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ABC News Anchor Leaves Because of Fake News

July 4, 2018

ABC News Anchor Leaves Because of Fake News

 

One of the prominent faces of ABC news has been Brian Ross, one of their star investigative correspondents. He has been forced to resign because he embarrassed the network late last year when he did an on-air report suggesting former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had been toldby President Donald Trump to make contact with Russian officials during the 2016 campaign for president. Ross and Rhonda Schwartz, who was the chief investigative producer for Ross’ team, has had to step down when that report proved to be false.

FAKE NEWS has been building because there have been no checks and balance. I have had my encounters over the years that will make your head spin. I was flying to Australia to give a public conference there and a journalist, who was obviously a socialist and President Reagan-hater calling it “trickle-down” economics,  ran a full-page story on me and said I was the author of just about everything and Reagan did everything I instructed so I was an evil capitalist and nobody should go listen to me. When I landed, the staff informed me about the article. I called the journalist who never bothered to interview me that I was only called in for that dog & pony show to launch G5 and that I disagreed with that policy. As for “trickle-down” supply-side economics, I told him that was Arthur Laffer – not me. Of course, there was never a retraction. I went to a cocktail party and someone called me a liar. His interpretation of that article was that I had worked in the White House as the Chief Economic Advisor. When I denied that, I was a liar because I was “embarrassed” to admit I worked for Reagan. That was just one of many encounters I had with FAKE NEWS.

The FBI is Not Your Friend

December 11, 2017

The FBI is Not Your Friend

One of the unfortunate ironies of the manufactured “Russiagate” controversy is the perception of the FBI as a friend of liberty and justice. But the FBI has never been a friend of liberty and justice. Rather, as James Bovard writes, it

has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that ‘the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.’ This has practically been the Bureau’s motif since its creation in 1908…. The FBI has always used its ‘good guy’ image to keep a lid on its crimes.

Bovard has made a vocation of cataloging the FBI’s many offenses against liberty and justice, for which we are forever in his debt.

Things are certainly not different today. Take the case of Michael Flynn, the retired lieutenant general who spent less than a month as Donald Trump’s national-security adviser. Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in connection with conversations he had with Russia’s then-ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, between Trump’s election and inauguration. One need not be an admirer of Flynn — and for many reasons I certainly am not — to be disturbed by how the FBI has handled this case.

One ought to be immediately suspicious whenever someone is charged with or pleads guilty to lying to the FBI without any underlying crime being charged. Former assistant U.S. attorney Andrew C. McCarthy points out:

When a prosecutor has a cooperator who was an accomplice in a major criminal scheme, the cooperator is made to plead guilty to the scheme.

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

Moscow Braces For More U.S. Sanctions

December 10, 2017

Moscow Braces For More U.S. Sanctions

Putin

Whatever friendly feelings United States President Donald Trump might personally hold toward Moscow, the anti-Russian policy of his administration is even bolder than the course set in the last year of Barack Obama’s presidency. This conclusion was articulated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who expressed his dismay about the wave of “Russophobic hysteria” that, he said, had swept Washington (Russiancouncil.ru, November 30). Lavrov had shared that opinion before Michael Flynn, the former national security advisor in Trump’s administration, pleaded guilty of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) about his contacts with Russian officials and opted to cooperate with the investigation of special counsel Robert Moeller. This investigation is now expected to produce more evidence of Russia’s interference in the U.S. presidential elections (Gazeta.ru, November 30). Stricter implementation of the law on sanctions is certain to follow, and Moscow is bracing for more punishment and preparing responses.

The Russian economy can be maintained at its just-above-zero growth trajectory only if Moscow’s agreement with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) on production cuts is sustained, thus supporting the oil price on its current plateau (Forbes.ru, November 30). Greater worries in the business elite pertain to the personal sanctions aimed at oligarchs with close ties to the Kremlin, which allegedly are being investigated by U.S. financial intelligence with alarming prejudice (Rosbalt, November 30). Huge fortunes evacuated to Western “havens” by carefully hidden channels are in danger, and even family members enjoying the “good life” in Monaco or Miami could feel the squeeze (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, November 28). It is well known in Russian business-political circles that the US State Department under Trump has not been particularly active in preparing new sanctions, so the news about the possible departure of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson brings more worries (RBC, December 1).

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

Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives

April 3, 2017

Putin Derangement Syndrome Arrives

Whatever the truth about Trump and Russia, the speculation surrounding it has become a dangerous case of mass hysteria

Michael Flynn and Donald Trump John Locher/AP

So Michael Flynn, who was Donald Trump’s national security adviser before he got busted talking out of school to Russia’s ambassador, has reportedly offered to testify in exchange for immunity.

For seemingly the 100th time, social media is exploding. This is it! The big reveal!

Perhaps it will come off just the way people are expecting. Perhaps Flynn will get a deal, walk into the House or the Senate surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers, and unspool the whole sordid conspiracy.

He will explain that Donald Trump, compromised by ancient deals with Russian mobsters, and perhaps even blackmailed by an unspeakable KGB sex tape, made a secret deal. He’ll say Trump agreed to downplay the obvious benefits of an armed proxy war in Ukraine with nuclear-armed Russia in exchange for Vladimir Putin’s help in stealing the emails of Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and John Podesta.

I personally would be surprised if this turned out to be the narrative, mainly because we haven’t seen any real evidence of it. But episodes like the Flynn story have even the most careful reporters paralyzed. What if, tomorrow, it all turns out to be true?

