Deep Politics Forum

Tracy and others:

I would refer everyone to an excellent article in the current issue of Scientific American on page 50 entitled the Tribalism of Truth. The article refers to recent psychological research which allegedly proves that many people today "argue to win" rather than "arguing to learn." Apparently this is a recent development and may be epidemic from my experience. On a "conspiracy theory" website, it's difficult to understand why anyone would be "arguing to win" and not "arguing to learn."

I can testify to personal experience that there is a terrific high when one discovers the truth behind what has been covered up, especially if it relates to a personal experience like the JFK case. Sad to say, though, that many are prisoner to their 2018 partisan political dogma and many more will spend their energy and the limited time they have left on earth blindly defending their religious dogma or their social class on a knee-jerk basis. My advice is "wake up and smell the roses." The roses are, of course, the truth. Not the stuff people believe, but the stuff that conforms to the planet we live on in its infinite detail.

The truth, not partisan dogma. The truth, not biased religious indoctrination. And the truth, not the defense of your social rank and privileges. The truth, the truth, the truth.

James Lateer

James Lateer Wrote:Tracy and others:

I would refer everyone to an excellent article in the current issue of Scientific American on page 50 entitled the Tribalism of Truth. The article refers to recent psychological research which allegedly proves that many people today "argue to win" rather than "arguing to learn." Apparently this is a recent development and may be epidemic from my experience. On a "conspiracy theory" website, it's difficult to understand why anyone would be "arguing to win" and not "arguing to learn."

I can testify to personal experience that there is a terrific high when one discovers the truth behind what has been covered up, especially if it relates to a personal experience like the JFK case. Sad to say, though, that many are prisoner to their 2018 partisan political dogma and many more will spend their energy and the limited time they have left on earth blindly defending their religious dogma or their social class on a knee-jerk basis. My advice is "wake up and smell the roses." The roses are, of course, the truth. Not the stuff people believe, but the stuff that conforms to the planet we live on in its infinite detail.

The truth, not partisan dogma. The truth, not biased religious indoctrination. And the truth, not the defense of your social rank and privileges. The truth, the truth, the truth.

James Lateer

James, I was a Republican for about 10 years, and then became a registered independent about 20 years ago. If you look at my posts on this forum, you'll see that I've spoken against tribalism in all its forms. A larger (all too human) problem with investigating any complicated case is that many people will make up their minds first, and then look for the evidence to support their pet theory. In the JFK case, someone might decide that "LBJ did it" or "the Russians did it" or "Oswald acted alone" and then exclude any data that doesn't support their thinking.

Unfortunately, in this Russia-Trump scandal, some on the alt-left joined with the alt-right in a knee-jerk reaction more than a year ago: They're trying to restart the Cold War, so they're blaming the Russians, it's all a hoax...and then they basically stopped paying attention to the evidence. If I had predicted a year ago that four of Trump's people would be in the dock by now, and practically everybody else on his team would be under investigation, I would have been laughed at.

Personally, I'm kind of a Russophile and wish that the US and Russia could have better relations. But Putin has proven to be a murdering, corrupt thug (and a very rich one), and Trump's involvement with Russian dirty money couldn't be better documented. His own stupid sons, Uday and Qusay, could never keep their mouths shut -

Donald Trump Jr. bragged in 2008:
"And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets; say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia. There's indeed a lot of money coming for new-builds and resale reflecting a trend in the Russian economy and, of course, the weak dollar versus the ruble," he said."
https://www.eturbonews.com/5008/executiv...merging-ma

"President Trump's son, Eric, once told a golf writer that funding for Trump golf courses come from Russia, that writer recounted in a new interview. James Dodson during an interview Friday with Boston's WBUR described meeting Donald Trump in 2014 and being invited to play golf at the Trump National Golf Club Charlotte. He said asked Donald Trump how he was paying for his courses, and the now-president "sort of tossed off that he had access to $100 million," Dodson said in the interview.Dodson said he then questioned Eric Trump, who was along for the day.

