermine the intelligence community and security of this country.  Even if a person might originally have been tempted to give Trump the benefit of the doubt in terms of denying the veracity of intelligence reports the past few weeks, yesterday's Senate hearing ought to have quashed that once and for all.

In fact, DNI James Clapper and his fellow spymasters (the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence,  and Director of the National Security Agency) all delivered testimony basically revealing Trump as a fraud, a fool and in no way qualified to hold the office of dog catcher- far less leader of the world's most powerful nation.

Mincing no words, National Intelligence Director James Clapper bluntly stated: "There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,”  skewering the Trumpian nonsense that his hesitance to accept the intelligence community's findings was mere "skepticism".

Clapper told a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing into foreign cyber-threats (headed  by Sen. John McCain)  to the US  that intelligence analysts “stand more resolutely” than ever behind their conclusion of “Russian interference in our electoral process”.

The testimony was delivered before Clapper and the heads of the CIA, NSA and FBI are expected to present their findings on Russian election interference to Trump today, in his Trump Tower redoubt. Asked by Lindsey Graham if he was ready to take on Trump  today, Clapper didn't hesitate, saying "Absolutely!".

The meet with the clown Trump, who has repeatedly scoffed at the hacking claims from the intelligence community, is likely to be highly charged. How can it not be given that Trump the  tweeting troll has all but left the nation's spymasters incredulous at the spectacle of his sheer foolish claims including "I know things other people don't know about hacking".   Thereby leaving the intel community not only in disbelief but hung out to dry with his off the cuff BS and dismissive tweets. (Which VP Biden admonished him to cease saying "Grow up, Donald!")

Indeed, this lout and loon has publicly derided the agencies on the hacking issue.  Also, as reported yesterday (MSNBC) the spymasters are so worried that Trump won't accept their final report that they called members of congress asking them for public support.  They are also clearly worried that Trump this week actually cited a denial by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks that his source for Democratic party emails released during the election was the Russian government or “a state party”.

In the wake of such unfathomable disparagement of their work,  both Clapper and Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, expressed concerns about intelligence analysts’ morale with Rogers suggesting some may quit.  Many in private have confided that having to deal with such a soon to be leader of the putative free world, has shaken them to their core.

And why not? They will within 2 weeks be under the control of a totally unqualified buffoon who has no more regard for this country than the quality of the crap he sells in the assorted boutiques of Trump Tower.

As 'Exhibit A' one can cite Trump’s confidence in WikiLeaks which has shocked and angered intelligence analysts, who consider Assange at minimum a dupe, and at most a willing tool of Putin. Clapper and Rogers testified they believe Assange has no credibility. “I don’t think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him,” said Clapper. Then On Thursday morning, Trump denied he was “in agreement” with Assange, tweeting: “I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth.”    But this is too clever by half, and way too coy, even for a president- elect with the impulse control of a three year old.

For one thing, if he took the intelligence community seriously he would not be dignifying the words of a person regarded as a hostile actor or used actor by most intel insiders. The very fact he would state what Assange states discloses he places Assange's words on a par with that of James Clapper and the intel directors. What's wrong with this picture? Well, everything!

If one trusts and accepts the reports - including daily briefs - of the intelligence analysts, then that must be mutually exclusive with accepting the words of a person they consider a hostile actor. Trump like any three year old merely tries to show he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Asked about morale within the intelligence agencies in the wake of Trump’s comments, Clapper said: “I haven’t done a climate survey, but I hardly think it helps it.” Rogers said the “confidence of our leaders” helps motivate intelligence officers, “and without that confidence, I just don’t want a situation where our workforce decides to walk, because that’s not a good place for us to be”.

Even more sobering, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the proposal, Trump is considering diminishing the director of national intelligence and even getting rid of it. This move, according to the head of the 9/11 Commission, would leave this nation even more vulnerable to outside attacks by hostiles, including terrorists.

