THE NEOCON PLAYBOOK IS A RECIPE FOR DISASTER IN VENEZUELA

Posted on February 15, 2019 by Reid Mukai

Neocon Nosferatu: Making South America Great Again. Photo credit: DonkeyHotey / WhoWhatWhy (CC BY-SA 2.0)

By Klaus Marre and Donkeyhotey

When Donald Trump promised that he would only hire the “best people,” maybe he should have been pressed on what, exactly, they would be good at. Because it’s clearly not running the US government. Over the past two years, it has become clear that liars, grifters, conmen, opportunists, and crooks seem to be drawn to the president like flies to … well, you know.

Now, however, a situation is arising for which one of Trump’s “best people” seems ideally suited for forcing regime change somewhere in the Americas.

At a time when the president seems intent on getting the US out of Syria and Afghanistan, he appears to be equally determined to plunge headfirst into the chaos in Venezuela.

His point person for this adventure is Elliott Abrams, who has a long history of mucking around in the US’s backyard — often with dubious methods. In other words, he’ll fit right in.

To those unfamiliar with Abrams, here are the CliffsNotes: In the early 1980s, Abrams served as assistant secretary of state for human rights, which, in retrospect, seems like some kind of cruel joke. In that position, Abrams once stated that former Guatemalan leader General Efraín Ríos Montt “brought considerable progress” to human rights in his country. In case you are not familiar with Ríos Montt, he was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013.

Abrams’s motives back then seemed to be consistent with the goals of the military-industrial complex: He wanted an embargo on military aid to Guatemala to be lifted. Just as an aside, and unrelated to Abrams but possibly relevant to Venezuela, the CIA-engineered coup in Guatemala in 1954 did nothing to stabilize the country and led to a brutal and lengthy civil war.

Around the same time, Abrams sought to downplay reports of a massacre in El Salvador and testified before the Senate that the incident was being used for guerilla propaganda. A decade later, however, the UN-approved Salvadoran Truth Commission found that more than 500 civilians were “deliberately and systematically” murdered during that massacre. At the time, the Reagan administration was worried about El Salvador becoming a communist country and falling under the influence of the Soviet Union and spent billions to provide weapons to El Salvador’s military. Oh, and there was a brutal and lengthy civil war.

But Abrams truly left his mark when trying to solicit funding for the Nicaraguan Contras from the Sultan of Brunei. He later tried to cover up what happened and ended up pleading guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress. He was pardoned by George H.W. Bush. All of this, of course, had to do with the US government supporting far-right “rebels” in Nicaragua and it involves a lengthy civil war that took a terrible toll on the country.

You may be detecting a pattern here.

We were certainly skeptical when it was announced that Abrams would be the special envoy for Venezuela. Throw in John Bolton and you have all of the ingredients you need for another neocon clusterfuck.

While Venezuela seems in urgent need of assistance, history has shown time and again that when the US “helps” in the Americas, almost everybody ends up worse than before — apart from the new US-backed right-wing regime and the people who supply the weapons. Just ask Abrams, who has had a front-row seat for some of the worst examples.

Based on his track record, he will make a terrible situation much worse. But maybe that’s the plan. And then he would certainly be the right man for the job.

Some interesting new information about 9/11

Posted on February 14, 2019 by Reid Mukai

Source: TruePublica.org

TruePublica Editor: We have published almost nothing about 9/11 on TruePublica. When independent news outlets do, they are immediately branded by the mainstream media and so-called ‘fact-checkers’ as conspiracy theorists. The BBC makes this point precisely in a 2018 article that starts like this – “On 11 September 2001, four passenger planes were hijacked by radical Islamist terrorists – almost 3,000 people were killed as the aircraft were flown into the World Trade Centre, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field. Just hours after the collapse of New York’s Twin Towers, a conspiracy theory surfaced online which persists more than 16 years later.”

The entire article is dedicated to all the ‘conspiracy theories’ involved in 9/11 and makes a mockery of anyone or anything that questions the official government line. They even heavily mock the brother of one man killed in 9/11 and frankly, true or not, the BBC’s report itself is rather sickening to read.

And yet, here we are, all these years later and it’s hardly surprising the theories of a conspiracy continue.

A 2016 study from Chapman University in California, found more than half of the American people believe the government is concealing information about the 9/11 attacks. This is in part because, large sections of the official US government report were redacted for years – and is still missing to this day.

The big problem is that the government is withholding crucial evidence. And then there’s other evidence the state and mainstream media refuse to even consider.

Paul Craig Roberts is an American economist and former United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan. Roberts was an associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and has received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the United States.

Roberts wrote this really interesting piece of information just a few days ago that the mainstream media has been completely silent about: “Although the United States is allegedly a democracy with a rule of law, it has taken 17 years for public pressure to bring about the first grand jury investigation of 9/11. Based on the work of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth led by Richard Gage, first responder and pilots organizations, books by David Ray Griffin and others, and eyewitness testimony, the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry has presented enough hard facts to the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York to force his compliance with the provisions of federal law that require the convening of a federal grand jury to investigate for the first time the attacks of September 11, 2001. https://www.lawyerscommitteefor9-11inquiry.org

This puts the US Justice (sic) Department in an extraordinary position. There will be tremendous pressures on the US Attorney’s office to have the grand jury dismiss the evidence as an unpatriotic conspiracy theory or otherwise maneuver to discredit the evidence presented by the Lawyers’ Committee, or modify the official account without totally discrediting it.

“What the 9/11 truthers and the Lawyers’ Committee have achieved is the destruction of the designation of 9/11 skeptics as “conspiracy theorists.” No US Attorney would convene a grand jury on the basis of a conspiracy theory. Clearly, the evidence is compelling that has put the US Attorney in an unenviable position.”

If the Lawyers’ Committee and the 9/11 truthers trust the US Attorney to go entirely by the facts, little will come of the grand jury. If the United States had a rule of law, something as serious as 9/11 could not have gone for 17 years without investigation.”

Three weeks before Roberts’ made this statement a letter was published by Off-Guardian about a Huffington Post hit piece about an academic teaching journalism. Its first paragraph explains entirely its own position.

An academic teaching journalism students at one of the UK’s top universities has publicly supported long-discredited conspiracy theories about the 9/11 terror attack, HuffPost UK can reveal.

This entire article, like that of the BBC’s, vigorously attacks any individual or organisation that has the temerity to question the ‘official’ narrative on any major incident as offered up by the state, such as the Skripal poisonings, Syria’s chemical weapons, Iraq and Chilcot Report.

HuffPost even uses an unnamed former head of MI6 and an unnamed former Supreme Commander of Nato to dispel such challenges to this narrative and then attacks other sources of news such as RT as nothing more than Russian propaganda irrespective of the source. As a rule, TruePublica does not publish news sourced by RT but that does not make all of its content propaganda.

David Ray Griffin, a retired American professor and political writer who founded the Center for Process Studies which seeks to promote the common good by means of the relational approach found in process thought was the co-author of the book ‘9/11 Unmasked’ – part of the attack piece was centred on by the HuffPost hit piece.

The head of the 9/11 Consensus Panel, the other co-author, responded to the HuffPost. For information, the goal of the Consensus Panel is to “provide a ready source of evidence-based research to any investigation that may be undertaken by the public, the media, academia, or any other investigative body or institution.”

That letter is as follows:

Jess Brammer, UK Huffington Post
Chris York, UK Huffington Post

Dear Ms. Brammar and Mr. York:

I was the head information specialist serving the Medical Health Officers of British Columbia, Canada, for 25 years.

Your attack piece on Professor Piers Robinson and on the scholarly work of Dr. David Ray Griffin is the least accurate and the lowest quality published article I have ever seen.

I have assisted Dr. Griffin with 10 of his investigative books into the events of 9/11. In 2011 we decided to create the international 9/11 Consensus Panel to review and evaluate the official claims relating to September 11, 2001. The Panel we formed has 23 members, including people from the fields of physics, chemistry, structural engineering, aeronautical engineering, piloting, airplane crash investigation, medicine, journalism, psychology, and religion (For the full list, see here).

In seeking a consensus methodology, I was advised by the former provincial epidemiologist of British Columbia to employ a leading model that is used in medicine to establish the best diagnostic and treatment evidence to guide the world’s doctors using medical consensus statements.

The Panel methodology has produced, seven years later, 51 refutations of the official claims, which were published as 911 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation in September, 2018.

Each Consensus Point, now a chapter in this book, was given three rounds of review and feedback by the Panel members. The panelists were blind to one another throughout the process, providing strictly uninfluenced individual feedback. Any Points that did not receive 85% approval by the third round were set aside.

The Honorary Members of the Panel include the late British (and longest-serving) parliamentarian Michael Meacher, the late evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis, and the late Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court, Ferdinando Imposimato.

The Huffington Post drastically lowered its standards to publish this hit piece, and what influenced it to do so is a question worth pursuing.

