How Do You Swallow The Sayso Of Malignant Deceivers?

caitlinjohnstone |  The dynamics of the establishment Syria narrative are hilarious if you take a step back and think about them. I mean, the western empire is now openly admitting to having funded actual, literal terrorist groups in that country, and yet they’re still cranking out propaganda pieces about what is happening there and sincerely expecting us to believe them. It’s adorable, really; like a little kid covered in chocolate telling his mom he doesn’t know what happened to all the cake frosting.

Or least it would be adorable if it weren’t directly facilitating the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people.

I recently had a pleasant and professional exchange with the Atlantic Council’s neoconservative propagandist Eliot Higgins, in which he referred to independent investigative journalist Vanessa Beeley as “bonkers” and myself as “crazy”, and I called him a despicable bloodsucking ghoul. I am not especially fond of Mr. Higgins.

You see this theme repeated again and again and again in Higgins’ work; the US-centralized power establishment which facilitated terrorist factions in Syria is the infallible heroic Good Guy on the scene, and anyone who doesn’t agree is a mentally deranged lunatic.

This is also the model for the greater imperialist propaganda construct, not just with regard to Syria but with Russia, North Korea, Iran, and any other insolent government which refuses to bow to American supremacist agendas. It works like this: first, the oligarch-owned establishment media, which itself is chock full of Council on Foreign Relations members, uses other warmongering think tanks and its own massive funding to force deep state psyops like Russiagate and “Saddam has WMDs” into becoming the mainstream narrative. Second, they use the mainstream, widely-accepted status of this manufactured narrative to paint anyone who questions it as a mentally defective tinfoil hat-wearing conspiracy theorist.

CIA Needn't Subvert Mainstream Media News Any Longer...,

realclearinvestigations |  House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes next plans to investigate the role former CIA Director John Brennan and other Obama intelligence officials played in promoting the salacious and unverified Steele dossier on Donald Trump -- including whether Brennan perjured himself in public testimony about it.

In his May 2017 testimony before the intelligence panel, Brennan emphatically denied the dossier factored into the intelligence community’s publicly released conclusion last year that Russia meddled in the 2016 election "to help Trump’s chances of victory.”

Brennan also swore that he did not know who commissioned the anti-Trump research document (excerpt here), even though senior national security and counterintelligence officials at the Justice Department and FBI knew the previous year that the dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Last week, Nunes (R-Calif.) released a declassified memo exposing surveillance “abuses” by the Obama DOJ and FBI in their investigation of Trump’s ties to Russia. It said the agencies relied heavily on the uncorroborated dossier to take out a warrant to secretly surveil a Trump adviser in the heat of the 2016 presidential election, even though they were aware the underlying “intelligence" supporting the wiretap order was political opposition research funded by Clinton allies — a material fact they concealed from FISA court judges in four separate applications.

Nunes plans to soon release a separate report detailing the Obama State Department’s role in creating and disseminating the dossier -- which has emerged as the foundation of the Obama administration's Russia “collusion” investigation. Among other things, the report will identify Obama-appointed diplomats who worked with partisan operatives close to Hillary Clinton to help ex-British spy Christopher Steele compile the dossier, sources say.

“Those are the first two phases” of Nunes' multipart inquiry, a senior investigator said. “In phase three, the involvement of the intelligence community will come into sharper focus.”

The aide, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said Nunes will focus on Brennan as well as President Obama’s first CIA director, Leon Panetta, along with the former president’s intelligence czar, James Clapper, and national security adviser, Susan Rice, and security adviser-turned U.N. ambassador Samantha Power, among other intelligence officials.

“John Brennan did more than anyone to promulgate the dirty dossier,” the investigator said. “He politicized and effectively weaponized what was false intelligence against Trump.”

Attempts to reach Brennan for comment were unsuccessful.  Fist tap Ken.

Ideally, Everyone Involved Would Be Granted..., ROTFLMBAO!!!!

   Chuck Grassley Letter to Susan Rice by The Conservative Treehouse on Scribd

theconservativetreehouse |  Senator Grassley is not asking questions he doesn’t already know the answers to.

Grassley and Nunes are now beginning to draw the upper part of the administration into the matrices of the conspiracy.  Secretary of State John Kerry; CIA Director John Brennan; ODNI James Clapper; Attorney General Loretta Lynch; AAG Sally Yates; DAAG John P Carlin (DOJ-NSD), DAAG Mary McCord (DOJ-NSD); Asst. FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI Director James Comey are inherently wound-up in the larger plan.

Chairman Grassley is simply expanding the net.

All narrative collapses eventually lead to President Obama’s involvement.

No Bucks, No Buck Rogers...,

tothestarsacademy |  The New York Times has published a stunning exposé titled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.” In it, former Pentagon military intelligence official LUIS ELIZONDO confirmed the existence of a hidden government program (the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program) that investigated the existence of U.F.O’s, a department he ran under a veil of secrecy since 2009.

