More Obvious Evidence that Deep State is Running America

Trump’s ‘favorable’ policy instincts obstructed by neocons,

foreign interests & the arms lobby at every turn – Ron Paul

©  Global Look Press / DPA / Saeid Zareian

Despite President Trump’s periodic calls to scale back some of America’s “endless wars,” they continue unabated thanks to pressure from an elite sect of pro-war interests in Washington and beyond, former lawmaker Ron Paul told RT.

While the president “wants to back away from some of the interventions that have been dragging [on] for many, many years,” Paul said there are “different factions in our country” that put up fierce resistance to even the prospect of non-intervention.

If [Trump] does move in this direction, there are neocons here who would get hysterical over it and they do not think that we should give an inch. It is a battle.

In addition to the neocons – who wield a powerful network of influential think tanks and media organizations – Paul pointed to a number of other forces that come together to propel Washington’s lust for war, singling out “pressure from Saudi Arabia” and Israel, as well as arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas.

Arms manufacturers who profit immensely from continued conflicts overseas

It is difficult because of all the warmongers and people who like to sell weapons – they have to have an enemy and all that nonsense – they believe that they could make a lot of money out of it.

It is absolutely necessary for the USA to continue to support Israel. The moment they abandon her, Islam will attempt again to annihilate her. I believe God requires us to support Israel and judgment will be swift and terrible if we should fail.

Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is using the USA to help fight its sectarian wars and proxy wars with Iran. All the better for Deep State arms manufacturers and sellers. Not so good anyone else.

Even with the president’s “favorable” foreign policy instincts, his decisions have been erratic under the influence of the Washington establishment, Paul said, citing Trump’s premature Syria withdrawal announcement, which has largely been reversed since it was made in October for the sake of defending oil fields.

Defending oil fields for whom? For Syria? Or, are they stealing Syria's oil?

“That is a confusing and unpredictable position,” Paul said. “I would like him to stick to his guns when he says that it is time to leave Syria and for us to just leave.”

On Afghanistan, too, the president’s rhetoric has been encouraging for those seeking an end to America’s longest war – stuck in mission creep for nearly two decades – but beyond mere lip service, his policies there have ultimately served the hawks.

“He talked about leaving Afghanistan – so often his talk does not match his actions, and his actions are what is important,” Paul said. “We are still building up our forces over there.”

Talks with the Taliban resumed last week after President Trump scrapped nearly a year of negotiations with the group in September, perhaps the closest the United States ever came to finally ending the conflict. The fresh round of talks was announced just as a trove of internal government documents were published in a report at the Washington Post, detailing how senior officials spun lies and falsehoods about the war for years, at times even fabricating data to suggest “victory” was within reach.

Insisting the United States can no longer be a “global policeman,” threatening the rest of the planet with everything from sanctions to drone strikes, Paul called for a clean break in foreign policy thinking in Washington and urged for a total withdrawal of American soldiers from the Middle East.

“So our position is: stay out of it, there is nothing to be gained and nobody from that part of the world is going to come and bomb or attack us, so we do not see any benefit in staying there,” he said.

What a crazy idea! How can you keep the war inventory moving? Next thing he'll be say they can reduce the military and get out of NATO! What heresy! 

As I wrote in the story immediately below this one, Deep State is running America. It has been since Nov 22nd, 1963. And if they can't get Trump in line, they will get rid of him one way or another. But there is no possibility of another 4 years as President.

‘Deepfakes’ in Action: Seattle TV Station Accused of Doctoring Trump Speech Video

An anti-Trump person working for FOX? Not for long, I suspect!

A screenshot from the allegedly doctored video © YouTube / MyNorthWest

As the nation tuned in to President Trump’s national address on border security, one Seattle TV station apparently manipulated its coverage on the fly, editing the footage to show Trump sticking out his tongue at viewers.