Does Trump care? I seriously doubt it. He likely cares more about kickbacks and money coming in from foreign visitors to his Trump Hotel in D.C.

Maybe the capper on the whole sordid interlude is that the Russkies were evidently elated by the Trump win, see e.g.

[U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win ]

Something that ought to make every American cringe is that two top intelligence officials, as reported last night on NBC, have revealed Russian cyber attacks against not only the DNC, but the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and even American companies.   Translation: We are soon to be in the maw of an administration that is friendly with the foreign entity responsible and with a "fellow traveler" holding the top position in the nation.

Instead of seriously dealing with the findings of the report, Trump blabbered in a tweet 'Who gave them this report? Politics!"  Actually no, reality!   But this is the sort of response one might expect from a fellow traveler.The better question is HOW does Trump know things about this recent hacking that no other sources do?  Does he therefore have inside information on how the hack of the DNC was done? Is it really a "fat man on a bed in New Jersey"? Or, maybe Trump himself?

Evan McMullen, former CIA analyst put it in blunt terms on MSNBC 'All In' last night, after Alabama GOOP Rep. Mo Brooks couldn't answer a simple question on whether it was more important to believe Julian Assange or  U.S. Intelligence professionals:

"It's absolutely unfathomable to me that we even have a question about whether we trust our intelligence professionals over an anti-American activist supported by Russia"

Unfathomable though it may be, it is even more so that Trump's followers and voters will likely see absolutely nothing wrong with anything he's done. The "banality of evil" as I referred to Hanna Arendt's perspective in yesterday's post.

Separating Paranoid Balderdash From Rational Conspiracy Thinking

It is no secret that in certain nations governed by the Neoliberal security meme,  any conspiracy thinking is regarded as - if not a specific pathology - at least a minor mental aberration ("tin foil hat" syndrome). This actually makes eminent logical sense given the leaders of a Neoliberal,  security -based government must - by definition- be on the lookout for anyone who might inveigh against their hard-earned agenda for which any disclosures are  unwelcome.  This is especially so with the JFK assassination, superbly exposed in Col. John Hughes-Wilson's recent book, JFK - An American Coup d'Etat.

No surprise then that a long time Neoliberal columnist, David Brooks, wrote in a recent NY Times Op-Ed ('The Epidemic Of Worry'):

"It is a well-established fact that people who experience social exclusion have a tendency to slide toward superstitious and conspiratorial thinking"

But is this really so?

To a degree, yes, but it must be clarified. By "social exclusion" Brooks doesn't necessarily mean the affected people live like hermits or outright recluses. He means, rather, they are outside the loop of the elite political class, outside the knowledge -based enterprises. He means, in general: i) those with the least advanced education, ii) those without the economic freedom to enable choices to enhance their knowledge of the system (taken to mean the Neoliberal system), and iii) those whose employment is not knowledge, information based but rather tied to muscle, hence again divorced from the knowledge loop. Often in two ways, first because their work precludes admission, and second because their work leaves them too taxed to investigate on their own.

For this lot, one of the few options is to hitch their fortunes and futures to a person - a de facto "voice" - who apparently has all the answers.  In this case, he may suggest the whole system is "rigged" including the media, without giving particulars. Never mind, it saves the "excluded" from having to put forth individual efforts of their own. So they adopt his way of thinking, which often also entails conspiracies, i.e. the opposition campaign is the beneficiary of a "global network of elites".

In other words, the conspiracies latched onto translate to a sense of powerlessness.  This would fit into the template Dr. Pat Bannister once invoked to describe a "conspiracy culture", thereby to distinguish it from "conspiracy research community". The latter she envisaged as the province of mature, rational, educated adults. The former was the realm of the semi-literate or poorly educated who fancied themselves adults but really weren't.   They were more like overgrown children playing elaborate paranoid games. Irrationalists like the indiscriminate conspiracy monger, Alex Jones, e.g.