The Times story featured an excerpt from Elizondo’s resignation letter in which he expressed his frustration with the limitations placed on the program, telling higher-ups “there remains a vital need to ascertain capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.”

Elizondo left his Pentagon post to join To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science, a consortium of scientists, aerospace engineers and creatives founded by company President and CEO Tom DeLonge, VP of Science and Technology Dr. Hal Puthoff (also quoted in the Times story) and = VP of Operations Jim Semivan. The principals include Aerospace Division Director Steve Justice and National Security Affairs Advisor Chris Mellon. The company launched this past October with a mission to explore exotic science and technologies to rapidly transition innovative ideas into world-changing products and services.

"I am first and foremost a soldier,” says Elizondo, who now serves as Director of Global Security & Special Programs for To The Stars Academy of Arts & Science. “I was honored to serve at the DOD and took my mission of exploring unexplained aerial phenomena quite seriously.  In the end, however, I couldn’t carry out that mission, because the Department — which was understandably overstretched — couldn’t give it the resources that the mounting evidence deserved.  So, under very good terms, I left to find an environment where investigating these phenomena is priority number one. I’m thrilled to say I found that environment at the To The Stars Academy, an amazing team of top-flight scientists  from the defense, industry and intelligence communities alongside passionate creatives to help tell the story.  We look forward to working closely with the US government to produce the best possible results for America and the world."

Today Elizondo and the TTS Academy launched a “Community of Interest” website to serve as a central database and communal hub – clickHERE. The website will be home to video footage, documents and other materials that can be studied and explored for transformative breakthroughs in science and engineering through a unique collaboration among scientists, academics, industry partners, government and the public at large.

Its content at launch includes two of the first official U.S. government videos of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) referenced in the Times article, which have recently gone through the U.S. government’s official declassification review process to be approved for public release. Alongside each video is technical analysis from Elizondo and TTS Academy’s Aerospace Division Director (and former Program Director for Advanced Systems at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works) Steve Justice. Click HERE.

Footage in the videos was captured by advanced sensor tracking technology in separate U.S. Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jets. In the 34-second “Gimbal” (the name likely a reference to the UAP’s free-tilting movement), astonished pilots can be heard talking excitedly about an oval-shaped craft spotted at an altitude close to 25,000 feet.  The object has no distinguishable flight surfaces or exhaust plume, and its flight seems to defy the known laws of physics.  In the under-1:30 video “FLIR1” (reference to footage captured by the F/A-18’s Forward Looking Infrared System), an unknown object is seen at appx. 24,000 feet.  The footage, which has no sound, shows the object hovering with no exhaust plume, displaying extreme maneuverability and sudden acceleration that cannot be achieved by any known aircraft. These are two of several official videos obtained by TTS Academy that serve as credible proof of the physics of advanced flight.

Visitors to TTS Academy’s Community of Interest website are encouraged to sign up for email to receive updates when additional intelligence is added.

Rethinking Valodya...,

thesaker |  I have recently had the pleasure of watching a short presentation by Professor Stephen F. Cohen entitled “Rethinking Putin” which he delivered on the annual Nation cruise on December 2, 2017 (see here for the original Nation Article and original YouTube video). In his short presentation, Professor Cohen does a superb job explaining what Putin is *not* and that includes: (but, please do watch the original video before proceeding).

1. He is not the man who de-democratized Russia (Elstin and the White House did)
2. He is not the leader who created corruption and kleptocracy in Russia (Elstin and the White House did)
3. He is not a criminal leader who ordered the murder of opponents or journalists (no evidence)
4. He did not order the hacking of the DNC servers (no evidence)
5. He was not anti-US or anti-West from the get-go (Putin changed over time)
6. He is not a neo-Soviet leader (he is very critical of Lenin and Stalin)
7. He is not an aggressive foreign policy leader (he has been a reactive leader)
8. He is not somehow defined by his years at the KGB.

Professor Cohen ended his talk by suggesting a few things which might form a part of a future honest biography:

1. As a young and inexperienced leader placed at the helm of a collapsing state:
2. He rebuilt, stabilized and modernized Russia in a way to prevent future collapses
3. He had to restore the “vertical” of power: “managed democracy” (i.e. restored order)
4. He needed a consensual history patching up Czarist, Soviet and post-Soviet eras without imposing one, single, version of history
5. He needed Western support to modernize the Russian economy
6. He wanted Russia to be a great power, but not a super-power
7. He never favored iron-curtain isolationism; he is an internationalist (more European than 90% of Russians, at least in the beginning).

The key thesis is this: Putin began as a pro-Western, European leader and with time he realigned himself with a much more traditional, Russian worldview. He is more in line with Russian voters today.

Professor Cohen concluded by addressing two topics which, I presume, his audience cared deeply about: he said that, contrary to Western propaganda, the so-called ‘anti-gay’ laws in Russia are no different from the laws of 13 US states. Secondly, that “by any reckoning, be it flourishing inside Russia or relations with Israel, by general consent of all, nobody denies this, Jews under Putin in Russia are better off than they had ever been in Russian history. Ever. They have more freedom, less official anti-Semitism, more protection, more official admiration for Israel, more interaction, more freedom to go back and forth”.

