sicsempertyrannis |the
MSM and online projects like the American Independent incessantly
insist that the simple fact that Hunter Biden and his dear old dad, a
"Union Man," solicited money in Ukraine and in China for services not rendered
proves nothing, that nothing has been proven against them and that any
mention of these occurrences is evidence of harsh partisan rhetoric
based on fantasy and equivalent to belief in the Loch Ness Monster.
Well, pilgrimsI want to know who and what investigation or investigations cleared the Bidens of anything.
It
is obvious that Hunter is qualified for employment as a bag man and not
much else. He has a law degree? So what? As in the matter of the
qualifications of doctors, not all learn much in medical or law school.
"US
Officials" say the Bidens are pure in heart and deed? Hah! Is it not
clear that The Borg (foreign policy establishment) hate Donald Trump and
will say anything possible to injure him?
"Debunked," "Discredited," "Conspiracy theories?"
Trickery in the press is the real truth, trickery intended to protect the only viable candidate in the Democratic Party field.
globalresearch |I have long believed that the core hatred of
Russia comes from the neocons and is to a large extent tribal or, if you
prefer, ethno-religious based. Why? Because if the neoconservatives
were actually foreign policy realists there is no good reason to express
any visceral dislike of Russia or its government. The allegations that
Moscow interfered in the 2016 presidential election in the U.S. are clearly a sham,
just as are the tales of the alleged Russian poisoning of the Skripals
in Winchester England and, most recently, the claimed assassination of
journalist Arkady Babchenko
in Kiev which turned out to be a false flag. Even the most cursory
examination of the past decade’s developments in Georgia and Ukraine
reveal that Russia was reacting to legitimate major security threats
engineered by the United States with a little help from Israel and
others. Russia has not since the Cold War ended threatened the United
States and its ability to re-acquire its former Eastern European
satellites is a fantasy. So why the hatred?
In fact, the
neocons got along quite well with Russia when they and their
overwhelmingly Jewish oligarchs and international commodity thieves cum
financier friends were looting the resources of the old Soviet Union
under the hapless Boris Yeltsin during the 1990s.
Alarms about the alleged Russian threat only re-emerged in the neocon
dominated media and think tanks when old fashioned nationalist Vladimir
Putin took office and made it a principal goal of his government to turn off the money tap.
With the looting
stopped by Putin, the neocons and friends no longer had any reason to
play nice, so they used their considerable resources in the media and
within the halls of power in places like Washington, London and Paris to
turn on Moscow. And they also might have perceived that there was a
worse threat looming. The Putin government appeared to be resurrecting
what the neocons might perceive as pogrom plagued Holy Russia! Old
churches razed by the Bolsheviks were being rebuilt and people were
again going to mass and claiming belief in Jesus Christ. The former Red
Square now hosts a Christmas market while the nearby tomb of Lenin is
only open one morning in the week and attracts few visitors.
I would like to
suggest that it is quite possible that the historically well-informed
neocons are merely longing for the good old Bolshevik days in Russia.
The fact is that much of Bolshevik state atheism was driven by the large
overrepresentation of Jews in the party in its formative days. British
journalist Robert Wilton’s meticulously researched 1920 study “The Last Days of the Romanovs” describes how David R. Francis, United States ambassador in Russia, warned in a January 1918 message to Washington that
“The Bolshevik leaders here,
most of whom are Jews and 90 percent of whom are returned exiles, care
little for Russia or any other country but are internationalists and
they are trying to start a worldwide social revolution.”
“Unless Bolshevism is
nipped in the bud immediately, it is bound to spread in one form or
another over Europe and the whole world as it is organized and worked by
Jews who have no nationality, and whose one object is to destroy for
their own ends the existing order of things.”
Russia’s greatest twentieth century writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn,
feted in the west for his staunch resistance to Soviet
authoritarianism, suddenly found himself friendless by the media and
publishing world when he wrote “Two Centuries Together: A Russo-Jewish
History to 1972”, recounting some of the dark side of the Russian-Jewish experience.
In particular, Solzhenitsyn cited the significant overrepresentation of
Russian Jews both as Bolsheviks and, prior to that time, as
serf-owners.
sicsempertyrannis |A
question for me is the motivation behind the antipathy of the American
neo-liberals and neocons toward Russia. There are a lot of Jews
scattered among these groups. Is it a group memory of Tsarist pograms
that eats at them? Israel does not seem to have a special problem with
modern Russia. Is it Russia's relentless persecution of homosexuals?
