Seeing Through the Lies – US Edition 186


The Guardian newspaper has taken the art of obfuscation, false implication and the subtler forms of journalistic lying to new heights in its very extensive coverage of the Roger Stone sentencing saga. It has now devoted fourteen articles in the last fortnight to this rather obscure episode of American political history. Yet in not one of those articles – nor in more than a dozen articles about the Stone case that preceded it over the last few months – has the Guardian informed its readers what Stone was actually convicted of doing.

Stone was convicted of giving false testimony and misleading the FBI, because he claimed to be a conduit between Wikileaks and Trump when he was not. There was no conduit between Wikileaks and Trump. Stone was also convicted of witness intimidation, because once his fantasies got him into trouble he tried to browbeat my friend Randy Credico into backing up his tale.

The Guardian has, in a feat of some skill, contrived to give its readers the impression that Stone has been convicted for Trump/Wikileaks links, when that is in fact the precise opposite of the truth.

Stone has been convicted for fabricating the existence of Trump/Wikileaks links, of which there were none.

The Guardian has hung its entire corporate personality on Clinton identity politics and its entire financial survival on building a new online customer base among the Clinton electorate in the USA. When even the New York Times had to admit the Mueller report utterly failed to substantiate Clinton’s inane claims that the Russians had caused Clinton’s election defeat, even when a judge dismissed the DNC’s lawsuit against said Russians as being supported by no viable evidence whatsoever, even when the entire world derided the Guardian’s massive front page lie about Paul Manafort visiting Assange in the Embassy, the Guardian has persisted in reporting as fact the preposterous conspiracy theory that its heroine was thwarted from attaining supreme power by the evil machinations of Vladimir Putin.

To maintain this stance in the face of all factual evidence requires great skill and dexterity from Guardian journalists. Fortunately for the Guardian it does not lack for fantasist Russophobe fabricators like Luke Harding or for more subtly corrupt spinners like David Smith, who last week wrote of Stone that “He was the sixth former Trump aide to be convicted in cases arising from the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.”

The oleaginous David Smith omitted to note what any half honest human being would consider a very pertinent fact – that not one of those convictions had anything at all to do with Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, being either entirely unrelated tax and corruption matters turned up while trawling, or as with Stone being questions of process. Stone’s case is unique in that not only did his conviction not relate to any Russian interference, it was for promoting precisely the same ludicrous fantasy that the Guardian is promoting. It was illegal for Stone to persist in telling his lies on oath; there is no legal bar to the Guardian promoting the same Trump/Wikileaks/Russia fantasy ad nauseam.

Yet we have the spectacle of Julian Assange standing before a judge facing extradition to the United States and up to 175 years in jail for “espionage”, when everything Wikileaks has ever published has a 100% record for truth and accuracy.

To finish with Stone, the ludicrous vindictiveness of the prosecutors in pushing for a seven to nine year jail sentence for an offence that was really no more than wasting investigators’ time with his fanatasies, was rightly called out by Donald Trump. The notion that Roger Stone threatened witnesses is problematical. Randy Credico, the only person Stone was convicted of threatening, has written to the judge asking for Stone not to be jailed and making plain he did not feel threatened. He had known Stone for years and was used to his blustering talk, which Randy never took as intended to be a serious threat.

To consider those DNC leaks published by Wikileaks in which Roger Stone claimed falsely to have a part. What the leaks did reveal was the foul play and machinations of the DNC machinery in cheating Bernie Sanders out of the nomination – including jiggling the ordering of primaries specifically to give Hillary “momentum”, and giving Hillary debate questions in advance. Nobody should be surprised to see the same tactics being deployed against Bernie Sanders – whom I should be clear I support strongly – yet again.

The “muddle” that led to CIA-linked Pete Buttigieg being able to claim victory in Iowa, for a crucial five days before the official tallies showed Bernie had in fact won was, I strongly suspect, merely a portent of what is to come. The fact the app that “misfired” was designed by four ex-Clinton staffers working for a company chaired by a Buttigieg team member is indicative of what we can expect over the next few months. The right have yet to decide on their champion to thwart Bernie. Buttigieg and Klobuchar are enjoying moments in the sun of media approval, and the DNC have now changed the rules to allow Bloomberg into future debates. That the Clintonites who have been deriding Sanders as not a Democrat, will actually switch to support Republican billionaire Bloomberg against Sanders, is something I expect to see play out over the next month as it becomes clear that neither Buttigieg nor Klobuchar can stop Bernie.

Here in the UK, I predict Bloomberg supporting Guardian editorials by April.

Still more sinister, the zionist propaganda machine has started to ramp up its attacks on Bernie. In Iowa the AIPAC linked Democrats pressure group Democratic Majority for Israel sprayed money on TV ads attacking Bernie. It is a sign of the times that Bernie Sanders, bidding to become the first Jewish President of the United States, is attacked and undermined by extreme zionists because of his entirely reasonable views on Israel/Palestine.

Despite all of which, opinion polls show Bernie with a clear lead heading towards the Nevada primary. I remain cautiously hopeful that the degree of cheating required to stop Bernie gaining the nomination would simply be too much to hide, and that the Wikileaks DNC revelations may ultimately, by showing up the dirty tricks last time, help Bernie to power this time. We should, however, never underestimate the resources of the financiers and the security state which will be deployed against Bernie in the next few months. It is going to be a fascinating year in US politics. Either the Democrats will pick a right wing standard bearer and lose to Trump, or Bernie will become President. I do not share the general fatalism on the left which deems the latter impossible.