CIA Roaches Scurrying Before That Bright Light Hits Them Too!!!

NYTimes |  After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian, who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. Instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

The United States intelligence officials said they cut off the deal because they were wary of being entangled in a Russian operation to create discord inside the American government. They were also fearful of political fallout in Washington if they were seen to be buying scurrilous information on the president.

American spies are not the only ones who have dealt with Russians claiming to have secrets to sell. Cody Shearer, an American political operative with ties to the Democratic Party, has been crisscrossing Eastern Europe for more than six months to secure the purported kompromat from a different Russian, said people familiar with the efforts, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid damaging their relationship with him.

Reached by phone late last year, Mr. Shearer would say only that his work was “a big deal — you know what it is, and you shouldn’t be asking about it.” He then hung up.

Mr. Shearer’s efforts grew out of work he first began during the 2016 campaign, when he compiled a pair of reports that, like the dossier, also included talk of a video and Russian payoffs to Trump associates. It is not clear what, if anything, Mr. Shearer has been able to purchase.

Who Has Been Steadily Knifing The Soft Underbelly of The Deep State?

theconservativetreehouse |  Yesterday the news broke of Senate Intelligence Committee Vice-Chairman, Mark Warner, seeking covert contact with ‘Clinton-Steele Dossier’ originating entity Christopher Steele.

Within the March/April 2017 communication, the back-and-forth centered around Chris Steele wanting a written request signed by both the Vice-Chair (Warner) and the Senate Committee Chairman, Richard Burr.

Vice-Chairman Warner didn’t want a ‘paper trail’ and transparently didn’t want the political opposition (republican members), to know of his political intent.  Therefore Warner never asked Chairman Burr for his signature upon the letter requested by Steele. Ultimately Mr. Steele was correct in his suspicions, and prudent in his risk avoidance.

All of that is true, however, very few have stopped to ask: how did we, the viewing public, discover the Warner messaging and communication story in the first place?

How did the story of the Warner text messaging get into the media bloodstream?   Who was the ‘entity’ who investigated, discovered, and eventually released the Warner messaging?

Cheesy Rat Rachel Brand Flees Swamp For Arkansas...,

NYTimes |  Rachel L. Brand, the No. 3 official at the Justice Department, plans to step down after nine months on the job as the country’s top law enforcement agency has been under attack by President Trump, according to two people briefed on her decision.

Ms. Brand’s profile had risen in part because she is next in the line of succession behind the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who is overseeing the special counsel’s inquiry into Russian influence in the 2016 election. Mr. Trump, who has called the investigation a witch hunt, has considered firing Mr. Rosenstein.

Such a move could have put her in charge of the special counsel and, by extension, left her in the cross hairs of the president. Ms. Brand, who became the associate attorney general in May, will become the global governance director at Walmart, the company’s top legal position, according to people briefed on her move. She has held politically appointed positions in the past three presidential administrations.

In her current job, she reports directly to Mr. Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, who has recused himself from the Russia investigation. 

Just As I Start Raking In Clintonian Loot - YOU PULL ME BACK!!!!

thehill |  Although Barack Obama is no longer president, the abuses that occurred within the FBI and Justice Department under his watch already have the potential to eclipse the Watergate scandal in their historic significance and damage done to American government.

​A Beltway adage ​has it that “it’s always the cover-up that’ll get you, not the original transgression.” Often, this proves to be true, especially in the case of Nixon, but even more recently, given the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton, which were over perjury and obstruction of justice, not actual abuse of power with a 22-year-old intern.

However, with the recent declassification of the Nunes and Grassley memos from the House and Senate, in this case the putative crimes are far more serious than a failed attempt to bug the private office of a political party. These crimes have the potential to shake American confidence in otherwise prestigious institutions like the FBI, and the sanctity of our constitutional rights as citizens, especially those afforded by the Fourth Amendment, specifically protection “against unreasonable searches and seizures” or warrants being issued without “probable cause.”

Despite the months it has taken for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the matters before them and declassify their initial findings, we are still just at the beginning of knowing how broad and deep a scandal we face. Nevertheless, the facts already laid out by the memos are shocking enough by themselves and, specifically, in the consequences they may have for all Americans.

We already know that during the 2016 presidential election, the FBI and Justice Department acquired a secret warrant to spy on U.S. citizen Carter Page, a volunteer adviser to the Trump campaign. The warrant application was based on an “opposition research” file paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton through her lawyer. This fact, that the file was paid for by the candidate and party running against Donald Trump, was not disclosed by the FBI or Justice Department to the secret FISA court judge to whom that warrant application was made.

It was also never disclosed that the author of the file was a former British intelligence officer with close ties to Moscow, who had been deemed by the FBI to be “unreliable” and who was known — at the highest levels of the Justice Department — to be “desperate” to ensure that Trump never became president. In other words, the FBI and Justice Department knowingly hid exculpatory evidence from the surveillance court in order to be able to start spying on a member of the Trump team.

