Month: June 2017

Three prominent journalists closely associated with the Russiagate story have been axed at CNN, which has imposed tighter new rules about stories linking Americans with the Uber Scandal.   http://thehill.com/homenews/media/339411-cnn-imposing-new-rules-on-russia-stories

CNNMoney executive editor Rich Barbieri sent out an email Saturday regarding the network’s new rules after CNN a day earlier issued a retraction on one of its stories.

“No one should publish any content involving Russia without coming to me and Jason [Farkas].”

This occurred after a powerful Wall Street fund owner who played a role in the Trump campaign, Anthony Saramucci, was implicated in a now scrubbed CNN report as being the focus of a Senate probe of meetings he had regarding the investment fund he ran with assets in Russia: http://thehill.com/media/339293-cnn-retracts-story-linking-trump-ally-scaramucci-to-russian-fund

A “massive, massive f-ckup, and people will be disciplined.”

A CNN source was quoted as remarking,  this is a”massive, massive f-ckup, and people will be disciplined.”

Like Joe McCarthy pointed his finger at the wrong guy at the Army-McCarthy hearings, CNN has stepped over a line.

The new restrictions come after CNN on Friday retracted a story that connected Anthony Scaramucci, a prominent ally of President Trump, to a Russian investment fund managed by a Kremlin-controlled bank.

“On June 22, 2017, CNN.com published a story connecting Anthony Scaramucci with investigations into the Russian Direct Investment Fund,” the news organization said in a statement.

“That story did not meet CNN’s editorial standards and has been retracted. Links to the story have been disabled. CNN apologizes to Mr. Scaramucci.”

The retracted story had claimed that Senate investigators were looking at the activities of the $10 billion Russian investment fund in connection to Scaramucci, who served on the executive committee of Trump’s transition team.

A source close to CNN told BuzzFeed the incident was a “massive, massive f– up and people will be disciplined.”

The CNN story, citing an anonymous source, said Senate investigators were examining a meeting between Scaramucci and an executive for the Russian Direct Investment Fund. The $10-billion fund makes direct investments in Russian companies.  Democrats on the committee reportedly wanted to question him whether he had discussed the effects of sanctions on the fund’s investment.

Scaramucci was the wrong guy to fuck with.

Who is Anthony Scaramucci?:  Wiki:

Career

After graduating from law school, Scaramucci began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he worked from 1989 to 1996 and held positions in its Investment Banking, Equities, and Private Wealth Management divisions.[14][15] After being hired, fired, and rehired in a single year, Scaramucci left Goldman in 1996[16] to launch Oscar Capital Management with his colleague Andrew Boszhardt.[17] In 2001, Oscar Capital was sold to Neuberger Berman and, upon Neuberger Berman’s sale to Lehman Brothers in 2003, Scaramucci served as a managing director in the firm’s Investment Management division.[14][18]
In 2005, Scaramucci founded SkyBridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm.[19]
Scaramucci was the chairman of the SkyBridge Alternatives “SALT” Conference, launched in 2009 and held in Las Vegas every spring.[20] In May 2014, SkyBridge licensed the rights to Wall Street Week, a financial television news program formerly hosted by Louis Rukeyser on PBS, installing Scaramucci as host. Broadcast rights were transferred to Fox Broadcasting Company in 2016.[21]
In 2011, Scaramucci received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award New York Award in the Financial Services category and[22] in 2016 was ranked #85 in Worth magazine’s “Power 100: The 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance.”[23]
On January 17, 2017, SkyBridge announced a majority stake sale to RON Transatlantic EG and HNA Capital (U.S.) Holding, a Chinese conglomerate with close ties to China’s Communist Party.[24][25]

The one-two public humiliations of Eric Lichtblau.

Among the casualties of the sudden shutdown of the CNN Russia unit was former NYT Washington Editor, Eric Lichtblau.  This Pulitzer Prize winner suddenly left the Times to join CNN’s Russiagate investigative unit after he served more than a decade as one of the Grey Lady’s most prominent investigative editors.

Lichtblau went from being publicly singled-out for the Times “too timid coverage” of Trump before the election to being its most aggressive reporter developing the Russiagate narrative. He was the target of a January 20th Times Public Editor column that blaimed him in particular as Trump was being nominated. If not fired, he resigned from The Times having been publicly humiliated by the paper where he had worked for 15 years.

This appears to have been the last article in the NYT which featured Lichtblau’s by-line.  https:/www.nytimes.com/by/eric-lichtblau

Comey Tried to Shield the F.B.I. From Politics. Then He Shaped an Election.

As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump campaign, James B. Comey tried to keep the bureau out of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.
By MATT APUZZO, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, ADAM GOLDMAN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
April 22, 2017
———————-
C.I.A. Had Evidence of Russian Effort to Help Trump Earlier Than Believed
Former government officials said the agency told senior lawmakers last summer that it had information indicating that Russia was working to help get President Trump elected.
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
April 6, 2017
—————————-
March 17, 2017
Russian Agents Were Behind Yahoo Hack, U.S. Says
Four men, including two Russian intelligence agents, were charged for their roles in the theft of 500 million Yahoo accounts in 2014.
By VINDU GOEL and ERIC LICHTBLAU
March 15, 2017
———————
Is Trump Being Investigated? `No Comment,’ Justice Dept. Says
Officials said the White House had not relied on any information from the Justice Department when it denied the existence of an investigation targeting President Trump.
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and ERIC LICHTBLAU
March 9, 2017
————————-
Democrats Seek Special Counsel to Investigate Russian Election Interference
Senator Dianne Feinstein said the move was necessary to shield the inquiry from the appearance of political interference by the Trump administration.
By CHARLIE SAVAGE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
March 7, 2017

These articles added immensely to the Russiagate narrative, Lichtblau and his co-authors at The New York Times relying on the now familiar “anonymous sources.”  His last, in particular, deserves close attention.   In that article he relied on the leaks of unnamed Bureau agents and lawyers to conclude — in the opening sentence — that Director Comey had “upended the 2016 election.” :
https:www.nytimes.com/2017/04/22/us/politics/james-comey-election.html

Comey Tried to
Shield the F.B.I. From
Politics. Then He
Shaped an Election.