Jones is notorious for whacky conspiracy ideation such as confecting the off the wall bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those twenty  kids weren't really slain, they were merely actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land.

In one of his more recent outbursts, Jones fulminated on Tuesday about a crypto Jewish conspiracy afoot in the country:

“I mean it’s not that Jews are bad; it’s just they are the head of the Jewish Mafia in the United States. They run Uber. They run the health care. They’re going to scam you. They’re going to hurt you.” 

Really, Alex? And where is the hard data, documents for that claim? Or is it merely the brain fart from a ruptured psychotic embolism in your amygdala?  The word "tin foil" had not yet achieved wide currency by the time of Dr. Pat Bannister's work, but I've no doubt she would have applied it to the spurious neural eruptions of crazy loons like Alex Jones.

Donald Trump is roughly in the same balmy,  nutso camp as Jones with his "rigged election" conspiracy balderdash. Like many loons he believes that merely repeating unsupported claims makes them so. Thus his incessant references to this election being "rigged", or "stolen" as through "voter fraud".  But how is that happening if states control the electoral process and 31 of the 50 states are run by Republican governors. Is Trump saying that even the governors of his own party are rigging the election? (John Kasich, of Ohio, dismissed that notion last Thursday morning on CBS as total idiotic nonsense.)

Now, what about a different perspective, such as advanced by Wikileaks' Julian Assange (a former physicist) , who in one 6-page  blog article ('Conspiracy as Governance')  advanced a meta-theory of conspiracy, i.e. as inherent to the very nature and workings of Neoliberal governance.

The essay tied together authoritarian governments, corporations, certain terrorist organizations and even political parties as fundamentally organizational  "conspiracies"- defined as groups that conceal and hoard secret information to win a competitive advantage over the general public. This advantage would seek to either: a) keep them in the dark as to deals or laws that would be to the public's detriment, or b) activities that over time undermine democracy, privacy and liberty - though on the surface the media assists in a continuing whitewash.

The classic historical case is the JFK assassination, which saw a nascent, genuinely liberal Presidency removed by force in a coup d'état to make way for a Neoliberal security state able to gradually foreclose citizen knowledge of its workings while eroding civil liberties. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/08/one-of-top-ten-books-on-jfk.html

But given we already exist within the security state germinated since that critical event, it behooves us to examine what that state has managed to hide from us, but which by diligent effort has been exposed.  A lot of this arrived in 2013 with Edward Snowden's whistle blowing on NSA programs like MUSCULAR, Xkeyscore, etc, that trampled on citizens' 4th amendment rights.

Years before Snowden's release of files showing NSA mass spying, Assange in his treatise argued that leaks cut the "conspiracies" open like a double-edged knife, empowering the public with privileged information while spreading confusion among the conspirators themselves ("Who let that cat out of the bag?", "Who released that FOIA document?", "Who leaked that info!?")

Further, if constant leakage was the rule, as opposed to the exception, Assange argued that conspiratorial organizations would be gripped by destructive, internecine paranoia leaving only transparent groups and governments to flourish.

While at first blush Assange's treatise sounds as cracked as one of Jones' radio rants, one must take care not to jump to conclusions and instead investigate history for such a basis. If one is intelligent and diligent enough he will find that in the early operations of Edward Bernays.

Bernays began his career in Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information. The objective was to drumbeat millions of recalcitrants into seeing the need for War. War to 'make the world safe for democracy' - in the words forged by Bernays first PR hacks. Later, much later - PR firms and sales-marketing departments would use the CPI as a template for their own efforts to mold the American mass mind.

Bernays left much more of a foundation for manipulative deceit than merely the CPI. For example, in 1923 he published what became the official manifesto of all future public relations 'Crystallizing Public Opinion'. As the title implies, the basic goal was to drumbeat the maximum number of 'the masses' into a homogeneous and consistent consent. But do it without their awareness.