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186 thoughts on “Seeing Through the Lies – US Edition

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  • Ben

    https://www.emptywheel.net/2019/11/18/the-trump-mueller-answer-the-stone-trial-really-implicates-pardoning-assange/

    Credico had long been hostile to any investigation of Stone’s ties to Assange. When Jerry Nadler started asking questions (of Jim Comey) about Stone’s ties to Assange in September 2016, Credico accused Nadler of McCarthyism.

    In early January, 2018, Credico texted to Stone that he would do an interview with Michael Isikoff to make it clear that Assange was “not colluding.”

    Much later — indeed, to this day — Credico would go to great lengths to try to rebut claims that Assange was “colluding.”

    • Johny Conspiranoid

      Perhaps Credico’s hostility was towards saying Stone was tied to Assange when there was no reason to think that.

  • Semanticleo

    Leftists tied to Russian hips have the same quandary as Trumpty Dumpty and Boris…

    Credibility…

  • Ben

    That’s why Trump and his Bumpkin horde are kicking our arses….wake the fuck up. You already have Boris and his minions rising like bile…

  • Baalbek

    So, pretty much everything (and then some) the ‘paranoiacs’ and ‘conspiracy theorists’ warned about after the systematic disassembling of democracy began on 9/12 has happened. Elections are a farce where candidates whom the establishment dislikes are routinely and deliberately smeared by the entire mainstream media apparatus; fact-based criticism of the failing neoliberal global capitalist system and the imperial wars used to uphold it is called “Russian propaganda” or “disinformation” and such content is routinely purged from the internet; the covert surveillance of citizens by state and corporate actors is unprecedented in human history; the media works in conjunction with the security [sic] services and think tanks (i.e. propaganda mills) to bury information that shows the establishment in a negative light and to stuff the public’s collective head with mindless nonsense, lies and spin; a scrupulously honest journalist and publisher and one of his most important sources are languishing in maximum security prisons on bogus charges after being stitched up by the American intelligence “community” and its sycophantic lap dog equivalents in the UK and Sweden; the endless “war on terror” continues, with Israeli-style assassinating of foreign leaders and widespread siege warfare tactics added to the American arsenal; being labelled by the state as a ‘national security threat’ means indefinite detention without charge and/or trumped up charges without the right to a fair trial; countries that once spoke up against the worst excesses and violations of international law committed by the United States an Israel are now silent or openly supportive; the Cold War with Russia has been revived and two other countries, China and Iran, added to the list of self-created ‘adversaries’.

    And this is only a partial list of anti-democratic transgressions undertaken by western governments since 9/11. It is clear the forces upholding the status quo are prepared to pull out all the stops and aggressively defend their illegitimate power no matter what it takes.

    On a slightly different note, fellow keyboard warriors and armchair revolutionaries ought to take note of what is happening in Canada at the moment where coordinated indigenous protests and blockades across the country, in opposition to an oil pipeline being built on their territory, have effectively stopped rail traffic nationwide. The government and business leaders are in panic mode about, what else, the economy. This is a great living lesson on what is required in order to affect change. The state and private sector do not fear people complaining on the internet. They do, however, very much fear people putting aside their differences and wielding real power by using direct action and making coherent demands. This is why the establishment loves identity politics and ‘weaponizing’ immigration…it keeps the proles fighting amongst themselves and blaming the powerless for all their problems, letting the powerful perpetrators of the hook. Unfortunately to many people keep falling for it. This has to be overcome if there is to be any hope for a democratic and peaceful west.

    • David

      you succinctly describe Baalbeck two named programs (possibly the others have names too, but I can’t remember them)

      they are PNAC – program for the new american century, and
      TIA – total information awareness (Poindexter, pentagon)

  • Baalbek

    This interview with Nils Melzer (in English) from a Swiss newspaper is a must read. It is the most comprehensive refutation of the lies and misinformation surrounding the Assange case that I have read, particularly regarding the Swedish “rape charge” and the media lies about his stay at the Ecuadorean embassy, and it is explained in persuasive and easy to understand English.

    I’ve been sending it to MSM Kool Aid drinkers I know and have had two people so far respond that the piece has inspired them to revaluate their position on Assange and Wikileaks.

    https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks-founder-julian-assange

    • Martin

      That’s just the most incredible interview. Also, is it just me or does the whole thing cast so called legal experts, like David Allen Green, who piled onto JA as being inconceivably gullible at best? Not knowing anything about law I often found stuff like this quite convincing at the time:
      https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/09/legal-mythology-extradition-julian-assange

      In hindsight the obvious things he inexplicably overlooks just don’t seem consistent with a claim to any kind of genuine legal expertise. And that’s the generous interpretation!

      • Shatnersrug

        The last paragraph of that interview should alarm everyone in the west

        “What are the consequences?
        As the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and, before that, as a Red Cross delegate, I have seen lots of horrors and violence and have seen how quickly peaceful countries like Yugoslavia or Rwanda can transform into infernos. At the roots of such developments are always a lack of transparency and unbridled political or economic power combined with the naivete, indifference and malleability of the population. Suddenly, that which always happened to the other – unpunished torture, rape, expulsion and murder – can just as easily happen to us or our children. And nobody will care. I can promise you that.”

