I think Mike Whitney is probably correct in assuming that a coup will take place. Regime change at home as well as abroad. It's hard to see that the neocons/neoliberal elite will sit idly by and allow 70 years of vicious US foreign policy/global dominance to go up in smoke. I suppose it depends on those who appear to be supporting Trump from the shadows and what degree of clout they have...
Quote:JANUARY 19, 2017
The Trump Speech That No One Heard
by MIKE WHITNEY
The US foreign policy establishment is gradually shifting its focus from the Middle East to the Far East, but the unexpected election of Donald Trump has thrown a wrench in the elitist plan to pivot to Asia. Trump wants to fundamentally change Washington's approach to policy, that is, he wants to abandon the destabilizing wars and regime change operations that have characterized US policy in the past and work collaboratively with countries like Russia that have a mutual interest in establishing regional security and fighting terrorism.
This has not been warmly received in Washington, in fact, Trump's recommendations have triggered a firestorm among elites who now believe that he is a serious threat to their interests. Recent attacks in the media and preemptive provocations with Russia, suggest that an effort to remove the new president from office is already underway. We expect that these attacks will only intensify in the weeks ahead. Here's an excerpt from the speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1 that is the source of the controversy:
"We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past…We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments…. Our goal is stability not chaos, because we want to rebuild our country [the United States]… We will partner with any nation that is willing to join us in the effort to defeat ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism …In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will."
None of the major media published Trump's comments, and for good reason. The statement is a straightforward repudiation of the last 70 years of US foreign policy during which time the United States has either overthrown or attempted to overthrow 57 foreign governments according to author William Blum. Removing governments that refuse to follow Washington's diktats has been a mainstay of US foreign policy for the better part of the last century. Regime change is what we do. And while GOP administrations have relied more on direct military power (Re: Afghanistan, Iraq) as opposed to the more covert operations (proxy-wars Syria, Ukraine, Libya) preferred by the Democrats, both parties fully support the violent and illegal ousting of foreign leaders provided Washington's geopolitical objectives are achieved.
Trump has charted a different course altogether which is why the media, the Intelligence Community, the political establishment and the deep state puppetmasters who operate behind the curtain, have abandoned all restraint and are doing whatever they can to delegitimize him, back him into a corner and potentially remove him from office. They cannot allow Trump to work with nations like Russia that pose a clear threat to Washington's plan to be a dominant player in the fastest growing region of the world. This is why CIA Director John Brennan took the unprecedented step of appearing on FOX News Sunday. Brennan and the other heads of the Intelligence Community have taken a leading role in the desperate character assassination campaign that is intended to undermine public confidence in Trump in order to foil his attempts at resetting relations with Russia. The CIA's involvement in the coups in Ukraine and Honduras, as well as the agency's funding, arming and training of Sunni militants that have destroyed Libya and Syria, attest to the fact that Brennan does not see peace and reconciliation as compatible with US foreign policy objectives. Like his elitist paymasters, Brennan is committed to perpetual war, regime change, and mass annihilation. Trump offers some relief from this 70 year-long nightmare policy. Check out this quote from Vice President-elect, Mike Pence on FOX News Sunday:
"I think the president elect has made it very clear that we have a terrible relationship with Russia right now. And that's not all our own doing, but really is a failure of American diplomacy in successive administrations. And what the president elect has determined to do is to explore the possibility of better relations. We have a common enemy in ISIS, and the ability to work with Russia to confront, hunt down and destroy ISIS at its source represents an enormously important priority of this incoming administration. But what the American people like about Donald Trump is that he's someone who can sit down, roll his sleeves up and make a deal. And what you're hearing in his reflections whether it be with Russia, or China or other countries in the world, is that we're going to reengage. We're going to put America first, we're going to reengage in a way that advances America's interests in the world and that advances peace."
Vice President-elect Mike Pence, FOX News Sunday
The American people don't want a war Russia, but US foreign policy elites do. Even now, after six years of carnage and destruction in Syria, elites at the Council on Foreign Relations are still resolved to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. (Re: "Aleppo's Sobering Lessons," Project Syndicate, by Richard Haas, President of the Council on Foreign Relations) The same is true at the Brookings Institute where chief strategist Michael O' Hanlon leads the charge for splitting up the battered country so Washington can control vital pipeline corridors, establish military bases in the east, and eliminate a potential threat to Israeli expansion. Here's a clip from a recent piece by O' Hanlon that appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The author admits that the US goal is to splinter to country into multiple parts transforming it into a failed state:
"To achieve peace, Syria will need self-governance within a number of autonomous zones. One option is a confederal system by which the whole country is divided into such zones. A less desirable but minimally acceptable alternative could be several autonomous zones within an otherwise still-centralized statesimilar to how Iraqi Kurdistan has functioned for a quarter-century….
Many Syrians will not like the idea of a confederal nation, or even of a central government controlling half the country with the other half divided into three or four autonomous zones. … But the broad vision should be developed soon." (Wall Street Journal)
"Autonomous zones" in a "confederal system" is a sobriquet for a broken, Balkanized failed state run by tribal elders, disparate warlords and bloodthirsty jihadists. O' Hanlon's vision for Syria is a savage dysfunctional dystopia run by homicidal fanatics who rule with an iron fist. Is it any wonder why the Syrian people have fought tooth and nail to fend off the terrorist onslaught?
The United States is entirely responsible for the death and decimation of Syria. It is absurd to think that either the Saudis, the Qataris or the Turks would have launched a war on a strategically-critical nation like Syria without a green light from Washington. The conflict is just the latest hotspot in Washington's 15 year-long war of terror. The ultimate goal is to remove all secular Arab leaders who may pose a threat to US imperial ambitions, open up the region to US-dominated extractive industries, and foment enough extremism to legitimize a permanent military presence.
Russia's intervention into the Syrian conflict in September 2015, has cast doubt on Washington's ability to prevail in the six year long war. The election of Donald Trump has further complicated matters by affecting a seismic shift in policy that could end the fighting and lead to improved relations between the US and Russia. Naturally, that is not in the interests of the vicious neocons or their liberal interventionist counterparts who see the proxy war in Syria as a pivotal part of their plan to clip Russia's wings, discredit Putin in the eyes of the international community, and lay the groundwork for regime change in Moscow. Washington's ultimate plan for Russia hews closely to that of Zbigniew Brzezinski who in an titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia" had this to say:
"Given (Russia's) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia's vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow's heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization." (Zbigniew Brzezinski, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997)
In other words, Washington's plan for Russia is no different than its plan for Syria. Both countries will be chopped up into smaller bite-size enclaves eliminating the possibility of a strong nationalist government rising up and resisting Washington's relentless exploitation and repression. It's divide and conquer writ large.
"A loosely confederated Russia" also fits perfectly with Washington's top priority to spread military bases across Asia, control crucial energy supplies, force open and dominate financial markets, impose Washington's neoliberal economic policies, and maintain a stranglehold on China's growth. It's the Great Game all over again, and Washington is "In it to win it."
Here's an excerpt from a speech Hillary Clinton gave in 2011 titled "America's Pacific Century". The speech underscores the importance that elites attach to the "rebalancing" plan contained in the term "pivot to Asia". The strategy relies on the opening up of new markets to US corporations and Wall Street, controlling critical resources, and "forging a broad-based military presence" across the continent. Washington intends to be the main player in the world's most prosperous region. Here's Clinton:
"The future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action…. One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise in the Asia-Pacific region…
Harnessing Asia's growth and dynamism is central to American economic and strategic interests and a key priority for President Obama. Open markets in Asia provide the United States with unprecedented opportunities for investment, trade, and access to cutting-edge technology…..American firms (need) to tap into the vast and growing consumer base of Asia…The region already generates more than half of global output and nearly half of global trade. As we strive to meet President Obama's goal of doubling exports by 2015, we are looking for opportunities to do even more business in Asia…
("America's Pacific Century", Secretary of State Hillary Clinton", Foreign Policy Magazine, 2011)
As we noted earlier, the pivot to Asia is Washington's top priority. Clinton merely confirms what geopolitical strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski had laid out in his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. Here's a short excerpt from the book:
"For America, the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia… (p.30)….. Eurasia is the globe's largest continent and is geopolitically axial. A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world's three most advanced and economically productive regions. ….About 75 per cent of the world's people live in Eurasia, and most of the world's physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world's GNP and about three-fourths of the world's known energy resources." (p.31)
For Washington to achieve its foreign policy objectives, it must eliminate or defeat all emerging threats to its dominance. In practical terms, that means the Russo-Sino plan to transform Europe and Asia into a giant free trade zone that extends from Lisbon to Vladivostok must be sabotaged by any means possible. The State Department's coup in Kiev as well as aggressive efforts to restrict the flow of Russian gas to the EU via Nord Stream and South Stream, have at least temporarily succeeded in undermining Moscow's plan for accelerated economic integration. Had Hillary won the election, the US would have stepped up its provocations, its sanctions, its military buildup on Russia's borders, its gas war, its attacks on Russia's markets and currency, and its proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine. But now that Trump has been thrown into the mix, anything is possible. Even a fundamental change in the policy.