Add to this what we now know about the contents of the file compiled by Christopher Steele, that its salacious accusations came from Russian officials and, in part, as Trey Gowdy has intimated, from none other than Sidney Blumenthal, the closest of Clinton’s confidantes, and the full scenario appears undeniable. One candidate for president managed to leverage elements of the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities to illegally spy on the campaign running against her.

If we add to this the countless anti-Trump text messages that have been released between key members of the FBI team investigating both the Clinton “servergate” case and the accusations of “Russia collusion” by Trump associates, and it is easy to understand why half a dozen senior FBI agents and Justice Department officials have been “relieved” or reassigned in recent weeks.

GOP Memo Phase Three: Lights On In the Kitchen, Roaches Scurrying Every Which-a-Way....,

WaPo | Jonathan M. Winer, a Washington lawyer and consultant, is a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement and former special envoy for Libya.

 

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) announced last week that the next phase of his investigation of the events that led to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III will focus on the State Department. His apparent area of interest is my relationship with former British intelligence professional Christopher Steele and my role in material that Steele ultimately shared with the FBI.

Here’s the real story: In the 1990s, I was the senior official at the State Department responsible for combating transnational organized crime. I became deeply concerned about Russian state operatives compromising and corrupting foreign political figures and businessmen from other countries. Their modus operandi was sexual entrapment and entrapment in too-good-to-be-true business deals.

After 1999, I left the State Department and developed a legal and consulting practice that often involved Russian matters. In 2009, I met and became friends with Steele, after he retired from British government service focusing on Russia. Steele was providing business intelligence on the same kinds of issues I worked on at the time.

In 2013, I returned to the State Department at the request of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, whom I had previously served as Senate counsel. Over the years, Steele and I had discussed many matters relating to Russia. He asked me whether the State Department would like copies of new information as he developed it. I contacted Victoria Nuland, a career diplomat who was then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and shared with her several of Steele’s reports. She told me they were useful and asked me to continue to send them. Over the next two years, I shared more than 100 of Steele’s reports with the Russia experts at the State Department, who continued to find them useful. None of the reports related to U.S. politics or domestic U.S. matters, and the reports constituted a very small portion of the data set reviewed by State Department experts trying to make sense of events in Russia.

Great Britain Interfere In the 2016 Presidential Election?

sic-semper-tyrannis |  The Grassley/Graham memo is devastating for Jim Comey. We can entertain only two possibilities--Jim Comey is a monumental dunce or he is a liar. One need only read the Michael Isikoff piece from 23 September 2016 to realize that Christopher Steele was a primary source for Isikoff. We are asked to believe that Comey is a naive, trusting soul bereft of curiosity, who refused to entertain the possibility that Steele was double dealing intel.

One of the most surprising revelations from the Grassley/Graham memo is in footnote 7. I'm surprised this was not redacted because it is drawn from a redacted/blacked out paragraph. Here is a critical bit of intel:

• The FBI has failed to provide the Committee the 1023s documenting all of Mr. Steele's statements to the FBI, so the Committee is relying on the accuracy of the FBI's representation to the FISC regarding those statements.

This means Steele was a signed up intelligence asset for the FBI. He was our spy. A FD-1023 is an FBI form used to document meetings between FBI and sources. It is also called a CHS Report--CHS aka Confidential Human Source.

With this confirmation the next move is in the hands of the Brits. If Steele became an FBI asset without the knowledge of his former colleagues and chain of command, he faces legal risk. But two development in the last two days suggest that British intelligence officials, at least some key officials, were witting of Steele's activities in gathering information for the FBI.

First, Steele is resisting efforts to face a deposition in a lawsuit over his infamous dossier. Steele’s lawyers argued in a court in London this week that a deposition would endanger the former spy’s dossier sources as well as harm U.K. national security interests. If the Judge buys this claim then we will not have to speculate anymore about whether or not Steele was acting on his own or had a "wink-and-a-nod" from his MI-6 bosses.

Second, in my mind more telling, were the comments made this week by former MI-6 Chief, Richard Dearlove, on behalf of his former protege:

Among those who have continued to seek his expertise is Steele’s former boss Richard Dearlove, who headed MI6 from 1999 to 2004. In an interview, Dearlove said Steele became the “go-to person on Russia in the commercial sector” following his retirement from the Secret Intelligence Service. He described the reputations of Steele and his business partner, fellow intelligence veteran Christopher Burrows, as “superb.”

But we do not have to rely solely on Dearlove's glowing remarks about Steele. There is other information indicating that the Brits played a substantial, if not leading, role in spying on Trump and building the Russian meddling meme.

So Much "Narrative Shaping" About A Greasy Little Weasel-Faced Snitch...,

WaPo |  Steele told associates that he was so nervous about the explosive nature of the information that he sent the memo via a commercial courier to Washington, rather than electronically.

