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MSM Defends CIA’s “Whistleblower”, Ignores Actual Whistleblowers
MSM Defends CIA’s “Whistleblower”, Ignores Actual Whistleblowers
The word “whistleblower” has been trending in news headlines lately, but not for the reasons that any sane person might hope for.
“Read the whistleblower complaint regarding President Trump’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky“, says The Washington Post. “Trump responds to hearing on whistleblower complaint“, says MSNBC. “Trump-Ukraine scandal: what did the whistleblower say and how serious is it?“, writes The Guardian. “Whistleblower complaint says White House tried to ‘lock down’ Ukraine call records” announces CBS. “Whistleblower’s complaint is a devastating report from a savvy official“, declares CNN.
So who is this “savvy official”? Who is this courageous whistleblower who boldly shone the light of truth upon the mechanisms of power in the interests of the common man? Who is this brave, selfless individual who set off an impeachment inquiry by taking a stand and revealing the fact that the US president made a phone call in July urging Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky to help investigate corruption allegations against Joe Biden and his son?
Well believe it or not, according to The New York Times this brave, noble whistleblower who the mainstream media are currently championing is an officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.
The idea that the media needs to “protect” a high-level CIA officer making explosive claims about the president, which have now been used as the basis for impeachment proceedings, is such an insane perversion of journalistic ethics
“The whistle-blower who revealed that President Trump sought foreign help for his re-election and that the White House sought to cover it up is a CIA officer who was detailed to work at the White House at one point, according to three people familiar with his identity,” The New York Times reports. “The man has since returned to the CIA, the people said. Little else is known about him.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
WaPo Warns USA Needs More Narrative Control As Pentagon Ramps Up Narrative Control
WaPo Warns USA Needs More Narrative Control As Pentagon Ramps Up Narrative Control
Do you lay awake at night terrified that the Russians are able to control your mind with information warfare while the US government’s slavish devotion to democratic values leaves it powerless to stop them? Me neither. But according to The Washington Post, whose sole owner is a CIA contractor and Pentagon board member bent on hijacking the underlying infrastructure of the economy, we should be.
WaPo columnist David Ignatius, who has been one of the more hyperbolic promulgators of western Russia hysteria in written media, has published an article titled “Why America is losing the information war to Russia” about a new book by former State Department undersecretary for public diplomacy Richard Stengel. Stengel and Ignatius engage in a joyful Red Scare frolic with the exuberance of two little boys with a box of spray paints, each trying to one-up the other in hysterical apocalyptic ominousness about the way evil, authoritarian governments like Russia have been able to weaponize information while freedom-loving democracies can only look on in passive despair.
“The cruel paradox of the Internet, once hailed as a liberating force, is that it empowers governments that control information and enfeebles those that let it run free,” warns Ignatius.
“[Authoritarian governments] have gone from fearing the flow of information to exploiting it,” cautions Stengel. “They understand that the same tools that spread democracy can engineer its undoing.”
Unsurprisingly, at no point during this brotherly romp does Ignatius bother to make mention of the fact that Stengel is actually on record saying he supports the use of propaganda and believes the US government should be using it on its own citizens.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Jeff Bezo’s Politics
Jeff Bezo’s Politics
It’s a billionaire’s world and the biggest of them all is in the thick of it, as Eric Zuesse explains.
Jeff Bezos is the owner of The Washington Post, which leads America’s news-media in their almost 100 percent support and promotion of neoconservatism, American imperialism and wars. This includes sanctions, coups, and military invasions against countries that America’s billionaires want to control but don’t yet control — such as Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, Libya, and China.
These are aggressive wars against countries which have never aggressed against the United States. They are not, at all, defensive, but the exact opposite. It’s not necessarily endless war (even Hitler hadn’t planned that), but war until the entire planet has come under the control of the U.S. Government, a government that is itself controlled by America’s billionaires, the funders of neoconservatism and imperialism — in both major American political parties, think tanks, newspapers, TV networks, etcetera.
Bezos has been a crucial part of neoconservatism, ever since, at the June 6-9 2013 Bilderberg meeting, he arranged with Donald Graham, the Washington Post’s owner, to buy that newspaper, for $250 million. Bezos had already negotiated, in March of that same year, with the neoconservative CIA Director, John Brennan, for a $600 million ten-year cloud computing contract that transformed Amazon corporation, from being a reliable money-loser, into a reliably profitable firm.
