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So many Wall Street CEOs and other titans of investing and industry have pulled out of next week’s “Davos in the Desert” conference that even the Ritz-Carlton, owner of the Riyadh venue hosting the conference (as it did last year), has been slammed by human rights groups over its continued support for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and his brutal regime. In perhaps the biggest blow to the conference’s clout, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has opted not to attend, eve as President Trump has insisted that Saudi Arabia’s story about the circumstances surrounding the (now confirmed) death of critical journalist (and former government insider) Jamal Khashoggi is “credible”. To deflect blame away from MbS, the Saudi leadership has orchestrated a purge of the country’s senior intelligence apparatus and arrested 18 other Saudi nationals for their “involvement” in orchestrating and carrying out the killing. And in the mother of all ironies, the royal family has tasked MbS with running a ministerial committee responsible for restructuring the Saudis foreign intelligence service.

Though Silicon Valley and Wall Street would probably have you believe that they aren’t simply ready to “forget” about Khashoggi, the reality is slightly more nuanced. But the simple fact is that both industries have become too reliant on Saudi money to simply walk away, as Bloomberg and the New York Times laid bare in a batch of stories that exposed this corporate indignation as little more than posturing.

But that doesn’t change the fact that Saudi Arabia’s economy is reliant on foreign money, without which it would grind to a halt (imagine what would happen if foreigner buyers of Saudi oil simply walked away?).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

AUDIO: Shady Claims by NYT on Russia-gate: Peter B. Collins interviews Gareth Porter

October 18, 2018

AUDIO: Shady Claims by NYT on Russia-gate: Peter B. Collins interviews Gareth Porter

Gareth Porter discusses with radio host Peter B. Collins his Consortium News article exposing exaggerated claims of Russian skulduggery on Facebook in 2016.

Journalist and historian Gareth Porter returned to the Peter B. Collins show to discuss his new article, exposing exaggerated claims of Russian skulduggery on Facebook in 2016. Porter’s article was published last week at Consortium News, showing inaccurate claims in the late-September recap of Russia-gate by New York Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti.

Both Porter and your humble host consider Shane to be a credible reporter, and credit him with caveats in stories on Russia-gate, including the quote from the September 26 report that these claims “can neither be proven nor disproven.”

We note how many “progressive” media figures, including Thom Hartmann, claim that Mueller’s convictions and plea deals amount to proof of “collusion”, even though Manafort and the others have not been tried on such charges.

Porter explains that the numbers cited by the Times about Facebook are grossly exaggerated, with “potential impressions” being treated as click-throughs. He notes that Facebook estimates that only 1 out of 10 posts in a news feed are actually read by the user. When you compare the modest traffic attributed to all Russians, including government actors, it’s infinitesimal compared to the $80 million-plus the Trump campaign spent on dark-targeted Facebook ads.

Porter also looks at the role of Twitter bots in amplifying tweets by the candidates, and argues that the impacts cited by Shane and Mazzetti are not significant. Listen to Peter B. delve deep into the deceptions of Russia-gate with Gareth Porter. Running time 35:14.

Peter B. Collins, a veteran radio host on the airwaves in the San Francisco Bay Area, is host of the Peter B. Collins Show.

How the FBI Silences Whistleblowers

October 17, 2018

How the FBI Silences Whistleblowers

Speaking truth to power has ruined Darin Jones, a former FBI contract specialist who reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties. He should be the last federal whistleblower victimized, writes John Kiriakou.

The idea of “whistleblowing” has been in the news a great deal.

Is the anonymous author of a recent New York Times op-ed eviscerating the president a whistleblower?

Is the victim of an alleged sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh a whistleblower?

I’m fortunate to have access to the media to talk about torture after blowing the whistle on the CIA’s program. I think Ed Snowden, Tom Drake and others would say the same thing about the aftermath of their own whistleblowing.

Cost of Doing the Right Thing

The problem is that we are the exception to the rule. Most whistleblowers either suffer in anonymity or are personally, professionally, socially and financially ruined for speaking truth to power. Darin Jones is one of those people. He’s one of the people silenced in Barack Obama’s war on whistleblowers. And he continues to suffer under Donald Trump.

Jones was an FBI supervisory contract specialist who in 2012 reported evidence of serious procurement improprieties to his superior. Jones maintained that Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) had been awarded a $40 million contract improperly because a former FBI official with responsibility for granting the contract then was hired as a consultant at CSC. Jones said, rightly, that this was a violation of the Procurement Integrity Act. He made seven other disclosures alleging financial improprieties in the FBI, and he was promptly fired for his troubles.

