Quote:Washington, D.C., and the mainstream media have spent much of the last week zeroing in on allegations that Russia interfered in the United States presidential election. Truthdig contributor Chris Hedges argues that such intense coverage is merely a way for establishment elites to criticize independent journalism.

In an interview with RT America's Simone Del Rosario, Hedges cites the McCarthyist attacks on independent outletsincluding Truthdiglast year and says that the recent wave of reporting on Russia continues the alarmist narrative.

Specifically, he labels a report recently released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence an "utter embarrassment." He notes that U.S. intelligence chief James Clapper possessed "a deep rage" toward independent news outlets during his testimony before Congress last week.

Watch the full interview below:

• Trump and Putin are expected to meet in Reykjavik soon after his inauguration
  
• It mirrors a similar meeting between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev in 1986
  
• But with there are fears Brtian could be left behind after leading calls for sanctions against Russia
  
• James Comey is silent on whether the FBI is investigating Trump-Russia links
  

Quote:Donald Trump's first serious foreign engagement will be with Vladmir Putin, fuelling fears that Britain could be left out in the cold.

History is set to repeat itself, with the two leaders expected to sit down in Reykjavik, just as Ronald Reagon did with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986, effectively ending the Cold War.

But an US-Russian alliance could spell trouble for Britain, which has been among the biggest critics of the Kremlin, in particular providing assistance for President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

British sources fear that a frosty relationship between Theresa May and Putin could affect trade with America, if Trump cosies up to the Russians.

According to the Sunday Times, British intelligence services are also keen that a new 'special relationship' would not compromise the security of British agents working in Russia.

It follows the leaking by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele of the now-infamous 'dirty dossier' regarding allegations surrounding Donald Trump and a Moscow hotel room.

A meeting between Trump and May is expected to be organised for late February.

David Guyatt Wrote:An excellent analysis by Chris Hedges

Quote:Picture this: it is well past midnight in the deeply grim Soviet city of Sverdlovsk. In a squalid communist-era hotel, the bedside phone rings for the fifth time.

My friend and colleague Rachel answers wearily.

She knows who is on the line. It is the same prostitute who has called her four times before, asking for Mr Hitchens.

Look,' Rachel explains in her perfect Russian. I am not the person you want. He is alone and asleep in room 362. This is room 243. I am alone and awake in it. I do not want your services.'

Not possible,' replies the prostitute in bored tones. Mr Hitchens was allocated room 243. I was ordered to call room 243. So I am calling it.' Room 243 must have been the one with the camera.

Such, in those days, was Soviet bureaucracy. It was unimaginable that we would defy the plan in this way. The tart was following her orders to the letter. By swapping rooms, Rachel and I had sabotaged weeks of scheming by the Sverdlovsk KGB.

This went on all night, while I slept undisturbed. So far as I know, it was the KGB's only attempt to lure me into a honey-trap during my years as a correspondent in the USSR.

They did send an attractive middle-aged woman to travel in a neighbouring sleeper on the Ostend- to-Moscow Express, as I made my way to set up home in the Soviet capital. But that wasn't, I think, about sex.

Romance failed to blossom, anyway. They hoped (correctly) that I would hire this brisk but shady lady as my assistant, a job she was very good at.

She disappeared as soon as the KGB worked out, through close observation of my private life, that I could not possibly be a spy. As a parting gift, they rather clumsily installed a microphone in my car, in case they were wrong.

At almost exactly the same moment, the now-famous spymaster Christopher Steele was arriving in Moscow, under diplomatic cover as a second secretary at the British Embassy, but actually working for the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6).

I was an icy Cold Warrior, consumed with loathing of the Evil Empire and all in favour of British nuclear weapons, whereas Mr Steele had recently left Cambridge, where he is said to have been an avowedly Left-wing student with CND credentials', and a confirmed socialist'. Isn't MI6 an odd organisation?

But in any case, I think I can claim to have some knowledge of the strange world of bugged rooms, naughty ladies and blackmail of which we have heard so much this week.

I've also kept in touch with Moscow and Russia, places utterly transformed since the 1990s, whereas, it is said, Mr Steele hasn't been back for 20 years.

