This cartoon seems to me very apposite. The capacity of the mainstream media repeatedly to promote the myth that Russia caused Clinton’s defeat, while never mentioning what the information was that had been so damaging to Hillary, should be alarming to anybody under the illusion that we have a working “free media”. There are literally hundreds of thousands of mainstream media articles and broadcasts, from every single one of the very biggest names in the Western media, which were predicated on the complete nonsense that Russia had conspired to install Donald Trump as President of the United States.
I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff believed it, whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay cheque, or whether they just did their “job” and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were producing truth or lies.
I suspect the answer varies from journalist to journalist. At the Guardian, for example, I get the impression that Carole Cadwalladr is sufficiently divorced from reality to believe all that she writes. Having done a very good job in investigating the nasty right wing British Establishment tool that was Cambridge Analytica, Cadwalladr became deluded by her own fame and self-importance and decided that her discovery was the key to understanding all of world politics. In her head it explained all the disappointments of Clintonites and Blairites everywhere. She is not so high-minded however as to have refused the blandishments of the Integrity Initiative.
Luke Harding is in a different category. Harding has become so malleable a tool of the security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used. It would be embarrassing to have written a bestseller called “Collusion”, the entire premiss for which has now been disproven, had Harding not made so much money out of it.
Harding’s interview with Aaron Mate of The Real News was a truly enlightening moment. The august elite of the mainstream media virtually never meet anybody who subjects their narrative to critical intellectual scrutiny. Harding’s utter inability to deal with unanticipated scepticism descends from hilarious to toe-curlingly embarrassing.
In general, since the Mueller report confirmed that $50 million worth of investigation had been unable to uncover any evidence of Russiagate collusion, the media has been astonishingly unrepentant about the absolute rubbish they have been churning out for years.
Harding and the Guardian’s story about Manafort repeatedly calling on Assange in the Ecuador Embassy is one of the most blatant and malicious fabrications in modern media history. It has been widely ridiculed, no evidence of any kind has ever been produced to substantiate it, and the story has been repeatedly edited on the Guardian website to introduce further qualifications and acknowledgements of dubious attribution, not present as originally published. But still neither Editor Katherine Viner nor author Luke Harding has either retracted or apologised, something which calls the fundamental honesty of both into question.
Manafort is now in prison, because as with many others interviewed, the Mueller investigation found he had been involved in several incidences of wrongdoing. Right up until Mueller finalised his report, media articles and broadcasts repeatedly, again and again and again every single day, presented these convictions as proving that there had been collusion with Russia. The media very seldom pointed out that none of the convictions related to collusion. In fact for the most part they related to totally extraneous events, like unrelated tax frauds or Trump’s hush-money to (very All-American) prostitutes. The “Russians” that Manafort was convicted of lobbying for without declaration, were Ukrainian and the offences occurred ten years ago and had no connection to Trump of any kind. Rather similarly the lies of which Roger Stone stands accused relate to his invention, for personal gain, of a non-existent relationship with Wikileaks.
The truth is that, if proper and detailed investigation were done into any group of wealthy politicos in Washington, numerous crimes would be uncovered, especially in the fields of tax and lobbying. Rich political operatives are very sleazy. This is hardly news, and if those around Clinton had been investigated there would be just as many convictions and of similar kinds. it is a pity there is not more of this type of work, all the time. But the Russophobic motive behind the Mueller Inquiry was not forwarded by any of the evidence obtained.
My analysis of the Steele dossier, written before I was aware that Sergei Skripal probably had a hand in it, has stood the test of time very well. It is a confection of fantasy concocted for money by a charlatan.
We should not forget at this stage to mention the unfortunate political prisoner Maria Butina, whose offence is to be Russian and very marginally involved in American politics at the moment when there was a massive witchhunt for Russian spies in progress, that makes The Crucible look like a study in calm rationality. Ms Butina was attempting to make her way in the US political world, no doubt, and she had at least one patron in Moscow who was assisting her with a view to increasing their own political influence. But nothing Butina did was covert or sinister. Her efforts to win favour within the NRA were notable chiefly because of the irony that the NRA has been historically responsible for many more American deaths than Russia.
Any narrative of which the Establishment does not approve is decried as conspiracy theory. Yet the “Russiagate” conspiracy theory – which truly is Fake News – has been promoted massively by the entire weight of western corporate and state media. “Russiagate”, a breathtaking plot in which Russia and a high profile US TV personality collude together to take control of the most militarily powerful country in the world, knocks “The Manchurian Candidate” into a cocked hat. A Google “news search” restricts results to mainstream media outlets. Such a search for the term “Russiagate” brings 230,000 results. That is almost a quarter of a million incidents of the mainstream media not only reporting the fake “Russiagate” story, but specifically using that term to describe it.
Compare that with a story which is not an outlandish fake conspiracy theory, but a very real conspiracy.
If, by contrast, you do a Google “news search” for the term “Integrity Initiative”, the UK government’s covert multi million pound programme to pay senior mainstream media journalists to pump out anti-Russian propaganda worldwide, you only get one eighth of the results you get for “Russiagate”. Because the mainstream media have been enthusiastically promoting the fake conspiracy story, and deliberately suppressing the very real conspiracy in which many of their own luminaries are personally implicated.
Furthermore – and this is a truly tremendous irony, which relates back to the cartoon at the start – only two of the top ten news results for “Integrity Initiative” come from the Western corporate media.
And this next fact comes nearly into the “too good to be true” category for my argument. Those two MSM mentions, from Sky News and the Guardian, do not complain of the covert anti-Russian propaganda campaign that is the Integrity Initiative. They rather complain that it was an alleged “Russian hack” that made the wrongdoing public!! You could not make it up, you really could not.
According to the mainstream media, it is not Hillary Clinton’s fault for conspiring with the DNC to cheat Bernie out of the nomination, it is Russia’s fault for allegedly helping to reveal it. It is not the British government’s, or their media collaborators’, fault for running a covert propaganda scheme to dupe the public of the UK and many other countries, it is the Russians’ fault for allegedly helping to reveal it!
Which brings us full circle to the DNC leak that sparked Muellergate and the claims that it was the Russians who lost Hillary the election. Robert Mueller repeats the assertion from the US security services that it was Russian hackers who obtained the DNC emails and passed them on to Wikileaks. I am telling you from my personal knowledge that this is not true.
Neither Mueller’s team, not the FBI, nor the NSA, nor any US Intelligence agency, has ever carried out any forensic analysis on the DNC’s servers. The DNC consistently refused to make them available. The allegation against Russia is based purely on information from the DNC’s own consultants, Crowdstrike.