"I said, 'Eric, who's funding? I know no banks because of the recession, the Great Recession have touched a golf course. You know, no one's funding any kind of golf construction. It's dead in the water the last four or five years,'" the writers told WBUR."And this is what he said. He said, 'Well, we don't rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.' I said, 'Really?' And he said, 'Oh, yeah. We've got some guys that really, really love golf, and they're really invested in our programs. We just go there all the time.'"
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/332270-...funding-we

Tracy-What a terrific reply to my citation in re tribalism and the truth. I also have never registered in any party nor voted in any partisan based primary (as in Illinois). However, I have also probably voted 99% democratic. But now since I'm a white guy, I have nearly been drummed out of the family as being an accused Trump-lover. And admittedly, Trump is currently my favorite Republican due to trade and immigration policy.

Here's the bottom line: I predicted to my son at least 1.5 years before the election that the National Security State would intervene in the 2016 election. He was a poly sci major and was astounded when it actually happened. But a decent JFK researcher could not have missed it. As everyone has heard, there has not been a Republican elected since Herbert Hoover without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket. Since 1980, there has always been a Bush. In 2016, the National Security State would not allow a Democrat due to the Supreme Court. There has been a conservative Supreme Court since the 1960s. (The National Security State was created by and is controlled by international bankers which apparently today means Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds, who knows?)

The National Security State wanted a (CIA connected) Bush. They had one in Jeb. Unfortunately, they could not call all the shots. So Bush fell on his face, CIA connected Ted Cruz fell on his face as well. So they intervened against Hilary with the Comey pre-election announcement. And at the same time, they began the "insurance policy" or the "Secret Society" at the FBI and let loose the Operation Mockingbird crowd like former CIA intern and Gloria Vanderbilt heir Anderson Cooper. They would do their best to remove Trump (or worse, I'm sure).

They plan to get rid of Trump. The plan is apparently that the FBI will blackmail (a la J. Edgar Hoover or Vladimir Putin) enough Republican members of Congress to impeach Trump. And for good measure, they will pull a Spiro Agnew on Pence. Paul Ryan will retire as Speaker and they will fill the Speakership with a former CIA employee from the Congress. I don't know who he is, but he's out there I'm sure.

If you have read enough about how and why the National Security State was created, then all of this is pretty much National Security State 101. That's why I'm amazed so many people (who are way smarter and for sure better educated) than I am can't see either this forest or any of the trees.

As far as Russia is concerned, this is not a Russian issue. It is a German issue. The last significant issue in Europe was when the German Government and US intel sponsored Ukrainian neo-Nazis to oust the elected government there while Hilary was Secretary of State. It's the expansionist forces in Germany that are the only relevant question in any of this Russia/Syria/Ukraine complex of stuff.

I learned all of the above reading 160 books on JFK and related foreign policy and other closely related issues. It was fun. I would recommend this as the ultimate hobby for any bored old guy like myself.

James Lateer

James Lateer Wrote:Tracy-What a terrific reply to my citation in re tribalism and the truth. I also have never registered in any party nor voted in any partisan based primary (as in Illinois). However, I have also probably voted 99% democratic. But now since I'm a white guy, I have nearly been drummed out of the family as being an accused Trump-lover. And admittedly, Trump is currently my favorite Republican due to trade and immigration policy.

Here's the bottom line: I predicted to my son at least 1.5 years before the election that the National Security State would intervene in the 2016 election. He was a poly sci major and was astounded when it actually happened. But a decent JFK researcher could not have missed it. As everyone has heard, there has not been a Republican elected since Herbert Hoover without a Nixon or a Bush on the ticket. Since 1980, there has always been a Bush. In 2016, the National Security State would not allow a Democrat due to the Supreme Court. There has been a conservative Supreme Court since the 1960s. (The National Security State was created by and is controlled by international bankers which apparently today means Goldman Sachs and the Rothschilds, who knows?)

The National Security State wanted a (CIA connected) Bush. They had one in Jeb. Unfortunately, they could not call all the shots. So Bush fell on his face, CIA connected Ted Cruz fell on his face as well. So they intervened against Hilary with the Comey pre-election announcement. And at the same time, they began the "insurance policy" or the "Secret Society" at the FBI and let loose the Operation Mockingbird crowd like former CIA intern and Gloria Vanderbilt heir Anderson Cooper. They would do their best to remove Trump (or worse, I'm sure).

They plan to get rid of Trump. The plan is apparently that the FBI will blackmail (a la J. Edgar Hoover or Vladimir Putin) enough Republican members of Congress to impeach Trump. And for good measure, they will pull a Spiro Agnew on Pence. Paul Ryan will retire as Speaker and they will fill the Speakership with a former CIA employee from the Congress. I don't know who he is, but he's out there I'm sure.

