Tag Archives: Deep State

State of Failure

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Days after President Trump said he wanted to pull the United States out of Syria, Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas.

Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me, the old saying goes. So, tread carefully through the minefields of propaganda laid for the credulous in such low organs as The New York Times. There are excellent reasons to suppose that the American Deep State wishes strenuously to keep meddling all around the Middle East. The record so far shows that the blunt instruments of US strategic policy produce a consistent result: failed states.

Syria was well on its way to that sorry condition — prompted by an inflow of Jihadi maniacs fleeing our previous nation un-building experiment in Iraq — when the Russians stepped in with an arrantly contrary idea: to support the Syrian government. Of course, the Russians had ulterior motives: a naval base on the Mediterranean, expanded influence in the region, and a Gazprom concession to develop and manage large natural gas fields near the Syrian city of Homs, for export to Europe. The latter would have competed with America’s client state, Qatar, a leading gas exporter to Europe.

But the US objected to supporting the government of Bashar al-Assad, as it had previously with Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi, as well as Russia’s presence there in the first place. So, the US cultivated anti-government forces in the Syrian civil war, a hodgepodge of Islamic psychopaths variously known as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), Daesh, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, Ansar al-Din, Jaysh al-Sunna, Nour al-Din al-Zenki, and what-have-you.

As it happened, US policy in Syria after 2013 became an exercise in waffling. It was clear that our support for the forces of Jihad against Assad was turning major Syrian cities into rubble-fields, with masses of civilians caught in the middle and ground up like so much dog food. President Barack Obama famously drew a line-in-the-sand on the use of chemical weapons. It was well-known that the Syrian army had stockpiles of chemical poisons. But the US also knew that our Jihadi consorts had plenty of their own. Incidents of chemical atrocities were carried out by… somebody… it was never altogether clear or proven… and Mr. Obama’s line-in-the-sand disappeared under dust-storms of equivocation.

Finally, a joint mission of the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was called in to supervise the destruction of the Syrian government’s chemical weapons, and certified it as accomplished in late 2014. Yet, poison gas incidents continued — most notoriously in 2017 when President Donald Trump responded to one with a sortie of cruise missiles against a vacant Syrian government airfield. And now another incident in the Damascus suburb of Douma has provoked Mr. Trump to tweetstormed threats of retaliatory violence, just days after he proposed a swift withdrawal from that vexing corner of the world.

Surely by now the American public has developed some immunity to claims of nefarious doings in foreign lands (“weapons of mass destruction,” and all). The operative sentence in that New York Times report is “…Syrian forces hit a suburb of Damascus with bombs that rescue workers said unleashed toxic gas.” Yeah, well, how clear is it that the toxic gas was contained in the bombs, or rather that the bombs dropped by the Syrian military blew up a chemical weapon depot controlled by anti-government Jihadis? Does that hodgepodge of maniacs show any respect for the UN, or the Geneva Convention, or any other agency of international law? As in many previous such incidents, we don’t know who was responsible — though there is plenty of reason to believe that parties within the US establishment are against Mr. Trump’s idea of getting the hell out of that place, and might cook up a convenient reason to prevent it.

Lastly, how is it in Bashar al-Assad’s interests to provoke a fresh international uproar against him and his regime? I’d say it is not the least in his interest, since he is on the verge of putting an end to the awful conflict. He may not be a model of rectitude by Western standards, but he’s not a mental defective. And he has very able Russian support advising him in what has been so far a long and difficult effort to prevent his state from failing — or being failed for him.

Coincidence? Every Time the US Threatens to Pull Out of Syria, Assad Uses Chemical Weapons

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For the second time in a year, immediately after the US says they are going to pull out of Syria, Assad conveniently gasses his own people to make sure that won’t happen.

By Matt Agorist

Source: Free Thought Project

Late Saturday night, the mainstream media began spreading the news of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria. It was reported that the tragic attack has claimed the lives of some 70 innocent civilians. Immediately after the unconfirmed reports, President Donald Trump began threatening Russia, Iran and “Animal Assad,” and blamed them for the attack.

The report of the alleged attack is unconfirmed and reported only by the known ISIS sympathizers, the White Helmets.

There has been no independent verification of the chemical attack and it is only being reported by a group who was caught multiple times staging fake attacks.

“Seventy people suffocated to death and hundreds are still suffocating,” said Raed al-Saleh, head of the White Helmets. This was their second tweet as the first one—now deleted—which claimed 150 people were killed, was apparently too big of an exaggeration to be believable.

Indeed, less than a month ago, the Russian military predicted this exact scenario. As CNBC reported last month, the threat, by Chief of Russia’s General Staff Valery Gerasimov, was widely reported by Russia media sites such as state news agency RIA and Tass. It said Gerasimov said Russia had “reliable information” about militants preparing to falsify a government chemical attack against civilians.

In spite of the fact that Syria and Russia are decrying the allegations as false, referring to them as a “fabrication,” the US has begun the pretext to provoking more war in Syria and potentially Russia and Iran.

The US state department said Russia – with its “unwavering support” for Syria’s government – “ultimately bears responsibility” for the alleged attacks.

There has been zero investigation, and the US government is already pointing fingers and implicating a world power in a massive war crime. Irresponsible indeed.

However, it was entirely predictable as these alleged gas attacks all follow a similar scheme.

For those who don’t remember, below is a timeline showing how conveniently timed this gas attacks are for the military-industrial complex.

On March 30, 2017, Reuters reported that Syria was no longer a US priority and that the government is no longer focused on “getting Assad out.” Conveniently, only 5 days after trying to de-escalate the situation, an alleged gas attack takes place to which Trump responds with 59 Tomahawk missiles.

Three days after the missile attack, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, issued a statement that regime change in Syria is inevitable.

As TFTP reported at the time, a leading weapons academic, and one of the foremost experts in the field, came forward in a series of reports noting his opposition to the official story in regards to the Khan Sheikhoun nerve agent attack in Syria. According to the expert, that Syrian gas attack was staged.

Fast forward to March 29, 2018 and Trump put many people to ease when he said that the US would “be coming out of Syria like very soon,” just hours after the Pentagon highlighted the need for US troops to remain in the country for the immediate future. “We’re knocking the hell out of ISIS. We’ll be coming out of Syria like very soon. Let the other people take care of it now,” Trump told supporters at an Ohio event on infrastructure, as CNN reported.

Days later, on April 7, 2018, the White Helmets report that Assad gassed his own people — again — and no one, other than the people known for staging videos, is the source.

On April 8, 2018, Trump then blames Russia, Iran, and Syria and issues “Big price to pay” threats to all of them.