The question is whether the deep state powerbrokers who have already launched a number of attacks on Trump in the media will throw in the towel and allow Trump to develop his own independent foreign policy or take steps to have him removed from office.
Early indications suggest that a coup is already underway.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:Magda, you talk about "Reds Under the Beds" as if Russia was still a Communist country. It isn't. Once again, it is an illiberal regime composed of oligarchs and mobsters, it supports white nationalist movements, murders reporters and political opponents, and has engaged in false flag attacks.
It is not me who thinks this but the MSM and the neocons there using the old anti Russia memes which have proved so useful over the years and many are responding just like Pavlov's dog to it again.
David Guyatt Wrote:...
However I agree that there is, indeed a "big picture" - but it's one that you repeatedly fail or avoid grasping. This is that it is the US Intelligence Community and the Democratic Party - both fully owned bastard twins of the neocons - who are selling this garbage and who have gone to war to stop Trump taking office, because he openly threatened their b ring their payola and ideology to an end.
Yep.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:The problem is that the evidence that really proves it is technical, and I certainly can't provide it, and I don't know what sources or methods might be compromised by doing so. I've already said that it could have been the Israelis or someone else trying to leave Russian fingerprints behind. But that's a high
The man that created the NSA system, William Binney, and understands the technicalities has said it isn't the Russians, it isn't a hack and that it is a leak. ly speculative theory.
The man that created the NSA system whiich would have been able to detect any hacking, William Binney, and understands the technicalities has said it isn't the Russians, it isn't a hack and that it is a leak.
If you want some technical information on why it is not a Russian government hack have a look at this. I received this as I use WordPress and use an add on called Word Fence which is a security add on to protect .php based sites like WordPress. Since the report contains specific indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and a PHP malware sample Wordfence decided to conduct their own analysis. It was in their commercial and professional interest to do so since their own security analysts spend a lot of time analyzing PHP malware because WordPress is powered by PHP.
Conclusion - it is old mal ware of Ukrainian origin can be and is used by any one on any number of hack attemps all over the world and it has no connection to Russia or Russian state intelligence who have their own and better malware. More detail below. My web sites and the servers they reside on, like Craig Murray's and millions of others, including the DNC server, are constantly attacked by these sorts of creations. Hence why I and millions of others use WordFence for protection from such malware. No biggie. Unless you are actually hacked and that didn't happen. Obama also said as much in his last press meeting. He was making it clear that it was not him pushing all this nonsense.
Quote:Update at 1am Pacific Time, Monday morning Jan 2nd: Please note that we have published a FAQ that accompanies this report. It contains a summary of our findings and answers several other questions our readers have had. It also provides some background on our methodology. You can read it either before or after reading this report. The original report follows:
The United States government earlier this year officially accused Russia of interfering with the US elections. Earlier this year on October 7th, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a joint statement that began: "The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts."
Yesterday the Obama administration announced that they would expel 35 Russian diplomats and close two Russian facilities in the United States, among other measures, as punishment for interfering with the US 2016 election.
In addition, yesterday the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) released a Joint Analysis Report, or JAR, compiled by the DHS and FBI, which they say attributes the election security compromises to Russian intelligence operatives that they have codenamed GRIZZLY STEPPE. The report that DHS and DNI released includes in its first paragraph: "This document provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities. The report contains specific indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and a PHP malware sample." At Wordfence our focus is WordPress security. Our security analysts spend a lot of time analyzing PHP malware, because WordPress is powered by PHP. As an interesting side-project, we performed analysis on the PHP malware sample and the IP addresses that the US government has provided as "…technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by Russian civilian and military intelligence services (RIS)". [Source] We used the PHP malware indicator of compromise (IOC) that DHS provided to analyze the attack data that we aggregate to try to find the full malware sample. We discovered that attackers use it to try to infect WordPress websites. We found it in the attacks that we block. Here it is.
The above is the header and here is the footer. The middle contains an encrypted block of text.
This is PHP malware that is uploaded to a server. An attacker then accesses the file in a browser and enters a password. The password also acts as a decryption key and decrypts the encrypted block of text which then executes. Once an attacker enters their password, it is stored in a cookie and they don't need to enter the password again to access the malicious application. We managed to capture a request from an attacker that contained their password. It was avto' without quotes. We used the password to decrypt the block of encrypted text. This is what the decrypted PHP looks like. It is a big chunk of PHP code that is a web shell.
We installed the web shell on a sandboxed environment. This is what it looks like: This is the kind of web shell that we see all the time in our day-to-day forensic operations. It includes the following basic features:
File browser/explorer
File search function
A database client to download the contents of a hacked site database
Network tools including a port scanner and the ability to bind a service to a port
A tool to brute force attack passwords on FTP and POP3 services.
A command line client to run arbitrary operating system commands
A utility to view server configuration info
By viewing the source code, we could find the name of the malware and the version. It is P.A.S. 3.1.0. We googled it and found a website that makes this malware. You can find the site at this address: http://profexer.name/pas/download.php
You can enter a password that you will use to access your malware once it's installed and then hit download' and a ZIP file downloads. The ZIP contains a text file and the malware. The text file looks like this:
The website claims the malware is made in Ukraine and the date at the bottom has the Ukraine country code UA. This malware is version 3.1.7 which is newer than the malware that the DHS indicator of compromise identifies. It is almost identical including it's indentation: And the footer: But PAS has evolved even further since 3.1.7. It is now version 4.1.1 which you can get from the same website: The 4.1.1b info.txt file: And the code has changed in 4.1.1 quite substantially. This is the header: The PAS malware is user friendly. It has an About page: They also have a helpful FAQ:
How does PAS infect WordPress websites?
This is a typical infection attempt for PAS 3.1.0 which is the DHS sample: The above request is an attempt to install a plugin in the WordPress CMS through the normal file upload method. What surprised us is that this request had a full set of cookies that indicates that the user or bot doing this was signed in and this probably was an actual web browser.
It also includes the WordPress nonce which is a security feature, also indicating this is a user. Only about 25% of the attacks that we see include the WordPress nonce, which suggests that many of these attempts fail. The vast majority of attacks we see that try to infect with PAS 3.1.0 use this kind of request. Here are a few theories:
WordPress website owners have malware installed on their workstations and that malware attempts to install PAS 3.1.0 on their WordPress websites.
This is CSRF, or cross site request forgery attack, that installs the malware. This is unlikely because the nonce is present in many requests. A nonce is a security feature that prevents CSRF attacks.
Users are voluntarily installing this on their own websites after downloading it from a malicious website thinking it is safe. Unlikely because the file that is uploaded is plain text PHP and it is clearly suspicious if you examine the file contents.
Attackers are compromising websites through some other means and then using the compromised credentials to manually sign in and install PAS 3.1.0 with a standard browser. These sign-ins could be partially or fully automated.
Malware Conclusions
DHS and DNI have released a joint statement that says: "This document provides technical details regarding the tools and infrastructure used by the Russian civilian and military intelligence Services (RIS) to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the U.S. election, as well as a range of U.S. Government, political, and private sector entities. The report contains specific indicators of compromise, including IP addresses and a PHP malware sample." The PHP malware sample they have provided appears to be P.A.S. version 3.1.0 which is commonly available and the website that claims to have authored it says they are Ukrainian. It is also several versions behind the most current version of P.A.S which is 4.1.1b. One might reasonably expect Russian intelligence operatives to develop their own tools or at least use current malicious tools from outside sources. Analysis of the IP addresses provided by DHS and DNI
DHS provided us with 876 IP addresses as part of the package of indicators of compromise. Lets look at where they are located. The chart below shows the distribution of IP addresses by country.
As you can see they are globally distributed with most of them in the USA. Lets look at who the top ISP's are who own the IP addresses:
There are several hosting companies in the mix including OVH SAS, Digital Ocean, Linode and Hetzner. These are hosting companies that provide low cost hosting to WordPress customers and customers who use other PHP applications. A common pattern that we see in the industry is that accounts at these hosts are compromised and those hacked sites are used to launch attacks around the web. Out of the 876 IP addresses that DHS provided, 134 or about 15% are Tor exit nodes, based on a reverse DNS lookup that we did on each IP address. These are anonymous gateways that are used by anyone using the Tor anonymous browsing service. We examined our attack data to see which IP addresses in the DHS data are attacking our customer websites. We found a total of 385 active IP addresses during the last 60 days. These IP addresses have launched a total of 21,095,492 complex attacks during that 60 day period that were blocked by the Wordfence firewall. We consider a complex attack to be an attack that tries to exploit a vulnerability to gain access to a target. We also logged a total of 14,463,133 brute force attacks from these IP addresses during the same period. A brute force attack is a login guessing attack. The chart below shows the distribution of the number of attacks per IP address. It only takes into account complex attacks. As you can see, a small number of the IP addresses that DHS provided as IOC's are responsible for most of the attacks on WordPress websites that we monitor. The following shows the list of the top 50 IP addresses in the DHS report sorted by the number of complex attacks we saw from each IP during the past 60 days.