If you have read enough about how and why the National Security State was created, then all of this is pretty much National Security State 101. That's why I'm amazed so many people (who are way smarter and for sure better educated) than I am can't see either this forest or any of the trees.

As far as Russia is concerned, this is not a Russian issue. It is a German issue. The last significant issue in Europe was when the German Government and US intel sponsored Ukrainian neo-Nazis to oust the elected government there while Hilary was Secretary of State. It's the expansionist forces in Germany that are the only relevant question in any of this Russia/Syria/Ukraine complex of stuff.

I learned all of the above reading 160 books on JFK and related foreign policy and other closely related issues. It was fun. I would recommend this as the ultimate hobby for any bored old guy like myself.

James Lateer

The Supreme Court did not become really conservative until Reagan's appointments in the 1980s, but in any case, the national security state doesn't care about the SCOTUS. Do you think it ever stopped them from doing things like Mockingbird, Paperclip, MK-ULTRA, Hoover's spying, etc? Those things were only exposed by Congressional investigations in the 1970s, and it certainly didn't stop them for very long.

The CIA just isn't that powerful anymore. The NSA and military intelligence are arguably more powerful and have been for a long time. You admitted yourself that they couldn't get Jeb or Ted off the ground. HRC would have been much friendlier to their interests (have you read this one? https://www.amazon.com/Compromised-Clint...1561712493 ) I'm not aware of any Republican in the House who is ex-CIA either (assuming Paul Ryan quits).

I'm a conspiracy realist, but I don't think that secret groups control every event in the world. The world is far too complex and humans are much too unpredictable for any group to control things that perfectly.

Russia has a deep state as well (which people on this forum avoid talking about), and it meddles in other country's affairs just like ours does. China is also just as active, and they are playing Jared Kushner like a fiddle:
[FONT=&amp]https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/...trump-card
[/FONT]
Trump's trade policies are going to hurt a lot of people in states who voted for him (especially in agriculture), and it's going to puncture that stock market bubble he's so proud of. If you think that Goldman Sachs is part of the anti-Trump elite, are you aware of how many GS people are on Trump's team (Steve Mnuchin, Gary Cohn)? I'm an old-style liberal Republican (extinct species), so I mostly support free trade and I think immigration has always been more of a benefit than a harm to the US. JFK supported those things too.

Since you've studied the JFK assassination, what do you think about Trump's claim [FONT=&amp]"All I did is point out the fact that on the cover of the National Enquirer, there's a picture of him [Rafael Cruz] and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast"?

[/FONT][FONT=&amp]I'm sure you know that there is no photo of Oswald having breakfast with anyone. The photos he's referring to are from New Orleans, passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Doesn't this episode demonstrate Trump's tendency to just, I don't know, make shit up? Honestly, I don't see why some of my fellow conspiracy researchers see Trump as a cause worth fighting for, or think that he's going to Abolish the Fed/ Break up the CIA/ Tell the truth about 9/11 and all these other things I see online. Frankly, it is all just wishful thinking about a real estate con man and reality TV star. [/FONT]

Tracy Riddle Wrote:Since you've studied the JFK assassination, what do you think about Trump's claim [FONT=&amp]"All I did is point out the fact that on the cover of the National Enquirer, there's a picture of him [Rafael Cruz] and crazy Lee Harvey Oswald having breakfast"?

[/FONT][FONT=&amp]I'm sure you know that there is no photo of Oswald having breakfast with anyone. The photos he's referring to are from New Orleans, passing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Doesn't this episode demonstrate Trump's tendency to just, I don't know, make shit up? Honestly, I don't see why some of my fellow conspiracy researchers see Trump as a cause worth fighting for, or think that he's going to Abolish the Fed/ Break up the CIA/ Tell the truth about 9/11 and all these other things I see online. Frankly, it is all just wishful thinking about a real estate con man and reality TV star. [/FONT]

(emphasis added)

Tracy, I think a lot of intelligent people of good intent determined that Hillary Clinton was The Enemy and supported Trump as the enemy of The Enemy.

Looks to me there's a lot of rationalizing going on among those who resist acknowledging the fact that everything Trump does is either advantageous for the rich or disadvantageous for people of color, or both.

Quote:Looks to me there's a lot of rationalizing going on among those who resist acknowledging the fact that everything Trump does is either advantageous for the rich or disadvantageous for people of color, or both.