There are a lot of LGBTQ supporters among the two groups. Or, do these
people see Russia as a plausible geopolitical rival for the US? Surely
it cannot be as simple, or simpleminded as that. The undying USSR as
chimera? Perhaps it is that.
moderndiplomacy | One can’t
understand the impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump unless one
understands accurately what was happening in Ukraine and what the
motivations
were of the persons who were involved in U.S.-Ukraine policy, first
under U.S.
President Barack Obama, and then under his successor Donald Trump.
Information will be presented here, about those matters, which probably
won’t come up in the House impeachment hearings. These matters are
likelier to
be publicly discussed afterward, when the case goes to the Senate, but
might be
too ‘sensitive’ to be brought up even there — especially if they make
both
Democratic and Republican officials look bad, such as, for example, if
both
Democrats and Republicans had participated in a February 2014 coup
against, and
overthrowing, Ukraine’s democratically elected Government, and — if that
happened, as we will show it did — how this fact might affect
Trump’s relationship with Zelensky. So: a lot is to be shown here, and this
will be information that the ‘news’-media have been hiding from the public, not
reporting to the public.
Without understanding the reality of Obama’s
coup in Ukraine, there is no way
of honestly explaining Ukrainegate. The 1953 Iran coup produced, as blowback,
the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979. Obama’s 2014 coup in Ukraine likewise
is having its blowbacks, but of different types.
TRUMP’S
PURPOSE IN THE 25 JULY 2019 CALL TO ZELENSKY
The argument to be presented here is
that Trump, in this phone-call, and generally, was trying not only to obtain
help with evidence-gathering in the “Crowdstrike” matter (which A.G. Barr is
now investigating, and which also is the reason why Trump specifically
mentioned “Crowdstrike” at the only instance in the phone-call where he was
requesting a “favor” from Zelensky), but to change the policy toward Ukraine
that had been established by Obama (via Obama’s coup and its aftermath). This
is a fact, which will be documented here. Far more than politics was involved
here; ideology was actually very much involved. Trump was considering a basic
change in U.S. foreign policies. He was considering to replace policies that
had been established under, and personnel who had been appointed by, his
immediate predecessor, Barack Obama. Democrats are extremely opposed to any
such changes. This is one of the reasons for the renewed impeachment-effort by
Democrats. They don’t want to let go of Obama’s worst policies. But changing
U.S. foreign policy is within a President’s Constitutional authority to do.
Trump fired the flaming
neoconservative John Bolton on 10 September 2019. This culminated a growing
rejection by Trump of neoconservatism — something that he had never thought
much about but had largely continued from the Obama Administration, which
invaded and destroyed Libya in 2011, Syria in 2012-, Yemen in 2015-, and more —
possibly out-doing even George W. Bush, who likewise was a flaming neocon.
Trump’s gradual turn away from neoconservatism wasn’t just political; it was
instead a reflection, on his part, that maybe, just maybe, he had actually been
wrong and needed to change his foreign policies, in some important ways. (He
evidently still hasn’t yet figured out precisely what those changes should be.)
WaPo | “I
am disappointed, and quite frankly I’m angered, by the fact — he knows
me, he knows my son. He knows there’s nothing to this,” Biden said.
“Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the
Ukrainians wouldn’t yield to. The Ukrainians would not yield to, quote,
‘investigate Biden’ — there’s nothing to investigate about Biden or his
son.”
A Graham spokesman declined to comment and said the senator was unavailable.
Trump’s
personal attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has been at the center of
the House impeachment inquiry, claimed that Biden’s comment was a
“threat” against Graham.
“This is getting to be more and more like my old mafia cases,” Giuliani wrote on Twitter, alluding to his time as a federal prosecutor. “They sure do sound like crooks.”
Graham, in a letter sent Thursday
to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, asked for information related to
calls between Biden, when he was vice president, and then-President
Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, as well as documents that referred to an
investigation of Burisma.
In the Obama years, Biden played an integral role
in pushing Poroshenko to crack down on corruption in Ukraine,
pressuring him to fire a prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was widely seen
as corrupt and not doing enough to undertake crucial investigations.
The
efforts to oust Shokin were mounted in coordination with U.S. allies,
and several Republican senators were on board at the time. Now, however,
some Republicans are asserting that Biden was attempting to get rid of
Shokin to protect his son, an assertion contradicted by the
circumstances at the time.
Still,
Biden’s aides at the time expressed concern about Hunter’s position on
the board of Burisma, worried that it could create the perception of a
conflict of interest. Biden took no action to discourage his son from
remaining on the board.
sicsemper | My father, a former intelligence person during WWII, explained to me
that if a secret is to be preserved, two links in the chain of evidence,
not just one, need to be broken.