        In particular this line “ At the roots of such developments are always a lack of transparency and unbridled political or economic power combined with the naivete, indifference and malleability of the population.”

        We are all in this state right now and we are all fulminating with rage, some of us at the right people most of us at the scapegoat. But it is rage and when it blows up we are all capable of fanning the flames of atrocity.

        It’s terrifying stuff, and not Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgoen, Keir Starmer, Nigel Farage, Ed Davies or any of the others no how to confront it. It’s a collective sickness and we are all infected.

  • Antonym

    The Guardian newspaper has taken the art of obfuscation, false implication and the subtler forms of journalistic lying to new heights
    Bolew another recent example in this article of Feb. 12th: Mass melting of Antarctic ice sheet led to three metre sea level rise 120,000 years ago
    ‘Their study finds that melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet caused a sea-level rise of more than three metres and it took less than 2C of ocean warming for that to occur.”
    Later on Lisa Fox writes: ‘Countries have signed on to the Paris agreement which aims to keep global heating below 2C”

    The scientists wrote about 2C sea water temperature rise, while Fox seamlessly writes about 2C air temperature rise, an enormously different metric.

  • Antonym

    Didn’t know Sanders was Jewish. Anyway, the US MIC will love him because he is old, weak (see DNC 2016 machinations) and not a billionaire with independent funds so no match for them.
    They love all present candidate puppets except Tulsi Gabbard, so she will have no chance.

    • Stonky

      zoot is right. It’s clear that no one to the left of Tony Blair will ever be allowed to win an election in the UK again. It will be interesting to see how things pan out with Bernie in the US.

  • Johny Conspiranoid

    Bernie will become president if he gets to be the candidate and there isn’t too much vote rigging. There is not much chance of either of those things happening. That said his foreign policy isn’t much different from Obama’s anyway.
    I wonder if there will be a down turn in Jewish support for Israel as a result of Israel’s behaviour.

  • Minority of One

    >>extreme zionists

    I am not sure that there is such a thing as an extreme zionist.
    Zionists are usually extreme in their behaviour and opinions. That is the impression I get, and they don’t seem to be very tolerant of their fellow Jews who don’t agree with them.

    • giyane

      Minority of One

      Imho a normal zionist supports the existence of Israel, rather like I supported Brexit. But an extreme zionist wants the Palestinians to be exterminated, and Mrs May took an extreme view of Brexit, that Brits hate woggery in all its forms. I have no problem with an integrated Israel which accepts that this is a place which is sacred to Jews , Christians , Muslims and others. It is a blessed place which should be shared on pluralist terms.
      David Davies was on the Today programme this morning arguing that the salary cap for immigration is nearly the same as the average British income. It is now impossible for a Romanian who wants to study Law in England and earn enough to support their studies from casual labour in their spare time to prove that salary, even if that is what they are actually earning. I couldn’t prove it about myself even. So if I can’t prove it and I am born here, how can a foreigner possibly prove it. It’s a totally impossible situation.

      An extreme zionist is one who stacks so much against the equality of its citizens that they cannot sustain any normality of human existence. As a result, imho, Tory racist Brexit and extreme zionism are exactly one and the same thing. A populist mindset that declares that anybody who isn’t a Tory or a Zionist doesn’t deserve to belong to this or that society. This is not just Eugenics, this is political apartheid. If I vote Labour, I am no longer welcome to stay in my own home. It’s as bad as that, and the rigging of the election will bring about an exodus from the UK, not only of Scotland and Northern Ireland, but millions of disaffect young people on the scale of the exodus of the Pilgrim Fathers.

      Extreme zionism wants vengeance not just for Nazi concentration camps but for the Captivity in 740 BC.
      They will never be happy until conditions in this country are unsustainable for most people.
      Zionism in this country has come to mean war on the poor as well as war on the Palestinians.

    • John Cowan

      Giyane has it right. The overwhelming majority of American Jews (about 6 million, roughly the same as the number of Israeli Jews) are Zionists in the sense that they support the existence (not necessarily all of the policies) of Israel. I feel reasonably confident that the 2 million Jews in the rest of the world agree. The chief exceptions are some (but not all) Haredi (“ultra-Orthodox”) Jews who believe that a Jewish state in the Holy Land is only permissible after the coming of the Messiah. It’s just that extreme Zionists get most of the publicity, as with other extremists.

      Two Jews are shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. After 27 years, their rescuers find the two living in ramshackle huts by the beach and living on fish. But further inland there are three magnificently built synagogues. One of the rescuers says, “Excuse me, but why are there three synagogues?”

      “Simple,” says one of the residents. “He goes to his, I go to mine, and we both boycott that son-of-a-bitch on the hill.”

  • Giyane

    The BBC reports on itself this morning, as it often does, that Rusbridger says it is the glue that binds the country together.
    I agree with him that that is what the BBC is , until last year’s election. Then we had an overwhelming bias against labour, preparing us for the rigged result. This has been followed by a charade of Johnson’s government pretending to be unhappy with the BBC, AS IF, it had not used them as the main campaign tool during the election.

