Ed Curtis reminds us of the almost parabolic escalation of antagonism in recent weeks:
"This has happened as the Russia-gate claims have fallen to pieces … All across the media spectrum, from the big name corporate stenographers like The New York Times, CNN, National Public Radio, The Washington Post to The Atlantic and Nation magazines and other "leftist" publications such as Mother Jones and Who What Why, the Russia and Putin bashing has become hysterical in tone, joined as it is with an anti-Trump obsession … "Russia Sees Midterm Elections as a Chance to Sow Fresh Discord (NY Times, 2/13), "Russia Strongman [Putin] haspulled off one of the greatest acts of political sabotage in modern history" (The Atlantic, Jan. /Feb. 2018), "Mueller's Latest Indictment Shows Trump Has Helped Putin Cover Up a Crime" (Mother Jones, 2/16/18), "A Russian Sightseeing Tour For Realists" (whowhatwhy.com, 2/7/18), etc."
By casting Russia's interference in the US presidential election as "an attack on American democracy" and thus "an act of war", the Covert American State' is saying implicitly - that just as the act of war at Pearl Harbour brought a retaliatory war upon Japan, so, pari passu, Russia's effort to subvert America require similar retribution.
Across the Middle East but especially in Syria there is ample dry tinder for a conflagration, with incipient or existing conflicts between Turkey and the Kurds; between the Turkish Army and the Syrian Army; between Turkish forces and American forces in Manbij; between Syrian forces and American forces; between American forces and the USAF, and Russian servicemen and Russia's aerospace forces; between American forces and Iranian forces, and last but not least, between Israel and Syria.
This is one heck of a pile of combustible material. Plainly any incident amidst such compressed volatility may escalate dangerously. But this is not the point. The point is: Does all this Russia hysteria imply that the US is contemplating a war of choice against Russia, or in support of a re-set of the Middle East landscape to Israel's and Saudi Arabia's benefit? Will the US deliberately provoke Russia by killing Russian servicemen, for example in order to find pretext for a bloody nose' military action launched against Russia itself for responding to the American provocation?
Inadvertent war is a distinct possibility, of course: Both Israel and Saudi Arabia are experiencing domestic leadership crises. Israel may overreach, and America may overreach, too, in its desire to support Israel. Indeed the constant portrayal of the US President as Putin's puppet is pursued, of course, to taunt Trump into proving the opposite - by authorizing some or other action against Russia albeit against his better instincts.
At the Munich Security Conference, PM Netanyahu said:
"For some time I've been warning about this development [Iran's alleged plan to complete a Shi'i crescent] I've made clear in word and deed that Israel has red lines it will enforce. Israel will continue to prevent Iran from establishing a permanent military presence in Syria … We will act without hesitation to defend ourselves. And we will act, if necessary, not just against Iran's proxies that are attacking us, but against Iran itself."
And, at the same conference, US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warned Saturday against increased Iranian efforts to support its proxies in the Middle East, saying the "time is now" to act against Tehran.
But what did McMaster mean by "time is now to act"? Is he encouraging Israel to attack Hizbullah or Iranian-linked forces in Syria? This, almost certainly, would lead to a three or four front war for Israel; yet there are good grounds for believing that the Israeli security establishment does not want to risk a three front war. Possibly, McMaster was thinking more of full-spectrum hybrid, or COIN war, but not conventional war, especially since Israel cannot, any longer (after the shoot down of its F16), be sure of its air dominance, without which, it cannot expect, or hope, to prevail.
As senior Israeli officials complain about the gap between US rhetoric and action, General Josef Votel, the commander of Centcom, stated explicitly, by way of confirmation of the differing view, at a hearing in Congress on 28 February that, "countering Iran is not one of the coalition missions in Syria".
So back to the Russia hysteria. I do not believe that Syria is a practical locus for a war of choice either for the United States or Russia. Both are circumscribed by the realities of Syria. American forces there are not numerous: they are isolated, and dependent on allies the Kurds who are a minority in that part of Syria, who are divided, and who are disliked by the Arab population. And Russian forces mostly consist of no more than 37 aircraft, and small numbers of Russian advisers and Russian supply lines are extended and vulnerable (in the Bosphorous).
No, the US aim in Syria is limited to denying any political success to either Presidents Putin or Assad. It is pure schadenfreude. The American occupation of north-east Syria is primarily about spitting in the face of Iran i.e. the pursuit of a COIN war against an American, generational enemy.