Yours truly

Elizabeth Woodworth, Co-author with Dr. David Ray Griffin
9/11 Unmasked

It is over 18 years now since the world-changing event of 9/11. One wonders when the information held by the American government, that continues to anger so many people affected by it will ever emerge.

However, one reason why such questions persist is precisely that of the actions of the US government itself. One should not forget those so-called ‘conspiracy theories’ that actually came true that continues to pour petrol on the flames of doubt.

For example, the American government killed thousands by poisoning alcohol to prove its point that alcohol was bad for the general public during prohibition. This was a ‘conspiracy theory’ that went on for decades – until it was proven to be true.

Then, you can take your pick of the lies government tells when it comes to starting wars – how about the lie the Saddam Hussain and Iraq had WMD ready to fire at Western targets. Total deaths exceeded 1 million. Yet another classic American lie was the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, as a pretext for escalating the country’s involvement in the Vietnam War that killed 60,000 American soldiers. Total deaths racked up 1.35 million, all based on a lie. That incident only came about because of an unintentional declassification of an NSA file in 2005.

Edward Snowden proved with his revelations in 2013 that the government was spying on everyone when the government had denied they had ever done so. It took a whistleblower to let us all know. The UK government has been found by the highest courts in the land to have broken numerous privacy and surveillance laws as a result of mass civilian surveillance systems.

Operation Mockingbird was a US government operation where journalists were paid to publish CIA propaganda, only uncovered by the Watergate scandal. It took a thief to unknowingly capture secret documents and recordings for the public to find out.

The list goes on and on – just as 9/11 will, so it will be interesting to see how the US Attorney, presented with evidence from so many prominent professionals will bury yet more 9/11 evidence. Don’t hold your breath though, the same questions will, no doubt, still be being asked in another 18 years time.

A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat a US Military Invasion of Venezuela

Posted on February 13, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

To the People of Venezuela

Recently I wrote an article explaining how you could defeat, using nonviolent strategy, the US coup attempt that is taking place in your country. See ‘A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat the US Coup Attempt in Venezuela’.

I would like to complement that article by now briefly explaining how you can also defeat a military invasion by the United States and any collaborating invaders by using a strategy of nonviolent defense as well.

In making this suggestion, I acknowledge the extraordinary difficulties inflicted on Venezuela by the US sanctions imposed over many years as part of its ‘undeclared war against Venezuela’ (partly designed to destroy its progressive social banking model), explained straightforwardly by Ellen Brown in her article ‘The Venezuela Myth Keeping Us From Transforming Our Economy’ as well as alternative proposals to resolve the crisis, ranging from that by several governments to facilitate dialogue between the Venezuelan government and the opposition – see, for example, ‘Russia Proposes Venezuelan “Peaceful Measures” Initiative to UN’ – to Stephen Lendman’s suggestion that a peacekeeping force be deployed to Venezuela by such countries as Russia, China and non-aligned nations. See ‘Save Venezuelan Sovereignty: Oil Economy Destabilized. Peace-keeping Role by Russia, China, Non-alligned Nations?’

I understand that your first reaction to the idea of a strategy of nonviolent defense might be one of scepticism or even outright disbelief. However, if you are willing to consider what I write below, I will briefly explain why a strategy of nonviolent defense is theoretically and empirically sound, has often been successful in a wide range of contexts in the past, and why I believe it is important and how it can be done.

Of course, I am well aware that this history of successful nonviolent defense is little known because it has been, and still is, suppressed. And yet the history of nonviolent resistance in many diverse contexts clearly demonstrates that a strategy of nonviolent defense has the best chance of defending your country while minimizing the death and destruction in doing so (which does not mean that it would be without cost).

Moreover, if you want to read many carefully documented historical accounts of nonviolent struggles that were successful against military opponents, including those that were ruthlessly violent, you can do so in The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach. The book also carefully explains why these successes occurred without incurring heavy casualties on the defense, particularly in comparison to military campaigns and guerrilla struggles.

In my view then, the idea of implementing a strategy of nonviolent defense is important to consider for two essential reasons.

First, you are dealing with an opponent that is insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with a more detailed explanation in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’ – incredibly ignorant – see this interview of US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo ‘Venezuelan military will realize Maduro’s time is up: Mike Pompeo’ which is critiqued in these articles ‘Pompeo: America “obligated” to fight “Hezbollah” in Venezuela to save “duly elected” Guaido’ and ‘Pompeo Attempts to Link Iran, Hezbollah to Crisis in Venezuela’ – and grotesquely violent – see ‘The History – and Hypocrisy – of US Meddling in Venezuela’ and Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II – that, history teaches us, is highly likely to destroy your country to gain the geostrategic advantage and natural resources that control of your country offers, as the people of Iraq and Libya, for example, can testify.

And second: no matter how committed and courageous are the (loyal) members of your military forces and civilian militia (the National Bolivarian Militia of Venezuela), and the military forces of any allies who will stand with you in the defense of Venezuela, even a ‘successful’ outcome, such as that which Syria may be on the verge of ‘celebrating’, will only come at enormous cost in terms of human lives, infrastructure (including national heritage), ecological impact and time, all of which can be far more gainfully employed to continue building Venezuela, including overcoming outstanding problems, as you decide.

The Background

As I know that you are well aware, given the declared interest of the US elite in stealing your natural resources, including oil – see, for example, ‘“Good for business”: Trump adviser Bolton admits US interest in Venezuela’s “oil capabilities”’ and ‘Regime Change for Profit: Chevron, Halliburton Cheer On US Venezuela Coup’ – the US elite has long interfered with – see, for example, ‘US Influence in Venezuela Is Part of a Two Centuries-old Imperial Plan’ – and threatened military invasion of Venezuela to seize control of these resources in clear violation of international law. For recent examples only, see ‘Trump pressed aides on Venezuela invasion, US official says’ and ‘Time for talks “long passed”: US weaponizes aid amid push for regime change in Venezuela’.

Consequently, the US administration has finally used the pretext of an unfair election result in 2018 to call for the overthrow of your government despite the widely accepted result, verified by independent sources, and even the testimony of a former US president that your electoral system is without peer. See ‘Former US President Carter: Venezuelan Electoral System “Best in the World”’.

Moreover, the US puppet Juan Guaidó, anointed by the US to replace your elected President, has effectively indicated his support for US intervention, which clearly reveals where his loyalties lie, his willingness to now provide a pretext for a US invasion, and his complete disregard for the well-being of those Venezuelans who will inevitably be killed, injured and/or dispossessed during an invasion to support the ‘neocon regime-changers’ in Washington. See ‘Venezuela’s self-proclaimed “president” Guaido isn’t ruling out “authorizing” US intervention’ and ‘The Cynicism of Empire: Sen. Rubio Tells Venezuelans to Overthrow Their Government… or Starve!’

This threat of military intervention, as the historical record clearly demonstrates, has every prospect of being carried out. See ‘Before Venezuela: The long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America’ and ‘Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List’.

Despite this threat, as you are aware, President Nicolás Maduro has persisted in offering to discuss the issues arising from this conflict while also calling on the international community to ‘“Stop Trump’s insane actions!” Venezuela’s Maduro talks to RT about avoiding war’ and even writing an appeal to the people of the United States which, of course, was ignored by the corporate media so that it does not even reach a wide audience. See ‘An Open Letter to the People of the United States from President Nicolas Maduro’.

While I applaud your President for his persistent calls for dialogue to resolve this issue – for a recent example, see ‘Maduro Asks International Community to End US’s Threats of War’ – there are simply three realities that make it highly unlikely that his call will be heeded, whether by the US administration that has already rejected such a call – see ‘Time for talks “long passed”: US weaponizes aid amid push for regime change in Venezuela’ – or by the international community, a substantial section of which has already declared their support for the US puppet Juan Guaidó, who has been carefully groomed for a decade for the role he is now playing. See ‘The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader’.

These three realities are those I mentioned above: You are dealing with an insane, incredibly ignorant and grotesquely violent opponent: an elite that seeks geopolitical control and endless resources for profit no matter what the cost to fellow human beings and the biosphere, as the record demonstrates.

Moreover, in seeking to secure its objectives, the US elite will endeavour to control the narrative in relation to Venezuela. Hence, as you have noticed, the corporate media is lying prodigiously about Venezuela as it ‘beats the drums of war’. See, for example, ‘Dissecting the jingoistic media coverage of the Venezuela crisis’, ‘Venezuela Blitz – Part 1: Tyrants Don’t Have Free Elections’, ‘Venezuela Blitz – Part 2: Press Freedom, Sanctions And Oil’ and ‘The BBC and Venezuela: bias and lies’.

For you and those of us outside Venezuela who have some knowledge of your country’s history, we are well aware of the enormous gains made by the Bolivarian movement, despite the enormously damaged country that the movement inherited. See, for example, ‘Venezuela: From Oil Proxy to the Bolivarian Movement and Sabotage’.

