American Politics > Obama weaponized the FBI as Soros contributed to Russiagate

 

This is not only Deep State but Dark State, only capable by powerful godless entities

FBI was ‘weaponized’ in Obama-Clinton conspiracy to ‘stop Trump’ – top US senator

The newly declassified Russiagate document exposes a deep state coverup, Chuck Grassley says

FILE PHOTO. Chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, arrives for the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings. ©  Getty Images / CQ-Roll Call, Inc / Bill Clark

The newly released annex to John Durham’s 2023 Special Counsel report exposes the “weaponization” of the FBI under the Obama administration and the agency’s involvement in an attempt to ruin Donald Trump's presidency in 2016, US Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) has said.

The senator, a key figure behind the release of the 29-page document, made the remarks to Fox News on Thursday shortly after the annex was published. The file outlines the alleged effort by the Hillary Clinton campaign to falsely accuse Trump of colluding with Russia, and the FBI’s failure to properly investigate the activities despite having solid intelligence.

“[The Durham annex] gives us information that the FBI had eight to ten years ago that they never followed up on. It actually brings attention to the fact that there was either a Clinton conspiracy to make this happen, or Russian disinformation. Either way, it was an attempt to stop Trump, and it proves that the FBI had a hand in it,” Grassley stated.

Declassified Durham Annex Released by Chairman Grassley

The annex provides “evidence of the great depth that the deep state will go to cover up weaponization that was going on in the FBI and the executive branch of government, generally, under the Obama administration,” the senator suggested. America needs “maximum transparency” on the 2016 presidential race “schemes” that were hatched “to either stop Trump from being elected or… to ruin his presidency,” he added.

READ MORE: Declassified document links Russiagate hoax to Soros

According to the document, the FBI obtained intelligence on “confidential conversations” between then-Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and individuals at George Soros’ Open Society Foundations in early 2016, yet did not take any action. The conversations reportedly detailed a plan to discredit the then-Republican candidate by preparing “scandalous revelations of business relations between Trump and the Russian Mafia.”

The agency allegedly obtained further evidence on the matter in mid-2016, including several “likely authentic” emails sent by Leonard Benardo, senior vice president of the Open Society Foundations. The emails further detailed the plot to “disseminate the necessary information through the FBI-affiliated ‘attic-based’ technical structures,” and appeared to predict a future FBI probe into Russiagate, suggesting the agency “will put more oil into the fire” later on.

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Russiagate Spells Trouble for the American ‘Deep State’

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10 Nov, 2021 09:54

FILE PHOTO. © Reuters / Carlo Allegri

By Glenn Diesen, Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Follow him on Twitter @glenn_diesen

Allegations he was secretly a Russian-backed Manchurian candidate haunted former US President Donald Trump's time in office. Now, though, long after he left the White House, the claims have gone from farce to clear falsification.

The indictment of Igor Danchenko on Thursday is the latest development in the painfully slow unravelling of the conspiracy behind the Russiagate hoax. At the same time, however, it is also a new window into the workings of the so-called ‘deep state’ forces that bought into the lies and wielded them like weapons against Trump’s presidency.

The scandal began, all accounts show, when Democratic contender Hillary Clinton’s campaign hired a private research firm, Fusion GPS, to dig up dirt on its political rival – then-Republican presidential contender Trump. Fusion GPS contracted the work out to former British MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

They didn’t get value for money, it seems. The subsequent Steele Dossier has since been exposed as a complete fraud – and one that wasn’t even well put together. Its damning ‘evidence’ referred to payments from the Russian consulate in Miami, despite there being no Russian consulate in Miami. Stories of secret servers, Trump staffers meeting with Moscow’s agents in Prague, and with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy, secret pee-pee tapes: the list was never-ending. All have been proven false.

Its damning ‘evidence’ referred to payments from the Russian consulate

in Miami, despite there being no Russian consulate in Miami.

What’s almost worse is that US intelligence knew it all boiled down to gossip and fraud, with then-CIA Director John Brennan warning President Obama in July 2016 that the Clinton campaign was effectively fabricating a Russia-Trump conspiracy theory.

The Russiagate accusations and investigations didn’t lead anywhere in terms of proving a conspiracy between Trump and the Kremlin. But the smears were successful in terms of delegitimising Trump, casting him as a Russian agent throughout his presidency and preventing any rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. Russiagate undermined key American institutions and intensified confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.

Probing the conspiracy theorists

The tables appear to be turning against the Russiagate hoaxers and their media enablers as new investigations explore how the greatest scandal in US history – a foreign agent in the White House – turned out to be one big deception.

FBI Director James Comey gave Congressional testimony in December 2018, explaining how he came to give credibility to the obviously fraudulent Steele Dossier. Comey managed to say he “can’t remember,” “can’t recall,” and “doesn’t know” no fewer than 245 times. It has also been revealed that the DNC never gave the FBI access to its servers, allegedly hacked by Russians, and instead outsourced the investigation to the private corporation CrowdStrike.

The president of CrowdStrike, ex-FBI official Shawn Henry, had already admitted in a testimony in December 2017 that there was no evidence of Russian hacking. This testimony was not made public until May 2020, and in the intervening time House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff continued to maintain there was evidence of Russian hacking.

