The Root of the New Cold War Between Russia and America

countercurrents |  On 3 January 2015, I submitted to all U.S. newsmedia, for them to consider for possible publication, a news-report that opened:

Czech President Says ‘Only Poorly Informed People’ Don’t Know About Ukraine Coup

Eric Zuesse

The Czech Republic’s President Milos Zeman said, in an interview, in the January 3rd edition of Prague’s daily newspaper Pravo, that Czechs who think of the overthrow of Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, on 22 February 2014, as having been like Czechoslovakia’s authentically democratic “Velvet Revolution” are seeing it in a profoundly false light, because, (as Russian Television translated his statement into English) “Maidan was not a democratic revolution.” He said that this is the reason why Ukraine now is in a condition of “civil war,” in which the residents of the Donbass region in Ukraine’s southeast have broken away from the Ukrainian Government.

He furthermore said that, “Judging by some of the statements of Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, I think that he is rather a prime minister of war because he does not want a peaceful solution, as recommended by the European Union (EU), but instead prefers to use force.”

He added, by way of contrast to Yatsenyuk, the possibility that Ukraine’s President, Petro Poroshenko “might be a man of peace.” So: though Zeman held out no such hope regarding Yatsenyuk (who was Obama’s choice to lead Ukraine), he did for Poroshenko (who wasn’t Obama’s choice, but who became Ukraine’s President despite Obama’s having wanted Yatsenyuk’s sponsor, the hyper-aggressive Yulia Tymoshenko, to win the May 25th Presidential election, which was held only in Ukraine’s pro-coup northwest, but claimed to possess authority over the entire country). …

That news-report was published at no mainstrean news-site and was rejected by almost all alternative-news sites, but was published at the following six: RINF, washingtonsblog, thepeoplesvoice, countercurrents, blacklistednews, and pontiactribune.

If such news-reports were published in U.S. newsmedia, especially in mainstream ones, then one could reasonably trust U.S. newsmedia, but such news-reports are not published in the U.S. (nor in its allied countries)

Here is terrific journalism (click onto that link) from “The Saker” documenting both with video from Hromadske TV, and with links to that TV operation’s annual financial reports, that the three top funders of Hromadske TV — Nayem’s springboard into Ukraine’s Rada —  were, in order: the Dutch Embassy, the American Embassy, and the International Renaissance Foundation (mis-identified there as the “International Renaissance Fund” — this is one of Soros’s ‘non-profits’, not one of his hedge funds). That report by The Saker was dated 3 August 2014, and afterward the linked-to “Hromadske TV Annual Financial Report, 2013” was taken down, but here it had been web-archived, so that you can see and authenticate it for yourself, showing on its second-to-last page, exactly what the screen-shot by The Saker showed. Interestingly, the “International Renaissance Fund” error was in the original financial report itself. The error wasn’t by The Saker.

That article by The Saker included the 31 July 2014 video of a Ukrainian ‘journalist’ being interviewed on George Soros’s and Mustafa Nayem’s and the U.S. Government’s and the Dutch Government’s Ukrainian TV station, explaining why “You need to kill 1.5 million people in Donbass” — arguing for ethnic cleansing there, of the genocidal type. The U.S.-imposed Ukrainian regime did attempt that, and such ethnic-cleansing started being Ukrainian Government policy as soon as the new Government was installed. On 19 November 2014, I headlined “Meet Ukraine’s Master Mass-Murderer: Dmitriy Yarosh” and noted that Yarosh had been the person who not only was very active in the ethnic-cleansing program, but he had trained the paramilitaries who had executed the overthrow, and I linked to a video of Yarosh being interviewed as a hero on the new regime’s television. I also wrote:

As Yarosh said this past March in an interview with Newsweek, he has “been training paramilitary troops for almost 25 years,” and his “divisions are constantly growing all over Ukraine, but over 10,000 people for sure.” More recently, in October, a pro-Government Ukrainian site interviewed Yarosh and he mentioned specifically a “DUC,” or Volunteer Ukrainian Corps of fighters. He was then asked “How many soldiers in DUC?” and he answered, “About seven thousand men.” These would be his real military force, by far the biggest private army in Ukraine. So, in his private files are everyone’s individual background and skill-level as a “paramilitary,” or far-right mercenary, and they all respect and obey him as the top man. He is the indispensable person in this new Ukraine. Yarosh’s teams carry out the most violent operations for the CIA in Ukraine (including the coup).

Valodya the GOAT! Accept No Substitutes...,

zerohedge |  The Trump dossier was reckless and irresponsible in the extreme, but only consequential after Election Day. It didn’t prevent Mr. Trump from becoming president.

In the new spirit of non-non-disclosure, it’s time for Mr. Comey to tell us about the Russian intelligence scam that may really have changed the election outcome.

In closed hearings, he reportedly acknowledged that his intervention in the Hillary Clinton email case was prompted by what is now understood to have been planted, fake Russian intelligence. The fake Russian intelligence purported to discuss a nonexistent email between then-DNC chief Debbie Wasserman Schultz and George Soros-employed activist Leonard Benardo.

