#is now paid by russia and the gop

[hussyknee]

Once I stopped wheezing, I went looking for what inspired this tweet. Apparently anyone consistently ripping into Biden and telling anyone why he's trash is "voter suppression". Liberals have all lost their goddamn minds.

[porterdavis]

From the essential Letters from an American by Heather Richardson: 

"Shortly after 1:00 this morning...“[a] 25-year-old engineer named Marko Elez, who previously worked for two Elon Musk companies [SpaceX and X], has direct access to Treasury Department systems responsible for nearly all payments made by the US government.”

What follows is a journey into the unthinkable. A half-dozen downy-cheeked codebros in the employ of a South African billionaire have seized control of the beating heart of the entire US financial system -- the computers that write 90% of the checks issued by the government as well as those that receive payments to the government.

Included in that, of course, is the complete financial data of every taxpayer and every corporation in the country. The leverage there for coercion, extortion, outright blackmail as well as general malicious mischief in delaying or cancelling payments is almost incalculable. And this is on a national level.

It's probably already too late. Those codebros, sucking down Red Bulls and sleeping on mattresses carted into the server rooms by their boss, have doubtless loaded all the data up into the cloud. There will be no Keifer Sutherland beating a ticking 24 clock arriving in the nick of time to press the cancel button. The horses are out of the barn.

The response so far has been laughable. The general public bears the bulk of the responsibility of this for petulantly choosing against voting for a Black woman, instead supporting a felonious conman. The Democrats in Congress know what's happening yet can only muster a few megaphones to stand in front of the Treasury building (the scene of the crime) and bark slogans to the believers.

The kids in the server rooms are there illegally, no matter what pretext Donnie or Elon attempt to sell. They need to be dragged out by force. I'm not talking about the Brooks Brothers republicans who swarmed the counting rooms in Florida in 2000 and swayed the election. I'm talking the SDS students who seized the administration buildings at Brown and Columbia in the 60's. Yes, it is illegal and yes, there could be physical confrontations with militia and/or police, but as the GOP itself used to say -- freedom isn't free.

Now for those of you who might call me out for calling for 'good trouble' from the relative comfort and safety of Canada, please be aware that I actually did walk the walk, paid in blood. Chicago Convention 1968. Campus shutdown and interrogation by the FBI in 1969. Other actions for which the statute of limitations has hopefully expired but will remain private. But do the math. I'm old. Nonetheless if circumstances seem to me to dictate it, I will break my boycott of the US and head to DC to at least provide cannon fodder.

But I really want to call on every concerned citizen to DO SOMETHING. Call your congressman (don't write or email, they view that as too easy to be meaningful). Show up at the field offices.

The American Democracy experiment is 250 years old and has suffered a grievous wound in the last three weeks. It's survival hangs in the balance. The best options if it fails is the US becomes Hungary, an 'illiberal democracy'. Next on the scale would be becoming like Russia, a totalitarian state run by a dictator and the oligarchs.

Last, of course, is Gilead.

DO SOMETHING.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

[deadweight-at7am]

I need everyone who keeps openly wondering about why the Trump administration is doing X,Y,Z (going after Federal workers, going after Medicaid, going after public lands) to stop openly wondering. If it wasn't obvious to you before now, it should be obvious to you now. Trump and the Entire GOP are trying to steal as much wealth as they can from the American public. They're doing it openly, they're doing it brazenly and they're not going to stop. They've been held off slightly be SOME judicial orders but even then... there isn't much the judicial branch is willing to do.

Why is Trump cozying up to Russia?

Russia helped him to win the election. He has been paid off and having favors done for him by Putin for many, many years. This is not news. We knew this (at least those of us who are politically aware).

Now that he's in power he's doing three things:

Paying back the people who he owes favors to. Putin, his little GOP friends, Big business, billionaire (Musk, Zuckerberg, etc)

Allowing it to be easy to steal wealth from the country with as little guardrails as possible.

Undermining the entire democratic system by undoing the checks and balances we had previously, or some semblance of, to cause destabilization.

"Trump is going to hurt Veterans!" He knows, he doesn't care.

"Trump is going to hurt poor people." He knows, he doesn't care.

"They're going to hurt our conservation efforts for public lands! Our water will be polluted and more animals endangered!" He knows, he doesn't care.

If you were ever under the illusion Trump or the Republican party ever cared about you, the American people, any of their constituents, I want to ask you why did you EVER think that? It's been blatant from the get-go. He is a failed business man that didn't pay his contracts, he is a convicted felon, he is a sexual predator and rapist... where and why did you think he would give a single damn about public causes?

If you're curious abut his obsession with Panama and Greenland, it's clearly to help Russia. Look at this site that explains it all very clearly. Russian embargo and shipping routes.

He is causing crises like trade wars to manipulate the stock market so his buddies can buy the dip and make MORE money. The Trump meme coin was a cash grab. This is all a cash grab. It's to get back at their "enemies", take money from the people and cause as much evil and destruction as possible to people they never cared about in the first place because... he's clearly evil.

DUH. Stop wondering. Start doing something.

[canichangemyblogname]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Matt Davies

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 30, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

This afternoon, the House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the government for 45 days—until just before Thanksgiving—by a vote of 335 to 91. 

The maneuver was a huge blow to the MAGA caucus that was demanding dramatic cuts to the government, the embrace of their border policies, and elimination of Ukraine aid in exchange for keeping the government open. The measure the House passed had almost none of that. It was a clean continuing resolution to fund the government at 2023 levels for another 45 days…with two important exceptions: it added disaster funding, and it stripped out additional funding for Ukraine’s war against Russia.  

House speaker Kevin McCarthy’s move was enough of a surprise that Democrats had to scramble even to read it, but it essentially means that McCarthy had to turn away from the MAGA Republicans to whom he has been catering and turn to the Democrats for the votes needed to fund the government. 

All but one of the Democrats voted in favor; the lone “no” vote came from Representative Mike Quigley (D-IL), the co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, whose district has a high percentage of Ukrainian Americans. The unity of the Democrats is notable and a sign of their strength going forward.

In contrast, the Republicans remain divided, but after months of catering to the extremists, today the rest of the conference asserted itself. One hundred and twenty-six Republicans voted in favor of the measure; 90 voted no. That 90 included all the usual suspects on the far right. The vote to pass the measure was a clear rebuke to the MAGA Republicans who had forced their colleagues in swing districts to vote for dramatic and unpopular cuts in services and then refused to fund the government anyway. 

House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said, “The American people have won. The extreme MAGA Republicans have lost. It was a victory for the American people and a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists who throughout the year have tried to hijack the congress.”

McCarthy, explaining his sudden about-face to work with the Democrats, also blamed the extremists. It was very clear he had done all he could to work with them, he said, but “if you have members in your conference that won’t let you vote for appropriation bills, doesn’t [sic] want an omnibus, and won’t vote for a stopgap measure so the only answer is to shut down and not pay our troops, I don't want to be a part of that team. I want to be part of a conservative group that wants to get things done.” 

More colloquially, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wrote: “Here’s what went down: we just won a clean 45 day gov extension, stripped GOP’s earlier 30% cuts to Social Security admin etc, staved off last minute anti-immigrant hijinks, and averted shutdown (for now). People will get paychecks and MTG threw a tantrum on the way out. Win-win[.]”

Still at stake is funding for Ukraine, but members promise to make sure that happens. “We will get the Ukraine funding next,” Representative Eric Swalwell (D-CA) wrote. “This is a 45-day bill to make sure government is open and troops/cops/air-traffic controllers etc get paid. With the same leverage we used to bear back MAGA, we will keep Ukraine in the fight.”

The issue of funding for Ukraine is not a small one. Former Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) noted that it was on September 30, 1938, that British prime minister Neville Chamberlain announced he would not stand in the way of Adolf Hitler’s annexation of the Sudentenland, a key move in Hitler’s rise. “Members of the House and Senate who are voting to deny Ukraine assistance on the 85th anniversary of Neville Chamberlain’s 1938 “peace in our time” speech should read some history,” she wrote. “Appeasement didn’t work then. It won’t work now.”

The votes should be there for Ukraine aid. Just two days ago, members of the House voted 311 to 117 for Ukraine funding, and the Senate, too, strongly favors Ukraine aid. But there is no doubt the removal of this funding signals that Trump and the MAGA Republicans favor a foreign policy that helps Russian president Vladimir Putin. 

