A View From Within the Belly of the Beast

theburningplatform |  The phony Russian election hacking narrative, additionally, provided cover for the beast to utilize its online social networks to censor the alternative media, sign into law the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act” on December 23, 2016, allow National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, to feloniously unmask Trump administration officials, pressure the new president’s National  Security Advisor to resign, and the nation’s new Attorney General to recuse himself from the Russia investigation; the last of which, of course, led to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation of President Trump.

In fact, all throughout the early months of the new president’s administration, the Russia investigation dominated the headlines.  The headlines were disseminated by the media corporations, owned by the beast, which comprised ninety percent of all news media outlets throughout the once free nation.

However, in a recent turn of events, the beast-owned mainstream media has been forced to report that Former President Obama, former Secretary State Hillary Clinton, former FBI director Robert Mueller and former attorney general Eric Holder are at the center of a new probe involving the sale of a large percentage of the nation’s uranium deposits to Russia, the same country the beast had accused of hacking the 2016 presidential election.

In addition, the partners of Fusion GPS, the obscure political research firm behind President Trump’s phony “Golden Shower” dossier, have recently asserted their Fifth Amendment rights as guaranteed by the very same constitution they tried to subvert.  It is, furthermore, being ever so reluctantly reported in the corporate media that the bogus “Golden Shower” dossier was funded by the Hillary Clinton Campaign and the Democratic National Committee.  Yet, in spite of this strange turning of the tables in the national media, there are some therein, including former presidential debate moderator, Chris Wallace, who just can’t understand  why anyone would ever want to attack the media minions of the beast; as Republican Senators Bob Corker and Jeff Flake label President Trump as a bully and bad role model.

Obviously, a threatened beast will do, and say, anything to survive.

Now, other minions of the beast are resurrecting the “fake news” scam and threatening to use the legal system to eliminate the First Amendment rights of the citizens of the once free nation

Only Baptism By Cleansing Blue Fire...,

countercurrents |  Gandhi was a so called "high caste". High castes represent a small minority in India, some 10-15% of the population, yet dominate Indian society in much the same way whites ruled South Africa during the official period of Apartheid. Dalits often use the phrase Apartheid in India when speaking about their problems.

 

The Indian Constitution was authored by Gandhi's main critic and political opponent, Dr.Ambedkar, for whom our journal is named and the first Dalit in history to receive an education (if you have never heard of Dr. Ambedkar I would urge you to try and keep an open mind about what I am saying for it is a bit like me talking to you about the founding of the USA when you have never heard of Thomas Jefferson).

Most readers are familiar with Gandhi's great hunger strike against the so called Poona Pact in 1933. The matter which Gandhi was protesting, nearly unto death at that, was the inclusion in the draft Indian Constitution, proposed by the British, that reserved the right of Dalits to elect their own leaders. Dr. Ambedkar, with his degree in Law from Cambridge, had been choosen by the British to write the new constitution for India. Having spent his life overcoming caste based discrimination, Dr. Ambedkar had come to the conclusion that the only way Dalits could improve their lives is if they had the exclusive right to vote for their leaders, that a portion or reserved section of all elected positions were only for Dalits and only Dalits could vote for these reserved positions.

Gandhi was determined to prevent this and went on hunger strike to change this article in the draft constitution. After many communal riots, where tens of thousands of Dalits were slaughtered, and with a leap in such violence predicted if Gandhi died, Dr. Ambedkar agreed, with Gandhi on his death bed, to give up the Dalits right to exclusively elect their own leaders and Gandhi ended his hunger strike.Later, on his own death bed, Dr. Ambedkar would say this was the biggest mistake in his life, that if he had to do it all over again, he would have refused to give up Dalit only representation, even if it meant Gandhi's death. 

As history has shown, life for the overwhelming majority of Dalits in India has changed little since the arrival of Indian independence over 50 years ago. The laws written into the Indian Constitution by Dr. Ambedkar, many patterned after the laws introduced into the former Confederate or slave states in the USA during reconstruction after the Civil War to protect the freed black Americans, have never been enforced by the high caste dominated Indian court system and legislatures. A tiny fraction of the "quotas" or reservations for Dalits in education and government jobs have been filled. Dalits are still discriminated against in all aspect of life in India's 650,000 villages despite laws specifically outlawing such acts. Dalits are the victims of economic embargos, denial of basic human rights such as access to drinking water, use of public facilities and education and even entry to Hindu temples.

To this day, most Indians still believe, and this includes a majority of Dalits, that Dalits are being punished by God for sins in a previous life. Under the religious codes of Hinduism, a Dalits only hope is to be a good servant of the high castes and upon death and rebirth they will be reincarnated a high caste. This is called varna in Sanskrit, the language of the original Aryans who imposed Hinduism on India beginning some 3,500 years ago. Interestingly, the word "varna" translates literally into the word "color" from Sanskrit.