This led directly to Mr. Comey’s second intervention, reopening the case 11 days before Election Day, a shocking development that appears now to have moved enough votes into Mr. Trump’s column to account for his win.

At the time, the press was all too happy to blame Bill Clinton for his wife’s loss when Mr. Comey, for nonclassified consumption, cited Mr. Clinton’s tarmac meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch as the reason for his intervention.

The press is silent now.

The new story satisfies nobody’s agenda, and only makes the FBI look foolish. Mr. Trump is not eager to hear his victory portrayed as an FBI-precipitated accident. Democrats cling to their increasingly washed-out theory of Trump-Russia collusion.

And yet, if Mr. Comey’s antic intervention in response to Russian disinformation inadvertently led to Mr. Trump becoming president, this was the most consequential outcome by far.

HRC DNC MSM #MeToo Dindu Slug Trails Everywhere..., Accept No Substitutes!

dystopiausa |  Before we get to the Week 3 thread, a recap of the past two weeks:

Week 2 of Trump’s Storm against the Deep State saw an increase in bombshell news events:

• Uranium One investigative revelations from Sara Carter and John Solomon.
• Subsequent Congressional probes into the U1 and FBI handling of the Clinton e-mail scandal were announced by Congress.
• The JFK Assassination files are to be declassified.
• Fusion GPS execs pleading the Fifth Amendment, with its lawyers frantically seeking to keep Fusion’s bank records private.
• Confirmation by the Washington Post that the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for the Steele dossier of the President.
• Announcement that the FBI has arrested pedophiles in a cross-country sting.

Week 1 saw the following developments:

• Weinstein scandal.
• The start of Project Veritas’ American Pravda series.
• Julian Assange tweeting hash keys.
• The FBI Vault releasing memos proving that Comey exonerated Hillary before even interviewing her.
• Judge Jeanine mentioning the Clinton’s connection to known pedophiles.

Well, Week 3 promises even more fun.

• The JFK files may or may not be released this week – I believe it will since FOIAs will probably be filed at 1 second past the declassification date.
• I’m expecting Robert Mueller to speak soon. More on that below a little later.
• Perhaps Assange drops what he has.

We’ll use the same format as before. Check beneath the dividing line for live updates and links to breaking news.

And for some background on my theories and why I believe what is happening lately is a coordinated effort to flush out the Deep State

People Get Their Beliefs Reinforced Just Enough To Keep Fooling Themselves

alt-market |  That maybe, just maybe, the conservative right is being tenderized in preparation for radicalization, just as much as the left has been radicalized. For the more extreme the social divide, the more likely chaos and crisis will erupt, and the globalists never let a good crisis go to waste. Zealots, regardless of their claimed moral authority, are almost always wrong in history. Conservatives cannot afford to be wrong in this era. We cannot afford zealotry.  We cannot afford biases and mistakes; the future of individual liberty depends on our ability to remain objective, vigilant and steadfast. Without self examination, we will lose everything.

Years ago in 2012, I published a thorough examination of disinformation tactics used by globalist institutions as well as government and political outfits to manipulate the public and undermine legitimate analysts working to expose particular truths of our social and economic conditions.

If you have not read this article, titled Disinformation: How It Works, I highly recommend you do so now. It will act as a solid foundation for what I am about to discuss in this article. Without a basic understanding of how lies are utilized, you will be in no position to grasp the complexities of disinformation trends being implemented today.

Much of what I am about to discuss will probably not become apparent for much of the mainstream and portions of the liberty movement for many years to come. Sadly, the biggest lies are often the hardest to see until time and distance are achieved.

If you want to be able to predict geopolitical and economic trends with any accuracy, you must first accept a couple of hard realities. First and foremost, the majority of cultural shifts and fiscal developments within our system are a product of social engineering by an organized collective of power elites. Second, you must understand that this collective is driven by the ideology of globalism — the pursuit of total centralization of financial and political control into the hands of a select few deemed as "superior" concertmasters or "maestros."

As globalist insider, CFR member and mentor to Bill Clinton, Carroll Quigley, openly admitted in his book Tragedy And Hope:

"The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences. The apex of the system was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank ... sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."

The philosophical basis for the globalist ideology is most clearly summarized in the principles of something called "Fabian Socialism," a system founded in 1884 which promotes the subversive and deliberate manipulation of the masses towards total centralization, collectivism and population control through eugenics. Fabian Socialists prefer to carry out their strategies over a span of decades, turning a population against itself slowly, rather than trying to force changes to a system immediately and outright.  Their symbol is a coat of arms depicting a wolf in sheep's clothing, or in some cases a turtle (slow and steady wins the race?) with the words "When I strike I strike hard."

Again, it is important to acknowledge that these people are NOT unified by loyalty to any one nation, culture, political party, mainstream religion or ethnic background.