In a side-by-side comparison, Q13 Fox in Seattle appears to have edited its coverage of Trump’s address, turning the president’s skin color a ludicrous shade of orange. In between sentences, the station seems to have doctored the footage to show Trump sticking out his tongue and licking his lips.

Q13 told MyNorthWest that the footage was indeed doctored, and that the culprit has been placed on leave.

“We are investigating this to determine what happened,” said Q13’s news director. “This does not meet our editorial standards and we regret if it is seen as portraying the President in a negative light. The editor responsible for editing the footage is being placed on leave while we investigate further.”

Faking video footage has become easy in recent years, thanks to the widespread availability of video editing software. A combative press conference debate between CNN anchor Jim Acosta and President Trump in November put the issue in the spotlight, after internet detectives accused Infowars editor Paul Joseph Watson of editing video footage of Acosta pushing a White House intern to make the anchor look bad. The ‘edited’ video was shared by the White House, Watson denied the accusation, and eventually the debate was forgotten about.

Slowing down video footage is one thing, but so-called ‘deepfake’ videos – real and fake footage spliced together with the help of artificial intelligence – are becoming increasingly harder to spot and can be put to a limitless array of malicious uses.

Deepfake technology has been used by the porn industry to superimpose celebrity faces onto porn actors’ bodies. One company, Naughty America, is launching a service to allow users to place their own likenesses – or those of their friends – onto performers’ bodies.

In political circles, concern has been raised that ‘deepfakes’ can be used to doctor footage of politicians and leaders, making them appear to do or say just about anything. As Russian hysteria gripped the nation following the 2016 election, news outlets and commentators repeatedly warned that ‘Russian trolls’ were planning on using deepfake videos to disrupt the 2018 midterm elections.

The predictions never came to pass. However, as the footage from Seattle this week shows, AI-enhanced meddling is a legitimate concern, and is being put to use at home in the US.

‘Deep State’ Memo that Rattled McMaster’s National Security Council Finally Released

Whether or not Deep State has been working to undermine Trump has been occupying my mind for a few days now. It seems obvious that they have been pulling his strings one way or another, and I wondered if they were not satisfied with that. 

It then occurred to me that if they completely undermined Trump and got him impeached, that they would then have Pence to deal with. The next question is, is Pence Deep State? We will know if Deep State goes for Trump's jugular. 

The usual caution: The report below came from RT.

U.S. President Donald Trump with National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster (L)

© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

A controversial memo penned by a former National Security Council staffer has been released. The document states, among other accusations, that the “deep state” is trying to undermine President Donald Trump.

A copy of the “POTUS & Political Warfare” memorandum, dated May 2017, was published by Foreign Policy on Thursday.

Rich Higgins, who served as the director of strategic planning for the NSC, was the author of the seven-page memorandum. He resigned from the NSC in July after National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster discovered he was behind the memo.

Although it does not mention McMaster’s name specifically, the NSC chief is purportedly one of the people described in the memo as trying to restrain Trump, an unnamed source with first hand knowledge of the memo and events, said, according to Foreign Policy.

“The administration has been maneuvered into a constant back-pedal by relentless political warfare attacks structured to force him to assume a reactive posture that assures inadequate responses,” the memo stated.

“Having become the dominant cultural meme, some benefit from it while others are captured by it; including ‘deep state’ actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans,” the document reads.

After the memo reached McMaster, Higgins, who was working in the strategic planning office, was forced to resign by McMaster’s deputy, Ricky Waddell. Waddell told Higgins that if he didn’t resign, his security clearance would be revoked.

McMaster allegedly determined some NSC staffers that were holdovers from former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn’s brief tenure were the type of people he had been looking to replace. This also led to the firing of top NSC intelligence official Ezra Cohen-Watnick and Derek Harvey, who controlled the NSC’s Middle East portfolio, according to Foreign Policy.

The most notable change resulting from the shake up is the removal of the president’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, from his seat on the security council.