    We know who won the battle between Blair and the BBC the last time our intelligence services used the BBC to shove its war agenda up the noses of the electorate. I have no doubt that this government has been illegitimately put together as a tool for war, targeted at the Syrian conundrum of MI6’s total failure to depose Assad using its proxy terrorists..

    If our intelligence services are stupid enough to sacrifice the glue that binds our society together, to salvage their own incompetence, and they certainly are that stupid, then we here in Britain will end up like the US, up the creek without a paddle against the military industrial banking , taking us to war ,taking us to the cleaners and taking the mick with our reputations for the sake of theirs.

    We have to protest against this abuse of power using the BBC to manipulate public opinion and rig the election, or we will face the shenanigans of the US elections here.
    We are already there if we don’t protest vigorously about the rigged result. Will I sign an AAVAZ petition? Who they? And who do they work for?

      • giyane

        J

        Previous contact with avaaz led to being bombarded with emails on every subject.
        It seems a funny way to have to raise questions which are so central and so obvious, to have to sign a foreign campaigning group petition. Are there no MPs questioning the result? My MP Liam Byrne had only a tiny dent in his majority which is what I expected to happen. He opposes Corbyn and he would vote for Middle East war without the slightest compunction.

        Nandy opposes Corbyn. But is the entire Labour Party supine? Are the unions totally tamed? It all looks as though the Labour Party wanted this defeat so that they could get rid of Corbyn and bin the electorate that voted for him. If the unions want Nandy, who assisted Owen Smith, it’s time to bin the unions. What you’re afraid to lose, you will lose anyway. If the Labour Party split, only the Corbyn supporters would be capable of ever winning a future election. And then we would be in exactly the same position as the US, with two shades of a permanent right wing.

        • SA

          Giyane
          I find myself in the same situation as previously during the gulf war when I resigned from the Labour Party. I find it difficult to vote for any of this lot who have pledged good behaviour to an outside organisation. Initially I thought Kier Starmer would be a good interim leader but I am not so sure now.
          It would probably be best if a new party called the socialist party, with a truly socialist programme and completely indipendent of the Blairos forms. I would certainly think seriously of joining such a party.

          • Watt

            Why not ‘Democratic Socialist Labour Party’, since the current ‘Labour Party’ are none of the above, and ‘labour’ is a word in its own right, not open to copyright! No squabbling over that name, then. A few hundred thousand genuine socialists new members overnight if all of the disillusioned members quit.

      • giyane

        Mary

        The BBC know full well what they’ve done. Since the subject of popular fascination is supposed to be the exciting things the new government is planning, the pit-bulls are quiet, snoozing on their doggy beds in the family home. Resting their jaws from savaging Corbyn.

        • Mary

          This clown hasn’t got it yet.

          ‘There is a general rule of thumb I follow in politics: if the Tories want to get rid of something, it’s almost certainly worth saving. That is certainly the case with the BBC. I love the BBC, and unlike my fellow candidates for Labour deputy leader, I am not ashamed to say so.

          I didn’t expect the future of something as precious as the BBC to be a dividing line in this contest, but it clearly demonstrates the need for our party to change. Replacing the BBC licence fee with a Netflix-style subscription would be an unpardonable folly that will have wide-ranging consequences for our country.

          It would force the BBC to sell most of its flagship radio stations and cut down its world-leading website content. In the era of fake news and conspiracy theory blogs, the BBC is respected around the world for its impartiality. Taking away people’s access to its coverage would be to the detriment of our society.

          https://labourlist.org/2020/02/as-labours-deputy-leader-i-would-proudly-champion-the-bbc/

          Ian Murray Lab MP Edinburgh South

          • ross81

            “Impartiality”

            hahaha, the cheerleaders of wars on Iraq, Libya and Syria is impartial? Complete and utter idiot.

      • pete

        Re Kuenssberg silence.

        There is a reason for that, Laura has to be packed in ice between performances as she can overheat.

        • SA

          Laura hyperbole Keunsberg thinks she is a profound thinker but comes out like a children’s story teller. I don’t know why they don’t sack her and appoint the straight talking, far more intelligent Katie Adler.

    • Kim Sanders-Fisher

      Giyane – I have clearly stated that the Petition I created is hosted “on AVAAZ.” It is among other community Petitions hosted on their site; this distinguishes it from being an “AVAAZ Petition.” These days it is really hard to establish, with any degree of certainty, where to go and who can be trusted. The truth is very few organizations can be totally trusted 100%, but we must use all of the tools that are still available to us.