And I must say I am deeply unimpressed with the document in which extraordinary, sordid claims are made against Donald Trump. Nameless sources, said without evidence to be reliable (a trusted compatriot'), repeatedly make vague, untestable claims. It is padded with general political statements to make it look grander than it is.

The most convincing bits in it are the blacked-out sections. These at least cannot be shown to be wrong unlike the claim that Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, met Kremlin officials in Prague in August 2016. Mr Cohen says he has never even been to Prague.

I loathe and mistrust Donald Trump. I think he is an oaf and a yahoo who has gravely damaged the standards of public life. I fear what he may do. But that does not mean I lose all sense of proportion.

Like it or not, he has been duly and lawfully elected as the head of state and government of the USA. If we believe in either democracy or law, or both at once, we must respect this fact. We cannot approve of, or help, attempts to topple him by scandal and smear, before he has even sworn the oath of office.

We should also stop being so pious. Far better men than Mr Trump, such as Jimmy Carter, have been disasters in office. John F. Kennedy, now revered as a sort of saint, had a private life which in this age would have brought him down in weeks.

And maybe the Russians did try to influence the American elections. I think it likely but unproven. But President Obama openly sought to influence our EU referendum, and it is now proven that the CIA tried to get us to join the Common Market at the start in the 1950s.

Around the same time, the CIA was (quite rightly in my view) spending a fortune defeating the communists in Italian elections. And we and the USA engineered and paid for a violent putsch against the elected government in Iran, for which we are still bitterly resented there.

Once you slip beyond the curtain of public relations into the real, cold world, as I have been lucky enough to do, life turns out to be a good deal more incredible than you thought it was. But there are still some things that it's wiser not to believe.

Paul Rigby Wrote:

David Guyatt Wrote:An excellent analysis by Chris Hedges

It is, indeed. And, like you, I know, I have to pinch myself at the truth we must look to a Russian TV channel for serious, quality discussion.

Quote:The Real Purpose of the U.S. Government's Report on Alleged Hacking by Russia


Posted on Jan 8, 2017


By Chris Hedges






A detail of a page in the declassified report. (Jon Elswick / AP)


Some thoughts on "Russia's Influence Campaign Targeting the 2016 US Presidential Election," the newly released declassified report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.


1. The primary purpose of the declassified report, which offers no evidence to support its assertions that Russia hacked the U.S. presidential election campaign, is to discredit Donald Trump. I am not saying there was no Russian hack of John Podesta's emails. I am saying we have yet to see any tangible proof to back up the accusation. This chargeSen. John McCain has likened the alleged effort by Russia to an act of waris the first salvo in what will be a relentless campaign by the Republican and Democratic establishment, along with its corporatist allies and the mass media, to destroy the credibility of the president-elect and prepare the way for impeachment.


The allegations in the report, amplified in breathtaking pronouncements by a compliant corporate media that operates in a non-fact-based universe every bit as pernicious as that inhabited by Trump, are designed to make Trump look like Vladimir Putin's useful idiot. An orchestrated and sustained campaign of innuendo and character assassination will be directed against Trump. When impeachment is finally proposed, Trump will have little public support and few allies and will have become a figure of open ridicule in the corporate media.


2. The second task of the report is to bolster the McCarthyist smear campaign against independent media, including Truthdig, as witting or unwitting agents of the Russian government. The demise of the English programming of Al-Jazeera and TeleSur, along with the collapse of the nation's public broadcasting, designed to give a voice to those not beholden to corporate or party interests, leaves RT America and Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! as the only two electronic outlets with a national reach that are willing to give a platform to critics of corporate power and imperialism such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Ralph Nader, Medea Benjamin, Cornel West, Kshama Sawant, myself and others.


Seven pages of the report were dedicated to RT America, on which I have a show called "On Contact." The report vastly inflated the cable network's reach and influence. It also included a few glaring errors, including the statement that "RT introduced two new showsBreaking the Set' on 4 September and Truthseeker' on 2 Novemberboth overwhelmingly focused on criticism of the US and Western governments as well as the promotion of radical discontent." "Breaking the Set," with Abby Martin, was taken off the air two years ago. It could hardly be tarred with costing Hillary Clinton the election.


