PANIC: Washington Elites in Full Propaganda Mode

CNN before the election; CNN after the election.
by David Hammond

Well, I honestly thought we had dodged a bullet involving war with Russia by not electing Hillary Clinton, but it looks like I was wrong. Given Clinton's defeat in the presidency, her controllers are now simply attempting to advance the timeline. Never mind the absurdity of the CIA complaining about election meddling, when that's been their particular specialty, in foreign governments, for at least the past seventy years. Never mind that our government has the gall to lie to us about "fake news" when our own Supreme Court has ruled that the mainstream news media is under absolutely no obligation to tell the truth. Never mind that the CIA has a documented history of infiltrating our news media through Operation Mockingbird and who knows what else, and has been called out by the highest members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, decade after decade, for being inherently deceitful from the inside out. Never mind that Julian Assange, top US intelligence officers, and even former UK ambassador Craig Murray have all explicitly stated that the expose of corrupt DNC activity was a leak, not a hack.

I suppose it may also be relevant that exactly twenty years ago TIME magazine proudly reported on the feats of American political consultants who manipulated the Russian election to ensure a Boris Yeltsin win, using a covert plan that involved specialized polling (similar to the Clinton campaign’s weighted polling that split Independents in half, giving her at least a constant 10% bump nationally) a negative ad campaign, propaganda, and other tools of the political manipulation trade.

This latest media propaganda blitz isn't so shocking on its own because similar tactics have presaged every war of choice America has ever been in. But to see so many intelligent people hysterically lap it up while apparently salivating for war with Russia and decrying "fake news" is getting a little creepy.

And the craziest part is that nearly every cheerleader is on the so-called left (of which I have been a lifelong member) when aren't we the ones who are supposed to see through government BS and lies as they goad us into yet another war? Surely such hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance can't be simply because our president is a Democrat, can it? Not even sure if I want to know the answer to that.

America, you are being lied to, yet again. You are being herded into yet another war of choice by powers that will say absolutely anything to get you to believe whatever they want you to believe. As Rahm Emmanuel infamously put it: "Never let a good crisis go to waste." Unfortunately, the establishment candidate's loss is just such an opportunity and they are capitalizing on it fiercely. How can this even happen? They are basically eliminating alternative news media with HR 6393, which was just quietly passed in the House, a bill that is quite literally the beginning of government censorship, with all of social media onboard. And, of all organizations, they're using Snopes as one of their go-to judges of what is “fake”, a widely-discredited source that routinely serves up misinformation, disinformation, and flat-out lies. Germany is even following suit by threatening to sue Facebook for €500,000 for every "fake" post allowed to stay up for more than 24 hours. When this kind of law can pass muster, it really doesn't matter which side of the aisle you are on. It should send a chill down the spine of anybody who appreciates their First Amendment rights. And as always, who is watching the watchers? This is nothing short of a open gate straight to tyranny.

Yet their technique has always been to point frantically to a threat so big and so encompassing that people will be clamoring for whatever medicine they want to sell. Its called problem -> reaction -> solution, and it's been their modus operandi for as long as anyone on the planet has been alive. Of course, they create the problem, fake the reaction, and then enact their preplanned solution, but is anyone really paying attention?

Right now, our government and their pliant mainstream media are engaged in a full-on fake news blitz, telling a lie so big and so outrageous that you'll have no choice but to believe it, or risk thinking the whole world has gone insane. This is called gaslighting, by the way. Look into it because it's one of the newest forms of mass manipulation in the book, and it's being aimed directly at you. Essentially a spin-off of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels' famous quip “Tell a lie big enough and loud enough, and people will eventually believe it,” contemporary gaslighting adds subtle techniques of psychological manipulation to disorient the populace into submission.

Of course if Hillary Clinton had won, and the Trump camp were making these same ludicrous accusations, based on the same dearth of evidence, the left would be howling and scowling and ridiculing them day and night. When are people going to realize that, left or right, we are being repeatedly played to acquiesce to the establishment agenda? Naturally, I did not vote for Trump and I do not support Trump. But I have a very big problem with glaring hypocrisy and selective outrage--especially when those playing such games dangerously throw all logic and common sense out the window while risking war with a nuclear power.

The same goes for the idea that we need to overturn this election. Caveat: Unless you are personally willing to fight in a civil war, then please stop immediately. Unless you are willing to throw this country into blind chaos and bloodshed, then please stop. And again, just think: if Trump supporters demanded overturning the election, the left would climb over themselves to use that as evidence of crazed depravity, leveling every possible insult imaginable, and very likely threatening violence. Don't expect that the same thing wouldn't happen if Clinton supporters get anywhere near actually overturning this election.