As you can see, many of the top attacking IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. There is also a relatively small number of IP addresses launching most of the attacks on websites we monitor. Conclusion regarding IP address data
What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be anonymous online, including malicious actors. Overall Conclusion
The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes. The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.
As always I welcome your comments. Please note that I will delete any political comments. Our goal in this report is to merely analyze the data DHS provided and share our findings.
Mark Maunder Wordfence Founder/CEO Special thanks to Rob McMahon and Dan Moen who provided valuable assistance with this research. For press inquiries please contact Dan Moen at press@wordfence.com. Comments are now closed. Thank you for your contributions!
Tracy Riddle Wrote:If it was a disgruntled DNC leaker, why didn't they put out all these emails during the convention when it might have helped Bernie get the nomination? Why wait to dump most of them in the fall when the only person being helped was Trump? If Seth Rich was the source (or one source) of the leak, why won't Julian Assange just say that?
You and many others seems to have many illusions about Wikileaks what it is and how it works. Wikileaks does not hack any thing. It publishes. Like the NYT and WaPo and the Guardian. Okay, Murdoch's Sun and News of the World did hack but their motivation was also different. Wikileaks do not release their data to coincide with election cycles. They publish only when the data has arrived and been thoroughly vetted and verified. Which is why Wikileaks has a 100% record in this and not the NYT and WaPo who frequently are pushing fake news because they accept the hand outs and media releases given to them by any old agency with an agenda. Maybe the source did upload it during the convention. But why do you assume either the disgruntled leaker or Wikileaks is in control of the timing? You obviously haven't seen the tweets from Wikileaks urging sources not to sit on their information but to share their information asap so it can be more effective? When ever any thing is receive by Wikileaks it also has to under go rigorous verification process. They do not just publish any material unexamined. That is the New York Time's job. All sorts of thing get sent to Wikileaks and other sites like Wikispooks. Not all of it is relevant or fit to be published. There are red herrings galore and people with personal petty vendettas and mental illnesses. It all needs to be assessed to sort the jewels from the dross and real from the fake. When Craig Murray was ambassador to Khazakstan and he leaked copies of his official communication and information to Whitehall and the foreign office that the US and UK were allowing rendition and the torture and secret prisons to operate there it took some time to verify all his documentation. It was not taken at face value. It wasn't a matter of him leaking it and Wikileaks publishing it the next day. And why would Wikileaks give up its sources? The whole idea is that you can upload anonymously for protection. Who would ever use Wikileaks in future if they feared their identity would be exposed? And you assume Wikileaks knows their identity. They do in some cases but not all. Also there is more than one leaker in these events.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:David: "who have gone to war to stop Trump taking office, because he openly threatened their b ring their payola and ideology to an end."
Hysterical. Read that long interview I posted with Trump's three biographers. This man believes in nothing except HIMSELF. He will take advice primarily from Javanka (Jared and Ivanka), he will care only about looking like a "winner." He will block out all other realities. Trump is the most shallow man to ever occupy the White House. He is not going to bring anybody's payola or ideology to an end.
Well they should all love him like they did Reagan then if it is all going to stay the same and the gravy train rolls on. But they don't. And it is not because of his hair style that they don't love him. Or his misogyny or racism. That they can live with. Of course he is shallow and egotistical and wants to be a winner. But hey he already won so he is a winner. But some one is feeling like they lost. And lost big. Not just entitled Hilary Clinton. So the big guns are being wheeled out. Dems had 8 years to fix the Electoral College which had already screwed them over before. Why didn't they? Why did they roll over and play dead when Gore was shafted and not this time? Reagan. Bush. Clinton. Bush. Obama. [insert Clinton 2 here] But the machine broke down this time and now there is a rogue Trump to deal with. Not business as usual. How is Trump any worse or more dangerous than the idiot Bush? Who also stole the election btw. Is it because we knew idiot Bush was just the front man for the real (unelected) players and we actualy were comfortable with these unelected masters of the universe being in control ? Now those (unelected) players are not there any more and don't have their puppet in office. As if it's like the end of the world for some and as if we were not heading there any way under the previous chaotic destructive neocons. Trump sure is not the Messiah but he certainly represents change. Clearly this is terrifying for some. Some thing that Obama never delivered despite the promise. What that change will be is yet to be seen. I m not particularly hopeful, at least domestically, given who I see being chosen to populate his swamp but the break in transmission gives us a chance to stop the war drums and put some better music on to dance to.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
Craig Murray commenting upon Obama use of the word "leaked" in his farewell speech.
Quote:Stunning Admission from Obama on Wikileaks [URL="https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/01/stunning-admission-obama-wikileaks/#tc-comment-title"]
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19 Jan, 2017 in Uncategorized by craig
In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material. This undermines the stream of completely evidence-free nonsense that has been emerging from the US intelligence services this last two months, in which a series of suppositions have been strung together to make unfounded assertions that have been repeated again and again in the mainstream media.
Most crucially of all Obama refers to "The DNC emails that were leaked". Note "leaked" and not "hacked". I have been repeating that this was a leak, not a hack, until I am blue in the face. William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, has asserted that were it a hack the NSA would be able to give the precise details down to the second it occurred, and it is plain from the reports released they have no such information. Yet the media has persisted with this nonsense "Russian hacking" story.
Obama's reference to the "the DNC emails that were leaked" appears very natural, fluent and unforced. It is good to have the truth finally told.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Quote:Donald Trump Will Take Office With a Skeleton Crew Running National Security
Mattathias Schwartz
January 19 2017, 8:53 p.m.
WHEN DONALD TRUMP takes the presidential oath of office on Friday, he will assume control of the same intelligence agencies he has been feuding with for several weeks. For national security, the transition is shaping up to be a rocky one.
Unlike President Barack Obama, who came to office with a relatively experienced national security team and allowed several of George W. Bush's key personnel to stay on until his own choices were confirmed, Trump's administration has reportedly demanded that many of Obama's choices, including ambassadors, leave immediately. The Pentagon, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Department of Homeland Security have all named interim successors who will run their agencies until Trump's appointments are confirmed. They are Robert Work, Michael P. Dempsey, and Chip Fulghum, respectively.
The CIA says it has a similar arrangement in place for a person to run the agency should Trump's nominee, Rep. Mike Pompeo not be confirmed by Friday, but it declined to say who. "The Agency obviously has contingency plans," wrote Dean Boyd, a CIA spokesperson, in an email late Wednesday. "That's all we can offer you."
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 12: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for the director of the CIA, Rep.ÊMike Pompeo (R-KS) is sworn in at his confirmation hearing before the Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee on January 12, 2017 in Washington, DC. Mr. Pompeo is a former Army officer who graduated first in his class from West Point. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for the director of the CIA, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) is sworn in at his confirmation hearing before the Senate (Select) Intelligence Committee on Jan.12, 2017 in Washington. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Politico this week also reported on unfilled positions and a murky hiring process at State Department, the Pentagon, and the National Security Council, which saw Monica Crowley withdraw from a senior appointment after reports that portions of a book she had authored were plagiarized.
According to one senior administration official, the transition is shaping up to be especially difficult at Department of Homeland Security. It appears likely that Trump will dismiss most or all of sixteen senior positions that require Senate confirmation. These include the heads of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The transition has not yet named anyone to replace them.
"It is troublesome in the extreme that there is no designated successor for senior staff across DHS," said the official, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the process. "If there were, current staff have been disallowed from communicating with them."
The assistant secretaries' portfolios will pass to unconfirmed advisers, but that could still be problematic.
"None of them [the advisers] have security clearances," said the official. "They'll have to lean very heavily on career civil servants to run the department."
Sean Spicer, the incoming White House press secretary, spoke Thursday morning about these unconfirmed advisers at a press conference held at the transition office. He called them "beachhead team members," and said the Trump administration would be sending more than 500 of them into federal agencies.
More than 50 Obama-appointed officials, including Robert Work at Defense and Adam Szubin at Treasury, would remain in place, Spicer said. That leaves more than 600 unfilled senior positions.
On Wednesday, Gordon Trowbridge, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary under Obama, said that the Department of Defense had nothing to announce on the question of whether assistant secretaries would be kept on until their successors were confirmed. Trowbridge was not answering his phone on Thursday afternoon; a colleague in the Pentagon's press office said that it was the deputy press secretary's last day of work.
Trowbridge, an appointee, had been asked to leave the building by the end of the day.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
The Washington Post on the battle between Trump and IC:
Quote:The intel chiefs did to Trump what Hoover did to MLK
Once he's inaugurated, the new president should dismiss them all.
By David J. Garrow January 18
David J. Garrow is the author of "The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr.: From Solo' to Memphis," the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference" and the forthcoming "Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama."
President-elect Donald Trump (Pool photo by Anthony Behar via Bloomberg News)
U.S. intelligence chiefs James R. Clapper Jr., John Brennan, James B. Comey and Adm. Michael Rogers (with an assist from BuzzFeed) all deserve an award: the J. Edgar Hoover memorial award, if you will. By giving official cognizance to, and personally presenting President-elect Donald Trump with the salacious fruits of sleuth-for-hire Christopher Steele's anonymously sourced and poorly written opposition research memos intended to smear Trump's character, the United States' intelligence officials have reprised what then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and deputies William Sullivan and Cartha "Deke" DeLoach did to Martin Luther King Jr. in 1964.
