If Only Ten Thousand More Crying CIA Crocodiles Would Self-Deport...,

WaPo |  The public outcry led the administration to reverse course and name the CIA director an NSC principal, but the White House’s inclination was clear. It has little need for intelligence professionals who, in speaking truth to power, might challenge the so-called “America First” orthodoxy that sees Russia as an ally and Australia as a punching bag. That’s why the president’s trusted White House advisers, not career professionals, reportedly have final say over what intelligence reaches his desk. 

To be clear, my decision had nothing to do with politics, and I would have been proud to again work under a Republican administration open to intelligence analysis. I served with conviction under President George W. Bush, some of whose policies I also found troubling, and I took part in programs that the Obama administration criticized and ended. As intelligence professionals, we’re taught to tune out politics. The river separating CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., from Washington might as well be a political moat. But this administration has flipped that dynamic on its head: The politicians are the ones tuning out the intelligence professionals.

The CIA will continue to serve important functions — including undertaking covert action and sharing information with close allies and partners around the globe. If this administration is serious about building trust with the intelligence community, however, it will require more than rallies at CIA headquarters or press statements. What intelligence professionals want most is to know that the fruits of their labor — sometimes at the risk of life or limb — are accorded due deference in the policymaking process.

Trump Will Persist

unz |  Michael Moore’s flabby mug always looks indecently exposed, like middle-aged female genitalia. The fat slob could lead the old hags’ march without the pink pussyhat. Just his own visage would suffice. He is actually similar to George Soros: the same obscene pussyface. For me, his appearance would doom him: like Oscar Wilde, I believe that ugly creatures are immoral as well. It’s enough to look at Madeleine Albright, another pussyface, for a proof. But if you need more, his Stupid White Men has been the most execrable book produced in the US in this century: there he claimed that were 9/11 passengers black, the hijack would never have succeeded. Now the Pussyface bared the hidden plans of Putin and called for enthroninge Clinton because Trump is a Russian spy. Years ago he spoke against the Iraq War; now he calls for the nuclear Armageddon. With such enemies, we should not give up on Trump.

Trump is down, cry the fans and haters alike. He’s been defeated, broken, never to rise again. He is a lame duck soon to be impeached. He will crawl back to his golden lair leaving the White House to his betters, or even better, he will run to his pal Vlad Putin.

No, my friends and readers, Trump is fighting, not running, but things take time. It is not easy to change the paradigm, and the odds were heavily slanted against Trump from step one. Still, he got this far, and he will go on. Stubborn guy, and he perseveres. The corrupt judges chain his hands; the CIA and NSA reveal his moves to the NYT, CNN, NBC; but he stands up, ready to carry the fight to his – and American people’s – enemy, the hydra of so many triple-letter heads.

Now you understand why the pessimistic assessments of our colleagues Paul Craig Roberts and The Saker are at least premature. In the face of the ancient regime’s hostility, Trump will need at least six months merely to settle properly in the White House. Just for comparison: Putin had spent five years consolidating his power, and another five years solidifying it, though he had full support of Russian security services and a most authoritarian constitution written by the Americans for their stooge Mr Yeltsin.

President Putin remembers that it takes time. For this reason, he is not unduly upset by President Trump’s delay with normalising US-Russia relations. The fake news of Russian disenchantment with Trump are exactly that, fake news. Russians believe in positive developments for US-Russia relations, and they do not hold their breath.

But why I do believe that Trump will win, at the end? The US is not an island; it is a part of the West, and the West is going through a paradigm change. Cuntfaces lost, Deplorables won, and not as a fluke. Remember, Trump was not the first victory; the Brexit preceded him. Between the Brexit vote and the Trump election, the British government hesitated and postponed acting upon. The Brits weren’t sure whether that vote was a sign of change, or a fluke. After Trump’s victory, the Brits marched on.

Trickster Trump Cannot Save America - But Can Reveal How It's Enslaved...,

thesaker |  I just don’t put anything past the evil capabilities of the Donald!

Reading the article I was surprised to find that the Deep State isn’t what I thought it was – apparently it’s only when the government leaks information to the media?

That’s funny, because one time on the SF-NYC “Job Creator Red-eye” I sat next to an Egyptian guy. Of course I was worried, at first, but I found out it he was a Coptic Christian, so that put me at ease. Who even knew they had those?!