The biggest loser in today’s vote was former president Trump, who had urged his loyalists to shut down the government until they got all their demands. He is an agent of chaos and recognized that hurting the nation—including our credit around the world—would make voters more likely to turn against the sitting president. 

Getting himself or someone like him back into the White House is becoming his only hope for turning back his legal troubles, especially now that a judge has decided that he, his older sons, a number of associates, and the Trump Organization engaged in fraud that requires the dissolution of many of his businesses. That is a psychic blow as well as a financial one, and he cannot afford either.

The biggest winner is the American people, not only because Congress has agreed to do as the vast majority of us wish and fund the government. It’s far too early to say Republican leadership might really be breaking away from the MAGA crowd, but for today, at least, we can see what’s possible. It is clear at the very least that McCarthy cannot hold the speakership without Democratic votes. 

Tonight the Senate also passed the continuing resolution, by an overwhelming vote of 88 to 9. The nine were all Republicans. 

President Biden is expected to sign the measure. Tonight he released a statement saying that the agreement would prevent “an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans. This bill ensures that active-duty troops will continue to get paid, travelers will be spared airport delays, millions of women and children will continue to have access to vital nutrition assistance, and so much more.” “But I want to be clear,” he continued: “[W]e should never have been in this position in the first place. Just a few months ago, Speaker McCarthy and I reached a budget agreement to avoid precisely this type of manufactured crisis. For weeks, extreme House Republicans tried to walk away from that deal by demanding drastic cuts that would have been devastating for millions of Americans. They failed.” Biden noted that despite the bill’s lack of aid for Ukraine, McCarthy and the overwhelming majority of Congress have been strong supporters of Ukraine. He said, “We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted. I fully expect the Speaker will keep his commitment to the people of Ukraine and secure passage of the support needed to help Ukraine at this critical moment.”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[scott1984fp2]

Bad @Tesco & @MarksAndSpencer Who Paid For 1st & Recruitment 1st Nakba On Behalf Of: Tory Party Lords Knights Dames Sirs Madams, Russia, Chinese Dictatorship, North Korea, Vatican Catholicism Pope's Italian Mafia, USA GOP Republicans Conservatives, French Nobles, India, Iran, & Now Its Marks And Spencer Plc, Tesco, @BritishGas , @BP_Plc , @MarksAndSpencerUSA / @MarksAndSpencee , BRICS Project 2025 & Brazil South Africa Are Pawns 😢😢😢😢😢😢💔💔💔💔💔💔💔

[potatoes83]

The Spin Cycle: Let's talk about government shutdowns...

Once again, the mainstream media, including Fox News is pearl clutching and going into straight up hysterics about the grim spectre of a government shutdown. Explaining how it's the GOP, the far right who joined with Democrats to sink the noble Speaker McCarthy's temporary spending bill, bringing us to the BRINK OF DISASTER. Using words like CRISIS, CHAOS, and other Pulitzer-worthy spin.

But there's a few things happening here. First off, what is a government shutdown exactly? Well, for starters, we're talking about the Federal government. And the vast majority of your day-to-day interactions with government are provided by local, county, or state governments, or private/government companies like the post office. Simply put, your mail will still be delivered. Your garbage will still be picked up. Your water will still flow, your electricity will still run, your roads will still be maintained, your day-to-day life won't really change all that much. And I would point out that we've been through a couple of these before in my lifetime. Remember the big one a few years back? National parks were closed, because they couldn't afford the staff to be there. In the case of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore here in Michigan, which happens to be unstaffed during the off-season anyway, they actually paid security to sit there and keep people out and tell them that it was closed. That's right. Because of the shutdown, they couldn't afford to run an unstaffed park, but they could afford to pay security to stand there and tell you it was closed. Tell me you're not trying to prove a point without using those words. 🤦‍♂️

And I think that's really the big part of it, not to go all down the rabbit hole on you, but everyone's in a panic because oh my God the government is SHUTTING DOWN. Forgetting that only a few short years ago this happened, and what affected you exactly? How quickly we forget. And I really think that's why all the hysteria is out there, because if people actually stoped for a minute and realized how little they actually need the Federal government, how during a shutdown their lives continued on same as they ever did, they might start wondering why it's so bloated / why we pay so much in taxes to support it. All non-essential workers will be laid off, hundreds of thousands of people, you're telling me you're running an organization with hundreds and thousands of non-essential people??? Anywhere I've ever worked, if I was not essential, I wouldn't be there.

Now yes, you're dealing with Social Security checks that won't go out, the military that won't be paid, so on and so forth, those evergreen soundbytes and talking points, but understand that I'm not a heartless bastard sitting here with some sort of anti-government myopia. Because they have the power to fix this. They're already talking about how we could have a shutdown and still be able to fund Ukraine because of some last minute legal tap dances in the appropriations process. Now first and foremost, no, actually I'll get to that in a minute. Point is, we could have this horrible government shutdown where you can't go to a national park, and still fund social security. And still fund our military. This is doable. The term shutdown is actually a gross overcharacterization.

But they have tied every single negotiation to additional funding for Ukraine, nevermind completely ignoring doing anything about our unfathomable debt load. Now step back and put a pin in whether you agree with the war between Russia and Ukraine or not, first off, since when is Russia our enemy? The Cold War is over, and last I checked, Congress had not declared us to be in open war with Russia. But getting even more simple, more soup to nuts, you're telling me that it is utterly essential that we fund the Ukrainian military before we fund our own? Or our senior citizens? That is some bullshit, and that should make anyone on any political spectrum stop and take notice.

The point is, as always, they're playing games. The difference this time around is that they're not even bothering to cover it up, and people still aren't seeing it. Like I'm really not trying to be that guy in the room, but when you can legitimately, legally, and relatively easily fund these things, our brave and selfless military, or those citizens of this country who have worked all their lives holding up their end of a promised bargain, but you choose not to because that would undermine your narrative, well you are just straight up fucking evil. Like there's no other word for it. You are literally using human beings as bargaining chips in your desperate attempt to hold sway and power.

Look, in this doomsday world where we are constantly told that the planet is on fire, that we are responsible for the suffering of everybody else who suffers, and that there is basically no hope, we're all done for, sometimes you really need to take a step back and focus on you. Just you. And for the vast majority of us, what you are going to find is come Monday morning, you will wake up. And you will be able to go to work. And you will be able to go to the grocery store, or pick up fast food, or order pizza, your house will still be there, the lights will still be on, the sink will still shoot water, the drain will still take it away. And all this, and countless other mundane things that you have come to count on every day of your life will continue to pass despite the fact that the government is shut down. 🥔

[newstfionline]

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Hot times (Bloomberg) Global warming-induced heat waves are worsening other problems around the world: Ships in the Panama Canal are being asked to lighten their loads, and wildfires in Canada’s top energy-producing province of Alberta have knocked out a fifth of the nation’s natural gas output. Scorching temperatures in Malaysia are pushing up food inflation—and putting pressure on government bonds. It’s a great time to be in the air conditioning business.

Debt ceiling negotiators race to cement deal before June 5 deadline (Washington Post) The U.S. government will run out of money to meet all its payment obligations on June 5, if Congress does not raise the debt ceiling, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen told lawmakers on Friday, providing a more precise forecast to lawmakers trying to break an impasse. Her new projections came as lawmakers struggled to strike a deal that would raise the nation’s borrowing limit and hold spending down, which Republicans have said is necessary to get their support to raise the borrowing limit. The new default date should not be seen as a reprieve, but rather a more firm deadline that “ensures the urgency” of reaching a deal within days, said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), one of the key GOP negotiators. (Later: President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached an “agreement in principle” to raise the nation’s legal debt ceiling, but now Congress must rush to approve the spending cuts package in a matter of days to avert default.)