Remember, the United States has a Whistleblower Protection Act. Any federal employee who brings to light evidence of waste, fraud, abuse, illegality, or threats to the public health or public safety is protected under federal statute.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“I Have No Words”: Aerial Footage Shows Trail Of Devastation Left By Hurricane Michael

October 11, 2018

“I Have No Words”: Aerial Footage Shows Trail Of Devastation Left By Hurricane Michael

“Today is a big day for us when it comes to helping people,” said Long during the Thursday morning press briefing, adding “Power is not going to be on for a while.”

The latest developments, per the New York Times:

• At least four deaths were linked to the storm in Gadsden County, west of Tallahassee, according to Lt. Anglie Hightower, a spokeswoman for the sheriff’s office. The victims included a man who died when a tree crashed down on his home in Greensboro.

• An 11-year-old girl, Sarah Radney, was killed on Wednesday when a carport was torn away and was sent hurtling into the modular home she was in, said Chad Smith, the coroner of Seminole County, Ga. “She was sitting right next to her grandmother,” said Mr. Smith, who described the girl’s death as a “horrible accident.”

• Emergency officials rushed to evacuate more than 300 patients from storm-damaged hospitals in Panama City. In total, four hospitals and 11 nursing facilities were closed in Florida. A nursing facility in Georgia was also closed.

• Much of the coast of the Florida Panhandle, including parts of Panama City and Mexico Beach, was left in ruins. The area is dotted with small, rural communities, some of them among the poorest in the state. Evacuation was difficult.Read more about how the storm was hard on people without the means to evacuate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Battle for Our Minds

September 26, 2018

The Battle for Our Minds

There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but given the state of corporate media, perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds, says Patrick Lawrence.

After reading The New York Times piece “The Plot to Subvert an Election” I put the paper down with a single question.

Why, after two years of allegations, indictments, and claims to proof of this, that, and the other did the newspaper of record—well, once the newspaper of record—see any need to publish such a piece? My answer is simple: The orthodox account of Russia-gate has not taken hold: It has failed in its effort to establish a consensus of certainty among Americans. My conclusion matches this observation: The orthodox narrative is never going to achieve this objective. There are too many holes in it.

“The information age is actually a media age,” John Pilger, the noted British–Australian journalist, remarked during a symposium four years ago, when the Ukraine crisis was at its peak. “We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media—a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions.” Pilger revisited the theme in a piece last week on Consortium News, arguing that once-tolerated, dissenting opinion has in recent years “regressed into a metaphoric underground.”

There are battlefields in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, and elsewhere, but perhaps the most consequential battle now being fought is for our minds.

Those who dispense with honest intellectual inquiry, healthy skepticism of all media, and an insistence that assertions require supporting evidence should not win this war. The Times piece by Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti—two of the paper’s top-tier reporters—is a case in point: If the Russia-gate narrative were so widely accepted as their report purports, there would have been no need to publish such a piece at this late date.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Strong GDP Data and Individuals’ Wellbeing

September 26, 2018

STRONG GDP DATA AND INDIVIDUALS’ WELLBEING

In the New York Times September 14 2018 in an article – We’re Measuring The Economy All Wrong, the writer of the article David Leonhardt complains that despite strong gross domestic product data (GDP) most people don’t feel it. The writer of the article argues that,

The trouble is that a handful of statistics dominate the public conversation about the economy despite the fact that they provide a misleading portrait of people’s lives. Even worse, the statistics have become more misleading over time.

According to the accepted rules of thumb, recessions are about at least two quarters of negative growth in real gross domestic product (GDP). Recessions, according to this way of thinking, are seen as something associated with the so-called strength of the economy. The stronger an economy is the less likely it is to fall into a recession. The major cause of recessions is seen as various shocks, such as a sharp increase in the price of oil or some disruptive political events, or natural disasters or a sudden fall in consumer outlays on goods and services. Obviously then, if an economy is strong enough to cope with these shocks then recessions can be prevented, or at least made less painful. For instance, a well-managed company with a well-managed inventory is likely to withstand the effects of various shocks versus a poorly managed company.