      By delegitimizing the fake news of a Tory landslide victory and working hard towards ousting Boris Johnson and his team from power we can set a vital example to the world, so I chose a hosting site with wide global reach. The rigging of elections is being coordinated globally by a few very powerful individuals using their excessive wealth to exploit known weaknesses in the Electoral System and use PsyOps data driven propaganda to manipulate the masses; watch a segment of the Democracy Now Documentary on “The Great Hack:” “Facebook is a Crime Scene.” https://tinyurl.com/yx4ffbfh

      If, through our Petitions, we increase public awareness of the corruption that occurred in the UK 2019 General Election, force an investigation to reveal the truth and correct the injustice, several malevolent foreign influences will be very publically discredited at a crucial time in the run up to the US Elections. This could have a serious impact not just for eradicating the damage to British politics but implications far beyond the UK to critically expose the exact same people who manoeuvred Trump into office in 2016 as they plan to use identical tactics to rig the US Presidential vote yet again.

      https://www.democracynow.org/2020/1/7/the_great_hack_cambridge_analytica
      I included the above Link to an interesting PBS Documentary Now Broadcast featuring the Documentary film “The Great Hack” in my latest entry on the Discussion thread: “Elections Aftermath; Was our 2019 Vote & the EU Referendum Rigged?” Also on this same thread you will find links to several other Petitions calling into question various aspects of both the ease of rigging the UK Election Process and BBC /Media bias that is rampantly out of control. Do check out this trove of Petitions at: https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/elections-aftermath-was-our-2019-vote-the-eu-referendum-rigged-toryrig2019/

      We cannot achieve the crucial goal of exposing the truth while the general public remains in a state of perpetual apathy. There are numerous people out there with far stronger social media connections than I have that could do their bit to publicize this important cause on various platforms and persuade a professional investigative journalist to work on this. My Petition focuses on the urgent need to secure UK elections by exposing the well recognized flaws in our Electoral System; this is only possible with an investigation of the 2019 vote. Do please read, sign, share and Link to the Petition:
      2019 TORY LANDSLIDE VICTORY DEMANDS URGENT NATIONWIDE INVESTIGATION. https://tinyurl.com/w4u9dwm

      • SA

        Kim
        I am surprised that your petition has only gathere 400 odd signatures. Even in this blog it seems people have not signed it. Has for example giyane signed it?
        All attempts at giving your thread in the discussion forum higher visibility have also failed. Pleas to Craig to give this a higher profile by writing about it have gone unheeded.
        It is like the story of Cassandra who clearly saw doom ahead but the god’s curse was that her true warnings went unheeded.

      • J

        Crowd funding to place an advert in every national paper featuring stories of only recently delivered ballots, signature rejected ballots etc, asking people to respond and ask friends and family whether their postal vote was delivered before the election, counted, rejected etc, create a database of the responses and match the data with a detailed breakdown of the election results. I want to test this theory.

  • Anthony

    Roger Stone is a ludicrous figure only a mother could love; but his recommended sentence is more preposterous still. Especially when you consider none of the Watergate burglars or conspirators got more than 18 months. Stone is also at the mercy of a jury whose forewoman has been pictured cavorting with former DNC Chairwoman Donna Brazille. As for the Guardian, it is pretty clear there are no limits to its bad faith disinformation.

    I see no legacy media outlet has reported Twitter’s shut down of the Wikileaks account on the eve of the JA extradition trial.

    • giyane

      Anthony

      ” I see no legacy media outlet has reported Twitter’s shut down of the Wikileaks account.. ”

      Presumably because whoever told Twitter to shut it down also told MSM to shut down discussion of it being shut down. It being shut down must increase Julian Assange’s feeling of isolation, but so far as I can see Twitter can be a 2 edged sword, opening a door to venom as well as support. Not everyone can have a secret door in their bedroom with a large office full of political nerds supporting Trump and his supposedly spontaneous ” tweets “, and defending his ears from criticism.

      Steve Bell shows a lobotomised Bojosbumcheeks, being assisted by a chimera octupus with fingers in many pies.

      Steve Bell’s If … Dominic Cummings puts his big brain to work [Web archive]

      And then there’s poor Caroline Flack , left defenceless and alone.

      • Anthony

        They’re clearly trying to stop any unfiltered information getting out about the trial. (Agree btw that Twitter is a horrendous medium in terms of the sick and deflective responses.)

    • Tony

      The Watergate burglars deliberately left clues so that the operation could be traced back to the White House. That is because they were still secretly working for the CIA which wanted to bring Nixon down.

      President Ford pardoned Nixon because he threatened to, amongst other things, reveal Ford’s role in falsifying President Kennedy’s autopsy report. A bullet had struck Kennedy at the bottom of his neck at the front. By changing the position of a bullet hole in the President’s back it was possible to portray the neck wound as an exit rather than an entrance wound.

      This is why Ford pardoned Nixon against all the wishes of his advisors. The threat to ‘reveal all’ was made by Nixon to General Alexander Haig who played a crucial role in the coup against him. Nixon’s policies had not only alienated the CIA but also the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

      The Watergate story was strongly pursued by the Washington Post which had strong ties to the CIA at that time.

  • Harold Palmer

    I have £10 on Hilary @ 22/1, I think everyone else is just a distraction.

    Why is Michael Bloomberg, Knight of the British Empire, running for president?
    https://www.bollyn.com/b/

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/01/shes-not-gone-yet-hillary-feels-urge-to-run/

    http://www.womensystems.com/2020/01/sanders-camp-livid-if-dnc-believes-its.html
    “the appointment of Hillary Clinton lackeys John Podesta and former Rep. Barney Frank to the rules committee that will oversee the party platform at their nominating convention.”

    https://theslanted.com/2019/12/36972/hulu-hillary-clinton-documentary-premiere/
    Release date March 6th

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mike-bloomberg-trojan-horse-clintonista-revival

    It’s just a fun bet, if I’m going to follow another US election I might as well add a little interest.
    Her odds were 80/1 to win the Pres. Election but people will have to die for that to happen and surely she wouldn’t go that far, would is she ?