President Lyndon B. Johnson should have fired Hoover and his minions for their opprobrious conduct. Clapper and Brennan are already on their way out, but Comey's and Rogers's resignations should be the first things Trump requests after taking the oath of office.
To anyone who knows memo-by-memo the documentary record of both the FBI and the CIA's pursuit of King, Steele's 35-page dossier of memos dating from June 20 through Dec. 13 of last year is replete with echoes. Steele begins his assault on Trump with an anonymous accusation of "perverted sexual acts," and his insistent obsession with "sexual perversion" mirror the characterizations Hoover and Sullivan flung at their subordinates in marshaling the FBI's workforce to seek King's personal destruction, repeatedly using phrases like "moral degenerate" in internal bureau communications about King. Akin to Steele's fanciful report of sexual exploits, Hoover's FBI entertained a made-up account of King involving a Las Vegas prostitute.
While the FBI leadership's animus toward MLK fixated on his reported sexual appetites, the CIA entertained and memorialized accounts that described the crucial secret conflict within the civil rights movement as one between Soviet-controlled agents and Communist China's sympathizers. Top CIA officials relied upon an informant who explained in meeting after meeting how a battle for subversive control over King was being waged between New York lawyer Stanley Levison and activist/entertainer Harry Belafonte. In the CIA's version of civil rights history, Levison, a onetime Communist Party financial functionary, was actively representing Moscow as he advised King, whereas Belafonte supposedly favored Beijing.
In a similar tone, Steele's memos detail Trump attorney Michael Cohen supposedly engaged in secret meetings with "Kremlin representatives" in Prague, notwithstanding how Cohen appears never to have traveled there.
The CIA's source on King turned out to be novelist and television host Jay Richard Kennedy, who had long-standing friendships with civil rights leaders A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer, and who moderated a nationwide August 1963 telecast featuring the leaders of the March on Washington. But Kennedy (born Samuel Richard Solomonick) and Levison, his longtime business partner, had fallen out years earlier. Indeed, by the 1950s, Levison's first wife, psychotherapist Janet Alterman, was married to Kennedy, who by then was Belafonte's business manager. Kennedy and Belafonte then had a falling out of their own, and Kennedy subsequently published a roman à clef about Belafonte, "Favor the Runner."
The Kennedy-Levison-Belafonte story may sound better than fiction but, more importantly, it is a case study in the ways anonymous intelligence sources may have multiple agendas when they tattle on, and smear, people for whom they have preexisting antipathy. Kennedy was not an opposition research contractor like Steele, but when as in the Steele case, and in the case of the FBI's most important informant close to King, accountant James A. Harrison a source is compensated for the information they provide, their incentive to spin a narrative that the payer wants to hear is that much greater.
American history teaches us again and again from the early Bureau of Investigation's pursuit of World War I pacifists and black nationalist entrepreneur Marcus Garvey, through Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs and, yes, weapons of mass destruction that U.S. intelligence agencies are often far less competent than both their most avid supporters and their most hostile critics mutually presume. That all four top leaders of the intelligence community were naively willing to give official credence to Steele's unsupported "oppo" is an indelible blot upon their records and reputations. Liberals and progressives who know better than to worshipfully respect American intelligence agencies should enthusiastically support President Trump in seeking entirely new leadership for the intelligence community come the afternoon of Jan. 20.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Quote:I've enjoyed watching Bernie Sanders grill Trump's cabinet nominees, quoting the President-Elect's campaign promises verbatim and demanding to know if those promises will be fulfilled. The man's a pit bull. He's there in the ring, slugging it out for truth, justice, and the American Way, just as he has all his life. The empty pantsuit has vanished. I'd like to think that she's on a terminal vodka bender up there in Chappaqua, cursing the walls as they close in on her. I'd say she has a much better chance of becoming the New York State Vegetable than Mayor of New York City.
As a student of history with a particular interest in the machinations of the Deep State, I'm thrilled at the prospect of a president taking office under direct and open threat from the CIA, especially one as bold and cunning as Donald Trump. The CIA has operated in direct and flagrant violation of its charter since the year I was born. The matchless hubris of its open assault on the President-Elect before he's even taken office will be its final undoing. The CIA's meddled in domestic affairs long enough, and severely underestimates Trump's vindictive streak and willingness to use every tool available to destroy his opponents. His ascent to power has been reminiscent of Sherman's March, and Langley shall surely be his Atlanta.
Here's the thing about New Yorkers: everybody thinks we think we're better than everybody else, but they're wrong. We are. New Yorkers have an intuitive grasp of the conspiratorial nature of power. Following the machinations of the Mulberry St. crowd is a popular hobby in the boroughs. Comparing the management techniques of Paul Castellano versus John Gotti always made for stimulating barroom conversations when I lived there. One thing that every New Yorker knows is that there's no such thing as a fair fight. Everything you need to know about politics and power is laid out clearly in The Godfather.
If they were going to whack him, they should've done it months ago. They thought he was a joke. The entire establishment thought that its puppet candidate had a lock on the election. They underestimated Trump then, and they're underestimating him now. Although I'm sure that the rank and file of the Secret Service is mightily relieved that they don't have to deal with Hillary Clinton, the organization itself cannot be trusted. It's a matter of historical record that it was the Secret Service that rerouted JFK's motorcade down Elm St. that day, and their behavior captured on camera in Dealey Plaza raises a lot of questions. Trump clearly doesn't trust them, and maintains his own network of private security contractors. He's also been known to carry a gun himself. Imagine what would happen to the poll numbers of a president who greased his own potential assassin live on television. I have a strong suspicion that Putin's FSB is also watching his back.
For the first time in a long time, I have hope for the future of this country. Trump's campaign was reminiscent of the rise of Huey Long. The elites are attempting to smear and discredit the wave of populism sweeping the globe. Their neo-feudal vision of a world based on the model of Red China is under serious threat. Monetary wealth is fissionable material: the more you accumulate, the more likely it is to blow up in your face.
Today we set sail into uncharted seas. It's High Noon in America. Call it JFK's Revenge.
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
Quote:The Trump era starts now with geopolitics and geo-economics set for a series of imminent, unpredictable cliffhangers.
I have argued that Trump's foreign policy guru Henry Kissinger's strategy to deal with the formidable Eurasia integration trio Russia, China and Iran is a remixed Divide and Rule; seduce Russia away from its strategic partnership with China, while keep harassing the weakest link, Iran.
In fact that's how it's already playing out as in the outbursts of selected members of Trump's cabinet during their US Senate hearings. Factions of US Think Tankland, referring to Nixon's China policy, which was designed by Kissinger, are also excited with the possibilities of containment regarding at least one of those powers "potentially arrayed against America".
Kissinger and Dr. Zbig "Grand Chessboard" Brzezinski are the two foremost, self-described Western dalangs puppet masters in the geopolitical arena. In opposition to Kissinger, Obama's foreign policy mentor Brzezinski, true to his Russophobia, proposes a Divide and Rule centered on seducing China.
Yet an influential New York business source, very close to the real, discreet Masters of the Universe, who correctly predicted Trump's victory weeks before the fact, after examining my argument offered not only a scathing appraisal of those cherished dalangs; he volunteered to detail how the new normal was laid out by the Masters directly to Trump. Let's call him "X".
The non-stop China watch
"X" starts by doing something US deep state-connected regulars, who revere their idols, never dare to, at least in public: "It is important not to attribute too much importance to either Kissinger or Brzezinski as they are merely fronts for those who make the decisions and it is their job to cloak the decisions with a patina of intellectuality. Their input means relatively nothing. I use their names on occasion as I cannot use the names of those who actually make the decisions."
That's the cue for "X" to detail the new normal: "Trump was elected with the support of the Masters to tilt towards Russia. The Masters have their tools in the media and Congress maintaining a vilification campaign against Russia, and have their puppet Brzezinski also come out against Russia, stating 'America's global influence depends on cooperation with China'. The purpose is to threaten Russia to cooperate and place these chips on the negotiating table for Trump. In a traditional good cop-bad cop approach, Donald is portrayed as the good cop wanting good relations with Russia, and Congress, media, Brzezinski are the bad cops. This is to aid Trump in the negotiations with Russia as Putin sees the 'precarious' position of his friend and should be willing to make major concessions as the line goes."
And that brings us to how Taiwan and Japan got into the mix: "Donald shows the Russian tilt by talking to the Taiwanese, demonstrating that the shift is serious. But it was decided to throw Japan into the mix as a predator against US industry, with an attack on Toyota, thoroughly deserved. That moderated the position as the Masters became afraid that the perception of our building up Japan against China would be too much of a provocation."
So expect China as "not too much importance" Kissinger prescribed to be under non-stop scrutiny: "The Masters have decided to reindustrialize the United States and want to take jobs back from China. This is advisable from the Chinese viewpoint; for why should they sell their work to the US for a dollar that has no intrinsic value and get really nothing back for the work. China should have a car in every Chinese worker's garage and they will become a larger producer of cars than the EU, US and Japan combined, and their own nation will keep their wealth in their own country."