This progress, of course, does not mean that all problems have been resolved, most of which have been exacerbated by the sanctions imposed in recent years by the United States government. See, for example, the report by Alfred de Zayas on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Council – ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador’ – which identified the crisis the US ‘economic warfare’ was precipitating. See ‘Former UN Rapporteur: US Sanctions Against Venezuela Causing Economic and Humanitarian Crisis’.

Defending Against a US Military Invasion of Venezuela

So, while your effort to defeat the coup attempt continues, even if the United States military invades Venezuela before or after this issue is resolved, you have the powerful option of resisting any invasion effectively by employing a strategy of nonviolent defense.

I have explained the essential points of this strategy on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. The pages of this website provide clear guidance on how to easily plan and then implement the twelve components of this strategy.

If you like, you can see a diagrammatic representation of this strategy by looking at the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel.

And on the Strategic Aims page you can see the basic list of 30 strategic goals necessary to defeat a military invasion. These strategic goals can easily be adopted, modified and/or added to if necessary, in accordance with your precise circumstances as you decide.

If you want to read a straightforward account of how to plan and conduct a nonviolent tactic so that it has strategic impact, you can do so here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

This will require awareness of the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And, to ensure that the military violence directed against you is made as difficult as possible to perpetrate and, in many cases, does not eventuate, you are welcome to consider the 20 points designed to ensure that you are ‘Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’ whenever you take nonviolent action to defend yourselves when repression is a risk. This information is useful for both neutralizing violent provocateurs but also to ensure that invading military forces are compelled to deal with complex emotional and moral issues that do not arise against a violent opponent who is threatening them, and which will lead some, and perhaps very many, to desist as the historical record clearly documents. Again, for many examples, see The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

Conclusion

The US government and its sycophantic allies might not invade Venezuela. It may transpire that the diplomatic and other efforts of your government to defeat the coup and avert a US-led military invasion of Venezuela will be successful. There is also a fracturing of the opposition forces within Venezuela, in several ways, which works against the success of ongoing efforts to remove your government. See ‘Venezuela Regime Change “Made in the USA”’.

However, the extensive historical evidence of US interventions in violation of international law, the geostrategic and natural resource advantages that will accrue to the US elite from an invasion that removes your elected government, the anointment of a puppet president of Venezuela, the recent posturing and declarations by key members of the US administration and many US-allied governments, and the manufacture of public acquiescence by the corporate media all point heavily in the direction of invasion. And, as you are well aware, it is wise to treat this possibility seriously.

The elite conducting these preparatory moves is insane and, if it attacks Venezuela, there is a serious risk it will destroy your country as it has destroyed Iraq and Libya, especially if it meets significant military resistance. Their insanity precludes them caring about you, the people of Venezuela (even as they present any intervention as ‘humanitarian’). See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. They care about nothing more than geostrategic advantage, eliminating progressive elements of your society’s development, and seizing your natural resources from which they can profit enormously.

Nevertheless, a strategy of nonviolent defense would enable you to defend yourselves and enable every last member of your population, irrespective of age and ability, to be strategically involved, as well as any solidarity activists overseas. It would also minimize the loss of life and destruction inflicted on your country.

Importantly, even if you suffer setbacks, unless and until you accept outright defeat, your strategy of nonviolent defense, ongoingly refined to maintain effective strategic coordination and to retain the initiative, will ultimately prevail.

As always, however, whether or not you decide to consider/adopt my suggestion, you have my solidarity.

Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.

These McCarthyite Accusations Benefit No One And Harm Everyone

Posted on February 7, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

In response to the reprehensible NBC hit piece we discussed the other day in which Hawaii congresswoman and Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard was smeared as a darling of the Russian government, journalist Glenn Greenwald published an article documenting the astonishing amount of journalistic malpractice which went into the piece’s formation. In the article, Greenwald wrote the following:

“That’s because the playbook used by the axis of the Democratic Party, NBC, MSNBC, neocons, and the intelligence community has been, is, and will continue to be a very simple one: to smear any adversary of the establishment wing of the Democratic Party — whether on the left or the right — as a stooge or asset of the Kremlin.”

Displaying a remarkable lack of self-awareness, Democratic establishment pundit and professional Russiagater Caroline Orr responded to Gabbard’s share of this article on Twitter as follows:

“And here, Tulsi Gabbard cites a Kremlin propagandist to deny claims that Kremlin propagandists support her campaign.”

And here, @TulsiGabbard cites a Kremlin propagandist to deny claims that Kremlin propagandists support her campaign. https://t.co/TPUmIGNIfH

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) February 4, 2019

This demented McCarthyite mind virus was exemplified even more egregiously in a recent attack on comedian and progressive commentator Jimmy Dore, in which fellow comedian and former Daily Show producer Jena Friedman publicly accused him of being a Kremlin agent just for disagreeing with her. After Dore’s fan base reacted to this deranged smear as any sane person would expect them to, Friedman claimed that this was evidence of a coordinated campaign against her by Russian trolls and bots.

“I wouldn’t doubt it if Jimmy Dore was a Russian asset,” Friedman tweeted in response to Dore’s having criticized her crazed Louise Mensch-esque rantings. “Why else would he drag my name in the mud and misquote me when I said that Russian trolls are fueling the fire and radicalizing people online, which has been in Washington Post. It’s all so insidious. Be careful, friends.”

“The real tell of who the paid assets are is that they all seem to be so coordinated,” Friedman added. “Do you know which of the 999 Dem contenders you are voting for yet? I don’t but if RT and Jimmy Dore and everyone who seems sketchy are pushing for Tusli [sic] Gabbard, it’s hard not to question why?”

“If I question whether someone is on Putin’s payroll and then immediately receive 100+ tweets harassing me as a result, that only proves my point,” Friedman posted in response to the wave of responses her behavior elicited on Twitter, later adding, “There are progressive people fighting with me on here who I am sure are kind (ish) and also bots and assholes using their platforms to troll me in ways that feel oddly suspect. Sorry to question if some guy is paid by Putin but people actually are so why not just say no and move on?”

“I blocked Jimmy Dore because he’s a PizzaGate Putin propaganda valve,” Friedman also said. “Comedians, we need to do a better job at policing our own. Check out his stuff if you don’t believe me & be careful. There are dark forces at play trying to undermine us all & it feels like they‘re winning.”

Gosh. I’m old enough to remember when being a comedian had something to do with comedy.

https://twitter.com/JenaFriedman/status/1092198344833884160

The fact that Friedman believed her freakish McCarthyite slander was perfectly healthy, and that her suggestion that a fellow comedian she’d just accused of conducting psyops for a foreign government agency should just “say no and move on” and have that be the end of it, says so much about how pervasively cancerous political discourse has gotten over the last two years.

So let’s talk about that for a minute. Why exactly isn’t it perfectly healthy to accuse everyone who disagrees with you of conducting psyops for a foreign government agency? Why specifically shouldn’t it be standard procedure to level that accusation willy nilly and expect them to just “say no and move on” if it isn’t true? What is it about these McCarthyite accusations that is so destructive and toxic, anyway?

Well, for starters it completely kills political discourse. Absolutely murders it stone dead. If you’re having a political debate with someone, you can disagree very strongly with one another, even get hostile and uncivil at times, and still continue dialoguing and sharing ideas and information with each other. But as soon as one party suggests that the other party is only advancing the ideas and information they’re advancing because they’ve been covertly paid to do so by a foreign government agency, where can the conversation go from there? You’ve slammed the door shut on any further dialogue by preemptively rejecting anything the other party could possibly say, just because you got overwhelmed by the experience of someone having different opinions from your own.

Political discourse is happening all over the world all the time every single day, and far too often it’s cut off from ever getting anywhere because one side can’t resist regurgitating an obnoxious McCarthyite smear they’ve been trained to believe is normal by the Palmer Report and MSNBC.

But political discourse is not the only thing that’s harmed by these McCarthyite smears, which seem to be enjoying their biggest resurgence yet as the 2020 presidential race kicks off. The Trump administration is currently pursuing the arrest of Julian Assange, a move which if carried out will constitute a mortal wound for press freedoms around the world, and yet the self-described liberals who claim to support the free press and oppose the Trump administration aren’t saying a peep about it because Assange has been falsely smeared as a Kremlin agent so much it’s now taken as an established fact. Meanwhile political dissidents like Greenwald, Jill Stein, Ron Paul, Abby Martin, Max Blumenthal, Jimmy Dore and so very many others have had the influence of their voices wedged out from mainstream consciousness because so many people have been indoctrinated to reflexively reject their words with a nonsensical accusation of Kremlin fealty.