This is one of the golden rules of Dalit liberation, that varna means color, and that Hinduism is a form of racially based oppression and as such is the equivalent of Apartheid in India. Dalits feel that if they had the right to elect their own leaders they would have been able to start challenging the domination of the high castes in Indian society and would have begun the long walk to freedom so to speak. They blame Gandhi and his hunger strike for preventing this. So there it is, in as few words as possible, why in todays India the leaders of India's Dalits hate M.K. Gandhi.

Tiny Glimpse of America's Coming Civil War In My Hood This Week...,

jimmycsays |  The lawyer, Thomas Pickert, had walked his two sons to school — not sure which school — and had returned home. “It appears that our victim was sitting on his front porch of his residence when he was shot,” police spokeswoman Sgt. Kari Thompson was quoted as saying. “The victim’s spouse heard something and came out and discovered her spouse on the ground.”

This murder — again as most of you know by now — was not random. The Star’s story provides the backdrop for this most unusual occurrence:

“Pickert won a $5.75 million judgment this summer against a businessman who had shot a homeless man on his property. Last week, Jackson County court officials started the process of seizing the man’s real estate to pay the judgment. The court filed paperwork that would prevent the man from selling or transferring the property.

“On Tuesday, the court sent the man’s attorney notice of its actions. The real estate to be seized for the judgment were the man’s business building and a home.”

Another extremely unusual thing about this case — besides occurring in quiet, upscale Brookside: 

The likely murderer is a 79-year-old man who owns a significant amount of property — or at least he did back in 2010.

That man, David Jungerman of Raytown, is the prime suspect in the murder. A 1997 Chevy van is registered to him — and that police were looking for — was found this afternoon.

theodoresworld |  A Missouri man’s sign painted on the side of an empty trailer along U.S. 71 has been torched twice in recent weeks. David Jungerman placed the trailer and sign in his field along the major highway, saying:

Are you a Producer or Parasite

Democrats – Party of the Parasites

Kansas City.com

David Jungerman farms 6,800 acres of river bottom land in western Missouri.

He’s not the kind of guy who posts on Twitter or has a Facebook profile.

So when the 72-year-old Raytown man wanted to speak out politically, he used what he had handy: a 45-foot-long, semi-truck box trailer.

Are you a Producer or Parasite

Democrats - Party of the Parasites

He planted the trailer with its professionally painted message in his Bates County cornfield along heavily traveled U.S. 71 about an hour south of Kansas City. He wanted lots of people to see it.

They did. Including at least one with a good case of outrage, matches and a can of gas.

On May 12, Jungerman’s trailer was torched. The Rich Hill volunteer fire department responded. A week later, it was set afire again. The firefighters put it out again.

Then flames erupted in an empty farm house that Jungerman owns.

“They don’t like free speech,” said Jungerman. He put out a $5,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

fox4news |  Kansas City police tell Fox 4 they are still trying to determine who killed a Kansas City attorney in front of his home on West 66th Terrace near Brookside Road on Wednesday morning.

Tom Pickert, 39, had just returned home from walking his children to school when he was shot and killed.

Major Donna Greenwall told Fox 4 Thursday that  police have interviewed the registered owner of the white van that was seen leaving the crime scene. The owner was released after questioning.

Although Major Greenwall would not use the owner's name, records show that the van is registered to a man named David Jungerman. FOX 4's Dave D'Marko was reporting near Jungerman's home in Raytown late on Wednesday night when the van was recovered and towed away from the scene.

Police have not said if they believe Jungerman was driving the van or if it was someone else who was driving Jungerman's van.

"We at the scene talked to several individuals, and we'd ask anybody that has information with regards to this that they contact us," Major Greenwall said. "It's an ongoing investigation, and any information that anybody has would help us and we'd welcome that information. "

Investigators say they are still collecting tips. No suspects have been taken into custody. If you have any information that could help them in their investigation please call the TIPS Hotline at (816) 474-TIPS.

Why Do Americans Own So Many Guns?

peggynoonan |  I think a lot of Americans have guns because they’re fearful—and for damn good reason. They fear a coming chaos, and know that when it happens it will be coming to a nation that no longer coheres. They think it’s all collapsing—our society, our culture, the baseline competence of our leadership class. They see the cultural infrastructure giving way—illegitimacy, abused children, neglect, racial tensions, kids on opioids staring at screens—and, unlike their cultural superiors, they understand the implications.

Nuts with nukes, terrorists bent on a mission. The grid will go down. One of our foes will hit us, suddenly and hard. In the end it could be hand to hand, door to door. I said some of this six years ago to a famously liberal journalist, who blinked in surprise. If that’s true, he said, they won’t have a chance! But they are Americans, I said. They won’t go down without a fight.