And why China over Russia? "Russia in this sense being a natural resource country with a gigantic military industrial complex (the latter being the only reason she is secretly respected) is exempt from any tough trade talk as they hardly export anything but natural resources and military equipment. The Masters want jobs back from Mexico and Asia including Japan, Taiwan, etc., and you see this in Trump's attack on Japan. The main underlying reason is that the US has lost control of the seas and cannot secure its military components during a major war. This is all that matters now and this is the giant story behind the scenes."
In only a few words "X" details the reversal of an economic cycle: "The Masters made money out of transfer of industry to Asia (Bain Capital specialized in this), and Wall Street made money from the lower interest rates on the recycled dollars from the trade deficits. But now, the issue is strategic; and they will make money on the return of industries scaling down their investments in Asia and returning them to the United States as we rebuild production here."
"X" remains quite fond of Henry Ford's business strategy; and that is the cue for him to address the crucial theme: national defense. According to "X", "Ford doubled the wages he paid and made more money than any other manufacturer. The reason was that a living wage where the mother can have many children on her husband's wage was psychologically good for productivity in his car plants, and that his workers could then afford his cars. He thus recognized that in a society there must be a just distribution of wealth that his admirer Steve Jobs could not.
Henry's mass productivity was the wonder of the world and that was what won World War Two for the United States. Amazon does not contribute anything to national defense, being merely an internet marketing service based on computer programs, nor Google which merely organizes data better. None of this builds a better missile or submarine except in a marginal way."
It's the Pentagon, stupid
So yes; this all has to do with reorganizing the US military. "X" made a point to refer to a CNAS report I quoted in my initial column: "It is very important for what is visible between the lines. And that is we are in deep trouble being technologically behind Russia by generations in weapons, which is a follow-up on the Brzezinski quote that we are no longer a global power."
This is a thorough, wide-ranging analysis of how Russia has managed to organize the best armed forces in the world. And that does not even take into account the S-500 missile defense system, which is now being rolled out and arguably seals the entirety of Russian airspace. And the next generation S-600? will be even more powerful.
"X" does venture into deep state taboo territory, as in how Russia, over the past decade, has managed to leap far ahead of the US, "eclipsing it as the strongest military power". But the game may be far from over wishful thinking or otherwise: "We hope Secretary of Defense James Mattis will understand this and that the Deputy Secretary of Defense has advanced technological skills, organizational ability and the foresight to understand that the weapons of World War Three are offensive and defensive missiles, and submarines, and not air power, tanks and aircraft carriers."
A realist, "X" admits that the warmongering neocon/neoliberalcon status quo represented by most US deep state factions will never abandon the default posture of unremitting hostility towards Russia. But he prefers to focus on change: "Let Tillerson reorganize the State Department along Exxon efficiencies. He may be worth something in that. He and Mattis may be gutless but if you tell the truth to the Senate you may not be confirmed. So what they say means nothing. But notice this about Libya. The CIA had a goal of driving China out of Africa and so does AFRICOM. That was one of the secrets to our Libyan intervention."
Not that it worked; NATO/AFRICOM turned Libya into a wasteland run by militias, and still China was not driven away from the rest of Africa.
"X" also admits: "Syria and Iran are red lines for Russia. So is the eastern Ukraine from the Dnieper." He is fully aware Moscow will not allow any regime change gambit on Tehran. And he's also aware that "China's investments in Iranian oil and gas imply that China also will not permit Washington's overthrow of the Iranian government."
The going really gets tough when it comes to NATO; "X" is convinced Russia "will invade Romania and Poland if those missiles are not taken out of Romania and the missile commitment to Poland rescinded. The issue is not the worthless defensive missiles of the United States but the substitutability of offensive nuclear missiles in these silos. Russia will not tolerate this risk. These are not subject to negotiation."
In contrast to the "perpetual threat" perpetual propaganda by the US War Party, Moscow focuses on actual facts on the ground since the 1990s; the break up of historic Slavic ally Serbia; Warsaw Pact nations and even former USSR republics annexed by NATO, not to mention attempts to also include Georgia and Ukraine; US deployment of color revolutions; the "Assad must go" fiasco, as in regime change forced on Syria even including the weaponizing of Salafi-jihadis; economic sanctions, an oil price war and raids on the ruble; and non-stop NATO harassment.
"X", fully aware of the facts, adds, "Russia has always wanted peace. But they are not going to play a game with the Masters of the Universe that has Trump as the good guy and the Congress, CIA, etc. as the bad guy as a negotiating ploy. That is how they see it. They do not regard this circus as real."
The circus may be just an illusion. Or wayang Balinese puppet theatre as I suggested. "X" advances a crisp interpretation of the shadow play ahead from Moscow's point of view, allowing "several months to see if Putin can work out a detente with Trump that essentially creates an autonomous eastern Ukraine, a peace treaty in Syria with Assad in place, and a withdrawal of NATO forces back to their line of defense under Ronald Reagan."
Who will prevail; the Masters, or the deep state? Brace for impact.
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
The enemy in one form or another drives the US the gun culture on the streets, the rich behind weapon-guarded enclaves, the pervasive violence entertainments of good vs. evil killers, the never-ending destabilizations of societies not submitting to US military and corporate globalization, and the hundreds of billions of public dollars pouring into continuous armed threats and wars.
Quote:The US capital-E Enemy is whatever exists in the world that stands against the full spectrum dominance' of the US in the world the bi-partisan objective made explicit in the iconic Project for a New American Century.
But incoming President Trump has gone to the other side, and so becomes the enemy to the establishment. He has rejected globalizing "free trade deals" led by NAFTA as "disastrous", saying to Canada, "congratulations, you now have your independence" (an idea that terrifies the branch-plant CEO's and their politicos and media now in power).
He has consistently intimated an "obsolete" NATO, the global military front of the US empire marching East through Ukraine to Russia's borders (which are now standing against the next US-led looting of the greatest natural resource treasures of the world). In the backdrop lies official Canada morphed into a new Minister of Foreign Affairs, Chrystia Freeland of Ukrainian descent, who like the US supports the 2015 neo-Nazi-led coup against Ukraine's elected government to force US-EU access to the breadbasket of Eurasia and new fossil-fuel riches formerly prohibited from fracking all of this publicly unspeakable fact in Canada and US corporate media today.
Trump's Russia connection has put him on the enemy side again, although the reasons why will never be made public in the official cultures of the corporate media and NATO states.
In the last days before his inauguration, Trump has not buckled fought back hard on the truly fake news backed by the CIA-led spy apparatus of US intelligence' and by his enemies in power. We read only of how reckless' and irresponsible' Trump is for insulting the intelligence community': in fact the lead agents of the US dark state long implicated in every state-terrorist interference with democratic process across the world, including the assassination of JFK.
In the last days before his entry into the White House, this CIA-CNN-McCain-led set-up of Trump has induced a feeding frenzy of the media to de-legitimate him now all but declared guilty of treason as well as dupery by Putin and sexual perversion, any of which is usually fatal to a US politician.
In historical perspective, all that the intelligence community' did to boost the Bush Jr. presidency and its 9-11 foreign wars and war crimes is put into reverse on Trump. If we know a man by his enemies, Trump is deeply honored by attacks from every quarter of the US Money-Enemy-War Establishment.
But President-to-be Trump goes further against the US dark state by implicitly denouncing the US-made wars in the Middle East and Central Asia as bankrupting America as well as ruinously invading other societies on false pretexts as many US libertarians have done for years. In the White House, this long-overdue rationality will be welcomed by everyone who is not part of America's war machine at the head of destroying the planet. It is the biggest point source of all ecocides and pollutions as well as of society destructions. This is a home truth which neither Trump nor anyone else in US power seems to have comprehended.
Yet what most triggers the enemy structure of US identity into fuming rage is Trump's refusal to assume that Putin and Russia are the Enemy of US. Trump's skepticism on NATO, foreign wars and the CIA is now compounded into perceptions of treasonous Manchurian Candidate projections. It is an interesting spectacle of US group-mind in official stories and media of record including junior counterparts in Canada and the EU. The US group-mind is militantly blocked against facts and reason wherever the Enemy is concerned.
Above all, the US-Enemy group-mind is governed by an inner logic of reverse projections. It projects onto the designated Enemy what the US is doing itself as the justification for warring against it.
Russia and Putin are a perfect example. Every malevolence of lies, forced expansion into other societies, and pretexts for more aggression and territory under US control is projected onto Putin. There is no hard evidence from which these accusations follow, but there is also no reasoning with the US-Enemy syntax of the capitalist group-mind. Reverse projections become the perpetual justification of war against the designated US hate-object.
We have seen it over and over again. US demonization of foreign individuals is repeatedly the pretext for wars against whole societies: while in fact the mass-murderous aggression and acquisition of new powers and treasure are by the US dark state. Trump has called this system into question at a libertarian level.