And that of course is the idea. The normalization of smearing any voice which differs from the orthodoxy of the unipolar world order in any way as a Russian agent has allowed dissenting narratives to be isolated away from the mainstream herd, where they are unable to influence a critical mass of individuals. They aren’t smearing Tulsi Gabbard as a Kremlin asset because they don’t want her to be president; the Democratic Party is still legally capable and structurally willing to rig its primaries to keep her out if need be. The real thing they fear is allowing her anti-interventionist ideas to take hold within the mainstream consciousness of a nation whose nonstop military interventionism is the glue that holds the empire together.

Even if you fully agree with all CIA/CNN talking points and think Joe Biden would be the best president ever, surely you can see that quashing dissent is a bad and undesirable thing? Surely you can see that allowing people free access to ideas and information is the absolutely indispensable foundation that anything resembling democracy must necessarily be built upon? Surely you can recognize that cutting off ideas and information that haven’t been authorized by the current political establishment by smearing dissident voices as agents of a foreign government is already a form of totalitarianism? Surely?

Because it's not normal or healthy to suggest that someone is saying what they're saying because they are paid to by foreign government agencies, Jena. If you don't like what someone's saying, ignore them or present an argument, don't smear them with McCarthyite insinuations.

— Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) February 4, 2019

Meanwhile what benefit comes from accusing someone of being a Kremlin agent? How does that help anything? Even in the extremely unlikely event that you are interacting with someone online who does indeed secretly work for the Russian government, you are still perfectly capable of debating their ideas. Being a secret propagandist doesn’t give someone super powers. It doesn’t give them the ability to control your mind or turn you into a newt. There is no reason whatsoever why you can’t just debate their ideas as you would anyone else’s instead of slamming on the brakes of the conversation to take a pointless million-to-one gamble on a McCarthyite accusation which benefits nobody in any way.

Let’s stop allowing the mass psychosis of these paranoid cold war feeding frenzies to be the new normal, please. If we keep going this way it’s only going to get worse for everyone.

A Nonviolent Strategy to Defeat the US Coup Attempt in Venezuela

Posted on February 4, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Robert J. Burrowes

To the People of Venezuela

Yet again, the United States elite has decided to attempt to impose its will on the people of another nation, in this case, and not for the first time either, your country Venezuela.

On 23 January 2019, following careful secret planning in the preceding weeks and a late night telephone call the previous day from US Vice President Mike Pence – see ‘Pence Pledged U.S. Backing Before Venezuela Opposition Leader’s Move’ and ‘Venezuela – Trump’s Coup Plan Has Big Flaws’ – the US initiated a coup against your President, Nicolás Maduro, and his Government, whom you democratically re-elected to represent you on 20 May 2018. See ‘The Case for the Legitimacy of Maduro’s Second Term’.

By organizing, recognizing and supporting as ‘interim president’ the US puppet trained for the purpose over the past decade – see ‘The Making of Juan Guaidó: How the US Regime Change Laboratory Created Venezuela’s Coup Leader’ – the United States government has simply brought into clearer focus and now precipitated its long-standing plan to seize control of Venezuela’s huge oil, gas, gold, water and other natural resources, with the oil and gas conveniently close to Texan refineries. In relation to gold, for example, see ‘Bank of England refused to return $1.2bn in gold to Venezuela – reports’ and then ‘Bank Of England Urged To Hand Over Venezuela’s Gold To Guaidó’.

Of course, this coup is perfectly consistent with US foreign policy for the past two centuries, the essential focus of which has been to secure control over key geostrategic areas of the world and to steal the resources of foreign nations. For a list of only the ‘most notable U.S. interventions’ in Central/South America over that period, see ‘Before Venezuela: The long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America’. But you can also read a more complete list of US interventions overseas (only since 1945) in William Blum’s ‘Overthrowing other people’s governments: The Master List’.

Needless to say, this latest attempt at ‘regime change’ is in clear violation of international law on so many counts it is difficult to document them concisely. First, the ongoing US intervention over an extended period has always been a violation of international law, including Chapter IV, Article 19 of the Charter of the Organization of American States. Second, sanctions are illegal under so many treaties it is sickening. See ‘Practice Relating to Rule 103. Collective Punishments’. And third, the coup is a violation of Venezuela’s constitution. See ‘The Failure of Guaido’s Constitutional Claim to the Presidency of Venezuela’.

Unfortunately, international law (like domestic law) is simply used as another means to inflict violence on those outside the elite circle and, as casual observation of the record demonstrates, is routinely ignored by elites in the US and elsewhere when their geopolitical, economic and/or other interests ‘require’ it.

As usual, there is no remotely reasonable pretext for this coup, despite the usual alphabet of sycophantic US allies such as Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Israel…. – see, for example, ‘Australia recognises Juan Guaidó as Venezuela president’ and ‘Emmanuel Macron, Pedro Sanchez, Angela Merkel and Theresa May Have No Right to Issue an Ultimatum to Venezuela’ – as well as the elite-controlled corporate media, lying that there is such pretext. Mind you, given the flagging domestic support for many of these political leaders in light of their obvious incompetence in dealing with issues of critical import to their own constituencies – is this where we mention words like ‘Brexit’ and ‘Yellow Vests’, for example? – it is little wonder that the distraction offered by events elsewhere is also used to provide some relief from the glare focused on their own ineptitude.

Of course, Luis Almagro, the submissive head of the Organization of American States (OAS), recognized Guaidó in violation of both the OAS Charter and a majority vote of that organization – see ‘Message of the OAS Secretary General on Venezuela’ and ‘Caricom to Almagro: “You Don’t Speak For The Entire OAS”’ – and the cowardly European Union (EU), also kneeling in the face of US pressure to ignore international law, simply add to the picture of a global system devoid of moral compass and the rule of law, let alone courage.

It is true, as most of you are well aware, that Venezuela has been experiencing dire economic circumstances but, as most of you also know, these circumstances have been caused by ‘outside intervention, internal sabotage and the decline in oil prices’, particularly including the deepening economic sanctions imposed by the United States in recent years. For solid accounts of what has taken place in Venezuela in recent times, particularly the external factors causing these dire economic circumstances, see the report on behalf of the United Nations Human Rights Council written by Alfred de Zayas ‘Report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order on his mission to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Ecuador’ which identified the crisis the US ‘economic warfare’ was precipitating – see ‘Former UN Rapporteur: US Sanctions Against Venezuela Causing Economic and Humanitarian Crisis’ – as well as the research reported in ‘Opposition Protests In Venezuela Rooted In Falsehoods’, ‘Trump’s Sanctions Make Economic Recovery in Venezuela Nearly Impossible’, ‘US Regime Change in Venezuela: The Documented Evidence’ and ‘Venezuela: What Activists Need To Know About The US-Led Coup’.

But lest some people think this US coup is only about resources, geopolitical control is also vital. As noted by Garikai Chengu: ‘America seeks control of Venezuela because it sits atop the strategic intersection of the Caribbean, South and Central American worlds. Control of the nation, has always been a remarkably effective way to project power into these three regions and beyond.’ See ‘Sanctions of Mass Destruction: America’s War on Venezuela’.

Of course, even though the outstanding problems in Venezuela have been primarily caused by the ongoing illegal US inteference, the eminently reasonable government of your country remains willing to engage in dialogue to resolve these problems. See, for example, ‘Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro seeks talks with Obama’ and ‘Maduro Reaffirms Willingness For Dialogue’. However, this willingness for dialogue does not interest the US elite or its sycophantic western and local (both within Central/South America and within Venezuela) allies who, as noted above, are intent on usurping control from the people of Venezuela and stealing your resources.

In any case, and most importantly, for those of us paying attention to the truth, rather than the garbage reported in the elite-controlled corporate media – see, for example, ‘Can Venezuela Have a Peaceful Transition?’ but outlined more fully in ‘“Resistance” Media Side With Trump to Promote Coup in Venezuela’ – we are well aware of what you all think about this. Because, according to recent polling, you are heavily against US and other outside intervention in any form. See ‘86% of Venezuelans Oppose Military Intervention, 81% Are Against U.S. Sanctions, Local Polling Shows’.

Fortunately, of course, you have many solidarity allies including countries such as Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey who acknowledge your right to live with the government you elected and do not wish to steal your resources. Moreover, at an ‘emergency’ meeting of the UN Security Council on 26 January 2019, called by the United States to seek authorization for interference in Venezuela, the Council was divided as China, Equatorial Guinea, Russia and South Africa opposed the move, with Côte d’Ivoire and Indonesia abstaining. See ‘UN political chief calls for dialogue to ease tensions in Venezuela; Security Council divided over path to end crisis’.

And there is a vast number of people, including prominent public intellectuals, former diplomats and ordinary people who are solidly on your side as you defend yourselves from the latest bout of western imperialism. For example, Professor Noam Chomsky and other prominent individuals have publicly declared their support – see ‘Open Letter by Over 70 Scholars and Experts Condemns US-Backed Coup Attempt in Venezuela’ – and former UK ambassador Craig Murray has argued that ‘The Coup in Venezuela Must Be Resisted’.