An unnamed source with first hand knowledge of the memo described McMaster’s decision-making after reviewing the document and discovering his inclusion, Foreign Policy reported.

“It was about H.R. McMaster,” the source said. “So, when he starts reading it, he knows it’s him and he fires [Higgins].”

The memo was purportedly first discovered by McMaster and the NSC after a search for staffers who were believed to be giving information to conservative author and activist Mike Cernovich, who seemed to have uncanny knowledge of operations at the NSC.

A subsequent “routine security” audit of NSC staffers’ communications eventually led to the finding of the memo, unnamed sources said, according to Foreign Policy. A different unnamed source explained the email audit as a McCarthyist-type leak investigation targeting staffers who had communication with Cernovich.

“McMaster was just very, very obsessed with this, with Cernovich,” an unnamed senior administration official told Foreign Policy. “He had become this incredible specter.”

Trump eventually saw the memo and was “furious” after learning the author was fired by McMaster, an unnamed senior White House official said.

“He is still furious,” the senior official added.

The fallout from the document has magnified McMaster’s difficulties at the NSC since taking over from Flynn. One unnamed source familiar with the NSC staff stated that the NSC chief “doesn’t really have any allies,” Foreign Policy reported. “It doesn’t seem as though he has the ear of the president, which is obviously essential to his survival.”

On Wednesday, the billionaire Sheldon Adelson-backed Zionist Organization of America, the oldest pro-Israel group in the United States, unleashed a report calling for McMaster’s reassignment to a post not dealing with issues concerning Israel or Iran. The group accuses McMaster of being a threat to Trump due to his firing of Flynn-era NSC staffers. Adelson contributed $5 million to Trump’s inaugural committee before he was sworn in as president.

Trump is Puppet of US ‘Deep State,’ has No ‘Own’ Foreign Policy – Assad

Some will accuse me of blowing Assad's trumpet here, but the fact is I have made similar remarks many times in the past. I'm not a fan of Assad; he is evil and cruel. I am a fan of the truth, and some of Assad's remarks are very close to the truth, some, not-so-much.

Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (L) and US President Donald Trump © Reuters

US president Donald Trump is not a truly independent political leader but merely a puppet of US corporations, military and intelligence, and who serves their interests, Syrian President Bashar Assad has told the Latin American TeleSUR TV network.

Trump pursues “no own policies” but only executes the decisions made by the “intelligence agencies, the Pentagon, the big arms manufacturers, oil companies, and financial institutions,” the Syrian leader said in an exclusive interview with TeleSUR.

"As we have seen in the past few weeks, he changed his rhetoric completely and subjected himself to the terms of the deep American state, or the deep American regime," Assad added.

This was obvious to me when Trump began appointing establishment figures to high positions in his government. It became more obvious when he began reversing decisions upon which he campaigned. America's attempt to elect an anti-establishment President failed miserably as it surely had to. The President does not run this country; Assad correctly identifies who does.

He referred to the fact that Trump came to power on a political platform promising a departure from the interventionist policy of the previous US president, Barack Obama, but soon forgot his promises and ordered a missile strike against the Syrian air base following a chemical weapons incident in Syria’s Idlib province.

That may explain why Assad thought he could get away with using Sarin gas on Syrians. He assumed Trump would keep his word and not intervene. He, obviously, knew nothing of Trump.

The Syrian president also said that it is “a complete waste of time to make an assessment of the American president’s foreign policy” as “he might say something” but what he really does depends on “what these [US military and business] institutions dictate to him.”

He also added that it “is not new” and “has been ongoing American policy for decades.”

"This is what characterizes American politicians: they lie on a daily basis... That’s why we shouldn’t believe what the Pentagon or any other American institution says because they say things which serve their policies, not things which reflect reality and the facts on the ground,” Assad told TeleSUR.

ALL politicians lie on a daily basis, not just Americans.