By now the groundwork for control of the public mind, as well as hoarding secret information to enable its facile manipulation, was well underway. Five years later came Bernays' definitive work 'Propaganda' - whose principles were to be later adopted wholesale by Goebbels and Reifenstahl. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents - if ever there was any doubt before:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country."

And here we see for the first time the term 'invisible government'. This Bernays equated to 'the true ruling power of the country'. In effect, he had taken the Bill of Rights and smashed it into a thousand pieces, giving authority for governance to a presumed intellectual and political elite.

So we see the seeds for the governance that Assange postulated had actually arrived by 1923, and had been consolidated by 1928.  Fast forward now to the present, if Assange's arguments have any heft then we'd need to see some kind further evidence, beyond Snowden's file releases, unearthed by careful, assiduous sleuthing in the real world. As it turns out a number of findngs have manifested in recent weeks from different sources including:

- That the Trans Pacific Partnership deal is a "Trojan Horse" with a provisions written in for "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" suits.  This basically means foreign corporations and investors can trump U.S. appellate courts and instead bring lawsuits via private tribunals against citizens or communities deemed guilty of blocking say...their fracking operations, oil pipelines or food processing methods. (Cf. 'Free Trade's Trojan Horse' in Sierra magazine, Nov-Dec., p. 45)

Also, see:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-johnson/69588/tpp-partner-jails-human-rights-blogger



- Project Censored's number one censored story for the year that US. military forces are now in 147 of the world's 195 nations, an 80 percent increase since 2010.  In 135 nations a secret war is being conducted. See e.g.

www.tinyurl.com/CSI-Censor-1


-  Another Project Censored hitherto concealed story: A Cybersecurity Sharing Act or CISA,  which had originally been blocked by the Senate through a 56-40 vote, has since been signed into law by Obama as part of a revised 2,000 - page Omnibus spending bill - with total media silence.  The Act:

"Authorizes the creation of a system for corporate informants to provide customers' data to the Department of Homeland Security which - in turn - can share this information with other federal agencies, including: the NSA, the FBI, Internal Revenue Service and others - without privacy protecting safeguards or special warrants. "

As one of the few alert media sources (The UK Guardian) reported,  civil liberties experts were dismayed with the passage of the bill whose most invasive components "made a mockery of the democratic process".

From all these perspectives it appears, therefore, that Assange's "conspiracy as governance" postulate carries vastly more weight than any of Alex Jones' off the cuff paranoid  ideations, and certainly Trump's rigged election nonsense . We have no concrete evidence to support such nutso blather, but we do have evidence of hoarding information - often to citizens' detriment - by the Neoliberal security statists (and their media apparatchiks - see the Project Censored link at the very end of this post.)

We may conclude from this, and I am sure Pat Bannister (if she were alive) would agree, that Assange's 6-page discourse comes closest to actual,  rational conspiracy thinking - and serious research- while Alex Jones demonstrates more paranoid balderdash: useless spoutings that serve no point or purpose other than to fill Jones' air time on his 'Infowars'.

Are the Neoliberals  ensconced in our government really out to get us? I believe it would be more accurate to say they want to keep us in the dark as much as possible concerning critical matters that affect our future welfare.  If they can do so then they can advance their bid for consolidating power. The "conspiracy" then, isn't so much a single coherent plan carried out via meetings in secret enclaves but more a zeitgeist or central conviction shared by all, which unifies their goals. Hence provides a means by which they can ultimately expedite disparate actions all oriented to attainment of a defined agenda - in this case a worldwide Neoliberal economy. Of course, to assure such a vision, military force must often be used, and that is implemented under a pretext that the "governance" agrees upon.

See also:

http://projectcensored.org/category/the-top-censored-stories-of-2015-2016/

After Seeing Wikileaks DNC Email Dump, Bernie Owes DNC and Hillary NOTHING!

Bernie firing off his point in CNN debate even as DNC turds were scoffing at him, undermining his campaign.