In short order, Steele made another fateful decision: that he needed to confide in U.S. law enforcement officials. He contacted a Rome-based FBI official with whom he had worked on the FIFA case and asked him to visit him in London in July, according to people familiar with the matter.

Steele told Simpson of his plan to meet with the FBI, describing it as an obligation rooted in his past work for the British government. 

“ ‘I’m a former intelligence officer, and we’re your closest ally,’ ” Steele told Simpson, according to testimony Simpson later gave to the House Intelligence Committee. “ ‘You know, I have obligations, professional obligations. If there’s a national security emergency or possible national security issue, I should report it.’ ” 

Simpson said he did not question Steele’s judgment: “He’s the spy,” Simpson said. “I’m the ex-journalist.” Simpson declined to comment to The Post.

On July 5, 2016, the Rome-based FBI agent met with Steele and Burrows in Orbis’s London offices, housed in a five-story Georgian-style building in the Victoria neighborhood.

Later that month, Steele reached out to a State Department contact in Washington, according to Nuland, who said officials decided his allegations were best left to the FBI.

In late July, Steele told friends he was rattled when WikiLeaks released thousands of internal Democratic National Committee emails on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, material that U.S. law enforcement officials said was hacked by Russia. Then Trump — who had repeatedly praised Putin on the campaign trail — publicly called on Russia to hack and release a cache of missing Clinton emails.

Steele, who had researched Russian attempts to interfere in European elections for another client, began to fear that the Americans were not taking the Kremlin’s efforts seriously enough, associates said. 

In the early fall, he and Burrows turned to Dearlove, their former MI6 boss, for advice. Sitting in winged chairs at the Garrick Club, one of London’s most venerable private establishments, under oil paintings of famed British playwrights, the two men shared their worries about what was happening in the United States. They asked for his guidance about how to handle their obligations to their client and the public, Dearlove recalled.

Dearlove said their situation reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted U.S. authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin.

He said he advised Steele and Burrows to work discreetly with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI. 

At the time of the meeting, Dearlove said he did not know whether Steele had approached the FBI.

Burrows declined to comment.

Obama Wants To Know Everything We're Doing...,

theduran |  New text messages between FBI lovers Peter Strzok and Lisa Page have now been made public, and the big reveal is that then-POTUS Barack Obama appears to be in the loop, on the whole ‘destroy Trump’ insurance plan hatched by upper management at the FBI.

The messages include an exchange about preparing talking points for then-FBI Director James Comey to give to President Obama, who wanted “to know everything we’re doing.”

Fox News reports…

Page wrote to Strzok on Sept. 2, 2016 about prepping Comey because “potus wants to know everything we’re doing.” Senate investigators told Fox News this text raises questions about Obama’s personal involvement in the Clinton email investigation.
In texts previously revealed, Strzok and Page have shown their disdain for Republicans in general, as well as Trump, calling him a “f—ing idiot,” among other insults.

Among the newly disclosed texts, Strzok also calls Virginians who voted against then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s wife for a state Senate seat “ignorant hillbillys.” (sic)

That text came from Strzok to Page on Nov. 4, 2015, the day after Jill McCabe lost a hotly contested Virginia state Senate election. Strzok said of the result, “Disappointing, but look at the district map. Loudon is being gentrified, but it’s still largely ignorant hillbilliys. Good for her for running, but curious if she’s energized or never again.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., along with majority staff from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is releasing the texts, along with a report titled, “The Clinton Email Scandal and the FBI’s Investigation of it.”

The newly uncovered texts reveal a bit more about the timing of the discovery of “hundreds of thousands” of emails on former congressman Anthony Weiner’s laptop, ultimately leading to Comey’s infamous letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election.

On Sept. 28, 2016 Strzok wrote to Page, “Got called up to Andy’s [McCabe] earlier.. hundreds of thousands of emails turned over by Weiner’s atty to sdny [Southern District of New York], includes a ton of material from spouse [Huma Abedin]. Sending team up tomorrow to review… this will never end.” Senate investigators told Fox News this text message raises questions about when FBI officials learned of emails relevant to the Hillary Clinton email investigation on the laptop belonging to Weiner, the husband to Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

It was a full month later, on Oct. 28, 2016 when Comey informed Congress that, “Due to recent developments,” the FBI was reopening its Clinton email investigation.

Coonery and Buffoonery Raging Amongst The Digital Hoteps...,

theroot |  Hey, man, we didn’t do an explainer last week, but I really need to talk to you about this Boyce Watkins thing that is bubbling on woke Twitter.

Sure! Earlier this week, a video of a screenshot of what seems to be an online conference call began circumnavigating the inboxes of the woke black internet. The video shows two men having a conversation about Boyce Watkins, Ph.D., and his ...

Wait, bruh. Who the hell is Boyce Watkins?