Many of us predicted that Epstein, as a serial blackmailer of the
rich and influential, would not live for very long in jail, yet I was
still surprised at the speed of his demise. We discussed this in some
detail in August.
My fathers dictum suggests that the two guards are unlikely to stay
alive if they were in any way willing accomplices in what was perhaps a
murder.
Ghislaine Maxwell? If she is smart, she will bury herself in a
kibbutz in deepest Israel. I don't think she has the ability to make the
trade of her continued life in the West for silence.
diogenesmiddlefinger |American voters
have been introduced to the idea that the elected President of the
United States can be accused of "undermining" foreign policy determined
by the permanent bureaucracy, which spends billions of our tax dollars
but is not even slightly interested in our input. We've been told
top bureaucrats who supposedly serve at the pleasure of the president
are actually entitled to their jobs and firing them is a crime, with the
president presumed guilty unless he can prove he had an acceptable
reason for terminating or reassigning them. We've learned that
Made Men of the bureaucratic empire and its political wing, the
Democrat Party, cannot be investigated for corruption unless the most
exquisite preliminary rituals are followed and the investigators can
demonstrate the absolute purity of their intentions. Outside of
Impeachment Theater, we've been told it's heroic for the bureaucracy to
organize "resistance" against the elected president and congressional
representatives, if the Washington empire disapproves of the voters'
choices.
What happened in Bolivia is a coup. Period. The United States and other countries should not be interfering in the Bolivian people's pursuit of self-determination and right to choose their own government.
Politico | “She sort of seems to be filling a
pretty strange lane. Is there a part of the party that hates the party?”
said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.). “It’s a little hard to figure out
what itch she’s trying to scratch in the Democratic Party right now.”
The Hawaii congresswoman’s presence on
the debate stage is becoming a headache for the party as she uses the
platform to appeal to isolationists, dissatisfied liberals and even
conservatives. She has managed to secure a spot on the debate stage as
more mainstream candidates like Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Gov.
Steve Bullock (D-Mont.) failed to meet polling and donor thresholds to
participate.
Gabbard met with Syrian President
Bashar Assad in 2017 and has repeatedly attacked Clinton’s foreign
policy views, grating on Democrats who’ve broadly supported the
center-left international platform of Democrats in recent decades.
“She has views on foreign policy that
are so outside the mainstream as to be a real liability to the
Democratic Party,” said another Democratic senator, who requested
anonymity to candidly discuss the party’s issue with Gabbard. “It is
corrosive to have folks on that stage who represent views that are
clearly not right.”
Gabbard’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
While Gabbard isn’t exactly gaining
traction in the polls, she does appear to have a loyal following. The
vast majority of her support comes from male voters, according to FiveThirtyEight.
She’s also more likely to attract support from Democratic primary
voters who supported President Donald Trump in 2016, according to a
November poll from The Economist/YouGov.
washingtonexaminer | The Democratic establishment despises the insurgent candidacy of Rep.
Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. From her decision to buck party orthodoxy and
endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 over Democratic National Committee
favorite Hillary Clinton, to her constant criticisms of Democratic
foreign policy mistakes, Gabbard has made herself no friends with the party elite. She's perfectly fine with that if it's required to put the people first.
Still, this means establishment Democrats and their allies regularly smear and attack the Democratic congresswoman. But, as if we need more proof of how deranged the establishment’s hatred for Gabbard has become, the New York Times style section is now criticizing her… wardrobe?
In a piece titled “Tulsi Gabbard’s white pantsuit isn’t winning,” Times
style writer Vanessa Friedman savages the congresswoman for her choice
of wardrobe. Friedman correctly notes that Gabbard has made the white
pantsuit her defining campaign look, wearing the iconic outfit in most
of the debates and much of her prominent campaign promotional material.
Yet where Friedman goes seriously, sinisterly wrong is
arguing that the look isn’t working, and sinking into deranged,
hypocritical attacks on the congresswoman. Friedman argues that when
Hillary Clinton wore white pantsuits, it was feminist and iconic, but
when Gabbard does it, she is “using her white suits to tap into another
tradition, latent in the public memory: the mythical white knight,
riding in to save us all from yet another ‘regime change war.’”