That caused Bezos’s net worth to soar even more (and at a sharper rate of rising) than it had been doing while it had been losing money. He became the most influential salesman not only for books, but for the CIA, and for such mega-corporations as Lockheed Martin. Imperialism has supercharged his wealth, but it didn’t alone cause it. Bezos might be the most ferociously gifted business-person on the planet.
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The CIA’s Dark Prince Doesn’t Want War With Iran
The CIA’s Dark Prince Doesn’t Want War With Iran
Two comments last week highlight the dangerous security impasse in which Iran and the U.S. find themselves. The first was from Iran’s spiritual leader, the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, that maritime security will remain at risk if its oil exports continue to be compromised. The second was from U.S. Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, that sanctions may be applied on any country that helps the Iranian tanker Adrian Darya 1 as it makes its way back to Iran through the Mediterranean, having been released by the U.K. overseas territory of Gibraltar.
“Iran’s view is now that the U.S. will not launch the full-scale military attack that was previously expected, that the U.S. is increasingly isolated in its actions against Iran among its allies in Europe and even in the U.K.,” a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week. “At the same time, Iran believes it can lever the U.S. back into a newly renegotiated nuclear deal involving the removal of all sanctions,” he added.
Up until a couple of months or so ago, the U.S. was actively considering a full-scale military operation against Iran and was “98 per cent ready” for such an all-out attack, according to senior political sources in Washington and London spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. “The remaining two percent involved the final movement of men and materiel into attack positions and finalising the technology and software involved,” said one. “At that point, [John] Bolton [U.S. National Security Advisor] was the dominant voice in [U.S. President Donald] Trump’s ear, and this meant moving at least 120,000 troops into position to augment the [U.S.S Abraham Lincoln aircraft] carrier group that was already in place.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Everyone’s A Conspiracy Theorist, Whether They Know It Or Not
Everyone’s A Conspiracy Theorist, Whether They Know It Or Not
Plutocratic propaganda outlet MSNBC has just run a spin segment on the breaking news that the medical examiner’s determination of the cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death is “pending further information”.
“Our sources are still saying that it looks like suicide, and this is going to set conspiracy theorists abuzz I fear,” said NBC correspondent Ken Dilanian. “NBC News has been hearing all day long that there are no indications of foul play, and that this looks like a suicide and that he hung himself in his cell.”
Dilanian, who stumbled over the phrase “conspiracy theorists” in his haste to get it in the first soundbyte, is a known asset of the Central Intelligence Agency. This is not a conspiracy theory, this is a well-documented fact. A 2014 article in The Intercept titled “The CIA’s Mop-Up Man” reveals email exchanges obtained via Freedom of Information Act request between Dilanian and CIA public affairs officers which “show that Dilanian enjoyed a closely collaborative relationship with the agency, explicitly promising positive news coverage and sometimes sending the press office entire story drafts for review prior to publication.” There is no reason to give Dilanian the benefit of the doubt that this cozy relationship has ended, so anything he puts forward can safely be dismissed as CIA public relations.
When I mentioned Dilanian’s CIA ties on MSNBC’s Twitter video, MSNBC deleted their tweet and then re-shared it without mentioning Dilanian’s name. Here is a screenshot of the first tweet followed by an embedded link to their current one (which I’ve archived just in case):
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The New Tanker War – Trump Pampers the US Shale Oil Industry
The New Tanker War – Trump Pampers the US Shale Oil Industry
The situation in the Gulf of Oman is getting worse. After the attacks on two tankers, Khamenei said that he would never sit at the negotiating table with the US again.1)So Iran will continue its nuclear program till the Israeli strategists interpret its advancement as unacceptable and will have Iranian targets attacked. Up to this time a new tanker war is more likely than 30 years ago, of which Gefira warned already in autumn 2018. 2)Our forecasts proved correct.
The attacks could indeed have been carried out by Iranians, and it is quite possible that they were a provocation of the Americans. Such a hypothesis is justified by the analysis of the history of the conflict between the Great Satan and Iran. In August 1953, MI6 and CIA overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq for wanting to nationalize the British Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (now BP). The company earned huge sums, of which Iran received hardly anything. The CIA’s Shah Reza Pahlavi, installed in place of Mossadeq, guaranteed the US that Iran would not cross over to the Soviet Union. With the help of the Americans3)he founded the secret service SAVAK, which suppressed the population, tortured and committed numerous murders.4)The Americans were not bothered by this for decades, but today they are outraged by the violation of human rights in Iran: indeed by the violation of their interests in the region.
The nationalization of oil production did not take place under Pahlavi. Almost half of the proceeds continued to go to American and British companies. As in Afghanistan and other countries of the world, Americans have invented their future enemies themselves.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
ANOTHER ‘JOLLY LITTLE WAR’?