Americans have so many guns because drug gangs roam the streets, because they have less trust in their neighbors, because they read Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” Because all of their personal and financial information got hacked in the latest breach, because our country’s real overlords are in Silicon Valley and appear to be moral Martians who operate on some weird new postmodern ethical wavelength. And they’ll be the ones programming the robots that’ll soon take all the jobs! Maybe the robots will all look like Mark Zuckerberg, like those eyeless busts of Roman Emperors. Our leaders don’t even think about this technological revolution. They’re too busy with transgender rights.

Americans have so many guns because they know the water their children swim in hasn’t gotten cleaner since Columbine, but more polluted and lethal.

The establishments and elites that create our political and entertainment culture have no idea how fragile it all is—how fragile it seems to people living normal, less privileged lives. That is because nothing is fragile for them. They’re barricaded behind the things the influential have, from good neighborhoods to security alarms, doormen and gates. They’re not dark in their imagining of the future because history has never been dark for them; it’s been sunshine, which they expect to continue. They sail on, oblivious to the legitimate anxieties of their countrymen who live near the edge.

Those who create our culture feel free to lecture normal Americans—on news shows, on late night comedy shows. Why do they have such a propensity for violence? What is their love for guns? Why do they join the National Rifle Association? The influential grind away with their disdain for their fellow Americans, whom they seem less to want to help than to dominate: Give up your gun, bake my cake, free speech isn’t free if what you’re saying triggers us.

Would it help if we tried less censure and more cultural affiliation? Might it help if we started working on problems that are real? Sure. But why lower the temperature when there’s such easy pleasure to be had in ridiculing your mindless and benighted countrymen?

Having Nothing to Hide - Kaspersky Opens Transparency Centers

theintercept |  Responding to U.S. government suggestions that its antivirus software has been used for surveillance of customers, Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab is launching what it’s calling a transparency initiative to allow independent third parties to review its source code and business practices and to assure the information security community that it can be trusted.

The company plans to begin the code review before the end of the year and establish a process for conducting ongoing reviews, of both the updates it makes to software and the threat-detection rules it uses to detect malware and upload suspicious files from customer machines. The latter refers to signatures — search terms used to detect potential malware —  which are the focus of recent allegations.

The company will open three “transparency centers” in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, where trusted partners will be able to access the  third-party reviews of its code and rules. It will also engage an independent assessment of its development processes and work with an independent party to develop security controls for how it processes data uploaded from customer machines.

“[W]e want to show how we’re completely open and transparent. We’ve nothing to hide,” Eugene Kaspersky, the company’s chair and CEO, said in a written statement.

The moves follow a company offer in July to allow the U.S. government to review its source code.

Although critics say the transparency project is a good idea, some added it is insufficient to instill trust in Kaspersky going forward.

“The thing [they’re] talking about is something that the entire antivirus industry should adopt and should have adopted in the beginning,” said Dave Aitel, a former NSA analyst and founder of security firm Immunity. But in the case of Kaspersky, “the reality is … you can’t trust them, so why would you trust the process they set up?”

Kaspersky has come under intense scrutiny after its antivirus software was linked to the breach of an NSA employee’s home computer in 2015 by Russian government hackers who stole classified documents or tools from the worker’s machine. News reports, quoting U.S. government sources, have suggested Kaspersky colluded with the hackers to steal the documents from the NSA worker’s machine, or at least turned a blind eye to the activity.

Kaspersky Did Nothing Wrong: Thieving NSA JaMoke Self-Stooged

theintercept |  Kaspersky Lab said an individual, believed to be one identified as a National Security Agency worker in news accounts, triggered the company’s antivirus software and paved the way for it to upload classified NSA files from his computer when he tried to pirate Microsoft Office and ended up infecting himself with malicious software.

The piracy claim is included in a set of preliminary findings released by the Moscow-based company from an internal investigation into a byzantine spying scandal that didn’t seem like it could get any more bizarre. A series of news reports this month, citing U.S. intelligence sources, asserted that the files on the worker’s computer, which included source code for sensitive hacking tools he was developing for the spy agency, were uploaded by Kaspersky security software and then collected by Russian government hackers, possibly with the company’s knowledge or help. Kaspersky has denied that it colluded with Russian authorities or knew about the worker incident as it was described in the press.

Details from the investigation, including the assertion that Kaspersky’s CEO ordered the files deleted after they were recognized as potential classified NSA material, could help absolve the antivirus firm of allegations that it intentionally searched the worker’s computer for classified files that did not contain malware. But they also raise new questions about the company’s actions, the NSA worker, and the spying narrative that anonymous government sources have been leaking to news media over the last two weeks.

After facing increasingly serious allegations of spying, Kaspersky provided The Intercept with a summary of preliminary findings of an internal investigation the company said it conducted in the wake of the news reports.