American Sheeple Can ALWAYS Be Depended Upon To Play Themselves...,

Alt-Market |  The false left/right paradigm is an often misunderstood concept. Many people who are aware of it sometimes wrongly assume that it asserts the claim that there is "no left or right political spectrum;" that it is all a farce. This is incorrect. In regular society there is indeed a political spectrum among the general populace from socialism/communism/big government (left) to conservatism/free markets/individualism/small government (right). Each citizen sits somewhere on the scale between these two dynamics. The left/right spectrum is in fact real for the average person.

We do not find a " false" paradigm until we examine the beliefs and behaviors of the elitist and political classes. For many banking oligarchs and high level politicians, there is no loyalty to a particular political party or an identifiable "left" or "right" ideology. Many of these people are happy to exploit both sides of the spectrum, if they can, to achieve the goals of globalism; a separate ideology that doesn't really serve the interests of groups on the left or the right. That is to say, globalists pretend as if they care about one side or the other on occasion, but in truth they could not care less about the success of either. They only care about the success of their own exclusive elitist club.

This reality also tends to apply to national loyalty as well. Globalists do not carry any ideological love for any particular nation or culture. They are more than happy to sacrifice and sabotage a country if the action will gain them greater power or centralization in return. A globalist is only "Democrat" or "Republican," or American or Russian or Chinese or European, etc., insofar as the label gets them something that they want.

The reason globalists and the people that work for them adopt certain labels is because through this they can act as gatekeepers and better manipulate the masses. The hot button issue of the week provides us with a case in point...

The organizer of the "Unite The Right" group during the Charlottesville circus, which ended in one death and numerous injured, happened to be an ideological playmate of the extreme left only a year ago. Jason Kessler seemed to come out of nowhere as a leading figure in the white identity or "white nationalist" movement in 2017, but in 2016, he was an avid supporter of Barack Obama, and before that, an active champion of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

I suppose anyone can change their ideological worldview over time, but I'm certainly not stupid enough to believe that Jason Kessler went from hardcore leftist to white nationalist in less than a year. Though it cannot be proven conclusively that Kessler is a provocateur, he certainly idolized the position. Kessler is quoted in his own blog on December 12, 2015, (now shut down but archived) as stating:

"I can't think of any occupation I admire more than the professional provocateur, who has the courage and self-determination to court controversy despite all the slings and arrows of the world."

This is not the first time white nationalists have been exploited by agent provocateurs to make the "political right" in general look bad. And, it is certainly not the first time white nationalists have been discovered to be working directly for the federal government. Klu Klux Klan leader Bill Wilkinson openly admitted to being a FBI informant and cooperator in 1981. Hal Turner, a white supremacist radio personality notorious for calling for the deaths of judges and lawmakers, turned out to be a provocateur paid by the FBI to drum up extremism. He was exposed in 2009 after his arrest led to his admission that almost everything he did was "at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigations..."

Why would the government seek to instigate white nationalist groups into violence? Well, you have to examine the larger narrative here.

Anti-conservative propaganda has been overwhelmingly one-track over the past several years. If you are well educated on the activities of deceit machines like the Southern Poverty Law Center, you understand that the thrust of all of their operations has been to tie white nationalism directly to conservative organizations even if there is no connection. I call this "guilt by false association." Keep in mind that the SPLC cooperates closely with government agencies like the DHS and their "Working Group To Counter Violent Extremism" to create profiling techniques to identify "right wing extremists." Meaning, their skewed propaganda is often what the media and government agencies use as a reference when writing articles or implementing policy.

The SPLC is inseparable from the mainstream media and government agendas dealing with conservatives.

In order to justify the madness and violence of the left in recent months, it is more important than ever for the establishment to maintain the lie that conservatives are also all violent racists and "fascists" that need to be destroyed. Propaganda alone is rarely enough to make such notions stick in the public consciousness. Sometimes, provocateurs are needed to "stir the pot."

However, this is only half the equation of the American civil war being engineered before our eyes.

Did Bannon and Mercer Game the Whole System but Finally Play Themselves?

theatlantic |  Taboo and sacredness are among the most important words needed to understand Charlottesville and its aftermath. Taboo refers to things that are forbidden for religious or supernatural reasons. All traditional societies have such prohibitions—things you must not do, touch, or eat, not because they are bad for you directly, but because doing so is an abomination, which may bring divine retribution. But every society also makes some things sacred, rallying around a few deeply revered values, people, or places, which bind all members together and make them willing to sacrifice for the common good. The past week brought violent conflict over symbols and values held sacred—and saw President Trump commit an act of sacrilege by violating one of our society’s strongest taboos.

The “Unite the Right” rally was an effort to mobilize and energize a subset of the far-right around its own sacred symbols—including swastikas and confederate flags—by marching to another symbol that is its members believed was under attack, a statue of Robert E. Lee. The psychological logic of the rally was to bind white people together with shared hatred of Jews, African Americans, and others, under a banner and narrative of racial victimhood and racial purity. Marching and chanting in unison has been shown to intensify feelings of oneness and social cohesion. The psychology of sacredness and its function in binding groups together is essential for understanding the method and the motives of the marchers.