William Binney, former Technical Director of the NSA (America’s US$40 billion a year communications intercept organisation), has proven beyond argument that it is a technical impossibility for the DNC emails to have been transmitted by an external hack – they were rather downloaded locally, probably on to a memory stick. Binney’s analysis is fully endorsed by former NSA systems expert Ed Loomis. There simply are no two people on the planet more technically qualified to make this judgement. Yet, astonishingly, Mueller refused to call Binney or Loomis (or me) to testify. Compare this, for example, with his calling to testify my friend Randy Credico, who had no involvement whatsoever in the matter, but Mueller’s team hoped to finger as a Trump/Assange link.
Randy Emerges From His Evidence Session Displaying A Great Taste in Reading Material
The DNC servers have never been examined by intelligence agencies, law enforcement or by Mueller’s team. Binney and Loomis have written that it is impossible this was an external hack. Wikileaks have consistently stressed no state actor was involved. No evidence whatsoever has been produced of the transfer of the material from the “Russians” to Wikileaks. Wikileaks Vault 7 release of CIA documents shows that the planting of false Russian hacking “fingerprints” is an established CIA practice. Yet none of this is reflected at all by Mueller nor by the mainstream media.
“Collusion” may be dead, but the “Russiagate” false narrative limps on.
I should add it seems to me very probable Russia did make some efforts to influence the US election. I worked a a British diplomat for 20 years and spent a lot of time trying to influence political outcomes in the country in which I was posted, in Eastern Europe and in Africa. It is part of the geopolitical game. The United States is of course the world leader by a long way in attempting to influence elections abroad, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to that effect in countries including Ukraine, Georgia, Ecuador and Venezuela recently, and pretty well everywhere in Africa. It is a part of normal diplomatic life.
Mueller uncovered some high level influence-broking meetings. This is what states do. He uncovered some sleazy deals. This is what rich people do. He uncovered some US $110,000 of Facebook ad spending from Russia targeted on the USA, some of which promoted sex toys, some of which was post-election, but some of which was apparently trying to assist Trump against Clinton. Compared to the amount the USA pumps into similar arms length assistance to Putin opponents in Russia alone, it was negligible. That this tiny bit of Facebook advertising crucially impacted the US $13,000,000,000 PR campaigns of the candidates is a ludicrous proposition.
That every country stay out of every other country’s politics is arguably desirable. It is not however the status quo, and the United States is in the worst position of all to complain.
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This circus served Trump right off, he will now likely win the 2020 election. Mueller, liberals, The Democrats/DNC, media have all acted lke useful idiots all along, doing Trump a big favour. Meanwhile they have taken us furthering to war with Russia and they have turned a blind eye to Trump’s anti labour policies with cut taxes for the rich, his warcrimes and generally his domestic politics. The left is nowhere to be seen in all this as an alternative, they have been too busy peddling the same conspiracies about Trump and Russia and have thus discredited themselves in the run.
Whats most agonizing is that the people that have been peddling this is still out there saying the same thing! Its like nothing happend!
Luke Harding is on social media spreading his conspiracy theories like it was 2016.
Integrity initiative is obviously big considering the refusal by big media to talk about it, there were early on talk about an investigation by the government but that was all bluff apparently, just made to put a lid on the scandal
The core of Trump and Integrity initiative is that Russian government is 1. Spreading propaganda and 2 they are so powerful.
As we saw with the Muellergate, that was obviously fake, but aslong as the majority of people believe that premise, the hysteria on Russia will keep on forever.
I think Clinton’s 2016 defeat in the context of the DNC emails leak presented a uniquely dangerous existential threat to the credibility of the ‘Corporate Party’ system (as Chomsky dubbed it). The political vacuum left behind by a disgraced Dem party subjected to criminal proceedings was deemed to be too dangerous by the establishment on both the left and right- either it could have allowed for new, truly progressive party unbeholden to corporate money to take root, or else may have led to a tipping point in the level of voter apathy.
IMO, stretching out Russiagate for the last 2+ years to distract public attention from email contents and cloud the narrative was deemed worth it in a desperate attempt to maintain the status quo of the the two-party system – even if ultimately it led to a boost for Trump’s re-election prospects, etc – plus it served the interests of the US military industrial complex by justifying record military budgets.
I have a couple of questions on this paragraph:
“Which brings us full circle to the DNC leak that sparked Muellergate and the claims that it was the Russians who lost Hillary the election. Robert Mueller repeats the assertion from the US security services that it was Russian hackers who obtained the DNC emails and passed them on to Wikileaks.”
Mueller’s investigation was initiated after Trump fired Comey. I don’t think that’s in dispute. The Russian inquiry, and I don’t think this is in dispute either, was started in May 2016 after an Australian diplomat overheard a Trump adviser (Papadopoulos) gossiping about Russian influence, and passed that information on to the FBI.
I have not seen Mueller say that Russians had hacked the DNC server and passed on those email to Wikileaks. Was that included in one of his criminal filings?
Lastly, while I agree that Manafort and Stone and others have been caught up in nonsense unrelated to Russian collusion, Michael Flynn, the earliest casualty on these inquiries, definitely lied about contacts with Russian and Turkish officials (and possibly others) while on the campaign and then in Trump’s transition team. So while I have no general argument that the media approach to the Mueller investigation has been often highly problematic, I find it very difficult to look past the Flynn debacle and say that there was nothing to look into.
About Flynn, it was blown out of proportion and unrelated to any “collusion”, it was normal talk.
“Flynn misled investigators by denying details of his efforts to convince Kislyak to not respond harshly to US sanctions and to vote against a UN Security Council measure critical of Israel. ”
https://www.thenation.com/article/russiagate-russophobia-mueller-trump/
My argument is not re. collusion fantasies, it is about the right response to Flynn’s lying. I don’t think the FBI could wave it away.
Actually they did, FBI let Flynn off any criminal offense concering his talks he had with Turkey, but on the talks he had with Russia he had to be punished by Mueller.
I perhaps wasn’t clear enough – the FBI response, to INVESTIGATE Flynn, was warranted. That’s all I’m saying.
He was accused of misleading statements, but he wasnt sentenced because of any wrongdoing when it comes to his talks with i.e. Russia/Turkey.
You would be right if it was exposed that he commited any crimes during these talks, so no, the investigation was not warranted.
The FBI have hardly covered themselves in glory. Some might say they tried to orchestrate a soft coup. Flynn’s misdemeanor is small in comparison to the actions of Comney, Brennan, Clapper and some within the Democratic party. This is where the real investigation should be happening and the charges shouldn’t be lying to the FBI – which is what they get you on when they cannot get you on anything else – they should be charges of treason.
eddie-g writes: “I have not seen Mueller say that Russians had hacked the DNC server and passed on those email to Wikileaks. Was that included in one of his criminal filings?”