Severity of a recession and the strength of the economy

We suggest that recessions are not about two quarters of negative growth in real GDP, or declines in various economic indicators as such. They are also not about successful inventory management. We would suggest that recessions are not about how resilient an economy is to various external and internal shocks.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The New York Times As Judge And Jury

September 23, 2018

The New York Times As Judge And Jury

Seeking to maintain its credibility, The New York Times dispenses with the criminal justice system and basic principles of journalism to weigh in again on Russia-gate…

We’ve seen it before: a newspaper and individual reporters get a story horribly wrong but instead of correcting it they double down to protect their reputations and credibility – which is all journalists have to go on – and the public suffers.

Sometimes this maneuver can contribute to a massive loss of life. The most egregious example was the reporting in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. Like nearly all Establishment media, The New York Times got the story of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction—the major casus belli for the invasion—dead wrong. But the Times, like the others, continued publishing stories without challenging their sources in authority, mostly unnamed, who were pushing for war.

The result was a disastrous intervention that led to hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and continued instability in Iraq, including the formation of the Islamic State.

In a massive Times‘ article published on Thursday, entitled, “A Plot to Subvert an Election: Unravelling the Russia Story So Far,” it seems that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti have succumbed to the same thinking that doubled down on Iraq.

They claim to have a “mountain of evidence” but what they offer would be invisible on the Great Plains.

With the mid-terms looming and Special Counsel Robert Mueller unable to so far come up with any proof of collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election—the central Russia-gate charge—the Times does it for him, regurgitating a Russia-gate Round-Up of every unsubstantiated allegation that has been made—deceptively presented as though it’s all been proven.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid

September 15, 2018

Four Reasons Why Interventionism In Syria Is Crazy And Stupid

As tensions continue to mount around the Al-Qaeda-held province of Idlib in Syria, the New York Times has published an op-ed by virulent neoconservative war whore Bret Stephens explaining that the US should intervene militarily in order to thwart the geopolitical agendas of Iran. He argues that any movement to recapture Idlib should be met with a full-scale assault on the Syrian government, crippling its air force and attacking Bashar al-Assad’s presidential palaces. Stephens says this must be done to prevent Tehran from “consolidating a Shiite crescent stretching from Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon.”

NYT op-ed says that when the Syrian army tries to reclaim the jihadi-led city of #Idlib, the US should treat that as a red line and destroy the military and go after Assad🤦‍♂️ https://t.co/0ZSACvxyW7

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) September 13, 2018

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. These propagandists keep giving us all these different, unrelated reasons why the US and its allies should definitely totally intervene in Syria and overthrow its government. It’s because the Syrian people want freedom and democracy. Wait, no, it’s because Assad is violating international law by using chemical weapons. Actually, it’s to thwart Putin’s agendas. Scratch that, it’s to stop Iran. We’re being given all these different stories about why a regime change intervention in Iraq’s next-door neighbor Syria is needed, and the only thing those stories seem to have in common is that they all require a large amount of expensive weaponry being discharged upon the human beings who back the Syrian government. Maybe, just maybe, taking out the Syrian government has always been the real goal, and they’re just making up different excuses to see what sticks?

They’re having a very hard time getting anything to stick with much conviction, though, so I figured I should give them a little assistance in seeing why that might be. Here are a few of the things which prevent interventionism in Syria from being a sane and appropriate thing for the US and its allies to do:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

On the Brink with Russia in Syria Again, 5 Years Later

September 12, 2018

On the Brink with Russia in Syria Again, 5 Years Later

It’s deja-vu all over again in Syria, with the U.S. on the verge of a confrontation with Russia as Donald Trump faces his biggest decision yet as president, comments Ray McGovern.

The New York Times, on September 11, 2013, accommodated Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s desire “to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders” about “recent events surrounding Syria.”

Putin’s op-ed in the Times appeared under the title: “A Plea for Caution From Russia.” In it, he warned that a military “strike by the United States against Syria will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders … and unleash a new wave of terrorism. … It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.”

Three weeks before Putin’s piece, on August 21, there had been a chemical attack in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was immediately blamed. There soon emerged, however, ample evidence that the incident was a provocation to bring direct U.S. military involvement against Assad, lest Syrian government forces retain their momentum and defeat the jihadist rebels.

In a Memorandum for President Barack Obama five days before Putin’s article on September 6, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) had warned President Barack Obama of the likelihood that the incident in Ghouta was a false-flag attack.