Taboo violations are contagious. They render the transgressor “polluted,” in the language of anthropology, and the moral stain rubs off on those who physically touch the transgressor, as well as on those who fail to distance themselves from the transgressor. When people march with Nazis and Klansmen, even if they keep their mouths closed when others are chanting, and even if they don’t personally carry swastika or Klan flags, they acquire the full moral stain of Nazis and Klansmen. By saying that some of these men were “very fine people,” the president has taken that stain upon himself.

You can’t just apologize for breaking a taboo, especially a taboo as deep as the one on Nazis and the KKK. Many religions offer methods of atonement, sometimes involving fasting, self-flagellation, and temporary separation from the community. But even if an anthropologically sophisticated chief of staff could devise a secular form of atonement, Trump would not undergo it. He does not believe he has done anything wrong.

So the stain, the moral pollution, the taint, will linger on him and his administration for the rest of his term. Business leaders have quit his panels and projects; artists who were due to receive honors from the president have changed their plans. Pollution travels most rapidly by physical touch, so be on the lookout for numerous awkward moments in the coming months when people refuse to shake the president’s hand or stand next to him. It is unclear how far the contagion will spread, but it will surely make it more difficult to attract talented people into government service for as long as Trump is the president.

Trump: Opposing the Establishment and Driving the Hard Bargain

theatlantic |  Sam Harris, the atheist philosopher and neuroscientist, has recently been using his popular Waking Up podcast to discuss Donald Trump, whom he abhors, with an ideologically diverse series of guests, all of whom believe that the president is a vile huckster.

This began to wear on some of his listeners. Wasn’t Harris always warning against echo chambers? Didn’t he believe in rigorous debate with a position’s strongest proponents? At their urging, he extended an invitation to a person that many of those listeners regard as President Trump’s most formidable defender: Scott Adams, the creator of the cartoon Dilbert, who believes that Trump is “a master persuader.”

Their conversation was posted online late last month. It is one of the most peculiar debates about a president I have ever encountered. And it left me marveling that parts of Trump’s base think well of Adams when his views imply such negative things about them.

Those implications are most striking with respect to extreme views that Trump expressed during the campaign. Harris and Adams discussed two examples during the podcast: Trump’s call to deport 12 million illegal immigrants from the United States, a position that would require vast, roving deportation forces, home raids, and the forced removal even of law-abiding, undocumented single mothers of American children; and Trump’s call to murder the family members of al-Qaeda or ISIS terrorists.

Trump took those positions not because he believes them, Adams argued, but to mirror the emotional state of the voters he sought and to “open negotiations” on policy.
Harris expressed bafflement that such a strategy would work:

Harris: If I'm going to pretend to be so callous as to happily absorb those facts, like send them all back, they don't belong here, or in the ISIS case, we'll torture their kids, we'll kill their kids, it doesn't matter, whatever works—if that's my opening negotiation, I am advertising a level of callousness, and a level of unconcern for the reality of human suffering that will follow from my actions, should I get what I ostensibly want, that it's a nearly psychopathic ethics I am advertising as my strong suit.

So how this becomes attractive to people, how this resonates with their values—I get what you said, people are worried about immigration and  jihadism, I share those concerns. But when you cross the line into this opening overture that has these extreme consequences on its face, things that get pointed out in 30 seconds whenever he opens his mouth on a topic like this, I don't understand how that works for him with anyone.

Adams: Let me give you a little thought experiment here. We've got people who are on the far right. We've got people on the far left. In your perfect world, would it be better to move the people on the far right toward the middle or the people on the far left toward the middle? Which would be a preferred world for you?

Harris: Moving everyone toward the middle, certainly on most points, would be a very good thing.

Adams: So what you've observed with President Trump through his pacing and emotional compatibility with his base is that prior to Inauguration Day, there were a lot of people in this country who were saying, 'Yeah yeah, round them all up. Send all 12 million back tomorrow.'

When was the last time you heard anybody on the right complaining about that? Because what happened was, immigration went down 50 to 70 percent, whatever the number was, just based on the fact that we would get tough on immigration. And the right says, ‘Oh, okay, we didn't get nearly what we asked for, but our leader, who we trust, who we love, has backed off of that, and we're going to kind of go with that, because he is doing some good things that we like. And we don't like the alternative either.’

So this ‘monster’ that we elected, this ‘Hitler-dictator-crazy-guy,’ he managed to be the only guy who could have, and I would argue always intended, to move the far right toward the middle. You saw it, you know, we can observe it with our own eyes. We don't see the right saying, ‘Oh no, I hate President Trump. He's got to round up those undocumented people like he said early in the campaign, or else I'm bailing on him.’ None of that happened. He paced them, and then he led them toward a reasonable situation, which I would say we're in.