Ending Attack of Russia as War-State Compulsion
Behind the ad hominem hate of Putin lies independent Russia. It has been a target of militarized expansion of the West since Napoleon and Hitler. Nonetheless few notice the staggering hypocrisy of accusing Russia of "interfering in elections" with no proof, and no question of the truth of the document itself. We see here the paranoid nature of this group-mind morality. It sees no facts, but only an "attack on US democracy": while in truth the US itself has never stopped interfering in others' elections, including Russia and Ukraine's.
Governing all the instituted criminal networks and armed special forces at work across borders in and out of elections is this degenerate framework of value attribution and meaning.
For the most civil examples of its operations, the US National Endowment for Democracy and, in private connection, multi-billionaire money speculator George Soros, generate well-paid NGO's" in other countries to destabilize any deviating society. Its is an a-priori enemy of "democracy and freedom".
Yet President-to-be Trump and Russia's President Putin are oligarch nationalists, not war mongers like previous US presidents and candidates. This is shown by Trump and Putin bridging across the Enemy driver of the cold and proxy wars now in motion.
The reverse projections of ad hominem hate have been so far deleted. This the US money-war establishment cannot bear. It undermines the whole global system of US-led terror and treasure across all borders. Trump and Putin have implicitly agreed that these wars are disastrous for both America and Russia.
Behind the Freedom Fighters and Terrorists Lies the Money-War Party
Breaking the continuous US destabilizations and wars is treason to those who profit big from them. Ever more tens of billions of public money go to Wall Street, weapons manufacturers, war-service corporation like Cheney's and Bush's,. Who in US power is not implicated?.
Keeping this foundational question out of the public agenda is the unseen censorship syntax of America's official culture.
An example of the power of the Enemy-US war driver is that even the first US President to win a Nobel Peace Prize ends up cheerfully approving serial mass murders of the designated Enemy - Islamic terrorists' including children, every Tuesday of the week.
This is also good business promotion. The eponymous drones now built by military-industrial corporations get mass advertised as very precise and profitable commodities about to fill auditory fields with their mass-marketing production already out of control. The Free World' has many ecocidal expressions.
Yet with the endless terrorist outfits designated as the US Enemy to justify the weekly bombing of families from al-Qaeda to ISIS and from Afghanistan to Syria and Libya the evidence consistently shows that the CIA (and related Saudi, Turkey and other secret agents) have been responsible for their financing, recruiting, arming, and training. But the morphing names of jihadi forces are effective masks for concealing their sponsors.
Recall here the vivid images of Reagan's "freedom fighters" (including bin Laden) in Afghanistan against the USSR (al-Qaeda's' launching pad) at the same time as the US drug-funded Nicaraguan Contras' were specializing in destroying hospitals, schools and peasant communities in Nicaragua.
Recall too the very sudden appearance of the new ISIS/Islamic State' in a daylight desert parade to the horizons waving machine guns in new Toyota trucks all with no intervention and impunity not far from Israel's borders and in full sight of US aerial reconnaissance.
Yet throwing spanner into the works of the privately profitable Enemy-US war system haemorrhaging public money and privilege around the clock to its leaders is President-to-be Trump, the rogue elephant none in the establishment believed could win.
He is a dangerous man to the money-war state. He does not hate Putin as required for the US- Enemy driver. He does not get lobbied by the manifold big money corporations profiting from endless war and war preparations. And he very publicly and rightly opposes foreign wars on false pretexts plunging the US people and Treasury into a great dark hole. This is ultimately why there is an increasingly shrill establishment war on him as a "threat to US security" and implicit collaborator with the Enemy.
On the other hand, if President Trump goes along with the weekly Obama-style drone murders and war-crimes, and the ongoing Israel war crimes as by far the longest in history, he may fit better with the US-Enemy war culture he is about to lead.
Trump however has signaled that he will end the legally questionable embargos on Russia. For this, the CIA, FBI and DIA are coming out along with Senate war-mongers like McCain against Putin, Russia and Trump together. Everything they have pulled in the days before his succession is an effort to blow up Trump's Russia connection. Even a honey-pot hoax has been hatched within the security community and forwarded to the media to nail Trump in the way they have done before with others.
Yet again, the enemies of Trump show that his position in making peace with Russia and getting the US war-state under control is for real. Trump would not be taken so seriously by the in-office war party if this were not true.
Trump's repudiation of foreign-war "disasters" should mean a change of US direction into Armageddon. Combined with his move to stop the transnational corporate stripping of US jobs, the Trump turn may be the most effective resistance to the corporate globalization establishment since 1950. That the dominant media hate Putin and Trump at once is predictable. This is the Russia connection that simmers back to McCarthyism.
The Inner Logic of Enemy Construction
Putin is a supreme object of non-stop abuse because his actions stand for an independent Russia which has stopped the march of NATO East in East Ukraine and Crimea. Although both have been long integrated with Russia, the US-Enemy mind frame screens out all facts not consistent with its presuppositions.
Combine Putin with Trump, and the conflagration of outrage explodes. Little recognised, it comes from all points of the non-productive transnational corporate system, and not from those who make things of life use. It is predictably full of hate.
In general, the Enemy designation to justify war on every level can be crystallized into the following lock-steps of operant conditioning across classes. Every step is a non-sequitur assumption or inference. Together they build to all-fronts war against the designated Enemy. .
The auto-pilot succession of (1) to (10) goes on as automatically like a Pavlovian reflex, but in more steps. Its meta program applies not only to the US. It explains how to identify the Enemy-War derangement across space and time. .
(1) The Enemy is any group or leader designated to be so (e.g., Russia, Putin).
(2) The Enemy is evil a-priori.
(3) Evidence to support this conclusion is not logically or scientifically demonstrated.
(4) Invariantly one-sided denunciations of the Enemy govern media and government statements.
(5) No counter-evidence or argument against (1) to (4) is normally allowed on the public stage
(6) Criminal and armed activities towards destabilizing the Enemy and its surrounding world are always blamed on it instead (the reverse projection operation).
(7) All is justified in one underlying form: here the Free World' against its Enemy.
(8) Attacking the Enemy includes non-stop hate propaganda, military-war preparations, encirclement, economic embargo, and bombing if the Enemy cannot bomb back.
(9) The designated Enemy of the US is always a leader, state or movement which is developing public infrastructures and standing against transnational corporate control, privatization and financialization (as with every society invaded by the US since 1945).
(10) Anyone or body effectively resisting (1) to (9) may be attacked or murdered in plausibly deniable' scenarios.
The War-Enemy Structure Built into American Culture
We can see the Enemy-and-War structure built into America's identity by the US national anthem itself.It hymns a war song of "the rocket's red glare and bombs bursting in air" It climaxes with "the blood [of the enemy] has wash'd out their foul footstep's pollution" which "prove" the meaning of "her flag'.
But where is this inner logic of the US war state decoded?
In lucid-dream read, America the Good bombs and rockets the Enemy which is inherently Evil, both true by definition. The blood of the designated Evil Enemy must flow to cleanse the world of it. Rockets and bombs prove the flag and its meaning to exterminate the Enemy of the US with no moral criterion but this designation. .
Illustration of the war hymn's binding of the American people is not hard to find. Any elite athlete who does not put his hand on his heart to seal the meaning may be pilloried and ruined (as happened to Afro-American men with bowed heads and fists of solidarity with the oppressed in the 1968 Olympics). Before that, the most all-round achiever in American history world renowned in sport, in law, in singing, in acting, in African linguistics Paul Robson was denied his freedom to leave and persecuted to death after he declined to declare the Soviet Union as evil.
The circumstances reveal the absolute command of the Enemy construction by which Robson and countless other distinguished Americans were ruined. This all happened after Russia's winning the war in Europe against the Nazis at the cost of 26 million lives, while known very rich Americans helped to build and weaponize Hitler's war state, and never punished for it.
In contrast, the allies Soviet Union was declared the Enemy right after Roosevelt's death. His chosen peace- president' successor was falsely accused as a communist'. The world had been at last in peace after Nazi surrender, but not the pro-Nazi American backers at the top of the money-war party led by David Rockefeller since. His prodigy Leo Strauss and Henry Kissinger have provided the rationales. US covert agents have ever since been seeking to destroy Russia in any form of sovereign economic independence and strategic power, and succeeded till Putin.
The surprising fact is the total contradiction between the a-priori US assumption that it has a right to have its propaganda and agents at work over any borders up to Russia and beyond, but an equally fixed a-priori assumption that no other country has any right to circulate even true information about US politics within it.
This is clear not only from the accusations against Russia's interference in the election of Trump as US President, but from public debates from 1991 on within the US. They argue whether or not and how many US troops should stay in Iraq after eco-genocidal bombing of its public life infrastructures,. Or whether to bomb Syria again to give a message to Putin not to eliminate US assets there.
On the other hand, an extended and still raging denunciation of Russia's alleged "aggression against the US" and "interference in US elections" for Russia accessing, without proof and imputed to Putin, a DNC e-mail whose truth no-one questions. How can there be such extremist imbalance of moral and rational understanding which so completely erases others' human rights up to war on their society's very life bases and children, while absolutizing the rights of US and ally bombers to do all of this, and debate only whether it will work if they go on doing it.