The first indictment went out against cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann in September 2021. Sussmann reported to the FBI that be had uncovered a secret server linking the Trump organisation to Russia’s Alfa-Bank, which was treated by the media as a smoking gun. Sussmann was indicted for lying to the FBI because he presented himself as an independent cyber expert when he peddled the false server story, when in reality he was hired by the Clinton campaign.

Danchenko and Brookings Institution

Special Council John Durham has now arrested and indicted Igor Danchenko, an analyst at the Brookings Institution. Danchenko was the primary source behind the infamous Steele Dossier ordered by Hillary Clinton. He has been indicted for lying to the FBI, as he claimed the information later featured in the dodgy dossier came from a phone call and meeting in New York with the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce’s president at the time, Sergey Millian.

Millian insists that no such conversation ever took place, either by phone or in person. The FBI investigation concluded that the phone call was made up, and Danchenko had repeatedly emailed Millian but never received a response. Danchenko’s trip to New York did not involve a meeting with Millian, and Danchenko was actually with his family at Bronx Zoo when the meeting was supposed to have taken place.

Danchenko worked for several years for Fiona Hill, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, an anti-Russian hawk, and perhaps the most devastating witness against Trump in the impeachment hearings of 2019. Hill assisted in advancing Danchenko’s career and introduced him to Christopher Steele and Democratic Party operative Chuck Dolan. The latter contact is important, as Danchenko is also indicted for lying to the FBI about speaking to him.

The Brookings Institution is one of the oldest and influential think tanks in Washington, of the kind initially envisioned as an intermediary to connect politicians with academics so the decision-maker could make informed decisions. However, this world of influence has since become a billion-dollar industry due to the development of a business model in which policy gets put up for sale. The Brookings Institution is now seemingly involved in the largest political fraud in US history.

The deep state on trial?

The term ‘deep state’ can easily be dismissed as a conspiracy theory of a hidden government, although in reality it merely denotes a bureaucracy that can act autonomously and pursue independent policies. Officials often, out of choice or necessity, operate to some extent independently from the elected officials they are supposed to serve.

For example, NATO’s 30 member states keep co-operating irrespective of the constant cycles of elections that rotate new defence ministers around the table. Some things happen regardless of who is in charge.

The bureaucracy can lean on everything from think tanks, intelligence agencies, and a myriad of institutions who inform the politicians and implement their decision-makers. The undemocratic bureaucracy acting under the democratic institutions can be considered a deep state – a government within a government that ensures continuity of the status quo.

The undemocratic bureaucracy acting under the democratic institutions can be considered a deep state – a government within a government that ensures continuity of the status quo.

When the status quo is disrupted, the deep state may act independently against the policies of the democratic institutions. Russiagate revealed that the election of Trump, with the stated intention of “getting along with Russia,” triggered the bureaucracy to act independently of democratic institutions. Intelligence agencies laundered gossip and smears by presenting them as credible; investigations were initiated on deeply flawed evidence to undermine the legitimacy of an elected representative; military leaders bragged about withholding information from the president; the media acted as soldiers in an information war by uncritically pushing bizarre narratives; and one of Washington’s major think tanks is now involved in the fabrication of the entire Russiagate scandal.

The status quo of anti-Russian policies and narratives usually enjoys bipartisan consensus and therefore goes on without criticism or fanfare. However, the mistake made by Russiagaters was to turn hysteria over Moscow into a political weapon, which one side had to defend against. Now it is coming undone; the recriminations are likely to go beyond the journalists, politicians, and imaginative analysts who backed it, and shine a light on the darkest recesses of the American state.

America and the west's hostile attitude toward Russia saw its flames fanned by the uber-narcissist Clinton. The danger she put the world in and the financial costs to European states was all for the sake of getting herself elected and ensuring Trump didn't get re-elected.

Such a dishonest, unprincipled politician! Thank God she was never elected!

Tulsi Gabbard Takes On Deep State With $50m Lawsuit Against Hilary

Defamation suit aims to stop Hillary and her ‘powerful elite friends’ from silencing patriotic Americans, Gabbard says

Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard ©  REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Suing Hillary Clinton for defamation is necessary in order to keep the former first lady and her powerful allies from smearing Americans who seek “peace and freedom” for all, Tulsi Gabbard has argued.

The Democratic presidential hopeful released a scathing statement in defense of her suit against Clinton, noting that the former secretary of state’s attempt to smear her as “the favorite of the Russians” would have far-reaching consequences if left unchallenged.

“If Hillary Clinton and her allies can successfully destroy my reputation – even though I’m a war veteran and a sitting member of Congress – then they can do it to anybody,” Gabbard wrote.

Tulsi Gabbard 🌺✔

@TulsiGabbard

My statement on defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton. http://Tulsi2020.com/lawsuit  #StandWithTulsi

Gabbard’s lawsuit, which seeks up to $50 million in damages from Clinton for insinuating that she is a “Russian asset,” is really about sending “Hillary and her powerful elite friends” a message, the Hawaiian congresswoman and Iraq war veteran noted.

Hillary Clinton and her allies want you to know that if you dare to cross them, they will destroy your reputation as well.