“Many dead, including women and children, in mindless CHEMICAL attack in Syria. Area of atrocity is in lockdown and encircled by Syrian Army, making it completely inaccessible to outside world. President Putin, Russia and Iran are responsible for backing Animal Assad. Big price……to pay. Open area immediately for medical help and verification. Another humanitarian disaster for no reason whatsoever. SICK!” wrote Trump.

No one here is claiming that Assad is some hero, but for him to make this move—knowing the end result—is entirely preposterous and would not happen.

This alleged chemical attack is in spite of the Syrian regime successfully defeating ISIS in over 90 percent of the county. Just as Assad hears that Trump is considering pulling out of the country—which would have been a massive win for the Syrian regime—he gases his own people ensuring the exact opposite of this would happen. Sure thing.

But, we are supposed to believe this. According to the official narrative, every time Syria is on the verge of a military victory in their own country, Assad then randomly gases his own people to thwart this victory and gives the US a reason to invade and turn what’s left of Syrian infrastructure into rubble.

And, the American mainstream is eating it up and ramming it down the throats of US citizens who couldn’t point to Syria on a map, yet demand we spend billions bombing brown people in a country that has never done a single thing to them.

As Finian Cunningham notes, “this weekend’s alleged chemical-weapon attack on civilians in Syria has all the hallmarks of a false-flag propaganda stunt. Only people who have had their critical senses numbed by saturated Western media distortion could possibly believe otherwise.”

Indeed, if you are one of these people who believes this most preposterous story, please consider turning off your television and opening a book instead. Being uninformed is far better than being misinformed.

 

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American Public Troubled by ‘Deep State’

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By John V. Walsh

Source: ConsortiumNews.com

“Public Troubled by Deep State” is the headline that the Monmouth University Polling Institute tags to its recent poll.  Acknowledging that polling about the term “Deep State” is problematic because “few Americans (13%) are very familiar with the term ‘Deep State,’” the pollsters at Monmouth defined the term as follows for their interviewees: “The term Deep State refers to the possible existence of a group of unelected government and military officials who secretly manipulate or direct national policy.”

Then they asked whether such a group exists.

Monmouth reports the results as follows: “Nearly 3-in-4 (74%) say they believe this type of apparatus exists in Washington. This includes 27% who say it definitely exists and 47% who say it probably exists. Only 1-in-5 say it does not exist (16% probably not and 5% definitely not).”

These opinions do not follow a partisan divide. The report explains that belief in the Deep State’s existence “comes from more than 7-in-10 Americans in each partisan group, although Republicans (31%) and independents (33%) are somewhat more likely than Democrats (19%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists.”

This leads the director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, Patrick Murray, to volunteer: “We usually expect opinions on the operation of government to shift depending on which party is in charge. But there’s an ominous feeling by Democrats and Republicans alike that a ‘Deep State’ of unelected operatives are pulling the levers of power.”

In addition, there are some significant but not drastic racial and ethnic differences on this question. Says the report, “Americans of black, Latino and Asian backgrounds (35%) are more likely than non-Hispanic whites (23%) to say that the Deep State definitely exists.”

The report also asked about government surveillance of the citizenry and here again there is widespread concern: Fully 8-in-10 believe that the U.S. government currently monitors or spies on the activities of American citizens, including a majority (53%) who say this activity is widespread and another 29% who say such monitoring happens but is not widespread. Just 14% say this monitoring does not happen at all. There are no substantial partisan differences in these results.

This too causes the director of the Institute to be concerned.  “This is a worrisome finding. The strength of our government relies on public faith in protecting our freedoms, which is not particularly robust. And it’s not a Democratic or Republican issue. These concerns span the political spectrum,” says director Murray.

We can add to the concern about a manipulative unelected apparatus at work in the government the widespread distrust of the press summarized in this recent Gallup/Knight poll:

“*Today, 66% of Americans say most news media do not do a good job of separating fact from opinion. In 1984, 42% held this view.

“*Less than half of Americans, 44%, say they can think of a news source that reports the news objectively.

“*On a multiple-item media trust scale with scores ranging from a low of zero to a high of 100, the average American scores a 37.”

This paints a pretty grim picture of trust in both our government and our media.  Perhaps “Deep Media” should be a term added to “Deep State.”

But perhaps it is cause for optimism. It seems that people are waking up and thinking for themselves. This is, perhaps, good news for those who are trying to end U.S. wars being ginned up by the Deep State.

 

John V. Walsh can be reached at john.endwar@gmail.com

Spies, Lies and War Propaganda: The Making of Another Conspiracy Theory

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By Timothy Alexander Guzman

Source: Silent Crow News

What is insane is how Western governments and the mainstream media (MSM) is that they can tell you that they have the proof that their enemies committed an act of war, or how they interfere in the affairs of other countries but cannot release the evidence due to national security issues or they just outright know in their gut instincts that their enemies did whatever it is that they did, and then they expect us to believe them. While we in the alternative media can show you mountains of evidence including government documents, photos, quotes from world leaders, reports and analysis from respected journalists and researchers from all over the world who represent the facts, yet we are called conspiracy theorists by the same Western governments and the MSM.

Russia is now accused of poisoning another former Russian spy, this time it’s Sergei Skripal (the late Alexander Litvinenko was the last victim) and his daughter Yulia who was living in the Salisbury section of the UK with a military-grade nerve agent produced by..drum roll, please… Russia! How convenient, especially during a time when the U.S. and its allies accuse the Syrian government of launching chemical attacks on civilians, but in reality (which has been proven time and time again) it was the US-backed terrorists or who they call the “rebel forces” who launched the chemical attacks. It’s amazing how Western governments and the MSM constantly link their adversaries to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs). For example, The New York Times published an article on February 27th titled ‘U.N. Links North Korea to Syria’s Chemical Weapons Program’ suggesting that North Korea shipped supplies to Syria to produce chemical weapons due to an investigation by United Nations:

North Korea has been shipping supplies to the Syrian government that could be used in the production of chemical weapons, United Nations experts contend.

The evidence of a North Korean connection comes as the United States and other countries have accused the Syrian government of using chemical weapons on civilians, including recent attacks on civilians in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta using what appears to have been chlorine gas.

The supplies from North Korea include acid-resistant tiles, valves and thermometers, according to a report by United Nations investigators. North Korean missile technicians have also been spotted working at known chemical weapons and missile facilities inside Syria, according to the report, which was written by a panel of experts who looked at North Korea’s compliance with United Nations sanctions

O.K. So now North Korea is shipping supplies to help the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad to produce chemical weapons? What is interesting about the accusation is that The New York Times reviewed the report, but would not release it themselves. The authors and other members of the UN security council would also not comment on the report:

The possible chemical weapons components were part of at least 40 previously unreported shipments by North Korea to Syria between 2012 and 2017 of prohibited ballistic missile parts and materials that could be used for both military and civilian purposes, according to the report, which has not been publicly released but which was reviewed by The New York Times.

