MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Russia’

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »

He’s a One-Man Ukrainian Lobby! – Taki’s Magazine – Taki’s Magazine

Posted by M. C. on November 1, 2019

https://www.takimag.com/article/hes-a-one-man-ukrainian-lobby/

by Ann Coulter

He’s a One-Man Ukrainian Lobby!
photo credit: Адміністрація Президента України

Alexander Vindman

I have a confession. I behaved badly recently, and I’m just going to admit it.

As a guest at a dinner party in Georgetown, I stormed in and started bossing everyone around. First, I demanded that the foyer be painted a different color and wainscoting be added to the dining room. Then I had my hosts assemble their children so I could give them all different names. Before making my exit, I grabbed two legs of turkey off the entree platter and stuffed them in my purse.

I have a second confession. None of that happened. But if it had, I would be exactly like Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman.

He was born in Ukraine and raised there until age 3 1/2, when he was invited to our country. As you’ve no doubt heard, he served in our military. Thank you for your service, Colonel!

Now he is the top Ukrainian adviser on the National Security Council. Of all the people who could look out for the U.S.’s interests vis-a-vis Ukraine, we got someone who was born there.

As such, Vindman was permitted to listen to a phone call the president of the United States made to the president of Ukraine — a completely unnecessary, pro forma task.

So, naturally, when he had a policy disagreement with President Trump pertaining to the country he was born in, he thought he had a responsibility to agitate for removal proceedings against the duly elected U.S. president, just as I might have taken issue with the carpets in the Georgetown townhouse…

It would be bad enough if Col. Vindman’s policy disagreement with the president had to do with U.S. policy on Mexico or North Korea. But it was about the country where Col. Vindman was born.

We’re always told that Democrats don’t have to prove wrongdoing by Trump — for example, under the emoluments clause, in his foreign policy negotiations or when he fired his FBI director. Rather, it’s claimed that Trump’s conduct creates the appearance of impropriety.

Well, having a Ukrainian-born analyst butt in to ensure U.S. foreign aid flows effortlessly to the country of his birth gives the appearance that he’s concerned about fairness to Ukraine. That’s not what this is supposed to be about. It’s supposed to be about what’s in the best interests of the United States.

Worse, Vindman was dealing with the U.S.’s Ukrainian policy versus Russia, which Ukrainians hate because Stalin murdered millions of them. It’s like having an Armenian advise on whether we should be hostile to Turkey.

This is not the usual dual loyalty claim insultingly attributed to Irish or Jewish Americans who were born in this country. Lots of us have admixtures of other nationalities.

But when you were actually born in another country and that’s the precise policy matter you’re sticking your nose into, people are going to wonder if it’s really our national interests you’re looking out for.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 1: Immigrants are required to wait a minimum of two (2) generations before bossing around the most successful, prosperous, free country on Earth, and fully three (3) generations before advising on our government’s policy toward the countries of their forefathers.

We also need a constitutional amendment directed at 10th-generation Americans who fancy themselves foreign policy experts. Foreign policy is the idiot’s shortcut to imagined erudition, the last refuge of the insufferable.

Sen. Lindsey Graham was on TV last week, bragging about how he’d been to Syria — Afghanistan? Iraq? Who cares! — 75 times.

Not one person who voted for Graham has the peace and contentment of Syrians on his Top Ten Concerns list. Like everyone else, South Carolinians care about their jobs, their safety, their neighborhoods, their country.

But Sen. Graham wouldn’t sound like a deep intellectual if he went on TV and started talking about water treatment plants, despite the fact that clean drinking water is of far greater interest to his constituents…

It would be annoying enough if government officials, whose salaries we pay, spent all their time working on the betterment of other nations, but at least everything turned out GREAT. In fact, however, they’re never right, they always make things worse, and they never pay a price because, again, no one cares.

Proposed Constitutional Amendment No. 2: Elected officials may take one government-funded boondoggle abroad for every three (3) trips they make to our southern border.

Be seeing you

thought mash

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Demonization of Dissent

Posted by M. C. on October 30, 2019

https://outline.com/6HAsmM

The Nation

James Carden

The war of words between former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and current 2020 presidential aspirant Tulsi Gabbard has been, in some respects, clarifying. Clinton’s insinuation that Russia is “grooming” the Hawaiian Democrat for a third-party run in order to influence the outcome of next year’s election, instead of provoking a “have you no shame?” response from the establishment media, was gleefully repeated by such establishment fixtures as the journalist Jonathan Alter and the scholar Norman Ornstein. In other words, McCarthyism has gone mainstream.

To get to the root of what is going on here, the spat between the Clinton camp and the upstart, anti-interventionist Gabbard must be placed within the broader context of the past several years during which, under the influence of Russiagate, the Democratic Party and the establishment media have taken the lead in calling for a new Cold War. Only then can Clinton’s accusation be seen for what it is, part of a long campaign of vilification and demonization against critics of the establishment consensus on Russia going back at least to late 2013, if not earlier.