ANOTHER ‘JOLLY LITTLE WAR’?
Sure. Let’s invade Venezuela. Another jolly little war. It’s full of commies and has a sea of oil. The only thing those Cuban-loving Venezuelans lack are weapons of mass destruction.
This week, leading US neocons openly threatened that if the CIA’s latest attempts to stage a coup to overthrow Venezuela’s Maduro government failed, Washington might send in the Marines.
Well, the coup was a big fiasco and the Venezuelan army didn’t overthrow President Maduro. The CIA also failed to overthrow governments in Moscow, Tehran and Damascus. Its only ‘success’ to date has been in overthrowing Ukraine’s pro-Moscow government and putting a bunch of corrupt clowns in its place at a cost near $10 billion.
The US has not waged a major successful war since World War II – unless you count invading Grenada, Panama and Haiti, or bombing the hell out of Iraq, Syria, Somalia and Libya. That’s a sobering thought given the Pentagon’s recent announcement that it is cutting back on little colonial wars (aka ‘the war on terror’) to get ready for real big wars against Russia and China, or even North Korea.
Venezuela is in a huge economic mess thanks to the crackpot economic policies of the Chavez and Maduro governments – and US economic sabotage. But my first law of international affairs is: ‘Every nation has the absolute god-given right to mismanage its own affairs and elect its own crooks or idiots.’
Now, however, the administration’s frenzied neocons want to start a war against Venezuela, a large, developed nation of 32.7 million, at the same time we are threatening war against Iran, interfering all around Africa, and confronting Russia, China and perhaps North Korea. Large parts of the Mideast and Afghanistan lie in ruins thanks to our ‘liberation’ campaigns.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ron Paul Warns: “Hapless” Guaido Now “Worth More Dead Than Alive” To Washington’s Venezuelan Coup-Creators
Ron Paul Warns: “Hapless” Guaido Now “Worth More Dead Than Alive” To Washington’s Venezuelan Coup-Creators
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido failed to kick-start a military uprising on Tuesday. After this fizzle, RT reports that his life may be in danger from his own CIA backers, the director of the Ron Paul Institute argued in a debate.
Daniel McAdams and Ron Paul, the former libertarian representative from Texas, discussed the repeated attempts by Guaido to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with the backing from the US government. Despite all the efforts, Maduro remains in power, supported by many Venezuelans and in control of its military and police forces.
Paul said he was concerned that the Latin American country may be plunged into large-scale violence by some provocation.
“The big danger is a hard war breaking out. I’d still bet it won’t be too bad, with thousands of troops moving. But it could be a guerrilla war or something like that. If there is a false flag or some important official on either side gets killed, you can’t tell what might happen,” he said.
McAdams pointed out that Guaido himself, with his record of failing to mobilize the protest against the Maduro government, could be a target for such a provocation.
He has been a kind of a hapless figure so far. He calls for mass protests and no one shows up. I don’t think he realizes right now that he is actually now worth more dead than alive not only to the CIA, but also to his own opposition people. A shot in the crowd or something like that to take Guaido out. It might shock you, Dr. Paul, but the CIA is pretty good at this kind of things.
He said Tuesday’s events, when Guaido declared a military-backed coup to be underway in Caracas which as of now seems to have led to little consequence for Maduro, seemed like an act of desperation.
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If The Agenda To Oust Maduro Was Honest Instead Of Dishonest
If The Agenda To Oust Maduro Was Honest Instead Of Dishonest
Juan Guaido: I would like to be regarded as the interim president of Venezuela because the current president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, stands opposed to the interests of the political bodies with which I have aligned myself. Also, he stands opposed to my own personal ambitions of becoming powerful.
Washington, DC: We too would like for Juan Guaido to be regarded as the interim president of Venezuela, because the current President of Venezuela is too cozy in policy and practice with our geopolitical opponents. We would not mind this so much if Venezuela didn’t sit atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves. If we can’t control what happens to those oil reserves, we won’t be as dominant on the world stage as we otherwise would be.
US allies: We too would like it if Juan Guaido were president instead of Nicolas Maduro, because that’s what the United States wants and it is in our interests to go along with whatever they say. If we go along with Washington’s dictates we are treated favorably, whereas if we don’t we’ll end up getting treated the way the Venezuelan government is being treated currently.