In its statement of findings, the company acknowledged that it detected and uploaded a compressed file container, specifically a 7zip archive, that had been flagged by Kaspersky’s software as suspicious and turned out to contain malware samples and source code for what appeared to be components related to the NSA’s so-called Equation Group spy kit. But the company said it collected the files in the normal course of its operations, and that once an analyst realized what they were, he deleted them upon the orders of CEO Eugene Kaspersky. The company also insists it never provided the files to anyone else.

Kaspersky doesn’t say the computer belonged to the NSA worker in question and says the incident it recounts in the report occurred in 2014, not 2015 as news reports state. But the details of the incident appear to match what recent news reports say occurred on the worker’s computer.

The NSA could not be reached for comment.

CIA-BezosPost Wants To Come Inside Without A Warrant

market-ticker |  I have a dozen ways criminals could exploit this, and they will.

You give Spamzon a means to access your house (e.g. a keypad on your door, etc.)  They now have it.

Let's enumerate a few of the ways you can get hosed:

• The "employee" (really a contractor, by the way) for Amazon simply steals anything he or she wants in your house while making the delivery -- which you allowed them in for.
  
• Your credit card gets compromised.  Said individual orders something on your card to your house, waits for it to be delivered inside and exploits said delivery, either in confederation with the person doing it or by rick-rolling them, and robs your house.
  
• The access code is stolen and used to directly access your home.  It's in the cloud.  I'm sure nothing in the cloud will ever be stolen, right?  Uh huh, just like virtually every American's credit file wasn't?  And since the code used to open the door will be authorized guess what -- your high-fautin' security system won't raise a peep as your nice 60" 4k OLED TV and jewelry walk right out the front door!

These took me about 30 seconds to come up with.  A bit more thinking would, I'm sure, enumerate dozens more, all of which will be exploited immediately by those with criminal intent.

I cannot imagine how stupid you have to be to sign up for such a thing.  The "initiative" to get into your car to make deliveries is bad enough, but allowing a retailer's contractors into your home when you have utterly no idea who they are or how said access data will be secured has to rank as one of the dumbest things I've ever heard of, and if you allow it then you have just marked yourself as having an IQ smaller than my running shoes.

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

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

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

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

Week 1 saw the following developments:

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

Well, Week 3 promises even more fun.

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

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

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

FBI Informant Cleared to Testify on Hillary Clinton's Uranium Pay-for-Play

thehill  |  The Justice Department on Wednesday night released a former FBI informant from a confidentiality agreement, allowing him to testify before Congress about what he witnessed undercover about the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favorable decisions during the Obama administration.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed to The Hill a deal had been reached clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time, nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI. 

“As of tonight, the Department of Justice has authorized the informant to disclose to the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as one member of each of their staffs, any information or documents he has concerning alleged corruption or bribery involving transactions in the uranium market, including but not limited to anything related to Vadim Mikerin, Rosatom, Tenex, Uranium One, or the Clinton Foundation,” she said.

Multiple congressional committees have been seeking to interview the informant, whose name has not been released publicly, because he stayed undercover for nearly five years providing agents information on Russia’s aggressive efforts to grow its atomic energy business in America. 

His work helped the Justice Department secure convictions against Russia’s top commercial nuclear executive in the United States, a Russian financier in New Jersey and the head of a U.S. uranium trucking company in what prosecutors said was a long-running racketeering scheme involving bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering. 

But the informant was unable to provide answers to lawmakers’ recent inquiries because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the bureau. He also was forced by the Justice Department in 2016 to withdraw a lawsuit that threatened to call attention to the case during last year’s presidential election.

The man’s lawyer, Victoria Toensing, told The Hill on Wednesday night that the FBI sent her a formal letter saying it no longer had any reason to ask the informant to keep his work confidential, clearing the way for him to potentially testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the House Intelligence Committee and the House Oversight and Reform Committee.

The committees are keen to learn what the informant knows about any Russian efforts to curry favor with Bill and Hillary Clinton, to win Obama administration approval for Moscow’s purchase of large uranium assets in the United States or to secure billions in new uranium sales contracts with American utilities.

Original DNC #MeToo Dindus Also Disavow Trump Russia "Dossier"

thehill |  Current and past leaders of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) say they had no knowledge that the national party was helping to fund a dossier compiled by a British spy that contained scandalous accusations about President Trump.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the DNC paid millions to the law firm Perkins Coie, where Democratic lawyer Marc Elias worked with the opposition research firm Fusion GPS to construct the memo, which was compiled by British spy Christopher Steele.

The memo is at the center of several investigations into Russian meddling and it may have been used by the FBI as part of its investigation into allegations that Trump campaign officials had improper contacts with Russian officials. Former FBI Director James Comey has said none of the allegations in the memo have been verified.