Despite his concern of a U.S. Attack, Putin’s main message in his Op-Ed was positive, talking of a growing mutual trust:

“A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action. [Syria’s chemical weapons were in fact destroyed under UN supervision the following year.]

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

James Grant Responds To The Bernanke-Paulson-Geithner Op-Ed

September 10, 2018

James Grant Responds To The Bernanke-Paulson-Geithner Op-Ed

Wealth defect

Over the weekend, Global Financial Crisis-era policymakers Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner and Henry Paulson brought the band back together to pen a New York Times opinion piece. After sharing their self-exonerating analysis of the events of 2007-2009 and subsequent response (which one of the three did the fact checking?), Bernanke et al. argue for greater regulatory powers, or as they put it, “adequate firefighting tools,” to resolve future financial crises.

Blanket guarantees of bank debt by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Fed’s emergency lending capabilities and the Treasury department’s guarantee of money market funds are among the mechanisms cited by the authors as necessary for crisis prevention and mitigation.

The trio write:

We need to make sure that future generations of financial firefighters have the emergency powers they need to prevent the next fire from becoming a conflagration. We must also resist calls to eliminate safeguards as the memory of the crisis fades. For those working to keep our financial system resilient, the enemy is forgetting.

Alternatively, the monetary mandarins could take a cue from Peter Fisher, former executive vice-president at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and senior fellow at the Tuck School of Business. Speaking on policy normalization at the Grant’s spring conference on March 15, 2017, Fisher offered a commanding critique of the crisis-era response led by the authors of this weekend’s Times piece. Written 18 months ago, the below passage could serve as a direct rebuttal to the authors, particularly former Fed chair Bernanke:

Curiously, the Fed has acknowledged no failures. All the experiments have been successful, every one: no failures, no negative side effects, no perverse consequences, only diminishing returns.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion

September 10, 2018

New York Times Undermining Peace Efforts by Sowing Suspicion

The New York Times continues to outdo itself in the production of fake news. There is no more reliable source of fake news than the intelligence services, which regularly provide their pet outlets (NYT and WaPo) with sensational stories that are as unverifiable as their sources are anonymous. A prize example was the August 24 report that US intelligence agencies don’t know anything about Russia’s plans to mess up our November elections because “informants close to … Putin and in the Kremlin” aren’t saying anything. Not knowing anything about something for which there is no evidence is a rare scoop.

A story like that is not designed to “inform the public” since there is no information in it. It has other purposes: to keep the “Russia is undermining our democracy” story on front pages, with the extra twist in this case of trying to make Putin distrustful of his entourage. The Russian president is supposed to wonder, who are those informants in my entourage?

But that was nothing compared to the whopper produced by the “newpaper of record” on September 5. (By the way, the “record” is stuck in the same groove: Trump bad, Putin bad – bad bad bad.) This was the sensational oped headlined “I am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration”, signed by nobody.

The letter by Mister or Ms Anonymous is very well written. By someone like, say, Thomas Friedman. That is, someone on the NYT staff. It is very cleverly composed to achieve quite obvious calculated aims. It is a masterpiece of treacherous deception.

The fictional author presents itself as a right-wing conservative shocked by Trump’s “amorality” – a category that outside the Washington swamp might include betraying the trust of one’s superior.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Steady State’ Or Deep State? Ron Paul Crushes The New York Times’ Hate-Driven Coup

September 10, 2018

‘Steady State’ Or Deep State? Ron Paul Crushes The New York Times’ Hate-Driven Coup

The New York Times unleashed a firestorm by publishing an anonymously written op-ed from someone purporting to be a “senior US Administration official” and who writes of a secret cabal within the US government that conspires to thwart President Trump’s agenda.

Presented as a heroic “resistance” from within, many see it as the work of a dangerous and undemocratic “deep state.”

As Ron Paul and Daniel Mcadams discuss below, is the “steady state,” as the NYT anonymous writer terms it, really another word for the “deep state”?

Peter van Buren sums the situation up perfectly: The op-ed does indeed signal a crisis, but not a Constitutional one. It is a crisis of collusion, among journalists turned to the task of removing a president via what some would call a soft coup.

Because it’s either that, or we’re meant as a nation to believe an election should be overturned two years after the fact based on a vaguely-sourced tell-all book and an anonymous op-ed…

Clarity on the Road to Civil War

September 9, 2018

Clarity on the Road to Civil War

If there’s one thing that makes this job difficult it is the endless smokescreens. Filtering out the noise is draining. From the double-speak of politicians to the endless manipulations of financial markets by central bankers the world is awash in fake news, fake prices and fake geniuses.