This Egyptian told me about his country’s Deep State, and it sounded really bad:

He said that they colluded with “some Western countries” – he didn’t say which and looked kind of uncomfortable as he said it, for some reason – to stop that great Tahrir Square Revolution which was to guarantee that Israel would be safe.

“Mr. Gypsy” said that the Egyptian version of the Deep State was that their military controlled the economy, and that they bribed, imprisoned and killed people to keep their grip on the economy and control over foreign policy.

It sounded pretty bad.

I told him I was happy that Washington was supporting Al-Sisi’s military takeover with billions in aid, and that he didn’t have to thank me personally for that.

A “military” intertwined with the “economy”…I must admit, it did make me think.

Of Russia! I’m nearly certain that Putin created something similar over thereafter he banned elections, so why even verify it with some research?!

But this Egyptian must not have known what he was talking about, because the New York Times article didn’t say anything about the economy?

What they said was:

“Mr. Trump, apparently seeking to cut the intelligence community, State Department, and other agencies out of the policy-making process almost entirely, may have triggered a conflict whose escalation we are seeing in the rising number of leaks.”

Officials, deprived of the usual levers for shaping policies that are supposed to be their purview, are left with little other than leaking.”

Trump was clearly trying to cut public officials out of the democratic process, and they had no choice but to resort to these “illegal” leaks!

I mean, I’m pretty sure you don’t get elected to be a CIA spy or NSA agent, but somebody up top is and…well, I don’t know if they did the leaks…and I don’t know if the leaks are really true or not…but I’m telling you – we have to get Donald out NOW!

Anything that’s bad for Trump must be good. It’s really that simple, so case closed.

“We’re in a world now where the president is playing to the edge of his powers, and I think there are real concerns about the constitutional implications of some of the actions he’s taken,” said somebody who must be totally objective and perfect because why else would the New York Times choose them?

If there’s one thing Obama never, ever, ever did it was to expand his executive authority in ways unbeseeming to the presidential authority.

If Obama had done that, I would have been in the streets, you can bet! Trust me: I have my anti-Trump “pussy hat” in my closet and ready for the next protest!

Who Runs Science and Technology If People are Ignorant of Science and Technology?

globalresearch |  Weather warfare technology was the teeth “sustainable development” Agenda 2030 had been waiting for (and surely why developing nations had valiantly attempted to include an International Tribunal of Climate Justice). Immediately after the two conferences, the Dutch Defence Joint Meteorological Group (JMG) took the lead “in providing weather forecasts for every exercise or deployment of [NATO’s] Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).” [20] And if you think the VJTF is only “forecasting” weather …

To be fair, some academics do ponder the naked emperor. How exactly is CO2 to be removed from the atmosphere “using an infrastructure we don’t have and with technology that won’t work on the scale we need, and finally to store it in places we can’t find” [21]? Others recognize that the carbon solution is a ploy for raking in disaster capitalist cash: $90 trillion in energy infrastructure investments, $1 trillion green bond market, multi-trillion dollar carbon trading market, $391 billion climate finance industry. [22] The UN Green Climate Fund alone will clear $100 billion per year, purportedly to support concrete carbons mitigation in developing countries. Should we take bets on if the money will ever make it to the developing countries after being filtered through multilateral and private banks like World Bank and Deutsche Bank? After all, the naked emperor is not known for keeping his promises.

Traditional bureaucratic foundations like Ford, Rockefeller and Carnegie were said to be giving way to “philanthrocapitalism,” a muscular new approach to charity in which the presumed entrepreneurial skills of billionaires would be applied to the world’s most pressing challenges … [23]

Too late, the public is awakening to the dismal fact that its institutions, agencies, universities, laboratories, and courts obey the very powers that have milked public assets dry. Worker and food safety, gone. Bill of Rights, gone. Environmental protections, gone. Soon, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) or facsimiles thereof will lock in corporate feudalism under an oligarchic world rule. Billionaire members of the Good Club [24] are establishing “brain institutes” to support the Brain Initiative and its neuroscientists in service to a Transhumanist future. [25]

“Science is broken”

