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The Fear Driving US Nuclear Strategy

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By Robert J. Burrowes

The United States Department of Defense released its latest ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’ (NPR) on 2 February, updating the last one issued in 2010 during the previous administration. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018’.

The Executive Summary of the NPR is also available, if you prefer. See ‘Nuclear Posture Review 2018 Executive Summary’.

Several authors have already thoughtfully exposed a phenomenal variety of obvious lies, invented threats, strategic misconceptions and flaws – such as the fallacious thinking behind ‘deterrence’ and significantly increased risk of nuclear war given the delusional ‘thinking’ in the document – as well as the political fear-mongering in the NPR. For example, eminent scholar Professor Paul Rogers has pointed out: ‘The risk now is that we are on a slippery slope towards “small nuclear wars in far-off places”, which themselves could either escalate or at the very least break the 70+ year taboo on treating nuclear weapons as useable.’ See ‘Nuclear Posture Review: Sliding Towards Nuclear War?’

Stephen Lendman has reminded us that US ‘defense spending far exceeds what Russia, China, Iran and other independent countries spend combined’ and that the US ‘nuclear arsenal and delivery systems can destroy planet earth multiple times over’ with the document suggesting ‘preparation for nuclear war’. Moreover, the NPR ‘falsely claims the nation must address “an unprecedented range and mix of threats” posed by Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and other countries’ and this despite the incontrovertible fact that no nation has threatened US security since World War II and none threatens it now.

He further points out that the NPR’s claim that there is ‘an unprecedented range and mix of threats, including major conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear, space, and cyber threats, and violent nonstate actors’ is ‘utter rubbish’ and that ‘America’s rage for endless wars of aggression, along with its rogue allies, poses the only serious threat to world peace and stability.’ See ‘Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review’.

Even Andrew C. Weber, an assistant defense secretary during the Obama administration, has warned that

‘Almost everything about this radical new policy will blur the line between nuclear and conventional’ and ‘will make nuclear war a lot more likely.’ See ‘Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks With Nuclear Arms’.

Despite the obvious belligerence in the document, we are supposed to believe, according to words in the NPR, that ‘The United States remains committed to its efforts in support of the ultimate global elimination of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons’ despite the US denunciation of the ‘UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons’ negotiated by 122 countries just a few months ago in mid-2017. See ‘U.S., UK and France Denounce Nuclear Ban Treaty’.

Presumably, we are supposed to have shorter memories than members of the US administration or to be even more terrified and unintelligent than are they. This would be difficult.

Rather than further critique the document, which several authors have done admirably, I would like to explain my observation immediately above.

Let me start by explaining why those who formulated the current US nuclear strategy, wrote the Nuclear Posture Review, now promote it and are responsible for implementing it, are utterly terrified and quite delusional, and constitute a threat to human civilization.

The NPR is full of language such as this: ‘There now exists an unprecedented range and mix of threats, including major conventional, chemical, biological, nuclear, space, and cyber threats, and violent nonstate actors. These developments have produced increased uncertainty and risk.’

Are these individuals, notably including Donald Trump, Secretary of Defense General Jim ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, Chief of Staff Marine General John Kelly and National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster, really frightened of countries such as Iran (with its non-existent nuclear arsenal) or North Korea (with its handful of ‘primitive’ nuclear weapons and inadequate delivery systems)? Or are they really frightened of countries such as Russia and China, whose nuclear arsenals pale in comparison to that of the United States and whose strategic posture in any case is decidedly non-aggressive (particularly towards the United States) despite its ongoing provocations of them?

Are US government leaders really so terrified of possible conventional, chemical, biological, space and cyber attacks that they need to threaten nuclear annihilation should it occur?

Well, the answer to each of these questions is that Trump, Mattis, Kelly, McMaster and other US political and military leaders are, indeed, terrified.

However, they are projecting their obvious terror away from its original source and onto a ‘safe’ and ‘approved’ target so that they can behave in accordance with their terror. They do this because the original cause of their terror – their parents and/or other significant adults in their childhood – never allowed them to feel their terror and to direct and express it safely and appropriately. For a full explanation of why this happens, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

Unfortunately, and in this case potentially catastrophically, this dysfunctional behavioural response to deeply suppressed terror cannot ‘work’ either personally or politically for the individuals concerned. Let me explain why.

Evolution devised an extraordinarily powerful response to threats: it gave many organisms, including human beings, the emotion of fear to detect threats as well as other tools that can be used in conjunction with fear to respond powerfully to threats. Hence, in response to a threat, humans are meant to feel their fear and, while doing so, engage other feelings, conscience and intelligence so that the source of the threat can be accurately identified and the most powerful and effective behavioural response to that threat can be devised and implemented. In simple language: We need our fear to tell us we are under threat and to play a part in defending ourselves. In evolutionary terms, this was highly functional.

If, however, during childhood, the fear is suppressed because the individual is too frightened to feel it (usually because their parents deny them a safe opportunity to do so), then they will be unconsciously compelled to project their fear onto those who pose no threat (precisely because these people do not immobilize them with terror) and to endlessly seek to control these people (during childhood this usually means their younger siblings and/or friends, and during adulthood it usually means people of another sex, race, class, religion or nation) so that they can gain relief from experiencing their suppressed (childhood) fear.

The relief, of course, is delusionary. But once someone is terrified, it is not possible for them to behave functionally or powerfully. They will live in a world of delusion and projection, endlessly blaming those who they (unconsciously) project to be a threat precisely because these people are not frightening and not a threat and seem more likely to be able to be ‘controlled’.

This projection and behaviour happen all of the time, both in personal interactions and geopolitically, but it doesn’t usually threaten imminent annihilation, even if, to choose another example, it endlessly and perhaps disastrously impedes efforts to tackle the environmental and other assaults on our biosphere.

It is because parents are frightened to feel and experience their own fear that they also fear their child’s fear and they act (consciously or unconsciously, depending on the context) to prevent the child from feeling this fear, perhaps by doing something as simple as reassuring them.