As the F.B.I. investigated Hillary Clinton and the Trump
campaign, James B. Comey tried to keep the bureau out
of politics but plunged it into the center of a bitter election.
By MATT APUZZO, MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT, ADAM GOLDMAN and ERIC LICHTBLAUAPRIL 22, 2017

WASHINGTON — The day before he upended the 2016 election, James B. Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, summoned agents and lawyers to his conference room. They had been debating all day, and it was time for a decision. Mr. Comey’s plan was to tell Congress that the F.B.I. had received new evidence and was reopening its investigation into Hillary Clinton, the presidential front-runner. The move would violate the policies of an agency that does not reveal its investigations or do anything that may influence an election. But Mr. Comey had declared the case closed, and he believed he was obligated to tell Congress that had changed. “Should you consider what you’re about to do may help elect Donald Trump president?” an adviser asked him, Mr. Comey recalled recently at a closed meeting with F.B.I. agents.

He could not let politics affect his decision, he replied. “If we ever start considering who might be affected, and in what way, by what we do, we’re done,” he told the agents.

But with polls showing Mrs. Clinton holding a comfortable lead, Mr. Comey ended up plunging the F.B.I. into the molten center of a bitter election. Fearing the backlash that would come if it were revealed after the election that the F.B.I. had been investigating the next president and had kept it a secret, Mr. Comey sent a letter informing Congress that the case was reopened. What he did not say was that the F.B.I. was also investigating the campaign of Donald J. Trump. Just weeks before, Mr. Comey had declined to answer a question from Congress about whether there was such an investigation. Only in March, long after the election, did Mr. Comey confirm that there was one.

Questionable surveillance and the unraveling of the Russiagate narrative

Why did Comey not reveal the FBI’s investigation of the Trump until March?  One takeaway on all this is this is that there is something about the Russiagate investigation the Director and others did not, and still do not, want revealed.

Here may be a key piece of that puzzle: Russiagate has its most direct origins in the fact that the FBI was running Carter Page, a figure who emerged suddenly in the Trump campaign last summer, as an FBI informant/agent provocateur in operations against the Russians several years earlier.  Court documents show he first played that role for the FBI in the investigation and prosecution of a Russian SVR espionage ring at the UN in 2013.

According to the Washington Post, Page is the only figure in Russiagate for whom a FISA warrant was ever obtained, and issuance of that warrant was delayed until late summer 2016.  That means that until the later warrant was issued, any legal surveillance involving Carter Page of other Americans abroad would have been in reliance upon a warrant issued for the limited purpose of surveiling a Russian intelligence operation that had been rolled up years earlier.  Or, else, there was no FISA warrant until 2016, and the surveillance of Americans implicated in Russiagate before then was conducted without a warrant.  Either way, Russiagate surveillance of Americans prior to late summer 2016  appears on its face to be without a proper warrant and clearly illegal.

We do know  the FBI would have been legally required to obtain a FISA warrant three years earlier for electronic evesdropping in NY in the same operation it used Page as a conduit to deliver bugs to the SVR compound.   It would make sense for the Bureau to later rely on that warrant to obtain another in 2016 so that Page could surveil other Americans in Russia during his frequent subsequent trips there.  Under FISA law, it would have been mandatory for the FBI to reveal that Page had previously been involved in a matter resulting in issuance of an earlier FISA warrant.  Beyond that,  we do not know the specifics of what the legal basis was for any authorized Russiagate surveillance that may have been obtained because that remains a secret that no one involved and in the media seems to have expressed much interest in.

Here’s what we know, or have been told.  We know that surveillance involving Page in Russia has been identified as a primary source of the so-call Steele “Pee Pee” memo that set off the Russiagate imbroglio last summer.  It is unknown whether pre-summer 2016 US surveillance that resulted in spying on Trump and other Americans in Russia was ever supported by a warrant.  Large parts of the Steele memo were never substantiated, and the major media now appears to be backpeddling from the core of Russiagate — allegations that major figures around Trump colluded with the Russians in releasing Hillary’s campaign email and in other alleged improprieties, such as foreign influence on the outcome of the election — but, that now appears to the factor behind the firings of several reporters leading the story.

What’s notable is the credibility of the official Russiagate narrative hinges on Carter Page, and whether he was indeed a Russian agent.  But, that now appears to have been a cover story fed to a gullible press intent on supporting political allies of Hillary Clinton.  The WaPo report that first confirmed the June, 2016 FISA warrant states the warrant was granted because the FBI suspected Page of being a Russian agent.  In reality, Page was turned as an FBI informant in 2013 when he was recruited to help wiretap the Russian diplomatic compound in NY, and later testified against one of the Russians arrested.   That fact which has been overlooked casts the WaPo story into doubt.  

Carter Page indeed appears to have been an operative in an intelligence operation, but he was an operative for U.S. not a Russian intelligence.   See the June 22 Daily Radical article for more details on that.  https:jackpineradicals.com/boards/topic/heres-the-backstory-behind-russiagate-the-msm-wont-t
ell-you

A new element of this story not previously reported is that a FISA warrant was apparently obtained  to carry out the FBI bugging of the SVR compound out of which Russian agents were operating.  Page went on to assist the FBI in passing bugged materials to the Russians, and testified as “Male-1” in the 2015 trial of one of the SVR agents.   His contacts with Russians and Americans doing business with them became the target of surveillance conducted pursuant to representations made to the FISA Court to obtain the 2016 FISA warrant.  It appears that a lot of powerful people were picked up in the FBI surveillance using Carter Page as an agent provocateur.

The Steele Dossier and Carter Page Intel Likely Based in Russian Disinformation

Whatever intelligence was gained from Carter Page after his involvement as an informant and witness for the prosecution in the 2015 trial of the Russian UN case was disinformation.  That would include much of the Christopher Steele Dossier.  Russian intelligence obviously knew that he had been turned and was acting as an FBI informant.  Whatever was said to and around him during his various trips to Russia after that was only what the SVR wanted him to hear.