He went on to say that the US continues to pursue its age-long policy aimed at establishing and maintaining a global hegemony by turning all countries that oppose it into war zones.

"The United States always seeks to control all the states of the world without exception. It does not accept allies, regardless of whether they are developed states as those in the Western bloc or other states of the world," the Syrian leader explained.

He goes too far here, much too far. If you look at most of the countries where there are war zones, they are almost all Muslim and most of the fighting is caused by Jihadists wanting the state to be even more Muslim than it already is. America has little or nothing to do with beginning those wars.

He also added that “what is happening to Syria, to Korea, to Iran, to Russia, and maybe to Venezuela now, aims at re-imposing American hegemony on the world because they believe that this hegemony is under threat now, which consequently threatens the interests of American economic and political elites.”

What is happening in Venezuela has to do with a collapsing economy because of an incompetent, socialist leader. The people are hungry!

North Korea and Iran are threats, not to the American economy, but to American allies like South Korea and Israel, and even to America itself.

Russia is a different issue. NATO and the cast of characters Assad lists above are, I believe, largely responsible for creating a new version of the 'cold war' by demonizing Russia and propagandizing an imminent threat of invasion to all surrounding countries. This is lees about a Russian threat than about NATO creating a reason for its existence. It is basically obsolete and should be shut-down. But as long as NATO is mobilizing troops, amassing them along Russian borders, arms manufacturers are moving inventory, and that's what it's all about.

Assad expressed similar views in an interview with Russia’s Sputnik news agency about a week ago. “The regime in the United States hasn't changed,” he said, adding, “since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been attacking different countries in different ways without taking into consideration the Security Council or the United Nations.”

He also said that for the US, “the end justifies the means, no values, no morals at all, anything could happen.”

Despite his criticism, Assad once again confirmed the readiness of the Syrian government to cooperate with the US if it could change its attitude towards respecting other countries’ sovereignty and that of Syria in particular.

If respecting sovereignty means allowing Assad to use chemical weapons, it's not going to happen. Notice, there was no mention of them in this article.

Hundreds of Scientists Urge Trump to Withdraw from U.N. Climate-Change Agency

MIT’s Richard Lindzen says policies cause economic harm with ‘no environmental benefits’

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks on the phone with Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull in the Oval Office of the White House, Saturday, Jan. 28, 2017 in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

By Valerie Richardson - The Washington Times 

More than 300 scientists have urged President Trump to withdraw from the U.N.’s climate change agency, warning that its push to curtail carbon dioxide threatens to exacerbate poverty without improving the environment.

In a Thursday letter to the president, MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen called on the United States and other nations to “change course on an outdated international agreement that targets minor greenhouse gases,” starting with carbon dioxide.

“Since 2009, the US and other governments have undertaken actions with respect to global climate that are not scientifically justified and that already have, and will continue to cause serious social and economic harm — with no environmental benefits,” said Mr. Lindzen, a prominent atmospheric physicist.

Signers of the attached petition include the U.S. and international atmospheric scientists, meteorologists, physicists, professors and others taking issue with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change [UNFCCC], which was formed in 1992 to combat “dangerous” climate change.

In 1990, the IPCC predicted a 1 degree C rise in the global temperature by 2025. It is now 2017 and we have seen about a quarter of a degree rise in temperature. Until they get the science right we should not be spending extreme amounts of money to fix a problem that is greatly exaggerated. Alleviate the poverty in the world; stop the selling of weapons as a center-piece of western economies. The worst problem in the world is child sex abuse - by a long shot. Tens of millions of children are sexually abused before they turn 18. Do something about that!

The 2016 Paris climate accord, which sets nonbinding emissions goals for nations, was drawn up under the auspices of the UNFCCC.

“Observations since the UNFCCC was written 25 years ago show that warming from increased atmospheric CO2 will be benign — much less than initial model predictions,” says the petition.

And certainly not worth the trillions of dollars those lunatics want to spend on it.