However, parents also use a variety of methods to distract their child from feeling their feelings. They might offer the child a toy or food to distract them. But another important way in which fear is suppressed is by teaching children to use play as a distraction from having their feelings. This fear might then remanifest in the form of the child wanting others to play with them but particularly by doing so in a game of their choosing and over which they have control (so that they can ensure that their fear is not raised).

Once the child has learned to use gaining control over play to distract themselves from their terror, it might well become a lifetime addiction, subsequently manifesting as a dysfunctional desire for control within a family or perhaps even economically, politically or militarily.

Unfortunately, as some of these children grow up and the nature of their ‘game’ changes, the outcome can have deadly consequences. This is simply because there is never any guarantee that others will submit willingly to control by others. And, if they do not, this can trigger the original person’s (unconscious) terror ‘necessitating’ action – a higher-risk strategy in an attempt to secure this higher degree of control over others – to resuppress their terror.

However, for example, even if the terrified person ends up owning a major corporation and exercising a great degree of control over employees, markets and possibly countries, the terror driving their delusional need for control can never be satisfied. See ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. But the same principle applies in other domains as well, including the political and military.

And in the most dangerous collective manifestation of this major psychological disorder, the current US political/military leadership, which has been effectively merged by Trump’s appointment of military generals to his political staff, we now have the situation where a collection of individuals who are terrified and also project their dysfunctional desire for control onto other nations, are willing to threaten (and use) nuclear weapons in a delusionary attempt to feel (personally) ‘in control’.

It is little wonder that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has moved the Doomsday Clock to two minutes to midnight! See ‘It is now two minutes to midnight: 2018 Doomsday Clock Statement.’

So what can we do?

Well, I would tackle the problem at several levels and I invite you to consider participating in one or more of these.

To help prevent this problem from emerging at its source, you are welcome to consider making ‘My Promise to Children’. This will play a vital role in ensuring that children do not grow up suppressing their fear.

Given the extraordinary emotional and other damage inflicted by school, you might consider educational opportunities for your child(ren) outside that framework. See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

If you suspect that you are not as powerful as you would like, you might consider ‘Putting Feelings First’ so that you can learn to behave with awareness – a synthesis of all of the feedback that your various mental functions give you and the judgments that arise, in an integrated way, from this feedback. This will enable you to love yourself truly and always courageously act out your own self-will, whatever the consequences.

If you wish to work against the many threats, including military threats, to our environment simultaneously, you are welcome to join those participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’.

And if you wish to be part of efforts to end violence and war, including the threat of nuclear annihilation, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’ and/or using sound nonviolent strategy for your campaign or liberation struggle. See Nonviolent Campaign Strategy or Nonviolent Defense/Liberation Strategy.

Our world is poised perilously on the brink of catastrophic nuclear war. This has happened because we have given responsibility for holding the nuclear trigger to a handful of men who, emotionally speaking, are terrified little boys cowering from the imaginary threat of the bogeyman under their bed.

There is no easy way back from this brink. But you can help, both now and in the future, by doing one or more of the suggestions above.

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.

—
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

Biggest Nunes Memo Revelations Have Little To Do With Its Content

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By Caitlin Johnstone

Source: Consortium News

It’s fitting that the ever-tightening repetitive loops of America’s increasingly schizophrenic partisan warfare finally hit peak shrillness and skyrocketed into a white noise singularity on Groundhog Day. Right now, we’re right about at the part of the movie where Bill Murray is driving over a cliff in a pickup truck with a large rodent behind the wheel.

If you only just started paying attention to U.S. politics in 2017 what I’m about to tell you will blow your mind, so you might want to sit down for this: believe it or not, there was once a time when both of America’s mainstream political parties weren’t screeching every single day that there was news about to break any minute now which would obliterate the other party forever. No Russiagate, no Nunes memo, no Rachel Maddow red yarn graphs, no Sean Hannity “tick tock,” no nothing. People screaming that the end is nigh and it’s all about to come crashing down were relegated to street corners and the occasional Infowars appearance, not practicing mainstream political punditry for multimillion dollar salaries on MSNBC and Fox News.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing that Americans are starting to look critically at the power dynamics in their country, but the partisan filters they’ve pulled over their eyes are causing mass confusion and delusion. Now everyone who questions the CIA is a Russian agent and the term “deep state” suddenly means “literally anyone who doesn’t like Donald Trump.” Your take on the contents of the Nunes memo will put you in one of two radically different political dimensions depending on which mainstream cult you’ve subscribed to, and it will cause you to completely miss the point of the entire ordeal.

The part of the memo that has everyone talking today reads as follows: “Furthermore, Deputy Director McCabe testified before the Committee in December 2017 that no surveillance warrant would have been sought from the FISC without the Steele dossier information.”

This refers to a surveillance warrant requested by the FBI’s then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court seeking permission to spy on the communications of Carter Page, a member of the 2016 Trump campaign. The controversy revolves around the claim that this surveillance warrant would never have even been requested if not for the clearly biased, Clinton-funded, and error-riddled Christopher Steele dossier which is acknowledged even by its former MI6 author to be 10 to 30 percent inaccurate.

Combine that with the fact that this has never been made clear to the public, and baby you’ve got yourself a scandal. The FBI knowingly using extremely tainted evidence from one presidential campaign to get permission to spy on another would indeed be a very big deal.

There are some problems with the “BOOM! Bigger than Watergate!” exclamations that pro-Trump partisans have been parading around about this, however. The first is that the memo is only an internal communication between Republican congressmen; it’s not a sworn testimony or legal transcript or anything legally binding. It’s basically just some Republican ideas about what happened. The assertions made therein are reportedly being hotly contested by Democrats with knowledge of the situation, which is in turn being disputed by Republicans.

Another thing putting a damper on the GOP’s “KABOOM!” parade is the fact that the memo’s contents are not even entirely new; CNN reported way back in April of last year that sources had informed them that the Steele dossier had been used to get a FISA warrant on the Trump campaign. Additionally, even if every single allegation in the memo is true, the revelations are still arguably far less earth shattering than the Edward Snowden revelations of 2013 exposing the NSA’s sprawling domestic espionage network, so the expectation that these less significant new revelations would cause a radical transformation in U.S. politics when the Snowden revelations did not seems highly unrealistic.