For two decades, independent scientists and the science-minded have been attempting to sound the alarm regarding what is going on in our skies and in low-earth orbit while university labs and burgeoning university scientists buckle to military grants dedicated to weaponizing everything under the Sun, if not the Sun itself. Rutgers University climatologist Alan Robock relates how CIA-funded consultants contacted him to ask two questions: If we control someone else’s climate, would they know about it? and Would climate experts be able to determine if another nation was attempting to control the climate? The CIA—not exactly known for being forthcoming—has funded multiple grants targeting weather domination (including HAARP via minions like Raytheon), including two February 2015 National Academy of Sciences reports: “Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration” (154 pages) and “Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool Earth” (234 pages). [26]

The peer review system has been co-opted, favoring some theories and scientists and banishing others to the outer darkness of non-publication and stonewalled careers. Nobel Laureate biologist Sydney Brenner:

I think peer review is hindering science. In fact, I think it has become a completely corrupt system. It’s corrupt in many ways, in that scientists and academics have handed over to the editors of these journals the ability to make judgment on science and scientists. There are universities in America, and I’ve heard from many committees, that won’t consider people’s publications in low impact factor journals … it puts the judgment in the hands of people who really have no reason to exercise judgment at all. And that’s all been done in the aid of commerce, because they are now giant organizations making money out of it. [27]

“Powerful orthodoxy against a marginalized heterodoxy” is how Charles Eisenstein describes the opposition to cutting-edge Electric Universe scientists:

If you have faith in the soundness of our scientific institutions, you will assume that the dissidents are marginalized for very good reason: their work is substandard. If you believe that the peer review process is fair and open, then the dearth of peer-reviewed citations for [Electric Universe] research is a damning indictment of their theory. And if you believe that the corpus of mainstream physics is fundamentally correct, and that science is progressing closer and closer to truth, you will be highly skeptical of any major departure from standard theories … Can we trust scientific consensus? Can we trust the integrity of our scientific institutions? Perhaps not. Over the last few years, a growing chorus of insider critics have been exposing serious flaws in the ways that scientific research is funded and published, leading some to go so far as to say, ‘Science is broken.’ [28]

Between 1973 and 2013, the decision-making as to which scientific papers merited publication and which didn’t was controlled by six major publishers (ACS; Reed Elsevier; Sage; Taylor & Francis; Springer; and Wiley-Blackwell), all in the back pocket of Big Pharma and the medical industry:

’As long as publishing in high impact factor journals is a requirement for researchers to obtain positions, research funding, and recognition from peers, the major commercial publishers will maintain their hold on the academic publishing system,’ added [Professor Vincent Lariviere, lead author of the study from the University of Montreal’s School of Library and Information Science]. [29]

Then there’s the danger quotient far beyond loss of career for scientists working on classified projects. In the early days of the “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) now culminating in the Space Fence, two dozen scientists and experts working for Marconi and Plessey Defence Systems either disappeared or died under “mysterious circumstances.” Most were microbiologists.

China's Deep Learning Edge

theatlantic |  China’s rapid rise up the ranks of AI research has people taking notice. In October, the Obama White House released a “strategic plan” for AI research, which noted that the U.S. no longer leads the world in journal articles on “deep learning,” a particularly hot subset of AI research right now. The country that had overtaken the U.S.? China, of course.

It’s not just academic research. Chinese tech companies are betting on AI, too. Baidu (a Chinese search-engine company often likened to Google), Didi (often likened to Uber), and Tencent (maker of the mega-popular messaging app WeChat) have all set up their own AI research labs. With millions of customers, these companies have access to the huge amount of data that training AI to detect patterns requires.

Like the Microsofts and Googles of the world, Chinese tech companies see enormous potential in AI. It could undergird a whole set of transformative technologies in the coming decades, from facial recognition to autonomous cars.“I have a hard time thinking of an industry we cannot transform with AI,” says Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu. Ng previously cofounded Coursera and Google Brain, the company’s deep learning project. Now he directs Baidu’s AI research out of Sunnyvale, California, right in Silicon Valley.

H+

newatlas | The looming specter of eugenics hovers over a great deal of transhumanist thought. In the first half of the 20th century the term became disturbingly, but not unreasonably, associated with Nazi Germany. Sterilizing or euthanizing those who displayed characteristics that were deemed to be imperfect was ultimately outlawed as a form of genocide. But as the genome revolution struck later in the century a resurgence in the philosophical ideals of eugenics began to arise.