You got that right. Just as liberals justified everything Obama did as multi-dimensional chess, same with Trump. ::cuckoo::

In fact, there is a strange continuity of the presidencies of multiple presidents. How far back? At least Reagan. Even with Trump, as we are encouraged to think there is a vast war between he and the deep state, there is a strange continuity. "History" is "progressing."

I like Jimmy Dore. He hates 'em all.

The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme

Paul Craig Roberts

25 January 2018

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01...s-extreme/

Quote:The Republicans' delay in releasing the summary of the House Intelligence Committee's Russiagate investigation is giving weight to the presstitutes' claim that the report is not being released, because it is a hack attempt at a Trump coverup that is not believable. Only Republicans are stupid enough to put themselves in such a situation.

Readers ask me why the summary memo is not released if it is real. There must be some reasons besides the stupidity of Republicans. Yes, that is so. Among the many reasons that might be blocking release are:

1) Republicans are very national security conscious. They don't want to provide precedents for the release of classified information.
2) Many Republican congressional districts host installations of the military/security complex. Upsetting a large employer and directing campaign financing to a challenger is a big consideration.
3) The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime was a neoconservative regime. One consequence is that Republicans are influenced by neoconservatives who stress the alleged "Russian threat."
4) The Israel Lobby can unseat any member of the House and Senate. The Israel Lobby is allied with the neoconservatives and this alliance intends to keep the US militarily active against perceived threats to Israel's hegemony in the Middle East and against Russia, which supports Syria and Iran, countries perceived as threats by Israel.
5) Many Republicans are themselves invested in false Russiagate allegations against Trump and would like to replace him with Pence. Other Republicans believe that Trump is undermining Washington's expensively-purchased foreign alliances and, thereby, undermining US power.

Many Americans do not seem to understand what is at stake. What America is confronted with is a coup conspiracy organized by top officials of the Obama Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Hillary DNC, and the presstitute media to overturn the result of a democratic election and remove the president from office. The basis of the coup is a fake dossier purchased for money that consists of unsupported allegations against Trump and that was used to obtain warrants from the FISA court to spy on Trump and various associates hoping to find something that can be used against Trump. Regardless, the false allegations could be fed to the CIA's media assets and used to create a scandal requiring a special prosecutor to investigate Russiagate. Once the investigation was under way, the presstitutes kept the scandal alive hoping to convince enough Americans that Trump must have done something"where there is smoke, there is fire"that justifies his removal. It worked against Richard Nixon, but not against Ronald Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan.

If the highest reaches of the police state agencies can get away with an attempted or successful coup against the president of the United States, then that is the complete end of democracy and all accountability in government. The House, Senate, and judiciary will become as powerless as the Roman senate under the caesars. We will live under a dictatorship ruled by police state agencies.

Many Americans say they don't need the House Intelligence Report, because they don't believe the Russiagate BS in the first place. They miss the point. They need the report, because those responsible for this attempt at a coup must be identified, charged, and prosecuted for their act of high treason.

This is not minor stuff. This goes to the heart of whether any form of liberty will exist. We all know that the ability of the people to hold government accountable is not assured by democracy. However, there is no prospect of holding government accountable if it is a police state, a road that the US has been going down for some time. The audacious coup attempt against President Trump is our opportunity to stop the momentum to a police state.

Despite my recent postings, many people do not understand that the somewhat redacted FISA court document that has been declassified and released and explained by myself, William Binney, and former US Attorney Joe di Genova (see: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01...ussiagate/ ) contains admissions by the FBI and DOJ that they improperly spied and obtained warrants from the court under false pretenses. In other words, we have it on the authority of the FISA court itself that the FBI and DOJ have admitted to the court their transgressions. When Department of Justice (sic) congressional liaison Stephen Boyd says the DOJ is "unaware of any wrongdoing," he is lying through his teeth. The DOJ has already confessed its wrongdoing to the FISA court.

(See Lendman on Boyd's claim that releasing the memo would harm national security and ongoing investigations. This is always the claim made when government has to cover up its crimes. http://stephenlendman.org/2018/01/memo-d...officials/ )

When Admiral Rodgers, director of the National Security Agency, discovered that the FBI and DOJ were misusing the spy system for partisan political reasons, he let it be known that he was going to inform the FISA court. This caused the FBI and DOJ to rush to the court in advance and confess to "mistakes" and to promise to tighten up procedures so as not to make mistakes in the future. It is these "mistakes" and corrections that the FISA court document reveals.