And isn't it ironic that an establishment complaining about "fake news" was all in for a candidate who openly stated to Goldman Sachs that “You have to have a public position, as well as a private position”? The message is quite clear: It's basically okay to lie to you, the public, as long as we're the ones doing it. But if somebody exposes our lies--Russia for instance, or some recently-murdered DNC staffer, namely Seth Rich, then it's clearly not okay.

And while the mainstream media implicates everybody not named Hillary Clinton for her loss, we're suddenly pretending it's the 1950s again and there's a Russky hiding under every bed and anybody who disagrees with the establishment's deceitful narrative is a Kremlin operative. The fact that our current Democratic Party's primary allies are the CIA, Internet censors, and McCarthyist hacks should strike the sane left observer as alarming, but then this is 2016 I suppose, so God only knows what's possible.

Who can be blind to the painful irony in the fact that the evidence for this supposed “election hacking” is nothing more than "a secret report, leaked by an anonymous insider, backed by no proof whatsoever, from an agency with a history of lying to the public." (Thank you, Estela Jordan, for that concise summary.)

And doesn't it seem a bit odd that the Orwellian NSA, which tracks every detail of our personal lives, somehow can't quite manage to trace this hack? “Of course they can't trace it,” sanity says, “because it's a leak, not a hack.” But plain sanity isn’t going to stop the government and its mainstream media lackeys from telling you otherwise.

According to CNN, our current president warned: "Mr. Putin can weaken us just like he is trying to weaken Europe if we buy into notions that it is okay to intimidate the press or lock up dissidents."

Oh really, you mean as in writing off all alternative and investigative news media as "fake news" while threatening to lock up true patriots like Edward Snowden, thus forcing them into exile? This from the same guy who promised to champion whistleblowers--then went on to prosecute more than all other presidents combined?

And isn't it getting a little hard to stomach that, even if Russia did hack the emails, their only crime was exposing the monumental lies and deceit that have become the hallmark of Clinton, Inc. and the DNC--yet never a single word about that is mentioned? So does this now mean that we shoot all messengers for delivering bad news? That exposing a lie fully implicates you in that lie or makes you a greater threat than the liar? What kind of upside-down, backwards, bizarro logic is that? Even if Russia did it, their only real "crime" would simply be exposing the truth about our so-called leaders.

There's no way the government can pull off this blitzkrieg of deception unless Americans abandon all logic and reason and allow the cognitive dissonance to fully take over. That again is part of the strategy of gaslighting. In insistent and logical tones, the manipulator repeats illogical things. And so our Washington elites continue screaming "Fake news from Russia!" over and over again, screaming it in the face of the universal recognition that the Wikileaks emails are entirely authentic, screaming it and waiting for us to grow uncertain of our mental footing and begin screaming along.

And as always, the final choice here is ours. No, we do not have a truly representative government, but we do still retain some influence. We can take their word for it and simply acquiesce, just like we did with the Iraq war, or we can stand firm and hold them to somewhat sane standards of accountability while boldly calling them out on their clearly illogical lies and propaganda. I pray that Americans make the right choice this time.

Russian Interference in Wisconsin Recount: Experts

Eric Mader, The Disassociated Press, Madison, December 13, 2016

Evidence of Russian interference in the recent Wisconsin recount is mounting, according to experts interviewed by the Disassociated Press.

Election and polling experts cite “abnormalities” in the outcome of the statewide recount, and point to Moscow as the likely source of organized meddling that occurred in several key counties across the state.

Final tallies announced Monday showed that Hillary Clinton still had not won the state, and that Donald Trump picked up an additional 131 votes. Final totals put Trump’s count at 1,405,284 votes, 22,748 more than Clinton.

“It is my firm belief that advanced mind-control techniques were employed by Russian-trained agents to throw off this count,” David Swishe, an election expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

"Agents of the Russian state were deployed outside county clerk’s offices as the recount unfolded," Swishe said. "They used telepathic mind-control to make election workers visualize Clinton ballots as Trump ballots."

“In Waukesha County, at a Starbucks just next to the clerk’s office, a very Russian-looking man was observed reading Dostoyevsky on more than one day during the recount,” he added. “It’s very suspicious.”