And at the same time, at the macro, geo-strategic level, America has precisely been trying to disarm' Russia's nuclear defences, and seize the advantage, by withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, and by deliberately surrounding Russia on its borders with anti-ballistic missiles (the ABM treaty provided for only one site on its territory - for each party - that would be protected from missile attack). The US strategy effectively left Russia naked, in the nuclear sense. And that clearly was the intent. "With the build-up of the global US ABM missile system, the New START Treaty (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) is devaluated, and the strategic balance [was] broken", Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his State of the Nation Address yesterday.
But then, as the quartet of generals' (effectively, General Petraeus is a part of the WH trinity of generals), having usurped America's foreign policy out from the prerogative of the President and into their control, so US defence policy has metamorphosed beyond Cold War', to something far more aggressive - and dangerous: a precursor to hot war'.
From the original Strategic Statement, casting Russia and China as rivals and competitors', the subsequent Defense Posture Statement elevated the latter from mere rivals, to revisionist powers', which is to say, dubbed them as seditionists committed to overturning the global order by military force (the definition of revisionist power). The Statement placed great power competition above terrorism, as the primordial threat facing America, and implied that this revisionist' threat to the American-led global order needed to be met. American generals complained that their erstwhile, unchallenged global dominance of the skies, and of terrain, was being eroded by Russia acting as arsonist' [of stability] whilst presenting itself as the "fire-fighter" [in Syria]. America's air dominance must be reasserted, General Votel implied.
But in a startling upending of the strategic balance and missile encirclement, that America has been seeking to impose on Russia, President Putin announced yesterday that:
"Those who for the past 15 years have been fueling the arms race, seeking advantages over Russia, imposing restrictions and sanctions, which are illegal from the standpoint of international law, in order to hinder our country's development, particularly in the defence field, must hear this: all that you have been trying to prevent by this policy has happened. Attempts to restrain Russia have failed."
The Russian President announced a series of new weapons (including new nuclear-powered missiles invulnerable to any missile defence, hypersonic weapons, and underwater drones, inter alia), that remarkably return the situation to the status quo ante one of mutually assured destruction (MAD), were NATO to contemplate attacking Russia.
President Putin said that he had repeatedly warned Washington not to deploy ABM missiles around Russia "Nobody listened to us: [But] Listen now!", he said:
"Our nuclear doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack or an attack with other weapons of mass destruction against her or her allies, or a conventional attack against us that threatens the very existence of the state."
"It is my duty to state this: Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, be it small-scale, medium-scale or any other scale, will be treated as a nuclear attack on our country. The response will be instant - and with all the relevant consequences" (emphasis added).
President Putin underlined that he was not threatening America, nor did Russia have revanchist ambitions. It was rather Russia simply using the only language that Washington understands.
Putin's speech, accompanied by visuals of the new Russian weaponry, explains at least something of what has been going on in DC: America's recent seizure by a madness for spending. The Pentagon must have got (some) wind of Russia's advances hence the huge increase in the budget for Defence planned for this year, and another 9% next year, and an unbudgeted commitment to fund a new nuclear submarine fleet, a replacement for the Minuteman missile system, and the development of new nuclear (tactical) weapons (costs unspecified).
The expense will be prodigious for the US government. But Russia already has stolen the lead, and did this with government debt, as a percentage of nominal GDP, standing at only 12.6%, whereas America debt's already is at 105% of GDP (before the weapons upgrade has begun). President Reagan is credited with busting the USSR economically by forcing it into an arms race, but now it is the US that is vulnerable to its mountain of debt should the US try to reverse Putin's Spring surprise', and (if it can), restore its global conventional and nuclear primacy.
The hysteric anti-Russian rhetoric will continue so deeply embedded is it as an article of faith' - but it seems likely that America will need to reconsider before further provoking Russia in Syria. If America is now unwilling to bloody Russia's nose' over some escalation in Syria, then its isolated and vulnerable military outposts in eastern Syria will loose much of their point, or begin to take casualties, or both.
The question now must be how Russia's exercise in speaking truth to power' will play on America's policy towards North Korea. The US generals' will not like President Putin's message, but there is probably little that they can do about it. But North Korea is different. Just as Britain, at its moment of weakness, in the wake of WW2, wanted the world to know that it remained strong (though the signs of its weakened state were evident to all), it sought to demonstrate its continued power through the disastrous Suez Campaign. Let us hope North Korea does not become America's Suez moment'.