The barely contained rage of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at the recent Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on foreign cyber threats was visible when he spat out that RT was "promoting a particular point of view, disparaging our system, our alleged hypocrisy about human rights, et cetera." His anger was a glimpse into how the establishment seethes with hatred for dissidents. Clapper has lied in the past. He perjured himself in March 2013 when, three months before the revelations of wholesale state surveillance leaked by Snowden, he assured Congress that the National Security Agency was not collecting "any type of data" on the American public. After the corporate state shuts down RT, it will go after Democracy Now! and the handful of progressive sites, including this one, that give these dissidents space. The goal is censorship.


3. The third task of the report is to justify the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization beyond Germany, a violation of the promise Ronald Reagan made to the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Expanding NATO in Eastern Europe opened up an arms market for the war industry. It made those businesses billions of dollars. New NATO members must buy Western arms that can be integrated into the NATO arsenal. These sales, which are bleeding the strained budgets of countries such as Poland, are predicated on potential hostilities with Russia. If Russia is not a threat, the arms sales plummet. War is a racket.


4. The final task of the report is to give the Democratic Party plausible cover for the catastrophic election defeat it suffered. Clinton initially blamed FBI Director James Comey for her loss before switching to the more easily demonized Putin. The charge of Russian interference essentially boils down to the absurd premise that perhaps hundreds of thousands of Clinton supporters suddenly decided to switch their votes to Trump when they read the leaked emails of Podesta. Either that or they tuned in to RT America and decided to vote for the Green Party.


The Democratic Party leadership cannot face, and certainly cannot publicly admit, that its callous betrayal of the working and middle class triggered a nationwide revolt that resulted in the election of Trump. It has been pounded since President Barack Obama took office, losing 68 seats in the House, 12 seats in the Senate and 10 governorships. It lost more than 1,000 elected positions between 2008 and 2012 nationwide. Since 2010, Republicans have replaced 900 Democratic state legislators. If this was a real party, the entire leadership would be sacked. But it is not a real party. It is the shell of a party propped up by corporate money and hyperventilating media.


The Democratic Party must maintain the fiction of liberalism just as the Republican Party must maintain the fiction of conservatism. These two parties, however, belong to one partythe corporate party. They will work in concert, as seen by the alliance between Republican leaders such as McCain and Democratic leaders such as Sen. Chuck Schumer, to get rid of Trump, silence all dissent, enrich the war industry and promote the farce they call democracy.


Welcome to our annus horribilis.

Paul Rigby Wrote:Last Minute Change in Security at Inauguration Reminiscent of JFK in Dealey Plaza

Published on 15 Jan 2017

Without explanation and just a week before inauguration, President Obama has suddenly announced he is removing the Major General in charge of the DC National Guard who helped plan and was set to oversee event security that day, effective right in the middle of the ceremony the very minute after Donald Trump is sworn in as president.

The termination is unprecedented and out of decorum with such a high state function taking place, raising serious concerns about the vulnerabilities and gaps in security on such an important day. Not saying that anything is going to happen, but it's hard not to notice and raise questions when the scenario is being made plausible.

[video=youtube_share;6quFfUj2boU]http://youtu.be/6quFfUj2boU[/video]

Quote:http://www.snopes.com/2017/01/14/national-guard-commander-inauguration/
........
According to a report from WUSA9 News, spokesmen for the Defense Department and National Guard said Schwartz was offered additional time to transition out of the post, but turned it down:

"Major General Schwartz is a non-career status political appointee. As such he has tendered his resignation that will be effective January 20th," Major Jamie Davis, a Department of Defense spokesman told WUSA9. "This is standard procedure for political appointees."
Like an ambassador would, Schwartz followed protocol and offered his resignation to the incoming administration. But according to a senior transition official, the Trump team had not yet accepted it and had asked Schwartz to stay on a few days past inauguration day to help ensure the event went smoothly.
Sources say that with Schwartz successor already named, the General declined to extend his command those extra days, instead stepping down at 12:01 p.m. exactly on January 20th.
"He wants to ensure that there is a secure transition between two commanding generals," DC National Guard Spokesman Major Byron B. Coward told WUSA9. "There's not going to be any disconnect or anything of that nature."