Nonetheless, there have been some extremely important revelations as a result of this memo; they just haven’t come from the contents of the memo itself. In the same way that cybersecurity analysts observe the metadata underlying hacked files rather than the contents of the files themselves, political analysts have been pointing out that a lot can be learned about the political establishment by looking at its response to the possibility of the memo’s release.

“Memo is clearly not a blockbuster. We can tell so by reading it. Which makes Dems’ frantic efforts to prevent anyone from reading it seem even more bizarre,” observed TYT’s Michael Tracey. “Veracity of memo’s claims aside, we were told that its release would undermine the rule of law. So, just checking: is the rule of law still in tact?” he added later.

“Now it is clear to all,” WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange tweeted. “The claims about how the ‘Nunes’ memo would destroy ‘national security’ were lies. Classification stickers are used by bureaucrats trying to obtain ‘political security’ for their cronies.”

“One effect of the memo – it’s an example of how extensively we overclassify information,” wrote National Review’s David French. “I’m highly dubious that any information disclosed threatens national security in any way, shape, or form. I’d be willing to bet the Dem response is similarly harmless. Release it.”

Indeed, both the FBI and high-profile Democrats have been claiming that the memo’s unredacted release would pose a national security threat, with California Congressman (and virulent Russiagater) Eric Swalwell going so far to call it “brainwashing.” A CNN panelist wandered completely off the paddock and suggested that yesterday may have been America’s last day as a democracy. Why were they all flipping out so hysterically over a release of information that plainly poses no threat to the American people?

In addition to Assange’s assertion that government secrecy has far less to do with national security than political security (a claim he has made before which seems to be proving correct time and time again), there’s the jarring question posed by Republican Congressman Thomas Massie: “who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?”

Whoa, Nelly. Hang on. What is he talking about?

It would be understandable if you were unaware of the debate over the reauthorization of FISA surveillance which resulted in unconditional bipartisan approval last month – the mainstream media barely touched it. In point of fact, though, the very surveillance practices alleged to have been abused in this hotly controversial memo are the same which was waved through by both the House and the Senate, and by the very same people promoting the memo in many cases.

The McCabe testimony was in December. FISA was renewed in January. Why is all this just coming out now? If the Republicans truly believed that McCabe said what the memo claims he said, why wasn’t the public informed before their elected representatives renewed the intelligence community’s dangerously intrusive surveillance approval? Was this information simply forgotten about until after those Orwellian powers had been secured?

Of course not. Don’t be an idiot.

This makes the kicking, screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth by the political establishment make a lot more sense, doesn’t it? Now suddenly we’re looking at a he-said, she-said partisan battle over an issue which can only be resolved with greater and greater transparency of more and more government documents, and we can all see where that’s headed. In their rush to win a partisan battle and shield their president from the ongoing Russiagate conspiracy theory, the Republicans may have exposed too much of the establishment foundation upon which both parties are built.

The term “deep state” does not mean “Democrats and Never-Trumpers” as Republican pundits would have you believe, nor does the term refer to any kind of weird, unverifiable conspiracy theory. The deep state is in fact not a conspiracy theory at all, but simply a concept used in political analysis for discussing the undeniable fact that unelected power structures exist in America, and that they tend to form alliances and work together in some sense.

There is no denying the fact that plutocrats, intelligence agencies, defense agencies and the mass media are both powerful and unelected, and there is no denying the fact that there are many convoluted and often conflicting alliances between them. All that can be debated is the manner and extent to which this is happening.

The deep state is America’s permanent government, the U.S. power structures that Americans don’t elect. These power structures plainly have a vested interest in keeping America’s Orwellian surveillance structures in place, as evidenced by the intelligence community’s menacingly urgent demand for FISA renewal back in December. If there’s any thread to be pulled that really could make waves in the way Official Washington (hat tip to the late Robert Parry) operates, it is in the plot holes between the bipartisan scramble toward unconditional surveillance renewal and the highly partisan battle over exposing the abuse of those very powers.

If we’re going to see a gap in the bars of our cages, that’s a great place to keep our eyes trained, so keep watching. Watch what happens in a partisan war where both parties have a simultaneous interest in revealing as little of the game as possible and exposing the other party. Things could get very interesting.

The Nunes Memo Only Partially “Vindicates” Trump, But it Fully Indicts the FBI and the FISA Court

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By Thomas L. Knapp

Source: The Fifth Column

On February 2, US president Donald Trump approved public release of a memo from the US House Intelligence Committee concerning FBI malfeasance in its applications for warrants to surveil Carter Page, a former member of his campaign team.

The following day, Trump triumphantly tweeted that the memo “totally vindicates” him in the ongoing “Russiagate” probe. It doesn’t really do that — proving a negative is always difficult — but it does add a great deal of credibility to his charge that the probe is a politically driven witch hunt rather than a serious criminal investigation.

According to the memo, the FBI based the probable cause claim in its multiple surveillance applications to Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge on two pieces of “evidence”:

1) A “minimally corroborated” (the FBI’s own words) dossier of political opposition research on Donald Trump, compiled by a British former spy in the pay of Trump’s political opponents; and

2) A Yahoo! News article based — although the FBI denied it — on leaks from that same foreign operative.

The memo also claims that at no point did the FBI apprise the judge of the political origins or “minimal corroboration” of the memo.

If these claims are true, then what happened was the equivalent of crazy Uncle J. Edgar going before a judge and using a picture of me with a Frisbee [TM] in the air behind me, taken by my angry ex-wife, as probable cause to believe that I’m from Mars, then asking for a warrant to search my garage for flying saucers.

As you may recall, this is the same FBI which (and the same FBI director who) amassed mountains of evidence that Trump’s opponent in the 2016 presidential election had committed multiple felonies in her grossly negligent handling of classified information as Secretary of State, yet recommended against prosecuting her because, well, she’s Hillary Clinton.

And as you may also recall, this is the same FISA court that, between 1979 and 2013 approved 35,434 warrant requests and denied 12.