"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,"
Lauren Johnson Wrote:Game. Set. Match. Seth Rich, a disgruntled Berniecrat, did it. And the emails are real and damning.
With the speed at which this scandal is developing, those are both pretty "old" videos. If there was anything to the argument at all, you can bet Trump would be Tweeting about it from the rooftops, especially since his CIA Director met with Binney last year:
A former intelligence official who claims that Russia did not hack the Democratic National Committee in 2016 reportedly met with CIA Director Mike Pompeo in late October at the request of President Donald Trump.
The official was part of a group of intelligence veterans whose report contradicts the findings of the intelligence agencies that investigated the 2016 election hacking. They say DNC emails were leaked by someone on the inside.
Pompeo has a history of siding with Trump on intelligence matters relating to Russia's meddling in the 2016 election.
President Donald Trump reportedly told CIA Director Mike Pompeo to meet with a former intelligence official who argued in a memo that Russia never hacked the Democratic National Committee in July of 2016, and that instead its emails were released due to an internal leak,according to the Intercept. Pompeo met with William Binney, the former National Security Agency official who co-wrote the memo with several other alleged intelligence veterans, on October 24 at the president's urging. According to Binney, Pompeo said Trump told him that if he "want[ed] to know the facts, he should talk to me," referring to Binney. Binney claimed the DNC emails were leaked by someone on the inside, contradicting the findings of intelligence agencies
A high-ranking intelligence source confirmed for the Intercept that the meeting between Binney and Pompeo had taken place at Trump's request. Binney himself acknowledged that he had brought up the case of deceased DNC staffer Seth Rich to Pompeo, referencing a right-wing conspiracy theory that claims that Rich was murdered on the orders of Hillary Clinton's campaign. Donald Trump Jr. also referenced the conspiracy theory in a tweet on Sunday.
Binney was one of several senior intelligence officials who authored a reanalysis of the 2016 DNC hack under the name Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), claiming that the DNC emails released by WikiLeaks in July of 2016 were in fact leaked "by a person with physical access to DNC computer," and not by hackers working for the Russian government, according toConsortium News. Binney and his colleagues wrote that the DNC data was copied at much higher speeds than would be possible through a remote internet hack, and that they were extracted by someone on the east coast of the US. These findings contradict the official findings of the four intelligence agencies that investigated the incident, which all concluded that Russia was behind a remote breach of the DNC's servers conducted by a hacker known as Guccifer 2.0 who reportedly claimed responsibility for the hack last year. In addition, several members of the VIPS group signed an opposing memo thatchallenged its assertions. "A number of VIPS members did not sign this problematic memo because of troubling questions about its conclusions, and others who did sign it have raised key concerns since its publication," the memo read. Pompeo's meeting with Binney fits into a pattern of allegiance to Trump
A former CIA officer said that Trump's insistence that Pompeo, who heads one of the agencies that presented the Russia findings, meet with Binney was highly unusual. "This is crazy. You've got all these intelligence agencies saying the Russians did the hack. To deny that is like coming out with the theory that the Japanese didn't bomb Pearl Harbor," the officer told the Intercept. Dean Boyd, the director of the CIA Office of Public Affairs, said Pompeo "stands by, and has always stood by, the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment." "The Director has been adamant that CIA officers have the time, space and resources to make sound and unbiased assessments that are delivered to policy makers without fear or favor," he said. But Pompeo has emerged as a Trump ally in the intelligence community, and he recently made the Counterintelligence Mission Center report directly to him. The center will likely play a large role in future CIA inquiries into Russia's influence on the 2016 election. He has also stated that Russian meddling likely had no impact on the outcome of the election.
Quote:Over the last few months, Professor Joseph Mifsud has become a feather in the cap for those pushing the Trump-Russia narrative. He is characterized as a "Russian" intelligence asset in mainstream press, despite his declarations to the contrary. However, evidence has surfaced that suggests Mifsud was anything but a Russian spy, and may have actually worked for British intelligence. This new evidence culminates in the ground-breaking conclusion that the UK and its intelligence apparatus may be responsible for the invention of key pillars of the Trump-Russia scandal. If true, this would essentially turn the entire RussiaGate debacle on its head.