Teen workers are in high demand for summer and commanding better pay (AP) Teens have long been vital to filling out the summertime staffs of restaurants, ice cream stands, amusement parks and camps. Now, thanks to one of the tightest labor markets in decades, they have even more sway, with an array of jobs to choose from at ever higher wages. In April, nearly 34% of Americans aged 16 to 19 had jobs, according to government data. That compares with 30% four years ago, the last pre-pandemic summer. More jobs are available for those who want them: There are roughly 1.6 jobs open for every person that is unemployed, according to the Labor Department. In normal times, that ratio is about 1:1. Maxen Lucas, a graduating senior at Lincoln Academy in Maine, had his first job at 15 as a summer camp dishwasher, followed by a stint as a grocery bagger before getting into landscaping. He said young workers can be choosier now. “After COVID settled down, everyone was being paid more,” said the 18-year-old from Nobleboro who’ll head off to Maine Maritime Academy this fall.

US to give away free lighthouses as GPS makes them unnecessary (Guardian) Ten lighthouses that for generations have stood like sentinels along America’s shorelines protecting mariners from peril and guiding them to safety are being given away at no cost or sold at auction by the federal government. The aim of the program run by the General Services Administration is to preserve the properties, most of which are more than a century old. The development of modern technology, including GPS, means lighthouses are no longer essential for navigation, said John Kelly of the GSA’s office of real property disposition. And while the Coast Guard often maintains aids to navigation at or near lighthouses, the structures themselves are often no longer mission critical. Yet the public remains fascinated by the evocative beacons, which are popular tourist attractions, beloved local landmarks and the subject of countless photographers and artists, standing lonely but strong against tides and storms, day and night and flashing life-saving beams of light whatever the weather.

Russia’s gold (Reuters) Russia produced an estimated 325 tonnes of gold in 2022, and exported 116.3 tonnes of it from February 24, 2022, to March 3 of this year. Russia is not exactly the most favorable trading partner of the world, so the overwhelming majority of it, 99.8 percent of Russia’s gold exports, went to just three countries: predominantly the United Arab Emirates (75.7 tonnes worth $4.3 billion, up from 1.3 tonnes in 2021) and then China and Turkey, who split the balance. Russia’s been hawking its gold at about 1 percent under market rates, making it a favorable trade to those willing to subvert the global sanctions.

Ukrainian children carry on (AP) The two children squinted to see through the thick smoke that hung in the air after a deafening blast shook their small home in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region. The pair, ages 9 and 10, called out for their father. Only eerie silence followed. Then Olha Hinkina and her brother, Andrii, rushed to the bomb shelter, as they had been taught. When the booms stopped and the smoke cleared, they found their father on the porch—motionless and covered in blood after being struck by a Russian projectile. The two siblings join a generation of Ukrainian children whose lives have been upended by the war. Russia’s full-scale invasion has subjected them to constant bombardment, uprooted millions from their homes and turned many into orphans. At least 483 children have lost their lives and nearly 1,000 have been wounded, according to figures from Ukraine’s general prosecutor’s office. Meanwhile, UNICEF says an estimated 1.5 million Ukrainian children are at risk of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues, with potentially lasting effects. Nearly 1,500 Ukrainian children have been orphaned, the National Social Service of Ukraine said. When Andrii Hinkin remembers his hometown, he doesn’t recall the bombs, the smoke or the thunderous explosions. He remembers it as a beautiful village. Asked what are his biggest dreams, he responds timidly. “I want to grow up.”

US rebukes Kosovo for escalating tensions, Serbia puts army on alert (Reuters) The United States and allies rebuked Kosovo for escalating tensions with Serbia on Friday, saying the use of force to install mayors in ethnic Serb areas undermined efforts to improve troubled relations with neighbouring Serbia. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic placed the army on full combat alert and ordered units to move closer to the border following clashes on Friday between Kosovan police and protesters opposed to the ethnic Albanian mayors. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken criticized the government of Kosovo for accessing the municipal buildings by force and called on Prime Minister Albin Kurti to reverse course. In a statement, Blinken said Kosovo’s actions went against U.S. and European advice and had “sharply and unnecessarily escalated tensions, undermining our efforts to help normalize relations between Kosovo and Serbia and will have consequences for our bilateral relations with Kosovo.”

Suspicious Software (Guardian) According to a joint investigation by multiple international research groups, spyware developed by NSO Group, an Israeli cyber-intelligence firm, has been used for the first time in a military conflict. NSO Group’s Pegasus, a military-grade spyware that allows users to hack into and remotely control any cell phone, was used to target multiple people involved with the Armenia-Azerbaijan border conflict from October 2020 to December 2022. The victims include journalists, human rights advocates, and a U.N. official. One former Armenian foreign ministry spokesperson was hacked over 27 times between October 2020 and July 2021, a period when she was still active as a diplomat, taking part in crucial negotiations regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh war. She was reportedly involved “squarely in the most sensitive conversations and negotiations related to the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis,” including ceasefire talks involving France, the U.S., and Russia. While NSO Group claims it investigates reports of its spyware being abused by governments, it has been continually abused around the world. The governments of India, Poland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Mexico have all employed the spyware for different purposes, including surveilling opposition leaders and foreign diplomats.

Amid Turkey election, a Syrian man’s murder stokes fear among refugees (Washington Post) The campaign posters promising to deport Syrian refugees appeared on the morning that Saleh Sabika was killed. They were all across the city by the time he began his final shift in a country that didn’t want him anymore. Grainy CCTV footage from the Istanbul sock factory around 10 a.m. shows a fistfight between Sabika, a 28-year-old Syrian, and a Turkish colleague. Not long after, eyewitnesses said, the colleague grabbed a knife from a nearby restaurant and returned to stab Sabika in the chest. He was dead by the time he reached the hospital. “He wasn’t just killed by a weapon,” said his childhood friend Islam, who spoke on the condition that he be identified by his nickname, fearing for his own safety. “He was killed by the words of all those politicians who planted the ideology against us in people’s heads,” he continued. “It won’t be the last death like this.” As Turkey prepares for a landmark runoff in its presidential election, the fate of people like Sabika and Islam are on the ballot. After years of economic crisis here, Syrian refugees and asylum seekers have become easy targets for leaders across the political spectrum, who contend that immigrants are changing the nation’s character and should be returned to their home country by force. Even before election season, a rising tide of forced deportations, police harassment and violent hate crimes had left many Syrians feeling under siege.

Israeli agents conducted raid against militants in civilian area, killing a child (Washington Post) The traffic was barely moving on March 16 in central Jenin, an unusually busy Thursday afternoon in the West Bank. With the holy month of Ramadan just days away, restaurants were full and shoppers wove between cars as they hustled from store to store. A father pushed a stroller past a silver sedan. Inside the car, Israeli undercover agents were in place, waiting to carry out an operation against two Palestinian militants who were walking nearby. Omar Awadin, age 14, pedaled by on his bicycle, having just completed his last errand of the day. Moments later, four plainclothes security forces burst from a second silver sedan nearby in pursuit of the militants and opened fire. Such scenes are increasingly common in the West Bank, where more than 3 million Palestinians live under Israeli military occupation and a new generation of militants has risen to prominence. Israel says raids like this one are vital to disrupting terrorist networks and protecting its citizens from attack; Palestinian officials say they are war crimes that should be referred to the International Criminal Court. Israeli military operations have long been a fixture of life here, but they once happened mostly at night, and usually ended in apprehensions. This year, under the most right-wing government in Israeli history, a growing number of incursions have been carried out during the day, in densely packed urban areas such as Jenin. As of May 15, 108 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, including militants and civilians, had been killed by Israeli forces, according to the United Nations, more than double last year’s toll from the same period. At least 19 were children—including Omar, who was fatally shot during the raid in Jenin.

[mojave-pete]

COLLUSION

COLLUSION How The Obama Administration Set In Motion Democrats’ Coup Against Trump Rep. Devin Nunes realized the purpose of Obama’s dossier. 'Devin figured out in December what was going on,' says Langer. 'It was an operation to bring down Trump.' By Lee Smith OCTOBER 28, 2019 The following is an excerpt from Lee Smith’s book out October 29, “The Plot Against the President: The True Story of How Congressman Devin Nunes Uncovered the Biggest Political Scandal in U.S. History.”

AFTER DONALD TRUMP was elected forty-fifth president of the United States, the operation designed to undermine his campaign transformed. It became an instrument to bring down the commander in chief. The coup started almost immediately after the polls closed.

Hillary Clinton’s communications team decided within twenty-four hours of her concession speech to message that the election was illegitimate, that Russia had interfered to help Trump.