Watkins is the less charismatic Umar Johnson of black financial independence and wealth. His Black Business School is a virtual version of Umar Johnson’s Kente Cloth Hogwarts for Black Boy Magic, except, of course, that Watkins’ really exists. While Watkins’ educational products seem to be the equivalent of freshman-level community college business-theory courses with a little Creflo Dollar sprinkled in, remember, the BBS is 100 percent black. (Remember this point. It is important.)

If I were still using the term “Hotep” as a pejorative—which I am not—I would call Watkins a level 3, low-ranking Ankhologist, perfect for easing black people who are not particularly educated or experienced in Watkins’ area of kente-clothians. He is a perfect conduit conning people into becoming practitioners of entry-level dashikinomics. Plus, Watkins’ school is 100 percent black, meaning that you don’t have to worry about any Caucasian shenanigans creeping into play.

OK, now back to the video.

So the videos show Charles Wu bragging about JARVIS and the Digital Underground and how ...

Slow down! Who is Charles Wu? Is Jarvis one of the lesser-known members of the Wu-Tang Clan? And what does Shock G and Humpty have to do with any of this?

Sorry. It’s just that there’s a lot to cover.

The Digital Underground, or “the D.U.,” as it is called, is not a reference to the ’90s rap group. It is a course in Watkins’ Black Business School.

For $2,999 (or the low price of $499 per month), instead of reading Wikipedia and doing a couple of Google searches, you can have Watkins teach you everything he knows about altcoin, blockchain and bitcoin (which, coincidentally, seems to not be much. But for those who don’t know anything, it seems like a lot. After all, his name has “Dr.” right in it!) Plus, you can trust Watkins. He’s leading black people toward their “Financial Juneteenth” (his actual term). He’s a solid dude.

Oh, did I mention the school was 100 percent black?

Not So Secret Agent Christopher Steele No Shows London Court Appearance

FoxNews  |  Steele was a no-show Monday for a long-requested deposition in London, Fox News has learned. The news comes as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have announced a criminal referral on Steele.   

Evan Fray-Witzer, a Boston-based attorney representing Russian tech tycoon Aleksej Gubarev in multi-million dollar civil litigation, described Monday's U.K. court actions to Fox News. “My understanding is that Mr. Steele’s lawyers spent a good deal of time arguing why they thought he (Steele) should not be required to sit for a deposition and that ultimately the court took the entire matter under advisement.”

Gubarev is suing the British-based Steele’s company Orbis Business Intelligence because the dossier claimed Gubarev's companies, including XBT Holdings and Webzilla, used “botnets and port traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs and steal data.”   

Fray-Witzer said, “Certainly with respect to Mr. Gubarev, Webzilla and XBT there has never been a single scrap of evidence about them in the dossier.”

Congressional testimony and ongoing Fox News reporting revealed that Steele and Orbis Business Intelligence were paid $168,000 by Fusion GPS’ Glenn Simpson to write and promote the dossier among select journalists when it was opposition research funded in part by the Democratic National Committee. As Fox News has reported based upon review of British court records, Steele promoted and met with five media outlets repeatedly between the spring and fall of 2016.  At the same time, Steele also was meeting with the FBI in Rome, according to reports.

Meanwhile, records obtained and reviewed by Fox News from related civil ligitation in Florida reveal that Steele maintains that even showing up for a deposition would “implicate state secrets in London.”

Fray-Witzer stressed in that hearing that the British government “has not asserted” Steele’s claims. The attorney has said Steele “is asserting he can’t speak about things.  We have pointed out that he’s spoken to anyone who is willing to listen, every journalist, and the FBI.”

Russia Hacks Forbes With "Lock'Em All Up" Fake News Narrative

Forbes |  There can be no question, at this point, that certain higher ups in the FBI and the DOJ did not want Hillary to be indicted and did not want Donald Trump to become President.  Those efforts were not entirely independent of each other.

Below is a timeline of events – abbreviated though it is – that makes it rather plain that the FBI and DOJ were not investigating potential crimes objectively.

Indeed, they were committing crimes during the process in aid of their preferred outcomes.

1.  2007. Hillary Clinton wanted to be President.  Hillary’s ambitions to be president started long ago.  She ran for President in the 2008 cycle.  In 2009, after losing to Obama, Hillary became Obama’s Secretary of State.  She stayed in that post until 2013.

2. March 2015. The Hillary email scandal breaks. Hillary was using an unapproved/unsecured server and devices to communicate.  She was using a private email account.  Classified information was being sent through that email, server and devices – including when Hillary was abroad.

All of that is illegal.  As 2015 unfolds, it becomes clear to the FBI and the DOJ that President Barack Obama was communicating with Hillary using her non-state department email.  Obama was using an email and a name that masked who he was.

That had to be known to authorities long before March of 2015 given that it occurred prior to 2013.

As Andrew McCarthy points out in his recent article, there was no chance that the DOJ was going to indict Hillary because that would have required implicating President Obama.  That was never going to happen.  From thereafter, DOJ officials acted with that understanding, however illegal, in mind.