The US national anthem itself expresses the chosen-people's right to kill others with no basis except that it is US doing it. The open logical spaces of this war hymn can include any nation or force as Enemy against it. The lines generically prescribe rocketing the Enemy to shed its blood. The compulsory song for all citizens to sing indicates no fault of the Enemy except being so designated.
No benefit for anyone is indicated but that "the US flag is still there".
Yet everyone in the US must put his hand over his heart when the anthem is sung before any public event: most fiercely before the sabbath NFL Games in which the largest, fastest and most powerful violence of body against body collide with each other n accordance with detailed war-room plans. The long bomb', sacking' and slashing up the center' are favorite operations of the stadium-war spectacle. On Superbowl days of the Superpower's favorite entertainment, army jets scream overhead to give US military signature to the meaning.
The Chosen People
In the world political context of today, the war party of the US includes all the media of record, all politicians not being condemned, and most people in allied states. The cheerleading of the now declared new Cold War' being created by "Putin's attack on America's election" is heard on every mainstream media days before the Trump Inauguration for, allegedly, finding and distributing true information of the DNC establishment's own subversion of the election of its presidential candidate.
If we read back to the first chosen people', which US exceptionalism' carries on, with "God's blessing America' for all its wars, we find an unmistakeable through-line of meaning: the Enemy structure of identity justifies eco-genocidal wars as Good against Evil and as led by God.
We find too that nothing of the society attacked is left behind, and this too as God's will. We see too that the US in either form controls vast new territory and power with no limit on the annihilation of others' communities, children and natural environments.
When we turn to the normative cornerstone of Western civilization, we find that total destruction of men, women and chidren and systems of life support is specifically commanded by the Almighty of Judaic-Christian tradition. Thus to His voice is attributed the still believed intention to "take "the whole land of Canaan to own in perpetuity" (Genesis 17:21) and, in, explicit prohibition of any "pact with them" to "exterminate" all of the inhabitants, "Amorites, Hittite, Perizzites, Cannanites Hivites and Jebusite" (Exodus 23:24) (Understanding War, Science for Peace, 1989)
But the guiding thread of meaning is assumed without being seen. The Enemy society is constructed as the hate object to mass-kill and erase from the world.
One way or another, the eco-genocidal right continues on in modified form. A lead individual is demonized by corporate states and media to justify attack on entire societies' shared life support systems. No collective psychopathology is penetrated. No eco-genocide is allowed to be seen even as n a word.
US Freedom of War against the Other as Supreme Value
Freedom in America means to liberate the individual to follow his self-maximizing purpose as freedom and happiness. Ronald Reagan interpreted this as the "freedom to get rich". All US enemies and wars since 1945 have been launched against those opposing the implementation of this ultimate value. The ultimate Good of the US and the Enemy as Evil to be rid of are two sides of one ultimate moral program. It is universal, overriding and obligatory to follow.
The US and its Enemy thus define each other. The US is born in war on this basis. Britain's 1763 Royal Proclamation prohibits any settler actions to "molest" and "disturb" the first peoples West from the Appalachians.
It also rejects any "pretexts whatever" or fraudulent purchase" in "all the lands" that the first nations inhabit and from which the colonists "must forthwith remove themselves" .
Very rarely is this ground of the US Revolution recognised. Yet US history follows in many such takings or invasions of other societies' lands under false pretexts ever since.
For example, it is seen as a "clear and present danger" to the US war state for any organized community to change the private-money rules of the game. It could be in the US backyard' of Latin America, or reach all the way to the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Other nations across in general are threatened and warred upon by the US dark state in many ways, and all work to take or destroy their natural and built resources (as with Iraq and Libya's oil and gold, and now Ukraine's and even Russia's).
Throughout, US identity lies in its own system of private capitalist market exchange and profit, and the Enemy is opposition to global expansion of it everywhere.
Ever greater extremes of rich-over-poor and loot-the-planet and public purse do not lead to any change that stops them, including the Trump agenda.
From US Independence against First Nations' Rights, the US is ordered by money value, private property and profit in everything that can be so extracted, priced and sold. There is no collective right that limits, redirects or cancels this right by obligation to the life commons of all.
All free trade' treaty commands of globalization' since 1988 spell out this logic of value in volumes of detail in which only private transnational corporate rights exist. All Cold War' actions before them have been to enforce this privatization-for-profit system.
"There is no alternative".
All US armed-force interventions and pervasive media propaganda against other regimes follow this inner logic one way or another. That it has proven to be eco-genocidal in effects does not stop the wars and treaties for further globalization of it. The Trump presidency may steer it back to home lands.
Thinking through Putin
As soon as Vladmir Putin rose to lead Russia from hollowed-out basket case to geopolitical independence, he was a marked man. His repudiation and pursuit of the oligarch crooks who parked their privatized oil fortunes outside Russia were glorified as oppressed fighters for freedom and their double agent killed was a martyr.
More impressively, social programs like pensions have been instituted again for the looted people, and the fanatic jihadi aggressors financed and directed from abroad since the late 1980's in Afghanistan to Syria have been bombed back.
Putin and Russia, once poodled, thus became the Enemy again. Putin even although an anticommunist was incarnate evil, a KGB agent still, a brutal dictator, a murderer with no evidence in front of the Kremlin, and so on. The US money and war party has gone on auto-repeat of US killing as Good and Putin/Russia as Evil .
"The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming" was into the ruling group-mind even as NATO forces rolled through the former USSR up to Russia's borders calling it the world's major aggressor as The US-led West positioned armies, tanks and missiles on its doorstep.
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It is not unlike the Nazis going through Poland and the Ukraine to save lives' before killing 26 million Russian people and destroying its life infrastructures, the litmus test again of who is right and wrong. .
The US-orchestration of the sniper-murderous coup of Ukraine's elected government in 2013 was enforced on the ground by neo-Nazis still glorifying Ukraine's Nazi collaborators, and calling for "extermination of the Russians" with US-supported leaders at the front.
Ethnic cleansing' attacks on Russia speakers went into high gear. The US and Canada silenced any attempt to recognise the neo-Nazi threat, far worse than anything in Western Europe where it is properly denounced. Schizoid morality rules.
"Communists" in Ukraine were and remain still the enemy to be slaughtered and forbidden to stand for election or speak. The full pogrom was in process until the majority of Russian-speaking citizens in East Ukraine rose up against the mass-murderous coup state which Canada's envoy and local MP's refuse to discuss. As always, the narrative of the US "leader of Free World" justifies all.
Reverse Projections Rule the Great Game of Aggression
The established reverse operation of blame on the designated Enemy has ruled since. Putin has been since slandered in foaming at the mouth attacks led by the US-led media and NATO without evident exception of intelligence or human care.
Fake news media of the West to reverse another reverse projection have not reported that Putin stopped the Dombass region and its mainly Russian-speaking people from joining Russia as they polled strongly in favor. No evidence has ever appeared in public that the industrialized region's revolt has been by Russian armaments rather than those captured from the US-led coup state. The US-directed military bombing of villages and urban centers in the Eastern region have gone on daily with no US-led diplomats or media of record reporting it.
In the post-truth era, facts make no difference. Only accusations of the Enemy frame the old story line. Putin was stripped of legitimacy in all the Western media (despite 87% population approval by independent polls). Russia has been ever more US-embargoed against UN law to cause recession (but no loss of support from Russian voters glad to have their leadership off its knees);. Putin has been ever more threatened by NATO command and armed forces advancing into Russia's heartland.
But always in accord with the reverse projection operation, Russia and Putin are accused of what the US-led armed forces have been themselves doing many thousands of miles from the US and right on Russia's Western borders on all sides.
As ever, the Evil of the Enemy of US justifies war on it on all levels available for private transnational corporate-profit globalization, here at the door of the world's greatest natural resource basin.
This is why so much space is dedicated in the mainstream media to accusing Putin and Russia with little or no evidence, but only repetition. The designated Enemy is Evil prior to fact.
We see by attention to undisputed historical facts that the legitimacy of Russia's former Ukraine long desired by the West as a sovereign state' with sacred borders' defended by patriots' and the Free World' is not what it seems. It is all part of the US versus Evil Enemy construction to pry open more national resources to raid. Putin and Trump may as nationalist leaders agree.
In truth the democratically elected Ukraine government has been usurped into a violent-coup state won by storm-trooper leaders adoring Nazi regalia, all of this orchestrated by the US and supported by Canada even against UN resolution to outlaw the Nazi symbols, memorials and statues now springing up everywhere the coupsters can manage in the corrupt new state.
Yet even now US Democrat and Canada Liberal regimes enthuse in "liberating Ukraine" from the "Putin-Russia bully" in perfect reverse projection, with Canada just changing its Minister of Foreign Affairs to carry out the big lie with "all the right connections"..
It is worth knowing that Ukraine is now indebted to the US-dominated IMF and the big private banks for which it is the collector and enforcer beyond any ability to pay. So Ukraine's breadbasket of the continent and newly discovered oil-and-gas sources will now service big public debts enforced by the IMF, with all in diplomatic and press circles crying "Russia aggression".