Express doubts about the establishment’s preferred policy toward Russia, and you will find yourself not only in the crosshairs of the liberal mainstream media but, even more worryingly, on the radar of the intelligence community—just ask a minor Trump campaign functionary like George Papadopoulos…

Over the last several years, high government officials have attempted to paint discourse and policy proposals with which they disagree as proof of disloyalty, if not worse.

One need only look to March 2017, when, on the floor of the US Senate, the senior senator from Arizona, John McCain, accused Kentucky Republican Rand Paul of “working for Vladimir Putin.” The accusation came amid an effort by Paul to have an actual debate (as opposed to a voice vote) over whether Montenegro should join NATO. Said McCain to Paul, “If there is objection, you are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin.”

Still more alarming, several months later, in December 2017, a little-noticed amicus curiae brief sent by former high-ranking US intelligence officials asserted that Russia uses “political organizers and activists, academics, journalists, web operators, shell companies, nationalists and militant groups, and prominent pro-Russian businessmen” to subvert the American political process.

Russia’s intermediaries, said the brief cosigned by, among others, former CIA director John Brennan, may include “the unwitting accomplice who is manipulated to act in what he believes is his best interest, to the ideological or economic ally who broadly shares Russian interests, to the knowing agent of influence who is recruited or coerced to directly advance Russian operations and objectives.”

And this is precisely what Clinton has now accused Tulsi Gabbard, a woman of color, a combat vet, and a major in the Army National Guard, of being: an accomplice in Russia’s malign campaign to influence the 2020 election. What we are now seeing is nothing less than a joint effort by the former secretary of state and her allies in the media (which very much include certain former high-ranking members of the US intelligence community) to vilify those like Gabbard who vocally oppose a new Cold War with Russia…

the silence with which this development has been greeted by many of the erstwhile guardians of political dissent on the left has been nothing short of deafening.

Be seeing you

Hillary Clinton's Hatred For Tulsi Gabbard Summed Up By ...

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on The Demonization of Dissent

A Question of Timing – The Coming Economic Collapse

Posted by M. C. on October 24, 2019

https://internationalman.com/articles/a-question-of-timing/

by Jeff Thomas

France, 1788.    Russia, 1916.    Germany, 1937.

These dates have something in common. In France in 1788, political conditions had been getting questionable, but there was no apparent need to panic. That came the following year, with the sudden outbreak of the French Revolution. From that point on, it was dangerous even to go out in the streets of Paris. So many people had become enraged, that even if you were not a member of the aristocracy, you could easily become collateral damage.

And so, it would have been wise if, in 1788, you had decided to pack your bags and remove yourself from the epicentre of what was developing.

Similarly, in 1916, Russia was at war with the Germans, and the populace was becoming increasingly vocal about the state of the economy. Yet, even the czar believed that the people simply had to accept the situation and muddle through.

A year later, soldiers were deserting, a host of political wannabes were vying for power and anyone who simply wanted to be left alone to run his own life was now afraid to go out on the streets.

And of course, in Germany, prior to Kristallnacht in November of 1938, all the warnings were there that the country was beginning to unravel, but virtually everyone assumed that, somehow, things would be all right.

A year later, Germany was at war with five nations and had invaded three others. People were being rounded up, imprisoned and/or shot. Those who sought to get out of Germany found that they were no longer allowed to do so.

And history is full of similar cases. In hindsight, the warning signs have always been there: an increasingly autocratic government, increasingly volatile and irrational political struggles, mounting debt, increased taxation, a declining economy and the removal of basic freedoms “for the greater good.”

In 1929, if you lived in the US, you might have just paid $2,735 for a new Packard Custom 8 Roadster – a means of showing off your recent gains in the stock market. A year later, you might well have offered it for sale for only $100, as, for all your previous price offers, there were no takers. And you, like they, had been wiped out in the crash, and $100 meant the difference between eating and not eating.

In 1958, you might have been enjoying a daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana and joking to friends about ‘las barbudas’ – the tiny rebel force hiding in the Sierra Madre. A year later, the joking had ended and private businesses like El Floridita had been nationalized by the new government.

For millennia, the playbook has been the same. Countries that had been wonderful to live in, began to deteriorate from within, and the great majority of residents had failed to read the tea leaves – the warning signs that, in the future, conditions were not going to get better; they were going to get worse.

But why should this be so?

Well, in 1787, in the midst of the Scottish Enlightenment that gave rise to Adam Smith, economist and historian Alexander Tytler is credited as having said:

A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.

He further noted that the latter stages of any such decline are marked, first, by complacency, then by apathy. The final stage is invariably one of bondage.