She added that she could not stand for Clinton’s “blatant effort to intimidate me or other patriotic Americans.”

Gabbard’s filing cites Clinton’s “long-time grudges” as the likely rationale for the character assassination, noting that the congresswoman resigned her post as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in protest and voiced support for Clinton’s rival Bernie Sanders after it emerged that there was ample evidence to suggest that the DNC had unfairly thrown its weight behind the former first lady and New York senator.

There are two other possible reasons, both of which may apply here along with Hilary's long-term grudge. 

1. Hilary's ego is such that she may have just wanted to show-off her power.

2. Hilary represents Deep State! Tulsi is a threat to Deep State, as is anyone who attempts to bring peace where war is so much more profitable. For example: JFK, RFK, MLK.

United States House Select Committee on Assassinations

Deep State took control of the US government on Nov 22nd, 1963 with a remarkable coup and an astonishing cover-up. While not all presidents since Johnson have been Deep State, they have had enough people in positions of influence and power that they were able to keep America's war machine producing planes, vehicles, weapons, etc., etc., etc. 

That's what this farce of an impeachment hearing is about. Trump is too unpredictable, even though Deep State has controlled him to some considerable degree as with the false flag chemical weapons events in Syria.

Yes, Trump is probably guilty of all the things they accuse him of, but I called it farcical because most presidents have committed far worse atrocities than what Trump is accused of. 

Rex Murphy: A Political Travesty is Unfolding in America

This sleazy attempt to get Trump out of office illustrates what happens when one side refuses to accept the voice of the people in an election

Rex Murphy, National Post
Rex Murphy is Canada's best political commentator. His drifting to the right in
recent years resulted in the termination of a very long employment at the CBC.

Back in the days when it was obvious to all the oracles of the higher punditry that Donald Trump was on a quixotic quest towards the presidency, and when it was inscribed in the granite of fate that Hillary Clinton was going to thrash the rampageous outsider, some raised a caution: what if Trump, in violation of all standards of American democracy, refused, after losing, as he was surely going to do, to accept the election’s result?

Predictably, the answer was that it would be a horror, typical of Trump’s manic manner, and in Ms. Clinton’s own tweeted words a fundamental “threat to our democracy.” The standard has always been: the people vote, the votes are counted, and save in the most exceptional and absolutely vivid demonstrations of overt and blatant examples of fraud, the loser sighs and the winner goes on to Pennsylvania Avenue. Even after the nail-biter and hanging chads debacle in the 2000 election, did not Albert Gore himself accede to George Bush II, and Americans proceeded, in the most beautiful phrase in politics, “to put it all behind them?”

Not so when, so to speak, Alaric stormed the empire and reduced Rome to ruins, which is the only historic template for how progressives viewed and still view Trump’s successful march to the White House. The psychological shock was massive and unprecedented, the “pussy hats” were out marching in days, and opinion columnists sobbed over the trauma of voters who found themselves incontinent with rage and sorrow that Trump, the disruptor, had won.

It was not, among the virulently anti-Trump forces, supposed to have been this way. Within the coven of Clinton supporters a Trump victory was against nature; it could not be, the goddess of glass ceilings must have been, had to have been, cheated. Hillary herself over the months that followed unspiralled a vast catalogue of why she shouldn’t have lost and then fixed upon the No. 1 favourite. Trump and his lawless henchpersons had “stolen” or “manipulated” the process. And most particularly, most explosively, spun the story of how the dread Darth Putin and Trump had secretly, nefariously, maliciously colluded and “stolen” the election from Hillary.

From the elegant hostelries of Martha’s Vineyard to the sleek mansion-palaces of the Silicon Valley hyper-tycoons, the keening went on. And thus, as soon as Trump was installed, the charge was made, that Trump was in the White House only because he had “colluded” with the Russians, and therefore he was not “really” president. It went even more raw than that. Some of the cable networks, and most of the big press, became utterly absorbed in the effort to prove collusion. The most hysterical of the Russian conspiracy theorists, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, went on every night for two and a half years articulating every wild wisp of an allegation that Trump was an agent of Russia, Putin’s stooge — a president beholden to an enemy tyrant.

With that as context the move to impeach originated. It would not do to have a “Russian asset” control the government of the United States. And for close to two and a half years the Russian connection was investigated as the strongest possible, irrefutable reason to take him out of office: to impeach him, and rid the country of his Russian-contaminated presence in the White House.

Hillary Clinton speaks at the Jewish Labor Committee’s Annual Human Rights Awards Dinner on Dec. 9, 2019, in New York City. Jeenah Moon/Getty Images

So there were investigations without number, hearings without end, with Robert Mueller, the distinguished, highly respected Washington prestige-figure all the while doing the most detailed and rigorous dive into the whole mess. Mueller was going to do the job, bring home the bacon. No report was more anticipated. And when it did come: Nada, nothing, no American, no one in the Trump administration, not Trump himself or his auxiliaries had “colluded with the Russians to steal the election.” The Russian collusion fantasy collapsed. Democrats again went into mourning. Rachel Maddow checked in for aromatherapy and radical grief counselling.