I don’t agree with parts of Adams’s analysis. But as he tells it, Trump targeted voters who’d be attracted rather than repelled by calls for policies that would inflict great suffering; he told those voters things that he didn’t really mean to gain their emotional trust; and all along, he probably intended to go to Washington and do something else. That sounds a lot like the way that Trump voters describe the career politicians who they hate: emotionally manipulative liars who will say anything to get elected, get to Washington, and betray their base by moving left on immigration.

The Establishment Defeated the Black Panthers - Can It Defeat The Alt-Right?

breitbart |  To young people and the politically disengaged, debate in the public square today appears topsy-turvy. The regressive Left loudly insists that it stands for equality and racial justice while praising acts of racial violence and forcing white people to sit at the back of the bus (or, more accurately, the back of the campus — or in another campus altogether). It defends absurd feminist positions with no basis in fact and ridicules and demeans people on the basis of their skin colour, sexual orientation and gender.

Meanwhile, the alt-right openly crack jokes about the Holocaust, loudly — albeit almost entirely satirically — expresses its horror at “race-mixing,” and denounces the “degeneracy” of homosexuals… while inviting Jewish gays and mixed-race Breitbart reporters to their secret dinner parties. What gives?

If you’re this far down the article, you’ll know some of the answers already. For the meme brigade, it’s just about having fun. They have no real problem with race-mixing, homosexuality, or even diverse societies: it’s just fun to watch the mayhem and outrage that erupts when those secular shibboleths are openly mocked. These younger mischief-makers instinctively understand who the authoritarians are and why and how to poke fun at them.

The intellectuals are animated by a similar thrill: after being taken for granted for centuries, they’re the ones who get to pick apart some of the Enlightenment’s dead dogmas. The 1488ers just hate everyone; fortunately they keep mostly to themselves.

The really interesting members of the alt-right though, and the most numerous, are the natural conservatives. They are perhaps psychologically inclined to be unsettled by threats to western culture from mass immigration and maybe by non-straight relationships. Yet, unlike the 1488ers, the presence of such doesn’t send them into fits of rage. They want to build their homogeneous communities, sure — but they don’t want to commit any pogroms along the way. Indeed, they would prefer non-violent solutions.

They’re also aware that there are millions of people who don’t share their inclinations. These are the instinctive liberals, the second half of Haidt’s psychological map of western polities — the people who are comfortable with diversity, promiscuity, homosexuality, and all other features of the cultural consensus.

Natural conservatives know that a zero-sum battle with this group would end in stalemate or defeat. Their goal is a new consensus, where liberals compromise or at least allow conservative areas of their countries to reject the status quo on race, immigration and gender. Others, especially neoreactionaries, seek exit: a peaceful separation from liberal cultures.

Should the liberal tribe (and let’s not deny it any longer – that’s both the Democratic and GOP Establishments these days) do business with them? Well, the risk otherwise is that the 1488ers start persuading people that their solution to natural conservatives’ problems is the only viable one. The bulk of their demands, after all, are not so audacious: they want their own communities, populated by their own people, and governed by their own values.

In short, they want what every people fighting for self-determination in history have ever wanted, and what progressives are always telling us people should be allowed — unless those people are white. This hypocrisy is what has led so many Trump voters — groups who have in many cases not voted since the 1970s or 80s — to come out of the woodwork and stand up for their values and culture.

The Establishment need to read their Haidt and realise that this group isn’t going away. There will be no “progress” that erases the natural affinities of conservatives. We can no longer pretend that divides over free trade and the minutiae of healthcare reform really represent both sides of the political spectrum in America. The alt-right is here, and here to stay.

It ABSOLUTELY Cannot Stand Being Ridiculed...,

dailymail |  Colin Kaepernick's MTV star girlfriend compares Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave master after he opposes signing quarterback

• Nessa Diab, 36, compared Baltimore Ravens owner Steve Bisciotti to a slave master and Ray Lewis to a senior house slave on Twitter Thursday
• She posted the controversial tweet after both Bisciotti and Lewis publicly criticized Kaepernick's non-violent protest of the national anthem
• Bisciotti decided to hand over the decision to the fans and some trusted advisers and determine if it was a good move to add Kaepernick, 29, to the Ravens
• The owner previously signed Dante Stallworth after he did time for DUI manslaughter and let Ray Rice play for seven months after he abused his fiancee
• The Baltimore Ravens had been considering signing Kaepernick as a possible second string quarterback who would start for Joe Flacco on opening day
• Kaepernick has a better passer rating than Flacco, and his 88.9 ranks him 11th in the NFL among active players, but he remains a free agent

🎯 @raylewis pic.twitter.com/N9k7nDgmDh

— NESSA (@nessnitty) August 3, 2017

Evidence of Susan Rice's Criminality Hidden at Obama Presidential Library

WND |  Key evidence on whether the Obama administration spied on the Trump team may be kept under lock and key for five years, at former President Obama’s presidential library.

Perhaps just as surprising, the announcement came from President Trump’s own National Security Council, or NSC.

There are still a publicly unknown number of Obama holdovers on the NSC, but there’s no word yet on how the decision was made.