Yes. Last July, Mueller indicted twelve Russians for hacking DNC and Clinton campaign officials to publicly leak their emails and potentially influence the election.
I should clarify – I know he indicted 12 Russians for hacking DNC servers, but did he also allege the hackers passed this information on to Wikileaks? That I wasn’t aware of.
In other words, it’s entirely possible that the DNC servers were targeted by hackers, and that Wikileaks separately received the emails from a whistleblower as Craig has reported in the past.
Yes, Mueller alleges the people he identifies as Russian GRU officers, posing as Guccifer 2.0, communicated with and used Wikileaks (referred to as “Organization 1” in the indictment) to publish the DNC and Clinton campaign documents.
You can read the damn thing: https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download
As for what’s “entirely possible”, my turn to clarify: I’m simply answering your question about what Mueller has alleged; I’m not saying I believe any of it.
Thanks – I’d missed the reporting that “Organization 1” was Wikileaks.
And no argument with you, these are Mueller allegations, not undisputed facts.
according to numerous very believable articles in DailyCaller.com and elsewhere this bit Australian diplomat overheard a Trump adviser (Papadopoulos) is likely back-to-front, there are credible allegations in USA that the missing Aussie diplomat was pushing “Russian rumors” at Pappi in order to justify the FVEY SIGINT selector attack on Trump’s entourage. Look up many many previous USA attempts at parallel construction , in order to obfuscate the mastery of the internet by NSA, gchq etc. the FBI often gets called last as “they discover everything from a tipoff” just before the court case, in this case the FISA court. previous form, lots of revelations yet to come! , keep up the great work Craig.
From Wikipedia, under Joseph Mifsud:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Mifsud
… At a meeting in April, Joseph Mifsud told Papadopoulos that he had learned the Russians were in possession of thousands of emails that were damaging to Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos allegedly repeated the information to Alexander Downer. Papopoulos has since publicly denied any recollection of this topic with Downer. See LaFraniere, Mazzetti, Apuzzo, “How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt,” NYT, Dec 30 2017.
thanks, there’s more time needed to d/l all the varied junk to a kindle and read all versions as my summer beach blockbuster!
More on Mifsud, this time from RT.com today:
https://www.rt.com/usa/455400-papadopoulos-russiagate-conspiracy-spies/
The Mueller investigation zeroed in on Papadopoulos’ contact with Joseph Mifsud and Alexander Downer, both of whom the media portrayed as “Russian intermediaries” but whom Papadopoulos believes were working with the FBI, “dropping information in my lap that I did not want regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails in the hands of the Russians.” Papadopoulos even went so far as to report Downer to the FBI “because I thought he was spying on me.”
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Wasn’t the US Green Party leader Jill Stein at the same dinner with Putin as was Flynn?
I remember a pic. of them all together eating dinner – I guess in Moscow. I also remember that the picture was used to lambast Flynn for “Russian collusion”, and yet the obvious presence of Jill Stein at the same dinner wasn’t used against her!?!
I wouldn’t be surprised if that was about the strongest evidence there was “against” Flynn, and Stein had nothing to do with the Trump administration, so she was safe.
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The key evidence against Flynn is that the FBI knew he’d been in recent contact with Kislyak and he lied about it.
I counted up six individual “collusion” threads at one point. Most were tenuous like Carter Page or the inept crook Flynn. The St. Petersburg troll farm doesn’t lead anywhere for reasons given by Craig. The whole Popadopoulos saga pans out as a Western, Deep State insurance policy.
This leaves the Trump Tower meeting with micro-intellect Don Jr.. I wonder whether we will be allowed to see an unredacted account of how Team Mueller dismisses that?
The Trump Tower meeting blows itself away. If the Trump campaign had been in cahoots with Russia, they wouldn’t have needed a meeting with a no-name anti-Magnitsky Moscow lawyer to get dirt – any real Russian contacts would have told them she was inconsequential. The logical conclusion would be that the meeting shows a. Trump didn’t have anything from Russia and b. had no contacts, but might have been interested to have something; but since it never came, we don’t know what might have occurred if the Trump campaign did have Russian dirt.
For H4A on the other hand, her campaign did seek out and get dirt from Russia (the Steele Dossier) via foreign agents, financing it illegally as ‘legal expenses’. Then used it to prime the press against Trump, and fed it via back channels to the DOJ and FBI. So essentially using Russia-sourced ‘intelligence’ and foreign operatives in an attempt to manipulate the election and subsequently, take down an incoming president.
Cadwalladr is MI5 operator/patsy.
If you search her previously written articles prior to brexit, you can see that she is a sub average writer at best…Yet suddenly she’s got all the dirt…
MI5 probably thought they were pushing their luck using Harding
I agree that this seems very likely. The Cambridge Analitica exposé stuff seemed to me to be a bunch of leaked stuff MI5 held on the company that they chose to leak to her to undermine Farage’s attempts to leave being that gov policy was to remain. She was then asked to use the same research as evidence that trump was involved, then after that as they became more desperate, even include Jeremy Corbyn. I think in all probability the data came via the Integrity Initiative run by the institute for statecraft of which Sheba very close ties.
The way she would blurt our vast amounts of confusing data over her twitter feed seemed to be to be past on from some collected source. I find her very dubious and refer to her as Carole Codswallop.
I also agree. Cadwalladr has zero track record as an investigative reporter. Prior to 2017, her reporting is all low-grade political and social background stuff. I can’t find any evidence that she has investigated anything.
Have you read her book on the security forces collusion with loyalists in N. Ireland. Published in 2013. It doesn’t look low-grade to me. Not the sort of thing an MI5 patsy would write is it?
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Lethal-Allies-British-Collusion-Ireland/dp/1781171882
So now we know that the dossier is a load of BS. Mueller must have had to investigate the claims within the dossier. I wonder what he will say in the report about the dossier?
Trump has made sure to criticise Mueller so that the media have lionised Mueller. I wonder if the summary released was not unequivacol about an obstruction charge being ruled out so that it winds up his opponents so they demand the full unredacted release.
Remarkably it is more than two years since the “dodgy dossier” was exposed. This report from that time by Martin Robinson of the Mailonline paints a vivid picture of the man or company (Orbis Intelligence) behind the Russiagate scandal.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4117040/I-introduced-wife-James-Bond-Former-spy-Chris-Steele-s-friends-shadowy-007-figure-MI6-bosses-brand-idiot-appalling-lack-judgement-Trump-dirty-dossier.html
An interesting aspect is reference to Steele likely being part of the MI6 team at Bagram airport. If so what can he tell us, if anything about the torture!
https://reprieve.org.uk/case-study/bagram-airbase/
I had never heard of Randy Credico.
