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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What doesn’t seem to get much mention when this subject is discussed is how the Russian angle is being utilised to bring in wide regulatory changes that will affect people’s ability to communicate on leading platforms and to attack those sources whose content goes against the coiffured narrative.
See this list by the LSE of the various initiatives underway at present. As a true right-winger (a rare bird here, I know) and not a globalist liberal (the usual type of person castigated at “right wing”) much of this assault will be against my team and hence my noticing it. This may be why leftist sources are less keen to criticise these trends (most ‘Big Brother’ outlets are silent as are the pretend critics at places like Spiked), but it’s worth being on your radar, at least
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/selected-policy-responses-to-the-information-crisis/
‘Trump lashes out over claims Mueller report is more damaging than Barr revealed –
‘Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump)
The New York Times had no legitimate sources, which would be totally illegal, concerning the Mueller Report. In fact, they probably had no sources at all! They are a Fake News paper who have already been forced to apologize for their incorrect and very bad reporting on me!
April 4, 2019′
The Times cited several of Mueller’s investigators as saying Barr’s four page summary failed to accurately portray their findings. The full report, yet to be released, “did not find” that Trump colluded with Russia, according to Barr, but did not exonerate him on obstruction of justice accusations.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the New York Times apologized to readers for its coverage of his 2016 campaign.
The New York Times did not apologize to its readers for its coverage of his 2016 campaign.’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2019/apr/04/trump-news-today-tax-returns-mueller-report-joe-biden-latest-live-updates?
In the transcript of arch-plagiariser and Guardian hack Harding’s interview with Aaron Mate, he uses no less than 61 gratuitous “kind of”s. Kind of irritating n’ est-ce pas?
@Frank Hovis-kind of. ?
Sorry, it’s basically a kind of pet hate of mine, kind of, you know? It’s just one level up IMHO from people (presumably who’ve not had the educational opportunities that Mr. Harding has had) who liberally intersperse their sentences with copious “fuckin(g)”s.
“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.”
Abusing the old 3 Stooges (Stone, Credico, Corsi) while at the same time not talking to you guys was when this thing reached Peak Farce. What were they thinking?!? Desperate, I guess. It would have been kind of funny, but the two, Credico and Corsi, were incredibly scared. Elder abuse.
Harding has a Blairish manner and voice. No wonder he works for the paper currently obsessed with destroying British democracy on behalf of the slippery Brussels Mafia.
You could use that photo as part of a clever marketing campaign for your book.
caption should say:
“It is mine, mine i say. That gentelmen over there has so many he even sells them.”
“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.”
It’s less than that. IRA is a click-bait farm, pure and simple. Yes, it’s owner has some links with Putin, but so do most of the Russian rich. However, some of the Facebook ads could be construed as directed against Trump (eg, the famous ‘buff Bernie’ meme). So if you put yourself in Putin’s place, neither he nor anyone else in the Russian government per se would have chosen this as part of a MO to produce a Trump presidency. Especially when the traditional channels of high level lobbying behind closed doors, etc, are far more effective in getting what you want from whomever might be in power.
“America was perfect. Then, the Russians made everyone see these dildo ads, which caused police to wantonly start shooting unarmed black people”
https://twitter.com/eshaLegal/status/1076134421860884480
Craig: Before assuming Trump is fully exonerated, wouldn’t it be a good idea to wait for the Mueller report to be made public? If it is made public.
Actually he is. Mueller said he wont seek any indictment for Trump.
Half the truth if that, Jack. Mueller won’t be doing anything except presenting evidence – he won’t be doing the indicting himself.
But as James pointed out (and I pointed out earlier in this thread), we don’t know what’s in the Mueller report, because Trump’s chum Barr has provided only the scantest outline – in order to protect various the confidentiality, of course.
No that is the the truth, please read what the attorney general QUOTED(!) from the Mueller report.
Here’s Attorney General Barr’s letter:
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/democrats.judiciary.house.gov/files/documents/AG%20March%2024%202019%20Letter%20to%20House%20and%20Senate%20Judiciary%20Committees.pdf
Jack: Barr quoted, sorry – “QUOTED(!)” – precisely two partial sentences from the Mueller report. Naturally, you think that’s a fair summary. This is despite the fact that the Mueller report came with its own summaries, which were entirely suitable for release, without any “help” from Trump’s stooge Barr.
glenn_nl
Sorry, if you cannot accept a quote by Mueller himself, nothing will get you to understand. Bye.
Don’t sneak off just yet, Jack – you sly old dog, you – where is a full, unredacted and complete quote from Mueller then? Two half sentences don’t count, I’m afraid.
The Ted Rall comic, while funny, is factually incorrect.
Russia did not ‘give’ the DNC emails to Wikileaks. It was Seth Rich, a disgruntled Bernie supporter who was subsequently murdered (gosh who would have the motive to do that?).
This was alluded to (attested to) by both @wikileaks and @KimDotcom. Neither of whom were interviewed by Mueller. The ‘Trump-Russia did it’ meme fronted by Hillary, the Comey-FBI (the FBI), the Brennan CIA (the CIA) was ‘substantiated’ by the Steele Dossier (MI6), which has now been discredited.
Fixed it for you … https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211958379389500&set=a.2581078740917&type=3&theater
Wikileaks never reveal their sources, so not “attested to” by Wikileaks.