How many of those 35,434 requests were backed by evidence no more substantial than that described in the Nunes memo?

How much more dumb and evidenceless did those 12 denied requests have to be to not get a pass?

And why did the same Republican Congress which just released this memo recently vote to renew Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, giving even more expansive powers to organizations which have clearly used those powers abusively and without regard to even minimal standards of evidence?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Did Trump and/or his campaign team “collude” with the Russian government to manipulate the 2016 presidential election? I don’t know. But I do know that disguising a circus as an investigation isn’t likely  to shed real light on the matter.

 

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

The Top 10 Outrageous Things About ISIS the Western Mainstream Media Ignores

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By Robert Bridge

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Last week, the US said it was working to create “alternative government authorities” on Syrian territory. This latest move, aside from demonstrating once again that the US has no respect for Syria’s territorial integrity, indicates we may be seeing more from that group of mercenaries known as Islamic State.

Thus, it seems to be an appropriate time to reflect upon a set of very strange circumstances that led to the rise of this loathsome terrorist group. Here are the top 10 reasons, in no particular order, as to why we should be very suspicious about this group.

10. Convenient Timing

In late August 2013, the United States was on the verge of initiating a massive attack on the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad over a deadly chemical attack that had occurred in the town of Ghouta just days earlier. Although it would have made no sense for Assad to have resorted to such dirty tactics, Washington had found its casus belli. It should be noted that at this time the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant was largely unknown. That would change soon enough.

Meanwhile, a terrible thing happened on the way to this jolly little war. UK Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a stunning defeat in the House of Commons, voting down his effort to join the Americans in Syria. Apparently the British were America’s obedient poodle no longer.

The setback had an apparent sobering effect on Barack Obama, who suddenly – in a feigned nod to democratic procedure and all that – called for Congress to decide whether or not to use military force against Syrian. Tellingly, that vote never materialized.

What did materialize, however, and with alarming speed and viciousness, was a terrorist group that rose up like a phoenix from the ashes of Iraq known as Islamic State (ISIS)*, with evil designs to create an Islamic caliphate across a wide swath of Iraq and Syria.

In other words, the perfect casus belli for the US in Syria that would require no need for a vote from Congress.

9. Journalist Killings

As if to draw gratuitous attention to itself more than anything else, the Sunni terrorist group ISIS, under the leadership of one Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, began to grab world headlines not by its battlefield exploits, but by carrying out videotaped executions of Western journalists, as well as destroying cultural heritage sites. I still can’t help wondering: Why didn’t the group just let its fighting skills speak for itself? Why the apparent need for such outrageous publicity stunts? Was this compensation for something the group was desperately lacking?

In any case, starting in August 2014, almost one year to the day that Obama was forced to put the brakes on his Syrian attack, the beheadings began in earnest.

On August 19, US journalist James Foley, seen kneeling on the ground in some undetermined location next to his apparent executioner, ‘Jihadi John,’ reads out a short statement before being beheaded by his captor. However, Islamic State spared its audience the gore by not showing the moment of the actual beheading; the video only shows a head lying on a body following the purported act.

Even Western mainstream publications admitted that something didn’t seem quite right.

Under the headline, ‘Foley murder video may have been staged’ the Telegraph, a reputable British newspaper, interviewed forensic experts who called into question the moment in the video when Foley is allegedly being beheaded by his captor.

“After enhancements, the knife can be seen to be drawn across the upper neck at least six times, with no blood evidence to the point the picture fades to black,” the expert said.

Another expert who examined the video for the newspaper said: “I think it has been staged. My feeling is that the execution may have happened after the camera was stopped.”

Incredibly, every subsequent beheading video put out by Islamic State attracted the same amount of scepticism – not just from alternative websites, who were also noticing the many irregularities contained in the videos, but from mainstream media news sources.

Following the release of the video purported to show the beheading of Steve Sotloff, a journalist who worked with the Jerusalem Post, The Australian newspaper reported that “the apparent beheading on camera of a second US hostage by a man with a British accent was again staged, according to forensic analysis.”

Then there was the video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians, dressed in impeccably clean orange jumpsuits, being led along a Libyan beach by black-clad members of ISIS, all of whom appear to be members of some NBA basketball team.

Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium, told Fox News that “the speaker, “Jihad Joseph” is much larger than the sea in both the close up and wide shots, and his head is bizarrely out of proportion, meaning he was filmed indoors and the sea added behind him… In addition, the jihadists featured in the film look to be more than 7 feet tall, towering as much as two feet above their victims…”

In July 2015, yet another strange report emerged, CyberBerkut, a Ukrainian group of hackers, said it hacked John McCain’s laptop while he was on an official visit to Kiev around the first week of June 2015. In a report by TechWorm, what they purported to find was a fully staged production of an ISIS execution video, with an actor portraying an executioner who is holding a knife in preparation to behead the prisoner.

The authenticity of this video has not been independently verified.

None of this proves that the individuals in all of the ISIS beheading videos did not go on to meet some grisly fate. However, it seems worth noting that so many forensic experts have spoken out on the “staged” nature of these videos, and that the actual moment of execution during these film productions is never actually shown. Why would such a barbarous group of villains like ISIS need to script and censor their videos?

8. ISIS freedom of movement

Despite employing state-of-the-art fighter jets, like the F-16 Fighting Falcon and A-10 Warthog, the US campaign to destroy Islamic State was largely an exercise in utter futility. There is no other way to explain it. In June 2014, a convoy of hundreds of ISIS fighters drove through 200 km of the Syro-Arabian Desert in fresh-off-the-lot Toyota pickup trucks on the way to Syria. For any modern military, eliminating such a target would have been the equivalent of a lazy afternoon at the shooting range, or shooting fish in a barrel. The fact that these terrorists made it to Syria unmolested tells us everything we need to know about America’s real agenda.

“With state of the art jet fighter aircraft … it would have been – from a military standpoint – ‘a piece of cake’, a rapid and expedient surgical operation, which would have decimated the Islamic State convoys in a matter of hours,” Michel Chossudovsky wrote in Global Research.