I first saw a picture of him a couple of months go, and judged him a sleazeball. Then I happened upon an interview (in parts?) with him by Jimmy Dore, and judged him very articulate, and that affected my earlier pre-judgement in a way.
I still don’t know much about him. He was in hiding, afraid Mueller would subpoena him.
There is an even better Randy Credico interview with Abby Martin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCCEeK0cofs
Thank you!
Correction: Credico was being subpoenaed by Adam Schiff’s Russiagate committee, not Mueller.
The iv. of Jimmy Dore with Randy Credico is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wcd2f1tY0k
Credico was particularly afraid he was being subpoenaed to testify w.r.t. Julian Assange. Which makes me remember Chelsea Manning.
During the iv. the letter is shown that Credico received from Schiff.
It requires of him “preservation and production of all documents, records, electronically stored information, recordings, data and tangible things (including, but bot limited to, graphs, charts, photographs, images and other documents) regardless of form, other than those widely available (e.g. newspaper articles), related to the Committee’s investigation, your interview, and ancillary matters.”
Yet Hillary’s servers were never of interest to the FBI.
Thanks bj, not only are Hillaries servers and parallel email traffic within the Clinton Foundation of no interest to the FBI, they are of no interest to the Congress at any level apparently!! The Clinton email fiasco is the biggest single breach of USA National Security ever. The emails of the Sec of State were stored in a totally non-secure environment and many agencies were aware of that including the stupid President. Guciffer 1 demonstrated how easy it was to penetrate high interest players. Podesta demonstrated ignorant hubris of the most fatal order in using the word ‘password’ as his password.
The USA Sec of State was most likely entirely monitored by any number of interested professional spies and amateur hackers and she did not give a sh!t. IMO the entire hate russia frenzy is a desperate (and seemingly successful) diversion to cover crimes against the State by the Clinton machine PLUS an attack on the highly desirable democratic socialist policy agenda instigated by Bernie Sanders and now others. Both the republicans and democrats are desperate to shut Sanders and peacenicks like Tulsi Gabbard down. Expect more hate russia vaping.
A country’s Establishment uses any party within reach to stay in power; they always want more control for them and less liberties for the masses. They used the Republican party under Bush as much as the Democratic party under Obama. A lot of them are higher bureaucrats, agencies, even judiciary and press friends. They attract big private money by dangling lucrative future contracts or wanted future policy changes. They look for and install “popular” Ken / Barbie dolls to be elected and after manipulated. Blair, Clinton, Sturgeon, Rutte, Trudeau, Macron, Ardern were some of them.
I’m very interested why you would include the FM of Scotland in your weird conspiracy. Did she do something to annoy you?
In private, it appears that there was much more honesty about why Clinton lost:
“In the (election) post-mortem Hillary and her aides identified dozens of reasons why she lost.”
“Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign” by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes p396.
Sick Hillary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmIRYvJQeHM
Yes, but the true reason Hillary lost has never been revealed. It was me.
Shortly before the election she came to see me. “Stonky,” she said. “Some of my guys are suggesting I should go talk to the rubes in Michconsin and Pennygan, and some other places I never heard of. What do you think?”
“My dear girl,” I replied. “Don’t be such a fool. These places are dirty and smelly, and there are poor people. Here in warm and cosy California there is MUNNY to be made. Trust me – you stay here greasing the backsides of wealthy faux-progressives to the tune of ten thousand dollars a plate, and telling them of all the wonderful things you’re going to do for them once the anointing ceremony is out of the way…”
Unfortunately for Hillary she listened to me, and the rest is history…
:
Hearty congratulations on your single-handed defeat of War-Gorgon Clinton – if only it were so easy!
😉
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“about why Clinton lost”
She lost the electoral college, but won the popular vote by 3 million votes I think. She seems to have lost because she won lots of votes in those states she won (e.g. in California she got 61% of the vote – 8.7 million votes to Trump’s 4.5 million).
Binney and Loomis however are mistaken, it is not impossible that the files were downloaded, but it is clear that at some point they were housed on a USB stick. What is not clear is whether that copy to USB was directly when they were copied, or a subsequent copy. I believe that Steve McIntyre has discussed this on his blog and in tweets. Just to be clear, the emails may have been downloaded by an insider, but they may also have been uploaded by external actors via a hack of some sort.
The other points about the disinformation revealed in the files meta-data is correct although we cannot at this stage be sure of why it is there, it sure looks like it was deliberately created. It is highly likely that Guccifer2 was a creation of Crowdstrike. It is also possible that the second hack was invented by Crowdstrike to divert attention from an insider’s work. The compile dates and the inclusion of the long sink-holed fixed IP address that “pointed” to Russian involvement does indeed suggest that this is likely. But we lack firm evidence.
The interesting emails though came largely from Podesta’s emails and there’s no doubt that that was hacked via a phishing attack and the emails downloaded. The DNC emails are almost devoid of interest and are largely from accounting and finance people. There maybe gold in terms of financing irregularities there, but no one has found anything much. This fact would possibly indicate that it wasn’t an insider as they would know that these emails were of limited interest.
If there was a ‘download’, as you call it, over a network, the NSA must have the TCP packets, as discussed earlier in the previous thread.
Since they’re talking about Russian collusion and about treason, the severest criminal disloyalty to the state, the highest crime in the land (that’s what we’ve been told for over two years), this would have been an explicit and patent case to present such evidence.
They never did.
Your witness.
Correct: any files gone over US-Internet should show up in the NSA’s archives in Utah: if not the NSA is useless – this supportingly being Russian interference in the US presidential selection making it hot item no.1.
Other option: they knew the DNC didn’t lose files over Internet but kept mum out of political considerations.
Why does the NSA still gets $ 40 billion a year, Mr. President?
“Why does the NSA still gets $ 40 billion a year, Mr. President?”
So that its boss will go on stage (in front of Congress or a court, if necessary) and lie like a trooper to back up the official narrative.
Same as all the alphabet soup.
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Well, the NSA may have the TCP/ip packets, but not even know that they’ve got them? and perhaps they never will.
A needle in a haystack doesn’t even come close; well, may be a fucking BIG haystack.
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The file sizes can be determined from the copies on Wikileaks, and the IP address of the source end must be known, plus the search can be narrowed by date. So a software search of just the metadata should find the transfer quite easily I’d have thought.