Neither the report’s authors nor members of the United Nations Security Council who have seen it would comment, and neither would the United States’ mission to the international agency. It is unclear when, or even whether, the report will be released

Of course they are not even sure if they would release the report to the public because it would most likely be criticized by the alternative media who would view it as a propaganda plot to demonize Kim Jung-Un. We can call The New York Times article for what it really is, and that is fake news. North Korea would not get involved in a Middle East conflict because it would not be in their interest, politically or economically. It would give the US and South Korean governments more reasons to threaten North Korea with a military strike if something like that was true, but it’s not. Kim Jung -Un does not have a relationship with ISIS and other terrorist groups who have been launching chemical attacks throughout Syria since the start of the conflict, the U.S. and its allies do. So it’s ludicrous accusation.

On March 12th, British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke at the House of Commons about the Skripal incident in Salisbury, UK:

It is now clear that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent of a type developed by Russia. This is part of a group of nerve agents known as ‘Novichok’.

Based on the positive identification of this chemical agent by world-leading experts at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down; our knowledge that Russia has previously produced this agent and would still be capable of doing so; Russia’s record of conducting state-sponsored assassinations; and our assessment that Russia views some defectors as legitimate targets for assassinations; the Government has concluded that it is highly likely that Russia was responsible for the act against Sergei and Yulia Skripal

The case of Sergei Skripal is becoming another farfetched conspiracy theory just like the Alexander Litvinenko case. If you remember Alexander Litvinenko who allegedly drank a cup tea at a business meeting with two other Russians (who were charged with his murder) which contained a fatal dose of Polonium-210. The editorial director of Antiwar.com, Justin Raimondo wrote an article on the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko titled ‘The Craziest Conspiracy Theory of Them All: The British government’s report on the death of Alexander Litvinenko reads like a bad thriller’:

To those of us who grew up during the cold war years, it’s just like old times again: Russian plots to subvert the West and poison our precious bodily fluids are apparently everywhere. Speaking of poisoning plots: the latest Russkie conspiracy – and the most imaginative by far – was the alleged assassination by poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko , a former agent of the Russian intelligence services who fled to the West to become a professional anti-Russian propagandist and conspiracy theorist with a talent for the improbable. According to his fantastic worldview, the many terrorist attacks that have occurred in Russia have all been committed by … Vladimir Putin. Aside from championing the Chechen Islamo-terrorists who actually committed these crimes, Litvinenko’s stock-in-trade was an elaborate conspiracy theory in which he regularly accused Putin of blowing up Russian apartment buildings and murdering schoolchildren and then diverting attention from his own nefarious plots by blaming those lovable Chechens. Not very believable – unless one is predisposed to believe anything, so long as it casts discredit on those satanic Russians.

The conspiracy theory promulgated by the British government – and now memorialized in this official report – surpasses anything the deceased fantasist might have come up with. According to the Brits, Litvinenko was poisoned on British soil whilst imbibing a cup of tea spiked with a massive dose of radioactive polonium-210 – and, since Russia is a prime source of this rare substance, and since the Russians were supposedly out to get Litvinenko, the FSB – successor to the KGB – is named as the “probable” culprit.

Looking at the report, one has to conclude that they don’t make propaganda the way they used to: the certitude of, say, a J. Edgar Hoover or a Robert Welch has given way to the tepid ambiguity of Lord Robert Owen, the author of this report, whose verdict of “probably” merely underscores the paucity of what passes for evidence in this case

Raimondo made his case with a common-sense approach to the conspiracy theory:

To begin with, if the Russians wanted to off Litvinenko, why would they poison him with a substance that left a radioactive trail traceable from Germany to Heathrow airport – and, in the process, contaminating scores of hotel rooms, offices, planes, restaurants, and homes? Why not just put a bullet through his head? It makes no sense.

But then conspiracy theories don’t have to make sense: they just have to take certain assumptions all the way to their implausible conclusions. If one starts with the premise that Putin and the Russians are a Satanic force capable of anything, and incompetent to boot, then it’s all perfectly “logical” – in the Bizarro World, at any rate.

The idea that Litvinenko was a dangerous opponent of the Russian government who had to be killed because he posed a credible threat to the existence of the regime is laughable: practically no one inside Russia knew anything about him, and as for his crackpot “truther” theories about how Putin was behind every terrorist attack ever carried out within Russia’s borders – to assert that they had any credence outside of the Western media echo chamber is a joke. So there was no real motive for the FSB to assassinate him, just as there is none for the FBI to go after David Ray Griffin

To assassinate Litvinenko with a dose of radioactive polonium-210 in his cup of tea is an incredibly ridiculous allegation by both the British and American establishment. Another anti-Putin crusader is the Hudson Institute’s own senior fellow, David Satter who wrote ‘The Russian State of Murder Under Putin’ in 2016 and said:

It is now imperative not only for the West but for the future of Russia that the Litvinenko inquiry set a precedent for the objective international review of the cases of political terrorism in Russia. These include the bloody sieges at Moscow’s Dubrovka theater in 2002 and at a school in Beslan in 2004, the assassinations of journalists and opposition leaders and, above all, the deadly 1999 apartment bombings that helped bring Mr. Putin to power.

In the Litvinenko case, the alleged assassins, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, were accused by the British inquiry of slipping polonium-210 into Litvinenko’s tea. A radioactive trail was left all over London. Traces of polonium were found in Mr. Lugovoi’s hotel room, at a sushi restaurant where Litvinenko dined with the two men, and on the seat occupied by Mr. Lugovoi on a British Airlines flight from Moscow to London

Satter’s view concerning Putin’s killing machine apparatus that uses chemical weapons to silence its opposition is pure nonsense. There are many ways to murder an individual if they really wanted to, so why would they use ‘Novichok’ a nerve agent that can be traced back to Russia? Novichok was produced in the former Soviet Union and then in Russia until 1993.

So who would benefit from such an attack? Putin himself? not really, it would somehow benefit the Anglo-American establishment by continuing the demonization of the Russian government. Sergei Skripal, was a former Russian military intelligence colonel who was found guilty of passing state secrets to the U.K. and was sentenced to 13 years in prison back in 2006. If Putin really wanted Skripal dead, he would have had him executed while in custody. The Western powers including the U.S., the U.K., Germany and France want to maintain their “International Order” as Prime Minister May had mentioned in a statement she gave last Monday:

“The UK does not stand alone in confronting Russian aggression. In the last 24 hours I have spoken to President (Donald) Trump, Chancellor (Angela) Merkel and President (Emmanuel) Macron. We have agreed to cooperate closely in responding to this barbaric act and to co-ordinate our efforts to stand up for the rules based international order which Russia seeks to undermine”

So Who Could Have Possibly Poisoned Sergei Skripal and his Daughter?