“Instead what we have witnessed is an ongoing drawn out six months of relentless air raids and bombings, and the terrorist enemy is apparently still intact.”

“And we are led to believe that the Islamic State cannot be defeated by a powerful US led military coalition of 19 countries,” he added.

The only reasonable conclusion to make from all of this is that the air campaign was not designed to eliminate Islamic State.

7. SITE Security Group

In 2002, Rita Katz and Josh Devon founded Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute (SITE), which, according to its website, is “the world’s leading non-governmental counterterrorism organization specializing in tracking and analyzing online activity of the global extremist community.”

In 2006, in a New Yorker article entitled, “Private Jihad: How Rita Katz got into the spying business,” it was mentioned how SITE spoke directly with jihadists via various message boards:

“Katz has a testy relationship with the government, sometimes acting as a consultant and sometimes as an antagonist. About a year ago, a SITE staffer, under an alias, managed to join an exclusive jihadist message board that, among other things, served as a debarkation point for many would-be suicide bombers.

For months, the staffer pretended to be one of the jihadis, joining in chats and watching as other members posted the chilling messages known as “wills,” the final sign-offs before martyrdom. The staffer also passed along technical advice on how to keep the message board going.

When Katz called officials in Washington, she was reportedly met with resistance: ‘Oh, Rita, I’m not sure you should even be communicating with them—you might be providing material support!,” they told her.

In an interview with CNN, Katz admitted that her group was able to “beat [ISIS] with a release” of a video before it had even been disseminated.

In 2007, SITE came under fire for obtaining an alleged Bin Laden video a month prior to its formal release.

Some have raised questions as to how this small group is able to do what the government has not been able to: track ISIS and other terrorist groups with uncanny efficiency.

6. Toyota Trucks

Watching mainstream media reports detail the adventures of Islamic State as they speed carefree across wide-open desert, beards blowing in the wind, one would be forgiven for thinking they were watching a Toyota commercial.

The Times of Israel went so far as to ridicule the leaders of the West for expressing such fear over these militants in their Toyotas like hell raising teenagers speeding around the parking lot of McDonald’s on a Friday night to impress their friends.

“It’s almost unbelievable,” Avi Issacharoff wrote. “They used to say in the IDF that ‘the man in the tank will win,’ justifying the preference for armor over infantry. Now we hear that, from a US source no less, ‘the man in the Toyota’ will defeat the West.”

Somehow we are expected to believe that these shiny new trucks, along with over 2,000 Humvee vehicles, fell into the terrorists’ control by winning some battles in Iraq, like in Mosul and Palmyra. That absurd explanation falls very wide of the mark and needs far more inquiry.

5. Drone attack on Russia

On New Year’s Eve and on January 6, 2018, Russia’s Khmeimim Airbase in Syria was attacked. The first incident involved militants armed with mortars that resulted in the death of two Russian soldiers and damage to several aircraft. The second attack involved a swarm of 13 drones armed with bomblets, which Russian forces countered by means of electronic warfare and air-defense systems. Around half of the drones were electronically hijacked by Russian forces, while the others were shot down without incident. Nevertheless, the attack required a high level of expertise from a “technologically advanced country,” according to Russia.

The United States countered the claim, suggesting that such technology can be easily purchased. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankin-Galloway said the “devices and technologies can easily be obtained in the open market.”

Meanwhile, however, President Putin never mentioned Islamic State when he discussed the incident with the media.

“Those aircraft were only camouflaged – I want to emphasize this – to look like handicraft production. In fact, it is quite obvious that there were elements of high-tech nature there,” the Russian leader said.

So are we expected to believe that Islamic State terrorists were able to buy these UAV drones, or is it more realistic to believe, along with the Russians, that some outside major power was needed to provide the know-how?

4. Never attacked mainland Israel

In March 2016, the warriors of Islamic State picked up their pens in an effort to explain away a question that has been perplexing many observers: why don’t they ever attack Israel?

In the article, translated by a group called MEMRI, the group said it holds to the position that the Palestinian cause does not take precedence over any other jihadi struggle.

“If we look at the reality of the world today, we will find that it is completely ruled by polytheism and its laws, except for the regions where Allah made it possible for the Islamic State to establish the religion…. Therefore, jihad in Palestine is equal to jihad elsewhere,” the article said.

“The apostate [tyrants] who rule the lands of Islam are graver infidels than [the Jews], and war against them takes precedence over war against the original infidels,” the article said, as reported in the Times of Israel.

Whatever the case may be, this seems to be the first time in modern history that a radical jihadist group has had no reason to quarrel with Israel.

3. Oil Export Business

After Islamic State managed to make it across the vast desert between Iraq and Syria without attracting so much as a damaged fender, it managed to do the unthinkable: it set up a very lucrative oil-export business practically overnight in the north of the country. And this was not some small-time operation.

According to one estimate, the motley crew of mercenaries was generating profits of more than £320million a year from oil exports, or about 40,000 barrels of crude every single day.

Are we really expected to believe that a 19-member military organization led by the United States was powerless to put this rag-tag operation out of business?

The reason why the story is so utterly preposterous is that Russia, in a matter of several days, was able to do what this multinational outfit could not do in over a year. In mid-November 2015, Russia had announced that it had destroyed in a matter of days some 500 fuel trucks – and there is plenty of videotape of the Russian attacks for the naysayers who doubt the Kremlin’s claim.

According to Russian General Staff spokesman Colonel General Andrey Kartapolov: “In just the first few days, our aviation has destroyed 500 fuel tanker trucks, which greatly reduced illegal oil export capabilities of the militants and, accordingly, their income from oil smuggling.”

2. Islamic State’s Israeli medical plan

In March 2015, The Wall Street Journal reported a rather stunning revelation that Israel was treating “Al-Qaeda* fighters wounded in the Syria civil war.”

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, Israel has provided medical assistance to nearly 2,000 Syrians.

The Wall Street Journal quoted “an Israeli military official” who said no questions were asked of the patients.

“We don’t ask who they are, we don’t do any screening,” the official said. “Once the treatment is done, we take them back to the border and they go on their way.”