3.  June 2015. Donald Trump announces his Presidential run.

4.  March 2016. Trump has enough delegates to claim the nomination.

5.  April 10, 2016. Obama makes clear he does not want Hillary indicted.  Obama, on TV, indicates Hillary did not intend to harm national security.  However, intent is not an element of the crime she committed.  At the time of that statement – made by a sitting President and in plain view of the Nation and more importantly his FBI/DOJ appointments - many witnesses had yet to be interviewed, including Hillary.

6.  April 2016. Hillary campaign and DNC begin funding infamous Trump dossier.  To conceal payments for the dossier, Hillary’s campaign gives money to attorneys who then pay for the dossier – a clear campaign law violation. If that campaign payment had been properly disclosed, the payment for the dossier, and likely the dossier, would have been exposed in the summer of 2016. That disclosure likely would have hurt Hillary’s campaign and LIKELY PREVENT THE USE OF THE DOSSIER to get  FISA warrant on Carter Page, which led to other spying and ultimately the Mueller investigation.

7.  May 2, 2016. Ted Cruz drops out of Presidential race. Cruz’ departure confirms Trump will be the Republican nominee.

8.  May 2016. Peter Strzok and Lisa Page make it clear they need to end the Hillary Investigation. Peter Strzok is the FBI agent in charge of the Hillary investigation, which is dubbed Mid-Year Exam.  He is having an affair with FBI lawyer Lisa Page.  In a text exchange, Page informs Strzok that Cruz dropped out.  Strzok responds:

“What?!?!?!?!”   Fist tap Dale.

Why So Much Weeping and Tooth Gnashing Over a Nothing-Burger?

unz |  FBI procedures and ambiguities aside, this is nevertheless serious business. If it can be determined that the omissions in submissions to the FISC were deliberate and calculated, the astute blogger Publius Tacitus has correctly observed that some senior FBI and DOJ officials who signed off on misleading or fraudulent applications concealing the antecedents of the so-called Steele Dossier to the FISC are now facing possible contempt-of-court charges that would include prison sentences. They include James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Dana Boente and Rob Rosenstein.

 

So there is likely considerably more controversy to come, whether or not the Bureau can or cannot provide backstory that credibly challenges the Republican Intelligence Committee memo. But it is also intriguing to consider what is missing from the document. As it is focused on the FBI and DOJ, there is no speculation about the possible role of senior intelligence officials CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Michael Isikoff reported in September 2016 that the two men were involved in obtaining information on Page and it has also been suggested that Brennan sought and obtained raw intelligence from British, Polish, Dutch and Estonian intelligence services, which apparently was then passed on to the Bureau and might have motivated James Comey to proceed with his investigation of the Trump associates. One has to consider that Brennan and Clapper, drawing on intelligence resources and connections, might have helped the FBI build a fabricated case against Trump.

Senator John McCain, a highly vocal critic of Trump, might have also become involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in the project to feed derogatory information on the GOP president-elect and his associates to the FBI. He reportedly obtained a copy of the Steele Dossier in December 2017 and passed it on to Comey, clearly intending that the FBI Director should take some action regarding it.

Indeed, there were many prominent voices raised demanding that something be done about Donald Trump. Eleven months ago, shortly after Trump took office, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, speculated on how he had been “…led to believe that maybe even the Democratic Party, whatever element of it, approached John Brennan at the CIA, maybe even the former president of the United States. And John Brennan, not wanting his fingerprints to be on anything, went to his colleague in London GCHQ, MI-6 and essentially said, ‘Give me anything you’ve got.’ And he got something and he turned it over to the DNC or someone like that. And what he got was GCHQ MI-6s tapes of conversations of the Trump administration perhaps, even the President himself. It’s really kind of strange, at least to me, they let the head of that organization go, fired him about the same this was brewing up. So I’m not one to defend Trump, but in this case he might be right.”

Reaction To The GOP Memo Revealed MUCH About Unelected American Power Structures

consortiumnews |  In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?”

Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about?

It would be understandable if you were unaware of the debate over the reauthorization of FISA surveillance which resulted in unconditional bipartisan approval last month – the mainstream media barely touched it. In point of fact, though, the very surveillance practices alleged to have been abused in this hotly controversial memo are the same which was waved through by both the House and the Senate, and by the very same people promoting the memo in many cases.

The McCabe testimony was in December. FISA was renewed in January. Why is all this just coming out now? If the Republicans truly believed that McCabe said what the memo claims he said, why wasn’t the public informed before their elected representatives renewed the intelligence community’s dangerously intrusive surveillance approval? Was this information simply forgotten about until after those Orwellian powers had been secured?

Of course not. Don’t be an idiot.

This makes the kicking, screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth by the political establishment make a lot more sense, doesn’t it? Now suddenly we’re looking at a he-said, she-said partisan battle over an issue which can only be resolved with greater and greater transparency of more and more government documents, and we can all see where that’s headed. In their rush to win a partisan battle and shield their president from the ongoing Russiagate conspiracy theory, the Republicans may have exposed too much of the establishment foundation upon which both parties are built.