The fact that his scheduled public testimony was recently cancelled by the Senate Committee only confirms that there has been a massive re-evaluation and backing away from US intelligence surveillance of Page’s conversations, the cornerstone of the case against Trump associates alleging collusion with the Russians.  Much of this now appears to have been disinformation fed to the FBI and CIA and allied agencies through Page.

The biggest question is, why wasn’t this obvious to everyone on the inside of US intelligence before they started leaking last summer and with a gusto in January?

Russiagate is Iraq WMD.  We were played again by an element of US intelligence who embraced it for political purposes.  It will reflect badly on the NYT and everyone else who has again trumpeted the siren call.

The identities of several prominent figures, such as Mr. Scaramucci have been illegally leaked in creating the “Russiagate” narrative, and since no real espionage has been proven, there is now blowback and people involved in promoting Russiagate at various levels are being fired.

CNN, which has been aggressively leading the Russiagate narrative, has reached its Army-McCarthy moment.
The New McCarthy Movement Meets Iraq WMD
The media, like the Dems, are acting opportunistically, and they have overstepped a line. This goes back to the Intelligence Community (IC) and the utter lack of discipline and “too big to discipline” attitude taken toward ranking people at CIA and the Bureau.  There’s very little accountability for program and individual failures, lies told to Congress and the public, leaks  of classified materials and other violation of law at the top of those organizations, which now quite openly flaunt their domestic political role.

Hillary Clinton being let off after her massive mishandling of classified materials was the signal to the rest that anything goes in pursuit of political power.  That followed the partial lack of accountability for the policy failure in Libya and Syria, operations that exceeded limits imposed by Presidential authorizations.   In the MENA serial regime change operations, the CIA and State Department led operations that resulted in massive arms transfers out of Libya to feed Jihadi forces funneled into Syria.  I say partial because CIA Director Petraeus paid a price by his prosecution for revealing classified materials, but even he was later allowed to come back into the fold of Cold War and necon advisors running U.S. policy in the Mideast.

Of course, 9/11 and the Iraq WMD deception were the mother of IC policy failures, and the wagons were circled so closely after the former that the agencies involved learned no lessons about the consequences of blowback from illegal, off-the-books operations.
For those in the corporate media who have embraced it with a reckless enthusiasm, Russiagate is turning into the Army-McCarthy hearings meets Iraq WMD.

In the New York Times, reporter Alexander Burns does a nice job of detailing how a bipartisan group of governors, led by Republican John Kasich of Ohio and Democrat John Hickenlooper of Colorado, teamed up to kill (for now, at least) Mitch McConnell’s effort to pass a health care reform bill that would cripple Medicaid and leave tens of millions of Americans medically uninsured. The most significant thing I learned in reading the piece is that the governors hatched their plot way back in February, long before they had any way of knowing the details of what would be in the House or Senate versions of the bill or how the process would proceed.

Mr. Hickenlooper said in an interview that he and Mr. Kasich had agreed to team up after a February meeting of the governors’ association in Washington, where state leaders heard an alarming presentation about the potential consequences of a federal pullback in health care.

Within weeks, Mr. Hickenlooper said, both Mr. Kasich and Mr. Sandoval had sought his help in taking on their own party. Mr. Kasich, the Colorado governor recalled, expressed confidence that he could find other Republicans who would “take a pretty strong stand that coverage shouldn’t be rolled back.”

A tentative game plan emerged: They would assemble a nimble, informal group of governors, from the right and left of center, who would publicly express concern about health care legislation drafted in the House and Senate. The governors would press for a slower, less disruptive and more public legislative process, and insist on protections for states that had greatly expanded their Medicaid rolls.

Joining Mr. Kasich and Mr. Sandoval on the Republican side was Mr. [Charlie] Baker [of Massachusetts]. On the Democratic side, Mr. Hickenlooper recruited Steve Bullock of Montana, John Bel Edwards of Louisiana and Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania.

Whatever was in that presentation must have been compelling, and it must have been easy even in February to read that Medicaid would be on the chopping block of any foreseeable bill. Therefore, before anything really happened in Congress, the governors already knew that they’d be able to criticize both the House and Senate versions of the bill, and to criticize the secretive and hasty process.

What’s also interesting is that this bipartisan group of governors is united in thinking that the Democrats ought to be central to any reforms.

John Weaver, Mr. Kasich’s chief political adviser, said Mr. Kasich had spoken recently with other Republican governors, including Mr. Snyder, Doug Ducey of Arizona and Larry Hogan of Maryland, who have publicly criticized the Senate proposal. “He has worked it on the phone,” Mr. Weaver said of Mr. Kasich. “There are a number of Republican governors who he spoke to and didn’t want to sign the letter, but came out on our position.”

Mr. Weaver said the group hoped its appeals would put political pressure on the Senate and serve as a model of bipartisan action that Congress could copy in a more protracted negotiation.

Now that Senate Republicans have balked, aides to several of the governors said they hoped lawmakers in both parties would craft a different measure focused principally on stabilizing insurance markets. It is unclear whether the Senate might consider that approach…

…Mr. Kasich, who said he had spoken with [Republican Sen. Rob] Portman [of Ohio], said that Democratic senators should volunteer to cooperate on a negotiated solution, and that Republicans who campaigned on a root-and-branch repeal of the Affordable Care Act should be “big enough” to say they changed their minds.

This is, of course, what should have happened from the outset, but it won’t be possible until the congressional Republicans exhaust every effort to pass a bill without asking for or relying on a single Democratic vote.

Whenever they realize the situation they’re actually in, they’ll also have to figure out how to get President Trump and his hardline advisers to see the light. Every single step they’ve taken so far has been premised on the idea that they will never need a Democratic vote for anything, ever. They have no idea how to pivot off that presumption, nor the faintest clue how they might convince the Democrats to forgive and forget everything they’ve experienced since Election Day.

Still, the exchanges aren’t going to fix themselves. At some point, the Democrats will have to fix them. If they ever get the chance, the governors will be their best allies.

Obama Choked on Russia Long Before the 2016 Election by Eli Lake

So why did Putin believe he could treat America like it was Estonia?