Obama was working against Trump until the hour he left office. His national security advisor, Susan Rice, commemorated it with an email to herself on January 20, moments before Trump’s inauguration. She wrote to memorialize a meeting in the White House two weeks before.

On January 5, following a briefing by IC leadership on Russian hacking during the 2016 Presidential election, President Obama had a brief follow-on conversation with FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates in the Oval Office. Vice President Biden and I were also present.

President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities “by the book.” The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.

From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia. . . .

The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.

The repetition of “by the book” gave away the game—for there was nothing normal about any of it.

Rice wrote an email to herself. It commemorated a conversation from two weeks before. The conversation was about the FBI’s investigation of the man who was about to move into the White House—an investigation from which Obama was careful to distance himself. During the conversation, the outgoing president instructed his top aides to collect information (“ascertain”) regarding the incoming administration’s relationship with Russia.

“To any rational person,” says Nunes, “it looks like they were scheming to produce a get-out-of-jail-free card—for the president and anyone else in the White House. They were playing Monopoly while the others were playing with fire. Now the Obama White House was in the clear—sure, they had no idea what Comey and Brennan and McCabe and Strzok and the rest were up to.”

Boxing Trump in on Russia Meanwhile, Obama added his voice to the Trump-Russia echo chamber as news stories alleging Trump’s illicit relationship with the Kremlin multiplied in the transition period. He said he hoped “that the president-elect also is willing to stand up to Russia.”

The outgoing president was in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel to discuss everything from NATO to Vladimir Putin. Obama said that he’d “delivered a clear and forceful message” to the Russian president about “meddling with elections . . . and we will respond appropriately if and when we see this happening.”

After refusing to act while the Russian election meddling was actually occurring, Obama responded in December. He ordered the closing of Russian diplomatic facilities and the expulsion of thirty- five Russian diplomats. The response was tepid. The Russians had hacked the State Department in 2014 and the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2015. And now Obama was responding only on his way out.

Even Obama partisans thought it was weak. “The punishment did not fit the crime,” said Michael McFaul, Obama’s former ambassador to Russia. “The Kremlin should have paid a much higher price for that attack.”

But the administration wasn’t retaliating against Russia for interfering in a US election; the action was directed at Trump. Obama was leaving the president-elect with a minor foreign policy crisis in order to box him in. Any criticism of Obama’s response, never mind an attempt to reverse it, would only further fuel press reports that Trump was collaborating with the Russians.

Spreading Intelligence to Spring Leaks In the administration’s last days, it disseminated intelligence throughout the government, including the White House, Capitol Hill, and the intelligence community (IC). Intelligence was classified at the lowest possible levels to ensure a wide readership. The White House was paving the way for a campaign of leaks to disorient the incoming Trump team.

The effort, including the intended result of leaks, was publicly acknowledged in March 2017 by Evelyn Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration.

Obama’s biggest move against Trump was to order CIA director John Brennan to conduct a full review of all intelligence relating to Russia and the 2016 elections. He requested it on December 6 and wanted it ready by the time he left office on January 20. But the sitting president already knew what the intelligence community assessment (ICA) was going to say, because Brennan had told him months before.

Brennan’s handpicked team of CIA, FBI, and NSA analysts had started analyzing Russian election interference in late July. In August, Brennan had briefed Harry Reid on the dossier and may have briefed Obama on it, too. Earlier in August, Brennan sent a “bombshell” report to Obama’s desk.

When Brennan reassembled his select team in December, it was to have them reproduce their August findings: Putin, according to Brennan, was boosting the GOP candidate. And that’s why only three days after Obama ordered the assessment in December, the Washington Post could already reveal what the intelligence community had found.

“The CIA,” reported the December 9 edition of the Post, “has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.”

The story was the first of many apparently sourced to leaks of classified information that were given to the Post team of Adam Entous, Ellen Nakashima, and Greg Miller. The reporters’ sources weren’t whistle-blowers shedding light on government corruption— rather, they were senior US officials abusing government resources to prosecute a campaign against the newly elected commander in chief. The article was the earliest public evidence that the coup was under way. The floodgates were open, as the IC pushed more stories through the press to delegitimize the president-elect.

A Wave of Leak-Sourced Stories All Saying the Same Thing The same day, a New York Times article by David E. Sanger and Scott Shane echoed the Post’s piece. According to senior administration officials, “American intelligence agencies have concluded with ‘high confidence’ that Russia acted covertly in the latter stages of the presidential campaign to harm Hillary Clinton’s chances and promote Donald J. Trump.”

A December 14 NBC News story by William M. Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden reported that “Russian President Vladimir Putin became personally involved in the covert Russian campaign to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, senior U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News.”

The ICA that Obama ordered gave political operatives, the press, and his intelligence chiefs a second shot at Trump. They’d used the Steele Dossier to feed the echo chamber and obtain surveillance powers to spy on the Trump campaign. The dossier, however, had come up short. Trump had won.

But now, on his way out of the White House, Obama instructed Brennan to stamp the CIA’s imprimatur on the anti-Trump operation. As Fusion GPS’s smear campaign had been the source of the preelection press campaign, the ICA was the basis of the postelection media frenzy. It was tailored to disrupt the peaceful transition of power and throw the United States into chaos.

Because Trump hadn’t been elected by the US public, according to the ICA, but had been tapped by Putin, he was illegitimate. Therefore, the extraconstitutional and illegal tactics employed by anti-Trump officials were legitimate. The ultimate goal was to remove Trump from office.

“If it weren’t for President Obama,” said James Clapper, “we might not have done the intelligence community assessment . . . that set off a whole sequence of events which are still unfolding today.”

Nunes agrees. “The ICA,” he says, “was Obama’s dossier.”

Changing the Intelligence Assessment Nunes is sitting in his office in the Longworth House Office Building along with his communications director, Jack Langer, a forty-six-year-old former book editor and historian with a PhD from Duke University.

“The social media attacks on Devin began shortly after the election,” Langer remembers. “They’re all hinting at some vast conspiracy involving Russia that the chairman of the Intelligence Committee is part of. And we have no idea what they’re talking about.”

Nunes points out that his warnings about Russia fell on deaf ears for years. “And all of a sudden I’m a Russian agent,” says the congressman.

Now Langer and Nunes see that the attacks were first launched because the congressman had been named to Trump’s transition team. “I put forward [Mike] Pompeo for CIA director,” says Nunes. “He came from our committee.”

The attacks on Nunes picked up after the December 9 Washington Post article. The assessment provided there was not what the HPSCI chairman had been told. The assessment had been altered, and Nunes asked for an explanation. “We got briefed about the election around Thanksgiving,” he says. “And it’s just the usual stuff, nothing abnormal. They told us what everyone already knew: ‘Hey, the Russians are bad actors, and they’re always playing games, and here’s what they did.’”

By providing that briefing, the IC had made a mistake. When it later changed the assessment, the November briefing was evidence that Obama’s spy chiefs were up to no good. “I bet they’d like to have that back,” says Nunes. “They briefed us before they could get their new story straight.”

‘They Kept Everyone Else Away from It’ Nunes acknowledges that he was caught off guard by many things back then. “We still thought these guys were on the up and up,” he says. “But if we knew, we’d have nailed them by mid-December, when they changed their assessment. ‘Wait, you guys are saying this now, but you said something else just a few weeks ago. What’s going on?’”

After the Post story, Nunes wanted an explanation. “We expressed deep concern, both publicly and privately,” says Langer. “We demanded our own briefing to try to determine whether that Post story was true or false. They refused to brief us. They said, ‘We’re not going to be doing that until we finish the ICA.’”

Nunes says the fact that the IC conducted an assessment like that was itself unusual. “I don’t know how many times they’d done that in the past, if ever,” he says. “But if the IC is operating properly, when someone says what can you tell me on X or Y or Z, they have it ready to pull up quickly. The tradecraft is reliable, and the intelligence products are reliable.” That was not the case with the ICA. There were problems with how the assessment had been put together.

“If you really were going to do something like an assessment from the intelligence community, then you’d get input from all our seventeen agencies,” says Nunes. “They did the opposite. It was only FBI, CIA, NSA, and DNI. They siloed it, just like they had with Crossfire Hurricane. They kept everyone else away from it so they didn’t have to read them in.”