You left out Crowdstrike.
As for undue foreign influence over the U.S. government, the elephants in the room which have been studiously ignored are Israel and the U.K. They have such a hammerlock over U.S. policy, that were one to investigate and report about their interference, especially Israel, they would bring retribution upon themself- and this includes not only journalists, but legislators or aspiring candidates for the presidency.
Indeed, this is interesting:
Papadopoulos: Mueller wanted to charge me as an agent of Israel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDd75B9vNz8
Papadopoulos: ‘I was framed in Russiagate over Israel support’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjDaf-vnNwI
Gosh Craig, you failed to mention that you personally delivered the DNC incriminating evidence to Julian Assange. That is pertinent information to this article. What the whole world wants to know is, did you get that information from Seth Rich?
Craig didn’t deliver it; that was an embellishment by the Daily Mail. Try the following article; 13th and 14th paragraphs:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/10/cia-concludes-russia-interfered-to-help-trump-win-election-report
Craig’s visit to Washington must have been between 15 September, when he was in Edinburgh, and 19 October, when he visited Julian Assange:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/09/mr-murray-goes-washington/
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/10/really-really-upset-foreign-office-security-services/
That rules out Seth Rich, who had already been murdered in July.
“the entire weight of western corporate and state media” => except FOX, that is
O/T Back to Salisbury. Rowley meets Russian ambassador and is disappointed to be told that Russia had no involvement in the ‘Novichok’ attack. The anti Russia prop by the state broadcaster continues.
Charlie Rowley: Novichok victim meets Russian ambassador
5 hours ago
‘Russian spy poisoning’
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-47843322
and it will continue, apparently the Mueller conclusion just made these people even more dangerous:
“Another unexpected Dem 2020 twist will be competing among candidates over who can be tougher on Russia — a development I would not have predicted in the party just 10 years after the “reset”
https://twitter.com/LevineJonathan/status/1114960239382626305
A man who was exposed to the most deadly nerve gas known to Russia, Novichok, wants to meet Vladimir Putin in order to “get to the bottom” of the poisonings.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-47858500
Charlie Rowley, 45, said Russia’s ambassador has agreed to try to arrange a meeting with the country’s president.
Does anyone know what this is about? Coming up in the Commons later today.
3. SANCTIONS
Up to 90 minutes (Standing Order No. 16(1)) Sir Alan Duncan That the Venezuela (Sanctions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (S.I., 2019, No. 135), which were laid before this House on 31 January, be approved.
Notes: If this item is opposed after 7.00pm, the division will be deferred
I’d like to just comment on a single aspect:
“Harding has become so malleable a tool of the security services it is impossible to believe he is not willingly being used.”
You may be right, but to me it’s entirely possible, Harding got fed with russian conspiracy plots for so long, he actually believes what he writes. This exonerates him in no way and shows at least a great lack of journalistic standards and critical thinking. “Journalists” like him aren’t necessarily particularly intelligent and I would even assume it’s helpful for such a career as others notice, they can use or influence them without being aware.
People like him stay away from digging deep themselves, but rely on their numerous contacts, that tell them what they want to hear.
In my view he is just the perfect example for the incredibly low integrity of big news organisations nowadays.
Harding spent considerable time living in Russia where, he says, various scary things happened to him. Of course it is merely his assumption that those things were done by Russian secret services, and there are hosts of other parties who’d like him to think the Russians were putting the frighteners on him.
Of course, this is a conspiracy theory, but an entirely feasible one.
Think back, way back, to recall what happened to Baghwan Sri Rajneesh, later known as Osho. He was deported from the US after spending some time in a US prison. He claimed that he was poisoned during his incarceration. And he probably was as he died a short time later after he returned to India at the age of 59 of an “undiagnosed” illness. He had no health problems when he was detained.
Let’s hope Julian doesn’t suffer the same fate. Nothing would surprise me.
It’s more than frightening to see people like Harding having access to public platforms, he exhibits a multiplicity of pathological delusions, but is articulate enough to present them as facts, a typical Julius Streicher journalist, he should be careful he doesn’t end up as the way the German did.
An excellent summary of the web of lies woven by the secret services of the US and UK which has been presented to the world as Russiagate. But what many of your admirers are still waiting for is your definitive, unambiguous testimony that the real “hacker” (leaker) of the DNC server was an insider, and whether or not that insider, to your knowledge, was Seth Rich. Since Julian Assange offered $20,000 for information on Rich’s murder, that scenario has been widely assumed by those interested in the truth. Why has there been no clear declaration by you or Wikileaks that this was indeed the case? Surely Assange’s ethical principle about not disclosing sources has been rendered null and void by the death of the source? Not to mention rendered frivolous by the extreme importance of killing off the Russiagate narrative, which continues to stoke the Cold War which threatens humanity. This reluctance on your part to state what you know clearly about the source of the leak is leading to all kinds of conspiracy theories even among “dissident thinkers” who share your views. I have heard suggestions that you or Wikileaks have been bought off. Otherwise, why continue to maintain this ambiguity? People are losing faith even in those fighting the good fight when they fail inexplicably to say what they know, which is of vital importance to the world. So can we finally have the identity of the DNC leaker you claim to have had contact with — if that person is dead and out of danger? Or can you explain to those who believe in you why you are hiding the truth?