Transhumanist thought often parallels the ideals of eugenics, although most self-identifying transhumanists separate themselves from that stigmatized field, preferring terms like reprogenetics and germinal choice. The difference between the negative outcomes of eugenics and the more positive, transhumanist notion of reprogenetics seems to be one of consent. In a 21st century world of selective genetic modification, all is good as long as all parents equally have the choice to genetically modify their child, and are not forced by governments who are trying to forcefully manage the genetic pool.

Some of the more valid concerns about the dawning transhumanist future are the socioeconomic repercussions of such a speedy technological evolution. As the chasm between rich and poor grows in our current culture, one can't help but be concerned that future advancements could become disproportionately limited to those with the financial resources to afford them. If life extension technologies start to become feasible, and they are only available to the billionaire class, then we enter a scenario where the rich get richer and live longer, while the poor get poorer and die sooner.

Without exceptionally strong political reform maintaining democratic access to human enhancement technologies, it's easy to foresee the rise of a disturbing genetic class divide. As environmentalist and activist Bill McKibben writes: "If we can't afford the fifty cents a person it would take to buy bed nets to protect most of Africa from malaria, it is unlikely we will extend to anyone but the top tax bracket these latest forms of genetic technology."

Elon Musk Thinks Humans Must Merge with Machines

libertyblitzkrieg |  To start, let’s examine some recent comments made by Elon Musk at the World Government Summit in the UAE.

ArsTechnica reports:

Humans must become cyborgs and develop a direct high-bandwidth connection with machines or risk irrelevance and obsolescence, says Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Musk’s latest cheery thoughts were imparted at the World Government Summit in the UAE. “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk said, according to CNBC.

The main thrust of Musk’s argument seems to hinge on the limited bandwidth and processing power of a single human being. Computers can ingest, transfer, and process gigabytes of data per second, every second, forever. Meatbags, however, are severely limited by an input/output rate—talking, typing, listening—that’s best measured in bits per second. Thus, avoid replacement by robot or artificial intelligence, we need to become machines.

By way of example, Musk spoke about self-driving cars, which will very soon start displacing jobs—lots and lots of jobs. “The most near term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars … There are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people … We need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick.”
Autonomous vehicles are perhaps the most visible prominence when it comes to recent developments in AI, but rest assured (or not) that we aren’t even close to AI’s capability ceiling. Current deployments of AI are quite limited in that they can only perform one or two tasks adequately—drive a car, lift a piece of steel, flip a burger—but AI research is slowly bubbling towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), which can ostensibly perform every task that a human is capable of.

Once that happens, it’s fairly safe to assume that AGI will continue to improve until, in the words of Elon Musk, it is “smarter than the smartest human on earth.”

As for how humans might achieve silicon symbiosis, the jury’s still out. Musk, according to CNBC, proposed a brain-attached high-bandwidth computer link, perhaps via neural lace. Low-speed and low-resolution EEG-based brain-computer interfaces already exist, of course, but I doubt that’s what Musk has in mind. In all likelihood, we will need to massively improve our understanding of the human brain before any such interface can be created.

Musk has been one of the individuals at the forefront of warning about the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) for a very long time, but it appears the thrust of his most recent comments center around concerns that a rapid increase in technology applied to the economy will result in a massive wave of job losses. This seems plausible to me, and I’ve called attention to it in the past. For example, in the 2015 post, Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots,

Is Google Deep Mind Exhibiting Greed and Aggression?

theantimedia |  Will artificial intelligence get more aggressive and selfish the more intelligent it becomes? A new report out of Google’s DeepMind AI division suggests this is possible based on the outcome of millions of video game sessions it monitored. The results of the two games indicate that as artificial intelligence becomes more complex, it is more likely to take extreme measures to ensure victory, including sabotage and greed.

The first game, Gathering, is a simple one that involves gathering digital fruit. Two DeepMind AI agents were pitted against each other after being trained in the ways of deep reinforcement learning. After 40 million turns, the researchers began to notice something curious. Everything was ok as long as there were enough apples, but when scarcity set in, the agents used their laser beams to knock each other out and seize all the apples.

The aggression, they determined, was the result of higher levels of complexity in the AI agents themselves. When they tested the game on less intelligent AI agents, they found that the laser beams were left unused and equal amounts of apples were gathered. The simpler AIs seemed to naturally gravitate toward peaceful coexistence.

Researchers believe the more advanced AI agents learn from their environment and figure out how to use available resources to manipulate their situation — and they do it aggressively if they need to.