    Apologies for all the links but it was the quickest way to tell the story.

    • Paul Spencer

      How about 2 pints instead? Might take a year or two for me to get over there, but I’ll take your marker.

  • Magic Robot

    Charter 88, proposed a written constitution for GB & NI.

    https://unlockdemocracy.org.uk/resources-index/2016/07/04/charter-88

    But failed to prevent the new law being passed:

    The Official Secrets Act 1989 contains no mention of section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, thereby removing ‘the public interest’ defence created by that section. In practice, even if an official were brave enough to speak out, anyone publishing this knowledge would also face a term in prison.

    The rot set in over 30 years ago.

  • Trowbridge H. Ford

    THink the relation is more complicated.

    You should say something about the crime syndicate. the Israeli Lobby, Bibi; and how Trump launders money, repudiates debt and uses his position to make money; and how the GNM makes money.

  • Rhys Jaggar

    I actually think that Sanders should run as an Independent if dirty tricks deny him the nomination by foul means.

    He did the decent thing last time around and much good has it done him.

    He should take his supporters with him and say: ‘at least Trump believes in being a Republican: why should true Democrats have a faux Republican candidate foisted upon them?’

    You will not break the oligarchy’s ‘you can have our blue bastard or our elephantine bastard, but you can never have your bastard!’ approach to politics without offering voters a clear choice distinct from the Establishment stitch up.

    • N_

      If Bernie Sanders is stitched up by the party leadership, he “should” run as an independent and win. I’d love to see that. But it comes as a package – the “win” is an indispensable part of what I’d like to see. Unfortunately if Sanders does run as an independent, rather than winning he would probably bring about a Trump landslide. He took the right decision in 2016. This isn’t comparable to Ken Livingstone in London. Which makes me curious as to what Ken advises. Then again, if Democrat versus Repuglican turns out to be one New York billionaire against another New York billionaire, seriously, why bother voting for either of them? What matters right now is that as many people as possible put some effort into helping Sanders win the Democratic nomination. No whingeing, just win.

    • Courtenay Barnett

      Rhys,

      If Sanders did run as an ‘independent’ – all that would do is:-

      1. Hurt the Demoratic base by dividing their votes between the Sandernistas and the traditional Democrat support base.

      2. The logic outcome would be that the scenario at 1 above would work in Trump’s favour.

  • N_

    Britain left the EU on 31 January 2020. Since then:

    1. The British media gave wide coverage to a “Happy Brexit Day” poster that was stuck up in a block of flats in Norwich demanding that immigrants should either speak English or “return” to the place they “came from”.

    2. The prime minister hired an out-and-out racist as his adviser and then refused to answer when asked whether he agreed with the said adviser’s expression of racial hatred against black people.

    3. The government announced a short time later that it was toughening Britain’s immigration policy by introducing a White Australian White Points System. (There may be a clue in the name.)

    4. The Daily Heil writes that “shopkeepers and home owners can only watch as the Severn surges inches from the top of its flood barrier”.

    What about tenants? What about people who only visit business premises such as shops when we want to buy stuff? It doesn’t matter what those guttersnipes watch or don’t watch, right, because who wants to hear about those dirty b*stards’ experiences? Their viewpoint doesn’t matter any more than it matters whether a bunch of “losers” in a foreign country, or for that matter a bunch of British “losers” in Britain, get locked up because they’ve caught the plague. Cruel and terrified Heil readers probably believe that anyone in Britain who gets locked up for having the plague gets given a free television set. Such trash don’t wash their hands enough, right? Not like clean Daily Mail readers, and lovely Enoch Powell who was so persecuted.

    Of course when the same people drag their knuckles to the polling stations to vote against dirty foreigners British membership of the EU, naturally they receive the highest level of respect that the Heil has on offer.

    • Magic Robot

      N_
      February 19, 2020 at 16:55
      “vote against dirty foreigners British membership of the EU”
      Nothing of the sort.
      I believe they voted against the employer’s ‘free trade’ policy in labour that was undercutting British worker’s wages. The same capitalist policies that were promoted in 1910 and partly led to the Great War.
      You’ve never involuntarily had to stand in the dole queue, have you.
      Marxist? Pshaw!

  • Dungroanin

    Nothing in the msm, we are under wartime reporting restrictions in a junta run post coup state – while the dumbed down worry if they’ll get their fix of Love Island soma.

    The eyeball to eyeball gunfight stand-off is upon us.

    Who is going to blink first?

    A new Yalta is imminent.

    bernards latest gives the running commentary on the high-noon!
    https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/02/syria-turkeys-bluff-is-called-media-opposition-sources-run-by-british-intelligence.html#more

  • Ben

    Trump continues to pardon fellow partners in white collar crime, with a democrat in the mix for bipartisanship.

    But they still oppose street crime to make life safer for the bizness thuggery.

    Assange and Stone are assured.