But. The impeachment game itself was not the least affected. After Russia, Russia, Russia every day, almost within minutes the impeach brigade jumped on a phone call to Ukraine. I’m not going to detail this adventure save to note that the speed with which his opponents went from “having evidence of collusion with Russia” as the ground base for their impeachment efforts — the very speed of the switch to Ukraine, was or should be mind-blowing.

And now to this very week: when articles of impeachment have been drawn up to vote on, on Wednesday or Thursday, there are only two charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Where’s Russia, where’s Lord Putin, where’s treason and being a “stooge” of a foreign power? How can they leap, with such shameless ease, from the massive campaign of nearly three years insisting they had proof Trump was a tool of Putin, to this petty sideline of an allegation that Trump abused his power on a phone call to Ukraine?

A copy of the House of Representatives articles of impeachment resolution that Democrats hope to use to impeach U.S. President Donald Trump is seen after being released in Washington on Dec. 10, 2019. Jim Bourg/Reuters

All this sits alongside what has been revealed during this farce, that the FBI and its masters had set spies in Trump’s campaign, that they had used the Steele dossier — compiled by the Clinton camp and utterly discredited — to obtain the famous FISA warrants, that they had played pat-a-ball with Hillary on her server, and the Clinton Foundation’s octopus relation with foreign “investors.” That, in fact, the whole predicate of their investigations came from a paid-for, confected, Clinton research dump, with some of the most salacious, unverified and to-be-proven-false allegations ever to rise against a president. The immortal charge came from the head of the FBI himself, and was repeated in his book tour: “I honestly never thought these words would come out of my mouth, but I don’t know whether the current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013,” he said. “It’s possible, but I don’t know.” Of course James Comey didn’t know — that’s the off-ramp of every sly insinuation.

So now this week, the move to impeachment proceeds but is reduced from the melodrama of Russian collusion, the word Russia not even in the two articles of the impeachment itself. And what are these two? Nothing more than a formless and flowing river of hot fudge and mostly composed of the same materials, so vague they could be hauled out on a thousand occasions.

Members of the House Rules Committee hold a hearing on the impeachment of U.S. President

Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 17, 2019. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

But no Russia. That’s the big take: It is what is not in the charges, which assures anyone looking at this that the desire to impede, demean and entangle Trump, not “high crimes and misdemeanours,” was and is the whole and only motive behind a transparent travesty. The impeachment process as we have observed turns, with vicious irony, on something Hillary Clinton herself warned about, when she was “certain” and half the country was, too, that she was going to win. That not accepting the result of an election was a grave threat to American democracy.

She was right. The past three years, clouded daily by this sleazy attempt to get Trump out by means other than by democratic vote, is the full illustration of what happens when one side — the Democrats — refuse to accept the voice of the people in an election. And there is an additional irony attached: the impeachment mania may well increase support for Trump and give him a second term. As was said of old: He who diggeth a pit shall fall into it.

If Trump's phone call with Zelensky is grounds for impeachment, I guarantee there is not one President who ever sat in the Oval Office who didn't deserve a similar fate. And many have committed far more outrageous travesties, but no-one is looking into those.

It should be noted here that the Republicans did exactly the same thing during the first term of Obama. They attempted to distort and prevent everything he tried to do, not on the basis of individual merit, but because they so intensely disliked him, whether for his colour, his progressiveness, or his preference for Muslims over Jews. They certainly did not respect the people's choice. Whoever wins next year, should expect more of the same, only, perhaps, worse.

Migrants, Protests & Aid Cuts: Legacy of US-Backed 2009 Coup in Honduras

As with Europe in Africa, the USA in Central America literally raped the countries of their natural resources leaving them in poverty and with dictators who are cruel and brutal. Then America builds walls to keep them from migrating. I know they can't all come to America, but America needs to be working to improve conditions in Central America giving the people hope and a reason to stay.

FILE PHOTO: A migrant holds flags of Honduras and the United States next to US-Mexican border

© Reuters / Kim Kyung-Hoon

As caravans of migrants stream toward the US border and protesters in Honduras demand the president’s resignation, a coup in Tegucigalpa exactly 10 years ago is now making for strange political allies in Washington.

Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) thus found herself on the same wavelength as US President Donald Trump when she advocated cutting off the aid to the government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez in March, and tweeted out a photo with the daughter of the slain Honduran activist Berta Caceres on Friday.

Ilhan Omar✔
@IlhanMN

 In 2016, Honduran activist Berta Cáceres was murdered by US-trained Honduran special forces.

The next year, I had the honor of meeting her daughter, Bertha.

Today marks 10 years since the coup in Honduras. We in the US must stop funding its brutality.

Trump also wants to cut US funding to Honduras, but for a completely different reason: along with Guatemala and El Salvador, the country is a major source of migrant “caravans” that have been streaming across the US border over the past year. All three Central American nations have experienced Washington’s meddling throughout their history.

On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military raided the home of President Manuel Zelaya and led him away at gunpoint. He was replaced by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, leader of the National Party, who held the office until 2014, when he handed it over to Hernandez.

The administration of Barack Obama – specifically, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – was involved in planning and executing the coup, it later emerged. Clinton herself admitted it in her memoir “Hard Choices,” first published in 2014. After public scrutiny, however, the part of the book detailing her involvement in Honduras was removed from the paperback edition. 