In some cases of collapse, the country is taken over by an outside force, but invariably, as stated above, the rot always starts from within. It’s simply human nature for the majority of any population, when passing through challenging times, to fall prey to promises that, somehow, a change in the form of government can and will result in the elimination of problematic conditions.

But how do those who make such claims sell their ideas? Do they suggest that everyone should work harder and practice a greater level of abnegation?

Well, no. Although such people may exist and may even become outspoken, they are, historically, never the individuals whom the majority of the population follow. Invariably, the majority (having become complacent and pathetic), choose those who promise to take from one group and share the spoils amongst those who are less productive.

As illogical as this promise is, most people, even if they doubt the reality of the claim, tend to think, “Well, it couldn’t be any worse. I might get something, so let’s give it a try.”

A very simple case in point is the Bahamas election of 1967, in which Bahamians elected their first ‘man of the people’ as their premier. Under his rhetoric of ‘Bahamas for Bahamians,’ he promised the large underclass of Bahamians that he would take the top jobs away from the British bankers and other business leaders and that the spoils would go to the average Bahamian.

Of particular interest were the luxury vehicles driven by successful businessmen. Bahamians in their thousands imagined that the senior staff in banks would be fired, that they themselves would be given the jobs… and the fancy Jaguar Saloons.

And that did happen to some extent. Those who were loyal to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling did move up to management positions overnight – positions for which they were not qualified. Not surprisingly, they were unable to learn decades of knowledge overnight. They subsequently either lost their new jobs, or the banks lost business on a massive scale.

And the Jaguars? Well, it turned out that there were thousands of Bahamians for every Jaguar that existed, and for 99.9%, there would be no previously imagined spoils.

Instead, their lives soon headed south in the coming months and years, as wealth flowed away from the Bahamas, most of it never to return.

In other countries the details have often been quite a bit more complex, but the scenario and the outcome have been the same.

Once the warning signs begin to appear, it’s important to remember that, historically, the process never reverses itself. An apathetic population is not one that will suddenly decide to roll up its sleeves and get the country, once again, on a productive footing.

Invariably, the population jumps on the toboggan of empty promises and rides it downhill until it reaches the economic bottom.

And so, circumventing such a situation becomes a question of timing. When it becomes clear that the telltale signs are reappearing once again, those who are wise will acknowledge that the sands are running out and it’s time to move on.

The signs tend to be the same in any locale, in any era. They’re quite easy to see. The difficult part is choosing to make an exit whilst it’s still easy to do so.

Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, there’s little any individual can practically do to change the trajectory of broke governments in need of more cash. There are still steps you can take to ensure you survive the turmoil with your money intact.

That’s precisely why bestselling author Doug Casey and his colleagues just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.

Be seeing you

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Washington Prefers Confrontation With Russia to Dialogue and Cooperation — Strategic Culture

Posted by M. C. on October 10, 2019

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/10/08/washington-prefers-confrontation-with-russia-to-dialogue-and-cooperation/

Brian Cloughley

On September 24, while the Ukraine corruption scandal was gathering momentum in Washington, the US Air Force’s 31 Fighter Wing deployed F-16 strike aircraft to Graf Ignatievo Air Base in Bulgaria as part of Exercise Rapid Buzzard which has the aim of improving the “joint warfighting capability” of the US and Bulgarian air forces. It is hardly coincidental that Bulgaria has undertaken to spend $1.27 billion on buying F-16s, resulting in the US State Department declaring that “We salute Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and the Bulgarian government on its commitment to modernize its military through the acquisition of these highly capable, NATO interoperable aircraft.”

The build-up of US-NATO offensive weapons continues unabated round Russia’s borders, with Bulgaria being described by the State Department as “a reliable ally in an area of strategic importance to the United States.” In New York, the day before the F-16 redeployment, US and Polish Presidents Trump and Duda signed a joint agreement to greatly increase military cooperation and “develop the plan to bolster Polish–United States military ties and United States defence and deterrence capabilities in Poland.”

The increase in US military commitment to Poland involves establishment of six bases, from Poznan is the west to Lubliniec in the south, accommodating forces including a divisional headquarters, an attack drone squadron, a combat aviation brigade and a special operations force “facility”. Discussions are taking place about “the most suitable location in Poland for an armoured brigade combat team.”

Meanwhile, in sanity land, Deutsche Welle reported on 2 October that “news of an agreement reached Tuesday between Ukraine and pro-Russia separatists was met with optimism in Russia and Germany” with Chancellor Merkel, arguably the most able leader in Europe, saying that it is an “important step.” The move towards rapprochement resulted from agreement by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to allow local elections in the Donbass regions of Luhansk and Donetsk where there has been an uprising against the Kiev government by Russian-speaking, Russia-cultured separatists.