  • remember kronstadt

    Loving Bernie but have a very bad feeling about both his POTUS fair chances and his safety. Looking back over the postwar political class and the unfolding and newly revealed downright badness that underlaid a great deal of business it appears that secrets were kept and breaches covered rather effectively if temporarily. A propriety of legality and fairness, albeit token, was self approved and society(no such thing) was polite. In the last few years a new punk political order has emerged that is shameless. For example, lying is now more honest than truth. People have their own reasons to do whatever they need to do and thereby justify anything. Cocking a snook at reality and truth is a rub your face in it medal of honour – this is the world now so get used to it. I don’t think Bernie can servive this – topical and threatened US oil, as with dead other dead hopefuls, will see to it.

    • michael norton

      Here is the thing, many counties are shitting themselves about global warming,
      U.K. is set to give up diesel/petrol by 2035.
      Bang goes the economy of Scotland.
      Bang goes the economy of the U.K.
      no more fuel tax, no more road fund tax.
      World GDP will plummet like a lead weight.
      Bang goes the economy of the U.S.A. the dollar is linked to OIL.

      So how is the new electric World expected to pan out for the West?
      How is it expected to pan out for the Middle East/Saudi?

      This is BIG news
      and it will not be allowed to happen.

      • Hove Actually

        Be of good cheer. There are so many non fuel products manufactured from plastics, either partly or completely obtained from oil.
        it would take more time than you or I have got to list them all. Everything from newspaper inks to household paints, from chewing gum to glues. Even if they banned diesel and petrol engines tomorrow, we’d still need oil and lots of it.

        • Kempe

          Globally 50% of oil is used in transportation, 3% for making plastics (which we’re also being urged to give up) and 4% on lubricants (stop sniggering at the back). Aviation will continue to need oil derived fuel for a while so keep flying!

          • Hove Actually

            Good morning, Michael. think the greatest problem for the UK government is the addiction to oil revenues. The advent of electric vehicles is the harbinger of road taxation. As the fuel duty income drops so will rise the necessity to find alternative revenue streams.
            M25 turnpike being most profitable. Though if it turnsinto a goldmine I wouldn’t mind betting it would either be part privatised or flogged off to Ithe Americans. To be piloted first in Scotland!

          • michael norton

            Gas heating is to be eliminated from all Historic Environment Scotland (HES) buildings, including Edinburgh Castle, by 2032.
            HES said it aimed to be “net-zero” by 2045 in line with the Scottish government’s target!
            https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-51561622
            Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: “The historic environment has a critical role to play in our response to the global climate emergency.

            So what will Scotland do with all its gas wells
            and the people who earn their living from the Hydrocarbon industries, how will they earn their living?
            I’ve got a relative in Scotland who works on a wind farm but not everyone who works in Hydrocarbons can get jobs on wind farms?

    • Dungroanin

      Cuckoo indeed.

      Can anyone really trust Starmer?

      He needs to come out immediately for Assange and explain his actions when the stitch up happened on HIS watch.

      It has to be Long-Bailey otherwise for these who want a REAL change.

      I have fallen out with many social justice warrior friends who are inveterate Groaniad suckers that there really were NO rape charges against JA. They are thick as shit and are heading for a huge fall.

  • Athanasius

    Lefties tell lies the way the rest of us tell the truth: it’s the default. When you assume the existence of some ineffable “spirit of the ages” entity moving through history and advancing humanity towards a glittering city on a hill, empty and only waiting for us to get there and move in, then the nobility of your cause excuses any sin you commit in its service. In short, it’s not wrong when WE do it. And anyway, it’s only lying about Orange Man, and…you know…shoes.

    • Ben

      No one group can compete with conservative prevarication. You excuse the corruption of your favs with extreme Whataboutery.

        • Bayard

          “Everybody lies. Only lefties think it’s not a problem.”
          Now that is not true, as anyone who has more of a passing acquaintance with our PM can easily see.

      • Bayard

        It may be only half the truth (“Righties tell lies …etc. is also true, as you point out.), but that doesn’t stop it being true in itself.

  • Ben

    In a pre-hearing hearing in London today, a lawyer for Julian Assange said they’d call a witness who would testify that Julian Assange was offered a pardon if he would say that Russia wasn’t behind the 2016 hack.

    This has led to people discovering for the first time the abundant evidence that Assange and the Trump Administration were discussing pardons in a bunch of different contexts. They weren’t all, at all, an exchange for Assange’s false testimony about his ties to Russia. That’s just the only legally convenient one Assange can mention, because the others involve extortion (either a quid pro quo for the initial campaign dirt, or an offer to limit the damage of the Vault 7 leak in exchange for immunity) that would easily reach the bar for extradition.

    https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/02/19/back-channel-how-sean-hannity-came-to-believe-every-word-assange-says/

    • Dungroanin

      Run that past us again slowly especially the last bit which seems to say JA is guilty as not charged. Why the fake rape crap then?

    • Courtenay Barnett

      Ben,

      “They weren’t all, at all, an exchange for Assange’s false testimony about his ties to Russia.”

      What ties to Russia, in point of fact, did Assange actually have?

    • N_

      The rule in English criminal trials by jury is that a defence barrister can’t mention in court the rejected offer of a plea bargain, although there’s no bar on a defendant representing himself doing it. (See the Randle and Pottle case.) What are the precedents when a foreign administration that is seeking extradition offered a deal in which it would desist, perhaps before it became the administration and merely took the form of a political campaign to get a strongman elected? The defence should call the extradition application an abuse of process.