Anyway, given your existing and ongoing resistance to the coup in defense of your elected government, I would like to offer another avenue of support for you to consider. My support, if you like, to plan and implement a comprehensive nonviolent strategy to defeat the coup.

So what is required?

I have explained in detail how to formulate and implement a strategy for defeating coup attempts such as this in the book The Strategy of Nonviolent Defense: A Gandhian Approach.

However, I have also outlined the essential points of this strategy on the website Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy. The pages of this website provide clear guidance on how to easily plan and then implement the twelve components of this strategy.

If you like, you can see a diagrammatic representation of this strategy by looking at the Nonviolent Strategy Wheel.

And on the Strategic Aims page you can see the basic list of 23 strategic goals necessary to defeat a coup of the type you are resisting at the moment. These strategic goals can easily be adopted, modified and/or added to if necessary, in accordance with your precise circumstances as you decide.

If you want to read a straightforward account of how to plan and conduct a nonviolent tactic so that it has strategic impact, you can do so here: ‘Nonviolent Action: Why and How it Works’.

This will require awareness of the difference between ‘The Political Objective and Strategic Goal of Nonviolent Actions’.

And, to ensure that your courage is most powerfully utilized, you are welcome to consider the 20 points designed to ensure that you are ‘Minimizing the Risk of Violent Repression’ whenever you take nonviolent action where repression is a risk. The information is useful for both neutralizing violent provocateurs but also in the event that sections of the police or army defect to support the US puppet Guaidó in the days or weeks ahead, as often happens in contexts such as these.

In essence, your ongoing resistance to the coup is essential if you are to defeat the coupmakers and defend your elected government. But the chances of success are vastly enhanced if your struggle, and that of your solidarity allies around the world, is focused for maximum strategic impact and designed to spread the cost of doing so.

Remember, it is you who will decide the fate of Venezuela. Not the US elite and not even your President and government.

Of course, whether or not you decide to consider and/or adopt my proposed strategy, you have my solidarity.

Robert J. Burrowes
P.O. Box 68
Daylesford, Victoria 3460
Australia

Email: flametree@riseup.net

Websites:
Nonviolence Charter
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth
‘Why Violence?’
Feelings First
Nonviolent Campaign Strategy
Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy
Anita: Songs of Nonviolence
Robert Burrowes
Global Nonviolence Network

Expect Increased Smearing Of Progressives As Russian Assets

Posted on February 1, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: CaitlinJohnstone.com

After WikiLeaks documents provided irrefutable evidence that the Democratic National Committee had violated its charter by rigging its primary for Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders, what should have happened is this:

The DNC apologizing profusely to the public for violating the promises it had made to the electorate.
Massive, sweeping changes to bring transparency and public accountability to the DNC’s inner workings, including a complete overhaul of staff and leadership.
If at all possible, a complete do-over of the primary vote.
A dedication to attacking Trump’s right-wing policies from the left, showing the public that a progressive approach works better than a conservative one.

If this had happened Americans would not only be living in a vastly saner political landscape, but Trump probably would not have won in 2016. If the Democratic establishment had shown clearly and unequivocally that it was remorseful for its malfeasance and made an immediate overhaul that people could see for themselves, they wouldn’t have alienated nearly as many voters.

Instead, what happened was the DNC changing absolutely nothing, Nanci Pelosi saying she doesn’t see anything wrong with primary rigging, and the Democratic Party shrieking about Russia for more than two years.

Bernie was the one Democrat not to vote to keep sanctions on Deripaska (he also voted against Russia sanctions and Magnitsky). @SenSanders won’t stand up to billionaires in Russia and he wants you to to believe he’ll stand up to them in America. #fraud https://t.co/oNLK0tbf83

— Active Measures (@ActMeasuresDoc) January 16, 2019

Watching the establishment Russia narrative take hold of public consciousness was like watching a zombie outbreak. First it infected the slow ones, the virulent Clintonites who never had any natural defense against CIA/CNN narratives, which was disturbing and distressing but not at all surprising. Then, bit-by-bit, the Russia hysteria began to creep leftward. Progressives I’d been fighting alongside in 2016 began succumbing to the Russiagate mind virus in 2017, folding under peer pressure and aggressive mass media manipulation. Some of them held strong for a few months, then when one of the hollow but oh-so-confident-sounding “bombshell” Russiagate reports struck them in the right way at the right time they made public social media posts saying they were now convinced.

I watched them drop like flies. To this very day I still see Russia hysteria on my social media feeds from progressive Berniecrats I’d followed early on who transformed into McCarthyite cold war hawks at some point in the interim. When I post something skeptical of the establishment Russia narrative on Twitter I see accounts with red roses next to their name, a sign of support for the Democratic Socialists of America, arguing with me and accusing me of sympathizing with Trump and Putin.

Writers like Max Blumenthal and Glenn Greenwald have been warning since the outbreak of this pernicious mass manipulation that it would be used to target the left, but their warnings went unheeded as more and more progressive minds were funneled into the belief that the best way to fight Trump was to get behind the Russia hysteria bandwagon and push with all your might. And now, even as America’s 2020 presidential race is barely in its infancy, we are already beginning to see Russiagate used to smear anyone to the left of Hillary Clinton as Russian dupes.

I’d like to draw attention to a few recent social media posts which have gained a lot of traction in the last few days, not for the impact those posts have but for what they portend for the rest of the 2020 race. The first is from the Twitter account for the Russiagate documentary Active Measures, and it received thousands of shares:

“Bernie was the one Democrat not to vote to keep sanctions on Deripaska (he also voted against Russia sanctions and Magnitsky),” the post reads. “@SenSanders won’t stand up to billionaires in Russia and he wants you to to believe he’ll stand up to them in America. #fraud”

The second comes from professional linguist and engineer John Rehling, who has over 50 thousand Twitter followers, and it received hundreds of shares:

“Kamala Harris is immediately the front runner for the Democratic nomination, and if Russia is predictable, they will create armies of bots attacking her from the *left*,” reads Rehling’s (now deleted) tweet. “If you’re left of Kamala Harris, I’m sure you are honestly, but you’ll be doing Putin’s work, like it or not.”

The third comes from Shareblue manipulator Caroline Orr, just one of many similar posts that she has made in recent days. Orr has also launched a GoFundMe to investigate Tulsi Gabbard’s imaginary Putin-Assad ties/score a free vacation to Hawaii, and is also circulating the baseless rumor that “Russian-linked accounts” are pushing for a Bernie-Tulsi 2020 ticket. Note the URL Orr highlighted in the tweet below featuring her allegation that Gabbard is “pro-Putin” and “pro-Assad”.

https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1085084216726044672

In each case, posts punching left with accusations of Kremlin servitude gained traction with their followers, which means there is already an audience for this schtick. And, again, the presidential race has barely even begun. Things are likely to get a whole lot uglier between now and November 2020.

This is your life for the next two years, progressives. This is what those of you who drank the Russiagate Kool-Aid have helped buy for what passes for America’s political left today. You can expect such accusations to get far more common and far more aggressive as this thing drags on. The left can either play along with this and let centrist cold war rhetoric suck all the oxygen out of the room for the advancement of progressive policies, or they can fight back against this moronic facilitation of longstanding intelligence community agendas.

This use of Russiagate to herd the political left toward supporting America’s “center” (so-called only because it is the mainstream view, which in turn is only due to plutocratic narrative control) will actively move things further into corporatist dystopia. Supporting a “moderate” Democratic Party while the Republican Party always pushes as far to the right as it possibly can is guaranteeing a continuous overall movement to the right, which is why the gains made by the left in the early 20th century are almost gone now. If you have one person half-pulling westward on one end of a rope and another person tugging eastward with all their might, they’re going to move steadily east.

The slow, incremental changes advocated by the political “center” are code for no change whatsoever; they’re just buying time so that their corporate sponsors, who themselves never slow down, can finish shoring up control before the public forces them to scale back. If progressives don’t start attacking this “Move right or you’re a Russian agent” schtick directly and with full force, it will snuff them out completely.

Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud’s Network

Posted on January 31, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Elizabeth Vos

Source: Disobedient Media

In April last year, Disobedient Media broke coverage of the British involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, asking why All Russiagate Roads Lead To London, via the quasi-scholar Joseph Mifsud and others.

The issue was also raised by WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, just days before the Ecuadorian government silenced him last March. Assange’s Twitter thread cited research by Chris Blackburn, who spoke with Disobedient Media on multiple occasions covering Joseph Mifsud’s ties to British intelligence figures and organizations, as well as his links to Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign, the FBI, CIA and the private cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.

We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn’s insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller’s investigation. What we are left with is an indication of collusion between factions of the US and UK intelligence community in fabricating evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: a scandal that would have rocked the legacy press to its core, if Western establishment-backed media had a spine.