Lisa, a Women’s Studies student and self-described polling expert, agrees that the recount was hacked.

“I conducted exit polls on Facebook the day after the election,” she said. “Every single one of my friends voted for Hillary. Really there is no way Trump won. It's scientifically impossible.”

Both Swishe and Lisa conclude, based on their evidence, that Clinton won the state by at least a couple hundred thousand votes.

“We’re starting a petition to push for a redo of the recount,” Swishe said. “And we’ll be placing Mind Protectors around all the sites where the recount is happening.”

“I had to read Dostoyevsky myself in a lit class,” he added. “The Brothers Raskolnikov. Let me tell you first hand, that book sucks. And these Russians we have today suck even more.”

Check out my Idiocy, Ltd. at Amazon.com and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Hillary More Dangerous

One candidate in this race is talking dangerous nonsense on Syria. Can you guess which?
Both major candidates are unacceptable, everyone knows it, but the constant refrain from the Clinton-backers is that we need to support her because Trump is “dangerous”.

The argument isn’t bad on certain levels. I think Trump’s character is a major major issue, no doubt about it. But in other and maybe more fundamental respects (in concrete policy stances for instance) there are reasons to see Clinton as potentially the more dangerous of the two. And that’s really saying something.

Why do I think she is possibly more dangerous?

Forget pay-to-play, the Wall Street corruption, the glaring attempts to obstruct public oversight of her State Department tenure, etc. All that is bad enough, and should have disqualified her. It maybe would have disqualified her if our FBI director had stuck to the text of the relevant laws in July. But forget all this. The real problem is Hillary’s militarism, which comes out glaringly in her current policy positions.

Soon enough a Clinton administration might very well bring us into open conflict with Russia over Syria, which could end a lot worse for us than anything we’ve ever experienced as a nation. And it’s not a stretch to imagine such a conflict either.

In the third debate, Hillary proposed we establish no-fly zones in Syria. As many have pointed out, this would be a very dangerous move, one that might quickly lead to us shooting Russian fighter jets from the sky. And how would we prevent things from escalating, especially given the thin ice on which we currently stand vis a vis Russia in Ukraine and the Baltic states?

Hillary’s willingness to “go into Syria” is in my mind on a par for stupidity with the Bush administration’s eagerness to take out Saddam. No, it is probably even stupider, given Russia already has a major stake in the Syrian conflict. What would prevent Hillary from pursuing her preferred course?

If corporate finance could convince these people that Glass-Steagall should be repealed (cf. Bill Clinton) and that the financial WMD called “derivatives” are acceptable instruments of trade, then corporate military could convince Hillary that being able to impose our will on Syria is worth risking war with Russia. To listen to her, she is already convinced. Never mind actual WMD this time in the form of Russia’s nuclear capability.

Blowing up the world economy so Wall Street could play blackjack 24/7 with our savings was bad enough. How about blowing up North American and half of Asia?

Our Washington hawks simply can’t seem to let the Middle East fall into a sane balance of power. And Hillary has always been on the hawkish side of the hawk camp. Many of us are getting damned tired of hearing about Russia from these people. That we screwed up massively in Iraq, creating ISIS and giving Baghdad to the Shia--this is not Vladimir Putin’s fault. It’s the fault of our own political class, who can’t seem to say No to a war if the corporate/military lobby wants one.

With all that’s happened since 2003, that the Hillary team can’t simply let Putin protect his ally Assad shows a Washington elite just itching to commit another crime against sanity. Overreach seems the default position for these people. Guess it pays the bills, huh?

As against this, we hear constantly that Trump is dangerous because of . . . racism, bigotry, his attitudes to women. These personal faults, to the extent they exist, don’t stand up to war with Russia in terms of a threat. In any case, I don’t believe Trump could establish American fascism, as some have been screaming. He simply doesn’t have a coherent enough ideology. Trump is no Mussolini, though he may well be an American Berlusconi.

On Syria, Trump is basically right. If Assad falls, it is jihadists who will take over, whether they call themselves ISIS or not. Trump recognizes that the best thing for American interests (to the extent those interests are not identical with corporate interests) is to let Russia continue to protect Assad, and let Russia and Assad knock themselves out bombing the ragtag horde of jihadists now fighting the Syrian state. Hillary, meanwhile, sounds literally nuts on this issue. And it’s a nuttiness we cannot afford--not any more, and certainly not this time, not with Russia deeply involved.