On March 4th, 2018 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench by a shopping centre in Salisbury by a doctor and nurse who happened to be passing by (what are the chances that happening?). It was soon discovered by a medical staff at the Salisbury District Hospital that Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a nerve agent. They both remain in critical condition. Three police officers investigating the scene were also hospitalized. The poison discovered on the Skripal family was apparently ‘Novichok.’ According to a New York Times report titled ‘In Poisoning of Sergei Skripal, Russian Ex-Spy, U.K. Sees Cold War Echoes’ basically says Russia is the culprit:

With its echoes of stranger-than-fiction plots from the Cold War and earlier episodes from the Putin era, the case threatens to worsen the already tense relations between the West and a Russian government that has annexed Crimea, destabilized eastern Ukraine and propped up the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, all while being accused of disrupting elections and sowing discord within Western democracies.

“This is a form of soft war that Russia is now waging against the West,” said Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the British Parliament. British officials have accused the Kremlin of only one assassination on British soil in recent years, but the Russian government has been suspected of being behind numerous other mysterious deaths in Britain and elsewhere.

In Mr. Litvinenko’s case, the weapon is believed to have been a poisoned teapot later found to contain polonium 210, a radioactive isotope; his death was slow and agonizing

Russia along with several other nations are not following the globalist’s blueprint because they want their sovereignty respected and therefore it is seen by the West as a threat to its World Order. If the Russian agents did poison Sergei Skripal (which is obviously, a false accusation) with a deadly military-grade nerve agent that can spread throughout the Salisbury community and traced back to Russia, then they must be the most idiotic and most incompetent intelligence agency on planet earth. There is no evidence of the Russian government being involved in Mr. Skripal’s poisoning, in fact, it sounds like a false-flag attack by using Mr. Skripal to blame Russia. Any of the Western intelligence agencies including MI6 or the CIA could have obtained the nerve agent or something close to it in order to poison Skripal. It is also most likely that we would never find out who actually committed the crimes against Skripal and Litvinenko, but according to the West, its Russia. The Alexander Litvinenko story told by the British government and the MSM (in this case, BBC News) is like a bad thriller and so does the Sergei Skripal case. Both cases will most likely make it to the big screen in the future since many of films produced by Hollywood is based on propaganda against America’s enemies including Russia (many Hollywood films, especially since the Cold War usually portray Russia as the enemy) and recently, North Korea made it to the big screen with the 2013 film, ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ about a North Korean terrorist organization who takes over the White House (yes, another really bad thriller). Rest assured, the Sergey Skripal case as well as the murder of Alexander Litvinenko will most likely make its way to the big screen someday.

The UK government along with its Western partners are spreading far-fetched conspiracy theories, but the MSM will cover their lies and deceit and tell you that it is the alternative media who needs to be censored because we are the ones who are spreading conspiracy theories and fake news. The American and the British governments accused Saddam Hussein of having “weapons of mass destruction” which as we all know, was not only a lie, but a lie that destroyed Iraq. Sooner or later, the facts of the Sergei Skripal case will show the world who are the liars and the conspiracy theorists really are, and once again, the Anglo-American establishment and its MSM representatives would lose even more credibility. In my opinion, they lost all of their credibility a very long time ago.

If You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It

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By James Howard Kunstler

Source: Kunstler.com

Various readers, fans, blog commenters, Facebook trolls, and auditors twanged on me all last week about my continuing interest in the RussiaRussiaRussia hysteria, though there is no particular consensus of complaint among them — except for a general “shut up, already” motif. For the record, I’m far more interested in the hysteria itself than the Russia-meddled-in the-election case, which I consider to be hardly any case at all beyond 13 Russian Facebook trolls.

The hysteria, on the other hand, ought to be a matter of grave concern, because it appears more and more to have been engineered by America’s own intel community, its handmaidens in the Dept of Justice, and the twilight’s last gleamings of the Obama White House, and now it has shoved this country in the direction of war at a time when civilian authority over the US military looks sketchy at best. This country faces manifold other problems that are certain to reduce the national standard of living and disrupt the operations of an excessively complex and dishonest economy, and the last thing America needs is a national war-dance over trumped-up grievances with Russia.

The RussiaRussiaRussia narrative has unspooled since Christmas and is blowing back badly through the FBI, now with the firing (for cause) of Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hours short of his official retirement (and inches from the golden ring of his pension). He was axed on the recommendation of his own colleagues in the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility, and they may have been influenced by the as-yet-unreleased report of the FBI Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, due out shortly.

The record of misbehavior and “collusion” between the highest ranks of the FBI, the Democratic Party, the Clinton campaign, several top political law firms, and a shady cast of international blackmail peddlars is a six-lane Beltway-scale evidence trail compared to the muddy mule track of Trump “collusion” with Russia. It will be amazing if a big wad of criminal cases are not dealt out of it, even as The New York Times sticks its fingers in its ears and goes, “La-la-la-la-la….”

It now appears that Mr. McCabe’s statements post-firing tend to incriminate his former boss, FBI Director James Comey — who is about to embark, embarrassingly perhaps, on a tour for his self-exculpating book, A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies, and Leadership.

A great aura of sanctimony surrounds the FBI these days. Even the news pundits seem to have forgotten the long, twisted reign of J. Edgar Hoover (1924 – 1972), a dangerous rogue who excelled at political blackmail. And why, these days, would any sane American take pronouncements from the CIA and NSA at face value? What seems to have gone on in the RussiaRussiaRussia matter is that various parts of the executive branch in the last months under Mr. Obama gave each other tacit permission, wink-wink, to do anything necessary to stuff HRC into the White House and, failing that, to derail her opponent, the Golden Golem of Greatness.

The obvious lesson in all this huggermugger is that the ends don’t justify the means. I suspect there are basically two routes through this mess. One is that the misdeeds of FBI officers, Department of Justice lawyers, and Intel agency executives get adjudicated by normal means, namely, grand juries and courts. That would have the salutary effect of cleansing government agencies and shoring up what’s left of their credibility at a time when faith in institutions hangs in the balance.

The second route would be for the authorities to ignore any formal response to an evermore self-evident trail of crimes, and to allow all that political energy to be funneled into manufactured hysteria and eventually a phony provocation of war with Russia. Personally, I’d rather see the US government clean house than blow up the world over an engineered hallucination.