In Disobedient Media’s previous coverage of Blackburn’s work, he described his experience in intelligence:

“I’ve been involved in numerous investigations that involve counter-intelligence techniques in the past. I used to work for the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism, one of the biggest tort actions in American history. I helped build a profile of Osama bin Laden’s financial and political network, which was slightly different to the one that had been built by the CIA’s Alec Station, a dedicated task force which was focused on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Alec Station designed its profile to hunt Osama bin Laden and disrupt his network. I thought it was flawed. It had failed to take into account Osama’s historical links to Pakistan’s main political parties or that he was the figurehead for a couple of organizations, not just Al-Qaeda.”

“I also ran a few conferences for US intelligence leaders during the Bush administration. After the 9/11 Commission published its report into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it created a public outreach program. The US National Intelligence Conference and Exposition (Intelcon) was one of the avenues it used. I was responsible for creating the ‘View from Abroad’ track. We had guidance from former Senator Slade Gorton and Jamie Gorelick, who both sat on the 9/11 Commission. We got leaders such as Sir John Chilcot and Baroness Pauline Neville Jones to come and help share their experiences on how the US would be able to heal the rifts after 9/11.”

“The US intelligence community was suffering from severe turf wars and firewalls, which were hampering counter-terrorism efforts. They were concentrating on undermining each other rather than tackling terrorism. I had mainly concentrated on the Middle East, but in 2003 I switched my focus to terrorism in South Asia.”

Counter Terrorism, Not Counter Intelligence, Sparked Probe

In an article published by The Telegraph last November, the paper acknowledged the following:

“It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI’s investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin… Mr. Trump’s allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK’s role in the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain… One former top White House adviser to Mr. Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: “You know the Brits are up to their neck.” The source added on the Page wiretap application: “I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don’t want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA.” [Emphasis Added]

The article cites George Papadopoulos, who asked why the “British intelligence apparatus was weaponized against Trump and his advisers.” Papadopoulos has also addressed the issue at length via Twitter. In response to the Telegraph’s coverage of the issue, Chris Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “The Telegraph story on Trump Russia acknowledges that activities involving counter-terrorism are at the heart of the scandal…not counter-intelligence. If the [London Centre for International Law Practice] was British state, not private, some Commonwealth countries are going to be seriously pissed off.”

Blackburn spoke with Disobedient Media, saying: “If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice. A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal.” [Emphasis Added]

Blackburn discussed this differentiation with Disobedient Media: “Counter-terrorism is obviously involved in more kinetic, violent political actions-concerning mass casualty events, bombings, assassinations, poisonings, and hacking. But, the lines are blurring between them. Counter-intelligence cases have been known to stretch for decades- often relying on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion to fuel investigations. Counter-terrorism is also a broader discipline as it involves tactical elements like hostage rescue, crime scene investigations, and explosive specialists. Counter-Terrorism is a collaborative effort with counter-terrorism officers working closely with local and regional police forces and civic organizations. There is also a wider academic field around countering violent, and radical ideology which promotes terrorism and insurgencies. Cybersecurity has become the third major discipline in intelligence. The London Center of International Law Practice, the mysterious intelligence company that employed both Papadopoulos and Mifsud, had also been working in that area.”

Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: “It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos’ activities look like they were something else. As counter-terrorism and counterintelligence are close in tactics and methods, it would seem that they were used because they share the same skill sets – covert evidence gathering and deception. It’s basically sleight of hand. A piece of theatre would be more precise. However, we don’t know if the FBI knew it was real or make-believe. It’s more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency.”

Mueller’s Team And Joseph Mifsud

Zainab Ahmad, a member of Mueller’s legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn, Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017. In recent days, Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “Zainab Ahmad is a major player in the Russiagate scandal at the DOJ. Does she work for SC Mueller? She was at a GCCS event in May 2017. Arvinder Sambei, a co-director of the [London Centre of International Law Practice], worked with Joseph Mifsud, [George Papadopoulos] and [Simona Mangiante]. She’s a GCCS consultant.”

Blackburn told this author: “Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.”

“Richard Barrett, the Former Chief of Counter-Terrorism at MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence department traveled with Mifsud to Saudi Arabia to give a talk on terrorism in 2017. Ex-CIA officers, US Defense, and US Treasury officials were also there. The London Centre of International Law Practice’s relationship to the Global Center had been established in 2014. The Global Center on Cooperative Security made Martin Polaine and Arvinder Sambei consultants, they then became directors at the London Centre of International Law Practice.”

“The Global Center on Cooperative Security’s first major UK conference was at Joseph Mifsud’s London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD). Mifsud then followed Arvinder Sambei and Nagi Idris over to the London Centre of International Law Practice. Sources have told me that Mifsud was moonlighting as a specialist on counter-terrorism and Islamism while working at LAD which explains why he went to work in counter-terrorism after LAD folded.”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller’s team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling.”

Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons. Critically, The Hill writes:

“Those he briefed included Andrew Weissmann, then the head of DOJ’s fraud section; Bruce Swartz, longtime head of DOJ’s international operations, and Zainab Ahmad, an accomplished terrorism prosecutor who, at the time, was assigned to work with Lynch as a senior counselor. Ahmad and Weissmann would go on to work for Mueller, the special prosecutor overseeing the Russia probe.” [Emphasis Added]

This point is essential, as it not only describes Ahmad’s role in Mueller’s team but places her at a crucial pre-investigation meeting.

Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei, writing: “LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud’s London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too.”

Sambei has been described elsewhere as a “Former practising barrister, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales, and Legal Adviser at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), Ministry of Defence.” [British spelling has been retained]

That Sambei has been so thoroughly linked to organizations where Mifsud was a central figure is yet another cause of suspicion regarding allegations that Joseph Mifsud was a shadowy, unknown Russian agent until the summer of 2016. She is also a direct link between Robert Mueller and Mifsud.

Blackburn wrote via Twitter: “Arvinder Sambei helped to organize LCILP’s counter-terrorism and corruption events. She used her contacts in the US to bring in Middle Eastern government officials that were seen to be vulnerable to graft. Lisa Osofsky, former FBI Deputy General Counsel, was working with her.” Below, Arvinder is pictured at a London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP) event.

As Chris Blackburn told this author: “Mifsud and Papadopoulos’s co-director Arvinder Sambei was also the former FBI British counsel working 9/11 cases for Robert Mueller. She also runs a consultancy which deals with Special Investigative Measure (SIMs) which is just a posh description for covert espionage and evidence gathering. She has worked for major intelligence and national law agencies in the past. She wore two hats as a director of London Centre and a consultant for the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), a counter-terrorism think tank which is sponsored by the Australia, Canada, UK and US governments. Alexander Downer’s former Chief of Staff while at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now works for the Global Center. Mifsud was also due to meet with Australian private intelligence figures in Adelaide in March 2016. So. Australia is certainly a major focus for the investigation.” [Emphasis Added]

Below, former FBI Deputy General Counsel Lisa Osofsky is pictured at a London Centre for International Law Practice event. Osofsky also served as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer with Goldman Sachs International. Since 2018, she has served as the Director of the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

An Embarrassment For John Brennan?

Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share ‘director-to-director’ level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that “The Guardian reported Hannigan’s announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing “deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level” is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ’s Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner.”

Blackburn told Disobedient Media: “Former Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has seen most of the information gathered by Congress from the intelligence community concerning the Russia investigation, said that if President Trump were to declassify files and present the truth to the American public, it would “embarrass John Brennan.” I think that is pretty concrete for me, but it’s not definitive. I know the polarization and spin in Washington has become perverse, but that statement is pretty specific for me. If Brennan is involved, it is most probably through Papadopoulos who sparked off the ‘official’ investigation at the FBI. He also made sure the Steele dossier was spread through the US government.”

Blackburn added: “Chris Steele was also working on FIFA projects, and a source has told me that he was working to investigate the Russian and Qatari World Cup bids. The London Centre of International Law Practice has been working with Majed Garoub, the former Saudi legal representative of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. He’s also been working against the Qatari bid. Steele likes to get paid twice for his investigations.”

“Mifsud has also been associated with Prince Turki the former Saudi intelligence chief, Mifsud and the London Academy of Diplomacy used to train Saudi diplomats and intelligence figures while Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to London. Turki is a close friend of Bill Clinton and John Brennan. Nawaf Obaid was also courting Mifsud and tried to get him a cushy job working with CNN’s Freedom Project at Link Campus in Rome. He also knows John Brennan. Intelligence agencies like to give out professional gifts like this plum academic position for completing missions. In the US, it is widely known that intelligence agencies gift the children of assets to get them into prestigious Ivy League schools.”