Amos Yadlin, the former military intelligence chief, told the Journal that Hezbollah and Iran “are the major threat to Israel, much more than the radical Sunni Islamists, who are also an enemy.”

“Those Sunni elements who control some two-thirds to 90% of the border on the Golan aren’t attacking Israel. This gives you some basis to think that they understand who is their real enemy – maybe it isn’t Israel.”

The Jerusalem Post repeated a joke allegedly told by Syrian President Bashar Assad to Foreign Affairs, ‘How can you say that al-Qaida doesn’t have an air force? They have the Israeli air force…They are supporting the rebels in Syria. It is very clear.”

1. The Pentagon report that speak volumes

In May 2015, a declassified Pentagon document provided shocking evidence that the US-led campaign in Syria not only contributed directly to the rise of the Islamic State (IS), but that Washington was perfectly satisfied with such an outcome.

The US Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, obtained by Judicial Watch, dated August 2012, states that the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” comprise “the Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq].”

Furthermore, it states, these forces are being supported by a Western-led coalition – “The West, Gulf countries and Turkey support the opposition.”

It went on to predict that the takeover of Hasaka and Deir Ezzor would possibly create a militant Islamist political entity in eastern Syria:

“If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasak and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).”

According to Nafeed Ahmez from Middle East Eye, “This extraordinary passage confirms that at least three years ago, the Pentagon anticipated the rise of a ‘Salafist Principality’ as a direct consequence of its Syria strategy – and that the ‘supporting powers’ behind the rebels ‘wanted’ this outcome ‘to isolate the Syrian regime,’ and weaken Shiite influence via Iraq and Iran.”

Let that sink in for a moment. The US-backed coalition, which seemed so inexplicably lacklustre in its fight against Islamic State, to the point where this group was actually able to open an oil export business, not to mention drive its Toyota trucks across wide-open desert unmolested, was more content to let a band of terrorists occupy Syria than the legitimate government in Damascus.

It seems safe to say, based on the findings of this incredible document, that such a rationale is exactly what guided Washington’s hand not only in Syria, but in other regime-change war zones, like Iraq and Libya. Democracy building was not the desired result in these fated places, but absolute chaos.

* Terrorist organization, banned in Russia by court order.

Release of Nunes memo throws anti-Russia campaign into disarray

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By Andre Damon

Source: WSWS.org

The Democratic Party was thrown into disarray Friday after the publication of a classified memo exposing as a factionally-motivated witch-hunt the investigation by leading intelligence agencies into the Trump administration’s alleged collusion with Russia.

The so-called Nunes memo, which Democratic lawmakers, US intelligence agencies, and major newspapers had been seeking to block for days, alleges that the FBI under the Obama administration used discredited sources and withheld key information to initiate a wiretap of former Trump campaign adviser Cater Page.

The Democrats responded to the prospective release of the Nunes memo with undisguised hysteria, declaring that it threatened National Security and was insufficiently deferential to the US intelligence agencies. Now that the memo has been released, Democrats’ claim that it contains sensitive national security secrets has been exposed as lies.

The memo, written by Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, claims that the FBI obtained a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) court authorization to wiretap Page in the fall of 2016 based on a memo compiled by former British intelligence official Christopher Steele.

The so-called Steele dossier, which was released to the public last year, made lurid allegations that Russian government officials had recordings of Trump engaging in “perverted sexual acts” with prostitutes “which have been arranged/monitored by the FSB [Russian intelligence service].” According to the Nunes memo, FBI director James Comey called the Steele Dossier “salacious and unverified” in congressional testimony in June 2017.

In perhaps its most explosive passage, the memo alleges that Andrew McCabe, a deputy FBI director who just stepped down this past week, testified before the House Intelligence Committee in December that “no surveillance warrant would have been sought… without the Steele dossier information.”

In addition, the FISA application “ignored or concealed [Steele’s] anti-Trump financial and ideological motivations,” i.e. the fact that his “research” had been funded by the Clinton campaign.

The Republican memo does not specify what information was collected by the wiretap, or whether it captured any conversations with Trump.

The contents of the memo are another demonstration of the manufactured and partisan character of the anti-Russia campaign and the Democrats’ allegations that Trump “colluded” with Russia. What is playing out is a partisan battle between two criminal and reactionary factions of the state apparatus, centering ultimately around differences over foreign policy.

The release of the memo once again underscores the fact that the US intelligence agencies have massively intervened in US politics. This is true not only with regard to the concocted narrative about “collusion” between Trump and Russia, but equally so with James Comey’s public announcement about re-opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the presidential vote, which Clinton claimed may have cost her the election.

The memo has undermined the aura of professional impartiality that the Democrats and their semi-official news outlets, the New York Times and the Washington Post, have sought to cultivate around the so-called “intelligence community.”

The real fear of Democrats is that the exposure of the anti-Russia campaign will undermine the credibility of the FBI. “The selective release and politicization of classified information sets a terrible precedent and will do long-term damage to the intelligence community and our law enforcement agencies,” declared Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, on Friday.

Schiff added, “If potential intelligence sources know that their identities might be compromised when political winds arise, those sources of vital information will simply dry up, at great cost to our national security.”

But all such arguments about “national security” have been rendered absurd by the release of the document, which contained no sensitive information besides the wrongdoing of the FBI and the Democrats—including Schiff himself.

In an editorial published Friday, ahead of the document’s publication, the New York Times accused congressional Republicans of “undermining the credibility of the law enforcement community,” which they had “once defended so ardently.”

It was left to the satirical news website the Onion to point out the obvious absurdity of such arguments:

Stressing that such an action would be highly reckless, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned Thursday that releasing the “Nunes Memo” could potentially undermine faith in the massive, unaccountable government secret agencies of the United States. “Making this memo public will almost certainly impede our ability to conduct clandestine activities operating outside any legal or judicial system on an international scale,” said Wray, noting that it was essential that mutual trust exist between the American people and the vast, mysterious cabal given free rein to use any tactics necessary to conduct surveillance on U.S. citizens or subvert religious and political groups.