This welcome development resulted in further optimism that there will be another series of discussions in the near future between Presidents Zelenskiy, Putin and Macron together with Chancellor Merkel, reviving the “Normandy Format” aimed at resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine on the lines of the peace agreement signed in Minsk in 2015.

Not much appeared in the western media about these initiatives, but Xinhua reported the French foreign ministry as stating that “France welcomes this progress, which was facilitated by the intense negotiations conducted over the last few weeks within the so-called Normandy format between France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia. The conditions have now been met for the forthcoming meeting of heads of state and government in the Normandy format aimed at making progress toward a lasting settlement of the conflict in Ukraine,” involving the separatists in the east of the country.

Although the modest progress was generally welcomed in Europe, there was no endorsement from Washington. This is understandable, because the entire government and media of the United States are obsessed with a massive scandal involving President Trump’s intention to have Ukraine confirm that his main 2020 presidential election opponent, Joseph Biden, had been in some way involved in shady dealings with Ukraine’s government. Further, as Time magazine summed up matters, it is said that Ukraine had “found a way to conspire against [Trump] during the 2016 election, and to collude with his rival, Hillary Clinton, by hiding the Democratic National Committee’s email server and feeding her allies dirt about Trump.”

All this was decidedly awkward for the US media, which has made it clear in the past that Ukraine, although corrupt to the core and verging on ungovernable, must be seen as a shining light of democracy, while neighbouring Russia is intent on extinguishing its sparkling example of freedom and social advancement. Washington ignores such inconvenient agencies as Human Rights Watch which in its 2019 Report observed that “The Ukrainian government continued restrictions on freedom of expression, freedom of information, and media freedom… These ranged from threats and intimidation to restricting journalists’ access to information.”

In July the US Senate approved a Resolution “marking the fifth anniversary of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity by honouring the bravery, determination, and sacrifice of the people of Ukraine during and since the Revolution, and condemning continued Russian aggression against Ukraine.” Tellingly, this drum-thumping ratification of aggression “applauds the progress that the Government of Ukraine has made since the Revolution in strengthening the rule of law, aligning itself with Euro-Atlantic norms and standards, and improving military combat readiness and interoperability with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.”

While the thrust of the Resolution was military confrontation, the most interesting paragraph concerns an important trade matter : the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which is intended to double the capacity of the existing pipeline conveying Russian gas to Germany. As Forbes noted in July, “Russia continues to dominate the global natural gas trade, accounting for 26% of global natural gas exports.”

The Senate disapproves of this impending improvement to the economies of Russia and Germany (and Europe as a whole) and alleges that in some strange fashion completion of the pipeline would “further undermine Ukraine’s economic stability, and threatens to increase the country’s vulnerability to further Russian military incursions.” There is no explanation offered as to how, exactly, the building of a gas pipeline of mutual benefit to provider and recipient can result in military incursions, but this sort of detail is irrelevant to deliberations and decisions in Washington.

What it all comes down to is the possibility of economic advantage to the United States, which would benefit enormously if Nord Stream 2 were cancelled, because Washington would then encourage Germany to import US gas, at a considerably higher price, with much profit to US producers.

Forbes notes that with “record production, and the most efficient and competitive natural gas industry in the world, the future shines bright for US gas exporters,” while “Although not as fast growing as China and India, Europe will remain a focus for US natural gas shippers.” Of course it is a focus, and it is not surprising that in July the US Senate legislated sanctions on companies and individuals involved in construction of the Russia-Germany Nord Stream 2.

Washington’s combination of military confrontation and economic sanctions in its campaign against Russia has no moral basis, and Ukraine has no reason to be confident that it will benefit in any way from the current uproar over the 2016 election fandangos. As a Washington Post Editorial had it on 4 October: “the White House was conditioning security assistance on Ukraine’s promise to conduct the politically motivated investigations.” That is not the way allies operate, but then Washington isn’t an ally to anyone unless there is a promise of economic advantage to the Military-Industrial Complex. That is why the Washington Establishment prefers confrontation to dialogue and cooperation.

 

Be seeing you

russia wants war

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

What’s Russia to Us? – LewRockwell

Posted by M. C. on October 5, 2019

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/10/angelo-m-codevilla/whats-russia-to-us/

By

Claremont Institute

What 21st-century Russia is in itself, to its neighbors, and to America flows from the fact it is no longer the Soviet Union. As the red flag came down from the Kremlin on Christmas Day 1991, Russian president Boris Yeltsin, when asked what he thought of Communism, nearly wept as he replied: “I wish it had been tried somewhere else.” Vladimir Putin, who famously said that the USSR’s collapse had been a tragedy, nevertheless shares the Russian people’s consensus that their country was Communism’s first and foremost victim, and that no one knows how long it may take to live down its dysfunctions. To its neighbors, this Russia is a rebudding tsarist empire. To Americans, it is a major adversary despite the lack of clashing geopolitical interests.