In other words, the information already exists in the pubic domain that proves that Russiagate was a conspiracy organized for the purpose of bringing down the elected president of the United States.

A case can be made that it would be just as well if the coup succeeds as it would bring an end to Washington's cover as the government of a great democracy with liberty and justice for all. Most other governments, and one would hope certainly the Russian and Chinese governments, would see the coup as America's final transition into a police state and give up their utopian ideas of reaching accommodation with Washington. The constraints on Washington's ability to bully the world would be greatly strengthened by the universal perception that the government of the United States had devolved into a police state.

Russiagate Isn't About Trump, And It Isn't Even Ultimately About Russia

Caitlin Johnstone

27 January 2018

https://steemit.com/trump/@caitlinjohnst...out-russia

Quote:MSNBC's Chris Hayes recently asked a question of his Twitter following that was so heavily loaded it wouldn't be permitted on most interstate highways: "Aside from genuine cranks, is there anyone left denying it was the Russians that committed criminal sabotage in the American election?"

Hayes asked this fake question because he works for MSNBC and it is therefore his job, and he asked it in response to a report first made viral by deranged espionage LARPer Eric Garland that a Dutch intelligence agency had been observing Russian hackers attacking US political parties in advance of the 2016 election. Like all "bombshell" Russiagate reports, this one roared through social media like wildfire carried on the wings of liberal hysteria about the current administration, only to be exposed as being riddled with gaping plot holes as documented here by independent journalist Suzie Dawson. The report revolves around an allegedly Russian cyber threat now known in the west as "Cozy Bear", which as Real News' Max Blumenthal notes is not a network of hackers but "a Russian-sounding name the for-profit firm Crowdstrike assigned to an APT to market its findings to gullible reporters desperate for Russiagate scoops."

This "bombshell" overlapped with another as it was reported by the New York Times that at one point many months ago Trump had wanted to fire Robert Mueller, but then didn't.

*Cough.*

Why does this keep happening? Why does the public keep getting sold a mountain of suspicion with zero substance? Over and over and over again these "bombshell" stories come out about Trump and Russia, Russia and Trump, only to be debunked, retracted, or erased from the spotlight after people start actually reading the allegations and thinking critically about them and see they're not the shocking bombshells they purport to be? These allegations are all premised upon claims made the US intelligence community, which has an extensive and well-documented history of lying to advance its agendas, as well as porous claims made by an extremely shady and insanely profitable private cyber security company, and yet all we're ever shown is smoke and mirrors with no actual fire.

Why is that?

You can begin finding your way toward the answer to that question by envisioning the following hypothetical scenario. Imagine what would happen if, instead of promoting the Russiagate narrative, the faces of the consent-manufacturing machine known as the mass media began telling mainstream America that in order to ensure that the US will remain capable of dominating the other countries on this planet, there's going to have to be an aggressive campaign to re-inflame the Cold War with the goal of disrupting and undermining China and its allies.

That would be a very different narrative with a very different effect, wouldn't it? But that's exactly what's going on here, and if the US power establishment and its propaganda machine were in the business of telling people the truth, that's precisely what they'd say.

It's not a secret that China has been working to surpass the United States as the world's leading superpower as quickly as possible. Hell, Xi Jinping flat-out said so during a three and a half hour address last October, and many experts think it might happen a lot sooner than Xi's 30-year deadline. An editorial from China's state press agency about the Davos World Economic Forum asserts that the time has come for the world to choose between the "Xi-style collaborative approach" and Trump's "self-centred America First policy (which) has led his country away from multiple multilateral pacts and infused anxiety into both allies and the broader world". China has been collaborating with Russia to end the hegemony of the US dollar, to shore up control of the Arctic as new resources become available, and just generally build up its own power and influence instead of working to remain in Washington's good graces as most western nations have chosen to do.

Preventing this is the single most important goal of the US power establishment, not just its elected government but the unelected plutocrats, defense and intelligence agencies which control the nation's affairs behind the scenes. This agenda is so important that in a letter to his successor the outgoing President Barack Obama made the "indispensable" nature of American planetary leadership his sole concrete piece of advice, and pro-establishment influence firms like Project for a New American Century have made preventing the rise of a rival superpower their stated primary goal.