‘Manipulation of Intelligence for Political Purposes’ Nunes released several statements in the middle of December. The HPSCI majority, read a December 14 statement, wanted senior Obama intelligence officials “to clarify press reports that the CIA has a new assessment that it has not shared with us. The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.”

After the statements warned of political foul play in the IC’s assessments, the social media attacks on Nunes became more regular. “They were constant,” says Langer.

Anti-Trump operatives recognized that Nunes was going to be a problem. The HPSCI chair had previously called out the IC for politicizing intelligence. “They said that we had defeated Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syria,” says Nunes, “and I knew that wasn’t true. Then they withheld the Osama bin Laden documents to conceal that Al Qaeda worked with Iran, because the administration was protecting the Iran deal. So when I saw them changing this assessment of the 2016 election in midstream, I knew it was the same old trick: they were politicizing intelligence.”

The speed with which Brennan’s handpicked analysts produced the ICA and then got a version of it declassified for public consumption was another sign that something wasn’t right. “All throughout Obama’s two terms, his IC chiefs aren’t paying attention to Russian actions,” says Nunes. “We give them more money for Russia, which they don’t use. But now they know so much about Putin that they manage to produce a comprehensive assessment of Russian intentions and actions regarding election interference in a month—at Christmastime, when everything slows down. And then they produce a declassified version in a manner of weeks. None of this is believable.”

Three different versions of the ICA were produced: an unclassified version, a top secret one, and another highly compartmentalized version. According to a January 11, 2017, Washington Post story by Greg Miller, Ellen Nakashima, and Karen DeYoung, an annex summarizing the dossier was attached to the versions that were not declassified.

‘Designed to Have a Political Effect’ The FBI had been working from Steele’s reports for more than half a year. Including the dossier along with the ICA would provide Comey with ammunition to take on the president-elect. Both he and Brennan were manipulating intelligence for political purposes.

“A lot of the ICA is reasonable,” says Nunes. “But those parts become irrelevant due to the problematic parts, which undermine the entire document. It was designed to have a political effect; that was the ICA’s sole purpose.”

The assessment’s methodological flaws are not difficult to spot. Manufacturing the politicized findings that Obama sought meant not only abandoning protocol but also subverting basic logic. Two of the ICA’s central findings are that:

Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump. Putin and the Russian government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. To know preferences and intentions would require sources targeting Putin’s inner circles—either human sources or electronic surveillance. As Nunes had previously noted, however, US intelligence on Putin’s decision-making process was inadequate.

But even if there had been extensive collection on precisely that issue, it would be difficult to know what was true. For instance, the closest you can get to Putin’s inner circle is Putin himself. But even capturing him on an intercept saying he wanted to elect Trump might prove inconclusive. It is difficult to judge intentions because it is not possible to see into the minds of other people. How would you know that Putin was speaking truthfully? How would you know that the Russian president didn’t know his communications were under US surveillance and wasn’t trying to deceive his audience?

Quality control of information is one of the tasks of counterintelligence—to discern how you know what you know and whether that information is trustworthy. There was no quality control for the Trump-Russia intelligence. For instance, Crossfire Hurricane lead agent Peter Strzok was the FBI’s deputy assistant director of counterintelligence. Instead of weeding out flawed intelligence on Russia, the Crossfire Hurricane team was feeding Steele’s reports into intelligence products. Yet the ICA claimed to have “high confidence” in its assessment that “Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President- elect Trump.” What was the basis of that judgment?

According to the ICA:

Putin most likely wanted to discredit Secretary Clinton because he has publicly blamed her since 2011 for inciting mass protests against his regime in late 2011 and early 2012, and because he holds a grudge for comments he almost certainly saw as disparaging him.

“Most likely” and “almost certainly” are rhetorical hedges that show the assessment could not have been made in “high confidence.” Putin may have held a grudge against Clinton, but there is no way of knowing it.

The supporting evidence deteriorates more the farther the ICA purports to reach into Putin’s mind.

Beginning in June, Putin’s public comments about the US presidential race avoided directly praising President-elect Trump, probably because Kremlin officials thought that any praise from Putin personally would backfire in the United States.

This is absurd. Part of the evidence that Putin supported Trump is that he avoided praising Trump. It is difficult enough to determine intentions by what someone says. Yet the ICA claims to have discerned Putin’s intentions by what he did not say.

There is no introductory philosophy class in logic where reasoning like that would pass muster. Yet Brennan’s handpicked group used it as the basis of its assessment that Putin had helped Trump.

Moscow also saw the election of President-elect Trump as a way to achieve an international counterterrorism coalition against the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

This may be an accurate description of how Putin saw Trump. But Trump’s predecessor also wanted to coordinate anti- ISIS operations with Moscow. On this view, Trump would have represented a continuation of Obama’s ISIS policy. Why would this make Trump’s victory suspicious to Obama’s intelligence chiefs?

Curious Inaccuracies about Russia’s RT Network The ICA also pointed to documentary evidence of Putin’s intentions: English-language media owned by the Russian government, the news site Sputnik, and the RT network, were critical of Clinton.

State-owned Russian media made increasingly favorable comments about President-elect Trump as the 2016 US general and primary election campaigns progressed while consistently offering negative coverage of Secretary Clinton.

Curiously, just days before the election, the informant the US government sent after the Trump campaign praised the Democratic candidate in an interview with Sputnik. “Clinton would be best for US-UK relations and for relations with the European Union,” Stefan Halper told the Kremlin-directed media outlet. “Clinton is well-known, deeply experienced, and predictable. US-UK relations will remain steady regardless of the winner although Clinton will be less disruptive over time.”

The ICA includes a seven-page appendix devoted to RT, the central node, according to the document, of the Kremlin’s effort to “influence politics, fuel discontent in [sic] US.”

Adam Schiff appeared on RT in July 2013. He argued for “making the FISA court much more transparent, so the American people can understand what’s being done in their name in the name of national security, so that we can have a more informed debate over the balance between privacy and security.”

RT’s editor in chief, Margarita Simonyan, is a master propagandist, according to the ICA. The document fails to mention that Simonyan heads another Moscow-owned media initiative, Russia Beyond the Headlines, a news supplement inserted into dozens of the West’s leading newspapers, including the New York Times. Russia Beyond the Headlines has been delivered to millions of American homes over the last decade. By contrast, RT’s US market share is so small that it doesn’t qualify for the Nielsen ratings. Virtually no one in the United States watches it.

Taking the logic of Brennan’s handpicked team seriously would mean that the publishers of the New York Times played a major role in a coordinated Russian effort to elect Donald Trump.

‘It Was an Operation to Bring Down Trump’ Nunes realized even then the purpose of Obama’s dossier. “Devin figured out in December what was going on,” says Langer. “It was an operation to bring down Trump.”

There was no evidence that any Trump associate had done anything improper regarding the Russians, and Nunes was losing patience. “We had serious things the committee wanted to do,” he says. “With Trump elected, we could do some big stuff, like with China.”

Still, it was important for HPSCI to maintain control of the Russia investigation. Otherwise, Democrats and Never Trump Republicans were likely to get their wish to convene a bipartisan commission to investigate Russian interference—with the purpose of turning it on Trump.

“Before they started floating the idea of a special counsel, the big idea was a special commission like the 9/11 Commission,” says Langer. It was outgoing secretary of state John Kerry who first came forward with the proposal.

The point was to change the power dynamic. “In a normal committee,” says Langer, “the majority has the power, and that happened to be us. They wanted to strip our power and make it fifty-fifty.”

“Bipartisan” was a euphemism for “anti-Trump.” “It would have been a complete joke,” says Nunes. “A combination of partisan hacks from the left and people who hated Trump on the right.”

Democrats led by Schiff and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer were joined by the late John McCain, the most active of the Never Trump Republicans. After the election, the Arizona senator had instructed his aide David Kramer to deliver a copy of the Steele Dossier to Comey.

“God only knows who they’d have populated that committee with,” says Nunes. “Anyone they could control. It would have been a freak show.”

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan defended HPSCI’s independence. On the Senate side, Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr had only one move. To deflect demands for an independent commission, he effectively ceded control of the Senate investigation to his vice chair, Democrat Mark Warner.

No Evidence of Collusion Years Later Still, Nunes believed that all the talk of Trump and Russia was a waste of time. “They kept promising us evidence of collusion, week after week, and they came up with nothing.”