The government-watchdog group Judicial Watch announced Monday the NSC had denied its Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, request for documents related to President Obama’s National Security Adviser Susan Rice’s alleged unmasking of the “identities of any U.S. citizens associated with the Trump presidential campaign or transition team.”

In a potentially bombshell development, the NSC said those documents have been transferred to the Barack Obama Presidential Library, while pointedly adding, “you should be aware that under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records remain closed to the public for five years after an administration has left office.”

It’s not yet known if that would block congressional investigators, the FBI, or Special Counsel Robert Mueller from obtaining the documents.

Valodya The Real Reality Winner!

Tass |  According to Putin, Comey is more like a rights activist than a secret service chief. "If he continues to be persecuted in this connection, we will be ready to provide political asylum to him, he should know about that," the Russian president said.

Putin pointed out that Comey had admitted to have recorded his conversation with Trump, handing it over to the media through a friend. "This sounds strange when a secret service chief records his conversation with the commander-in-chief to hand the record to the media," Putin added.

Triangular Diplomacy

Sputniknews |  In his recent Davos speech, Kissinger reiterated that the global order the US and EU were familiar with is fading away.

"One of the key problems of our period is that the international order with which we were familiar is disintegrating in some respects, and that new elements from Asia and the developing world are entering it," Kissinger pointed out Friday.

In light of this, it is no surprise that Kissinger sees Trump's approach toward Russia largely as a step in the right direction.

Kissinger as Trump's 'Informal Foreign Policy Adviser'

Furthermore, German newspaper Bild reported that the former American diplomat has taken on the role of Trump's informal foreign policy adviser.

Citing information obtained by Western European intelligence from Trump's transition team, the German newspaper  wrote in late December that Kissinger has repeatedly met with Trump in the past couple of months and that the White House is likely to go for "constructive cooperation" with the Kremlin.

In early January 2017, citing officials with Trump's transition team, Eli Lake of Bloomberg disclosed that since the election, the veteran diplomat has been counselling incoming National Security Adviser Michael Flynn and his team, citing officials with Trump's transition team.

But that's half the story. According to Lake, it was Kissinger who urged Trump to nominate Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State and recommended his former assistant K.T. McFarland to be Flynn's deputy.

"Kissinger is one of the few people in Trump's orbit who can get him on the phone whenever he wants, according to one transition adviser," Lake noted.

Whose Side is He On?

QZ |  Former secretary of state Henry Kissinger may be in his nineties, but he’s continuing to play a key, globe-spanning role in one of the most substantive foreign policy negotiations of the US presidency so far.

Kissinger, who brokered a ground-breaking detente between the US and China’s Communist Party’s in 1972, has served a valued go-between for the two nations for more than four decades, earning him the nickname of “old friend of the Chinese people.” It’s privilege he has shared with at least 600 people, although Kissinger may be the living person who has held the nickname the longest.

As recently as December, when then US president-elect Donald Trump threatened upheaval between the world’s most powerful nations, by accepting a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s Tsai Ing-wen, Kissinger was already in Beijing with Chinese president Xi Jinping, reassuring him that “overall, we hope to see the China-US relationship moving ahead in a sustained and stable manner.” (A Bloomberg report suggested that Xi may have turned to the venerable diplomat to better understand Trump, telling Kissinger he was “all ears” regarding what he had to say about the future of US-China relations.)

Kissinger met with the incoming Trump administration soon after the election, and helped to connect Chinese politicians with the US president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, the Washington Post reports—connections that ultimately led to this week’s meeting.

In doing so, he’s opened up a now familiar controversy in the US—who does Kissinger work for, exactly, and whose side is he on?

Kissinger is “representing China’s interests and trying to influence American foreign policy,” said Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen, a nonpartisan group that advocates for citizens’ rights in Congress. “That crosses the threshold for FARA,” he said, referring to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Foreign Policy is the Art of Establishing Priorities

WaPo |  For the West, the demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy; it is an alibi for the absence of one.

Putin should come to realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military impositions would produce another Cold War. For its part, the United States needs to avoid treating Russia as an aberrant to be patiently taught rules of conduct established by Washington. Putin is a serious strategist — on the premises of Russian history. Understanding U.S. values and psychology are not his strong suits. Nor has understanding Russian history and psychology been a strong point of U.S. policymakers.

Leaders of all sides should return to examining outcomes, not compete in posturing. Here is my notion of an outcome compatible with the values and security interests of all sides:

1. Ukraine should have the right to choose freely its economic and political associations, including with Europe.

2. Ukraine should not join NATO, a position I took seven years ago, when it last came up. 

3. Ukraine should be free to create any government compatible with the expressed will of its people. Wise Ukrainian leaders would then opt for a policy of reconciliation between the various parts of their country. Internationally, they should pursue a posture comparable to that of Finland. That nation leaves no doubt about its fierce independence and cooperates with the West in most fields but carefully avoids institutional hostility toward Russia.