The answer is that Obama spent the first six years of his presidency turning a blind eye to Russian aggression. In his first term, Obama pursued a policy of “reset” with Moscow, even though he took office only five months after Russia had occupied two Georgian provinces in the summer of 2008. In the 2012 election, Obama mocked his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, for saying Russia posed a significant threat to U.S. interests. Throughout his presidency, Obama’s administration failed to respond to Russian cheating on arms-control agreements. His diplomacy to reach an agreement to temporarily suspend progress on Iran’s nuclear program made the U.S. reliant on Russian cooperation for Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement.

In the shadows, Russian spies targeted Americans abroad. As I reported in 2011 for the Washington Times, Russia’s intelligence services had stepped up this campaign of harassment during the reset. This included breaking into the homes of NGO workers and diplomats. In one case, an official with the National Democratic Institute was framed in the Russian press on false rape charges. In 2013, when the Obama administration appointed Michael McFaul to be his ambassador in Moscow, the harassment got worse. McFaul complained he was tailed by cameramen from the state-owned media every time he left the Embassy for an appointment. He asked on Twitter how the network seemed to always know his private schedule.

This lax approach to Russia was captured in the memoir of Obama’s former defense secretary, Robert Gates. He wrote that Obama at first was angry at his FBI director, Robert Mueller, and his CIA director, Leon Panetta, for recommending the arrest in 2010 of a network of illegal Russian sleeper agents the FBI had been tracking for years.

“The president seemed as angry at Mueller for wanting to arrest the illegals and at Panetta for wanting to exfiltrate the source from Moscow as he was at the Russians,” Gates wrote. He quoted Obama as saying: “Just as we’re getting on track with the Russians, this? This is a throwback to the Cold War. This is right out of John le Carré. We put START, Iran, the whole relationship with Russia at risk for this kind of thing?” Gates recounts that the vice president wanted to ignore the entire issue because it threatened to disrupt an upcoming visit from Russia’s president at the time, Dmitry Medvedev.

After some more convincing, Obama went along with a plan to kick the illegal spies out of the country in exchange for some Americans. But the insight into the thinking inside his Oval Office is telling.

“Send It To Lake Right Away!” | The Atlantic – Nov. 2009 |

In all this, a figure like NIAC’s Trita Parsi is dangerous. Charismatic, telegenic, close to the Obama administration and yet a man whose credentials during the Green Revolution are impeccable: he suggests that neocon Manicheanism is far too crude to understand let alone resolve this crisis. Parsi opposes sanctions, for example, as do Karroubi and Mousavi. And, more relevant with respect to the neocons, he opposes war. And so if you want to understand the motives behind the leaked documents behind Eli Lake’s recent fair story, you need look no further. Smearing the non-neocon Green opposition as essentially pro-Khamenei solidifies the neoconservative war project.

This is pretty obvious but we now have some rare and clear proof of how the neocons operate.

An email error gives the entire game away:

The central neocon smear of Parsi was that he was actually an agent for Kamenei. The absurdity of this is underlined by the fact that Eli could find no evidence for it whatever in his expose. But the origin of the story came from the neocon right, engaged in a defamation suit with NIAC and Parsi. And we now have, via Josh Rogin, the details of the strategy:

Previously unreported documents provided by NIAC to The Cable show that Daioleslam was working with neoconservative author Ken Timmerman as early as 2008 and that their moves on Parsi were part of a larger effort to thwart Obama’s Iran policy.

“I strongly believe that Trita Parsi is the weakest part of the Iranian web because he is related to Siamak Namazi and Bob Ney,” Daioleslam wrote in one e-mail dated April 2, 2008, “I believe that destroying him will be the start of attacking the whole web. This is an integral part of any attack on Clinton or Obama.”

Namazi is a fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy with whom Parsi has worked. The e-mails show that Parsi and Namazi coordinated efforts to make recommendations to administration officials.

Tim Kapshandy, a lawyer for Sidley Austin LLP, came to represent Daioleslam in 2009. Upon seeing the e-mails about Parsi and Namazi, he accidentally sent a note to both of them. The note read, “Send it to [Washington Times reporter Eli] Lake right away!”

“This is not as much targeting us, the end objective seems to be, according to these e-mails, to bring down Obama,” Parsi said of the emails in an interview with The Cable.

In another previously unreported memo, it appears that Parsi tried to start an official lobbying organization on Iran, back when he was an unpaid advisor to now disgraced former Rep. Bob Ney. Sent by Parsi from his congressional e-mail account to ex-Bush aide Roy Coffee and former Ney chief of staff David Di Stefano, the memo talks about a “strategic partnership” between the new lobbying organization and NIAC and says that Parsi would be the lobbying group’s executive director.

The memo was entitled, “Towards the creation of an Iranian-American lobby.”

It’s just a rare and small glimpse of how neocons operate. It is warfare abroad and warfare at home. It is a philosophy of attack and force, not dialogue and thought. And if we are to find a sane way through our current perilous global environment, it must be exposed and resisted as thoroughly and as relentlessly as we try to resist its mirror image among the extremists within the Iran coup regime.

Abramoff and the Israeli Connection

In the December 2002 e-mail, Halpern advised Abramoff to end his $3,560 monthly stipend to Shmuel Ben Zvi, a Jewish settler, and to stop buying “spy equipment,” including night vision goggles and camouflage, which Ben Zvi was using to equip paramilitary units in the West Bank.
[Source: A Lobbyist’s E-Mail Trail of Billing, Status, Charity ]

The neocons operate hand in glove with the right-wing fascist state of Israel under Benyamin Netanyahu. A whole army of bloggers from the right to the “progressive” left are willing to take the bait and run with their false stories. The war parties need an “enemy” for their warmongering. The Democrats fold and participate for the sake of winning the next election.

○ Michael Weiss, Iranian-U.S. Hardliners Led Iranian-American Family to Evin Prison | Tikun Olam |
○ Bob Ney, Trita Parsi and pro-Tehran activities in Washington
○ Corrupt politician Bob Ney installing Israeli wireless network in Congress by Oui on Nov. 24, 2005
○ Circle Closed :: Neocons – AIPAC – Shill Reporter ¶ Laurie Mylroie – Benador Associates by Oui on Oct 17, 2005

So Trump is breaking Obama foreign policy gains vs Cuba and Iran. Replacing it with the U.S. axis of Salafists KSA/GCC with ally Israel. Bush wrecked Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama/Clinton did the same with Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Now Trump is ready to wreck Iran and like the presidents before him will bite off a chunk too large. Overextending the military might of America.