Nunes’s disdain for the ICA forced the Crossfire Hurricane team’s hand. “Right around the time that they came out with the ICA, they kept saying that we were waiting on something to show us, something important that was coming in,” he says. “They said it was some significant figure who they couldn’t quite track down yet.”

But the FBI knew exactly where its missing link was, the piece of evidence that they thought would convince hardened skeptics like Nunes that collusion was real. They didn’t have to chase him down, because he was sitting at home in Chicago. He submitted to a voluntary interview January 27 and without a lawyer because he had no idea what the FBI had in store for him.

The Crossfire Hurricane team was figuring how they were going to set up the Trump adviser they’d used to open up the investigation in July 2016: George Papadopoulos.

Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet. Photo White House / public domain

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

And it's important people realize Pelosi is far from the only one making statements meant to intimidate people into silence.

I'll admit that I've mainly kept an eye out for my state politicians and the White House statements, but there are several that are troubling.

After John Fetterman's former staffers sent an anonymous letter asking him to put conditions on aid to Israel, his chief of staff dismissed this by saying no one elected staffers. Present staffers received an email reminding them that they could not publicly share opinions that differed from Fetterman's positions unless they did so anonymously. This may well be the policy, but considering the letter was anonymous and the signees were not current staffers, it certainly sends a message that Fetterman does not welcome dissenting opinions.

He has said: "Other Democrats that are now vocalizing and saying these incredibly unhelpful kind of things—why? What's your goal? Are you trying to diminish the president? Are you trying to strengthen Trump? It's much easier and much less effort to just write a check for Trump."

He told South Africa to "sit this one out" and told James Carville to "shut the fuck up" when Carville said Biden might loss.

The White House likened proPalestinian protesters to the Nazis in Charlottesville.

Biden labeled a proPalestinian protester who interrupted him as a "MAGA Republican."

Then we have the House censuring Rashida Tlaib and passing a resolution that equates antizionism to antisemitism.

The message is clear: Like the GOP, Republican politicians do not support freedom of speech. They may be avoiding saying those exact words, but they are trying to intimidate people into silence through labeling them as antisemitic, MAGA Republicans, or being paid by Russia.

It is so transparent it would be hilarious if it wasn't being done to commit genocide and if it wasn't a tactic that has worked a thousand times before. McCarthyism.

I hate dealing with the state of modern politics so much man

[ignorantsanonymous]

Leaked notes obtained by the Telegraph say that when Theresa May asked for Trump to take a strong stand after Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal, Trump replied “I’d rather follow than lead.”

Everybody works for somebody; we all know who Donald works for now. There is no benefit for him in this behavior because it doesn’t help his base or his donors, so he must owe Putin big time for something else. He’s been funded by Russian money since 1984:

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.

► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.

► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)

► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.

► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."

► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower

► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.

► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.

Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:

► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. "I don't care, I believe Putin"

► Trump met in secret with Putin the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.

► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.

► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.

► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.

► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7

► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.

► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty

► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.

► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)

► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

August 18, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

It is still early days, and the picture of what is happening in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has regained control of the country continues to develop.

Central to affairs there is money. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with about half its population requiring humanitarian aid this year and about 90% of its people living below the poverty line of making $2 a day.

The country depends on foreign aid. Under the U.S.-supported Afghan government, the United States and other nations funded about 80% of Afghanistan’s budget. In 2020, foreign aid made up about 43% of Afghanistan’s GDP (the GDP, or gross domestic product, is the monetary value of all the goods and services produced in a country), down from 100% of it in 2009.

This is a huge problem for the Taliban, because their takeover of the country means that the money the country so desperately needs has dried up. The U.S. has frozen billions of dollars of Afghan government money held here in the U.S. The European Union and Germany have also suspended their financial support for the country, and today the International Monetary Fund blocked Afghanistan’s access to $460 million in currency reserves.

Adam M. Smith, who served on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, told Jeff Stein of the Washington Post that the financial squeeze is potentially “cataclysmic for Afghanistan.” It threatens to spark a humanitarian crisis that, in turn, will create a refugee crisis in central Asia. Already, the fighting in the last eight months has displaced more than half a million Afghans.

People fleeing from the Taliban threaten to destabilize the region more generally. While Russia was happy to support the Taliban in a war against the U.S., now that its fighters are in charge of the country, Russia needs to keep the Taliban’s extremism from spreading to other countries in the area. So it is tentatively saying supportive things about the Taliban, but it is also stepping up its protection of neighboring countries’ borders with Afghanistan. Other countries are also leery of refugees in the region: large numbers of refugees have, in the past, led countries to turn against immigrants, giving a leg up to right-wing governments.

Canada and Britain are each taking an additional 20,000 Afghan women leaders, reporters, LGBTQ people, and human rights workers on top of those they have already volunteered to take, but Turkey—which is governed by strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdogan—is building a wall to block refugees, and French President Emmanuel Macron asked officials in Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey to prevent migrants reaching their countries from traveling any further. The European Union has asked its member states to take more Afghan refugees.

In the U.S., the question of Afghan refugees is splitting the Republican Party, with about 30% of it following the hard anti-immigrant line of former president Donald Trump. Others, though, especially those whose districts include military installations, are saying they welcome our Afghan allies.

The people fleeing the country also present a problem for those now in control of Afghanistan. The idea that people are terrified of their rule is a foreign relations nightmare, at the same time that those leaving are the ones most likely to have the skills necessary to help govern the country. But leaders can’t really stop the outward flow—at least immediately—because they do not want to antagonize the international community so thoroughly that it continues to withhold the financial aid the country so badly needs. So, while on the streets, Taliban fighters are harassing Afghans who are trying to get away, Taliban leaders are saying they will permit people to evacuate, that they will offer blanket amnesty to those who opposed them, and also that they will defend some rights for women and girls.

The Biden administration is sending more personnel to help evacuate those who want to leave. The president has promised to evacuate all Americans in the country—as many as 15,000 people—but said only that we would evacuate as many of the estimated 65,000 Afghans who want to leave as possible. The Taliban has put up checkpoints on the roads to the airport and are not permitting everyone to pass. U.S. military leaders say they will be able to evacuate between 5000 and 9000 people a day.

Today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark A. Milley tried to explain the frantic rush to evacuate people from Afghanistan to reporters by saying: “There was nothing that I or anyone else saw that indicated a collapse of this army and this government in 11 days.” Maybe. But military analyst Jason Dempsey condemned the whole U.S. military project in Afghanistan when he told NPR's Don Gonyea that the collapse of the Afghan government showed that the U.S. had fundamentally misunderstood the people of Afghanistan and had tried to impose a military system that simply made no sense for a society based in patronage networks and family relationships.

Even with Dempsey’s likely accurate assessment, the statement that U.S. military intelligence missed that a 300,000 person army was going to melt away still seems to me astonishing. Still, foreign policy and national security policy analyst Dr. John Gans of the University of Pennsylvania speculated on Twitter that such a lapse might be more “normal”—his word and quotation marks—than it seems, reflecting the slips possible in government bureaucracy. He points out that the Department of Defense has largely controlled Afghanistan and the way the U.S. involvement there was handled in Washington. But with the end of the military mission, the Defense Department was eager to hand off responsibility to the State Department, which was badly weakened under the previous administration and has not yet rebuilt fully enough to handle what was clearly a complicated handoff. “There have not been many transitions between an American war & an American diplomatic relationship with a sovereign, friendly country,” Gans wrote. “Fewer still when the friendly regime disintegrates so quickly.” When things started to go wrong, they snowballed.

And yet, the media portrayal of our withdrawal as a catastrophe also seems to me surprising. To date, at least as far as I have seen, there have been no reports of such atrocities as the top American diplomat in Syria reported in the chaos when the U.S. pulled out of northern Syria in 2019. Violence against our Kurdish allies there was widely expected and it indeed occurred. In a memo made public in November of that year, Ambassador William V. Roebuck wrote that “Islamist groups” paid by Turkey were deliberately engaged in ethnic cleansing of Kurds, and were committing “widely publicized, fear-inducing atrocities” even while “our military forces and diplomats were on the ground.” The memo continued: “The Turkey operation damaged our regional and international credibility and has significantly destabilized northeastern Syria.”