Responding to the Democrats’ allegations that the publication of the document would threaten “national security,” journalist Glen Greenwald tweeted, “What conceivable argument is there that any part of the Nunes Memo could jeopardize national security?”

The Times editorial effectively argues that no documents critical of the actions of the US intelligence apparatus should be published. To make this point, the Times quotes Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who argued against the release of the memo on the grounds that the public would “see this release as proof that selective classification is used more often to deceive them than to protect them.”

But it is, of course true that “selective classification” is used to deceive the American people. This was demonstrated by the release of the classified Pentagon Papers in 1971, which documented how flagrantly and extensively the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations lied to the American people about the Vietnam War.

As The Post, the recently-released film by Stephen Spielberg effectively documents, the New York Times and Washington Post made the decision at the time to defy the Nixon administration and publish the Pentagon Papers, rejecting the spurious argument that their publication would harm “national security.”

The editorial published in the Times Friday reads like a cruder version of the arguments put forward by the Nixon White House to block the release of the Pentagon Papers. If one were to take the editorial at face value, one would conclude that, if the Times had the Nunes memo in its sole possession, it would never have published it.

The Times has become little more than a mouthpiece for the US intelligence agencies, whose aim is to prevent the dissemination of any information that they see as harmful to the interests of the American ruling class and the capitalist state.

Remembering Investigative Journalist Robert Parry

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Robert Parry in Washington, D.C. (AP, February 1987)

By Norman Soloman

Source: TheRealNews.com

After Robert Parry died on January 27, I asked another great investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, for some words. “I ran into Bob more than three decades ago when he was the first to warn of the Iran/Contra affair, to little avail,” Hersh replied. “He was widely seen over the next years as a critic of the mainstream media in America. That was not so. He was a critic of lousy reporting, be it in Pravda or The New York Times. He wanted every journalist, everywhere, to do the research and the interviewing that it takes to get beyond the accepted headline.”

What made Bob Parry a trailblazer for independent journalism also made him a bridge burner with the media establishment. He refused to take on faith the official story, whether from governments or news outlets. After winning acclaim, including a Polk Award, as an Associated Press reporter who broke many big stories on deadly US policies in Central America, he spent three years at Newsweek—where he saw top editors collaborating with officials of the George H.W. Bush administration on what should be shared or withheld from the public. Bob left the magazine in 1990, and soon his relations with mainstream media had a whistle-blower quality. His 1992 book Fooling America: How Washington Insiders Twist the Truth and Manufacture the Conventional Wisdom named names and pulled no punches.

Midway through the decade, Bob did a stint as director of the Nation Institute’s investigative unit. His writing for The Nation during 1996 included pieces about the CIA and drug trafficking by the Nicaraguan contras, the bankrolled power of right-wing foundations, and a seven-page expose that is chilling to read more than 30 years later—an investigative report on the Koch brothers.

In 1995, Parry launched a unique journalistic space, Consortiumnews.com, where he worked intensely as publisher, editor, and writer. For the next 22 years, Parry oversaw the website’s scrutiny of elite wisdom. His work, which included authoring six books, won the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Harvard’s Nieman Foundation in 2015 and, last year, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism.

I got to see Bob at work up close, in 1996, when we co-wrote a series on a media darling: “Behind Colin Powell’s Legend.” During interviews, Bob was politely unrelenting. He had a methodical zest for plowing through documents, determined to “master the material.” And he was professionally generous; I wrote just a small proportion of the articles, but he insisted that I share the byline on every one.

Bob was notably non-ideological. What propelled him was a moral core and determination to follow the facts. That devotion led him to expose the lethal deceptions and machinations of Reagan-era figures like Oliver North, Elliott Abrams, and Caspar Weinberger. Three decades later, the same resolve to separate fact from spun fiction put him on a collision course with the conventional wisdom of “Russiagate.”

No one knew better than Bob Parry how intelligence agencies and major media outlets can create a cascading frenzy. Beginning in late 2016, Bob was prolific as he debunked the torrent of hyperbolic claims about Russia that became an ever-present flood across the US media landscape. Some progressive sites went from often posting his articles in 2016 to rarely or never posting them in 2017.

“For years, the mainstream, establishment media have, by their malpractices in covering US-Russian relations from Ukraine to ‘Russiagate,’ been deeply complicit in the unfolding of this new Cold War and its unprecedented dangers,” said Russia scholar Stephen F. Cohen, a contributing editor at The Nation. “Bob Parry, very often alone, exposed those malpractices, especially those committed by the powerful New York Times and Washington Post, misreported story by misreported story, sometimes daily. For this, he was ostracized, slurred, certainly ignored by mainstream media.”

At the end of December, a week after his first stroke left him with badly blurred eyesight, Bob somehow was able to write what turned out to be his final article, brilliant and transcendent, a kind of cri de coeur that is a stunning last testament to “the journalistic principles of skepticism and evenhandedness.” Western journalists, he wrote, “now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide key facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia. Ironically, many ‘liberals’ who cut their teeth on skepticism about the Cold War and the bogus justifications for the Vietnam War now insist that we must all accept whatever the US intelligence community feeds us, even if we’re told to accept the assertions on faith.”

At the close of a lengthy tribute that appeared the day after his father’s death, Nat Parry wrote that, “ultimately, Bob was motivated by a concern over the future of life on Earth. As someone who grew up at the height of the Cold War, he understood the dangers of allowing tensions and hysteria to spiral out of control, especially in a world such as ours with enough nuclear weapons to wipe out all life on the planet many times over.”

Robert Parry carried the lantern high. Now others will need to carry it on.

 

Read Robert Parry’s final article (posted 12/31/17) at https://consortiumnews.com/2017/12/31/an-apology-and-explanation/

Mainstream Media: The Evil Empire

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By Anthony Freda

Source: Medium

As it becomes increasingly clear that yesterday’s conspiracy theories are today’s real news, the call to kill the messengers just gets more shrill and hysterical.

The attacks on free speech with high-tech censorship campaigns and old-fashioned hit pieces in the “War on Fake News” are massive and concerted.