It
gets worse. Friedman continues that Gabbard’s white pantsuits are “the
white of avenging angels and flaming swords, of somewhat combative
righteousness,” and the white of “cult leaders.” Friedman writes that
Gabbard’s wardrobe “has connotations of the fringe, rather than the
center.”
strategic-culture | The developing story about how the US intelligence and national
security agencies may have conspired to influence and possibly even
reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election is compelling,
even if one is disinclined to believe that such a plot would be possible
to execute. Not surprisingly perhaps there have been considerable
introspection among former and current officials who have worked in
those and related government positions, many of whom would agree that
there is urgent need for a considerable restructuring and reining in of
the 17 government agencies that have some intelligence or law
enforcement function. Most would also agree that much of the real damage
that has been done has been the result of the unending global war on
terror launched by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, which has showered
the agencies with resources and money while also politicizing their
leadership and freeing them from restraints on their behavior.
If the tens of billions of dollars lavished on the intelligence
community together with a “gloves off” approach towards oversight that
allowed them to run wild had produced good results, it might be possible
to argue that it was all worth it. But the fact is that intelligence
gathering has always been a bad investment even if it is demonstrably
worse at the present. One might argue that the CIA’s notorious Soviet
Estimate prolonged the Cold War and that the failure to connect dots and
pay attention to what junior officers were observing allowed 9/11 to
happen. And then there was the empowerment of al-Qaeda during the
Soviet-Afghan war followed by failure to penetrate the group once it
began to carry out operations.
More recently there have been Guantanamo, torture in black prisons,
renditions of terror suspects to be tortured elsewhere, killing of US
citizens by drone, turning Libya into a failed state and terrorist
haven, arming militants in Syria, and, of course, the Iraqi alleged
WMDs, the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. And the
bad stuff happened in bipartisan fashion, under Democrats and
Republicans, with both neocons and liberal interventionists all playing
leading roles. The only one punished for the war crimes was former CIA
officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed some of what was
going on.
Colonel Pat Lang, a colleague and friend who directed the Defense
Intelligence Agency HUMINT (human intelligence) program after years
spent on the ground in special ops and foreign liaison, thinks that
strong medicine is needed and has initiated a discussion based on the
premise that the FBI and CIA are dysfunctional relics that should be
dismantled, as he puts it “burned to the ground,” so that the federal
government can start over again and come up with something better.
Lang cites
numerous examples of “incompetence and malfeasance in the leadership of
the 17 agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of
Investigation,” to include the examples cited above plus the failure to
predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the domestic front, he
cites his personal observation of efforts by the Department of Justice
and the FBI to corruptly “frame” people tried in federal courts on
national security issues as well as the intelligence/law enforcement
community conspiracy to “get Trump.”
NYPost | Not content with more than 10 million books sold, a Netflix deal in
the high eight figures, a joint publishing advance with husband Barack
worth $65 million, a highly profitable world tour, speaking fees that by
now surely average around $500,000 per, and a recently acquired
waterfront Martha’s Vineyard mansion purchased for $15 million, Michelle Obama is back with another craven money grab.
Billed as a sequel of sorts to Obama’s best-selling memoir, this
squat, slim volume, priced at $19.99, is Michelle “now provid[ing] you
with the encouragement to find value in your own personal journey,” the
publisher says.
“Printed on cream writing paper, with a grosgrain ribbon,
foil-stamped cover, and removable half-jacket, ‘Becoming’ … includes
thought-provoking prompts designed to help you reflect on your personal
and family history: your goals, challenges and dreams; what moves you
and brings you hope; and what future you imagine for yourself and your
community.”
Axios | "We need to stop believing
that more and bigger is better. We are chasing the wrong things," former
president Barack Obama told a Silicon Valley audience Thursday.
Why it matters:
Obama's warning has an added layer of meaning here, where the tech
industry has grown powerful and rich by mastering the art of "scaling
up."
The big picture: Speaking
at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, Obama traced many of the
problems in today's society to uncertainty fueled by globalization and
automation, along with an underlying misconception of what it takes to
be satisfied.
"What I also see
is just this sense of anxiety and rootlessness and uncertainty in so
many people some of which is fed by globalization and technology," he
said. "So much of the political turmoil we are seeing right now has to
do with people feeling materially insecure."
The bigger picture:
Technology and globalization have "turbocharged" the anxiety, and we
need to deal with the social issues that has created, he said.
"Part
of the goal of solving big problems is not just a matter of finding the
right technical solution," he said. "Part of it is also finding out how
do we restore some sense of our common values."
mises | On Tuesday, Congressional impeachment hearings exposed an interesting
facet of the current battle between Donald Trump and the so-called deep
state: namely, that many government bureaucrats now fancy themselves as
superior to the elected civilian government.
In an exchange between Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Alexander Vindman,
a US Army Lt. Colonel, Vindman insisted that Nunes address him by his
rank.
After being addressed as "Mr. Vindman," Vindman retorted "Ranking Member, it's Lt. Col. Vindman, please."