In the decade since, Honduras has become a human rights nightmare, according to organizations such as Amnesty International, which accused state security forces of routinely engaging in torture and extrajudicial killings. 

Caceres, for instance, was murdered in 2016 in attack widely believed to have been in retaliation for her activism against the construction of the Aguas Zarca dam in the Gualcarque river.

Over the last several months, public anger at Hernandez’s rule has turned into widespread unrest. Riots first began in April, in protest over his plans to privatize the education, healthcare and pension systems of Honduras. In May, demonstrators set fire to the US embassy in Tegucigalpa, and later attacked containers belonging to the Dole Fruit Company. 

Fruit companies are a symbol of US military and political meddling in Central America, which gave rise to the term “banana republic.”

On Tuesday, state security forces opened fire on a group of student protesters, injuring four people. Activists are no longer calling for merely reversing the privatization, but also for  Hernandez to step down.

While Hernandez’s economic policies have created a favorable environment for US multinational corporations, they brought ruin to the small farmers of Honduras, who are fleeing to the US in droves in search of work. 

The political establishment in Washington, however, has considerable interest in keeping Hernandez in power, as he has promised to keep open the US military base at Soto Cano. 

Good grief! How cheaply we sell our soul!

U.S., Russia - Long History of Election Interference

The U.S. is no stranger to interfering

in the elections of other countries

One professor's database cites 81 attempts by the United States to influence elections in other countries, notably in Italy, Iran, Guatemala and Chile.  

Nina Agrawal. L.A.Times

White House counter-terrorism and Homeland Security advisor Lisa Monaco speaks to reporters at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. (Michael Bonfigli / Christian Science Monitor)

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing  emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things. 

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.

Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.

In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share.

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.

Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome. 

“We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money”  to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected.

Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections.

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said.

This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period. 

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.

In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism. 

“The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin.

Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.

In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S.

Liberation theology - a movement in Christian theology, developed mainly by Latin American Roman Catholics, that emphasizes liberation from social, political, and economic oppression as an anticipation of ultimate salvation. Many a priest and Bishop was murdered for practicing such, like the Bishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero. Some estimate the number of priests and Bishops murdered for their theology to be in the hundreds. The U.S. was greatly opposed to liberation theology which it saw as Marxist and utterly unacceptable in the Americas, according to Noam Chomsky.

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions. And probably to buy a few dozen cases of vodka.

In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election.

“We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time.

In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu.

In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.

"That Makes Me Smart"! Sure!

If you have been following this blog for awhile you know that I haven't paid a lot of attention to the presidential race in the USA. You may even know that I do not like 'reality TV' nor do I like the 'theatre of the absurd', both of which describe the last year and a half of American electioneering. Consequently, I did not watch the big debate last night; I was happy to watch a few highlights, although I'm not sure that's the appropriate word. What I heard was disturbing but very telling.

Hillary Clinton missed a great opportunity last night to destroy Donald Trump; whether she didn't hear his remark or just wasn't ready for it, only she knows. But when she announced that Trump had paid zero dollars in taxes for some years (I'm not sure how she found that out, it seems unlikely that it was public information), Trump interjected with the comment, "That makes me smart"! Does it? Maybe, but saying it was a pretty stupid thing to do for several reasons:

1. He's calling everyone else in America who pays taxes - stupid for doing so.

2. That sets an example for Americans to emulate. If All Americans were 'smart', there would be no government, no police, no military, no justice system, no prison system, no food and drug control, etc., etc. Society would completely collapse into anarchy.

3. If Trump becomes President, he would have to deal with that very problem of falling tax revenues. Consequently, he would have to raise taxes in many areas and eliminate tax breaks, ie mortgages. God forbid he should attempt to tax the wealthy.

4. Trump has as much as admitted that the entire government, military, police, etc., etc, systems are being carried on the backs of middle income Americans who, obviously, aren't very 'smart'. 

5. That means that Trump and many other extremely wealthy people do not support the American military, police or firefighters. They seem quite happy with allowing middle income Americans to shoulder all that responsibility. Their responsibility is to their own greed, not to America.

They are quite happy to send Americans into war zones where they know some will come back in body bags, or missing some parts, because many of America's wealthy benefit financially from Americans using their weapons, etc. And, all too often, those soldiers are fighting an enemy using American weapons as well. All the more profit for American arms manufacturers to hide in off-shore accounts away from the IRS.

One of the reasons middle Americans are supporting Trump is because he is rogue; he's not in the pockets of the 1% who are telling Congress and the Senate how to vote on any bill concerning them. And that's refreshing, the thought of the 1% not being able to control the government. It is, however, wishful thinking, for two reasons:

1. Trump is one of the 1%, so how would his policies differ from the others?

2. If he did attempt to make some significant changes to benefit middle-income Americans at the expense of the tax-free 1%, he would be stymied at every turn by Congress and the Senate who are still in the pockets of the rich and tax-free.