The ‘problem’ is, the haystack is there, only the needle ain’t.
Btw., a “fucking BIG haystack” holding a needle can be reduced to a non-problem when you have a sufficiently strong magnet.
Even more btw., a search of metadata like that, where you know its signature, can be done and completed on a huge
amount of metadata in a surprisingly short time. In fact, I’d say, in this particular case, the haystack isn’t that big.
The ‘problem’, coming full circle, is that the needle just isn’t there.
In respect of the Podesta emails, that seems also to be the thinking of “the twisted genius” poster at Pat Lang’s Sic Semper Tyrannis website. Is he the same Steve McIntyre?
Steele is now a proven liar and keeps popping up in several cases all Russia related . He’s the man who testified alone behind closed door that led a judge to blame the Russian state for Alexander Litvinenko‘s death .
It would be wise to reopen that enquiry urgently , Christopher Steele designs dossiers to suit agendas . I’m quite sure he is capable of fabricating a few things to convince a judge the Russian state was to blame .
Excellent article Craig ! Thank you !
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Makes me wonder if Steele was a protege of the utterly odious Robert Conquest?
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Craig: – “I genuinely have never quite understood whether the journalists who wrote this guff believed it, whether they were cynically pumping out propaganda and taking their pay cheque, or whether they just did their “job” and chose to avoid asking themselves whether they were producing truth or lies.”
Anything, anything, anything other than admit that their corporate media is opposed to the more left-wing, non-neoliberal, non-neoconservative Bernie Sanders. Just like the anti-Semitism smears against Corbyn and Labour in the UK. There’s really nothing more to it than that. Whether any individual journalists admit it to themselves or not isn’t worth wondering about.
Adding to that, now when their lies is out for everyone to see, they will lose viewers/money:
Russia Hoax Queen Rachel Maddow’s Ratings Take 20% Dive
https://canadafreepress.com/article/nolte-russia-hoax-queen-rachel-maddows-ratings-take-20-dive
Maddow & Riley, two Rachels, united by their intense aversion to evidence.
Thanks Craig. A mighty succinct and damning assessment. Mueller is a fraud. Now can we have an investigation of the Clinton Foundation and the Secretary of State pay to play racket. Seth Rich is dead!
simply fab
and what a sleazy, pathetic, shitty personality this so-called harding is
What about “what a sleazy, pathetic, shitty personality” this so-called Erdogan is, the man who got a green light from Cameron in 2010 to start the war against Syria, and make Daesh, and about whom the BBC is saying that the Turkish electorate have voted against his economic policies? Nothing about the Turkish Muslims being fed up about their country being used as NATO’s sex slave. The only metaphor I can find for the disgusting politics of USUKIS colonial expansion.
Erdogan was waiting for a green/red light from Cameron on anything?
He was more a slave of a particular old Compilation from 1400 miles to his south east than of some ex-Eton leader 1800 miles to his north west: more power grip.
Seems to have lost the big Turkish cities in local elections just now to Kemalists.
The opposition is made up from the left wing and Kurds in coalition. It doesn’t take much to be left of dictator Erdogan who resents the loss of the Ottoman caliphate due to conspiracies by the Kurds some 100 years ago. The British did not honour their promises to the Kurds but instead carved them up between Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.
The idea that anyone in Turkey follows Attaturk the gay, nationalist, secular dictator is a fiction.
Turkey is a majority Muslim country wrestling like the UK with the loss of a vast empire and failing miserably to interest even its own people with the idea of Empire2.
So what if Erdogan lost the biggest cities in local elections? The British media have made a big thing out of the issue, quite fakely. But I don’t believe Sadiq Khan being Labour mayor of London has slowed down the Tories one little bit. And elected dictatorship, as they have in Turkey, is no different from what we have in Britain.
Now Nanterre Man is kissing Erdogan’ arse as well. Kissing Macron’s arse is obviously insufficiently satisfying.
There is a long-term positive, which is the fact the MSM has revealed itself for what is is: malicious bullshit. I suspect if we go down the rabbit hole, we’d find that the vast majority of MSM journos are either spooks, or assets of some kind. Quite serious, I’d have it over 2/3, at a guess. And they’ve all just utterly embarrassed themselves for over 2 years, and continue to show zero contrition whatsoever. To quote the poet: fuck those guys. I don’t take any of their political coverage remotely seriously, to the extent that I bother to read it at all. PewDiePie is probably a better analyst than all of them, and he’s basically a comedian.
It was all Hillary. This is the fact that none of these lying jackasses are willing to admit. To calm her down her team spiked her drink with sleeping pills, and made promises about a Russia investigation. But it wasn’t a new investigation, Obama was involved whilst still President. They high-ranking colluders all traitors, and I’m quite sure certain people in the military would quite happily have them shot. So would I.
Our own leaders are also traitors, who have given up sovereignty to a corrupt EU cabal, and currently refuse to allow the Brexit sanity to prevail. I know Craig and others love the EU, but here I must demur. The EU is too corrupt, and entirely unrepresentative,so Corbyn’s common market plan is a solid one. Off-topic, I suppose.
I should note, I wouldn’t really have them shot. Shootings are never a good idea, it always spirals.
I may make a rare exception for Tony Blair, who probably should face a military tribunal, and shot for treason and war-crimes.
There was a time not so long ago when every newspaper, local and national had a SIS asset as did every police station.
I suppose it was always handy, if a Cyril Smith (or his ilk) came to the attention of the local press or plod.
With most local newspapers and police stations now closed I suspect the intelligence services have had to change their focus, unlike establishment paedophiles I suspect.
Apologies, one ‘I suspect’ too many.
The funniest thing about Russiagate is the inevitable consequence of actually believing it to be true:
Killary Klownshoes spent one point two BILLION dollars on her election campaign, and lost.
She was beaten by a couple of sweaty Russians, sitting in a basement at their laptops with their underpants around their ankles and a budget of a few thousand bucks.
And nobody thinks it strange that 200 million US citizens can be so easily deceived.
That is, of course, obvious to the establishment which has been deceiving them easily for over a century.
And that’s why they hate the idea of anyone else taking over the controls.
Of course, a country whose citizens are so ignorant, naive and insouciant shouldn’t be a democracy at all. Nor even pretend to be one.