More Reasons Have Emerged To Doubt The Official Narrative About Syria

The highly decorated Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh is back again, throwing yet another monkey wrench in the propaganda narratives of the US war machine. [Pulitzer Prize winning report on the massacre by U.S. troops in Vietnam, My Lai]

 « click for more info »

Hersh’s latest piece, titled “Trump’s Red Line”, was published in the German publication Welt am Sonntag, reportedly after London Review of Books backed out for fear that it would make them “vulnerable to criticism for seeming to take the view of the Syrian and Russian governments”. LRB’s decision is understandable in light of today’s fact-free McCarthyist feeding frenzy given the criticism they’d already received from establishment loyalists for publishing Hersh’s explosive 2013 report “Whose Sarin?“, which attacked establishment allegations of Assad having used chemical weapons that year. Their decision points straight at the invisible state censorship that goes on within the editorial boards of every western outlet and the self-censorship that goes on in the minds of every western journalist when confronted with these uncomfortable and seemingly unreportable truths. The ruling class can make life very difficult for you if you don’t sing their propaganda song.

Hersh’s central source, whom Welt reportedly was able to contact and confirm the veracity of, describes a US president hell bent on attacking Syria regardless of facts, evidence, logic, or what he was being told by his own advisors.

Interview with former US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford by the Saudi-owned newspaper Asharq al-Awsat on June 20.

○ Interview Robert Ford

US will lose Syria to Iran and abandon Kurdish allies, former ambassador Robert Ford says | Newsweek |

Robert Ford, who served as envoy to Syria under former President Barack Obama from 2011 through 2014, said during an interview with the London-based Arabic-language newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat that “Obama did not leave the Trump administration many options to achieve its goal” of defeating the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) and curbing Iran’s foothold in the region.

…
Ford spoke candidly about what he believed were serious errors made by Washington at the beginning of the crisis in Syria, in 2011. He recalled being deeply opposed to Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s decision to publicly call for Assad’s removal from power during a period of mass demonstrations against the Syrian government. He said he knew that U.S. approval for the political opposition would encourage certain elements to take up arms against the government, expecting the U.S. military to stage an Iraq-style intervention to aid them–which he did not believe the U.S. would carry out.

When the opposition, which also received support from Turkey and Gulf Arab states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, did launch a large-scale insurgency against the state, the CIA ultimately decided to train and equip certain rebel groups. After this policy came to light, Ford said in 2014 that the U.S. was “behind the curve,” as Russia and Iran were devoting extensive resources to defending Assad, much more than the U.S. was willing to devote to the insurgents, Many of the insurgents were later overtaken or absorbed by more radical Sunni Muslim militant moves such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

As jihadists climbed the ranks among Syrian rebels, the U.S. shifted the focus of its policy toward eradicating ISIS and began backing another faction, the Syrian Democratic Forces. Many Kurds were initially supportive of the uprising against Assad, hoping it would give them an opportunity to establish an autonomous Kurdish area in northern Syria, much like Iraqi Kurdistan. The mostly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces, however, found themselves clashing with both ISIS and Syrian rebel groups backed by Turkey, which has long sought to quell Kurdish nationalism in the region.

Jared Kushner visits family friend Netanyahu and listened well …

○ Mahmoud Abbas infuriated by messenger boy from the White House  
○ Wailing wall not for gender mix: Jerusalem

Well…here I am in semi-rural, Eastern Pennsylvania, working with young, aspiring jazz musicians at a week-long camp. Last week I promised to do further reporting on the state of the fly-over union, but I have had precious little time to do anything but teach and perform with a crowd that is fairly well biased towards real “progressivism” as I understand it. That is, multiracial, artistically-inclined kids, teachers, administrators, performers and parents who…if they were a working majority in this country…would aim for an egalitarian, democratic socialist, non-aggressive society.

But of course they are not a majority, nor even an important voting bloc.

So it goes…

Instead, I will post the following regarding the apparently steady realization amongst the Democratic rank and file that the old guard is marching them right off a Russiagate cliff.

From Counterpunch.

Is `Russiagate’ Collapsing as a Political Strategy?
by Norman Solomon

The plan for Democrats to run against Russia may be falling apart.

After squandering much of the last six months on faulting Russians for the horrific presidency of Donald Trump…

After blaming America’s dire shortfalls of democracy on plutocrats in Russia more than on plutocrats in America…

After largely marketing the brand of their own party as more anti-Russian than pro-working-people…

After stampeding many Democratic Party-aligned organizations, pundits and activists into fixating more on Russia than on the thousand chronic cuts to democracy here at home…

After soaking up countless hours of TV airtime and vast quantities of ink and zillions of pixels to denounce Russia in place of offering progressive remedies to the deep economic worries of American voters…

Now, Democrats in Congress and other party leaders are starting to face an emerging reality: The “winning issue” of Russia is a losing issue.

The results of a reliable new nationwide poll — and what members of Congress keep hearing when they actually listen to constituents back home — cry out for a drastic reorientation of Democratic Party passions. And a growing number of Democrats in Congress are getting the message.

“Frustrated Democrats hoping to elevate their election fortunes have a resounding message for party leaders: Stop talking so much about Russia,” The Hill reported over the weekend. In sharp contrast to their party’s top spokespeople, “rank-and-file Democrats say the Russia-Trump narrative is simply a non-issue with district voters, who are much more worried about bread-and-butter economic concerns like jobs, wages and the cost of education and healthcare.”

The Hill coverage added: “In the wake of a string of special-election defeats, an increasing number of Democrats are calling for an adjustment in party messaging, one that swings the focus from Russia to the economy. The outcome of the 2018 elections, they say, hinges on how well the Democrats manage that shift.”

Such assessments aren’t just impressionistic or anecdotal. A major poll has just reached conclusions that indicate party leaders have been operating under political illusions.

Conducted last week, the Harvard-Harris national poll found a big disconnect between the Russia obsession of Democratic Party elites in Washington and voters around the country.