The term “deep state” does not mean “Democrats and Never-Trumpers” as Republican pundits would have you believe, nor does the term refer to any kind of weird, unverifiable conspiracy theory. The deep state is in fact not a conspiracy theory at all, but simply a concept used in political analysis for discussing the undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist in America, and that they tend to form alliances and work together in some sense.

There is no denying the fact that plutocrats, intelligence agencies, defense agencies and the mass media are both powerful and unelected, and there is no denying the fact that there are many convoluted and often conflicting alliances between them. All that can be debated is the manner and extent to which this is happening.

The deep state is America’s permanent government, the U.S. power structures that Americans don’t elect. These power structures plainly have a vested interest in keeping America’s Orwellian surveillance structures in place, as evidenced by the intelligence community’s menacingly urgent demand for FISA renewal back in December. If there’s any thread to be pulled that really could make waves in the way Official Washington (hat tip to the late Robert Parry) operates, it is in the plot holes between the bipartisan scramble toward unconditional surveillance renewal and the highly partisan battle over exposing the abuse of those very powers.

If we’re going to see a gap in the bars of our cages, that’s a great place to keep our eyes trained, so keep watching. Watch what happens in a partisan war where both parties have a simultaneous interest in revealing as little of the game as possible and exposing the other party. Things could get very interesting.

Speaking Only For Myself, Disgust Is Just Half-A-Click Away From Violence...,

WSJ |  A bipartisan pair of senators said they would introduce a new immigration bill Monday in an effort to move negotiations toward a narrow agreement that leaves out more contentious proposals sought by President Donald Trump. 

The government’s current funding expires at 12:01 a.m. Friday. While lawmakers expect to pass another short-term spending bill to keep federal agencies open, they are frustrated by the gridlock that has prevented them from striking a long-term deal on either immigration or spending levels. Immigration has become entangled in the spending negotiations ever since Mr. Trump last year ended an Obama-era program that protects young people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as Dreamers.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R., Ariz.) and Sen. Chris Coons (D., Del.) plan to unveil a proposal that offers a path to citizenship for Dreamers and orders a comprehensive study to determine what border-security measures are needed. But the bill stops well short of almost all of Mr. Trump’s demands—including immediate funding for the wall along the southern border—and is likely to meet a chilly reception from conservative Republicans.

Still, Mr. McCain, who was diagnosed with brain cancer last summer and has been working from Arizona since late 2017, retains powerful sway among his GOP colleagues. His bill with Mr. Coons could also benefit from good timing, as the March 5 deadline draws closer and lawmakers grapple with the political consequences of failing to reach any agreement.

“It’s time we end the gridlock so we can quickly move on to completing a long-term budget agreement that provides our men and women in uniform the support they deserve,” Mr. McCain said in a statement Sunday.

“While reaching a deal cannot come soon enough for America’s service members, the current political reality demands bipartisan cooperation to address the impending expiration of the DACA program and secure the southern border,” he said, referring to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill.

Hitler's Table Talk

The Ruling Elites Love Political Correctness

oftwominds |  No wonder the Ruling Elites loves political correctness: all those furiously signaling their virtue are zero threat to the asymmetric plunder of the status quo.

 

The Ruling Elites loves political correctness, for it serves the Elite so well. What is political correctness? Political correctness is the public pressure to conform to "progressive" speech acts by uttering the expected code words and phrases in public.

 

Note that no actual action is required. This is why the Ruling Elite loves political correctness: conformity is so cheap. All a functionary of the Ruling Elite need do is utter the code words ("hope and change," "we honor diversity," "thank you for your service," etc.) and they get a free pass to continue their pillaging. 

Those placated by politically correct utterances accept symbolic speech acts as substitutes for real changes in the power structure. This glorification of symbolic gestures--virtue signaling via social media, the parroting of progressive phrases, etc.--is as cheap as the mouthing of PC platitudes. Everybody gets to feel validated and respected at no cost to anyone: the progressives feel smugly superior because the Ruling Elite now feels compelled to parrot "progressive" speech acts in public, and the Ruling Elite is free to pillage without any demands for a radical restructuring of the incentives and distribution of the nation's wealth and income. 

The rise of "progressive" speech acts and political correctness parallels the decline of the fortunes and incomes of the bottom 90%. While the "progressives" focus on cheap symbolism, the laboring classes are being gutted by the centralized financialization that rewards the few at the expense of the many. 

So while the "progressives" focus exclusively on their own ineffectual virtue-signaling and the empty "victories" of Ruling Elites mouthing the acceptable code words, our economy, society and the social contract are being shredded. No wonder the corporate media promotes empty gestures, virtue signaling and political correctness: all that phony compliance leaves the current wealth-power structure unchanged, and the Ruling Elite firmly in charge of the economy and governance. 

No wonder the Ruling Elite loves political correctness: all those furiously signaling their virtue are zero threat to the asymmetric plunder of the status quo.