To give an idea of the scope of this report, a few central points showing the UK connections with the central pillars of the Trump-Russia claims are included here, in the order of discussion in this article:
Mifsud allegedly discussed that Russia has dirt' on Clinton in the form of thousands of emails' with George Papadopoulos in London in April 2016.
The following month, Papadopoulos spoke with Alexander Downer, Australia's ambassador to the UK, about the alleged Russian dirt on Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky Kensington bar, according to The Times. In late July 2016, Downer shared his tip with Australian intelligence officials who forwarded it to the FBI.
Robert Goldstone, a key figure in the Trump Tower' part of the RussiaGate narrative, sent Donald Trump Jr. an email claiming Russia wanted to help the Trump campaign. He is a British music promoter.
Christopher Steele, ex-MI6, who worked as an MI6 agent in Moscow until 1993 and ran the Russia desk at MI6 HQ in London between 2006 and 2009. He produced the totally unsubstantiated Steele Dossier' of Trump-Russia allegations, with funding from the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
Robert Hannigan, the head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan.
Each of these strands of UK-tied elements of the Russiagate narrative can be substantially dismantled on close inspection. This untangling process leads to the surprising conclusion that UK intelligence services fabricated evidence of collusion in order to create the appearance of a Trump-Russia connection.
This trend begins with Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese scholar with an eclectic academic history who Quartz described as an "enigma," while legacy press has enthusiastically characterized him as a central personality in the Trump-Russia scandal. The New York Times described Mifsud as an "enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia", citing his regular involvement in the annual meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Russian-based think-tank, as well as three short articles he wrote in support of Russian policies.
Mifsud strongly denied claims that he was associated with Russian intelligence, telling Italian newspaper Repubblica that he was a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Clinton Foundation, adding that his political outlook was "left-leaning." Last month, Slate reported Mifsud had disappeared', as did some of the other figures linking the UK to the Trump-Russia scandal. This aspect will be discussed in more detail below.
To contextualize Mifsud's eclectic academic career in terms of intelligence service, it is helpful to note that research undertaken by this author and Suzie Dawson as part of the Decipher You project has repeatedly shown the close ties an outright merger in many cases between the intelligence community and academia. This enmeshment also takes place with think-tanks, NGOs, and in the corporate sphere. In this light, Mifsud's brand of scholarship' becomes far less mysterious.
Mifsud's alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud's LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor's name and biography had been removed from the campus' website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for "years."
WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: "[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo]."
The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: "…Training program on International Security which was organised by Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy." The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant for a number of reasons.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]9493[/ATTACH]
Claire Smith standing with Joseph Mifsud, on the left side of the back row.
First, the training program Smith attended with high-ranking members of the Italian military was organized by the London Academy of Diplomacy, where Jospeh Mifsud served as Director, as noted by The Washington Post. That Claire Smith was training military and law enforcement officials alongside Mifsud in 2012 during her tenure as a member of the UK Cabinet Office Security Vetting Appeals Panel, which oversees the vetting process for UK intelligence placement, strongly suggests that Mifsud has been incorrectly characterized as a Russian intelligence asset. It is extremely unlikely that Claire Smith's role in vetting UK intelligence personnel would lead to her accidentally working with a Russian agent.
The connection between Mifsud and Smith does not end at bumped elbows in a photograph. Mifsud's LinkedIn profile lists the University of Stirling as a place of occupation in connection with his service as Director of the London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD), where Claire Smith served as a visiting professor from 2013-2014 according to her LinkedIn profile. This adds yet another verifiable connection between a man who is at the center of already-flimsy Trump-Russia allegations and a high-ranking British intelligence figure.
Claire Smith also hosted a seminar titled "Making Sense of Intelligence" at the University of Stirling. The event registration form describes her career, including her service as Deputy Chief of Assessments Staff in the Cabinet Office, as a member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and her completion of an eight-year term as a member of the UK Security Vetting and Appeals Panel.
A particularly compelling factor indicating that Mifsud's working relationship with Claire Smith suggests his direct connection with UK intelligence is Smith's membership of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), a supervisory body overseeing all UK intelligence agencies. The JIC is part of the Cabinet Office and reports directly to the Prime Minister. The Committee also sets the collection and analysis priorities for all of the agencies it supervises. Claire Smith also served as a member of the UK's Cabinet Office.