This is what Russiagate is ultimately about. Democrats think it's about impeaching Trump and protecting the world from a nigh-omnipotent supervillain in Vladimir Putin, Trump's supporters think it's a "deep state coup" to try and oust their president, but in reality this has nothing to do with Trump, and ultimately not a whole lot to do with Russia either. When all is said and done, Russiagate is about China.

In an essay titled "Russia-China Tandem Changes the World", US-Russia relations analyst Gilbert Doctorow explains how the surging economic power China depends upon Russia's willingness to go head-to-head with America and its extensive experience with US attempts to undermine the USSR during the Cold War. Alone both nations are very vulnerable, but together their strengths are complimentary in a way that poses a direct threat to America's self-appointed role as world leader.

"Russia is essential to China because of Moscow's long experience managing global relations going back to the period of the Cold War and because of its willingness and ability today to stand up directly to the American hegemon," writes Doctorow, "whereas China, with its heavy dependence on its vast exports to the U.S., cannot do so without endangering vital interests. Moreover, since the Western establishment sees China as the long-term challenge to its supremacy, it is best for Beijing to exercise its influence through another power, which today is Russia."

So the strategic value of taking Russia out of the equation is clear, and that's exactly what the US power establishment is attempting to do. California Representative Eric Swalwell, one of the lead congressional promoters of both anti-Russia sentiment and the Trump-Russia "collusion" narrative, admitted last year that he'd like to see tougher sanctions stacked up until they "isolate Russia from the rest of the world" after much badgering from Fox's Tucker Carlson about his incendiary claims that the alleged cyberattacks constituted an "act of war". It is worth noting here that despite Swalwell's repeated hysterical claims about Trump and Russia, he recently voted to renew the treasonous Kremlin-colluding president's godlike surveillance powers anyway.

Establishment muppets like Swalwell and the unelected elites who own them don't care about Trump, they care about crippling China's right arm Russia so that they can set about sabotaging the agendas of a potential rival superpower unimpeded by the skilful opposition of a nuclear superpower. But, getting back to the hypothetical situation I asked you to envision earlier, they can't just come right out and say that.

They can't. The US oligarchs, the oligarch-owned media outlets, and the oligarch-aligned intelligence/defense agencies can't just come right out and say "Hey America, we need to ensure our power structures remain unrivalled for the foreseeable future, so we're going to have to try and shut down Russia's influence using ever-tightening economic sanctions, NATO expansionism, proxy wars and troops along Russia's border to squeeze them until they lose the capacity to interfere with our ability to crush China. We'll also need a vastly inflated military budget to help facilitate our geopolitical agendas and prepare for a possible world war, please." A few Americans might consent to it, but by and large the US public would rather see those resources spent on making their lives better.

Just as importantly, the rest of the world would recoil in revulsion.

So they lie. They use America's deliberately constructed partisan enmity and culture wars to fan the flames of mass hysteria about a new president so that enough Americans will permit continuous escalations with Russia under the mistaken impression that they are helping to resist Trump. They think they're lying to you for your own good, because you can't understand how important it is that they do what they're trying to do. That's why there are so many gaping plot holes and none of this ever quite adds up; they're lying to you like a parent telling a child he needs to eat his broccoli if he doesn't want a lump of coal for Christmas. Except instead of eating broccoli it's consenting to dangerous escalations and military expansionism, and instead of a parent it's a class of elitist sociopaths, and you're always going to get coal.

And sure, an argument can be made that the world is better off under the watchful domination of the US power establishment than it would be with multipolar power arrangements, and I encounter many establishment loyalists who make precisely that argument. Personally I would argue that the death, destruction and mayhem caused by the intrinsically evil things the US establishment must do in order to maintain dominance completely invalidate that argument, but it's a debate that people deserve to have, and they can't have it when they're being lied to about what's really going on.

Insist on the truth. Keep pushing back against this pernicious psyop. Spread the word.