The bombshell Washington Post report has emboldened President Trump, who on Wednesday lashed out at the “fake dossier” and described it as the cornerstone of “the whole Russia hoax.” 

yahoo |  Elias — after consulting with senior officials at the Clinton campaign and the DNC — approved the retention. At some point that spring, Fusion GPS retained a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele. Steele paid for information from Russian sources who reported allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Putin government. His reports on these allegations — which he has since described as “raw intelligence” — formed the basis for the dossier.

But how much senior officials at the Clinton campaign and the DNC were informed about the work being done by Fusion GPS and the contents of the dossier is unclear. Donna Brazile, who became the DNC chair after Fusion GPS was hired but served the entire time the dossier was being assembled and while some of its contents shared with journalists, told Yahoo News Wednesday that at one point she requested the names of every consultant working for the committee — and she was never told by Perkins Cole about the work being done by Fusion GPS. “I knew nothing about it,” she said. (The Clinton campaign did not respond to inquiries about the matter Wednesday. A lawyer for Fusion GPS declined comment. )

“The clients were aware and approved the retention of outside research firms,” said a lawyer representing Perkins Cole who asked not to be identified. “They did not know which research firms had been engaged. … There was no reason to tell them.” The lawyer added that the material being investigated was “sensitive” and “you don’t want hundreds of people working on the campaign to be in the loop on it.”

#MeToo Dindu Clinton's DNC Replacement Negroes Throw Predecessors Under the Bus...,

Examiner |  The Democratic National Committee claims its "new leadership" had nothing to do with the funding of the so-called "Trump dossier," after it was reported Tuesday that the firm behind it was hired by DNC lawyer Mark Elias and Hillary Clinton's campaign.

"Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in the decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization," said DNC Communications Director Xochitl Hinojosa in statement, referring to the DNC chairman.

The statement, however, makes no mention of the DNC leadership during the 2016 campaign. The group had been led by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida up until July 2016 when she resigned after WikiLeaks published leaked emails which showed she expressed bias in favor of Hillary Clinton over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the fight for the Democratic nomination.

She was followed by Donna Brazile, who served as acting chair until February up until Perez, former President Barack Obama's labor secretary, was elected.

Observer |   DNC Chair Tom Perez, who was elected without adequate political or fundraising experience, promised change, reform, and “to get things done” as leader of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). Instead, he has driven the organization further into the ground.

During this tenure, Perez has managed to alienate wealthy donors, who don’t trust that the party can recoup its drastic losses, and progressive grassroots activists, who have been ostracized by party leadership. The RNC has outpacedthe DNC in fundraising from both small and large donors, a harrowing sign that Democrats are in trouble for 2018. McClatchy DC reported on October 18, “The Republican National Committee raised more than $100 million in the first nine months of 2017, marking the first time it has raised that much, that fast, in a non-presidential election year.” The DNC is likely panicking over the Republicans’ record breaking numbers. 

Hillary #MeToo Dindu Clinton Claims "See, What Happened Wuz.., I Dindu Nuffin!!!"

thehill |  Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that renewed focus on Russian uranium deals approved during her tenure is nothing more than debunked “baloney" and a sign that Republicans are nervous about the current intelligence probe into Moscow's efforts to meddle with last year's election.

"I think the real story is how nervous they are about these continuing investigations," the former Democratic presidential nominee said during an interview broadcast on C-SPAN.

The renewed interest in the so-called Uranium One deal came after The Hill reported last week that the FBI had gathered solid evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery and extortion before the Obama administration approved the sale to Russia of a company that controls 20 percent of America's uranium supply.

The Hill further reported Sunday that the FBI had identified a Russian spy ring's attempt in 2009 and 2010 to infiltrate Clinton's inner circle through a donor friend in order to spy on the State Department. Agents arrested and deported the female spy before anything could happen.

Though stories in The Hill were based on court documents, declassified law enforcement memos and interviews with career officials, Clinton said any accusations of wrongdoing were partisan in nature.

HRC DNC Paid For the Bogus Trump Russian Dossier

WaPo  |  The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump’s connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.

After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPS’s research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.

The Clinton campaign and the DNC, through the law firm, continued to fund Fusion GPS’s research through the end of October 2016, days before Election Day.

#MeToo Snatching Busters Left and Right....,

RT  |  A journalist with Swedish daily Aftonbladet who reportedly referred to WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange as a “criminal” is himself in hot water. He’s accused of rape and sexual assault – including of underage girls. 

The allegations against Fredrik Virtanen, who also hosts his own talk show on Swedish TV8, emerged as part of the #MeToo social media campaign. The campaign, which surged in popularity after the sex scandal surrounding Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, encourages women to speak up to share their experiences of sexual harassment.

The first accusation against Virtanen was made by Swedish feminist activist, journalist and actress Cissi Wallin, who claimed last week that Virtanen raped her back in 2006, when she was 21. In 2010, Wallin said an “older media man with power” had sexually assaulted her and wanted to push his genitals into her mouth, but did not give his name, Nyheter24 reported. 