In summary, Mifsud's appearance with Claire Smith at the LINK campus, in addition to her discussion on intelligence at yet another university where Mifsud was also employed, as well as her long-standing role in UK intelligence vetting and her position as a member of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee, would suggest that the roving scholar is not a Russian agent, but is actually a UK intelligence asset. The possibility that such a high-ranking member of this extremely powerful intelligence supervisory group was photographed standing next to a "Russian" asset unknowingly is patently absurd. This finding knocks the first pillar out from under the edifice of the Trump-Russia allegations. It provides an initial suggestion of the UK's involvement in procuring the evidence' that fueled the debacle.
Claire Smith is not the only British official associated with Mifsud. He was a speaker at an event by the Central European Initiative alongside former British diplomat Charles Crawford, whose postings included Moscow, Sarajevo, Belgrade and Warsaw. Crawford is listed as a visiting Professor with the same London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD) where Mifsud served as Director, associated with Stirling University. This adds more weight to the idea that Mifsud is a familiar figure among the upper echelons of the UK intelligence and foreign policy establishment.
The final nail in the coffin of the theory that Mifsud is a Russian spy is this photograph of Mifsud standing next to Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary, as reported by The Guardian. The photograph, taken in October 2017 nearly a full year after the US Presidential election and nine months after Mifsud's name appeared in newspaper headlines worldwide as allegedly involved in Russian meddling in that election is either highly embarrassing for the hapless Mr Johnson, or it's not, because Joseph Mifsud is actually a valued and security-vetted asset to the United Kingdom.
Another aspect of the RussiaGate claims tied to the UK includes the reported conversation between George Papadopoulos and Alexander Downer, Australia's High Commissioner to the UK who was based in London. The pair reportedly spoke about the alleged Russian dirt' on Hillary Clinton while they were drinking at a swanky bar in London. According to Lifezette, Downer is closely tied with The Clinton Foundation via his role in securing $25 million in aid from his country to help the Clinton Foundation fight AIDS.
He is also a member of the advisory board of London-based Hakluyt & Co, an opposition research and intelligence firm set up in 1995 by three former UK intelligence officials and described as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking". Whereas opposition research group Fusion GPS has received all the media attention so far, Lifezette states that Hakluyt is "a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm… with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign".
Yet another UK link to a central pillar of the Trump-Russia narrative is British music promoter Robert Goldstone, who was reported to have organized a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and Russian nationals in June 2016. In the email chain setting up the Trump Tower meeting, both before and after the meeting, the only real evidence' of collusion with Russia come from Goldstone's own emails; none-too-subtle heavy hints about Russian help' dropped by Goldstone but later after the emails became public walked back by him as "hyping the message and… using hot-button language to puff up the information I had been given."
Some have speculated that Goldstone was also involved with British or US intelligence efforts to concoct the RussiaGate narrative. As soon as his name emerged in the press, Goldstone like Christopher Steele and Joseph Mifsud went into hiding'. Multiple press reports claimed he had done so out of fear for his safety, a claim also made about Christopher Steele when his name first became public. Indeed, the UK government issued a DA Notice (a press suppression advisory notice) to the British press to suppress the ex-spy Steele's name. It is notable that, of all the people swept up into the ever-burgeoning RussiaGate investigation, it is only the UK-linked witnesses Mifsud, Steele, Goldstone who have felt the need to go into hiding when their role has been exposed.
The New York Times summed up the contents of Christopher Steele's dossier: "Mr. Steele produced a series of memos that alleged a broad conspiracy between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 election on behalf of Mr. Trump. The memos also contained unsubstantiated accounts of encounters between Mr. Trump and Russian prostitutes, and real estate deals that were intended as bribes."
Press reports also relate that Steele was ordered by an English court to appear for a videotaped deposition in London as part of an ongoing civil litigation against Buzzfeed for publishing the unverified dossier, for which Steele was paid $168,000 by Glenn Simpson's company Fusion GPS, who were in turn paid by Mark Elias of law firm Perkins Coie, lawyers to both the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC.
In his thread on the role of UK intelligence interference in the 2016 US Presidential race, Assange also noted how Christopher Steele used another former UK ambassador to Moscow, Sir Andrew Wood, to funnel the dossier to Senator John McCain in a way that moved the handover out of London, to Canada. It's often said that no one ever really leaves the UK security services when they retire many former' MI6 or MI5 officers' private intelligence businesses are dependent on maintaining good contacts among their ex-colleagues so it is interesting to note that Sir Andrew Wood says he was "instructed" by former British spy Christopher Steele to reach out to the senior Republican, whom Wood called "a good man," about the unverified document.