Throughout social media, anti-Trump forces, who have apparently now
become pro-military partisans, sang Vindman's praises, applauding him
for putting Nunes in his place.
In a properly functioning government — with a proper view of military
power — however, no one would tolerate a military officer lecturing a
civilian on how to address him "correctly."
It is not even clear that Nunes was trying to "dis" Vindman, given
that junior officers have historically been referred to as "Mister" in a
wide variety of times and place. It is true that higher-ranking offers
like Vindman are rarely referred to as "Mister," but even if Nunes was trying to insult Vindman, the question remains: so what?
Military modes of address are for the use of military personnel, and no one else. Indeed, Vindman was forced to retreat on this point
when later asked by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) if he always insists on
civilians calling him by his rank. Vindman blubbered that since he was
wearing his uniform (for no good reason, mind you) he figured civilians ought to refer to him by his rank.
arkansasonline | DNA testing has established, “with scientific certainty,” that Hunter
Biden is the father of an Arkansas baby, according to a motion filed
Wednesday in Independence County on behalf of the child’s mother, Lunden
Alexis Roberts.
Biden, son of former vice president Joe Biden, “is not expected to
challenge the results of the DNA test or the testing process,” the
filing states.
An attorney for Hunter Biden, former Arkansas Attorney General Dustin
McDaniel, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A hearing in the case was previously scheduled for Dec. 2 in Batesville.
The baby’s “paternal grandfather, Joe Biden, is seeking the
nomination of the Democratic Party for President of the United States of
America,” the mother notes. “He is considered by some to be the person
most likely to win his party’s nomination and challenge President Trump
on the ballot in 2020.”
The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette posted a story early this
afternoon about the DNA test-related court filing. Soon after, the Trump
campaign tweeted out a link to the article, adding three words of its
own: "Congratulations, Joe Biden!"
Hunter Biden, who initially denied having sexual relations with
Roberts, eventually agreed to take a DNA test, according to documents
filed by Roberts’ attorney, Clint Lancaster.
Sorry about the irony of using this ABC News Video.
off-guardian | The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time.
It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity,
warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal
Family, whose cupboard stocked with misbehaviours and raunchiness got
just more crowded with the antics of the Duke of York.
Prince Andrew’s performance on Saturday on the BBC’s Newsnight
was an object study of how not to self-exonerate. The prince had been
thick with Epstein, though hardly a luminary when compared to that
particularly chocked address book. The meetings between them were
sufficiently frequent to warrant questions.
Madeleine Aggeler reminds us:
Mar-a-Lago in 2000; his presence at Epstein’s spacious abode in 2010;
the foot massages from “two well-dressed Russian women” in 2013.
But when it came to alleged misdeeds, the prince can count himself
high up in the rankings, with one of Epstein’s accusers, Virginia
Roberts Giuffre, adamant that she was forced when underage to have sex
with the royal on three separate occasions.
In September, it became clear that the FBI was conducting an
investigation into Prince Andrew’s Epstein link. As a member of the US
Department of Justice revealed, “The
US investigation is focusing on several potential victims in the hope
that they can provide more details about Prince Andrew and his
connection to the Epstein case.”
The level of Buckingham Palace’s seriousness regarding such claims is
measured by the degree royal excursions are shortened. The palace has
not been quite so sympathetic to Prince Andrew as they might, a point
made by the shortening of a golf vacation in Spain over the summer.
PCR | With the entirety of the presstitute media endeavoring to turn
second-hand hear-say into an impeachable offense, do not expect to hear
any contrary news. Such as:
NYPost | A congressman from California became the butt of everyone’s joke for appearing to fart on live television Monday night.
Rep. Eric Swalwell was mid-sentence on MSNBC’s “Hardball with Chris Matthews” when it sounded like he let ‘er rip.
“Chris, so far the evidence is uncontradicted that the president used
taxpayer dollars to help him cheat —” Swalwell says with a pause, as
the noise is clearly heard, “— an election.”
But the 39-year-old Democrat, who’s been in Congress since 2013 and
sits on the House Judiciary Committee, was quick to deny the apparent
tummy troubles.
“It is real you can tell the pause he takes to push it out,” one person wrote.
Another noted, “The slight pause as he realizes he can’t hold it in any longer is pure gold.”
“Hardball” issued its own cheeky explanation, blaming the fart faux pas on a production snafu.
“Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theorists – it was the #hardball mug scraping across the desk,” the show’s Twitter page posted. “Get yours today and let’s get back to the news!”
By Tuesday morning, #fartgate was trending on social media.
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