At minimum, we can surmise that Mifsud was not a Russian agent, but was an asset of Western intelligence agencies. We are left with the impression that the Mifsud saga served as a ploy, whether he participated knowingly or not. It seems reasonable to conclude that the gambit was initially developed with participation of John Brennan and UK intelligence. Following this, Mueller inherited and developed the Mifsud narrative thread into the collusion soap opera we know today.

Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power.

Cyberwar: #RussiaGate Is US

Posted on January 29, 2019 by Reid Mukai

By Rob Williams

Source: Project Censored

The following is a critical book review of Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect A President – What We Don’t, Can’t, And Do Know (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).

“Russia hacked the 2016 US election!”

Since November 2016, the US “news” chatterati – pundits and poets, priests, prognosticators and politicians – have repeated this statement ad nauseum. The #RussiaGate story has become a commonly-accepted article of faith amongst the US neoliberal faithful – disgruntled Clintonistas, bereaved “Bernie Bros,” US news flaks, and anyone else who dislikes the current occupant of the White House. If the “Russia hacked the 2016 US election” meme warriors had a high-viz US standard bearer, it would probably be popular MSNBC performance artist Rachel “All Russia, All The Time” Maddow, who serves up the #RussiaGate sauce with reckless abandon to high TeeVee viewer ratings, earning somewhere between $30 and $40 K daily in salary. (LINK to RM mashup here).

And now, we have a scholarly book published by Oxford University Press with an epic title – Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect A President – What We Don’t, Can’t, And Do Know – that purports to prove that Russia’s cyber-meddling helped sabotage the HRC campaign, swinging the 2016 US presidential election in favor of DJT.

To approach Cyberwar, first consider everything on the table re: the 2016 US presidential election.

Here‘s just a short list.

Witness the two most unpopular presidential candidates in US political history (one of whom confidently encouraged the other to run, convinced she could beat him); massive and well-documented bipartisan digital vote count manipulation (“electile dysfunction”) courtesy the 2002 “Help America Vote Act” (Orwell would be impressed); the grotesque (human) nature of Donald J Trump and Republicans’ comical attempts to first displace and then eventually come to terms with his 2016 candidacy; the complete corruption of the national Democratic Party leadership, which did everything it could to crown HRC the Dem standard bearer, from systematically undermining insurgent Vermont “progressive” Bernie Sanders’ presidential bid (read the 110 page report “Democracy Lost” for detailed descriptions of how the DNC manipulated 2016 Democratic primary outcomes in 11 swing states) to diverting DNC fundraising – millions of dollars collected from the pockets of ordinary Americans – away from so-called “down ballot” local office races and into HRC presidential campaign coffers during the heated months of 2016.

There’s so much more, but I’ll simply stop there.

Rather than looking in the 2016 mirror, however, US blames…Russians?

To be clear, I approached Cyberwar with an open mind. I am a big fan of the book’s author, distinguished US media scholar Kathleen Hall Jamieson (KHJ), longtime badass in the world of political communications scholarship, and current Elizabeth Ware Packard Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and the Director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Jamieson’s got street cred. However, after a close read and re-read of KHJ’s new book, including all the footnotes, Cyberwar left me unconvinced by its “more or less” central conclusion – “Russia trolled and hacked the 2016 US election, sorta!” In fact, I’d suggest that Cyberwar is a deeply problematic book, a fascinating scholarly study in “manufacturing consent” – the term Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky borrowed from Walter Lippman to title their 1988 book of the same name – describing how US elites “massage” US news channels like the New York Times, “filtering” into public view the “news” stories most beneficial to their strategic goals, while downplaying or censoring other worthy “news” stories of significance.

To fully understand my critique of Cyberwar, start with Jamieson’s credulous acceptance of “facts” provided by the US “intelligence community” (my new favorite Orwellian trope) re: the Russian government’s “interference” to advance her Cyberwar case. More on that in a moment. In the meantime, here is KHJ’s central Cyberwar claim, summarized in a single long sentence, slightly paraphrased for brevity, from her book’s conclusion: “In the run up to the 2016 US presidential election, Russian trolls and hackers carried out a strategically systematic and ultimately successful communications campaign to discredit Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton and support Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump through sufficiently widespread messaging that focused on issues compatible with Trump’s strategic needs, addressing constituencies he had to mobilize and demobilize, by employing persuasive, visually evocative and well-targeted content that was amplified in swing states through sharing, liking, and commenting.” (p. 203).

It’s a mouthful, I know, and when you read it over a few times, removing both Clinton and Trump’s names, you quickly realize that this is what ANY strategic political campaign using digital tools –Cyberspace’s unique power and reach – would set out to do to try and win any election, anywhere. Russian president Vladimir Putin himself concedes that Russia wages “campaigns of political influence” wherever and whenever they can, just as the US and other powerful countries do and have done for decades, using as many communications tools as they can leverage.

So – how does Jamieson set out to prove Russian Cyberwar? She divides her book into four parts.

Part One of Jamieson’s book explores “who did it, why, and what research says about it might matter.” Here, KHJ flags the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian troll farm, and introduces the reader to her previous ground-breaking work on communications effects research – how techniques like agenda-setting, framing, priming and “contagion creation” have worked over time to influence US voter decisions, and thus, perhaps, election outcomes. Big caveat here, that KHJ leaves unacknowledged. To wit – presumably, Russian “trolls” share the same primary goal as ALL trolls on the Internet, namely, maximizing audience engagement (and thus profit) through the creation and deployment of relevant content, with their chief “currency” being click-throughs, likes, shares, retweets, etc.

In Part Two of Cyberwar, Jamieson looks at what she calls “the prerequisites of [Russian] troll influence.” “Were the extent and virality of Russian social media content and the nature, coverage, and exposure of Russian-hacked Democratic materials,” she asks, “sufficient and sufficiently persuasive to plausibly affect the outcome of an election decided in three states by about 78,000 votes?” (p. 65). Hint – her final answer is a circumspectly strong “maybe.”

Part Three of Cyberwar finds KHJ considering “how the Russians affected the news and debate agendas in the last month of the presidential campaign.” Here, Jamieson looks at how “Russian hacked content” (her words) transformed the nature of US news coverage surrounding HRC in the month before the 2016 election, with a particular focus on the “drip drip drip” impact of “WikiLeak’d” emails illegally obtained from Democratic National Committee (DNC) servers, as well as FBI director James Comey’s role, during October 2016, in reopening the investigation into “newly-found” HRC emails, which KHJ argues helped shape public impressions around HRC for undecided US voters in the days just before the election.

Jamieson uses Cyberwar Part Four to provide a brief summary of “what we don’t, can’t, and do know about how Russian hackers and trolls helped elect Donald Trump.” “My case that the uses of Russian-hacked (emphasis added) Democratic materials influenced voters is built on scholars’ understandings of the effects of linguistic priming, media agenda setting, and framing the susceptibilities of late deciders, the dispositions of those who view both candidates unfavorably, the effects of imbalances in the amount of negative information available about alternative candidates, and scholarship on how debates affect voter attitudes,” Jamieson concludes. “It is scaffolded on evidence that the hacked content not only altered the media and debate agendas but also increased the negative press about Clinton. And it is bolstered by the possibility that Russian access and anticipated use of illegally gotten or fabricated Democratic content shaped a key decision by FBI director Comey.” (210)

To be fair, Cyberwar is an engaging read. Jamieson is a fine scholarly writer, and she has a field day digging into the aesthetics of individual Russian troll farm memes – complete with pictures. (The “Army Of Jesus” Facebook page, purportedly created by Russian trolls, features a boxing glove clad HRC sporting devil horns engaged in a fierce arm-wrestling match with Aryan Jesus himself. Hilarious.) KHJ also does a credible job tracing the evolution of the US news narrative around HRC in the weeks leading up to the 2016 election, showing how pivotal moments may have influenced voter perceptions about both HRC and DJT.

However! Individual Russian troll farm memes and evolving US “news” media coverage negatively impacting HRC do NOT a strategic Kremlin-led messaging campaign make.

Cyberwar continually flirts with a central question (which has become a story routinely told by US “news” media outlets) – “Was Russian troll farming some sort of Kremlin-staged strategic cyber-op?” – without ever really answering it. The result is a book-length begging of this very important question, and here we come to the primary problem with Cyberwar– and it’s a whopper. Jamieson build her case for the Russian “tanking” of HRC’s candidacy on two central assumptions, both unproven.

Assumption #1: Jamieson implicitly asserts in Cyberwar that the Russians “hacked” into the Democratic National Committee (DNC) computer servers (as well as other hacks) and obtained digital copies of thousands of what became publicly damning emails from members of the DNC leadership team – Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta, HRC herself, and others – and then (by extension) tried to leverage the contents of these stolen documents for months in US social media spaces (and, by extension, influenced the shaping of US news narratives about HRC.) Interestingly, KHJ sneaks in “Russia hacked” and “Russian-stolen Democratic content” language into the last third of her book, without directly addressing this BIG rhetorical move or providing any proof that the Russians did so. Instead, she appears to implicitly draw on “evidence” for Russian hacking provided by the US “intelligence community” – former FBI director turned Trump special prosecutor Bob Mueller, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, and former National Security Agency director Michael Hayden chief among them. (Mueller, Clapper, Hayden – three US government officials who have all been less than honest with the American people, and I’m being generous.)