After Communism

The Revolution of 1917 was possible because socialists, in Russia and throughout the Western world, believed that “present-day society,” as Karl Marx put it, is a jumble of “contradictions,” which could be resolved only by tearing down the pillars of the house. Once that was done, history would end: man and woman, farmer and industrial worker, producer and consumer, intellectual and mechanic—heretofore at odds—would live harmoniously, freely, and prosperously ever after.

Because they really believed in this utopian dream, the socialists gave absolute power to Lenin and Stalin’s Communist Party to wreck and reorganize—to break eggs in order to make a delicious omelette. But Communism, while retaining some of Marxism’s antinomian features (e.g., war on the family and on religion), became in practice almost exclusively a justification for the party’s absolute rule. For example, the economic system adopted by the Soviet Union and by other Communist regimes owed precisely zero to Marx, but was a finely tuned instrument for keeping the party in control of wealth.

The Leninist party is gone forever in Russia because, decades after its leaders stopped believing in Marxism, and after Leonid Brezhnev had freed them from the Stalinist incubus that had kept them loyal to the center, they had learned to make the party into a racket. That, and the residual antinomian features, made Russia into a kakotopia. Russian men learned to intrigue and drink on the job rather than work. Shunning responsibility for women and children, they turned Russian society into a matriarchy, held together by grandmothers. In a thoroughly bureaucratized system, each holder of a bit of authority used it to inconvenience the others. Forcing people to tell each other things that both knew not to be true—recall that “politically correct” is a Communist expression—engendered cynicism and disrespect for truth. The endless anti-religion campaigns cut the people off from one moral system and failed to inculcate another. Alcohol drowned unhappiness, life expectancies declined, and fewer Russians were born.

The Russian people rejected Communism in the only ways that powerless people can—by passivity, by turning to anything foreign to authority, and by cynicism. Nothing being more foreign to Communism than Christianity, Russians started wearing crosses, knowing that the regime frowned on this feature of the Russia that had pre-existed Communism, and would survive it.

No sooner had the USSR died than Russia restored the name Saint Petersburg to Peter the Great’s “window on the West.” Even under Soviet rule, Russians had gone out of their way to outdo the West in Western cultural matters—“nekulturny” (uncultured!) was, and remains, a heavy insult in Russia.

Read it here

Be seeing you

Modern Russia | Others

 

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

A Better Question Might Be Who Are They Paying And For What.

Posted by M. C. on October 1, 2019

If Russia hacked

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Democrats Wrote to Ukraine in May 2018, Demanding It Investigate Trump | Breitbart

Posted by M. C. on September 26, 2019

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/09/24/democrats-wrote-to-ukraine-in-may-demanding-it-investigate-trump/

by Joel B. Pollak

Democrats wrote to the Ukrainian government in May 2018 urging it to continue investigations into President Donald Trump’s alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign — collusion later found not to exist.

The demand, which came from U.S. Senators Robert Menendez (D-NJ), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Patrick Leahy (D-VT), resurfaced Wednesday in an opinion piece written by conservative Marc Thiessen in the Washington Post.

Ironically, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) declared Tuesday that the mere possibility that President Trump had asked Ukraine to continue an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden — even without a quid pro quo — was enough to trigger an impeachment inquiry. (Biden boasted in 2018 that he had forced Ukraine to remove its prosecutor by threatening to withhold $1 billion in U.S. aid; he did not tell his audience at the Council on Foreign Relations that the prosecutor was looking into a firm on whose board his son, Hunter Biden, was serving.)

Thiessen observed (original links):

It got almost no attention, but in May [2018], CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

The Democrats’ letter is available online here. In it, Menendez, Durbin, and Leahy demanded that the Ukrainian government answer their questions about the Mueller probe, and issued an implied threat: “This reported refusal to cooperate with the Mueller probe also sends a worrying signal — to the Ukrainian people as well as the international community — about your government’s commitment more broadly to support justice and the rule of law.”

Be seeing you

Kevin Barrett: Ukraine another CIA coup victim -- Puppet Masters -- Sott.net

 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Noam Chomsky Calls Out Israel For Interfering In US Elections & Says Russian Interference Is “A Joke” – Collective Evolution

Posted by M. C. on September 6, 2019

Modern day politics is extremely corrupt, and here at CE we’ve been presenting evidence for years that many of our political ‘leaders’ are actively engaged and involved in some very unethical and immoral behaviour

Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.

https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/09/05/news-noam-chomsky-calls-out-israel-for-interfering-in-us-elections-says-russian-interference-is-a-joke/

By

CE Staff Writer

  • The Facts:Noam Chomsky calls out Israel for interfering in the US elections. He also confirms the obvious, that the Russian Interference narrative is a joke.
  • Reflect On:Why does the media only focus on certain figures to create a narrative? Who is guiding the media to create these narratives?