The poll “reveals the risks inherent for the Democrats, who are hoping to make big gains — or even win back the House — in 2018,” The Hill reported. “The survey found that while 58 percent of voters said they’re concerned that Trump may have business dealings with Moscow, 73 percent said they’re worried that the ongoing investigations are preventing Congress from tackling issues more vital to them.”

The co-director of the Harvard-Harris poll, Mark Penn, commented on the results: “While the voters have a keen interest in any Russian election interference, they are concerned that the investigations have become a distraction for the president and Congress that is hurting rather than helping the country.”

Such incoming data are sparking more outspoken dissent from House Democrats who want to get re-elected as well as depose Republicans from majority power. In short, if you don’t want a GOP speaker of the House, wise up to the politics at play across the country.

Vermont Congressman Peter Welch, a progressive Democrat, put it this way: “We should be focused relentlessly on economic improvement [and] we should stay away from just piling on the criticism of Trump, whether it’s about Russia, whether it’s about Comey. Because that has its own independent dynamic, it’s going to happen on its own without us piling on.”

Welch said, “We’re much better off if we just do the hard work of coming up with an agenda. Talking about Trump and Russia doesn’t create an agenda.”

Creating a compelling agenda would mean rejecting what has become the rote reflex of Democratic Party leadership — keep hammering Trump as a Kremlin tool. In a typical recent comment, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi pounded away at a talking point already so worn out that it has the appearance of a bent nail: “What do the Russians have on Donald Trump?”

In contrast, another House Democrat, Matt Cartwright of Pennsylvania, said: “If you see me treating Russia and criticisms of the president and things like that as a secondary matter, it’s because that’s how my constituents feel about it.”

But ever since the election last November, Democratic congressional leaders have been placing the party’s bets heavily on the Russia horse. And it’s now pulling up lame.

Yes, a truly independent investigation is needed to probe charges that the Russian government interfered with the U.S. election. And investigators should also dig to find out if there’s actual evidence that Trump or his campaign operatives engaged in nefarious activities before or after the election. At the same time, let’s get a grip. The partisan grandstanding on Capitol Hill, by leading Republicans and Democrats, hardly qualifies as “independent.”

In the top strata of the national Democratic Party, and especially for the Clinton wing of the party, blaming Russia has been of visceral importance. A recent book about Hillary Clinton’s latest presidential campaign — “Shattered,” by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes — includes a revealing passage. “Within 24 hours of her concession speech,” the authors report, campaign manager Robby Mook and campaign chair John Podesta “assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up.”

At that meeting, “they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”

In early spring, the former communications director of the 2016 Clinton presidential campaign, Jennifer Palmieri, summarized the post-election approach in a Washington Post opinion piece: “If we make plain that what Russia has done is nothing less than an attack on our republic, the public will be with us. And the more we talk about it, the more they’ll be with us.”

Polling data now indicate how wrong such claims are.

—snip—

Some of you may remark on my general, basic distrust of polling pros. They are a motley crew at best, but when what I see and hear quite plainly from working people agrees with what the pollsters have to say, I tend to lean in that direction. Doubling up on this idea, when even Mark Penn…a political “advisor” pro for the Clintons who was arguably one of the main people involved in creating the losing, elitist/centrist strategy that got HRC unelected twice…is supervising a national poll that suggests that the Russiagate hustle has run its course and is now in fail mode, that signals a seismic shift in the party.

I mean…even if he and his little professional pollster helpers jiggered the numbers to produce the above result, then the swing away from this losing Russiagate strategy is already in place at the highest reaches of the Democratic Party. If it was not, then his polls would not be allowed to show these sorts of results. And of course if they are actually honest polls, high-level Dems would have to be massively self-destructive to ignore what they are saying.

Either way, the worm appears to have turned for the Dems. Again…in sheer self-interest, the Dem pros are going to have to find a new position or simply get out of the business and find a new way to make their money. And it would be hard to find another hustle that would be quite so permanently lucrative.

So keep your eyes open. Russiagate is probably about to be put to bed as a political cudgel. That doesn’t mean that investigations and possible legal actions will disappear. Instead it means that they will not be so politically motivated and thus probably much less corrupt as a result.

Back to social ideas instead of finger pointing.

Please!!!

Later…

AG

It’s fascinating to see how Republicans talk to each other about health care. Over at the National Review, Jonah Goldberg tip-toes towards political reality, but always by jingling enough right-wing lunacy around to try to scare off the bears.

Here’s how he tries to inoculate himself against what he knows will be a fiery pushback from his conservative audience:

I’m just thinking out loud here. But it seems to me this is one of those moments in American politics where no one can simply say what they really think or want.

So, whatever the distinctions between rhetoric and reality might be on the right, it’s really no different from what the Democrats are doing, too. And what are the Democrats doing?

Meanwhile, the Democrats know that Obamacare has been a huge albatross for their party and understand that the best thing that could happen for them is if the Republicans agreed to keep Obamacare in name (i.e., abandon the rhetoric of “repeal”) but do whatever is necessary to make the thing work. But the GOP is doing the opposite. It’s largely keeping Obamacare in terms of policy (at least the really popular parts) but rhetorically its claiming to destroy Obamacare utterly. So, both the Democrats and the Republicans end up claiming this is a repeal of Obamacare when it’s not. It’s all a war for the best spin, not the best policy.

Of course, this isn’t even half true. While the Democrats would welcome a constructive effort to shore up the Affordable Care Act, they are actually protesting a bill that would undo all the gains in coverage that Obamacare created. And I mean that quite literally.

But Goldberg is really aiming to make a different point.

In different times, a Republican president might have come in and, like Eisenhower did with the New Deal, say, “We’re not going to throw away all that stuff, but we are going to fix it and shave the rough edges off.” A mend-it-don’t-end-it rhetorical approach to Obamacare would win over enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass a serious (albeit way-too-statist for me) health-care bill that gave Obama credit while reworking the whole thing.

Of course, that’s precisely what I’ve been saying from the get-go. Goldberg is saying the same thing because it’s obviously true and would make much more sense for a president who campaigned, as Goldberg notes, “vowing not to touch Medicaid.”