      Julian Assange should say whatever he has to say to get himself freed. Then go somewhere and recant if he likes. Once he’s outside the clutches of the poshboy royalists and the cowboy gunslingers he can stick two fingers up at them, and good luck to him.

  • Ben

    https://www.emptywheel.net/2020/02/19/back-channel-how-sean-hannity-came-to-believe-every-word-assange-says/

    But now that Assange is preparing to unpack one point of blackmail he has against Trump — and given the abundant effort we’ve seen that various people (including but not limited to Paul Manafort) use Sean Hannity as a back channel to the President — it’s time for folks to reconsider the Sean Hannity interview of Julian Assange from early January, 2017, just days after Roger Stone was known to be pursuing a pardon for Assange.

  • David

    Tonight in usa the Dem candidates (& Bloomberg) debated.
    Bloomberg’s $400M campaign blipverts proved useless as he had a meltdown and did not debate successfully. Another debate next week, Bloomberg (NDA-party) cee you next Tuesday.
    Bernie Sanders did OK, but there’s still a spectre of last-times’ DNC ‘super delegates’ which could derail his humourless, but sincere, crack at opposing The Donald.
    America probably isn’t ready for a straight guy who аллегедлу honeymooned in the СССР.

    Still looks like another 4 years….

      • David

        four more years of this:-

        can you give a summary of the CIA’s role in the 2016 election, what led up to them being a more politically driven organization and what can be done to remedy that?

        About that I don’t know more than anybody else, I know the CIA very well having superintended it for 8 years and continuing contact with it, for better or worse it really hasn’t changed very much, it has changed some, in the same direction. Look when I was involved in it, it’s interference in politics was through the policy process, you see, now they’ve gone directly to ad hominem involvement, which is something else, not that you couldn’t see this happening, but it really hadn’t happened yet.

        So you’ve written that ‘senior intelligence officials were the key element in the war on Donald Trump’s candidacy and presidency.’ Could you expand on that?

        Oh absolutely, yes of course. I mean look, the talk about the so called uncertainty about who sicced [professors] [Joseph] Mifsud and Stef Halper onto the Trump people is nonsense, both of these people were strictly CIA assets. I mean I’ve known Stef Halper for 40 years. This had to be done by Brennan….. etc

    • Tony

      But the Grain is still lying. It is still trying to frame the story that Stone actually had a backdoor to Wikileaks through Randy Credico, and makes no mention of the fact that Credici testified that Stone was lying about the connection, and that it was this lie that got him convicted.

    • OnlyHalfALooney

      Roger Stone, a longtime ally of Donald Trump and a self-described political dirty trickster, is set to be sentenced on Thursday for his attempts to sabotage a congressional investigation that posed a political threat to the president.

      Do you see what the filthy Guardian is doing? Suggesting Stone was “sabotaging” the congressional investigation to protect/on behalf of Trump. This is simply not the truth.

      It is also very questionable whether Stone’s (admittedly false) testimony was intended to “sabotage” the investigation.

      Note that the text can be interpreted in various ways, presumably to suggest involvement by Trump but protect themselves if legally challenged.

      I don’t even look at the Guardian website any more. It makes me too angry and it’s bad for my well-being. I urge others to simply ignore that ragsheet fulll of stinking lies.

  • Brianfujisan

    Here is A Letter released today by World-wide journalists –

    World-wide journalists condemn court action against Julian Assange

    1200 journalists from 98 countries have released a joint statement today in defence of Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, in the lead up to proceedings in a UK court to extradite him to the United States to face the espionage charges. The court case begins on 24 February.

    “It is very rare for journalists to join together and speak up on an issue. Indeed, the size and breadth of this joint journalists’ statement may be unprecedented,” spokesperson Serena Tinari said.

    The journalists statement calls for Julian Assange to be released immediately from prison, and for the extradition proceedings and espionage charges against him to be dropped.

    They write: “We urge our fellow journalists to inform the public accurately about this abuse of fundamental rights. We urge all journalists to speak up in defense of Julian Assange at this critical time. Dangerous times call for fearless journalism.”

    https://www.pressenza.com/2020/02/world-wide-journalists-condemn-court-action-against-julian-assange/?

    • Borncynical

      Thanks for this, Brian

      Some interesting names on the list of signatories. I have been through the list and counted up 69 ‘UK’ signatories. Everyone who has signed deserves credit. Many of the UK names came as no surprise. But familiar ‘mainstream’ or ex-mainstream names which jumped out at me were: George Monbiot, Paul Mason, John Sergeant, Cat Wiener (BBC Radio), Ewan MacAskill (former senior reporter, The Guardian), Eric Allison (Prisons correspondent, The Guardian). No other ‘high level’ mainstream journalists feature, only those whom I have already named with BBC connections, and no one listed at all from Channel 4, Sky or ITN.

      • Brianfujisan

        Borncynical.. Yes I seen Mason, And Monbiot and the others names.

        I was going through the names again and then searching for some of their Sites / work.
        some very interesting Stuff in there, and it will take ages do go through them all.

        I found Pablo Navarrete, Founder of Alborada Films, TeleSUR to be interesting,
        And Leah Borromeo’s, Disobedient Films,
        Jane Whyatt led me to the ECPMF site.. There’s just so much in all those new names
        I was on Vanessa beeley’s site just last night.

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