[FONT=&amp]"According to a report in[/FONT][FONT=&amp] the Dutchnewspaper [/FONT]de Volkskrant[FONT=&amp], the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD)the Netherlands' domestic intelligence servicehad hacked into the network of a building at a Russian university in Moscow some time in the summer of 2014. The building housed a group running a hacking campaign now known as "Cozy Bear," one of the"threat groups" that would later target the Democratic National Committee."[/FONT]
[FONT=&amp]https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/dutch-intelligence-hacked-video-cameras-in-office-of-russians-who-hacked-dnc/[/FONT]


SEAN GALLAGHER - 1/26/2018, 8:29 AM
Enlarge / Rob Bertholee (L), head of the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD), and Dutch Minister Ronald Plasterk of the Ministry of the Interior, address a press conference on the presentation of the AIVD's annual report in Zoetermeer, the Netherlands, on April 21, 2016. AIVD reportedly penetrated the network of a Russian hacking group directed by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in 2014, and shared the intelligence with the US.
According to a report in the Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant, the General Intelligence and Security Service of the Netherlands (AIVD)the Netherlands' domestic intelligence servicehad hacked into the network of a building at a Russian university in Moscow some time in the summer of 2014. The building housed a group running a hacking campaign now known as "Cozy Bear," one of the "threat groups" that would later target the Democratic National Committee.

AIVD's intrusion into the network gave them access to computers used by the group behind Cozy Bear and to the closed-circuit television cameras that watched over them, allowing them to literally witness everything that took place in the building near Red Square, according to the report. Access to the video cameras in a hallway outside the space where the Russian hacking team worked allowed the AIVD to get images of every person who entered the room and match them against known Russian intelligence agents and officials.
Based on the images, analysts at AIVD later determined that the group working in the room was operated by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). An information and technology sharing arrangement with the National Security Agency and other US intelligence agencies resulted in the determination that Cozy Bear's efforts were at least in part being driven by the Russian Federation's leadershipincluding Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The data collected by AIVD began to pay off in November of 2014, when the agency alerted US intelligence officials that the Cozy Bear group had obtained login credentials and email from US State Department employees. enabling the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigations, and the State Department to shut down the attack within 24 hours. A later attack on the White House was also picked up by the AIVD analysts, de Volkskrant's Huib Modderkolk reported.
In a speech at the Aspen Forum in March of 2017, NSA Deputy Director Robert Ledgett described the effort to defend the State Department as "hand-to-hand combat," acknowledging that information on the attack had come from a then-unnamed ally. At that time, unnamed current and former intelligence officials had indicated to The Washington Post that said ally had gained access to both the hackers' computers and the surveillance cameras inside their workspace.
AIVD's penetration into the Cozy Bear network lasted for more than a year. The information gathered during the surveillance, Modderkolk's sources suggested, was key to the US intelligence agencies' attribution of the DNC breach to Russia. And the leaks that have followed, as well as the Trump administration's recalcitrance in accepting the attribution, have made the Dutch intelligence community a "lot more cautious when it comes to sharing intelligence," Modderkolk wrote.

Paul Rigby Wrote:The Russiagate Stakes Are Extreme

Paul Craig Roberts

25 January 2018

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01...s-extreme/

Quote:The Republicans' delay in releasing the summary of the House Intelligence Committee's Russiagate investigation is giving weight to the presstitutes' claim that the report is not being released, because it is a hack attempt at a Trump coverup that is not believable. Only Republicans are stupid enough to put themselves in such a situation.

Readers ask me why the summary memo is not released if it is real. There must be some reasons besides the stupidity of Republicans. Yes, that is so. Among the many reasons that might be blocking release are:

1) Republicans are very national security conscious. They don't want to provide precedents for the release of classified information.
2) Many Republican congressional districts host installations of the military/security complex. Upsetting a large employer and directing campaign financing to a challenger is a big consideration.
3) The George W. Bush/Dick Cheney regime was a neoconservative regime. One consequence is that Republicans are influenced by neoconservatives who stress the alleged "Russian threat."
4) The Israel Lobby can unseat any member of the House and Senate. The Israel Lobby is allied with the neoconservatives and this alliance intends to keep the US militarily active against perceived threats to Israel's hegemony in the Middle East and against Russia, which supports Syria and Iran, countries perceived as threats by Israel.
5) Many Republicans are themselves invested in false Russiagate allegations against Trump and would like to replace him with Pence. Other Republicans believe that Trump is undermining Washington's expensively-purchased foreign alliances and, thereby, undermining US power.