The book burners are starting so many fires it’s impossible to stamp them all out.

What are the horrible thought crimes committed by the alternative press?

The new media has consistently exposed the lies and crimes of our corrupt and broken institutions.

Pioneers of alt media have passionately and convincingly made the case that The Patriot Act literally reversed the gains to human liberty codified in The Bill of Rights.

Independent media dismantled the lies that were presented as the pretexts to the invasion of Iraq. The same lies aggressively promoted by Bush, Hillary Clinton, CNN and The New York Times and that resulted in the death of a million people and global chaos. By contrast, how many people have died as a result of alternative media reports? The answer is zero.

The independent press interviewed NSA whistle-blowers who accurately described how the U.S. government was illegally spying on its citizens and retaining our data, and how these whistle-blowers were being persecuted by their own government for coming forward and refusing to break the law.

This was years before anyone heard of Edward Snowden.

Amazingly, there was very little interest in these bombshell allegations in the mainstream press.

It’s hard to believe now, but in those days, people who claimed the government was spying on innocent citizens were dismissed as paranoid by the self-proclaimed arbiters of truth at the NYT and CNN.

Grassroots media detailed a decade ago how police forces all over America were becoming militarized and predicted that this dangerous trend would lead to racially charged conflict on the streets of the nation. What kooks!

We have also railed against; torture, needless wars, police brutality, government corruption, the two-party duopoly, the criminality of the banksters and the end of privacy.

Now the very same mainstream media hacks who promoted the lies that lead to war in Iraq and Libya and mindlessly regurgitate whichever talking point is uploaded onto their teleprompter are gleefully assassinating what they call “fake news” using edited tape and misleading hit-pieces.

While these discredited war cheerleaders lie about why our sons and daughters are sent to die, we are bravely exposing the fraudulent casus belli they traitorously and disgracefully promote.

While these corporate spokespeople work for the interests of the oil and drug companies and political forces that pay their salaries, we risk everything to expose the crimes and scams of these same broken institutions.

We have done a great public service by exposing the deceptive, psychological methods used by the ruling elite to warp historical narratives, manipulate patriotism and manufacture consent.

By helping people to recognize and suspend their belief in propaganda and therefore their own complicity in it, the alternative media is helping to create a public awareness to the tactics our enemies use to keep us divided, steal our rights and slaughter countless innocents all over the world.

I know it’s fun and easy to call us tin-foil-hat wearers, or whatever pejorative has been chosen for you today, but let’s be clear about whose dirty work some are doing. Ironically, many are using talking-points written by deep-state operatives to ridicule the idea that the deep-state exists at all!!

Alternative media is in direct competition with the mainstream media for revenue and the MSM want to control the information we are exposed to.

The MSM is waging a concerted demonization campaign aimed at destroying some of the dominant platforms exposing the lies and crimes of their corporate and deep-state masters and many are helping them do it.

The MSM is an enemy of the truth and of the people. Friends of mine have been accused of being Russian agents in The NYT because they simply told the truth about Clinton during the campaign.

The corporate press has gone from lying to the American people to lying about the American people.

Do we have the will and power to destroy our common enemy?

Stormy Weather

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

For those of us who are not admirers of President Trump, it’s even more painful to see the Democratic opposition descend into the stupendous dishonesty of the Russian Collusion story. When the intelligentsia of the nation looses its ability to think — when it becomes a dis-intelligentsia — then there are no stewards of reality left. Trump is crazy enough, but the “resistance” is dragging the country into dangerous madness.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the evidence in the public record that the FBI misbehaved pretty badly around the various election year events of 2016. And who, besides Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, and Dean Baquet of The New York Times, can pretend to be impressed by the so far complete lack of evidence of Russian “meddling” to defeat Hillary Clinton? I must repeat: so far. This story has been playing for a year and a half now, and as the days go by, it seems more and more unlikely that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller is sitting on any conclusive evidence. During this time, everything and anything has already leaked out of the FBI and its parent agency the Department of Justice, including embarrassing hard evidence of the FBI’s own procedural debauchery, and it’s hard to believe that Mr. Mueller’s office is anymore air-tight than the rest of the joint.

If an attorney from Mars came to Earth and followed the evidence already made public, he would probably suspect that the FBI and DOJ colluded with the Clinton Campaign and the Democratic Party to derail the Trump campaign train, and then engineer an “insurance policy” train wreck of his position in office. Also, in the process, to nullify any potential legal action against Clinton, including the matter of her email server, her actions with the DNC to subvert the Sanders primary campaign, the Steele dossier being used to activate a FISA warrant for surveillance of the Trump campaign, the arrant, long-running grift machine of the Clinton Foundation (in particular, the $150 million from Russian sources following the 2013 Uranium One deal, when she was Secretary of State), and the shady activities of Barack Obama’s inner circle around the post-election transition. There is obviously more there there than in the Resistance’s Russia folder.

I don’t even understand why Robert Mueller ever had credible standing to preside over this special investigation. He is, after all, the close friend and once-mentor of the figure who is very likely the fulcrum in any case against Trump: James Comey, the former FBI director fired by Trump — theoretically to obstruct justice, the keystone in the effort to find an impeachable offense.

I’m not comfortable acting as a supporter or defender of Trump, but I’m even less comfortable with the appearance of a rogue security and law enforcement apparatus gone blatantly political. The so far poorly-explained antics at the FBI and DOJ reflect badly on all vested authority in the country — and especially for any faction that pretends to be on the side of justice. This is a much larger problem than the public debate seems to recognize. We are not far from a point where nobody will be able to believe anything official in this land.

I remain convinced that this circus of scandal and counter-scandal will not necessarily be resolved by the legal machinery, at least not in any meaningful time frame that would allow the political establishment to pull its head out of its ass and actually start paying attention to the public interest. Rather, the circus tent will just blow down in the financial crisis that is spinning toward the US mainland like a superstorm. Mr. Trump now has full, gold-plated ownership of the parabolic stock market, a shuddering bond market, a wobbling currency, and an implacable debt quandary. These are conditions that can blow a society up for real.