Donald Trump: I’ve been told by the neoconservatives who I have appointed to guide my foreign policy that it would be good for America’s resource control agendas if I apply more sanctions to Venezuela’s economy at this time. This will force the Venezuelan civilians, and more importantly their military, to overthrow Maduro or else see their loved ones die of malnutrition and lack of healthcare.
John Bolton: I too encourage Venezuela’s citizens and military to turn against their government and begin inflicting violence upon it until Nicolas Maduro is either dead or removed from power.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Assange’s Imprisonment Reveals Even More Corruption Than WikiLeaks Did
Assange’s Imprisonment Reveals Even More Corruption Than WikiLeaks Did
Consortium News has launched a new series titled “The Revelations of WikiLeaks”, geared toward helping readers come to a full appreciation of just how much useful information the outlet has made available to the world with its publications. Which is good, because there’s a whole lot of it. Understanding everything that WikiLeaks has done to shine light in areas that powerful people wish to keep dark makes it abundantly clear why powerful people would want to dedicate immense amounts of energy toward sabotaging it.
What’s even more interesting to me right now, though, is that if you think about it, the completely fraudulent arrest and imprisonment of Julian Assange arguably exposes more malfeasance by government and media powers than than what has been revealed in all WikiLeaks publications combined since its inception. And we can use that as a weapon in waking the world up to the dystopian manipulations of the powerful, in the same way we can use WikiLeaks publications.
Really, think about it. Thanks to WikiLeaks we know about a military cultural environment in the Iraq war that was toxic enough to give rise to US servicemen merrily gunning down civilians, including two Reuters war correspondents, while whooping and exchanging verbal high-fives. We know that the CIA cultivated a massive cyber-arsenal which enables them to spy through smartphones and smart TVs, remotely hijack vehicles, and forge digital fingerprints on cyber-intrusions to make it look to forensic investigators as though hackers from another nation was responsible, and that they lost control of this arsenal.
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The Triumph of Evil
The Triumph of Evil
Today (April 17) I heard a NPR “news” report that described the democratically elected president of Venezuela as “the Venezuelan dictator Maduro.” By repeating over and over that a democratically elected president is a dictator, the presstitutes create that image of Maduro in the minds of vast numbers of peoples who know nothing about Venezuela and had never heard of Maduro until he is dropped on them as “dictator.”
Nicolas Maduro Moros was elected president of Venezuela in 2013 and again in 2018. Previously he served as vice president and foreign minister, and he was elected to the National Assembly in 2000. Despite Washington’s propaganda campaign against him and Washington’s attempt to instigate violent street protests and Maduro’s overthrow by the Venezuelan military, whose leaders have been offered large sums of money, Maduro has the overwhelming support of the people, and the military has not moved against him.
What is going on is that American oil companies want to recover their control over the revenue streams from Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Under the Bolivarian Revolution of Chavez, continued by Maduro, the oil revenues instead of departing the country have been used to reduce poverty and raise literacy inside Venezuela.
The opposition to Maduro inside Venezuela comes from the elites who have been traditionally allied with Washington in the looting of the country. These corrupt elites, with the CIA’s help, temporarily overthrew Chavez, but the people and the Venezuelan military secured his release and return to the presidency.
Washington has a long record of refusing to accept any reformist governments in Latin America. Reformers get in the way of North America’s exploitation of Latin American countries and are overthrown.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Are “Conspiracy Theories” Tearing Society Apart Or Saving Us From Destruction?
Are “Conspiracy Theories” Tearing Society Apart Or Saving Us From Destruction?
The phrase “conspiracy theory” is often used by establishment agencies, the mainstream media and useful idiots as a tool to dismiss legitimate evidence or viewpoints that disagree with their predetermined version of events. This method of propaganda was not always as widespread as it is today. The phrase was not “created” by the CIA, but it was in fact weaponized by them in the 1960’s after the assassination of John F. Kennedy with the express purpose of shutting down rational debate.
CIA memo 1035-960, circulated within the CIA in 1967 and exposed through a freedom of information act request by the New York Times in 1976, outlines strategies the agency would use to shut down critics of the Warren Commission Report. Specifically, they suggested the accusation of “conspiracy” with negative connotations attached, predominantly in mainstream books and articles. This was indeed done through the CIA’s many puppets in the media, and the concept of “conspiracy theory” as a pejorative was born.
Through the use of strawman arguments, red herring fallacies and sophistry, the incredible scale of evidence (exposed by investigators like New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison) suggesting the Warren Commission was either corrupt or ignorant in its findings was buried in a flurry of hatchet jobs and hit pieces. And this was the goal, of course; to attack the messenger and silence the truth without having to go through the ugly process of directly confronting the truth.