“I cannot be quiet anymore,” Wallin said in her Instagram post. The journalist added that she should “have screamed his name long ago,” but was silent as the journalist’s representative called her “bosses and so on, and dubbed me a ‘crazy mythomaniac.’”

Virtanen himself was a critic of Assange over rape charges, which were subsequently dropped. But before the case was abandoned, the journalist had referred to the whistleblower as “criminal” and said he seemed to become “more and more cracked,” according to Swedish Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR). 

Swedish crime writer Camilla Läckberg voiced her support to Wallin and said she was ashamed that she had also been silent for years over many other testimonies against Virtanen.

Pennywise the Political Assassin Missing Trump, Hitting Africom, Disserving Black Americans?

Politico |  Wilson, calling Trump a “jerk” and a “liar,” said in an interview in Miami Thursday that she believed the ambush that led to four deaths two weeks ago resembled the 2012 attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that also left four dead, including a U.S. ambassador. The attack led to criticism of former President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by conservatives who said the facility was unprepared for such an incident and also took issue with their handling of the aftermath.

“The circumstances are similar,” Wilson said. She said in Niger, the four soldiers providing counterterrorism training “didn’t have appropriate weapons where they were. They were told by intelligence there was no threat. They had trucks that were not armored trucks. They were particularly not protected. Just like in Benghazi, they were given the impression that everything was fine.”

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, disputed the comparison. 

“In Benghazi, you had U.S. fighter jets sitting in Crete that could have been there very quickly. Here, we did not have U.S. capabilities that we were freezing in place,” Gaetz said. “It is not like that in Central Africa.” 

In Niger, Gaetz said, U.S. special forces were trying to keep a light footprint so as not to draw attention as they equipped and trained local forces to combat terrorists chased out of North Africa. As a result, he said, the soldiers were exposed because of the dangerous nature of the mission.

“When you’ve got Americans in a zone where there’s really little command and control, it’s a highly volatile environment,” Gaetz said. “It is not atypical to begin these types of operations by having our high-intensity special operators — the Green Berets, the Navy Seals, the air commandos — and then over time increase our capabilities. In Central Africa, it is important that we maintain low visibility in some cases. And having a massive extraction force in the region doesn’t always facilitate low visibility.”

Counterpunch |  The ball is in the Trump court. What were those four men doing in Niger? Is our military presence making things better or worse there? Did US leadership make a bad decision that had unforeseen consequences? Are they relying on secrecy to cover up an embarrassment? And the big question: Is the United States mobilizing its military in Africa? Are we embarking on a huge new foreign adventure? On a large, historic canvas, one can look at the Vietnam and Iraq Wars in this light, as the growth of imperial militarism with expanding commitments of young men and women in uniform. Which brings us back to General Kelly’s schizophrenic press conference: On one hand, there’s his moving call for recognizing the sacrifice of our soldiers and their families. Then, there’s his shameful political attack on a congresswoman who he did not realize had real skin in the game — skin that happened to be darker than his white, privileged Boston skin. The general wonders why the honor and glue of America isn’t what it used to be in the glory days of World War Two, which was a defensive war. Those “values” no longer prevail; something else is going on. General Kelly needs to realize, when he becomes an attack dog for someone like Donald Trump, he’s not on a foreign battlefield — he’s in the trenches of Washington DC, which a recent article in the conservative National Review compared to the climate in the HBO hit Game of Thrones.

Washington politics is uglier than it has been in a long time. Secrecy, dishonesty and corruption are epidemic. As long as our military is rooted in such amoral soil, the respect and sacredness for our  soldiers that General Kelly seeks will remain far out of reach.

AFRICOM: The Forced Recolonization of Africa Began With Libya

RT |  Exactly six years ago, on October 20th, 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was murdered, joining a long list of African revolutionaries martyred by the West for daring to dream of continental independence.

Earlier that day, Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte had been occupied by Western-backed militias, following a month-long battle during which NATO and its ‘rebel’ allies pounded the city’s hospitals and homes with artillery, cut off its water and electricity, and publicly proclaimed their desire to ‘starve [the city] into submission’. The last defenders of the city, including Gaddafi, fled Sirte that morning, but their convoy was tracked and strafed by NATO jets, killing 95 people. Gaddafi escaped the wreckage but was captured shortly afterward. I will spare you the gruesome details, which the Western media gloatingly broadcast across the world as a triumphant snuff movie, suffice to say that he was tortured and eventually shot dead.

We now know, if testimony from NATO’s key Libyan ally Mahmoud Jibril is to be believed, it was a foreign agent, likely French, who delivered the fatal bullet. His death was the culmination of not only seven months of NATO aggression, but of a campaign against Gaddafi and his movement, the West had been waging for over three decades.