According to the Father of Propaganda an Invisible Government Controls Our Minds with a Thought Prison

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By Sigmund Fraud

Source: Waking Times

“Who are the men who without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities, about the tariff, about the price of rubber, about the Dawes Plan, about immigration; who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put in them, what menus we should serve on our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?” ~ Edward Bernays [b.11/22/1891, d. 3/9/1995]  Propaganda

Authored by Edward Bernays and published in 1928, the book Propaganda still holds its position as the gold standard for influencing and manipulating public behavior. Drawing on his expertise in psychology while using the language of manipulation, Bernays pioneered social engineering via mass media, and his work lives on in the distorted, statist, consumer world we have today.

But who are the ones behind the curtain telling us what to think by directing our attention onto the things which serve interests?

Interestingly, chapter III of Propaganda is titled, ‘The New Propagandists, and is devoted to explaining why the controls for mass manipulation are so closely guarded by a relatively tiny elite who sit in the shadows, out of the public eye, choosing what we are to see and to think, even controlling the politicians we elect to represent us.

If we set out to make a list of the men and women who, because of their position in public life, might fairly be called the molders of public opinion we could quickly arrive at an extended list of persons mentioned in “Who’s Who…”

Such a list would comprise several thousand persons. But it is well known that many of these leaders are themselves led, sometimes by persons whose names are known to few.

Such persons typify in the public mind the type of ruler associated with the phrase invisible government.

An invisible government of corporate titans and behind the scenes influencers who’s mark on culture cannot be understated today. Bernays continues:

The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.

The public relations counsel, then, is the agent who, working with modern media communication and the group formation of society, brings an idea to the consciousness of the public. But he is a great deal more than that. He is concerned with courses of action, doctrines, systems and opinions, and the securing of public support for them.

Ultimately, the goal of this type of mass-produced, pop-culture propaganda is to weaken the individual’s ability to think critically, thereby creating an environment where many people look to one another for approval, always second-guessing their own faculties. When this happens, the strength of the collective group begins to take form and multiply, and ideas can be implanted into the popular culture, taking root in the form of widespread conformist behavior.

“Thinking critically means making reasoned judgments that are logical and well thought out. It is a way of thinking in which one doesn’t simply accept all arguments and conclusions to which one is exposed without questioning the arguments and conclusions. It requires curiosity, skepticism and humility. People who use critical thinking are the ones who say things such as, “How do you know that?” “Is this conclusion based on evidence or gut feelings?” and “Are there alternative possibilities when given new pieces of information?””  [Source]

Final Thoughts

The takeaway here is that not much has changed in 100 years of corporate/statist American culture, other than the technical capacity to scale this ever upward. Our lives are still heavily influenced by the likes of the described by Bernays. There is one advantage we do have now, however, as technology has given us greater access to the truth and we are now free to split from the matrix psychologically by understanding what it is and how it influences our lives. If we choose to do so, that is, if we choose to take the red pill.

In order to understand your life and your mission here on earth in the short time you have, it is imperative to learn to see the thought prison that has been built around you, and to actively circumnavigate it. Free-thinking is being stamped out by the propagandists, but our human tendency is to crave freedom, and with the aid of truth, we are more powerful than the control matrix and the invisible government.

The Simulacra Democracy

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By John Steppling

Source: CounterPunch

… a nation in which 87 percent of eighteen- to twenty-four year olds (according to a 2002 National Geographic Society/Roper Poll survey) cannot locate Iran or Iraq on a world map and 11 percent cannot locate the United States (!) is not merely “intellectually sluggish.” It would be more accurate to call it moronic, capable of being fooled into believing anything …”

— Morris Berman

I cannot remember U.S. culture ever being quite so compromised by ruling class control. Hollywood turns out one jingoistic and militaristic and racist film and TV show after another. Corporate news is completely controlled by the same forces that run Hollywood. It is the complete capitulation of the liberal class to the interests of the increasingly fascistic U.S. elite. And this didn’t start with Donald Trump. Certainly in its current incarnation it goes back at least to Bill Clinton, and really it goes back to the end of World War Two. The ideological trajectory was formed under the Dulles brothers and military industrial complex — representing U.S. business interests and exhibiting a demand for global hegemony. But once the Soviet Union collapsed, the project was accelerated and intensified.

Another starting point might well be the 1960 Bay of Pigs fiasco, or the 1961 CIA (and MI6) assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Or Kennedy’s 1962 speech at American University calling for the end of Pax Americana. We know what happened to Kennedy soon after that. Pick any of these incidents. But it was the fall of the U.S.S.R. that signaled to the governing class, the proprietor class, that the last real obstacle to global domination had been removed. In the interim, one finds the Iran/Contra affair, and the invasion of Iraq. The real and the symbolic meaning of the Soviet Union is forgotten today, I think. Its meaning for the developing world, especially.

The next conscious trial balloon was Clinton’s attack on the former Yugoslavia. A test run for expanding NATO. And it worked. The propaganda machine has never been as successful as it was when it demonized the Serbs and Milosevic. Then came 9/11. And the well honed PR machine spewed an endless barrage of hyper-patriotic rhetoric and disinformation. American exceptionalism was given full credibility. And remember Colin Powell and his cartoon visual teaching aids at the UN? Nobody was going to argue. Certainly not the white liberal class. And Hollywood upped its game in churning out military fantasies. And in just churning out fantasies. A genre that lent itself to obvious neo-colonial messages. By 2007, when Barack Obama announces he will run for President, the master narrative for America was firmly entrenched. The biggest hit from Hollywood in this period is Avatar (2009), a neo-colonial fable that fit seamlessly with Obama’s reconquest of Africa.

Dan Glazebrook recently wrote:

The year 2009, two years before Gaddafi’s murder, was a pivotal one for US-African relations. First, because China surpassed the US as the continent’s largest trading partner; and second, because Gaddafi was elected President of the African Union. The significance of both for the decline of US influence on the continent could not be clearer. Whilst Gaddafi was spearheading attempts to unite Africa politically, committing serious amounts of Libyan oil wealth to make this dream a reality, China was quietly smashing the West’s monopoly over export markets and investment finance. Africa no longer had to go cap-in-hand to the IMF for loans, agreeing to whatever self-defeating terms were on offer, but could turn to China – or indeed Libya – for investment. And if the US threatened to cut them off from their markets, China would happily buy up whatever was on offer. Western economic domination of Africa was under threat as never before.