But Goldberg knows that he’s putting all his conservative credentials at risk by suggesting that Trump should have worked with the Democrats on health care, so he has to finish up by basically disavowing his entire point:

I’m not saying that alternative universe would be better. For instance, I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal. But I do think it’s an interesting example of how rhetoric and the logic of tribalism is driving the debate far more than policy is.

I think it’s pretty lazy to write something as vague as “I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal” while basically praising him for doing something sensible that could work both in practice and as a political matter. But I don’t expect anything more than this from a guy like Johah Goldberg.

As for the Republicans’ refusal to say what they mean and mean what they say, Goldberg is fairly honest:

As Yuval [Levin] noted yesterday, big chunks of the GOP-controlled Congress just don’t want to deal with health care or repeal Obamacare. As both the House and Senate legislation demonstrate, they’d rather tinker with it than tear it down. But they can’t say that.

And he has a lot of Trump supporters pegged, too.

So, in policy terms, the voters who believed Trump when he said he wouldn’t touch Medicaid are getting screwed, but it seems many of them — or their anointed representatives in right-wing media — don’t care, because they too want Trump to have a big political win more than a much more difficult policy win (and for the Democrats to have a big political loss).

It must be exhausting to try to tell the truth to the conservative base. You have to make so many caveats and create so many false equivalences just to gather the courage to open your mouth, and when you’re done you feel the need to disavow the implications of everything you’ve just said.

It’s fascinating to see how Republicans talk to each other about health care. Over at the National Review, Jonah Goldberg tip-toes towards political reality, but always by jingling enough right-wing lunacy around to try to scare off the bears.

Here’s how he tries to inoculate himself against what he knows will be a fiery pushback from his conservative audience:

I’m just thinking out loud here. But it seems to me this is one of those moments in American politics where no one can simply say what they really think or want.

So, whatever the distinctions between rhetoric and reality might be on the right, it’s really no different from what the Democrats are doing, too. And what are the Democrats doing?

Meanwhile, the Democrats know that Obamacare has been a huge albatross for their party and understand that the best thing that could happen for them is if the Republicans agreed to keep Obamacare in name (i.e., abandon the rhetoric of “repeal”) but do whatever is necessary to make the thing work. But the GOP is doing the opposite. It’s largely keeping Obamacare in terms of policy (at least the really popular parts) but rhetorically its claiming to destroy Obamacare utterly. So, both the Democrats and the Republicans end up claiming this is a repeal of Obamacare when it’s not. It’s all a war for the best spin, not the best policy.

Of course, this isn’t even half true. While the Democrats would welcome a constructive effort to shore up the Affordable Care Act, they are actually protesting a bill that would undo all the gains in coverage that Obamacare created. And I mean that quite literally.

But Goldberg is really aiming to make a different point.

In different times, a Republican president might have come in and, like Eisenhower did with the New Deal, say, “We’re not going to throw away all that stuff, but we are going to fix it and shave the rough edges off.” A mend-it-don’t-end-it rhetorical approach to Obamacare would win over enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass a serious (albeit way-too-statist for me) health-care bill that gave Obama credit while reworking the whole thing.

Of course, that’s precisely what I’ve been saying from the get-go. Goldberg is saying the same thing because it’s obviously true and would make much more sense for a president who campaigned, as Goldberg notes, “vowing not to touch Medicaid.”

But Goldberg knows that he’s putting all his conservative credentials at risk by suggesting that Trump should have worked with the Democrats on health care, so he has to finish up by basically disavowing his entire point:

I’m not saying that alternative universe would be better. For instance, I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal. But I do think it’s an interesting example of how rhetoric and the logic of tribalism is driving the debate far more than policy is.

I think it’s pretty lazy to write something as vague as “I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal” while basically praising him for doing something sensible that could work both in practice and as a political matter. But I don’t expect anything more than this from a guy like Johah Goldberg.

As for the Republicans’ refusal to say what they mean and mean what they say, Goldberg is fairly honest:

As Yuval [Levin] noted yesterday, big chunks of the GOP-controlled Congress just don’t want to deal with health care or repeal Obamacare. As both the House and Senate legislation demonstrate, they’d rather tinker with it than tear it down. But they can’t say that.

And he has a lot of Trump supporters pegged, too.

So, in policy terms, the voters who believed Trump when he said he wouldn’t touch Medicaid are getting screwed, but it seems many of them — or their anointed representatives in right-wing media — don’t care, because they too want Trump to have a big political win more than a much more difficult policy win (and for the Democrats to have a big political loss).

It must be exhausting to try to tell the truth to the conservative base. You have to make so many caveats and create so many false equivalences just to gather the courage to open your mouth, and when you’re done you feel the need to disavow the implications of everything you’ve just said.

It’s fascinating to see how Republicans talk to each other about health care. Over at the National Review, Jonah Goldberg tip-toes towards political reality, but always by jingling enough right-wing lunacy around to try to scare off the bears.

Here’s how he tries to inoculate himself against what he knows will be a fiery pushback from his conservative audience:

I’m just thinking out loud here. But it seems to me this is one of those moments in American politics where no one can simply say what they really think or want.

So, whatever the distinctions between rhetoric and reality might be on the right, it’s really no different from what the Democrats are doing, too. And what are the Democrats doing?

Meanwhile, the Democrats know that Obamacare has been a huge albatross for their party and understand that the best thing that could happen for them is if the Republicans agreed to keep Obamacare in name (i.e., abandon the rhetoric of “repeal”) but do whatever is necessary to make the thing work. But the GOP is doing the opposite. It’s largely keeping Obamacare in terms of policy (at least the really popular parts) but rhetorically its claiming to destroy Obamacare utterly. So, both the Democrats and the Republicans end up claiming this is a repeal of Obamacare when it’s not. It’s all a war for the best spin, not the best policy.

Of course, this isn’t even half true. While the Democrats would welcome a constructive effort to shore up the Affordable Care Act, they are actually protesting a bill that would undo all the gains in coverage that Obamacare created. And I mean that quite literally.

But Goldberg is really aiming to make a different point.