“This model … shows that some aspects of human-like behaviour emerge as a product of the environment and learning,” a DeepMind team member, Joel Z Leibo, told Wired.

Not BioTerror, BioError...,

WND |  Tom Horn, a Christian author, filmmaker and researcher, expressed his concerns about “transhumanism” and the latest advances in gene editing to WND late last year.

“It holds great promise in new disease therapies but immeasurable peril due to its capacity to make germline genetic modifications, which would be passed on to all future generations, not to mention planned extinctions through gene-drive technology which is already past ‘proof of concept,'” said the co-author of “Pandemonium’s Engine.”

WND reported in November on plans by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, dubbed DARPA, to develop a cleanup crew for engineered genes deemed harmful to the eco-system.

The initiative is called “Safe Genes” – a program designed to counteract gene-drive systems currently being developed to override the standard rules of gene inheritance and natural selection. The danger, scientists recognize, is that without a backup plan, a gene drive released into nature could spread or change in unexpected ways with potentially disastrous effects.

Kevin Esvelt, head of the Sculpting Evolution lab at MIT Media Lab, which is applying for Safe Genes funding in collaboration with eight other research groups, predicts that eventually an accident will allow a drive with potential to spread globally to escape laboratory controls.

“It’s not going to be bioterror,” he told Scientific American, “it’s going to be ‘bioerror.'”  Fist tap Big Don.

Long Overdue Time For Cleansing Blue Fire...,

fredoneverything |  The desire to shock of the eternally pubescent. Smirk, smirk, look at me, smirk, smirk.

 

We saw Ashley Judd, apparently an actress, addressing the “Women’s March.”

“I am not as nasty as racism, fraud, conflict of interest, homophobia, sexual assault, transphobia, white supremacy, misogyny, ignorance, white privilege. I’m not as nasty as using little girls like Pokemon before their bodies have even developed. I am not as nasty as your own daughter being your favorite sex symbol, like your wet dreams infused with your own genes.”

The astonishing thing is not that some foul-mouthed twit came up with such cloacal gush, but that the “Women’s March” sponsored her, did not eject or even censure her.

Can you imagine any of Trump’s middle-American supporters accusing Obama of lusting for incest with his daughters?  The two camps are different peoples. Half of the country seems culturally dominated from the ghetto. The other half embodies standards of behavior that have usually been thought congruent with civil society. While Trump himself is crass, making menstrual jibes on the air at Megyn Kelly for example, his supporters are not.

Any number of arguments can be adduced against Trump but so much of the outpouring of hostility, even from the intelligent, lacks thought. Thisaphobe, thataphobe, Nazi, misogynist. Putin’s Bitch.

Most seem not to know what the words mean, or care.

Wild thought: We may be seeing Darwinian regression. The intellectual nanoparticles waving placards, the sobbing talking headesses  may represent the return of the procaryote IQ. They give us a living paleontological record of what life looked like before it evolved. Think “Cambrian Implosion.” I imagine Rachel Maddow with twelve body segments and compound eyes.

Different peoples. I would like to see a comparative poll: How many women who voted for Trump would allow themselves to be associated with Ms. Judd’s remarks? None, I suspect. How many women voting for Trump would parade around in “pussy hats”? How many fathers voting for Trump would allow their daughters, have raised their daughters, to behave as the “Women’s Marchers”? Their children to copy Black Lives Matter? 

Different civilizations. Virtually no overlap.

The media are decidedly of the Clinton America. In Washington at least some journalists donned pussy hats and jointed the demonstrators. Trashy behavior has seeped into many in the professional classes. Trump  recently sued a journalist and the London Daily Mail for describing Melania as “a high-end escort”–i.e., a take-out call girl, a prostitute. Can you imagine a conservative paper–say, the Washington Times, The American Conservative, National Review–describing Michelle Obama as a whore? Or Trump’s fans wearing scrotal hats? 

There is a brattyness in the apparent belief of the Clinton Americans that they are entitled to the electoral result of their choice. When they don’t get it,they act like spoiled two-year-olds. Poor widdle fings! It is embarrassing. If Hillary had won, would disappointed Trumpists be squalling and posing in genital headgear or looting and burning?  Whatever the merits of the politics of either side, the two have little in common culturally. 

Whatever Happened to Black Lives Matter?

theroot |  Have you seen it?