So, when a series of events occur that bring clarity to the circus that is world politics, my first reaction is to distrust them. It’s that weird moment when the evil-doers rip off their masks and just start telling you what their intentions are. This creates cognitive dissonance in those of us conditioned to reading between the thinnest of lines.

But, sometimes things are exactly what they appear to be.

And what is clear to me now is that the Deep State is done whipping the progressive Left into a frenzy over Donald Trump. They are now openly handing them pitchforks and mustering for a hostile takeover of the Oval Office.

The anonymous op-ed published by the New York Times timed perfectly with the leaked quotes from moldy old Bob Woodward’s new book “Fear – Trump in the White House” are clarion calls for a challenge of Trump’s competency via the 25th amendment.

We are in the last 60 days before the mid-term elections. The fear of loss by the Deep State is palpable. If Trump survives this election with his base and any form of congressional majority intact he will finally be able to go to town on these people who are a threat not just to the country but to humanity itself.

This narrative about Trump being unstable and insane began during the campaign and those that need to believe in this were always willing to keep this fire stoked. After that it’s simply a matter of repeating the lie over and over until, hopefully, they’ve manufactured a bonfire big enough to roast Trump on the altar of their agenda.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“This Is A Coup, Okay”: Bannon Weighs In On Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed

September 9, 2018

“This Is A Coup, Okay”: Bannon Weighs In On Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed

Responding to an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times detailing an active resistance within the Trump White House, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon told Reuters that President Trump is facing a “coup” the likes of which haven’t been seen since the American Civil War.

“What you saw the other day was as serious as it can get. This is a direct attack on the institutions,” Bannon said while flying to Italy. “This is a coup, okay”.

The Wednesday column in the New York Times slams Trump’s “amorality” and claims that “Many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.”

Bannon told Reuters that the last time a sitting US president had been challenged like this was during the American Civil War when Democratic General George B. McClellan went after Republican President Abraham Lincoln.

“This is a crisis. The country has only ever had such a crisis in the summer of 1862 when General McClellan and the senior generals, all Democrats in the Union Army, deemed that Abraham Lincoln was not fit and not competent to be commander in chief,” said Bannon – whose departure from the White House was in large part over a fallout with Trump’s “establishment” advisers. Bannon said at the time that the “Republican establishment” sought to nullify the results of the 2016 election and effectively neuter Trump.

“There is a cabal of Republic establishment figures who believe Donald Trump is not fit to be president of the United States. This is a crisis,” Bannon said in Rome.

“I am not a conspiracy guy … I have said there is no deep state. It is an in-your-face state.” -Steve Bannon

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Covert US Plot For Venezuela Coup Detailed In Explosive NYT Report

September 8, 2018

Covert US Plot For Venezuela Coup Detailed In Explosive NYT Report

“This is going to land like a bomb” in the region, a former Latin America diplomatic official told the New York Times in this morning’s explosive lengthy report detailing how the Trump administration held covert meetings with Venezuelan military coup plotters targeting President Nicolás Maduro.

The “clandestine channel” involved contacts with what are described as “rebellious officers” bent on bringing about regime change with the help of Washington.

The astounding revelation — though perhaps familiar-sounding when considering the historical string of coups and CIA covert interventions across the 20th century from Cuba to Nicaragua to Chile — comes just over a month after a bizarre assassination attempt involving two C-4 explosive laden drones which detonated near Maduro as he gave a televised speech during a military parade in Caracas.

At the time the Venezuelan president pointed the finger at Washington, claiming right-wing factions connected to Columbia and Florida and backed by the United States were behind the sensational attempt on his life; meanwhile some American pundits raised the question of whether it was a ‘false flag’ staged by Maduro himself, given the strangeness of the event.

Though the August 4 events remain very much a mystery, the new revelation of White House-sponsored coup plotting meetings are sure to add fuel to Maduro’s ravings against Washington, and will further be utilized to blame external forces for causing Venezuela’s collapsing economy and failed infrastructure.

Like prior US covert action in Latin America, The New York Times finds that the White House was in bed with some very unsavory local actors:

But one of the Venezuelan military commanders involved in the secret talks was hardly an ideal figure to help restore democracy: He is on the American government’s own sanctions list of corrupt officials in Venezuela.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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