Lastly, Robert Hannigan, former head of British intelligence agency GCHQ, is another personality of note in the formation of the RussiaGate narrative and its surprisingly deep links to the UK. The Guardian noted that Hannigan announced he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. Jane Mayer in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner.
The central supporting pillars of the RussiaGate allegations hinge on figures with close ties to British intelligence and UK nationals. Even establishment media like The Guardian reported that British spies from GCHQ were the first to alert US authorities to so-called Russian interference. Did the entire narrative originate with UK intelligence groups in an effort to create the appearance of Russian collusion with the Trump Presidential campaign, much as the Guccifer 2.0 persona was used in the US to discredit WikiLeaks' publication of the DNC emails?
If it was not Russia at the heart of a complex operation to topple the Clinton campaign in 2016, then was British Intelligence responsible for creating false narratives and mirage-like evidence' on which the Trump-Russia scandal could hinge?
Put another way, if UK intelligence is responsible for manufacturing the Trump-Russia allegations, it suggests that the UK's efforts formed an international arm running concurrently with domestic US Deep State' efforts to sabotage Trump's presidential campaign and/or oust him once he had been elected.
Is British intelligence involvement in RussiaGate, as outlined above, the international version of CrowdStrike and former FBI figures manufacturing the Guccifer 2.0 persona specifically to smear WikiLeaks via false allegations of a Russian hack of the DNC? Have we been looking in the wrong place at the wrong country to unearth the so-called foreign meddling' in the 2016 US election all along?
Kenneth Whittle contributed to this report.
"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,"
This may be too simple of a question, but....isn't it an age-old practice that when something is too illegal for the CIA to do, they ask the UK (Five Eyes) to do it for them and vice-versa. If this were the case, then it would be the work of the CIA not really MI6 or the UK.
James Lateer Wrote:This may be too simple of a question, but....isn't it an age-old practice that when something is too illegal for the CIA to do, they ask the UK (Five Eyes) to do it for them and vice-versa. If this were the case, then it would be the work of the CIA not really MI6 or the UK.
James Lateer
A perfectly sensible question. And I strongly suspect you're right.
"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:If there is one thing the last 48 hours have proved to me, it's this. Donald Trump is no longer acting President. The coup against Trump has been completed.
I'm going to keep this simple. Follow the dots and try to keep up.
The Deep State's lies are being unraveled in real time thanks to the collective intelligence of the internet' and our ability to synthesize data in real time.
The Skripal poisoning and the latest Syrian "chemical weapons" attack share the same thing both set government officials off rushing to judgment and action before any official investigation could debunk them.
Trump has pissed off everyone in power on both sides of the Atlantic since coming into power.
He has been a material threat to powerful members of the Deep State/Shadow Government who have unmasked themselves as criminals to avoid losing power.
Trump needs to be neutralized. And up to this point he hasn't been, c.f. his tax cuts, deregulation, Executive Orders against Obamacare, TPP, TTIP.
He's attacking the current managed trade schema of Wall St. and the City of London via trade war rhetoric with China and the EU.
Russia collusion narrative has failed completely. Mueller's investigation has now jumped the shark.'
Things were falling into place for Trump, Jinping and Putin for a wider peace framework from North Korea to the Middle East. This does not serve the entrenched powers in D.C., New York, City of London, Riyadh and Beirut.
The operation to destroy Syria is at least a 20 year old idea. It will not be derailed. It goes back to overthrowing Assad's father.
John Bolton is one of the architects of this mess.
Trump's tweets right after the latest announced attack rang false. The word choice was all wrong. Tone right. Words wrong.
This morning's tweets. The same way. "Gas killing Animal?" Who's writing his material now? A third-grader?
These tweets will be used as evidence' against Trump in his upcoming either resignation or removal from office.
They have to in order to countermand his historical public record against intervention in Syria as well as his publicly-stated intentions to pull out of Syria real soon.'
Trump would not telegraph his military posturing like this, c.f. Al-Shairat, MOAB. He's made that point abundantly clear.
These tweets and past events will make a case for him not being fit for office.
After the U.S. and the coalition Obama and David Cameron could not put together in 2013 commits serious war crimes in Syria and the reality in Douma is revealed, i.e. no chemical weapons were even used, Trump will be blamed for rushing to judgment.