4. It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. But it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship to Ukraine on a less fraught basis. To that end, Russia would recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea. Ukraine should reinforce Crimea’s autonomy in elections held in the presence of international observers. The process would include removing any ambiguities about the status of the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol.

These are principles, not prescriptions. People familiar with the region will know that not all of them will be palatable to all parties. The test is not absolute satisfaction but balanced dissatisfaction. If some solution based on these or comparable elements is not achieved, the drift toward confrontation will accelerate. The time for that will come soon enough.

Duty, Honor, Country..., and NOT Jailing Any Banksters!!!

libertyblitzkrieg |  Which brings me to the final and most important part of this piece. The entire Comey firing saga could go in several directions, but an increasingly likely outcome is the one I don’t see being discussed anywhere. First we need to ask ourselves, what’s likely to happen next? Calls for a special prosecutor and independent investigation into Trump-Russia collusion are likely to get louder and louder. Given the timing of the firing, I support this and I think there’s a good chance it’ll happen. I hope it does happen, as we really do need to put an end to all the speculation and hysteria one way or the other, once and for all. But here’s where it gets really interesting…

If Trump really did coordinate with the Russian government to affect the U.S. election and indisputable evidence emerges, it will be an enormous scandal and he will likely be removed from office. Personally, I don’t think such evidence exists because I don’t think such collusion happened, but I support an independent investigation. On the other hand, what might happen if Trump didn’t collude with Russia?

Here’s where Trump legitimately has a chance to destroy the Democratic Party once and for all. The Democrats have already been putting all their eggs in the Russia conspiracy theory basket, and this focus on Russia as opposed to jobs, healthcare, student loans, debt slavery etc., has made the American public think the Democratic Party is more out of touch than both Trump and the GOP. Given that’s where things stand today, imagine what’ll happen to the party and its leaders if they start spending 100% of their time pursuing this lead and then nothing comes up? What then?

I’ll tell you what happens. The Democratic Party, as useless as it is today, will completely evaporate as a serious political opposition force in America. This is because it appears all of its handful of 2020 hopefuls seem to be completely hyperventilating and losing their minds about Comey’s dismissal and asserting that it represents proof Trump colluded with Russia.

Imagine if Trump is cleared by an independent investigation? These Dems will look like complete imbeciles with horrible judgement who wasted the nation’s time while tens of millions of Americans struggled to make ends meet. This will destroy the party and lead to an easy Trump win in 2020. This is a potentially lethal trap for Democrats and they seem to be falling for it in unison.

Trump Is Not Under Criminal Investigation By the FBI

NationalReview |  The bureau is conducting a counterintelligence investigation, which is a whole different beast. There is no ongoing criminal investigation of President Trump or his campaign. I realize that may not be what you expect to hear, if you’re only casually consuming the news. But it’s what FBI director Jim Comey told Congress, and no available evidence contradicts it. Democrats are desperate to draw a parallel between Comey’s testimony Monday before the House Intelligence Committee — about an ongoing FBI investigation that includes any connections between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election — and Comey’s statements in July and October 2016 about the criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server. But if you listen to what Comey actually told Congress under oath, you get a very different picture.

Let’s quote the key portion:

As you know, our practice is not to confirm the existence of ongoing investigations, especially those investigations that involve classified matters, but in unusual circumstances where it is in the public interest, it may be appropriate to do so as Justice Department policies recognize. This is one of those circumstances.

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia’s efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

Because it is an open ongoing investigation and is classified, I cannot say more about what we are doing and whose conduct we are examining. At the request of congressional leaders, we have taken the extraordinary step in coordination with the Department of Justice of briefing this Congress’ leaders, including the leaders of this committee, in a classified setting in detail about the investigation but I can’t go into those details here. [Emphasis added.]

In short, the investigation Comey references is not a criminal investigation; it’s a counterintelligence investigation, and crimes will be investigated or charged only if they happen to be uncovered in the process.

Where does that leave us?

Weaponizing Interdependence - .45 Using Cathedral's Shunning Tactics in Trade War?

WaPo  |  “Three of the airlines that have been targeted for these measures — Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways — have long been accused by their U.S. competitors of receiving massive effective subsidies from their governments,” wrote political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman. “These airlines have been quietly worried for months that President Trump was going to retaliate. This may be the retaliation.”

Farrell and Newman suggested Tuesday’s order is an example of the Trump administration “weaponizing interdependence” — using its leverage in a world where American airports are key “nodes” in global air travel to weaken competitors. My colleague Max Bearak detailed how this could be a part of Trump’s wider protectionist agenda. In February, President Trump met with executives of U.S. airlines and pledged that he would help them compete against foreign carriers that receive subsidies from their home governments.

“A lot of that competition is subsidized by governments, big league,” said Trump at that meeting. “I’ve heard that complaint from different people in this room. Probably about one hour after I got elected, I was inundated with calls from your industry and many other industries, because it’s a very unfair situation.”