A keystone of the “Russiagate” hoax, an element which helped launch and propel the propaganda campaign is the Magnitsky myth propagated by American-turned-British con-man Bill Browder, and characters on both sides of the pond – incl. the late John McCain, lobbyists, bureaucrats, politicians, state/intell forces: Jakir Daniel Sha’ashoua, Jonathan Winer, Ben Cardin, Roger Wicker, Irwin Cotler, Chrystia Freeland, Guenter Schirmer et al and a corps of journalists-as-stenographers. Corporate, court, police and other documents all available on the public record prove that Sergei Magnitsky’s never a lawyer, nor a whistle-blower. The reinvention of Magnitsky, in truth a tax-evading accountant, long in the employ of Hermitage Capital players, following his tragic death in a Russian prison, has been exploited by a corrupt cabal of geopolitical actors. This story has still to be told to the broad public – and it can help illuminate this entire scam and expose many of those in the networks threatening our world today.
Agree. The whole story is one of the biggest lies ever and it needs to be exposed . Browder himself is a little coward , it can be seen in his court statements how nervous he gets . He only succeeded because there are people that lied with him and fabricated this fraud .
The story is clearly told in Andrei Nekrasov’s seriously suppressed film on the subject. TPTB have, however, taken steps to ensure as few people as possible get to see it.
Indeed. But the story – the “narrative” – IMHO served the strategy – let us call it the Plan for the New American Century.
My point being that the Magnitsky Act allows America to punish its enemies beyond its borders in countries where its writ, officially, doesn’t run. The Global Empire projecting its power.
People love “Red Notice”. They just don’t realise that most of it is fiction.
There can be no greater satisfaction when one has been thoroughly hood-winked oneself by the lies of the super-power state that thinks it is invincible, than to hood-wink others who suffer from the same apparent gullibility as one’s own unfortunate self.
Craig was adopted under the wing of the super-state, the CIA, the all-encompassing octopus tentacles of the USUKIS equivalent of the KGB, used, abused and spat out again. One wonders how the English language can contain an historical word, hood-wink. which so accurately describes the actual 21st century torture technique of the rampaging armies in Iraq of the USUKIS. The obvious conclusion is that in some different form than torture rendition – brainwashing with psychotic drugs, or maybe with a combination of alcohol and other poisons like laudanum, the process was being used for centuries before 2001 and baby Blair in carpet-bombed Afghanistan.
My point is simply that I have been saying for several years that the use of torture rendition which was the subject of Craig’s objections to his employers at the FOC was not the use of torture to obtain information as the bourgeois press and the superpower nutter-leaders said, but rather the application of techniques perfected by the Nazis in the previous century to radcally alter the entire personality. So why should it be so amazing that the same stinky superpower should keep using the same Great Game scapegoat, Russia, as it has used for centuries, long after Russia has been incorporated into the tentacles of the stinky octopus in the form of the EU, which Craig played a leading part in doing?
Clearly the insertion of the word bourgeois is a clue. Because it mocks the naievety of those who believe the bogey-man narrative, or are sufficiently bought , body and soul, by their job security not to disagree with the superpower’s smoke and mirrors fake enemy. One coukl even go so far as to say that without the German bogeyman, and the Russian bogeyman this stinky superpower would not have been able to set up a nuclear arsenal which actually threatens the safety of every nation, that we have the bombs to blow you into eternity if you don’t do exactly what we want you to do.
The new bogeyman of Islamic terror has been crafted by torture-rendition-brain-washing on an industrial scale , but the bourgeois whistle-blowing Craig has told us long ago that this blog has rigid limits beyond which it cannot go, and the description of the satanic, fascist technique developed to perfection by Hitler of totally transforming the personality of a human being, is a step beyond what a civilised and bourgeois society could ever admit to, however much the human organ of the mind needs this particular human necessity, just as the willie needs to wee.
So here we are, clod-hopping in muddy boots round the stinky superpowers private property, trying to intimidate it with this expose, when Craig has already been thoroughly proscribed from telling the truth as much as the bourgeois journalists of civilised society. “Only connect”, Forster’s hint of forbidden love between the upper class female and the Indian wally who was guiding her through the cave, is as far as Craig can go on this particular bogeyman, Russia. Forster was writing after the bogeyman of colonial genocide had been busted by the second woprld war. Craig can’t say anything about the bogeymen of Islamist terror, the current fake bogeyman. And all he is saying here about Russia is Forster’s “Only connect”because nobody actually believes Mrs May’s fake indignation against Russia, lies about novichok, or NATO’s loss of radar, any more.
Giyane,
You may choose to see everything through the lens of your religion, but you can’t expect other people to and you should spare them from these lengthy ramblings on that basis
I would be more inclined to share your view of Islamist terror as a ‘fake bogeyman’ if I wasn’t a regular visitor to the Iraq Body Count website, which documents the deaths of Iraqi civilians in terror attacks. In the 16 years since 2003 there have been an average of almost 1000 civilian victims every month.
Ignoring all the other victims of Islamist terror all over the rest of the planet, that’s quite a lot of dead people for a fake bogeyman.
Stonky
I’m not saying the terror is fake. I’m saying it is manufactured by the West by brainwashing people to violence. An idea which is so fascist, so inhumane, and so satanic that it is so far unmentionable in polite political circles. The purpose of manufacturing people who are addicted to violence out of otherwise ordinary pleasant Muslims is to be able to falsely portray Islam as a violent religion.
USUKIS also brain-washes its own troops to be violent and the result is disastrous for survivors who try to re-enter the civil community.
We keep going around in circles on this one, and always you dodge the issue. To quote your holy book (Al Nisa 56):
Lo! Those who disbelieve Our revelations, We shall expose them to the Fire. As often as their skins are consumed We shall exchange them for fresh skins that they may taste the torment. Lo! Allah is ever Mighty, Wise…
How is this anything other than repulsively violent? And as you are perfectly well aware, it’s not some cherry-picked excerpt. One of the main themes of your holy book is this kind of sadistic gloating over the appalling torture that Allah hands out to the disbelievers.
Your religion starts teaching kids from the age of 4 or 5, that this is the literal truth, and it has no effect on any of them? And then the West comes along at some point with some unspecified ‘brainwashing’ and all of a sudden that’s what turns them into violent extremists and terrorists?
Get real.
The Iraq Body Count site is a propaganda fake, no proof of anything. Figures far too low when the Americans were there (“they couldn’t read Arabic”, so didn’t bother with the local newspapers, only English-language international reports), and now a thousand a month is too high probably, though it’s not a stable country (thanks to American destabilisation). By the way in the US, the figure for firearms deaths is 33,000 pa, three times the Iraqi figure.
Nice whataboutery in the last sentence. But irrelevant.
It’s not ‘fake’. But its numbers are almost certainly understated, as it applies quite stringent criteria to the ‘deaths’ it counts.