He is Commander-in-Chief. His military handlers will turn on him in a heartbeat and all of this will be used as proof' of his insanity.
The headlines are preparing us for this. The GOP is split on him at this point, some openly wishing for him to fail. This
At the announcement of response in Syria Trump looked defeated. He doesn't look like himself. He's done.
The reality is that he's not making these decisions. These decisions were made for him and, like every other President, he's trapped having to sell it.
If he resists, his family dies. His businesses destroyed. Or he can go along, do what he can and after four years leave the office in disgrace.
And he will be blamed for it all.
I told you months ago, when you make a deal with the devil, in this case the Neoconservatives, you do so at your own peril. When Trump reversed course on Afghanistan the fix was in then. He would be allowed, like all presidents, to play around at the edges of domestic policy, but the foreign policy train will not be derailed.
That's what fuels the Empire. That's the game. And the events of the past four days tell you what's what.
"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,"
I am currently reading Gestapochef Heinrich Muller by Bornschein. When Germany created State Political Police and Himmler (along with Goring, Heydrich and Hitler) made it a National Political Police, ie the Gestapo, Nazi Germany came into being.
Ironically, the head of the German Gestapo was named Muller (Mueller, in English). This might even be a genetic inheritance situation, who knows? One thing is for sure. There is a very high, scary percentage of people (Americans) who support a National Political Police in the form of a politicized FBI.
It is in the [possibly fake] journals of Gestapo Chief Heinrich Muller where Muller relates his version of the 1919 Palmer raids. He claims that when President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by his stroke and his wife was running the country, the Justice Department and the nascent FBI took advantage of the situation and staged the illegal, political Palmer Raids against their political opponents and other innocent people.
In the present situation, it looks like high-ups in the FBI, along with [apparently] Obama and even John Kerry were involved in the worst apparent surveillance crime spree since the Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790's. So now their theory is that [for a cover-up] the best defense is a good offense, to quote a basketball metaphor. So they are trying to keep Trump on the ropes to prevent him from revealing the reality of such things as the mysterious mishandled murder of Seth Rich and the surrounding events and emails. Also embarassing is the teaming with British Intelligence to subvert our government.
Too bad people don't know even how and why the National Security State [Deep State] was created and who runs or controls it in 2018. I'm not sure I, myself, have any good answers for the latter.
Today, I contemplated visiting the office of my Congressman, a "progressive", to share my thoughts. Sadly, I feared that if I went there and opened my mouth too far, I could get on an enemies list kept either by the Congressman and/or the FBI. My Congressman is a leading backer of the criminal Andy McCabe, (who is not a bad person, according to my Congressman).
We are in straits here, folks! I do think that Trump will get the best of these Deep State people. Just because they run the National Security State doesn't mean that they are smarter than Trump, especially when it comes to the profession of public relations.
There may be light at the end of the tunnel. If Trump manages to get these corrupt spies off his back, it will be pretty much like the guy in Waukesha Wisconsin who was the only person to survive a case of rabies. It wasn't pretty, but it can have a good outcome.
Just attempted to read the McCabe pdf of the Report of the Inspector General of the FBI. It is pretty much impossible to read. The major takeaway is that the Inspector General finds McCabe guilty of four counts of lying to investigators.
What the Inspector General is NOT going to do is to reveal the large-scale conspiracy to influence or throw the 2016 presidential election.
Apparently this Inspector General process will be analogous to looking for pock-marks on the faces on Mount Rushmore, but failing to notice or mention Mt. Rushmore or whose faces are up there. In other words, a cover-up in plain sight.
We need an aggressive special counsel to look into this FBI and State Department conspiracy. Or maybe some enterprising JFK researcher will retool his efforts to analyze the scope of this anti-democratic deep-state conspiracy.
Three things happened in less than a week. 1) The long expected poison gas attack took place the day before 2) John Bolton was sworn in as the National Security Adviser. The day before the quickly arranged attack on Syria, Scooter Libby is pardoned! Scooter Libby went to jail for perjury in the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA employee with a non-official cover.
Since Bolton and Libby are well known neocons, the bombing of Syria is a continuation of the Yinon Plan of sewing chaos with Israel's neighbors, the coup seems to be celebrated by the singing of Hava Nagila.
No doubt that Trump is being run by other factions.
"We'll know our disinformation campaign is complete when everything the American public believes is false." --William J. Casey, D.C.I
"We will lead every revolution against us." --Theodore Herzl