It’s important to understand why Donald Trump, since he decided to run for president, gets demonized by mainstream media. The answer is simple, it’s because he is a disrupter. Many minds will have a hard time seeing this, and this is the power that mainstream media has had over the minds of the masses for years. It’s not hard for them to program a perception about an event or a person into the mind of the average human being. They have a very powerful ability to do so, and these programs stem from mainstream media’s relationships with intelligence agencies like the CIA. It’s simply a tool used to brainwash the masses.

The coordinated efforts among major news outlets including CNN, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, and USA Today are no different from the concerted media attacks against Brazil’s Dilma Rousseff, which resulted earlier in 2016 in her impeachment and removal from power. In the case of Rousseff, we see what has been alternately described as a soft coup or a Wall Street coup, along the lines of the “color revolutions” that occurred a few years earlier (which are now largely understood as CIA-NGO orchestrated). In both cases, pretexts were created and hammered home by an insistent media that whipped up public opinion. In Brazil, it worked. It seemed like it would work in the US.

As for Donald Trump, his presidency in many ways falls against the two key pillars of the American ruling elite’s ideology: neoliberalism and neoconservatism. And this is why we constantly see him being demonized, and efforts to impeach him are abundant. It’s also why the ‘Russian collusion’ narrative existed, something that many should have been able to recognize as being completely fake.

There has clearly been an ongoing deep state attack on Trump. Whether or not you hate Trump, far beyond the point, what is being exposed here is far bigger than that.

Welcome to America, where fake news is pushed as real, and real news is heavily censored and ridiculed.

Not long ago, Noam Chomsky offered his thoughts and made some very good points on this. Chomsky is known as a deep critical thinker, a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist, among other things. I’m a longtime fan, and much of the work he’s put out deeply resonates with me, but at the same time, much of it does not.

 

He is usually spot on for the most part, in my opinion,  when it comes to his analysis of modern day politics. He recently shared his thoughts on this entire Russian collusion debacle.

He explained in an interview with Democracy Now that the media’s focus on Russian collusion with regards to the 2016 US election was a “joke.”

He did not confirm or deny his belief on whether or not it even happened, but rather explained:

First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely counts or weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly and with enormous support.

Israeli intervention in US elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done, I mean, even to the point where the prime minister of Israel, Netanyahu, goes directly to Congress, without even informing the president, and speaks to Congress, with overwhelming applause, to try to undermine the president’s policies – what happened with Obama and Netanyahu in 2015.

It’s a great point. Three-time presidential candidate and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Dr. Ron Paul, has been outspoken about the US meddling in the elections of other countries. He noted that in an ideal world, the US wouldn’t be concerned about other countries trying to interfere with their elections, and that the reason it’s not happening is because the US government is steeped in hypocrisy, doing the exact same thing they are accusing Russia of doing.

“The American people should be worried about the influence of our CIA in other people’s elections, I mean probably hundreds. It’s constant,” he said, even mentioning “domestic assassinations” the CIA has apparently been a part of.

Paul stirred the pot further by revealing that a “shadow government,” in the words of RT, has teamed up with major media in order to push an anti-Russian narrative on the public to instil fear and hatred and ultimately rile up more arguments between the opposing Republican and Democratic parties.

There Are More Important Issues

The point of presenting the interview with Chomsky and the points he makes is that there are more pressing issues. The supposed Russian hacking in the US election is not really important, it’s simply being used for political purposes and assassinations.

Modern day politics is extremely corrupt, and here at CE we’ve been presenting evidence for years that many of our political ‘leaders’ are actively engaged and involved in some very unethical and immoral behaviour. That shouldn’t really come as a surprise if you take a look at what is happening to our planet–it’s truly the result of psychopathic leaders that we, the people, allow to control all our resources and make decisions for us.

Furthermore, the interview also sheds light on interference in our electoral process that never gets any media attention. So, ask yourself, why?

Who Is Really In Charge? Do We Really Live In A Democracy?

One of many popular quotes we use here at Collective Evolution to shed light onto the world of modern day politics comes from New York City mayor, John F. Hylan, who once said, “like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation.” This “little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both parties … [and] control the majority of the newspapers and magazines in this country.“

This begs the question, do we really live under a system of democratic vote? Do the people truly have a voice? It seems that corporations and other higher powers have complete control over political policy, and the will of the people is never really considered. For the most part, especially in the United States, elections come down to two people who don’t really have the best interests of the people or humanity at heart. Despite this fact, we keep voting, something that gives us the illusion that we are living in a democracy. Voting does absolutely nothing for change, and yet many Americans still give it grave importance. It seems that both democrats and republicans have simply been representing two different wings from the same bird for a long time.