Reports of that ethnic cleansing in the wake of our withdrawal seemed to get very little media attention in 2019, perhaps because the former president’s first impeachment inquiry took up all the oxygen. But it strikes me that the sensibility of Roebuck’s memo is now being read onto our withdrawal from Afghanistan although conditions there are not—yet—like that.

For now, it seems, the drive to keep the door open for foreign money is reining in Taliban extremism. That caution seems unlikely to last forever, but it might hold for long enough to complete an evacuation.

Much is still unclear and the situation is changing rapidly, but my guess is that keeping an eye on the money will be crucial for understanding how this plays out.

Meanwhile, the former president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, has surfaced in the United Arab Emirates. He denies early reports that he fled the country with suitcases full of cash.

—-

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/world/asia/ashraf-ghani-uae-afghanistan.html

https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/afghanistan/overview

https://asiatimes.com/2021/08/the-root-of-russias-fears-in-afghanistan/

https://www.sigar.mil/pdf/quarterlyreports/2021-07-30qr-section2-economic.pdf#page=14

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-afghanistan-funding-int/u-s-other-aid-cuts-could-imperil-afghan-government-u-s-watchdog-idUSKBN2B72WJ

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-will-have-to-talk-to-taliban-but-wary-of-recognition/a-58890698

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021/08/17/treasury-taliban-money-afghanistan/

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/08/18/business/afghanistan-lithium-rare-earths-mining/index.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/russia-taliban-afghanistan-putin/2021/08/17/af53a9ec-ff4c-11eb-87e0-7e07bd9ce270_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/18/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/aid-groups-warn-of-possible-refugee-crisis-in-afghanistan-far-beyond-western-evacuation-plans/2021/08/18/0d7094fc-0058-11ec-825d-01701f9ded64_story.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/06/21/1008656321/how-does-the-u-s-help-afghans-hold-on-to-gains-while-withdrawing-troops

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/18/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/

https://www.reuters.com/world/canada-accept-20000-vulnerable-afghans-such-women-leaders-human-rights-workers-2021-08-13

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/us/politics/memo-syria-trump-turkey.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/18/afghan-refugee-debate-fractures-gop-506135

​​https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/18/politics/us-must-rely-on-taliban-for-evacuation/index.html

John Gans @johngansjrFrom what I'm seeing and hearing, the reasons for the mess in Afghanistan might be far more 'normal' than many are suspecting/suggesting -- driven more by typical pathologies in government & Washington. More to be learned. But a few thoughts. 1/x

533 Retweets2,195 Likes

August 18th 2021

https://www.npr.org/2021/08/15/1027952034/military-analyst-u-s-trained-afghan-forces-for-a-nation-that-didnt-exist

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[arcticdementor]

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 

…

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 7/x

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 9/x

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem. 13/x

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 16/x

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution.

…

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares?

…

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x

The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew.

…

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct. 33/x

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. /end

[quakerjoe]

A CUPPA JOE 01 November 2020

The Sound of Democracy Dying

Today, I heard the cheers for fascism by way of dozens of car horns blaring along the main street downtown here, a block from my home in rural Vermont. Dozens of them, driving up and down the main drag, being loud and obnoxious, like they all are, all excited for trumplefuckstick because they're either that hateful of a nation they claim to be so proud of and love so much or because they're far too gone and stupid to know what actual fascism looks like. It's the 21st century recreation of the thousands of cheering fans who packed audiences to hear Hitler or Mussolini speak once upon a time.

The sounds is an abysmal comparison of how things are in the US, represented by a noise typical of gridlock traffic or a multi-car pileup on a major highway. Neither are good; people get upset and some even get killed. That's exactly what this is now as we break records because 45 failed to take Covid seriously while he drained our nation's coffers to enrich himself and make the poor even poorer. Still, these fuckwits are all jazzed up for him; not because they're smart on any level but because to them it's all a game of 'own the libtards' and nothing more.

This is the sound of democracy dying. Dozens of car horns screaming in the gray, cold afternoon. Loads of flags flapping in the wind like their own lips do, spouting ignorance, bigotry, racism and hate. It's right here in my own quiet little Vermont town.

Our days are clearly numbered here in the US. All that bullshit about the bible and loving one another is horse shit. All that rambling on you hear about liberty and justice for all is a farce. We're slipping away into the next big villain nation in world history and here, the crowds (a minority one at that) think they're the good guys, just like all those fanatical Germans and Italians in the 1930's. The stench on the air of history is exactly the same.

The GOP knows how to wield and hold onto power, even when they're the minority. Democrats, for the most part, have all sold us out. We're sliding rapidly to totalitarianism, plutocracy, fascism and every other bad 'ism' out there is swallowing us whole. While those who still try to play fair and by the rules are constantly being shafted, the darkness is swallowing us all whole here and nobody is coming to save us. Not a god, not Biden, not Democrats... Nobody. 

When a Progressive/Liberal state like Vermont has these kinds of fascists having a horn rally, clogging up traffic in their auto-circle-jerk in such numbers, it's a clear sign of the times that we've lost the Republic. A blood bath is coming, rule of law is soon to collapse, and the USA is about to be a thing of the past and nobody's going to want to get near this shithole until the dust settles and that's going to be a while. Perhaps Russia and China will dabble more in affairs here as the two carve up what pieces fall to the wayside during this the way we did when the USSR collapsed.

When asked, a long time ago, what it is that we've won in our independence, Benjamin Franklin stated that we've got a Republic "for as long as we can keep it". While the "Great Experiment" had no expiration date and initially was set up to grow and prosper to be a better place, it has become abundantly clear that this is not the land of the free or the home of the brave. We know when this Republic died and continues to wheeze like a bunch of car horns sounding as the nation's dying breaths come in labored, desperate gasps. Like a patient of Covid-19, we're in quarantine from the rest of the world, dying on a respirator made of parts from corporate news and political corruption. We're not allowed visitors and we're going to die, as a nation, a long, drawn-out, lonely death before the USA finally flatlines.

Don't worry though. Those rich folk that got all the tax breaks and hid their money off-shore will be just fine. While we tear into one another, black v. white, religious v. atheist/agnostic, LGBTQ v. straight whites, they'll be dining well from afar as they watch the blood sport that "We the People" will be engaging in. The masses here never figured out that their true enemy has been the rich fucks who keep us divided; instead we, as a people, just keep giving them more money so they'll let people here be more free to hate one another and kill each other more freely. Of course, this only applies to white folk. Forget it if you're not a white, hetero, "christian" male in this nation!

The upcoming election is going to be a shit show unlike any we've seen in our history. We already know this. The polls closing, the gerrymandering, the open, blatant cheating techniques of the GOP and inaction of the Dems is patently, painfully obvious. If this was a boxing match, you'd know that the GOP couldn't win a fair fight and the Dems got paid to take a dive. It's that simple. So, we're going to see the shittiest election ever in our lifetimes. This administration has done just about everything they could to destroy the election process and if 45 loses, it'll be a court battle that he can't lose now. It's almost a waste of time and effort. It's "zugzwang"; all their moves have led up to this and the proverbial Left is about to be put in checkmate in only a few short days and there's literally nothing that can be done about it shy of a more "French" solution. Fascism is about to win. Democracy is about to die and you know what? These assholes still think fascism is some form of democracy and liberty all while thinking democratic socialism is evil. That's how stupid the US has gotten.

As we approach "Game Over, Man!" I just wanted to point out this bit of prattling on because you, dear reader, are either part of the choir I'm preaching to or one of the fucktards out there honking horns and flying flags all jazzed up to watch the nation fall and fascism prevail. "That's the way it is" and "Goodnight and good luck".