After yesterday's middle finger salute to Bernie supporters compliments of Hillary and her Neolib cohort, Sanders' nation ought to be even more outraged today. This is after WikiLeaks released nearly 20,000 DNC emails showing how this disgusting bunch of pud suckers scoffed at Bernie and even his religious beliefs (or lack thereof), as they made plans to derail his campaign.

Reading through the emails was enough to make me physically ill and also - at  least for now - side with other Democratic Socialists calling for Bernie to retract his endorsement of Clinton at the Democratic Convention. Why not, after these odious fuckers  repeatedly spat in his face, weighted the nomination against him using the super delegate system, and now with this email dump shown how vile they really are?. (And bear in mind they were also behind the false story of Sanders's supporters "throwing chairs" at one Las Vegas  event two months ago)

One piece of excrement named Brad Marshall said of Sanders in one email that drove my BP through the roof:

“Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist."

Is this asshole for real?  What the fuck does it matter if Bernie believes in a God or not? What does it matter if he is a self-proclaimed Jew or not? What the fuck business is it of Marshall's or the asswipe clowns of the DNC? The fact is Marshall, bipedal turd that he is,  would only ruminate on Bernie's beliefs or lack of them as a way to undermine his credibility, especially with Southern voters.. 

So what if Sanders is an atheist? I am too. Does that matter or would you like me too take my vote some place else?  I had actually thought the Dems were beyond this sort of divisive thinking - characteristic of the Repukes, but I guess not. They are just as bad, but why be surprised since both parties now are just two sides of the same corporate coin? (Proven by Clinton's selection of Kaine, sending a message to the Street not to be alarmed by her debate attacks. Just words, ya know?)

How did WikiLeaks get hold of the emails? We cant say for sure. But earlier this year Russian hackers stole material from the DNC’s email system, the party and an investigating cybersecurity firm acknowledged last month. Wikileaks did not reveal how it acquired the files, though a hacker who goes by “Guccifer 2.0” has also claimed to breach the party’s system.

Nonetheless, there is no hard evidence that's surfaced showing WikiLeaks got their material from the Russians.  It is possible that Guccifer 2.0 was a member of the hacker group 'Anonymous' and worked alone, then gave his trove of files to WikiLeaks.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair and manipulator of the Dem debates, called the Russian breach  a “serious incident” and said a private contractor had been hired to sweep the organization’s network had “moved as quickly as possible to kick out the intruders and secure our network”. But clearly if Guccifer 2.0 could get in it wasn't as secure as she believed.

Meanwhile, on its web page, Wikileaks said the new cache of emails came from the accounts of “seven key figures in the DNC” and warned that the release was “part one of our new Hillary Leaks series”.

It's kind of sad to read about the DNC's machinations but most of us suspected them all along. Needless to say, along with the cowardly Veep pick of Tim Kaine, this will do nothing to energize Sanders' millions to work on behalf of the Dem ticket. Or even show up to vote. Why should they after being given the literal shaft? As Ruth Conniff, editor of the Progressive magazine put it: "Hillary wants progressive voters but she's shown she has no interest in progressive values."

In other words, it's all a big act especially with her sorry selection of Tim Kaine, yet another Wall Street beholden political hack.

Those who want to see the DNC emails can go to the WikiLeaks  website. Pay special attention to  the details of perks to be provided to party donors attending the convention;:

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/
 

("The top tier of donors will receive priority booking at a premier hotel in Philadelphia and free tickets to major convention events and six tickets to an "exclusive VIP party," according to the document titled, "2016 Convention Packages.")