Yet it was also the opening salvo in a new war - a war for the militarily recolonization of Africa.

The year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for US-African relations. First, because China overtook the US as the continent’s largest trading partner; and second because Gaddafi was elected president of the African Union.

The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. While Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China - or indeed Libya - for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before.

The response from the West, of course, was a military one. Economic dependence on the West - rapidly being shattered by Libya and China - would be replaced by a new military dependence. If African countries would no longer come begging for Western loans, export markets, and investment finance, they would have to be put in a position where they would come begging for Western military aid.

To this end, AFRICOM - the US army’s new ‘African command’ - had been launched the previous year, but humiliatingly for George W. Bush, not a single African country would agree to host its HQ; instead, it was forced to open shop in Stuttgart, Germany. Gaddafi had led African opposition to AFRICOM, as exasperated US diplomatic memos later revealed by WikiLeaks made clear. And US pleas to African leaders to embrace AFRICOM in the ‘fight against terrorism’ fell on deaf ears.

After all, as Mutassim Gaddafi, head of Libyan security, had explained to Hillary Clinton in 2009, North Africa already had an effective security system in place, through the African Union’s ‘standby forces,' on the one hand, and CEN-SAD on the other. CEN-SAD was a regional security organization of Sahel and Saharan states, with a well-functioning security system, with Libya as the lynchpin. The sophisticated Libyan-led counter-terror structure meant there was simply no need for a US military presence. The job of Western planners, then, was to create such a need.

controlling africa and ejecting russia and china from the mediterranean (REDUX 4/10/11)

LewRockwell | In the 1930s the US, Great Britain, and the Netherlands set a course for World War II in the Pacific by conspiring against Japan. The three governments seized Japan’s bank accounts in their countries that Japan used to pay for imports and cut Japan off from oil, rubber, tin, iron and other vital materials. Was Pearl Harbor, Japan’s response?

Now Washington and its NATO puppets are employing the same strategy against China.

Protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen arose from the people protesting against Washington’s tyrannical puppet governments. However, the protests against Gaddafi, who is not a Western puppet, appear to have been organized by the CIA in the eastern part of Libya where the oil is and where China has substantial energy investments.

Eighty percent of Libya’s oil reserves are believed to be in the Sirte Basin in eastern Libya now controlled by rebels supported by Washington. As seventy percent of Libya’s GDP is produced by oil, a successful partitioning of Libya would leave Gaddafi’s Tripoli-based regime impoverished.

The People’s Daily Online (March 23) reported that China has 50 large-scale projects in Libya. The outbreak of hostilities has halted these projects and resulted in 30,000 Chinese workers being evacuated from Libya. Chinese companies report that they expect to lose hundreds of millions of yuan.

China is relying on Africa, principally Libya, Angola, and Nigeria, for future energy needs. In response to China’s economic engagement with Africa, Washington is engaging the continent militarily with the US African Command (AFRICOM) created by President George W. Bush in 2007. Forty-nine African countries agreed to participate with Washington in AFRICOM, but Gaddafi refused, thus creating a second reason for Washington to target Libya for takeover.

A third reason for targeting Libya is that Libya and Syria are the only two countries with Mediterranean sea coasts that are not under the control or influence of Washington. Suggestively, protests also have broken out in Syria. Whatever Syrians might think of their government, after watching Iraq’s fate and now Libya’s it is unlikely that Syrians would set themselves up for US military intervention. Both the CIA and Mossad are known to use social networking sites to foment protests and to spread disinformation. These intelligence services are the likely conspirators that the Syrian and Libyan governments blame for the protests.

Caught off guard by protests in Tunisia and Egypt, Washington realized that protests could be used to remove Gaddafi and Assad. The humanitarian excuse for intervening in Libya is not credible considering Washington’s go-ahead to the Saudi military to crush the protests in Bahrain, the home base for the US Fifth Fleet.

If Washington succeeds in overthrowing the Assad government in Syria, Russia would lose its Mediterranean naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus. Thus, Washington has much to gain if it can use the cloak of popular rebellion to eject both China and Russia from the Mediterranean. Rome’s mare nostrum (“our sea”) would become Washington’s mare nostrum.

“Gaddafi must go,” declared Obama. How long before we also hear, “Assad must go?”

The American captive press is at work demonizing both Gaddafi and Assad, an eye doctor who returned to Syria from London to head the government after his father’s death.

The hypocrisy passes unremarked when Obama calls Gaddafi and Assad dictators. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the American president has been a Caesar. Based on nothing more than a Justice Department memo, George W. Bush was declared to be above US statutory law, international law, and the power of Congress as long as he was acting in his role as commander-in-chief in the “war on terror.”