This arrangement was instituted as the first big move after the neo-Nazi coup repudiating Russia's interest-free loans and financial assistance of tens of billions of dollars in Russia oil-and-gas energy support alone.
But the dots are never joined if the US-Enemy, Good-Bad lenses blinker out the meaning. Trump could turn the tide here with the home truth.
Putin, the US, and Syria: Assad's Alleged Gas-Attack on his own People
Another US Enemy, President Bashar Al Assad of Syria, is incarnate Evil to the US money-war party on the charge account that he used chemical weapons' and gassed his own people', a crime under international law, and the red line'of President Obama.
Yet when the iconic investigative journalist Seymour Hersh tracked down the chemical weapons that were in fact found to be crudely made by non-Syrian jihadis, and he identified exactly how they were mocked up and used to generate a pretext for US bombing of Syria. But his painstaking research and publication went down the mind hole again.
This was not so when Hersh revealed the Mai Lai massacre, even if no US decision maker was punished. At least the massacre was revealed. Here in Syria decades later, the media sound reason to ignore everything at once, and invalidate Hersh by insinuations. The media of record then continued with the NYT to tirelessly repeat the exposed falsehood as a given truth.
Since Putin has led the pacification of the war waged by the "mercenary" jihadis as well as sponsored he UN-led destruction of the unused chemical weapons of Assad by his permission, how can he remain the US Enemy?
The US Enemy remains Evil by definition. Putin is most of all attacked for his alleged "annexation of Crimea in violation of all international norms and laws". This is the ultimate crime Putin is fixed to in auto-pilot media and politician blame across the the free world'. "No-one can forget this'" they say.
Yet the facts that Crimea has been part of Russia since Catherine the Great, and was in the sights of the US-led neo-Nazi implemented Ukraine coup government for occupation again go down the memory hole. In fact, the next coup taking Crimea from Russia was stopped by Putin before it was launched. An on-the-spot over-90% referendum for re-joining Russia worked with no evidence of any force used.
This is Putin's real offense, drawing the line on the moving US-led take into Russia. In fact Crimea had been traditional Russia territory since defeating the Ottoman Turks to keep its lone outlet onto the inland Black Sea.
So keeping the Enemy ball rolling, the US dark state supported Tatars, who opposed the re-Crimea re-integration into Russia, to sabotage in full view Crimea's main source of electricity cheered on by the US-led military and media.
What about Putin's war criminal' invasion of Ukraine? What about daily NATO-claimed Russian troop movements' and aggressions against a sovereign state'?
That Ukraine and Kiev are originally the founding center of the Rus people in the seventh century, around the same time as Britons, is inconceivable to think through the ruling group-mind of the US-Enemy frame of mind.
That Ukraine was long a province of Russia before Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, made it an independent state is erased from the record and the frontal lobes.
That this was a Soviet Union dictate by its supreme dictator' is an unspeakable exposure of the established mental disorder. Trump could turn the tide here with the home truth.
Can President- Trump Lead Solution to the Collapsing Empire?
President-to-be Trump has a model to go on. A remission in the US private corporate occupation of the world for private profit occurred with Roosevelt's New Deal. It emerged with the victorious war against Nazism, union legalization, high taxes on high incomes, and post-war industry growth on all planes. An implied social contract' between the working class and the often pro-Nazi rich was formed.
Yet the Enemy card of "communism" was played to reverse the much better America that FDR led. As soon as the war was won with Russia sacrificing by far the most in collective defense, US war on the USSR as the designated enemy began to be waged. An unseen continuation of the Nazi project which had been supported by the US corporate giants and money men like the Bush family fortune connected back to the original US-led war against the 1917 Russian revolution.
FDR was now dead and Henry Wallace was publicly red-smeared by the Truman wing of the still money-controlled Democratic Party an interesting parallel to the DNC's undermining the candidacy of Bernie Sanders in 2016. But this too was forgotten by the DNC, the Clintons and the political and media establishment.
They have kept insisting since the election loss that it was because of "Russia's hacking aggression against US democracy", not the e-mail that directly demonstrated this corrupt tactic of the DNB and the Clintons against the progressive Bernie Sanders. This meaning has been erased from reference, a revealing confirmation of their systemic corruption.
Trump has overcome the auto-hate on Russia and Putin in the face of near-deadly opposition from the US political and covert-state machine. Yet in many ways, he specially embodies the life-blind freedom of America and the corporate rich.
He exudes enjoyment in ostentatious spending on and show of himself, an egomaniac and ugly American many say. His program for public infrastructure is privatization for profit. He loves more oil and gas extraction that are proven mass polluters.
He promises more de-regulation without life-based criteria. He seems to deny system-caused climate destabilization, and seeks by implication to undo the Environmental Protection Agency as well as a universal healthcare insurance.
He hates Castro on cue despite or perhaps because of Cuba's having far better universal healthcare and education systems than the US.
Trump may be the paradigm of the US social and mental disorder. But hopeful signs are there. Trump learned against his loud opinion that water-boarding torture was lawless and did not work. He has acknowledgd that climate-change science can change his mind on his doubts of it.
Most importantly, President-to-be Trump is adamant in opposition to "disastrous" foreign wars and regime changes, multi-national trade treaties disemploying workers in the US, ruinous money-hole US empire in general, and Big Pharma fleecing of the US public.
John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO's Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his most recent book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: from Crisis to Cure.
"There are three sorts of conspiracy: by the people who complain, by the people who write, by the people who take action. There is nothing to fear from the first group, the two others are more dangerous; but the police have to be part of all three,"
Quote:Obama Admits Gap in Russian Hack' Case
January 20, 2017
The hole in the U.S. intelligence community's "high confidence" about Russia "hacking" Democratic emails has always been who gave the material to WikiLeaks, as President Obama admitted, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.
By Ray McGovern
Oops. Did President Barack Obama acknowledge that the extraordinary propaganda campaign to blame Russia for helping Donald Trump become president has a very big hole in it, i.e., that the U.S. intelligence community has no idea how the Democratic emails reached WikiLeaks? For weeks, eloquent obfuscation expressed with "high confidence" has been the name of the game, but inadvertent admissions now are dispelling some of the clouds.
President Barack Obama in the Oval Office.
Does the Russian government hack, as many other governments do? Of course. Did it hack the emails of the Democratic National Committee? Almost certainly, though it was likely not alone in doing so. In the Internet age, hacking is the bread and butter of intelligence agencies. If Russian intelligence did not do so, this would constitute gross misfeasance, especially since the DNC was such easy pickings and the possibility of gaining important insights into the U.S. government was so high. But that is not the question.
It was WikiLeaks that published the very damaging information, for example, on the DNC's dirty tricks that marginalized Sen. Bernie Sanders and ensured that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would win the Democratic nomination. What remains to be demonstrated is that it was "the Russians" who gave those emails to WikiLeaks. And that is what the U.S. intelligence community doesn't know.
At President Obama's Jan. 18 press conference, he admitted as much: "the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked." [Emphasis added}
It is necessary to carefully parse Obama's words since he prides himself in his oratorical constructs. He offered a similarly designed comment at a Dec. 16, 2016 press conference when he said: "based on uniform intelligence assessments, the Russians were responsible for hacking the DNC. … the information was in the hands of WikiLeaks."
Note the disconnect between the confidence about hacking and the stark declarative sentence about the information ending up at WikiLeaks. Obama does not bridge the gap because to do so would represent a bald-faced lie, which some honest intelligence officer might call him on. So, he simply presents the two sides of the chasm implies a connection but leaves it to the listener to make the leap.
WikiLeaks Account
As I suggested to RT viewers right after the last press conference, the reason WikiLeaks might have been "not witting" could be that it was quite sure it was not a "conduit" for "hacking" by the Russians or anyone else. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has stated that the Russian government was not the source and it's significant that President Obama stopped short of contradicting him. It is also clear that WikiLeaks, in the past, has obtained LEAKED information from U.S. whistleblowers, such as Chelsea Manning.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. (Photo credit: Espen Moe)
Former U.K. Ambassador Craig Murray, a close associate of Assange, has made clear that the two separate batches of Democratic emails one from the DNC and the other from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta also were leaks from insiders, not hacks from outsiders.
After the Jan. 18 press conference what Murray called the "Stunning Admission from Obama on Wikileaks" Murray wrote:
"In his final press conference, beginning around 8 minutes 30 seconds in, Obama admits that they have no evidence of how WikiLeaks got the DNC material. This undermines the stream of completely evidence-free nonsense that has been emerging from the US intelligence services this last two months, in which a series of suppositions have been strung together to make unfounded assertions that have been repeated again and again in the mainstream media.
"Most crucially of all Obama refers to The DNC emails that were leaked.' Note leaked' and not hacked.' I have been repeating that this was a leak, not a hack, until I am blue in the face. William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA, has asserted that were it a hack the NSA would be able to give the precise details down to the second it occurred, and it is plain from the reports released they have no such information. Yet the media has persisted with this nonsense Russian hacking' story."
So I suppose we should thank Barack Obama for dispelling at least some of the obfuscation at which he is so rhetorically eloquent, while our lame "mainstream" media take steno and regurgitate ad nauseam.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
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