Postscript 7/24:

Kudos to Bernie on 'Meet The Press' this morning for telling Chuck Todd in no uncertain terms that Tim Kaine "does not share my political views".  Incredibly, panelist Rachel Maddow - more and more disclosing herself a confirmed Neolib - actually said that was an "aggressive statement". Seriously? It was an honest statement which it appears most of the pundits today - so immersed in their PR worlds of bafflegab- can't process. Maddow followed up this blurtation with the equally stupid observation that "on balance Tim Kaine is a progressive". Yeah right, Rachel, and what universe would that be? Not the one I inhabit! Further, because he once long ago "defended civil rights"  does not make him a progressive now.  Lastly, I commend Bernie for calling for the resignation of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz after the DNC email leaks. She needed to go months ago, but at least now she won't be speaking at the Dem Convention.

And now the latest news (2:15 MDT) is that she will resign after the Convention.  A small 'w' but one nonetheless.

 

See also:

 

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/david-swanson/68227/explaining-the-problem-with-lesser-evilism

 

And:

 

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/peter-white/68224/sanders-should-withdraw-his-endorsement

TPP Still A Bad Deal, NO Matter What Obama Says!

"Hmmmmm......if we can just sneak this by the People all will be well!"


Barack Obama’s claim that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) would be beneficial to the average American worker must still be taken with a grain of salt. Just over a year and a half ago I noted that - via Britain's Guardian - WikiLeaks had released the draft text  of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement.    

This is a Neoliberal-generated multinational "free trade" treaty that - like NAFTA and GATT before it - promises much but delivers precious little to the average citizen.   The full agreement covers a number of distinct areas but the chapter released by WikiLeaks 17 1/2 months ago focuses on intellectual property rights - an area that influences as many other areas as civil liberties and pharmaceuticals. Most noteworthy, at the time Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group, remarked that:

"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."
 

Indeed!   And the most damning indictment that the whole enchilada is bogus and only favors the elites and power brokers is the fact that the 30,000-word intellectual property chapter disclosed a vicious intent to  increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability.

The day after the leaks, smikringchimp.com blogger Thomas Hartmann observed:

" This week, Americans got a peek behind the curtain of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and what we found is frightening. On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP, and it poses a serious risk to free speech and information access. The document contains proposals that would change copyright and patent laws, so-called fair use practices, and the liabilities for alleged violations.

The provisions would stifle innovation, creativity, and information sharing, all under the guise of protecting intellectual property. And, many of the proposed changes are being suggested by US negotiators. Opposition to these restrictive policies is coming from other nations, like Canada, Chile, Malaysia, and New Zealand."

 

Right, so now many citizens will be rendered poorer because of increased costs to their meds, negating or disallowing the emergence of lower cost generics. Copyright restrictions are also bound to stifle creativity, making it much more difficult to reference previous work to either build upon or critique. Then there is the double standard on hacking, disallowing it for the usual n'er do wells but allowing exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorized activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".

Given what segments had been disclosed it was clear the rest of the TPP agreement would be even worse. Indeed on Wednesday night's Rachel Maddow show Maddow played a clip from the president’s appearance on “Hardball with Chris Matthews” on Monday, in which he actually said that progressives who oppose the TPP "prefer the status quo,” .

Actually no, Mr. Prez, we prefer a world and level playing field without Neoliberal hijinks and economic manipulations! THAT is the status quo right now, which TPP doesn't do one scintilla to break!

He also went on saying that while he believes Senator Warren to be an ally on many other issues, in this case “she’s just wrong.” Well, duh, of course she'd be seen as "wrong" if she stands up for the crumbling middle class against advancing Neoliberalism!

Maddow noted that although Obama believes the TPP to be "the most progressive trade compact in American history", progressives in his own party — in particular, Senator Warren — strongly oppose it. And she's absolutely right because we believe the playing field can't be tilted any more than it is toward Neoliberalism and markets dominating over the pro- human agenda. We cannot afford to have in place anything where government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative

 

Warren  correctly informed Maddow that one of the problems with the TPP is that the public has no access to it. Senators and representatives can read it, but they’re not allowed to discuss the details of it in public — which effectively means that Obama is asking the American people to take his word that the deal would have a favorable effect on the quality of middle-class American lives. But one could ask Mr. Prez if an informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, why are we being kept in the dark? Perhaps because we no longer have a democracy  but a corporatocracy! (And I won't even get into how much data, and how many files are being blocked from citizen scrutiny with the Obama administration now deemed the most secretive in U.S. history)