What's That Africom Cover Story Again? (REDUX Originally Posted 1/26/13)

antiwar | But Patrick Meehan, chairman of the US Congressional committee that drew up the report, said “While I recognize there is little evidence at this moment to suggest Boko Haram is planning attacks against the [US] homeland, lack of evidence does not mean it cannot happen.”

Washington’s interest in Africa goes back at least to 2007, when the Pentagon’s AFRICOM was formed, long before rebels in Libya or militants in Mali were a threats to exaggerate.

The dominant way of thinking in Washington is that the US should be involved in every corner of the planet, and the pressure to always “do something” is intense.

But as Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations recently commented with regards to the intervention in Mali, “Some things that happen on the other 94% of the earth that isn’t the US, has nothing to do with the US, nor requires a US response.”

Africa in 2040 (REDUX Originally Posted 2/20/08)

Paul Chefurka's grim assessment of what's in store for Africa. Please read and bookmark this paper.

There is a darkness moving on the face of the land. We catch glimpses of it in newscasts from far-off places that few of us have ever seen. We hear hints of it on the radio, read snippets about it in newspapers and magazines. The stories are always fragmentary, lacking context or connection. They speak of things like inflation in Zimbabwe, war in Chad, electricity problems in Johannesburg, famine in Malawi, pipeline fires in Nigeria, political violence in Kenya, cholera in Congo. Each snapshot of grief heaves briefly into view, then fades back into obscurity. With every fresh story we are left asking ourselves, "Is there something bigger going on here, some unseen thread connecting these dots? Or is this just more of the same from a continent that has known more than its share of misery?"

This paper is my attempt to connect those dots, to tease some order out of the chaos of the news reports. I will use some very simple numerical techniques to fill in the missing lines, and in the end a picture will emerge. I can tell you in advance that the picture is fearsome beyond imagining, and you may well be tempted to avert your gaze. I would advise you instead to screw up your courage and take a good look. It is crucial to our future as a civilized race.

I expect the collapse to turn Africa into the next arena for a quick game of "Disaster Capitalism." Large trans-national entities will make offers of "significant assistance" to particular countries in return for untrammeled access to their resource base. The vultures will be lining the banks of the Zambezi waiting for the feast, no doubt about it.

"I know there's rumors in Ghana `All Bush is coming to do is try to convince you to put a big military base here,' Bush said at a news conference with Kufuor. "That's baloney. As they say in Texas, that's bull."

Instead, he said the new command — unique to the Pentagon's structure — was aimed at more effectively reorganizing U.S. military efforts in Africa to strengthen African nations' peacekeeping, trafficking and anti-terror efforts.

"The whole purpose of Africom is to help African leaders deal with African problems," Bush said.

Bush sought to dispel the notion about militarization of Africa even before giving reporters a chance to ask him about it. Kufuour said he was satisfied with Bush's explanation, and thanked him for announcing it "so that the relationship between us and the United States will grow stronger."

For now, the administration has decided to continue operating Africom out of existing U.S. bases on the continent with a headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. War-wrecked Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host a headquarters. Bush said before the trip that "if" a headquarters for Africom is ever established on the continent, he would "seriously consider" Liberia as the host.

Dutertism: Imperial Economics Collide With Post-Imperial Politics

Counterpunch |  History may have come to an embarrassing end in the centres of the Empire but not in it’s remote regions. As the great Egyptian analyst Samir Amin points out in a recent Monthly Review essay: it is in the periphery of the global system where the great political and social storms occur.

Why? Because history is still fluid there. The battle for and against the transformation of the system still resonates there. Whereas the stagnant centres of the system are dealing with the pathetic aftermath of modernity – on the edges: modernity is still being born and still being strangled.

In other words, the weakest links in the global chain of capitalism best reveal what the hell is going on. And what’s going to happen next. Therefore if you want to gauge the system forget about New York or London or Paris and head to places like the Philippines.

Before Rodrigo Duterte was elected Filipino President last year no one gave a damn about the country. It was just assumed to be an American puppet. Another one that is full of poverty. But overnight this perception changed. A significant political storm emerged from within the Filipino archipelago that forced the world to adjust its vision.

Within days of Duterte’s election the Empire was forced on the back foot, as he insisted on Filipino sovereignty. Ironically he did this by acknowledging China’s position in the South China Sea. Refusing to take the American bait (war on China) the new President of the Philippines quickly defused one of the world’s most dangerous confrontations.

For this diplomacy alone, Duterte deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. However the Empire and even some Filipino progressives, like Walden Bello, were frustrated by this outbreak of peace in the South China Sea.

For committing “the crime of peace” on the international stage Duterte became a figure of hate for liberal imperialists everywhere. And on cue, liberals suddenly cared about life in the Philippines. From being an ignored entity before the advent of Duterte – Filipino life became front page news in New York, London and Paris. Liberal cynicism went into overdrive and felt the need, for geopolitical reasons, to demonise yet another Third World leader.