According to the laws of physics and the principles of nature, nothing disappears into thin air, so it must be around here somewhere. It was too big and loud to fall between the couch cushions or hide in the closet, so someone must have stolen it. Someone must have found a way to silence it. I know there were a lot of people who wished it would evaporate into the ether or slowly fizzle out, but I’m sure it can’t be all gone.

What happened to Black Lives Matter?

Barely a year ago, #BlackLivesMatter was on the tip of almost every tongue in the country. It caused such a commotion that America had no choice but to take notice. Whether they supported it or hated it, everyone had an opinion of it. It led the evening news. It popped up in every social media feed.

They argued about it on SportsCenter. Have you seen it lately? I know it hasn’t gone anywhere.

Don’t reduce its existence to a simple hashtag, because it was more than that. It was a living, breathing thing. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I saw it at football games kneeling during the national anthem. I saw it change the entire municipal structure of the city of Ferguson, Mo. I watched it strut onstage at halftime of the Super Bowl. It strong-armed police departments into buying body cameras. It showed up at presidential debates and awards shows. It fueled conversations in every corner of the country about how America treated black bodies.

But lately, my friends don’t talk about it as much. Is it dead? Is it asleep? Have we lost interest? Why is it so quiet? Where did it go?

Maybe it was the propaganda.

Speaking of the Absurd, Bless Your Heart Maxine Waters...,

theduran |  Russian pranksters called US Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) posing as Ukraine's Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. The conversation which transpired between them is both hilarious and telling. 

While seeking reassurances from the US in the wake of Moscow’s most recent “invasions” across the globe and impudent “hacking” of presidential elections in a fictitious country, the two tricksters pretending to be Ukraine’s Prime Minister revealed just how clueless Congresswoman Waters really is about the world she lives in.

To refresh your memory, this is the same Congresswoman who told us last week that Donald Trump should be impeached because he wants to be friends with Russia, and that Putin is invading Korea. Clearly, that was a clue that something was not right in the head of Rep. Waters.

What the phone conversation with the fake PM of Ukraine revelaed, however, is that she is much more airheaded and gullible than anyone had previously thought.

Trump Calls Out Absurd 5th Column

BostonGlobe |  President Donald Trump mounted a vigorous defense of his presidency Thursday, pushing back against media reports that his campaign advisers had inappropriate contact with Russian officials and vowing to crack down on the leaking of classified information.

Nearly a month into his presidency, Trump said in a free-wheeling White House news conference that his new administration had made ‘‘significant progress’’ and took credit for an optimistic business climate and a soaring stock market.

The president denounced media reports of a chaotic start to his administration marked by a contentious executive order — now tied up in a legal fight — to place a ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim nations.

‘‘This administration is running like a fine-tuned machine,’’ Trump declared. He said he would announce a ‘‘new and very comprehensive order to protect our people.’’

The People vs. America

aljazeera |  The American people’s lack of faith in and disillusionment with the US establishment is greater now than at any other point in history. The institutions that served US citizens are increasingly regarded as self-serving and the people increasingly divided, increasingly polarised along racial and economic lines.

As new President, Donald Trump, enters the White House on a wave of populism, The Big Picture explores just how America has become so fractured, and how for many, the American Dream has been lost.

We chart the history of that mythic dream to show its power and the ways in which, throughout the last 70 years, it has been undermined by the powerful and shattered for those who still believe in it as truth.

Progressive Combatant in the Deep State's Peak Oil War?

lewrockwell |  And for those naive enough to question this basic assessment of the state’s interests in Syria, ask yourself: if the US and its owned media clique slavishly calls Assad a butcher and promoted chaos in his country for purely humanitarian reasons, why aren’t they doing the same in countries like Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Chad? Those countries are ruled by brutal dictators too. Yet your vacuous media guardians, those valiant watchdogs of the truth, do not tell you every day how much of a butcher they are or how we should overthrow their regimes.

The answer is clear: the financial interests that own these media puppets do not prioritize those nations’ resources, strategic locations, or financial structures. So you don’t hear every night how they’re run by butchers. Instead, you see a congresswoman like Gabbard castigated and demonized for daring to question their lying interventionist narrative.

Is that too cynical to consider? Why not hang around your local city commission for a while and see how much power jockeying, clique politics, lying and back-stabbing goes on to decide who will get the contract to build a new 2 million dollar road.