Tens of Thousands Of Scientists Declare Climate Change A Hoax

by Sean Adl-Tabatabai in Sci/Environment  YourNewsWire

30,000 scientists declare man-made climate change a hoax

and that's just in America

A staggering 30,000 scientists have come forward confirming that man-made climate change is a hoax perpetuated by the elite in order to make money. 

One of the experts is weather channel founder, John Coleman, who warns that huge fortunes are being made by man-made climate change proponents such as Al Gore.

Natural News reports:

In a recent interview with Climate Depot, Coleman said:

“Al Gore may emerge from the shadows to declare victory in the ‘global warming’ debate if Hillary Clinton moves into the White House. Yes, if that happens and the new climate regulations become the law of the land, they will be next to impossible to overturn for four to eight years.”

Unfortunately, President Obama has somehow already ratified the Paris Accord as announced in China yesterday. How did he do that? Once 16 or so more countries ratify the accord, it will become law and a portion of American sovereignty will be ceded to an unelected UN panel. This, some say, will be the first step in forming a one-world government.

Climate change proponents remain undeterred in their mission, ignoring numerous recent scientific findings indicating that there has been no warming trend at all for nearly two decades.

Al Gore’s dire predictions of the melting of polar ice on a massive scale have proved to be completely false. In fact, in 2014 – a year that was touted as being “the hottest ever” in the Earth’s history – there were record amounts of ice reported in Antarctica, an increase in Arctic ice, and record snowfalls across the globe.


Debunking the “97 percent” lie

On top of those “inconvenient truths,” the White House’s assertion that 97 percent of scientists agree that global warming is real has been completely debunked. Several independently-researched examinations of the literature used to support the “97 percent” statement found that the conclusions were cherry-picked and misleading.

More objective surveys have revealed that there is a far greater diversity of opinion among scientists than the global warming crowd would like for you to believe.

From the National Review:

“A 2008 survey by two German scientists, Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, found that a significant number of scientists were skeptical of the ability of existing global climate models to accurately predict global temperatures, precipitation, sea-level changes, or extreme weather events even over a decade; they were far more skeptical as the time horizon increased.”

Other mainstream news sources besides the National Review have also been courageous enough to speak out against the global warming propaganda – even the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece in 2015 challenging the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) pseudoscience being promulgated by global warming proponents.

And, of course, there are the more than 31,000 American scientists (to date) who have signed a petition challenging the climate change narrative and 9,029 of them hold PhDs in their respective fields. But hey, Al Gore and his cronies have also ignored that inconvenient truth, as well.

Many of those scientists who signed the petition were likely encouraged to speak out in favor of the truth after retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist John L. Casey revealed that solar cycles are largely responsible for warming periods on Earth – not human activity. Nor CO2 levels. 

Northumbria U's Prof Zarkhova reports the same findings, even predicting that a cooling cycle has begun (El Nino not withstanding).


Al Gore and cronies continue getting richer from the global warming hoax

But the global warming crowd continues to push their agenda on the public while lining their pockets in the process. If you’re still inclined to believe what Al Gore has to say about global warming, please consider the fact that since he embarked on his crusade, his wealth has grown from $2 million in 2001 to $100 million in 2016 – largely due to investments in fake “green tech” companies and the effective embezzlement of numerous grants and loans.

Ah, but his motives are entirely altruistic; I'm sure; I think; maybe.

You might want to take all of this information into serious consideration before casting your vote in the November election.

Trump Proposes Political Tests for Immigrants

If you have been following this blog for any time you might have noticed that I have been avoiding publishing anything on the American election saga. I hate reality shows and that is what this is. What it is doing to democracy, I can only guess, but I would guess that it is nothing short of complete corruption. But then politics has always been dirty and dishonest, so maybe I'm overreacting.

At any rate I post this article because Donald Trump is proposing the very thing that I have been proposing for some time and that is serious vetting of refugees with regard to how fanatical their embrace of Islam is. For instance, Wahabists would be completely barred, so would many Pakistanis and Afghans who believe, for instance, that a girl in your right hand (ie under your power) is fair game for rape and for sharing with your friends (think Rotherham and many other cities in the UK).

Newt Gingrich called for such a test just a month ago.

I am not endorsing a candidate or a party in this election, merely promoting an idea that should be taken seriously if America wants to still be America, and continue to be relatively safe from terrorism.

Republican candidate lays out new immigration policy in campaign speech

The Associated Press 


Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump spoke to an enthusiastic audience in Youngstown, Ohio on Monday. (Gerald Herbert/The Associated Press)

Donald Trump on Monday called for a new ideological test for admission to the United States, vetting applicants on their stance on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights. The policy would represent a significant shift in how the U.S. manages entry into the country. 

In a speech in swing state Ohio, Trump also called for "foreign policy realism" and a "decisive and swift" end to nation-building if he were elected president. And he argued that the United States needs to work with countries that share the mission of destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and other extremist organizations, regardless of other disagreements.

"We can't choose our friends, but we can never fail to recognize our enemies," Trump said.

Why can't we choose our friends?

The Republican nominee's foreign policy address comes during a rocky stretch for his campaign. He's struggled to stay on message and has consistently overshadowed his policy rollouts, including an economic speech last week, with provocative statements, including falsely declaring that President Barack Obama was the "founder" of ISIS.