The US response was to increase base building, upgrade AFRICOM, and then murder Gadaffi. Hollywood hits from this period include The Hurt Locker and The Dark Knight. Meanwhile domestically Obama was giving the OK for militarizing of police departments across the country. On another front….Danny Haiphong wrote…

What isn’t discussed often enough is how Obama has worked tirelessly to protect and fulfill the interests of the corporate healthcare system. In 2009, he collaborated with the monopoly health insurance industry and its pharmaceutical counterparts to repress the demand for single payer healthcare. The conditions at the time appeared ripe for a single payer system. Popular discontent with Republican Party rule was at its highest point. A relatively organized movement for single payer care was represented by organizations such as Healthcare Now. The Democratic Party possessed a majority in both the House and Senate.

Obama came to power as Wall Street went into meltdown, 2008. But instead of hope and change we got almost 5 trillion dollars moving to the top 1% of the financial elite. Poverty increased every year under Obama, as did inequality. Social Network came out in 2010 and Wolf of Wall Street in 2013. Both were big hits. The message from Hollywood never changed. And part of that message is that wealth is its own justification and a symbol of virtue. Hollywood, and U.S. liberals just naturally gravitate toward the rich.

Obama attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen. And it is perhaps that last venture that will prove to be his most significant. Arming, training, and coordinating the Saudi aggression (and now that has escalated to boots on the ground) against the helpless Yemen has resulted in the largest humanitarian catastrophe in five decades.

The U.S. now has all but formally criminalized dissent, especially if that dissent is aimed at Israel.

None of this is to create exact corollaries between political action and studio product. But rather that the overriding message of Hollywood in both film and TV is to validate U.S. exceptionalism. And to hedge criticism with faint token protest. But its not just Hollywood, its theatre and fiction and all the rest of the arts. The erasure of the working class is the most pronounced truth in American culture today. There are no Clifford Odets (a high school drop out) anymore; they have been replaced by a steady stream of well groomed compliant MFA grads. Mostly from elite and expensive schools. Hemingway and James Baldwin were not college grads, nor was Tennessee Williams, the son of a traveling shoe salesman. Even more recent authors such as Thomas Pynchon were college drop outs (to join the Navy), but the point is that today mass culture is carefully controlled. Dreiser was a college drop out, and Twain was a typesetters apprentice. Others like Faulkner, went to University, but also worked. In Faulkner’s case as a postman. Same profession as Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. Stephen Crane and Hemingway worked as journalists, when that was an honorable profession.

The decision makers in mass culture are mostly firmly entrenched in the Democratic Party ethos (witness stuff like House of Cards, Madame Secretary, or Veep). If one only gets one’s news from MSNBC or FOX or CNN then one will take away mostly pure propaganda. Rachel Maddow has a career based on craven parroting of DNC approved talking points and conclusions. Bill Maher, whose show is on HBO, is of late pimping for war. Sunday news talk shows do not invite radical voices, not ever. Michael Parenti isn’t on those shows, nor  are Ajamu Baraka or Glen Ford Mike Whitney or Ed Curtin or Dan Glazebrook or Stephen Gowans. No, but there are plenty of retired generals and politicians. This is a media that exerts absolute control of message.

The loss of the working class, of class diversity, has been a far bigger blow to the health of the culture than anything else. One might argue that culture has always been, in the modern era, a province of the bourgeoisie, and that’s true. But there is still a rather pronounced change that has taken place. But Americans are discouraged from thinking in terms of class. They see individualism and identity. Get me more women directors they cry….which would give us more versions of Zero Dark Thirty, I guess. Gender equality matters, something every single socialist country in history has emphasized. Something Chavez saw fit to write into the Bolivarian constitution on day one. Chavez, who liberal avatar Bernie Sanders dismissed as a “dead communist dictator”. Chavez, who feminist avatar Hillary Clinton worked overtime to oust from power.

People are shocked…shocked I say…that US soldiers are killed in Niger. Darn that Donald Trump. When it is pointed out that it was Obama who sent troops there in his pivot to Africa, one is met with blank stares. The concern over U.S. soldiers dying is simply mind numbing in its hypocrisy and blinkered exceptionalism. I mean just count the numbers of dead civilians due to U.S. drone strikes from just one year. Pick any year you like.

Under Obama, the US African Command (AFRICOM) has penetrated every African country but Zimbabwe and Eritrea. AFRICOM has locked African nations into military subservience. In 2014, the US conducted 674 military operations in Africa . According to a recent Freedom of Information Act request by Intercept, the US currently has Special Forces deployed in more than twenty African nations.

Danny Haiphong

People are terrified today lest they be called conspiracy theorists. No single pejorative term has exercised such disproportionate power. There is a subterranean subject position associated with this, too. A masculine identity that connects with the presentation of those accepting of the official version of things. It is ‘no nonsense, mature, and sort of tough guy’ pose. Only weak and muddled (feminine you see!) would bother to question official narratives of…well, anything. It is staggering, really, why so few ask why is it OK to assassinate people without due process? Why is it whistleblowers, truth tellers, are being locked away and shunned? Why are there 900 plus US military bases around the world. Why, given the growing poverty in the U.S. do we need an updated nuclear arsenal that will cost trillions? In fact why is the defense budget over 4 billion a day? The liberal educated class seem not to ask such questions. Let alone ask is the U.S. arming takfiri jihadists in Syria? Most of what people call conspiracy is just perfectly reasonable skepticism. Given a history that includes COINTELPRO, Operation Northwoods, Gladio, MKUltra, and Operation AJAX. This is also relevant in terms of the coming war on *fake news*. An idea put forward by Obama and now in enthusiastic Orwellian operation by Facebook, YouTube, and Google. In the U.K. Theresa May proudly announces the government SHOULD control what one can see on the internet. Censorship is pitched as protection.

And then we come to NATO and Europe. Why does NATO even exist one might ask? I mean the USSR doesn’t exist anymore. Well, the answer has been under construction for a few years now, and that answer is the extraordinary anti Putin propaganda of the U.S. The “Russian Threat” is now an accepted trope in public discourse. Or the anti Iranian disinformation. In fact Iran is far more democratic and less a global threat (actually its NO global threat) than U.S. boon allies Israel and Saudi Arabia. Which brings us back to Yemen. The utter destruction of Yemen, poorest Arab country in the world, and now one with the largest Cholera outbreak in history, posed no threat to ANYONE. Certainly not to the United States. Are we to believe the House of Saud is worth supporting? They behead homosexuals and witches in Saudi Arabia. The leader of KSA is a 32 year old psychopath named Mohammed Bin Salman. Someone please explain the U.S. support for this country?