And you think humans, given access to the greatest monopoly of military leverage in the US government, will magically just act in pure humanitarian interest when trillions of dollars are at stake?

I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Aleppo.

Gabbard has criticized Assad’s role in the conflict. But she has also been vocal in denouncing the US’s one party policy of arming terrorists in Syria. She even introduced a bill in Congress to stop arming terrorists. Our government aided and weaponized ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, the same group that attacked us on 9-11, for the pathetic, pitiful lust for power and money available in Syrian regime change.

Yet today, you’ll see headlines like these plastered all over the hegemonic leftist media: POLITICO: Gabbard won’t disclose who’s paying for secret trip to Syria

 

DAILY BEAST: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fascist Escorts to Syria The Democratic congresswoman used affiliates of a violent, anti-Semitic political party to take tea with Assad.

DAILY KOS: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has turned into a stooge for Syria’s dictator. Who will primary her?

Remember, these are the same outlets who slavishly lined up to dine with the pro-Syrian coup Clinton campaign, as Wikileaks revealed. These are the same outlets who allowed their key reporters to submit their pre-published content for approval by Clinton operatives.

These reporters are of the same state-religious clique that threatened Tulsi Gabbard’s career when she refused to bow the knee to Hillary Clinton in the primary. They want power. They love the state denomination of establishment leftism which allows them to use Syrian migrants’ fleeing desperation as a photo-op to bludgeon their rival state sect embodied in Trump.

The leftist media outlets incessantly questioning Gabbard’s call for peace and an end to US-backed terrorism in Syria don’t care if our intervention has destroyed cities and murdered and raped thousands. They only care about the social status points they get in social circles where being seen outraged at airport arrival lines is more important than stopping mass murder for profit and power.

Trump Regime Manufactured By Peak-Oil War Within the Deep State?

medium |  Trump fits into this system snugly. Among his draft executive orders is one that would open the door for US corporations to engage in secretive corrupt and criminal practices to buy conflict minerals from the Congo — which are widely used in electronic products like smartphones and laptops.

From this broader perspective, it’s clear that far from representing a force opposed to the Deep State, the Trump regime represents an interlocking network of powerful players across sectors which heavily intersect with the Deep State: finance, energy, military intelligence, private defense, white nationalist ‘alt-right’ media, and Deep State policy intellectuals.

According to Scott, this reflects a deepening “old division within Big Money — roughly speaking, between those Trilateral Commission progressives, many flourishing from the new technologies of the global Internet, who wish the state to do more than at present about problems like wealth disparity, racial injustice and global warming, and those Heritage Foundation conservatives, many from finance and oil, who want it to do even less.”

So rather than being a nationalist ‘insurgency’ against the corporate globalist ‘Deep State’, the Trump regime represents a white nationalist coup by a disgruntled cross-section within the Deep State itself. Rather than coming into conflict with the Deep State, we are seeing a powerful military-corporate nexus within the American Deep State come to the fore. Trump, in this context, is a tool to re-organize and restructure the Deep State in reaction to what this faction believe to be an escalating crisis in the global Deep System.

In short, the Deep State faction backing Trump is embarking on what it believes is a unique and special mission: to save the Deep State from a decline caused by the failures of successive American administrations.

However, what they are actually doing is accelerating the decline of the American Deep State and the disruption of the global Deep System.

Whatever Happened with the Awan Brothers?

frontpagemag |  Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to top secret classified information.

The signatories to the letter were Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell and Patrick Murphy. All the signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to undermine national security.

Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.

The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.

Imran Awan and his two brothers, Jamal and Abid, are at the center of an investigation that deals with, among other things, allegations of illegal access.  They have been barred from the House of Representatives network.

A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”

All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats. The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier, Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.

Abid A. Awan was employed by Lois Frankel and Ted Lieu: members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also on the committee is Castro. As is Robin Kelly whose office employed Jamal Awan.  Lieu also sits on the subcommittees on National Security and Information Technology of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Tammy Duckworth’s office had also employed Abid. Before Duckworth successfully played on the sympathy of voters to become Senator Tammy Duckworth, she had been on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the Armed Services Committee.

Gwen Graham, who had also been on the Armed Services Committee and on the Tactical Air and Land Forces subcommittee, had employed Jamal Awan. Jamal was also employed by Cedric Richmond’s office. Richmond sits on the Committee on Homeland Security and on its Terrorism and Cybersecurity subcommittee. He is a ranking member of the latter subcommittee. Also employing Jamal was Mark Takano of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.