Democratic Narrative on Putin-Trump Influence Falls to Pieces

washingtonsblog |  As Rep. Adam Schiff tries out for the lead role in a remake of the Joe McCarthy hearings by maligning specific Americans as suspected Russian moles, some of the actual evidence argues against the Democratic notion that the Russians own President Trump and other key Republicans.

For instance, last week, Democrats circulated a report showing that retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who served briefly as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, had received payments from several Russia-related entities, totaling nearly $68,000.

The largest payment of $45,386 came for a speech and an appearance in Moscow in 2015 at the tenth anniversary dinner for RT, the international Russian TV network, with Flynn netting $33,750 after his speakers’ bureau took its cut. Democrats treated this revelation as important evidence about Russia buying influence in the Trump campaign and White House. But the actual evidence suggests something quite different.

Not only was the sum a relative trifle for a former senior U.S. government official compared to, say, the fees collected by Bill and Hillary Clinton, who often pulled in six to ten times more, especially for speeches to foreign audiences. (Former President Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with ties to the Kremlin, The New York Times reported in 2015,)

Yet, besides Flynn’s relatively modest speaking fee, The Washington Post reported that RT negotiated Flynn’s rate downward.

Deep inside its article on Flynn’s Russia-connected payments, the Post wrote, “RT balked at paying Flynn’s original asking price. ‘Sorry it took us longer to get back to you but the problem is that the speaking fee is a bit too high and exceeds our budget at the moment,’ Alina Mikhaleva, RT’s head of marketing, wrote a Flynn associate about a month before the event.”

So, if you accept the Democrats’ narrative that Russian President Vladimir Putin is engaged in an all-out splurge to induce influential Americans to betray their country, how do you explain that his supposed flunkies at RT are quibbling with Flynn over a relatively modest speaking fee?

Wouldn’t you think that Putin would have told RT’s marketing department that the sky was the limit in paying off Flynn because the ever-prescient Russian president knew from his Ouija board in 2015 that Flynn would be the future national security adviser under President Trump?

After all, it’s become one of Official Washington’s favorite groupthinks that RT is nothing but a Russian propaganda front designed to destroy the faith that Americans have in their democratic process – as if the sleazy and shameful political campaigns financed with hundreds of millions of dollars from billionaires need any help from RT.

Tillerson Plans to Skip NATO Meeting and Visit Russia Instead

reuters |  U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson plans to skip a meeting with NATO foreign ministers next month in order to stay home for a visit by China's president and will go to Russia later in April, U.S. officials said on Monday, disclosing an itinerary that allies may see as giving Moscow priority over them.

Tillerson intends to miss what would have been his first meeting of the 28 NATO allies on April 5-6 in Brussels so that he can attend President Donald Trump's expected April 6-7 talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, four current and former U.S. officials said. 

Skipping the NATO meeting and visiting Moscow could risk feeding a perception that Trump may be putting U.S. dealings with big powers first, while leaving waiting those smaller nations that depend on Washington for security, two former U.S. officials said.

Trump has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Tillerson worked with Russia's government for years as a top executive at Exxon Mobil Corp, and has questioned the wisdom of sanctions against Russia that he said could harm U.S. businesses.

Better Be Careful What You Say To Me, Cause It Might Turn Around On You

justsecurity |  Once again, Donald Trump has kicked off a media firestorm with a series of early-morning Tweets, this time leveling the serious accusation that “President Obama had my ‘wires tapped’ in Trump Tower”  just prior to the presidential election.

Though Trump asserted he had “just found out” about this surveillance, he appears to be referencing a series of reports that began with a piece by Louise Mensch in Heat Street back in November, which was later corroborated by articles published by The Guardian and the BBC in January.  The reports may have come to Trump’s attention by way of a Breitbart story that ran on Friday, summarizing claims of a “Deep State” effort to undermine the Trump administration advanced by conservative talk radio host Mark Levin.

If it were true that President Obama had ordered the intelligence community to “tapp” Trump’s phones for political reasons, that would of course be a serious scandal—and crime—of Nixonian proportions. Yet there’s nothing in the published reports—vague though they are—to support such a dramatic allegation.  Let’s try to sort out what we do know.

First, as one would hope Trump is aware, presidents are not supposed to personally order electronic surveillance of particular domestic targets, and the Obama camp has, unsurprisingly, issued a statement denying they did anything of the sort:

Neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

Rather, the allegation made by various news sources is that, in connection with a multi-agency intelligence investigation of Russian interference with the presidential election, the FBI sought an order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing them to monitor transactions between two Russian banks and four persons connected with the Trump campaign.  The Guardian‘s report alleges that initial applications submitted over the summer, naming “four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials,” were rejected by the FISC. But according to the BBC, a narrower order naming only the Russian banks as direct targets was ultimately approved by the FISC in October.  While the BBC report suggests that the surveillance was meant to ferret out “transfers of money,” the Mensch article asserts that a “warrant was granted to look at the full content of emails and other related documents that may concern US persons.”

Taking all these claims with the appropriate sodium chloride seasoning, what can we infer?