Or Venezuela. The U.S. has waged various campaigns against this sovereign nation for over a decade now. A democracy. But a disobedient one. Where is the outcry? When people are going on about Harvey Weinstein, a troglodyte movie producer that literally everyone knew was a serial abuser, I wonder that the women of Venezuela seem not to count. Or of Libya, or Haiti, or Puerto Rico, or hell, the women of Houston right now. Poor women. Ah, but that is class again. Now perhaps the Weinstein affair will yield good results and some form of collective protection and maybe even unionizing will take place to limit the power of rich white men. I doubt it, but maybe. Still, given that the liberal class today applaud the idea of making it OK for women to bomb defenseless villages in Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen, just like men, and given that most of these horrified by Weinstein were and are solidly behind Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and laud adulation on figures like Maddie Albright, it seems hard to imagine.

David Rosen:

Sexual abuse and violence in the U.S. is as old as the country. America’s patriarchal culture long legitimized sexual abuse and violence toward women — and children — whether conducted at the workplace, at home, a nightclub or on a deserted street. During the nation’s earliest days, the custom of sexual abuse and violence was legitimized through the notion of “chastisement.” This was a feature of Anglo-American common law that recognized the husband as master of “his” household and, thus, permitted him to subject “his” wife to corporal punishment, including rape, so long as he did not inflict permanent injury upon her. Sexual abuse was institutionalized in the rape of African and later African-American female slaves. As the legal scholar Adrienne Davis notes, “U.S. slavery compelled enslaved black women to labor in three markets – productive, reproductive, and slavery – crucial to the political economy.”

One need only note the sexual violence that takes place in the U.S. military (See Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War). But that is not the military you see in this season’s TV shows such as SEAL Team or Valor or The Brave. The current Tom Cruise film American Made is a sort of comedy about Barry Seal who worked as a pilot for the CIA, and with various cartels in South America. Yeah, nothing funnier than squashing a socialist government like in Nicaragua. There is not a single Spanish speaking character who is not either a drunk, a sadist, or just incompetent. This stunningly racist revisionism was called “jaunty and bouncy” by the Hollywood Reporter.

The liberal class will always side with the status quo. Always. They do not care if the status quo is fascist. And its suits them much more to lay out bromides about male abuse of women, as long as this doesn’t mean having to untangle the complexity of women in unfamiliar non tourist visited nations like Yemen or Libya or Honduras. Just like the fact that U.S. domestic police departments murdered over a thousand black men in 2015. And continue to do so, along with increasing numbers of black women. That’s just not a jaunty bouncy story, I guess. Obama has never been comfortable talking about or to black people. He did manage to scold Colin Kaepernick recently though, about the pain he, Kaepernick, might be causing. The pain of white billionaire sports team owners I guess. The Uncle Tomism of what Glen Ford called black misleadership has never been greater. And that’s another crime we can lay, largely, at the feet of Barack Obama.

The U.S. House voted unanimously to sanction Iran and North Korea, an absurdity and a crime, and yet one that barely registered on the media Richter scale. What has Iran or North Korea ever done to hurt anyone in the United States? It is Saudi Arabia and Israel that fear a democratic nation like Iran and the influence they wield in the region. Iran is accused of fomenting instability but evidence is never given. Russia is said to control U.S. public opinion, but evidence is never given. The U.S. doesn’t even bother to really try and make claims about Venzeuela, because its just part of inherited wisdom that they are *bad*. Like Castro was bad, like Gadaffi, like Aristide, like anyone exhibiting independence. The world according to media entertainment is made up of bad guys and good guys. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, recently stated that his agency would become a “much more vicious agency” in fighting its enemies. Its actually hard to imagine what that might look like given CIA history. More vicious than rendition, drone killing and black site torture? Remember it was the U.S. and its School of the Americas that trained those death squads in Central America. Hollywood makes comedies about this.

In any event nobody in Hollywood complains. Just as none of the actresses assaulted by Weinstein (and countless others) said anything lest they lose career opportunities. Just as nobody complains about the racism and demonizing of Muslims or Serbs or North Koreans or Russians lest they not get the job. Coercion is silent and a given. It is also absolute. Most actors and directors simply don’t think about it, and most know little beyond what they hear on corporate news or read in the NYTimes. But I understand. People have to eat, have to feed their families. The real problem is that power is ever more consolidated. Distribution of films is monopolized. And for most Americans, foreign policy remains a giant black hole about which they know very little. Tell someone Milosovic was actually a good guy and they will laugh at you (this still happens on the left, too, rather depressingly). Tell them Russia is not threatening the U.S. or Europe, and they will laugh at you. Try to explain what Imperialism is and means, and you get that bored look of irritation. A good rule of thumb is if the U.S. targets a country or leader, then its worth questioning the western generated propagated propaganda in mainstream media about said country or leader (think Syria, Gadaffi, Aristide, Milosovic, Iran, North Korea). The U.S. does not go after countries who welcome western capital.

One of the things I’ve noticed about Hollywood film is the extraordinary amount of self pity from most characters. Self pity, entitlement, and sarcasm. The people who produce and make film and TV today, by and large, tacitly censor themselves. Some don’t have to, of course. But there is a general group think at work. And it extends to the way characters are written. The problems of affluent white people is the template here. Few examine the wider world, and mostly when they do it is seen as a world of threat and menace. An uncivilized place in need of guidance from the civilized white West (The Lost City of Z comes to mind, which made all the approved anti colonial notes while still creating a colonial narrative anyway.). But it is even more narrow than that. Everything resembles a studio; political discussions, even if they take place in outer space, resemble studio executives discussing opening weekend profits, or Neilson ratings. And since Hollywood itself ever more resembles Wall Street, or some corporate headquarters, that is increasingly what the world looks like. It is a profound loss of imagination. Westerns look and sound the same as melodramas set in Santa Monica or New York. Fantasy worlds resemble corporate headquarters or corporate motivational weekends. It is a world created by writers under thirty, largely, and certainly under forty. These are worlds created by people who themselves know very little of the world. They know even less about having to work for a living. The entire universe of film is absent any class awareness. History is simplified the better to appeal to a wider audience. Everything feels and sounds the same. And it is stultifying. There are films and TV from Europe, even from the U.K. that have merit, have heterogeneous sensibilities, but not from Hollywood. Like White House press conferences, the idea is to stay on message. Black characters sound white (or are given caricature *black* dialect and dialogue), brown characters sound white (or are given caricature barrio dialects), and Muslims sound dangerous and devious. Asians seem lifted from Fu Manchu serials or Charlie Chan. Strange when I hear people make fun of ethnic cliches from the 1940s, because it is really no different today (and check the recent TV incarnation of the venerable Star Trek franchise where the Klingon villains are very dark, live in dark spaceships and utter a guttural invented language all of which suggests something oddly racist and like nothing so much as colonial portraits of savages from darkest Africa).