I have no idea what stupid point you think you are making here. The US population is more than ten times that of Iraq. And two thirds of the deaths you cite are suicides. To be comparable to the situation in Iraq, there would need to be 30,000 gun deaths a month in the USA, not 30,000 a year.
India has been assaulted through many ages by Koran inspired imperialists, looters and iconoclasts. Islam inspired terror is nothing new under the Sun. One example: the 1921–22 Moplah rebellion in Kerala with Ali Musliyar as one of its leaders https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Musliyar
Old and real, from long before Uncle Sam.
Unfortunate that racist posts are allowed on this site.
Laguerre
I suppose that your latest smear is directed at Antonym. As you are a clever academic and I’m just a peasant, could you explain how Antonym’s post was racist?
Sounds factual to me – after all, that rebellion either occurred or it didn’t. If it did, what’s racist about recalling the fact?
“Taxman kept quiet while £8bn fraud helped fund bin Laden” For years a UK gang infiltrated government agencies and funnelled cash to al-Qaeda. HMRC knew but kept MI5 in the dark
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/taxman-kept-quiet-while-8bn-fraud-helped-fund-bin-laden-wqkcsrdpz
“A network of British Asians based in London, Buckinghamshire, Birmingham, northwest England and Scotland mounted VAT and benefit frauds against the exchequer over two decades and made further gains from mortgage and credit card fraud targeting banks and individuals. The group netted an estimated £8bn in public money alone.”
Those damn British Japanese!
Craig writes: “… some US $110,000 of Facebook ad spending from Russia targeted on the USA, … some of which was apparently trying to assist Trump against Russia.”
I don’t understand “assist Trump against Russia” here.
Is this a proofreading slip, maybe for “against Clinton”? If not, I’d appreciate an explanation of what was meant.
Yes, typo thanks. Now corrected.
Thanks for this article Craig, that is the first time I have heard Luke Harding speak, and that interview revealed him to be some crazed, evangelistic, anti Russian madman.
There was absolutely nothing he said which would convince me that Russia had anything malignant to do with the US or for that matter any other election – including Estonia’s.
It not only showed Harding up for the tool/fool he is, it also showed that Aaron Maté is a real journalist who is well worth following.
I remember this great film – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie – directed by Luis Bunuel. They don’t make films like it anymore.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discreet_Charm_of_the_Bourgeoisie
Re Lois Bunuel (OT)
I heartily agree, all Bunuel’s films that I’ve seen are brilliant, I particularly like The Phantom of Liberty, The Exterminating Angel and The Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz.
Surely with Mullergate the lies are not discrete but blatant.
‘Russiagate endgame? Democrats to issue subpoena for full, unredacted Mueller report
The Democratic lawmaker who chairs the House Judiciary Committee has said that he will approve a subpoena to obtain an unabridged version of the Mueller report, in what could be described as a Hail Mary for Russiagaters.
1 April 2019 | 16:49
https://www.rt.com/usa/455285-mueller-report-subpoena-democrats/
Will we see it?
Russiagate is dead and deservedly so. Full disclosure of the Mueller report continues to offer some usefulness to the Democrats with regard to the not proven verdict on obstruction of justice.
Perhaps understandably, Mueller refused to reach a conclusion with regard to obstruction of justice due to the unique circumstances pertaining to Trump. Obstruction could be conceived on a spectrum. At one end we have lying under oath to an Officer of the Court. At the other end we have broadcasting, en clair to the heavens. Before Trump, no one would be as “confrontational” as to conduct (potential) obstruction of justice in plain view. Whether this constitutes the legal definition of obstruction of justice would be a matter for the highest courts and several years of deliberation.
Take the episode where Trump dictated a misleading rebuttal of the purpose of Don. Jr’s, Trump Tower meeting with the Russians as an example.
On 12/07/17, Trump’s lawyer, Jay Sekulow stated; “I wasn’t involved on the statement drafting at all, nor was the President.”
On 29/01/18, Sekulow & John Dowd stated; “The President dictated a short but accurate response to the New York Times article on behalf of his son Donald Trump Jr..”
Leaving aside the claim that the initial rebuttal was “accurate”, someone is being dishonest, but is it Trump (senior) or Sekulow? If the dishonesty is not under oath does this constitute obstruction of justice?
Far be it for me to agree with Nancy Pelosi, but time to ignore Trump and get on with other business. Trump just ain’t worth the skin off anyone’s knuckles.
again VivOB, this sentence jars me
Take the episode where Trump dictated a misleading rebuttal of the purpose of Don. Jr’s, Trump Tower meeting with the Russians
a reasonable document whizzed past my inbox in years past where the nice russki-linked lady lawyer was persuaded to go to this meeting by the Clintone side, as a deliberate “smoking gun” & “reveal strategy” , I gave that (another) setup explanation as much credence as anything the rich orange person has ever said. I can go and look for dates/times – but it will all come out as the USA side is long-term leaky. UK is squeaky clean , at present….
David.
Exactly WTF was going on in Trump Tower eludes me. Perhaps the Mueller report would illuminate? I am aware of the theory espoused by the Daily Caller et all that the meeting was facilitated by the Deep State in as much as the Russian lady lawyer had her initial visa request denied and a Deep State cabal reversed that decision thereby engineering the meet.
The dishonesty I refer to is not collusion either genuine or created as a false flag, but rather the statement dictated on Airforce One to the effect that the meeting was to discuss the poor little Russian orphans. The orphan line was discredited by the subsequent publication of the e-mail chain arranging the get together.
I give no credence to the Trump Tower meeting as an example of “collusion”, but in his half arsed, instinctively mendacious response to the New York Times initial report, Trump MAY have obstructed justice.
ok, but – having briefly followed his twitter – , I think you could take any two week random period and find something that might ultimately be arrestable… I still think he’s going to get re-elected in 2020, and I’m one who could forsee him getting in this-time… surely his many faults & illegalities will be swept under his hair-do, in exchange for some judicious shredding, I think he’ll be prez for a while, then Melania…? I think I need a drink now
Quite possibly the best piece of journalism I have seen for a very, very long time, the quality of which shows the rest of our ‘media’ in an even dimmer light than we already intrinsically knew them to be in and pointing to a serious crisis in contemporary democratic legitimacy.
Corbyn/Labour should put democratic renewal at the heart of their next election campaign and they should mean it and then they should act on it.
Regarding ‘Russiagate’, is not the real reason that they went after Trump because he wanted/wants to be friends with Russia, whereas the American Establishment/military industrial complex want exactly the opposite – confrontation with Russia in order to assert their own global dominance, hence the Integrity Initiative?
“I should add it seems to me very probable Russia did make some efforts to influence the US election.”
I disagree.