Once all of the horn honking has died down and all is said and done, it all comes down to a line from the poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot when he wrote “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

[alexsmitposts]

Conservative Americans Now Labeled “Domestic Terrorists” The long-awaited transition of power finally occurred in the United States on January 20, 2021 when Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were sworn in as president and vice president. Two weeks before on January 6, a large number of Donald Trump’s supporters rallied in Washington DC to protest what they believed to be a stolen election by the Democrats. A small fraction of the demonstrators were let into (or broke into) the Capitol Building and staged a riot which was eventually ended by security forces with a small number of casualties. It is clear that the media and political reactions and the possible long-term effects on freedom of speech are more interesting than the riot itself. Speaking with Geoff Young, a US antiwar activist who ran for the Kentucky House of Representatives in 2012, and several times for the US House of Representatives, and Governor of Kentucky in 2015 and 2019, some additional insight can be added. He hasn’t won any elections yet, but he has discovered in campaigning how corrupt the Democratic and Republican Parties are when it comes to vote rigging. He currently has active lawsuits against both the Kentucky “Democratic” Party (KDP) and the Republican Party of Kentucky (RPK). Mr. Young, what is going on here? One just has to carefully evaluate the media, not only MSM. It’s easy to notice that the framing of the “domestic terrorism” issue is being promoted by public television and radio stations as well as the usual mainstream media corporations, most of which are openly biased in favor of the Democrat Party. As Glenn Greenwald wrote in a January 19, 2021 article called, “The New Domestic War on Terror Is Coming,” “The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against al-Qaeda here at home.” Are they suggesting that the CIA should fire missiles from drones at members of the Proud Boys and Antifa without any kind of legal due process? Greenwald went on to note that “former Facebook security official Alex Stamos” emphasized “the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against US citizens that they used to remove ISIS (banned in Russia) from the internet — in collaboration with law enforcement — and that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist ‘conservative influencers’.” Glenn Greenwald: “Meanwhile, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — not just one of the most dishonest members of Congress but also one of the most militaristic and authoritarian — has had a bill proposed since 2019 to simply amend the existing foreign anti-terrorism bill to allow the US Government to invoke exactly the same powers at home against ‘domestic terrorists’.” In a recent airing of Frontline: American Reckoning – A PBS NewsHour Special Report, the narrator said within the first 30 seconds of the show: “Provoking a mob of his supporters, President Trump upended a long tradition of peacefully transferring power.” That anti-Trump framing continued throughout the entire 57-minute broadcast. Do you buy this narrative? There’s no real evidence that Trump ever incited his supporters to break into the Capitol, however, and quite a bit of evidence that he urged them to remain peaceful, nonviolent and loud. If that is the case, then the Democrats’ second impeachment of Donald Trump was as constitutionally and legally unsound as the first one. Both impeachments were exercises in pure partisan politics designed to benefit the fortunes of the Democrat Establishment and damage Trump and the GOP as much as possible. With social media and government agencies working in tandem to restrict foreign and domestic news, and to label journalists who are not toeing the US line as foreign agents, the First Amendment is under attack. President Biden has not expressed any interest in dropping all charges against Julian Assange. Was this a false flag? It is not at all clear who turned the loud, outdoor demonstration on January 6, 2021 into a riot in the Capitol Building. It could have been the Trump supporters, but it could also have been the Capitol Police, other anti-Trump security forces, international experts in color revolutions such as George Soros, the Trump-hating FBI, the Trump-hating CIA, or the DNC. If anti-Trump organizations were the ones who got the large rally to turn violent, the riot would have been a coup against Donald Trump as an individual, not against the American republic. One is reminded of what happened in 1933 – the burning of the German Reichstag. When the German parliamentary building went up in flames, Hitler harnessed the incident to seize power – and that means gaining control of the media and cracking down with laws “to protect society,” and the Constitutional Order (“Ordnung” in German). For this reason, it is not only appropriate but necessary to revisit history, because whenever citizens and politicians feel threatened by executive overreach, the Reichstag Fire is referred to as a cautionary tale. Young concludes, “It seems likely that the Democrats are using the January 6 riot as an excuse to impose something like martial law on the American people and to stifle all criticism of the incoming Democrat administration (or regime).” Analysis and Commentary It is doubtful that any expected FBI investigation into the causes of the riot will ever incriminate the FBI or crisis actors but the very talk may be used to invoke some kind of crackdown on those who “take exception” with the new government and its policies and methods. It should be noted that the PBS broadcast also examined the impact of President Donald Trump’s rhetoric throughout his presidency and the government’s missed opportunities to manage the spread of misinformation and the rise of domestic terrorism. These are valid issues to be discussed; however, all who supported Trump cannot be labeled as fringe groups, totally disgruntled or domestic terrorists. As Time Magazine so accurately describes, “Rolling back those freedoms has served in other countries as a prelude to authoritarianism, and it is easy enough to imagine a future US President deciding to label his opponents terrorists before stripping them of their fundamental rights.” It is an overreaction to be calling for a domestic war on terrorism. Nonetheless, it is easy to collectively take words and actions of Trump’s supporters, even when they renounce the results of a [supposedly] free and fair election and label such discontents as being against the Constitution or legal order. However, let us not forget the double standard, and how former President Trump attempted “to designate Antifa, a loose band of left-wing radicals, as a terrorist organization, a move that civil liberties groups successfully resisted. The larger purpose, however, appears to paint all those groups in the wake of the storming of the Whitehouse on any group which supported Trump, and label all those who will not recant their support as potential domestic terrorists or conspiracy theorists. Even PBS admits there have been double standards in how such breaches of government building are addressed. It would be nice to believe that freedom of speech will continue to mean that people are free to engage in certain forms of protected speech, including criticizing the government and politicians, without control or reprisal by the government, provided they don’t call for direct violence or overthrow. However, that may be short lived, and now Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, plans to reintroduce the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House last fall but went nowhere in the Senate. Its purpose is to authorize dedicated domestic terrorism offices within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to analyze and monitor domestic terrorist activity and require the Federal Government to take steps to prevent domestic terrorism. Biden is keeping to the script, by stating soon thereafter, “don’t dare call them protesters. They were a riotous mob, insurrectionists, {they were] domestic terrorists: It’s that basic. It’s that simple.” However, it is not that simple, in light of the emotions running high in the US. These words may come back to haunt him and his administration, as a self-fulfilling prophesy. And now Biden is just as guilty as Trump for dividing an already divided people, with his own fiery rhetoric: “No one can tell me that if it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesting, they wouldn’t have been treated very, very differently from the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol,” the president-elect said The timing and choice of wording is most inopportune and inappropriate, as much of what the US has accused other nations of doing, controlling media, and its people, is fast becoming a US production. In fact it is as if Biden is borrowing pages from Trump own play book. This does not come at at good time, with social media and government agencies working in tandem in restricting foreign news and domestic news, and labeling journalists who are not toeing-the-US line as foreign agents. There have even been instances of where native born US citizens have been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department simply for writing articles and publishing them on Russian media sites. All the while, the plurality of the US media is at its lowest point ever, controlled, manipulated, bought and paid for. There is no longer a fine line between news and blatant propaganda. Being labeled as part of a group that really believes that the US election result was tainted now may put you on a list for a visit from Homeland Security or some anti-terrorist organization. There was no Trump Era! He was merely a papier-mâché cut out puppet, and who out of his bottomless narcissism reined over the corporate media news and talk shows with his Mad Hatter Tweets, using the same Twitter that mobilized the Arab Spring masses to screw up their countries too, a pre-test before fanning it out on a declining ready for figuratively beheading much of the US domestic population over their political preferences. The post Trump period is being compared on PBS to post Civil War, “incitement of insurrection,” and “how US President Grant realized how the KKK was an essential threat to everything that had been achieved by that bloody war, and various commentators claim that that is what the Federal Government is now facing. Those who stormed the White House are described (43:00) as “white nationalists, and there is a need to aggressively pursue and root out this cancerous menace of white nationalism and the “kind of” white extremist militias that are really a functionally revanchist movement in American Society.” All things considered, and the swing of the pendulum, things will not get better with Biden anytime soon, maybe even worse, because the ruling elite in their “close knit societies,” have it all mapped out in detail. It appears as some of the Capitol guards let the fed agent provocateurs, and if some of the crisis actors just waltz right in … and keep in mind that the Reichtag Fire was not engineered by the guards circling and within the Reichtag. There are too many unanswered questions, just look at the US Congress, most of the powerful have been in office for over 50 years, and never leave office, and the newbies, especially in the Democrat party, are former military or CIA trained or Intel Democrats, young and frisky. It is a threatening time (even more than during Trump), and that era is fading; however, it seems America may be in for some rough times with the crackdown on civil liberties because of COVID and the NEW domestic terrorist label. Protecting the American people from themselves is the NEW doublespeak.