Many Americans do not seem to understand what is at stake. What America is confronted with is a coup conspiracy organized by top officials of the Obama Justice Department, FBI, CIA, the Hillary DNC, and the presstitute media to overturn the result of a democratic election and remove the president from office. The basis of the coup is a fake dossier purchased for money that consists of unsupported allegations against Trump and that was used to obtain warrants from the FISA court to spy on Trump and various associates hoping to find something that can be used against Trump. Regardless, the false allegations could be fed to the CIA's media assets and used to create a scandal requiring a special prosecutor to investigate Russiagate. Once the investigation was under way, the presstitutes kept the scandal alive hoping to convince enough Americans that Trump must have done something"where there is smoke, there is fire"that justifies his removal. It worked against Richard Nixon, but not against Ronald Reagan, and Trump is no Reagan.

If the highest reaches of the police state agencies can get away with an attempted or successful coup against the president of the United States, then that is the complete end of democracy and all accountability in government. The House, Senate, and judiciary will become as powerless as the Roman senate under the caesars. We will live under a dictatorship ruled by police state agencies.

Many Americans say they don't need the House Intelligence Report, because they don't believe the Russiagate BS in the first place. They miss the point. They need the report, because those responsible for this attempt at a coup must be identified, charged, and prosecuted for their act of high treason.

This is not minor stuff. This goes to the heart of whether any form of liberty will exist. We all know that the ability of the people to hold government accountable is not assured by democracy. However, there is no prospect of holding government accountable if it is a police state, a road that the US has been going down for some time. The audacious coup attempt against President Trump is our opportunity to stop the momentum to a police state.

Despite my recent postings, many people do not understand that the somewhat redacted FISA court document that has been declassified and released and explained by myself, William Binney, and former US Attorney Joe di Genova (see: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01...ussiagate/ ) contains admissions by the FBI and DOJ that they improperly spied and obtained warrants from the court under false pretenses. In other words, we have it on the authority of the FISA court itself that the FBI and DOJ have admitted to the court their transgressions. When Department of Justice (sic) congressional liaison Stephen Boyd says the DOJ is "unaware of any wrongdoing," he is lying through his teeth. The DOJ has already confessed its wrongdoing to the FISA court.

(See Lendman on Boyd's claim that releasing the memo would harm national security and ongoing investigations. This is always the claim made when government has to cover up its crimes. http://stephenlendman.org/2018/01/memo-d...officials/ )

When Admiral Rodgers, director of the National Security Agency, discovered that the FBI and DOJ were misusing the spy system for partisan political reasons, he let it be known that he was going to inform the FISA court. This caused the FBI and DOJ to rush to the court in advance and confess to "mistakes" and to promise to tighten up procedures so as not to make mistakes in the future. It is these "mistakes" and corrections that the FISA court document reveals.

In other words, the information already exists in the pubic domain that proves that Russiagate was a conspiracy organized for the purpose of bringing down the elected president of the United States.

A case can be made that it would be just as well if the coup succeeds as it would bring an end to Washington's cover as the government of a great democracy with liberty and justice for all. Most other governments, and one would hope certainly the Russian and Chinese governments, would see the coup as America's final transition into a police state and give up their utopian ideas of reaching accommodation with Washington. The constraints on Washington's ability to bully the world would be greatly strengthened by the universal perception that the government of the United States had devolved into a police state.

There is so much wrong with that editorial. He claims that Bush/Cheney stressed the "Russia threat" like good little neo-cons. This ignore's Bush's 2001 public statement about Putin: [FONT=&amp]"I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country."

[/FONT]He claims the Israel Lobby may be behind all of this. Roberts ignores the fact that Trump and his people are mostly Zionists, and his administration is doing everything Netanyahu wants, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem.

He thinks that Adm. Mike Rogers is a hero in this story. But on November 16: The director of the National Security Agency, Admiral Michael Rogers, implies that he believes Russia interfered in the US election. In response to a question about WikiLeaks hacks during the election, Rogers says, "This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect."
In June 2017 "Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Director of National Security Agency Adm. Mike Rogers each separately told Senate investigators and special counsel Robert Mueller's team that Trump suggested that they publicly deny that there was any collusion between his campaign and Russian officials. Both intelligence officials said they were surprised by the suggestion and found it uncomfortable, but did not perceive these statements as orders from the president....Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Mike Rogers refuse to answer questions about whether Donald Trump had asked them to intervene in the FBI's Russia investigation."

"Both Comey and NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers dismiss Trump's claim that Obama wiretapped him during the election."
source:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/201...-timeline/