What no commentator (anywhere) seems to have recognised is that maybe the Russians had little interest in who won the US presidential election. After all, there is zero difference between any of the candidates. Why bother?
It is surely only the US (and perhaps it’s poodle the UK) that is vain enough to think that the world really gives much of a shit as to which particular corporatist sleazebag is squatting at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at any given moment.
Agreed John2o2o.
USUK has successfully relieved and excluded Russia from any requirement to influence our elections. All Russia needs to do is (i) carefully to watch both the UK and the USA tread their chosen path of self-harming and toward ultimate bankruptcy; and (ii) to restrain USUK short-term efforts to destabilise countries like Ukraine, Syria where Russia has obligations to protect its citizens and interests; then (iii) simply to hold its breath. The rest is history or is on the road to becoming history. Sideshows like Trump and Brexit are simply signs of where USUK is going – down the drain – with minimal if any further assistance required from Moscow.
“What no commentator (anywhere) seems to have recognised is that maybe the Russians had little interest in who won the US presidential election. After all, there is zero difference between any of the candidates.”
So wrong.
Whilst Trump (no friend of him I) was calling for a peaceful, constructive relationship with Russia, Clinton was threatening military confrontation with them via the Syrian so-called “safe zones” or “no fly zones”. That’s quite some difference:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/25/hillary-clinton-syria-no-fly-zones-russia-us-war
In the meantime the full Harding interview is here:
https://therealnews.com/stories/wheres-the-collusion-2
Excellent article every bit of which I believe to be the truth. If it was not for the internet as we currently know it and use it none of this truth would become apparent to us mushrooms ( kept in the dark and fed on shit ) so we must support it and hope it continues .
Good summary.
I’ve actually come to the considered conclusion now that since 911 the mainstream media in the US and UK (and quite possibly elsewhere in the “West”) have become largely controlled by the security services of those countries (CIA, MI5, MI6, GCHQ &c).
Even as little as a year ago I would have thought that a paranoid position to take, but since becoming aware of material such as that you have presented above I have been forced to re-evaluate.
The Guardian may have been the last to fall. The tipping point there was the publication of material from Edward Snowden’s NSA files, which resulted in a raid by GCHQ in 2014 and the subsequent destruction of hard drives. Less well known in my opinion is that the security services never really left the Guardian’s offices after that.
Genuine and honest journalists such as Aaron Mate, Abby Martin and Max Blumenthal in the USA and Kit Klarenburg in the UK are no longer employed by mainstream media. Dissident commentators – who nevertheless hold differing views on a number of important issues – are smeared to within an inch of their lives. George Galloway immediately springs to mind.
I can only hope that the public wakes up to what has been happening and is able to reclaim decent journalism and public discourse from the abyss.
It goes back way further than ‘911’. Check out Operation Mockingbird and see whether you think it ended there.
There was a joint speech by Trump and Putin in Iceland that I attempted to watch live, a couple of years back. Most of it was viewable, but occasionally there would be breaks, attempting to censor the narrative. Basically they seemed to speak honestly about building better relations. Putin admitted interfering in the the US election, because he preferred Trump to Clinton, but he laughed that the US should show any outrage in comparison to the massive interference by the US in Russian elections. The model defined by Gene Sharpe appears to be the basis of that effort – in funding Opposition movements in Russia, but because it is a well funded business it does seem to not attract sympathetic potential leaders. Trump is working for the oligarchs now though, almost to the extent that Clinton would have war hawked. The world needs Bernie. Extinction protocols dominate business models. Bernie and Ocasio Cortez could still put the brakes on, but the end days otherwise approach, thanks to fracking and palm oil deforestation. Fossil fuel dependency needs to stop. Now. Wars for oil need to stop. The oceans need to be cleaned up. We live in a small world and we all depend on it. Gets off soap box….
‘Putin admitted interfering in the the US election, because he preferred Trump to Clinton …’ I saw no ‘admission’ of interference, simply a preference for better US-Russia relations.
Your assessment sounds more realistic.
A great post Craig that for me defines the critical challenge for citizens to stay informed in the internet age.
Should we still expect the mainstream media to serve content that tells truth to power, or accept that internet publishing is the route to inform citizens directly?
The sheer hypocrisy of the US calling out other countries – particularly Russia, China and Iran – meddling/hacking/interfering around the World, has to be shown up for what it really is.
The US has between 600 to 800 military bases around the World in up to 70 countries, Nobody knows how many personnel they have in total, but the largest one in Ramstein, Germany has around 9,200 personnel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_military_bases
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2524082/All-US-Armys-secret-bases-mapped-Google-maps.html
Meanwhile, Russia has around 21 bases in 14 countries (Ex Russian republics plus Syria, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, Eritrea), which pales into insignificance when you take into account the US plus NATO, plus “allies” such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_military_bases_abroad#Current_bases
Craig,
Good and interesting stuff as always. It does seem clear to me that Russia is a convenient whipping boy in the establishment narrative.
In the interests of transparency, of which I am sure you are in favour, could you clarify the extent of any payments you might have received from Russia Today (where you appear from time to time) or other related entities?
I ask this as a genuinely open question, not imputing anything. But I really hope that the answer is “none at all”.
Paul
Craig has commented previously on this topic. The detail is in the trailer to each of his blog posts:
“this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers…” etc
Sorry to be pedantic, but “this blog” isn’t the same as “this author”. Clearly Craig has other sources of income (his work in Ghana, etc).
And I am one of those who pays monthly, so I really am not imputing anything. I just wish to hold Craig to the same high standards that he holds others.
No, I don’t get paid for my appearances on RT.
I agree. Why are people so indignant when someone asks whether RT has paid Murray for his appearances and contributions? Why are they so sensitive about this? Perhaps Sharp Ears, who is this blog’s resident digger into people’s finances and sojurces of income, could do some research into the question and report bck.
Thank you for that considered and substantive reply to my suggestion. I will take it to mean “no”.
To paraphrase SE.
Eff off you effen oxygen thief git.
Far more considered and substantive than any of your volumonous and vacuous commentary.
Ray Raven:
I heartily second your sentiment; and that of SE – though I don’t know what it said precisely as Craig has already ‘nuked’ it. Pity. Bostick is such an insufferable suffocating right wing snob. I imagine inGRRRRlish Public School through and through.
Much needed is hands glued together with Bostick to make keyboard incapable, or sailing into equatorial regions and so melts and disappears forever
..
‘not imputing anything’
About as genuine as the Russiagate conspiracy theory.
And yes, Sharp Ears, “manoeuvre” is mis-spelled. Thought I’d save you the trouble of pointing it out 🙂