The counternarrative to the “Russia hacked into the DNC computers” story? Information was “leaked” from inside the DNC, not hacked from the outside. How might we know? Former NSA cryptographer Bill Binney, former CIA official Ray McGovern, and many other members of the 2003-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) argue that, based on their review of computer bit rate information, the stolen DNC content traveled at bandwidth rates too high to have been an external “hack,” but rather an internal “leak.” The reality? We’ll never know for sure, because the DNC refused to hand over their compromised computer servers to the FBI, instead contracting with Crowd Strike, a private US cybersecurity firm, to ascertain affirmative Russian hacking involvement (#Surprise!). For interested readers, NSA whistleblower Bill Binney discusses his “leak versus hack” conclusions on this recent episode of Brass Check TV between 1:27 – 1:37 here.

Assumption #2: In Cyberwar, Jamieson implies that WikiLeaks closely collaborated with the Russian government, or at the very least (it’s a bit hard to tell from her lack of analysis here), Putin used WikiLeaks as its public relations machine to destroy HRC’s reputation and elevate DJT as a presidential candidate. In other words, from his Ecuadorian embassy prison, Assange was in close cahoots with Putin, Cyberwar implies, or at the very least, Assange served as a “useful idiot” for the Kremlin. Here again, KHJ offers no proof, other than continually flagging the usual suspects, Russian troll farmers and hackers, as well as other sources such as the popular RT (formerly Russia Today) news channel for alleged disinformation shenanigans, such as broadcasting an exclusive in-depth interview between independent British journalist John Pilger and WikiLeaks’ co-founder Julian Assange on November 6, 2016, two days before the election.

Side note – this interview, entitled “Secret World of US Election,” is fascinating (see here).

RT/Russia Today now carries a variety of US news shows hosted by US news journalists now unable to find access to the US airwaves, individuals like former MSNBC journalist Ed Schultz (now deceased), former US talk show host Larry King, and Pulitzer Prize winning former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges. Ironically, RT’s news content is often much more in-depth than any stories provided by the US corporate commercial TeeVee channels – watch any episode of Chris Hedges’ “On Contact,” for example, to hear perspectives on US politics you’ll rarely find on any other US news channel. On December 31, 2018, RT aired an episode of Larry King’s program talking with longtime Russia expert and War With Russia? author Stephen Cohen, and the show begins with King parroting the “Russia interfered in the US election” meme, a claim Cohen respectfully disputes before launching into a cogent and thoughtful analysis of the importance of a 21^st century US-Russia “partnership” (not “friendship”) instead of more US/NATO aggression on Russia’s borders, and how DJT’s overtures to Russia have been continually hamstrung by US political and media elites. Here’s a link for further listening. It bears repeating, and King and Cohen discuss this at some length, that Cohen’s point of view re: Russia is now considered “radical” in US policy-making circles, despite the Cold War between the US and Russia having been officially over for thirty years.

Back to WikiLeaks and the organization’s alleged conspiring with the Kremlin. Suffice to say, as the world’s first truly “stateless” news organization, WikiLeaks’ role as a powerful platform for publishing information provided by corporate and state insiders-turned-whistleblowers has been consistently credible and accurate, as well as proving a colossal PITA for US political and economic elites on all sides of the aisle. And yes, Assange and WikiLeaks have reserved special ire for the Clintons, and indeed, Assange admitted to actively working with the DJT campaign in the months leading up to the 2016 US presidential election. To implicitly blame the Russians for WikiLeaks’ behavior, however, as KHJ does in Cyberwar, is disingenuous at best.

Here’s a single example of this troublesome conflation based on faulty assumptions from page 149 pf KHJ’s Cyberwaranalysis: In early October 2016, Jamieson asserts, “a DHS-ODNI intelligence report confirmed that the Russians were behind the hacking of the DNC…and a first tranche of Russian-hacked Podesta emails was WikiLeak’d.” She then goes on to detail (rightly in my estimation) the damning impact of these documents on US news coverage of HRC’s campaign. But read her sentence above again to understand the broad leaps she is making, which go well beyond Russian troll farmers.

And here is the rub. At day’s end, Jamieson’s case for Russian Cyberwar squarely rests on these two assumptions, both unproven. The result? KHJ makes mountains out of molehills – amateurish Russian troll farming on Facebook and Twitter, and (maybe?) a “campaign of influence targeting HRC” is transmogrified, in her implicit final analysis AND by uncritical coverage of her Cyberwar book in the popular US news media, into Putin’s Russian government strategically penetrating to the very heart of the US electoral process, “gaming” the outcome against HRC and in favor of DJT. In this tense geopolitical moment, when corporate for-profit and “deep state” US “news” media mouthpieces supporting the Empire’s “full-spectrum dominance” of planet Earth on the Pentagon’s behalf are blindly thrashing about looking for someone (or some country) to blame, Cyberwar only adds fuel to the fires of the #RussiaGate hysteria.

Bigger picture? Even more troublesome for any American who still believes in the transformative power of free, open, and democratic discourse are the ways in which the two-year-old #RussiaGate tale is now being leveraged by US elites here in the “Homeland.” “Behavioral microtargeting,” a digital communications strategy pioneered in 2016 by UK-based Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix, Trump chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Facebook (unwittingly?) through “data breaches” of 50 million (with an M) Facebook user accounts, is now being used in state and local political races around the US as a viable political strategy. Social media censorship, meanwhile, is emerging as a strategic US synergistic state/corporate response to so-called “fake news” – witness neoliberal think tank Atlantic Council’s recent collaboration with Facebook to “purge” more than 800 “suspect” Facebook accounts, or Google’s “algorithmic censorship,” gaming its algorithm to marginalize US news outlets – TruthDig, Alternet, TruthOut, WWSA – critical of the US imperial status quo, or the complete purging of controversial independent analyst and so-called “conspiracy theorist” Alex Jones from pretty much ALL mainstream (read corporate) US digital platforms – all happened within the past year. And, as US comedienne Michelle Wolf pointed out at the annual Washington Press Club banquet last spring, MOUNDS of money are being made by US neoliberal “news” outlets – clicks, ratings, book sales – through this sort of Trump-bashing and fear-mongering, while pressing issues impacting the lives of ordinary Americans – “still no clean water in Flint, Michigan!” – are completely ignored. #RussiaGate, in sum, is now a rationale for demonizing, marginalizing, and censoring any US individual or organization that does not tow the #RussiaGate party line.

Despite the US news-induced hysteria surrounding the #RussiaGate tale, voices of reason persist. Most prominent include Rolling Stone investigative journalist Matt Taibbi, LA-based nightclub comedian Jimmy Dore (who regularly covers the excesses of the #RussiaGate story with his comedic colleagues on is popular YouTube channel “The Jimmy Dore Show”), and Nation reporter Aaron Maté, whose December 28, 2018 article calls BS on the #Russiagate nonsense. The complete title of Maté’s article? “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics – Far from being a sophisticated propaganda campaign, it was small, amateurish, and mostly unrelated to the 2016 election.” (read Maté’s piece here). Maté, who has covered the #RussiaGate story extensively since 2016, provides in-depth analysis of two new reports alleging Russian cyber meddling – one produced by the University of Oxford’s Computational Propaganda Research Project and the other by the US consulting corporation with deep ties to the national security state, New Knowledge. I encourage interested readers to take the time to read his story.

Maté’s conclusion, meanwhile, is worth quoting here at length:

Based on all of this data, we can draw this picture of Russian social-media activity: It was mostly unrelated to the 2016 election; microscopic in reach, engagement, and spending; and juvenile or absurd in its content. This leads to the inescapable conclusion, as the New Knowledge study acknowledges, that “the operation’s focus on elections was merely a small subset” of its activity. They qualify that “accurate” narrative by saying it “misses nuance and deserves more contextualization.” Alternatively, perhaps it deserves some minimal reflection that a juvenile social-media operation with such a small focus on elections is being widely portrayed as a seismic threat that may well have decided the 2016 contest.

Indeed.

Would that Kathleen Hall Jamieson was not a bit more “nuanced” in “contextualizing” her Cyberwar analysis.

What to do? The best answer is critical media literacy education – moving beyond partisan politics and moral panics to more thoughtfully engage these important political questions in open dialogue and debate.

Until we do so, we will continue to be enthralled by the #RussiaGate tale, with potentially deleterious geopolitical consequences. (Again, Cohen’s interview with Larry King is a good starting place).

To wit, in Pogo’s famous phrase – “we have met the enemy and he is US.”

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