Trump is a loose cannon and narcissist of the first order. He is, however, not nearly as likely to continue trying to remake every state in the Middle East through American firepower. His positions are more trade oriented, isolationist, ultimately pragmatic and domestic in scope. The corporations don’t want pragmatic, or domestic, and so they hate him. But what represents the real danger for us at present--the unfettered military/corporate power Hillary shills for, the ongoing march of aggressive globalization, or the politically incorrect behavior of a Donald Trump?

At the very least, Trump and Clinton both represent serious dangers. The assumption that we must vote Clinton to “protect us” from Trump, however, seems to me a case of willful blindness.

Check out my book Idiocy, Ltd. and begin the long, hard reckoning.

Letter to a Trump Supporter

Dear T-----:

I know you are a Trump supporter, and I know in our conversations that I’ve pointed out aspects of Trump’s approach that I like. I’m writing now to say that I’ve pretty much vetted Trump to my satisfaction, and have come to the conclusion: He should not be in the White House.

The final straw was my review of his foreign policy positions. They don't make sense. They'd sound alright if US foreign policy were a direct business transaction, but it is not.

The benefits the US has gotten from its political and military clout in Asia and the West are immense. Trump's plan, abandoning long-held policies, would create power vacuums in key regions. He talks as if these power vacuums would not be taken advantage of by our enemies. They would. That's the point about power vacuums: the enemy moves in immediately and begins reaping advantages where previously you did.

From a US foreign policy perspective, the main enemies are three: radical Islam, China, Russia.

We cannot afford to let whole regions fall further under the sway of these serious strategic competitors.

The problem with Trump's thinking is that it is based on his life as a businessman. In a large-scale real estate project, you fight for the best prices, bribe the right people, strong-arm the local authorities to bend zoning ordinances, build and promote the building--AND THEN, TAKING YOUR PROFIT, YOU LEAVE.

Trump talks as if American foreign policy is a kind of real estate project. The blindness in this is clear. With foreign policy, you can never do that last part of the deal: LEAVE.

In other words, Trump's whole perspective is not suited to the long game that is statesmanship. Once things get messed up on one part of the picture (as has often happened with Trump's individual business ventures) he cannot just move on to the next big project. No--the world is the whole world; there’s no next project to move on to.

I imagine Trump in the Oval Office fuming that he cannot just let some particular project go bust so he can get up and running on the next: Trump University; Trump Steaks, etc. But he will not be able to. In the White House, when one project goes bust, it just keeps going bust, and you can't really extricate yourself. Because you are in charge of managing America's relations in all of these regions, and unlike casinos, or steak brands, regions can’t be sold off.

If you combine this short-term real estate developer's approach with Trump's erratic flip-flopping, and his nearly pathological narcissism, you will see what I see. A formula for disaster.

And it's no small disaster either. You need to keep in mind, when you think of supporting Trump, that this guy will personally be in charge of the system that keeps your finances in order. In short: When Trump fails on foreign or trade policy, which are closely interlinked, America's economic well-being will take the hit. The market will drop, companies will lay people off, home values will suffer, etc.

You have to try to imagine this guy not as what he's been so far, the loudspeaker in which you hear your justified grievances against the system, but as the one in charge of keeping our whole egg cart from tipping over.

Trump's approach so far is not one to inspire confidence in his skill as a careful egg cart driver.

I don't completely support any of the candidates on offer, as I've said, but I'm hoping the GOP ends up with someone else. You personally don't like Kasich, his demeanor, but he's the most stable of the three who are left. And he has a lot of experience in government. 



We'll see what happens. I'm also furious at all the corruption, both cultural and political, in America. But Trump is not the answer. Yes, he has done the country a service by underlining some of the worst aspects of the problem. But we need a calmer, cooler head, with a better sense of political complexities, to actually fix the problems.

We've discussed Trump several times, and I wanted to send you my current thinking. Hope you’ll reconsider supporting Trump in the Wisconsin primary.

Best,

Eric

My new book Idiocy, Ltd. is now available through Amazon.

Ukraine: Reputations are at Stake Here

A Disassociated Press Editorial, Taipei

Eric Mader

So Obama is telling Putin that his troop deployment in Ukraine risks seriously damaging Russia's "standing in the international community". Uh-huh. The administration is also threatening consequences, and Secretary of State Kerry has been talking tough about isolating Russia. Some are characterizing the Russian move as an outrageous military aggression, and I've even seen, yawn, Putin compared to Hitler.