What if reality does turn out to be a massive connect-the-dots image of St. Basil’s Cathedral sitting atop the White House? (This was suddenly legitimate British conspiracist Louise Mensch’s construction in The New York Times last week.) What if all the Glenn Beck-style far-out charts with the circlesand arrows somehow all make sense?

This is one of the tricks that keeps every good conspiracy theory going. Nobody wants to be the one claiming the emperor has no clothes the day His Highness walks out naked. And this Russia thing has spun out of control into just such an exercise of conspiratorial mass hysteria.

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

The Deep State and the Dark Arts

March 12, 2017

The Deep State and the Dark Arts

Photo by Nicolas Raymond | CC BY 2.0

Photo by Nicolas Raymond | CC BY 2.0

Rejecting populism for hegemony

There’s a superb scene in the movie Syriana where CIA bureaucrats distance themselves from one of their agents, Bob, played by George Clooney, who has become a troublesome asset for the agency. Terry, the pack leader, begins to extemporize a narrative to his subordinates. With cool detachment, he tells them: “Put some space between us and Bob. Bob has a long history of entrepreneurial operations. We haven’t really had a handle on Bob for years. After 9/11, some people got a lot of leeway, let their emotions get the best of them. These are complex times. There’s already an active investigation into Bob’s activities in…help me out here.”

At this point, the group flesh out the details of how they’re going to burn the agency’s connection to Bob, painting him as an agent gone rogue, slipping the net of agency supervision, defying protocol, and ultimately selling himself to unsavory elements that want a U.S. asset killed. In this way, the leviathan spits out a loyal servant, rendering him obsolete with a fable and a slander, sanctified by the imprimatur of the officialdom.

We should note the importance of the media in all this storyline, albeit fictional. The dark arts of propaganda aren’t overtly mentioned, but they are the pivotal tools that will animate the destruction of Bob’s career. All sound strangely familiar? It should. It’s pretty much the script the intelligence community uses as its modus operandi when it needs to deal with an inconvenient public servant.

Theater of the Absurd

With rumors of detente crackling through the ether, the imperialist machinery of anti-Russian foreign policy has cranked into high gear, leveraging leaks and the press to mute Trump’s overtures of peace. Leaks to the The Washington Post were leveraged in last month’s excommunication of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.

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

Red Hysteria Engulfs Washington

February 20, 2017

Red Hysteria Engulfs Washington

Red Hysteria Engulfs Washington

President Dwight Eisenhower’s warning about the dangers of the military-industrial complex made half a century ago ring as loud and clear today. The soft coup being mounted against the Trump government by America’s ‘deep state’ reached a new intensity this week as special interests battled for control of Washington.

The newly named national security advisor, Lt Gen Michael Flynn, was ousted by Trump over his chats with Russia’s ambassador and what he may or may not have told Vice President Pence. The defenestration of Flynn appeared engineered by our national intelligence agencies in collaboration with the mainstream media and certain Democrats.

Flynn’s crime? Talking to the wicked Russians before and after the election. Big, big deal. That’s what security advisors are supposed to do: keep an open back channel to other major powers and allies. This is also the job of our intelligence agencies.

There is no good or bad in international affairs. The childish concept of ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ comes from the Bush era when simple-minded voters had to be convinced that America was somehow in grave danger from a bunch of angry Mideast goat herds.

The only nations that could threaten America’s very existence are nuclear powers Russia, China, India, France, Britain and Israel (and maybe Pakistan) in that order.

Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads targeted on the US mainland. Any real war with Russia would invite doom for both nations. Two near misses are more than enough. Remember the 1962 Cuban missile confrontation and the terrifying 1983 Able Archer scare – near thermonuclear war caused by Ronald Reagan’s anti-Russian hysteria and Moscow’s panicked response.

Margolis’ #1 rule of international relations: make nice and keep on good terms with nations that have nuclear weapons pointed at you. Avoid squabbles over almost all matters. Intelligence agencies play a key role in maintaining the balance of nuclear terror and preventing misunderstandings that can cause war.

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

The Deep State Targets Trump

February 17, 2017

The Deep State Targets Trump

When Gen. Michael Flynn was forced to resign as national security adviser, Bill Kristol purred his satisfaction, “If it comes to it, prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”

To Kristol, the permanent regime, not the elected president and his government, is the real defender and rightful repository of our liberties.

Yet it was this regime, the deep state, that carried out what Eli Lake of Bloomberg calls “The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn.”

And what were Flynn’s offenses?

In December, when Barack Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats, Flynn spoke to the Russian ambassador. He apparently counseled the envoy not to overreact, saying a new team would be in place in a few weeks and would review U.S.-Russian relations.

“That’s neither illegal nor improper,” writes Lake.

Vladimir Putin swiftly declared that there would be no reciprocal expulsions and U.S. diplomats and their families would be welcome at the Kremlin’s Christmas and New Year’s parties.

Diplomatic crisis averted. “Great move … (by V. Putin),” tweeted Trump, “I always knew he was very smart.”

But apparently, this did not sit well with the deep state.

For when Vice President Pence told a TV show that Flynn told him that sanctions did not come up in conversation with the Russian ambassador, a transcript of Flynn’s call was produced from recordings by intelligence agencies, and its contents leaked to The Washington Post.

After seeing the transcript, the White House concluded that Flynn had misled Pence, mutual trust was gone, and Flynn must go.

Like a good soldier, Flynn took the bullet.

The real crime here, however, is not that the incoming national security adviser spoke with a Russian diplomat seeking guidance on the future president’s thinking. The real crime is the criminal conspiracy inside the deep state to transcribe the private conversation of a U.S. citizen and leak it to press collaborators to destroy a political career.

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

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