Quote:http://www.forbes.com/sites/melikkaylan/2017/01/10/what-the-trump-era-will-feel-like-clues-from-populist-regimes-around-the-world/2/#3807dd0f2f38

Melik Kaylan - contributor

......
In addition, you find in populist regimes worldwide the discovery of hitherto untapped areas of news. Duterte of the Philippines hit on the drug problem. Trump has suddenly unearthed an entirely fresh news source in car companies' plans to invest abroad. Trump invented the Mexico wall issue, which will turn into a klaxon-loud distraction resource for him at every opportunity. In Georgia, Russia, Turkey and elsewhere people woke up one day to find that their national religion needed defending from inscrutable forces, according to their demagogue leaders. In Thailand, the regime's sentimental oratory wraps itself in the perpetually threatened flag of King and (Buddhist) Temple. Also in Thailand, the premier of the army-led regime has sung and released a mawkish patriotic pop-song urging unity and positive support to massive media coverage ad nauseam. He has auto-created his own news cycle, conflated entertainment and politics, an accusation oft levelled at Trump. We all see that Donald Trump's tweets also serve as news distraction, his form of pro-active self-leaking.
In this memorable recent interview on MSNBC, media guru Michael Hirschorn, formerly the programing director who brought reality shows to VH1, talks of Trump's reality tv approach to politics. Money quote: in reality tv you don't resolve disputes, you foster them endlessly to retain public attention.
Unnerving Fantasyland
Sometimes populists do invoke issues that have become urgent, issues that genuinely exercise citizens but which conventional politicians or media simply haven't dared address. Keep in mind, though, the Hungarian's warning above: there is no plan to resolve such issues, merely to keep them active and inflammatory. The aim is to keep it all on the boil, crisis merging into crisis, with the strong leader dominating and stoking the noise. There will be something fresh everyday from Monica Crowley's plagiarism to the fashion choices of the first lady. Behind the noise, there will be only more noise. Some demagogic quasi-successes will be paraded but paradoxically they won't illustrate real policy directions. Confusion IS the policy. That and the enabling of Russian power, removal of sanctions, neutering of Nato.
For the best guide to the garish sensory wall-paper of the Trump era's assault on our senses we must look to RT and other Russian news media. They pioneered post-fact reality as mainstream culture. Peter Pomeranzev's book "Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible" studies the phenomenon, lays it out plainly. In essence, the kind of supermarket gossip-tabloid material that once infested our peripheral vision now moves front and center. Total fantasy for the masses. Every so often containing a tiny germ of truth. Total fantasy and not even simple lies like Kellyann Conway's recent assertion that the intelligence services clearly concluded Russia hadn't successfully influenced the election. (They concluded no such thing.) Or Trump's notorious assertion months ago that Mexico's President, after their meeting, had agreed to pay for the wall. It will feel more like a wholly fabricated unending theater of bizarrerie and Orwellian inversions. As Michael Hirschorn says in the MSNBC interview, we look for the wrong things in Trump's world, such as content and argument. "In reality tv it really isn't about content, it's about show, about performance,,, it's about endless chaos."
Orwellian inversions: Turkey's President just celebrated Journalism Day. Soberly and without irony. Trump's style hews closer to his post-modern reality show experience. As Michael Hirschorn says, "really great reality tv talent really doesn't know or soon forgets the difference between reality and television." Trump deploys a sort of loud kitsch with a built-in subliminal wink at the audience: 'we both know this is fake, mere performance, but it's a show you're complicit in. That's your level of participation. Leave the rest to me.' This echoes the false-real tone of Putin's rule in Russia where his face carries an almost-smirk in every television appearance. The implied message goes something like: 'you and I, all of us, know that this popular display nonsense, this dealing with the public, is a total charade (never happened during the old KGB days). It's all mere performance to fill the airwaves. The people don't decide anything, not even by their vote. (Just look at the recent US election). Here's our pact: you stay entertained but confused, paranoid even. That's why you need me.'
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