The US president is obliged to grumble, to be sure, but frankly it looks like he's overplaying his hand.

Ukraine is a multi-ethnic state with a large Russian population. Much of the rest of the Ukrainian population besides considers Russia a traditional ally. The country, in terms of cultural loyalties, looks both to Russia and Western Europe, which has made it a flashpoint in East-West power politics.

Two more things to keep in mind: Ukraine's largest border is, yes, with the Russia Federation. Russia has had an important naval base in the city of Sevastapol for over two centuries. Sevastapol also happens to be in the Crimea, which is where most of the Russian population is located and where Putin has (so far) sent troops.

Pro-Russian demonstrators in Simferopol, Crimea, Ukraine
Obama points out that Putin's troop deployment represents a "clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity". Which it certainly does. But why not get a little perspective here? Is Putin doing anything unexpected? What if we were to move this conflict to our own hemisphere?

Posit a fictive nation in South America (we'll call it "Jolivia") with a large American expat population mostly settled in one region. And those Americans have been there for quite some time, to the degree that the culture of the region is basically American.

Suppose further that Jolivia had elected a pro-US president (a corrupt bastard, as it turned out) but 1) an ELECTED president, and 2) a pro-US president.

Next suppose that a popular revolution by the Spanish-speaking majority was getting close to overthrowing that president, our Jolivian buddy.

How would Obama respond, or indeed any US leader?

Who are we kidding? It would go something like this: "Democracy is in peril in Jolivia. To prevent further violence and to keep this crisis from escalating further, I have authorized troop deployment. General Feldspar will be briefing you on the details."

The difference between US action in the case of "Joliva" and Russian action now?

1) If Putin were an American president, he wouldn't have waited this long to send in troops.

2) He wouldn't have sent troops only the region with a majority Russian population. Russian troops would be in the capital Kiev by now--indeed, they'd have been there two weeks ago.

Who can't see that this is so?

And how would the US population likely view this crisis, if it were a matter of something happening "in our back yard" (i.e., Latin America) rather than on the other side of the planet?

As for American perceptions, of course most people would be worried about the Americans in Joliva falling victim to ethnic violence. Those perceptions would be shaped in real time by our wonderfully objective media.

CNN and Fox both would be covering the crisis as follows.

"To what degree are those seeking to overthrow the president linked with these fascist organizations, Bob?"

And: "We know there's a large Muslim population in Jolivia, and some analysts have shown that radicalized elements in the Muslim population are actively involved in the uprising. Where is this likely to lead?" (In fact there is a Muslim population in Ukraine, and many Muslims are none too friendly to Russia.)

And: "So the Jeffersons' shop windows were broken by the Jolivian protesters? Is that what you're saying, Dara? And the neighboring shops weren't touched?"

And: "Did some of those arms come from Cuba, according to what we've been hearing?"

And: "Some people are saying that if this crisis isn't contained it's likely to spread to neighboring Bradzil. Now we go to our correspondent Brent Botoxathon in the Bradzilian capital." Brent: "Well the streets are mostly quiet here in Anistonia, Lisa, but there were reports of skirmishes on the outskirts of the city--" blah blah blah. . . .

And after each news segment (before the car or insurance ad came on) a flashy logo appears on the screen with a militaristic soundtrack in the background, the logo reading:

JOLIVIA
---Democracy in Peril---

Please understand. I'm not on Russia's side here. I just don't like to see adults taken in by the hypocrisy of superpower politics. What Americans don't seem to realize is this: Our president lecturing foreign leaders on respecting other nations' "territorial sovereignty" sounds utterly ridiculous these days. Such niceties may sound fine in our domestic media, but to people in other countries (and I live overseas) they provoke mostly hissing and jeers.

And sorry to say: On this score we deserve hissing and jeers. For decades our leaders have shown zero respect for national sovereignty whenever the flimsiest excuse can be made that American interests, or "freedom", or whatever, is threatened. Putin is much more justified in invading Crimea than we've been in four of five of our last deployments.

But patriotic Americans, likely offended by what I've written here, may still wonder what we must do. To appear tough. To show the world we mean business. To show that Russkie he can't do just any old thing he likes.

I have a suggestion for these folks. Why not send over Sarah and Todd Palin? Sarah knows what to do when Putin rears his head. And send a Fox News correspondent to cover the mission.

No, wait. Fox, like Dairy Queen, doesn't actually have foreign correspondents. Kind of odd for a news channel, isn't it?

Send Bristol with a camcorder.