In different times, a Republican president might have come in and, like Eisenhower did with the New Deal, say, “We’re not going to throw away all that stuff, but we are going to fix it and shave the rough edges off.” A mend-it-don’t-end-it rhetorical approach to Obamacare would win over enough Democrats and moderate Republicans to pass a serious (albeit way-too-statist for me) health-care bill that gave Obama credit while reworking the whole thing.

Of course, that’s precisely what I’ve been saying from the get-go. Goldberg is saying the same thing because it’s obviously true and would make much more sense for a president who campaigned, as Goldberg notes, “vowing not to touch Medicaid.”

But Goldberg knows that he’s putting all his conservative credentials at risk by suggesting that Trump should have worked with the Democrats on health care, so he has to finish up by basically disavowing his entire point:

I’m not saying that alternative universe would be better. For instance, I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal. But I do think it’s an interesting example of how rhetoric and the logic of tribalism is driving the debate far more than policy is.

I think it’s pretty lazy to write something as vague as “I wish Eisenhower had been more hostile to the New Deal” while basically praising him for doing something sensible that could work both in practice and as a political matter. But I don’t expect anything more than this from a guy like Johah Goldberg.

As for the Republicans’ refusal to say what they mean and mean what they say, Goldberg is fairly honest:

As Yuval [Levin] noted yesterday, big chunks of the GOP-controlled Congress just don’t want to deal with health care or repeal Obamacare. As both the House and Senate legislation demonstrate, they’d rather tinker with it than tear it down. But they can’t say that.

And he has a lot of Trump supporters pegged, too.

So, in policy terms, the voters who believed Trump when he said he wouldn’t touch Medicaid are getting screwed, but it seems many of them — or their anointed representatives in right-wing media — don’t care, because they too want Trump to have a big political win more than a much more difficult policy win (and for the Democrats to have a big political loss).

It must be exhausting to try to tell the truth to the conservative base. You have to make so many caveats and create so many false equivalences just to gather the courage to open your mouth, and when you’re done you feel the need to disavow the implications of everything you’ve just said.

CNN’s Senior Congressional Reporter Manu Raju just made a tweet announcement that I’ve been anticipating for months and months now. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can’t get the votes from his own caucus to repeal Obamacare.

MCCONNELL tells senators: He will delay the health care vote until after the recess to solicit more support from GOP senators

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) June 27, 2017

I’ve written piece after piece about how Trump miscalculated when he made the decision (if it really was a “decision” at all) to try to govern with zero Democratic votes. In a last ditch effort to win over wavering members of his caucus, Mitch McConnell finally said something approximating the truth:

Mitch McConnell is delivering an urgent warning to staffers, Republican senators and even the president himself: If Obamacare repeal fails this week, the GOP will lose all leverage and be forced to work with Chuck Schumer.

Working with Chuck Schumer should have been Trump’s starting point because he promised to protect Medicare and Medicaid. He promised not to leave people dying on the streets. He promised people would get excellent and even more affordable access to health care. If he wanted those things, the last people to rely on would be ideological conservatives.

Trump was too stupid to understand this up front, so he went along with a plan that not only would break some of his more important campaign promises but which is polling just above the ebola virus. Maybe Trump doesn’t realize it, but one major reason he won over so many Obama Democrats is because he distinguished himself from ordinary Republicans like Paul Ryan who have built their entire careers around destroying the safety net.

But his strategy was idiotic for another reason, which was that it should have been obvious that the Republican Party can’t operate as a unified borg anymore. They basically ran John Boehner and Eric Cantor out of town because they couldn’t get behind their leadership and forced them to go running to Nancy Pelosi for help over and over again.

I know Josh Marshall can’t quite believe his eyes, but this shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Mitch McConnell is a master legislative tactician, but he isn’t a wizard. There never was a way to square the circle between Trump’s campaign promises, the needs of moderate Republicans from states that expanded Medicaid, and the unhinged anti-Obamacare rhetoric of Trump and the hard right.

Marshall is correct to caution that this isn’t the end and that McConnell will keep working. He may cobble together something in the end. But unless he comes up with a plan that won’t strip 15 million people of their health care next year that still does pretty much everything the House Freedom Caucus would like to see in a repeal bill, he isn’t going to be able to reconcile any Senate bill with the House version. And if that were possible, he would have presented that bill already.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have succeeded in doing real damage to the health care exchanges, to the point that they can’t just give up and move on to other things. That’s why he’ll need to start talking to Schumer. And the Republicans will discover, once they start exploring that route, that the Democrats have all the leverage because they’ll be expected to provide almost all the votes.

McConnell tried using this stark reality as his final cudgel to beat his caucus into line, but they wouldn’t budge.

They’ll go into their recess and have to endure the fury of pretty much everyone who is engaged on health care, regardless of what angle they’re taking on it.

Trump has an opportunity now to recalibrate how he wants to govern, but it’s probably far too late for him to provide an olive branch to the Democrats. As I predicted, his presidency is going to crash and burn this summer.

I’ve lost a little confidence lately in my ability to predict the political consequences of various scenarios, but I still have to believe that this is bad advice:

Only 16 percent of adults believe that House [health care] bill is a good idea, while 48 percent say it’s a bad idea, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week. Even Republican respondents are lukewarm, with 34 percent viewing the bill positively and 17 percent viewing it negatively.

Doug Heye, a Republican consultant, argued that the president badly needs a legislative victory and that achieving a high-profile win should override concerns about the legislation’s impact.

“Those who are strong Trump supporters have remained so despite the controversies,” Heye said. “They still see Trump as someone willing to take on their fights.”

Ultimately, people will vote on how they perceive the health care system to be working for them, and not on whether or not Trump can “take on fights.” Of course, there will be a battle to shape how people perceive things. But objective reality will still have the biggest say in that.

In the short-term, maybe Trump’s supporters will be happy to see him have a legislative victory, but they may turn on him when they see how their lives are negatively impacted. And, besides, Trump’s supporters aren’t the only group worthy of consideration here. There’s a political cost to losing soft supporters or those on the fence, and mobilizing your opponents is dangerous, too.

I think that both the president and GOP lawmakers will pay a price if they pass this bill. It might not be as big of a price as I think they should pay, but I feel more confident in saying that it won’t be a winner for them.