Fixation on Trump’s crimes distracts from a system in which crime is a built-in factor. Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. They are only the figureheads that carry water for the system. And the system is the property of the ruling class. People vote as if it crucially matters, and they vote for who they like. Not for policy because mostly they have no idea of policy. Trump is an obvious target, but that’s the problem in a sense. America didn’t become racist and violent overnight. The forces of social unrest have been building for decades. Trump was inevitable. His lack of basic literacy mirrors the nation he nominally heads, and his vulgarity mirrors the vulgarity of America, as does his misogyny and racism. The same advisors are in place and if Hillary had won, those openly fascist thugs applauding Trump would still be committing hate crimes. Has Trump empowered them? To a degree, yes. But an HRC win would likely have provided motivation of a different sort and the same violence would be taking place. You cannot sustain, as a country, this level of inequality. And as more super hurricanes descend on us, as the bio-sphere collapses, none of this may end up mattering. There is something disturbing, actually, about the relentless attacks on Trump. Its like beating up a special needs kid. Where was this hatred and outrage before? I mean Trump’s America, a term I hear a lot, is just America. We have over 2 million people in prison in the U.S. Far and away leaders in the world. Infant mortality however puts the U.S. between 26th and 51st, depending on who is counting. There is no Universal Heath Care, no union protection for workers, no maternity leave, no free education. What is there to feel so special about, exactly? Trump was very popular on his moronic reality TV show. I’m guessing more than few now outraged by this buffoonish reactionary watched that show. I mean it did last fifteen years I believe. Who did they think he was? There is nothing wrong with identifying the crimes of Trump’s administration. But there is something deeply wrong in not recognizing it as a continuation of prevailing policy. Yes, it is worse in many areas. The environment for one. But then again, 47% of the world’s pollution is caused by the military. And the U.S. has a military bigger than the next ten largest militaries in the world. And every president since the first  Bush has increased the military budget. The nightmare did not begin with the swearing in of Donald Trump. But nobody likes him. They liked Obama. And that is why he was able to do so much harm. Trump is dangerous not because of what he thinks (he mostly doesn’t) but because of his ignorance and weakness (and fear). And that weakness generated his welcoming hand to the Pentagon. Foreign policy is really in the hands of a man nicknamed ‘Mad Dog’. One cannot blame this catastrophic situation on one man. This is the creation of American history.

Mueller’s Fraudulent Indictment

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(Rex Features via AP Images)

The Internet Research Agency: clickbait farm or KGB plot?

By Justin Raimondo

Source: Antiwar.com

The indictment handed down by Robert Mueller against 13 Russians connected to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian-owned- and- operated clickbait farm, is the capstone of my case that we have indeed entered Bizarro World, an alternate universe where up is down, black is white and truth is a ridiculous falsehood.

Yes, I said clickbait farm – because that’s precisely what the Internet Research Agency (IRA) is: founded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Russian chef who wanted to figure out a new way to make money, the IRA, as pointed out here, is a money-making operation. Mueller seems to acknowledge this when, in his laughable “indictment,” we read this:

“Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their coconspirators typically charged certain US merchants and US social media sites between 25 and 50 US dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false US persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.”

What kind of a propaganda/spy operation charges its coconspirators a fee?

The total Russian/IRA buy was $100,000, including $300 in Pennsylvania, $832 in Michigan, and $1979 in Wisconsin (mostly before the primary). Most of the “Russian” ads ran after the election, and they didn’t support any candidates: instead, they focused on “hot button” issues – precisely the sort of thing intended to attract visits and make money for the creators via ads.

This business model has been widely utilized by enterprising Macedonian teenagers and others out to make a quick buck, and it works quite effectively if you know what you’re doing. The IRA, like other clickbait operations, isn’t really about politics, although it deals with political subjects: it’s about making money for it owners. Period. As the Moon of Alabama blogger points out:

“There were, according to the indictment, eighty people working on the “translator project”. These controlled “hundreds” of sock-puppets online accounts each with a distinct “political” personality. Each of these sock-puppets had a large number of followers – in total several hundred-thousands. Now let’s assume that one to five promotional posts can be sold per day on each of the sock-puppets content stream. The scheme generates several thousand dollars per day ($25 per promo, hundreds of sock-puppets, 1-5 promos per day per sock-puppet). The costs for this were limited to the wages of up to eighty persons in Moscow, many of them temps, of which the highest paid received some $1,000 per month.”

All in all, a fairly profitable business – not a state-run “disinformation” project, but rather good old free enterprise.

Yes, I know that some of the IRA’s employees traveled to America for a week or two to do “research.” But what, exactly, does this mean? Does anybody have a record of where they stayed, or whom they associated with? There’s nothing about that in the indictment. In short, they could have come to America for the same reasons tens of thousands do every day of the week: to enjoy themselves as tourists. After all, what could they possibly learn in a week-long stay that could … sway a presidential election? I mean, what are we talking about here?

The weird-stupid aura hanging over this whole affair was underscored when CNN actually knocked on the door of some woman whom they accused of running a “Russian-sponsored” pro-Trump rally in Florida: the woman laughed in the “reporter’s” face and said she’d never spoken to a single Russian in her entire life. So how many Trump supporters will be visited not just by CNN but by the FBI in order to intimidate them in a similar manner?

What I want to know is this: what in the name of all that’s holy does Robert Mueller think he’s doing? Is he just plain ignorant of the internet and how it works – or is he mocking us? His “indictment” is nothing but a joke. And as for the hysterics proclaiming it shows that the Russians have launched the equivalent of the attack on Pearl Harbor – these people need to be heavily sedated. Three-thousand people died at Pearl Harbor: how many were killed by Prigozhin’s clickbait farm?

My recent cancer diagnosis has really focused my attention on an issue I had hardly considered before: spending time refuting nonsense is essentially a waste of my time. And at this point, it’s the kind of luxury I can no longer afford. If these are truly my last days on earth, I’d rather be writing about something substantial, and meaningful, thank you very much.

So I’ll just end with this: anyone who says they believe the Mueller narrative outlined in his laughable indictment is either clueless or is a cynic who will say anything. The “charges” detailed in this “indictment” – “Conspiracy to Defraud the United States” – are precisely what the authors of this disgraceful document are guilty of themselves.

Russia-gate is a hoax – I’ve told my readers that from the very beginning. This “indictment” underscores the extent of the hoax – and the contempt that the government officials and their journalist collaborators who thought this would bring down a President have for the American people. They expect us to swallow this fraud whole. Well, guess what – it’s not happening, folks. A child could see through this nonsense.

It’s high time to shut this fraud on the country down, and return Mueller to private life (where he can contemplate how badly he messed up not only this but also the anthrax investigation).