This is the way the system works, it’s a rotten system, and I see elections as so much of a charade. So much deceit goes on… whether it’s a Republican or a Democrat president, the people who want to keep the status quo seem to have their finger in the pot and can control things. They just get so nervous so, if they have an independent thinker out there, whether it’s Sanders, or Trump, or Ron Paul, they’re going to be very desperate to try to change things… More people are discovering that the system is all rigged, and that voting is just pacification for the voters and it really doesn’t count.”  – Dr Ron Paul

There are dozens upon dozens of politicians who have referenced the ‘Deep State,’ not just Donald Trump. Despite the fact that Trump has often been labelled as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ by mainstream media, he joins a long list of politicians who have expressed the same things.

Another great example comes from Theodore Roosevelt,

Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great staffs, both of the old parties have ganged aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests which use them in martialling [sic] to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day. (source)

The point is, politics is not what we think it is. Not all that is presented to us is as it seems, and this is far from a conspiracy theory. We cannot keep going through the same process every four years believing that a difference will be made via the modern day political system.

Something needs to change because the human race has so much potential and we are squandering it.

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, politics has clearly been exposed as a game where one group tried to slander another for their own purposes. Rarely are decisions made with the intention of benefiting the people or the planet.  Politics is not about the will of the people, but rather a means to bamboozle the population into thinking a certain way while benefiting a small group of the financial elite. It’s become completely useless, and participation in it should be discouraged.

Be seeing you

image020.jpg

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Irresponsibility of Small Nations – PaulCraigRoberts.org

Posted by M. C. on August 24, 2019

That Washington intends to put missiles on Russia’s border and pulled out of the INF Treaty for this sole purpose is now obvious.

No one is capable of coming to Romania and Poland’s aid even if anyone was so inclined. NATO is a joke. It wouldn’t last one day in a battle with Russia. Does anyone think the United States is going to commit suicide for Romania and Poland?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2019/08/23/the-irresponsibility-of-small-nations/

Paul Craig Roberts

After falsely accusing Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Washington unilaterally repudiated the treaty. Thus did the US military/security complex rid itself of the landmark agreement achieved by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that defused the Cold War.

The INF Treaty was perhaps the most important of all of the arms control agreements achieved by American 20th century presidents and now abandoned in the 21st century by US neoconservative governments. The treaty removed the threat of Russian missiles against Europe and the threat of European-based US missiles to Russia. The importance of the treaty is due to its reduction of the chance of accidental nuclear war. Warning systems have a history of false alarms. The problem of US missiles on Russia’s border is that they leave no time for reflection or contact with Washington when Moscow receives a false alarm. Considering the extreme irresponsibility of US governments since the Clinton regime in elevating tensions with Russia, missiles on Russia’s border leaves Russia’s leadership with little choice but to push the button when an alarm sounds.

That Washington intends to put missiles on Russia’s border and pulled out of the INF Treaty for this sole purpose is now obvious. Only two weeks after Washington pulled out of the treaty, Washington tested a missile whose research and development, not merely deployment, were banned under the treaty. If you think Washington designed and produced a new missile in two weeks you are not intelligent enough to be reading this column. While Washington was accusing Russia, it was Washington who was violating the treaty. Perhaps this additional act of betrayal will teach the Russian leadership that it is stupid and self-destructive to trust Washington about anything. Every country must know by now that agreements with Washington are meaningless.

Surely the Russian government understands that there are only two reasons for Washington to put missiles on Russia’s border: (1) to enable Washington to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike that leaves Russia no response time, or (2) to enable Washington to threaten such a strike, thus coercing Russia to Washington’s will. Clearly, one or the other of these reasons is of sufficient importance to Washington for Washington to risk a false alarm setting off a nuclear war.

Military analysts can talk all they want about “rational players,” but if a demonized and threatened country with hostile missiles on its border receives a warning with near zero response time, counting on it to be a false alarm is no longer rational…

Why do Romania and Poland enable this threat by permitting US missiles to be stationed on their territory?

Little doubt the Romanian and Polish governments have been given bagfulls of money by the US military/security complex, which wants the multi-billion dollar contracts to produce the new missiles. Here we see the extreme irresponsibility of small countries. Without the corrupt and idiotic governments of Romania and Poland, Washington could not resurrect a threat that was buried 31 years ago by Reagan and Gorbachev.

Even the American puppet state of occupied Germany has refused to host the missiles. But two insignificant states of no importance in the world are subjecting the entire world to the risk of nuclear war so that a few Romanian and Polish politicians can pocket a few million dollars.

Missiles on Russia’s borders that provide no response time are a serious problem for Russia. I keep waiting for Moscow to announce publicly that on the first sign of a missile launching from Romania or Poland, the countries will immediately cease to exist. That might wake up the Romanian and Polish populations to the danger that their corrupt governments are bringing to them.