Democrat Hillary Clinton has spent the summer hammering Trump as unfit to serve as commander in chief. She's been bolstered by a steady stream of Republican national security experts who argue the billionaire businessman lacks the temperament and knowledge of world affairs to be president.


Hillary Clinton's campaign slammed Trump's campaign manager for ties to Russia and pro-Kremlin interests, an apparent reference to a New York Times story published Sunday night. (Andrew Harnik/Associated Press)

Clinton spent Monday campaigning with Vice-President Joe Biden in Scranton, Pa., a working-class area where both have family ties. Biden vigorously vouched for Clinton's readiness for the White House and called Trump's foreign policy views "dangerous" and "un-American."

Blame Obama, Clinton for ISIS

Biden also warned that Trump's false assertion about Obama founding ISIS could be used by extremists to target American service members in Iraq. "The threat to their life has gone up a couple clicks," he said.

This is most likely an attempt to shore-up the Republican vote, some of which has gone soft due to Trump's often stupid and outright false statements, like this. Any reasonable-minded person understands that if anyone is responsible for the creation of ISIS, it is George Bush and Dick Cheney.

Questionnaires, social media

Trump said that any country that wants to work with the U.S. to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism" will be a U.S. ally — including Russia.

Under Trump's new immigration policy, the government would use questionnaires, social media, interviews with friends and family or other means to determine if applicants support American values like tolerance and pluralism. The U.S. would stop issuing visas in any case where it cannot perform adequate screenings.

It is unclear how U.S. officials would assess the veracity of responses to the questionnaires or how much manpower it would require to complete such arduous vetting. The campaign has yet to say whether additional screenings would apply to the millions of tourists who spend billions of dollars visiting the United States each year.

It is the latest version of a policy that began with Trump's unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country — a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American. Following a massacre at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in June, Trump introduced a new standard, vowing to "suspend immigration from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or our allies, until we fully understand how to end these threats."

I think this is the first time in months that I have seen the 'temporary' aspect of Trump's call to halt Muslim immigration reported by media. Most often they show a clip of Trump saying that he would call for an immediate cessation of Muslim immigration, and then cut it off before he has a chance to say 'until....'

That proposal raised numerous questions that the campaign never clarified, including whether it would apply to citizens of countries like France, Israel or Ireland, which have suffered recent and past attacks. Trump had promised to release his list of "terror countries" soon. But now, aides say, the campaign needs access to unreleased Department of Homeland Security data to assess exactly where the most serious threats lie.

Seeking to beat back criticism of his struggling campaign, Trump and his top advisers have blamed the media for failing to focus on his proposals.

"If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20 per cent," he tweeted Sunday.

Donald, if you didn't keep saying stupid, inflammatory things, the media might actually look at your platform. Ah, but then, that's show biz.

British Spies Gave Faulty Intelligence on Iraq, Then Quietly Withdrew It - Chilcot

But where is the American inquiry into 

this incredible atrocity?

Detail of a declassified handwritten letter sent by the then British PM Tony Blair,to George Bush, former President of the United States, is seen as part of the Iraq Inquiry Report presented by Sir John Chilcot at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster,In London,Britain July 6, 2016. © Reuters

The Chilcot report into Britain’s invasion of Iraq is highly critical of the UK intelligence services, saying it provided “flawed” information about Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

In his damning report on the Iraq war, released on Wednesday, Sir John Chilcot slams security agencies such as MI6 over major errors in their intelligence gathering and assessments.

Chilcot says it worked on the “misguided assumption” that Saddam had WMD - a threat which turned out to be non-existent and was the basis for war - and made no effort to investigate otherwise.


This file photo taken on December 22, 2005 shows British Prime Minister Tony Blair (C) with troops at Shaiba Logistics Base in Basra, Iraq. © Adrian Dennis

“At no stage was the proposition that Iraq might no longer have chemical, biological or nuclear weapons or programmes identified and examined by either the joint intelligence committee (JIC) or the policy community,” the report says.

In September 2002, MI6 reported it was on the edge of a “significant breakthrough” after finding a new source inside Iraq with “phenomenal access” to information about WMDs.

The source, which said Iraq had accelerated production of chemical and biological weapons, was later described in MI6 notes as having been lying to SIS over a period of time.

However, the reports were used to provide assurance in drawing up a 2002 dossier preparing the case for war. Reports from that agent were still being reissued in April 2003.

According to the Chilcot report, MI6 “did not inform No 10 or others that the source who had provided the reporting issued on 11 and 23 September 2002, about production of chemical and biological agent, had been lying to SIS.”

In July 2003, the reports were officially withdrawn, but in a “low key manner compared with the way in which the original intelligence was issued.”

Blair was not originally told the source’s information had been withdrawn.

The Chilcot report is highly critical of Sir John Scarlett, the chairman of the JIC, and the then MI6 chief, Sir Richard Dearlove.

Chilcot says Scarlett is to blame for failing to ensure the assessments of the intelligence community were properly reflected.

Chilcot says intelligence services got some assessments correct, which were largely ignored by Blair.

They included that while Saddam had the potential to proliferate WMDs to Islamic terrorists, he was unlikely to do so. Furthermore, Iraq was likely only to mount a terrorist attack in response to military action and if the existence of the regime was threatened. 