But that is the other prop the Neoliberals depend upon: citizen inertia, ignorance,  stupidity or belief in impotence, i.e. that they only have "opinions" - which carry no weight.  Also, they don't want citizens pursuing truth - information outside the media they promote, which is more invested in propaganda. This, my friends, is the Neoliberal paradigm at work. Whether it's preventing more disclosure on the exact details of the TPP,  or releasing all salient CIA files to do with the JFK assassination. (Which the National Archives refused to do in 2013, the 50th anniversary year - thereby enabling disinfo specialists and quacks like John McAdams to shamelessly continue their crusades to mock the conspiracy template.).
 

Meanwhile, the administration said Wednesday that the agreement will be made available online, and that there will be a period of "public comment  on it. Maddow noted this before asking Warren if that move would assuage some of her concerns.  But Sen. Warren wasn't biting:
 

“They’re asking us to vote now to grease the skids,” Warren replied, “so there won’t be any chance to amend or block it, won’t be any chance to slow it down.” She claimed that the administration is saying, “Give all that up, and you’ll get a chance to see the deal on the other side.”


 Sen. Warren didn't think that was acceptable and neither do I. It is instead a form of extortion. Indeed, the only thing that the American public has been able to learn about the deal is who was negotiating it — corporate lobbyists.  Well, we saw how that worked out when these same parasites wrote and negotiated the 2003 "Medicare Modernization Act" which ended up costing nearly 3 times more than originally promised and delivered a lump sum of corporate welfare equal to $13.6b to Big Phrma thanks to those who pushed it through like Billy Tauzin (La) who then became a lobbyist. Anytime corporate lobbyists are involved you know: a) the bill or agreement is toxic, and b) it is thoroughly in Neoliberal interests, not the people's.

To Maddow's question, Sen. Warren responded:

“My view is when the process is rigged, the outcome’s likely to be rigged too.”

Maddow then asked:
 

"You’re saying that the corporate interests don’t just have access to see what’s in [the TPP], they helped shape what’s in it?”


To which Sen. Warren replied:

“They’ve been in there for months and months and months during the negotiations,”

In other words, watching like the predators they are to make sure every damned 't' is crossed and every 'i' is dotted - in the favor of Neoliberal hegemony

Watch the entire interview via “The Rachel Maddow Show

And here is the letter of Sens. Warren and Sherrod Brown to Obama after his most recent attacks:

Your Administration has deemed the draft text of the agreement classified and kept it hidden from public view, thereby making it a secret deal… It is currently illegal for the press, experts, advocates, or the general public to review the text of this agreement. And while you noted that Members of Congress may “walk over ... and read the text of the agreement” -- as we have done -- you neglected to mention that we are prohibited by law from discussing the specifics of that text in public.

Before Congress votes to facilitate adoption of the TPP, the American people should be allowed to see for themselves whether it’s a good deal for them.

If we really are a democracy then we need to heed Hartmann's words:

"Unions, civil rights advocates, environmental activists, and many other groups are demanding that the details of the TPP are made public. Before this massive trade deal is signed, Americans have the right to know what it contains, and the right to demand that our elected leaders say “No” to the TPP. -"

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/thom-hartmann/61928/hey-mr-president-transparency-applies-to-the-tpp-too

Excerpt:

What do we know about the TPP? Well, according to Public Citizen, we know that the TPP could ship millions of good-paying US jobs overseas.

We know that the TPP could increase the costs of health care and medicine, while hurting health and safety standards. And we know that the TPP could make corporations even stronger and undo what few reforms are left on Wall Street.

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/eric-zuesse/61952/what-s-obama-up-to-with-his-tpp-and-ttip