Until recently, this strategy was highly effective. Attacking a person as a “conspiracy theorist” was the only tool critics really needed to keep a piece of evidence or a concrete viewpoint from going viral. Conspiracy theory is equated to insanity, or stupidity, or buffoonery. Everyone knows a conspiracy theorist is not to be taken seriously, so why waste time listening to what they have to say in the first place?
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Day America Died
The Day America Died
47 years ago in American Pie, Don McLean talked about The Day The Music Died. Or of course the music didn’t really die, but at the same time it did. “The three mean I admired most, the father, son and the holy ghost, they caught the last train for the coast, the day the music died.”
Back then you could still have claimed the country merely lost its innocence. And you could have said the same in 1861 or 1914 or 1941. Today, not to take anything away from music, or the song, something much bigger died. America itself died, not just its music or innocence. America didn’t just lose its innocence, it pled guilty.
No doubt most of you would proclaim that’s a gross exaggeration, and an insane hyperbole, but you would all be wrong, sorry. There’s no way back this time.
America, the United States, with all its initial prejudice and lethal screw-ups, was founded as a place where people could direct their own lives without having to fear any other party, let alone a government, that would stand in their way while they did it. And a big part of not having to fear one’s government is not having to fear that government purposely lying to its citizens. The Founding Fathers, for all their faults, got that right. And today erases all of that in one fell swoop.
That is what died today. Or, you know, it may have died much earlier, and a thousand times before as well, but with the arrest in London of Julian Assange, an Australian citizen wanted by the US Deep State, a myriad of strands connecting, and connected to a bloated dying corpse came together. And now we know there is no salvation possible.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
8 Historic Cases That Show the FBI and CIA Were Out of Control Long Before Russiagate
8 Historic Cases That Show the FBI and CIA Were Out of Control Long Before Russiagate
The survival of liberty depends on skepticism of government power—and make no mistake, that includes President Trump.
Conservatives tend to have two bad habits. First, they’re prone to viewing the past through a nostalgic lens. Second, they tend to instinctively give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt.
These tendencies help explain why conservatives for decades have been able to overlook the many abuses—constitutional, legal, and moral—of US intelligence agencies.
Government bureaucrats were out of control long before the 2016 presidential election.
Unlike some more seasoned media, conservatives have appeared genuinely shocked by revelations of the Trump-Russia saga: abuse of FISA warrants, classified leaksfrom top FBI brass,corruption, campaign moles, and an apparent plot to remove an elected president through undemocratic (and likely extra-constitutional) means.
These revelations are unique in that they have become highly public and involve a sitting president. However, an examination of the history of US intelligence agencies reveals government bureaucrats were out of control long before the 2016 presidential election.
1. That Time the CIA Considered Bombing Miami and Blaming It on Castro
It’s no secret that the US government sought to assassinate Fidel Castro for years. Less well known, however, was that part of their regime-change plot included a plan to blow up Miami and sinking a boat-full of innocent Cubans.
The plan, which was revealed in 2017 when the National Archives declassified 2,800 documents from the JFK era, was a collaborative effort that included the CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies that sought to brainstorm strategies to topple Castro and sow unrest within Cuba. One of those plans included Operation Northwoods, submitted to the CIA by General Lyman Lemnitzer on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
America’s Venezuela Strategy: Coup By Sheer Narrative Control
America’s Venezuela Strategy: Coup By Sheer Narrative Control
The Trump administration is working to overthrow the government of Venezuela. They are not at this time doing this by military invasion, nor by funneling thousands of armed militants into the country, nor even solely with starvation sanctions and CIA ops. The first and foremost means of overthrowing Venezuela’s government currently being utilized by the United States government is the low-risk, low-cost plan to simply control the stories that everyone tells themselves about who is in charge in Venezuela.
Adept manipulators understand that humans are storytelling animals. The only thing keeping the powerful powerful, keeping money operating the way it operates, and keeping government running the way it runs is the stories we all agree to tell each other about those things. If everyone collectively decided today that poker chips are the new currency and Kim Kardashian is the Supreme Ruler of the Entire World, those stories would be the new reality, and tomorrow we’d all be doing whatever Empress Kim commands and Las Vegas would be the new Wall Street.
The Trump administration is exploiting this exact principle in Venezuela by singling out some guy named Juan and calling him Mister President, despite the fact that he’s never received a single vote for that office and holds no actual power. If they can persuade enough Venezuelans (particularly the ones with the big guns) and the rest of the world’s governments to do the same, then Guaido will indeed become the functional president of the country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