Why aren’t the Romanian and Polish provocations sufficient justification for Russia to pre-emptively occupy both countries? Is it more provocative for Russia to occupy the two countries than it is for the two countries to host US missiles against Russia? Why only consider the former provocative and not the latter?

No one is capable of coming to Romania and Poland’s aid even if anyone was so inclined. NATO is a joke. It wouldn’t last one day in a battle with Russia. Does anyone think the United States is going to commit suicide for Romania and Poland?

Where are the UN resolutions condemning Romania and Poland for resurrecting the specter of nuclear war by hosting the deployment of US missiles on their borders with Russia? Is the entire world so insouciant that the likely consequences of this act of insanity are not comprehended?

It does seem that human intelligence is not up to the requirements of human survival.

Be seeing you

America's sport

Government’s favorite sport-War

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

NBC Blames Russia for Drawing Attention to Racist Incidents – Antiwar.com Original

Posted by M. C. on August 12, 2019

Blaming these twitter accounts for spreading these stories is insulting to Americans – especially minorities – who are concerned with issues minorities face.

https://original.antiwar.com/dave_decamp/2019/08/11/nbc-blames-russia-for-drawing-attention-to-racist-incidents/

by

NBC news ran a story titled, “Russia-linked Twitter accounts promoted ‘doxxing’ over racial tension videos.” The article claims some videos that went viral on twitter featuring confrontations between white people and minorities would not have been so popular if it wasn’t for some “Russia-linked” twitter accounts.

The first incident the story mentions is from October 2018, when a white woman was caught on video calling the police on a 9-year-old black boy in Brooklyn, NY. The woman told police the boy sexually assaulted her. Surveillance video from the store the incident occurred in showed that the boy’s backpack just brushed the woman’s backside. The video is rather shocking, the boy who was accused of assaulting the woman is seen crying with his family as the woman is on the phone with 911.

But according to NBC this video only became viral because of the Russia-linked twitter accounts. The NBC article said, “Clemson University researchers have found those videos received instrumental early social media promotion from inauthentic accounts, some of which have since been removed by Twitter and linked by US intelligence to Russia’s efforts to stoke racial tensions in America.”

One of the researchers said, “It’s clear in several examples that some of these stories would never have gone viral without the influence of Russian disinformation.”

The video was posted on Facebook by Jason Littlejohn, the man who caught the incident on camera. Littlejohn’s video went viral and many major media outlets picked up the story. The NBC article only mentions inauthentic twitter users spreading the video, but Littlejohn’s Facebook video has over eight million views.

Littlejohn is heard in the video giving the woman the nickname “Cornerstone Caroline.” The other videos cited in the NBC article have similar nicknames, “Taco Truck Tammy” and “Basketball Becky.” NBC alludes to the idea that the Russia-linked accounts were responsible for the nicknames saying, “The objects of the outrage were often given alliterative nicknames.”

In April of this year a Hispanic taco truck worker in Texas uploaded a video of a white woman threatening to call US immigration and Customs Enforcement. NBC says, “One of the suspicious accounts spotted by the researchers was the first to call her “Taco Truck Tammy.”

The researchers came to the conclusion that “the suspicious accounts drew about half of the retweets of the encounter between the homeowner and the workers in the first two days.” Even if it is true that some suspicious accounts were responsible for some of the retweets, the story drew lots of media coverage.

The researchers said the twitter accounts called on people to share the women’s private information also known as “doxxing.” In both cases the women who were caught on video did interviews with local media apologizing for the incidents.

The third story mentioned in the article known as “Basketball Becky” just happened this past July. A black couple was shopping at a California Nike store and bought a basketball for their 18-month-old son. The couple left the store and the white manager came out accusing the couple of stealing the ball. The couple showed the manager and police their receipt and uploaded a video of the incident on Facebook, where the video went viral.

So how did the researchers and NBC News determine these twitter accounts were Russian in origin? According to NBC, “The researchers said they placed the accounts as probably Russian in origin based on forensic analysis of account information and behavior that they shared with NBC News.”

The article also hyperlinks to a list of twitter handles affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, the Russian company indicted by Robert Mueller in 2018. Some of the handles are mentioned in the article. Two of the four twitter handles mentioned are on the list, although no specific activity was credited to these handles.

In an effort to scare the reader NBC quotes Phillip Howard, the director of the Oxford Internet Institute, “The real goal is to get the conflict off Twitter, to get it into the streets.”

Blaming these twitter accounts for spreading these stories is insulting to Americans – especially minorities – who are concerned with issues minorities face. Each of the three videos are real incidents that happened to real people, two of them being children. NBC minimizes what happened to these children by stoking fears of Russian influence on the country.

Be seeing you

Masters voice

Listening to it’s CIA master.

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

« Previous Entries
Next Entries »