Consequently, invading Iraq dramatically increased the danger of Saddam using WMDs, so why then invade? Did they know there was no risk because Saddam didn't have any WMDs?

The intelligence community also assessed it would take Saddam four to five years to acquire enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon, but the Blair dossier claimed it could be achieved within a year or two.

The report says Blair presented assessments by the spy agencies to parliament with a “certainty that was not justified” by the intelligence that had been gathered.

The report says “the flaws in the construct and intelligence were exposed after the conflict.”

If I were a conspiracy theorist, actually I am a conspiracy theorist, and I assumed that Mr. Blair heard what he wanted to hear, the elements of this intelligence farce couldn't have come together more perfectly. 

It's not a coincidence that British Intelligence made the same mistakes as American Intelligence. That in itself is reason to suspect collusion. I'm pretty sure that an inquiry would find the same results in America, but we will never see that.

I'm not a Clinton fan, nor a Democrat, but why haven't there been investigations into this intelligence failure that resulted in 250,000 Iraqis dead, 5000 Americans dead, and was undoubtedly responsible for the formation of ISIS? Why? 255,000 dead + ISIS compared to 4 in Benghazi, and there have been numerous investigations into Benghazi and none into the decision to invade Iraq - an unequivocally illegal act with astounding repercussions.

I can't help but think that if Saddam had used WMDs, there would have been way fewer casualties than a quarter of a million.

Stinging Critique of Susan Rice by the Most Famous Rabbi in America

The New York Times - Saturday, 28 Feb. 2015

Susan Rice, Security Adviser to the President, appears to have taken on the role of 'frontman' for President Obama and Foreign Secretary John Kerry. Willingly, she stepped forward and condemned Israeli President Netanyahu's upcoming speech to Congress as 'destructive to US - Israeli relations'. 

She also tweeted, “Personal attacks in Israel directed at Sec Kerry totally unfounded and unacceptable”, thereby running interference for the 'obsessive and messianic' Kerry.

What do we know about Susan Rice and why was she trashed in the poster above?

New York Observer

Susan Rice was part of Bill Clinton’s National Security Team that in 1994 took no action whatsoever during the Rwanda genocide, leaving more than 800,000 men, women, and children to be hacked to death by machete in the fastest genocide ever recorded.

Not content to insist on American non-involvement, the Clinton administration went a step further by obstructing the efforts of other nations to stop the slaughter. On April 21, 1994, the Canadian UN commandeer in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, declared that he required only 5000 troops to bring the genocide to a rapid halt. In addition, a single bombing run against the RTLM Hutu Power radio transmitting antenna would have made it impossible for the Hutus to coordinate their genocide.

But on the very same day, as Phillip Gourevitch explains in his definitive account of the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will Be Killed With Our Families, the Security Council, with the Clinton Administration’s blessing, ordered the UN force under Dallaire reduced by ninety percent to a skeleton staff of 270 troops who would powerlessly witness the slaughter to come. This, in turn, was influenced by Presidential Decision Directive 25, which “amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions,” even though Dallaire did not seek American troops and the mission was not peacekeeping but genocide prevention. Indeed, Madeleine Albright, then the American Ambassador to the UN, opposed leaving even this tiny UN force. She also pressured other countries “to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands … the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman.”

In a 2001 article published in The Atlantic, Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem from Hell and arguably the world’s foremost voice against genocide and who is now Rice’s successor as America’s Ambassador to the UN, referred to Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton Administration as Bystanders to Genocide. She quotes Rice in her 2002 book as saying, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November congressional election?” That Rice would have brought up the midterm elections as a more important consideration than stopping the fastest slaughter of human life in all history – 330 dying every hour – is one of the saddest pronouncements ever to be uttered by American public official.

Susan Rice

But she did not stop there.

Rice then joined Madeline Albright, Anthony Lake, and Warren Christopher as part of a coordinated effort not only to impede UN action to stop the Rwanda genocide, but to minimize public opposition to American inaction by removing words like “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” from government communications on the subject.

In the end, eight African nations, fed up with American inaction, agreed to send in an intervention force to stop the slaughter provided that the U.S. would lend them fifty armored personal carriers. The Clinton Administration decided it would lease rather than lend the armor for a price of $15 million. The carriers sat on a runway in Germany while the UN pleaded for a $5 million reduction as the genocidal inferno raged. The story only gets worse from there, with the Clinton State Department refusing to label the Rwanda horrors a genocide because of the 1948 Genocide Convention that would have obligated the United States to intervene, an effort that Susan Rice participated in.

It was painful enough to watch Kofi Anan elevated to Secretary General even though as head of UN peace-keeping forces worldwide he sent two now infamous cables to Dallaire forbidding him from any efforts to stop the genocide (the cables are on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial).

It’s nearly as painful watching Rice lecture the Jewish state, which lost one third of its entire people in a genocide of four short years, lecture the Jews about how unacceptable it is for them to criticize those who claim to know how to protect them better than they know themselves.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek and The Washington Post call “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international best-selling author of 30 books, and will shortly publish The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging G-d in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.