Imran had worked for the office of John Sarbanes who sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee that oversees, among other things, the nuclear industry. Other members of the Committee employing the brothers included Yvette Clarke, who also sits on the Bipartisan Encryption Working Group, Diana DeGette, Dave Loebsack and Tony Cardenas.

But finally there’s Andre Carson.

Trump Saw the Transcript(s) and Sacrificed a Troublesome Knight

foxnews |  As President Trump sometimes awkwardly comes to terms with being the fish in the fishbowl, he gets to observe the case of his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.

The main issue for Flynn is that he did not tell the truth about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. It would have been bad enough if Flynn had simply misled the press, but he also seems to have let the vice president step forward and repeat those untruths on his behalf.

Flynn, who has attributed the misstatements to poor memory and not any intent to deceive, has reportedly apologized to Pence and is doing his best to dig in against his internal foes.

The retired general’s perilous position is highlighted in a couple of different ways. We know of reports about tensions between Flynn and Defense Secretary James Mattis. Mattis has more pull inside the administration, arguably, than any other cabinet member and if he has issues with Flynn, that’s a big deal.

But more ominous for Flynn was the news over the weekend that the CIA director had nixed one of Flynn’s top deputies for failing to qualify for high-level security clearance. If Trump’s newly minted CIA boss, Mike Pompeo, feels obliged and willing to shut down the president’s closest national security adviser that’s a big deal.

Flynn or his allies seemed to make the case that the deputy got booted because of a turf war between the agencies and as retribution for Flynn’s efforts to reform U.S. intelligence.

Remember all of the drama at the time of the inauguration about Trump questioning U.S. intelligence and wondering if the Russians weren’t telling the truth and the CIA lying? That was probably Flynn’s voice coming through.

But to renew allegations of corruption against the CIA after Trump’s director is in charge is something different. It’s hard to imagine Trump would believe Pompeo is a crook so soon after selecting him and so soon after the president visited the agency to make peace.

Trump will presumably see or has already seen the transcript of Flynn’s calls and will make up his own mind about whether keeping Flynn’s counsel is worth the internal strife and external narrative.

But whatever Trump decides, he can learn one key lesson from Flynn: Somebody is always listening.

Krauthhammer: Deep State Ought Not Eavesdrop and Leak on U.S. Citizens

realclearpolitics |  Charles Krauthammer, commenting on the resignation of National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, said we can not have the government eavesdrop on conversations and then leak it to the media. From Tuesday's Special Report:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Each side always wants to argue the real story is the misdeeds of the other guy. The fact that there are real big misdeeds in these leaks, but that doesn't exonerate what happened within the Trump administration. There are two stories. One is that the internal dysfunction in the Trump White House, the fact that Flynn lied internally was untrustworthy. But the other story is the scandal of these leaks.

Look, we cannot have our intelligence agencies eavesdropping on Americans and releasing it to the press. We have extremely elaborate procedures when we eavesdrop on, say, and ambassadors from other countries, which we do all the time. Everyone does. Everyone knows it. When the conversation involves an American, there are extremely strict procedures to blur the identity, to hide the identity and to protect the information coming from the American. This is the exact opposite of that and it is scary because it means everybody who communicates with a foreigner is subject to being exposed by his own government. You can't have that.

Fist tap Bro. Makeru.

Flynn an Expendable Neocon-Compromised Knight - Chess About Hiring/Firing/Negotiating

thesaker |  Less than a month ago I warned that a ‘color revolution ‘ was taking place in the USA.  My first element of proof was the so-called “investigation” which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump’s candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn.  Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation.  Trump accepted it.

Now let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.  That he was not.  However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump’s national security policy.  For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed.  Flynn also tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via the National Security Council.  Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and subordinate them back to the White House.  Flynn also wanted to work with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that Russia had the West had common interests.  That is another absolutely unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC.

The Neocon run ‘deep state’ has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador.

And Trump accepted this resignation.

Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking “stars” and even from European politicians.  And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back.  Nowhere was his famous “you are fired!” to be seen.  But I still had hope.  I wanted to hope.  I felt that it was my duty to hope.

But now Trump has betrayed us all.

Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.?  Today, Trump has shown us his true face.  Instead of refusing Flynn’s resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation