Trump era: Fascist dawn, or road to liberation?

[angelburst29]

Representative Duncan Hunter, Jr. (R-CA) and his wife, Margaret, were indicted by a federal grand jury in California Tuesday on charges they used $250,000 in campaign money for personal expenses.

22.08.2018 - GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter, Wife Indicted on Corruption Charges
GOP Congressman Duncan Hunter, Wife Indicted on Corruption Charges

The indictment also accuses the congressman of filing false campaign finance reports with the Federal Election Commission to disguise the spending, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The indictment alleges that Congressman Hunter and his wife repeatedly dipped into campaign coffers as if they were personal bank accounts, and falsified FEC campaign finance reports to cover their tracks," said US Attorney Adam Braverman. "Elected representatives should jealously guard the public's trust, not abuse their positions for personal gain. Today's indictment is a reminder that no one is above the law."

The Hunters are accused of having used the funds for, among other things, vacations to Italy and Hawaii and school tuition to more mundane things like video games and dental work. Hunter has attempted to refute the accusations by saying he didn't handle the campaign credit card.

In lieu of a statement to AP, a representative for Hunter sent a copy of a letter to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which Hunter's attorney, Gregory A. Vega, called the indictment process politically motivated.

They are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday at 10:30 a.m. local time on charges of conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, wire fraud, falsification of records and prohibited use of campaign contributions.

Hunter was the second sitting congressman to endorse US President Donald Trump during the 2016 election campaign.


21.08.2018 - Former Trump Campaign Manager Manafort Found Guilty of Tax Fraud, Bank Fraud
Former Trump Campaign Manager Manafort Found Guilty of Tax Fraud, Bank Fraud

Among the charges he was found guilty of are five counts of tax fraud, two counts of bank fraud and one count of failing to disclose foreign bank accounts. The jury said in a note it had not reached consensus on the other 10 counts, and the judge declared a mistrial on those counts.

Judge Thomas S. Ellis III excused the jury after the verdict and encouraged members not to talk to the press but did not bar them from doing so, saying, "I suggest to you that you have a duty of confidentiality."

The first trial of Paul Manafort, briefly the manager of US President Donald Trump's 2016 election campaign, went on for four weeks and the jury deliberated for four days. The trial at the federal courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia, is the first stemming from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russia's supposed role in the 2016 US election. In this case, Mueller's probe turned up evidence of financial crimes, but no connection to Russia, or to the Trump campaign.

Prosecutors argued that Manafort hid money in foreign bank accounts and failed to claim it on his taxes. They also argued that he obtained $20 million in falsified bank loans. All 27 witnesses during the trial were for the prosecution — Manafort's defense team called none.

The jury found that Manafort stashed $15 million in secret foreign bank accounts, many of them based in Cyprus, to hide money he received while working for then-Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych.

During their four days of deliberations, the jury asked Judge Ellis for several clarifications, including the definition of the term "reasonable doubt," as they were required to find guilt beyond reasonable doubt in order to convict Manafort. Other questions included clarification of the requirements for US citizens to report financial interests in foreign bank accounts and what a shell company is, since Manafort allegedly used such an entity to accept payments and move money into secret bank accounts.

Manafort faces up to 305 years in prison. The charges he has been found guilty of so far carry steep sentences. Each of five counts of subscribing to a false income tax return carries a maximum of three years in federal prison; the count of failing to report a foreign bank account carries a five-year maximum sentence; and each of his two counts of bank fraud carries a maximum of 30 years behind bars.

The 10 counts remaining include two counts of bank fraud, all five counts of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, and three counts of failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Judge Ellis has not yet set a sentencing date and has given prosecutors until August 29 to decide whether to retry Manafort on the deadlocked charges.

US Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) told Reuters Tuesday that any attempt by Trump to pardon Manafort "would be a gross abuse of power" and would require an immediate congressional response. Burr heads the Senates Intelligence Committee.

Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, told the press outside the courthouse Tuesday that his client thanks Judge Ellis for a fair trial and the jury for their thoughtful deliberation. He noted that Manafort is "reviewing all options" and that they were disappointed not to get a hung jury on all counts.

Regardless of the outcome of the remainder of this trial, Manafort faces a second trial in Washington, DC, next month, focused on allegations of lying to the FBI, money laundering and foreign lobbying. Mueller's office has supplied prosecutors with more than double the amount of evidence as the first trial — over 1,000 exhibits, compared to 400 displayed in the Virginia case — according to a court filing Thursday.


21.08.2018 - Trump Lawyer Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Implicates President in Campaign Violations
Trump Lawyer Pleads Guilty to Fraud, Implicates President in Campaign Violations

US President Donald Trump's former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to eight charges which included tax fraud and making false statements.

Counts one through five are for tax evasion on some $4.3 million worth of income; count six, false statement to financial institution; count seven, willful cause of unlawful corporate contribution; and count eight, excessive campaign contribution. Reuters reported that the plea bargain includes a prison sentence of up to five years and three months, however, without a plea bargain Cohen could've faced up to 65 years.

The former longtime lawyer of Trump said in court that at the direction of the "candidate for federal office" he arranged payments "for principal purpose of influencing election." Cohen's excessive campaign contribution was said to have taken place on October 27, 2016, which line up with hush payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, Deputy US Attorney Robert Khuzami said following the announcement. Both Daniels and McDougal were paid $130,000 and $150,000, respectively, in exchange for keeping quiet on their sexual relationships with Trump.

"He worked to pay money to silence two women who had information that he believed would be detrimental to the 2016 campaign and the candidate in the campaign," Khuzami told reporters, explaining that Cohen sought his reimbursements by submitting false invoices. "These are very serious charges and reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a long period of time."

Cohen is free pending his sentencing. The 51-year-old lawyer pleaded guilty hours after news broke that he would be entering into a plea deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York on Tuesday.

Cohen was reportedly under investigation for a several charges including tax fraud and other banking-related crimes. According to the New York Times, federal investigators were looking into more than $20 million in loans obtained by a taxi business owned by Cohen and his family. Officials investigated hush payments Cohen had arranged with women who allegedly had sexual encounters with Trump.

Per ABC News, information from Cohen could be beneficial to special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election and any collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian actors. However, it is still unclear whether Cohen will cooperate.

Images showing barricades being posted near the Manhattan federal court surfaced online ahead of reports of Cohen's plea deal.

 

[angelburst29]

Freezing Russian assets in the US - to the tune of several million dollars - sounds more like a personal vendetta against targeted Russian individuals? Wonder if William Browder had some influence in this ploy?

US Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Sigal Mandelker stated that Russian-owned assets in the United States worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been frozen as part of Washington’s sanctions campaign against Moscow since 2013.

Wed Aug 22, 2018 - Treasury: Washington Froze Russian Assets in US Worth Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Farsnews

“The actions of the US Treasury have had significant consequences for the financial interests of individuals and businesses that were affected, including the blocking of hundreds of millions of dollars of Russian assets in the United States,” Mandelker said on Tuesday, RT reported.

The statement was published shortly before her speech in Congress.

Mandelker, who is responsible for sanctions by the US Treasury, added that “Russia is taking note of these impacts".

Foreign direct investment into Russia has fallen five percent since 2013, with direct investment from the US falling 80 percent, according to her statement.

Mandelker is expected to tell Congress later on Tuesday that while Russia's “malign activities” continue, Moscow’s “adventurism” has been checked by the knowledge that the US can bring more economic pain through additional sanctions.

The Donald Trump administration has sanctioned 217 Russian-related individuals and entities, including oil company Surgutneftegaz and power company EuroSibEnergo, since January 2017. Targets include heads of major state-owned banks and energy firms, and some of President Putin's closest associates.

"As companies across the globe work to distance themselves from sanctioned Russian persons, our actions are imposing an unprecedented level of financial pressure on those supporting the Kremlin's malign agenda and on key sectors of the Russian economy," Mandelker said in the prepared remarks.

Moscow has repeatedly said that introduction of sanctions by Washington is counterproductive, with the Russian Foreign Ministry calling them illegitimate and useless.

 

[angelburst29]

Time - for some FUN - get out the popcorn and enjoy the ride ...

August 21, 2018 - Connecting some dots
reddit]greatawakening/comments/98yduw

From 2001 to 2005 there was an ongoing investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

A Grand Jury had been impanelled.

Governments from around the world had donated to the “Charity”.

Yet, from 2001 to 2003 none of those “Donations” to the Clinton Foundation were declared. Now you would think that an honest investigator would be able to figure this out.

Look who took over this investigation in 2005: None other than James Comey; Coincidence? Guess who was transferred into the Internal Revenue Service to run the Tax Exemption Branch of the IRS? None other than, Lois “Be on The Look Out” (BOLO) Lerner.
Isn’t that interesting?

But this is all just a series of strange coincidences, right?

Guess who ran the Tax Division inside the Department of Injustice from 2001 to 2005?

No other than the Assistant Attorney General of the United States,

Rod Rosenstein.

Guess who was the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation during this time frame?

Another coincidence (just an anomaly in statistics and chances), but it was Robert Mueller.

What do all four casting characters have in common?

They all were briefed and/or were front-line investigators into the Clinton Foundation Investigation.

Another coincidence, right?

Fast forward to 2009….

James Comey leaves the Justice Department to go and cash-in at Lockheed Martin.

Hillary Clinton is running the State Department, official government business, on her own personal email server.

The Uranium One “issue” comes to the attention of Hillary Clinton.

Like all good public servants do, supposedly looking out for America’s best interest, she decides to support the decision and approve the sale of 20% of US Uranium to no other than, the Russians.

Now you would think that this is a fairly straight up deal, except it wasn’t, America got absolutely nothing out of it.

However, prior to the sales approval, no other than Bill Clinton goes to Moscow, gets paid 500K for a one hour speech; then meets with Vladimir Putin at his home for a few hours.

Ok, no big deal right? Well, not so fast, the FBI had a mole inside the money laundering and bribery scheme.

Robert Mueller was the FBI Director during this time frame? Yep, He even delivered a Uranium Sample to Moscow in 2009.

Who was handling that case within the Justice Department out of the US Attorney’s Office in Maryland?

None other than, Rod Rosenstein. And what happened to the informant?

The Department of Justice placed a GAG order on him and threatened to lock him up if he spoke out about it.

How does 20% of the most strategic asset of the United States of America end up in Russian hands when the FBI has an informant, a mole providing inside information to the FBI on the criminal enterprise?

Very soon after; the sale was approved!~145 million dollars in “donations” made their way into the Clinton Foundation from entities directly connected to the Uranium One deal.

Guess who was still at the Internal Revenue Service working the Charitable Division? None other than, – Lois Lerner.

Ok, that’s all just another series of coincidences, nothing to see here, right?

Let’s fast forward to 2015.

Due to a series of tragic events in Benghazi and after the 9 “investigations” the House, Senate and at State Department, Trey Gowdy who was running the 10th investigation as Chairman of the Select Committee on Benghazi discovers that Hillary Clinton ran the State Department on an unclassified, unauthorized, outlaw personal email server. He also discovered that none of those emails had been turned over when she departed her “Public Service” as Secretary of State which was required by law. He also discovered that there was Top Secret information contained within her personally archived email.

Sparing you the State Departments cover up, the nostrums they floated, the delay tactics that were employed and the outright lies that were spewed forth from the necks of the Kerry State Department, we shall leave it with this…… they did everything humanly possible to cover for Hillary Clinton.

Now this is amazing, guess who became FBI Director in 2013? None other than James Comey; who secured 17 no bid contracts for his employer (Lockheed Martin) with the State Department and was rewarded with a six million dollar thank you present when he departed his employer? Amazing how all those no-bids just went right through at State, huh?

Now he is the FBI Director in charge of the “Clinton Email Investigation” after of course his FBI Investigates the Lois Lerner “Matter” at the Internal Revenue Service and he exonerates her. Nope…. couldn’t find any crimes there.

In April 2016, James Comey drafts an exoneration letter of Hillary Rodham Clinton , meanwhile the DOJ is handing out immunity deals like candy. They didn’t even convene a Grand Jury!

Like a lightning bolt of statistical impossibility, like a miracle from God himself, like the true “Gangsta” James Comey is, James steps out into the cameras of an awaiting press conference on July the 8th of 2016, and exonerates Hillary Clinton from any wrongdoing.

Do you see the pattern?

It goes on and on, Rod Rosenstein becomes Asst. Attorney General, James Comey gets fired based upon a letter by Rod Rosenstein, James Comey leaks government information to the press, Robert Mueller is assigned to the Russian Investigation sham by Rod Rosenstein to provide cover for decades of malfeasance within the FBI and DOJ and the story continues.

FISA Abuse, political espionage….. pick a crime, any crime, chances are…… this group and a few others did it:

All the same players.

All compromised and conflicted.

All working fervently to NOT go to jail themselves.

All connected in one way or another to the Clinton’s.

They are like battery acid; they corrode and corrupt everything they touch. How many lives have these two destroyed?

As of this writing, the Clinton Foundation, in its 20+ years of operation of being the largest International Charity Fraud in the history of mankind, has never been audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

Let us not forget that James Comey's brother works for DLA Piper, the law firm that does the Clinton Foundation’s taxes.

The person that is the common denominator to all the crimes above and still doing her evil escape legal maneuvers at the top of the 3 Letter USA Agencies?

Yep, that would be Hillary Clinton.

Now who is LISA BARSOOMIAN? Let’s learn a little about Mrs. LISA H BARSOOMIAN background.

LISA H BARSOOMIAN an Attorney that graduated from Georgetown Law, is a protégé of James Comey and Robert Mueller.

Barsoomian with her boss R. Craig Lawrence, represented Bill Clinton in 1998.

R. Craig Lawrence also represented:

Robert Mueller three times;

James Comey five times;

Barack Obama 45 times;

Kathleen Sebelius 56 times;

Bill Clinton 40 times; and

Hillary Clinton 17 times.

Between 1998 and 2017, Barsoomian herself represented the FBI at least five times.

You may be saying to yourself, OK, who cares? Who cares about the work history of this Barsoomian woman?

Apparently, someone does, because someone out there cares so much that they’ve “purged” all Barsoomian court documents for her Clinton representation in Hamburg vs. Clinton in 1998 and it's appeal in 1999 from the DC District and Appeals Court dockets (?). Someone out there cares so much that even the internet has been “purged” of all information pertaining to Barsoomian.

Historically, this indicates that the individual is a protected CIA operative. Additionally, Lisa Barsoomian has specialized in opposing Freedom of Information Act requests on behalf of the intelligence community. Although Barsoomian has been involved in hundreds of cases representing the DC Office of the US Attorney, her email address is Lisa Barsoomian at NIH.gov. The NIH stands for National Institutes of Health. This is a tactic routinely used by the CIA to protect an operative by using another government organization to shield their activities.

It’s a cover, so big deal right? What does one more attorney with ties to the US intelligence community really matter?

It deals with Trump and his recent tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum imports, the border wall, DACA, everything coming out of California, the Uni-party unrelenting opposition to President Trump, the Clapper leaks, the James Comey leaks, Attorney General
Jeff Sessions recusal and subsequent 14 month nap with occasional forays into the marijuana legalization mix …. and last but not least Robert Mueller's never-ending investigation into collusion between the Trump team and-the Russians.

Why does Barsoomian, CIA operative, merit any mention?

BECAUSE …

She is Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s WIFE!

 

[NormaRegula]

Wow! If all those connections prove to be true, that's quite damning. However you won't see that story on the MSM. Maybe Hannity might touch on it on Fox News.

Thanks for posting.

 

[angelburst29]

Wow! If all those connections prove to be true, that's quite damning. However you won't see that story on the MSM. Maybe Hannity might touch on it on Fox News.

Believe it or not - the information pans out. Take a name like Rod Rosenstein for starters and do a Wikipedia search that brings up his history bio and check the dates and position held, in reference to the article (above). Then do Mueller, Comey etc. I kept the tabs open - so I could go back and forth and do a comparison. The only thing that I couldn't verify was "how many times" Barsoomian or her boss R. Craig Lawrence represented the names listed. Probably, would have to file separate "Freedom for Info Act" forms to check the Court Dockets. (Not worth the time or energy.)

Either way, nice little "Buddy-Club" racket - they have going? All ... at taxpayers expense, including their paychecks and free-flyer-miles!

 

[angelburst29]

August 22, 2018 - Cohen’s Lawyer Lanny Davis Is a Registered Foreign Agent For Pro-Russian Oligarch Wanted by US Government
Cohen's Lawyer Lanny Davis Is a Registered Foreign Agent For Pro-Russian Oligarch Wanted by US Government - Supreme Insider

On Tuesday, President Trump’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen said he violated campaign finance laws at “direction of the candidate,” an indirect reference to the president.

On the advice of his attorney and Clinton advisor Lanny Davis, Cohen pleaded guilty to bank fraud, tax fraud, and campaign finance law violations in the Southern District of New York.

Lanny Davis just said that Michael Cohen decided to start telling the truth right after watching the Helsinki Press Conference because he is afraid about the damage President Trump may do to our country.

Well, we can’t make this stuff up even if we want to!

Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen and the word “truth” don’t belong in the same sentence. And, only 24 hours are enough to expose these people for what they are. It seems like their skeletons keep getting exposed and we learn the ugly truth about them. Conservative independent journalist Jack Posobiec reported that Lanny Davis is a registered foreign agent for Dmytro Firtash, a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch wanted by the US government.

pic.twitter.com/4CfzK9d24u

Jordan Schachtel ✔ @JordanSchachtel

Lanny Davis is co-founder and partner of the law firm of Davis Goldberg & Galper. I just checked FARA records. His firm is a registered *ACTIVE* foreign agent for Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash, who is a close ally of Russian pres Vladimir Putinhttps://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1032311832025935872 …

Additional FARA docs show Lanny Davis personally lobbied for Firtash
pic.twitter.com/o51Q1nlrWA

Good work Jack. As it seems to me, Davis being ordered by someone to get to President Trump by any means necessary. It all fits together.

The Democrats are so tied up with Russia. They think they can throw that spotlight off themselves by trying to blame Trump, but they’re dead wrong. We know how corrupt they are. We know their evil tactics. I’ll be so glad when the truth comes out about them and they are all thrown out of our government and into prison. So, if these guys think there isn’t going to be any blow-back for their two-minute warning push … they are oh so very sadly mistaken.


July 12, 2018 - Michael Cohen Purchases New York City Apartment for $6.7 Million (GoFundMe ? )
Michael Cohen Purchases New York City Apartment for $6.7 Million


August 23, 2018 - AWOL AG Sessions UNLOADS On President Trump in Rare Statement
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/20...unloads-on-president-trump-in-rare-statement/

AWOL AG Sessions unloaded on President Trump Thursday afternoon in a rare statement in response to the President’s interview with FOX & Friends host Ainsley Earhardt.
“I took control of the Department of Justice the day I was sworn in, which is why we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the President’s agenda,” Sessions said in the statement posted on Twitter by DOJ spox Sarah Isgur Flores.

Sessions then took it to the next level and unloaded on President Trump.

“While I am the Attorney General, the actions of the Justice Department will not be improperly influenced by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action,” Sessions continued.

President Trump blasted AWOL Jeff Sessions during an interview with Ainsley Earhardt on FOX and Friends which aired on Thursday Morning.

President Trump: I put in an Attorney General who never took control of the Justice Department. And it’s sort of an incredible thing. We have this country going so well… I wanted to stay un-involved. Jeff Sessions recused himself and should have told me. What kind of man is this? He knows there was no collusion.​

AG Sessions is usually silent; it is a very rare move for him to speak out.

President Donald Trump went off on a tirade earlier this month against AWOL Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Just a few days ago, President Trump took another shot at AWOL Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a total disgrace and coward who refuses to do his job and refuses to resign.

Jeff Sessions recused himself the first day on the job citing the wrong law. He has been in the corner of the Justice Department cowering while his Deputy, Rod Rosenstein calls the shots.

Sessions recusal is the reason why Robert Mueller and 17 angry Obama-Hillary donors are hunting down everyone in President Trump’s inner circle.


08/23/2018 - Steele Dossier Pushers Lay Low After Lanny Davis Bombshell
Steele Dossier Pushers Lay Low After Lanny Davis Bombshell

BuzzFeed News, which published the infamous dossier, is refusing to comment on recent comments from Lanny Davis, the Clinton-connected lawyer representing Michael Cohen

• Davis is emphatically stating that the dossier’s allegations about Cohen are “100 percent” false. Davis claims that Cohen “never, never, ever” went to Prague, as the dossier alleges
• The dossier is Exhibit A in Trump critics’ collusion conspiracy theory

For nearly 20 months, the allegations made in the infamous Steele dossier have hung like a cloud over the Trump administration and several of his former advisers.

The salacious 35-page document has become Exhibit A in President Donald Trump critics’ conspiracy theory that the campaign colluded with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election. Numerous news outlets, pundits and lawmakers have also pushed the theory.

But the dossier arguably suffered its heaviest blow on Wednesday after Clinton-connected lawyer Lanny Davis emphatically denied one of the document’s most intriguing allegations.

Davis said the dossier’s claims that his client, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, traveled to Prague in August 2016 as part of a conspiracy with the Kremlin are “100 percent” false. (RELATED: Lanny Davis: Michael Cohen Never Went To Prague, As Dossier Alleges)

Davis’ comments received little attention from the both the mainstream press and the entities that have pushed the dossier.

“We have no comment on Mr. Davis’s statements,” said Matt Mittenhal, a spokesman for BuzzFeed News, which published the dossier on Jan. 10, 2017.

Fusion GPS, the opposition research firm that commissioned the dossier on behalf of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee, has also not weighed in. Joshua Levy, a lawyer for the firm, did not respond to a request for a response to Davis’ comments.

The DNC did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Marc Elias, the attorney who hired Fusion GPS on behalf of the Clinton campaign and DNC.

McClatchy News, which in April reported that special counsel Robert Mueller has evidence that Cohen did travel to Prague, says that it is sticking by its report. The article, written by reporters Greg Gordon and Peter Stone, breathed new life into the dossier’s claims about Cohen, but it has never been corroborated.

“We stand by our reporting,” said Jeanne Segal, a spokeswoman for McClatchy.

***
Denials about the dossier’s claims are as old as the salacious document itself.

Then President-elect Trump called the dossier “crap” during a press conference a day after BuzzFeed published the report. Cohen vehemently denied the allegations, as did former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Page is alleged in the dossier of being the Trump campaign’s conduit to the Kremlin. Though the allegations remain unverified, the FBI relied heavily on the dossier to obtain four surveillance warrants against Page.

Davis’ statements would seem to add substantial weight to Cohen’s denials, largely because he is far from a Trump supporter.

Davis is close friends with former President Bill and Hillary Clinton. He held an unofficial role as a surrogate for the Clinton campaign, which partnered with the DNC to pay Fusion GPS $1 million for the dossier.

Davis has also made it his mission over the past couple of months to discredit Trump regarding hush money payments to women who claimed to have had affairs with the former real estate mogul. The 74-year-old PR guru gave CNN an audio clip earlier this month of Cohen speaking with Trump about payments to Karen McDougal, a former Playboy playmate who claimed to have an affair with Trump in 2006.

Cohen pleaded guilty to a series of charges on Tuesday, including some that are related to the payoff to McDougal and Stormy Daniels. He also pleaded guilty to tax evasion and bank fraud.

***
Cohen last publicly disputed the dossier on June 28, when he wrote on Twitter that the “dossier misreports 15 allegations about me.”

“My entire statement must be quoted – I had nothing to do with Russian collusion or meddling!” he said.

It had been unclear if Cohen planned to maintain those denials in the wake of guilty plea earlier this week. But Davis answered the question in a series of interviews on Wednesday.

“Thirteen references to Mr. Cohen are false in the dossier, but he has never been to Prague in his life,” Davis said Wednesday in an interview on Bloomberg.

“Never, never in Prague. Did I make that? Never, never, ever. Ever,” Davis told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd.

“And the reason, just to let your viewers know, what we’re talking about is that the dossier, so-called, mentions his name 14 times, one of which is a meeting with Russians in Prague. Fourteen times false,” he continued.

Davis was even more emphatic in an interview with BBC Newsnight.

“The answer is 100 percent ‘no.’ Never has he ever been in Prague. And the 13 other references to my client in the so-called dossier are false,” Davis said in the interview, pounding the table to underscore each specific denial.


BBC Newsnight ✔ @BBCNewsnight

“I told you I’m an Anglophile and you asked me the question I wanted you to ask me” Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer speaks to Evan Davis.@LannyDavis | @EvanHD | @BBCTwo | #newsnight
5:51 PM - Aug 22, 2018

BuzzFeed and other news outlets ignored Davis’ statements (CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other major outlets have not picked up the story as of this writing), however, an attorney for another dossier target is weighing in.

“The one thing that we’ve always know for certain is that the allegations concerning Gubarev, Webzilla, and XBT are completely false, and to the extent that those allegations overlap with allegations concerning Mr. Cohen we knew those had to be false as well,” said Evan Fray-Witzer, a lawyer for Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian tech executive suing BuzzFeed over the dossier.

Cohen and Gubarev are both mentioned in the 17th and final dossier memo, dated Dec. 13, 2016. The memo alleges that Cohen traveled to Prague to pay hackers for cyber attacks against the Democratic National Committee.

The memo then claims that Gubarev’s companies infiltrated the DNC’s computer networks using viruses, bots and malware.

“The special counsel indicted the people involved in the hacking and those people aren’t our clients. We may never know precisely how Gubarev, Webzilla, and XBT ended up in the Dossier, but we do know that after more than a year of trying, Buzzfeed has no evidence to support the allegations that they published about them,” Fray-Witzer told The Daily Caller News Foundation.


23.08.2018 - Hillary Reportedly Returns to US Politics as Midterm Election Campaign Kicks Off
Hillary Reportedly Returns to US Politics as Midterm Election Campaign Kicks Off

The Democratic candidate stepped back from politics after losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, but still kept her political organization Onward Together working.

Hillary Clinton, a former democratic presidential candidate, will headline fundraisers for some of the Democrats running for the midterm elections this November, Fox News reported. The events featuring Clinton will take place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, with the first one kicking off next month.

"There has never been a more important midterm election, and Secretary Clinton is going to do her part to lift up the next generation of leaders," Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said in an interview with NBC News.

Clinton's spokesperson failed to name the candidates that she intends to campaign for.

Earlier, the former presidential candidate organized a fundraiser for Lucy McBath, a gun control activist who won elections in Georgia recently.

Hilary Clinton has been keeping her distance from US politics ever since she lost the 2016 presidential election and promised never to run for the presidency again. She organized a campaign in support of her memoirs explaining her defeat, but mostly hasn't supported Democratic candidates so far.

 

[angelburst29]

US President Donald Trump has blisteringly mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions a day after the lawyer tried fighting back against criticism from the president.

24.08.2018 - 'So Unfair, Jeff': Trump Accuses Sessions of Bias
'So Unfair, Jeff': Trump Accuses Sessions of Bias

US President Donald Trump has blisteringly mocked Attorney General Jeff Sessions a day after the lawyer tried fighting back against criticism from the president.

Trump has tweeted that he wants Sessions to "look into all of the corruption on the other side," emphasizing, "Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!"


Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over “classified” information. Gee, this is “small potatoes” compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.
7:10 AM - Aug 24, 2018

In an interview with Fox News on August 23, Trump blamed Sessions for failing to take control of the Justice Department.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions shot back that his department would not be "improperly influenced by political considerations."

The president’s accusations are connected to a 63-month sentence handed down to a 26-year-old former Air Force linguist, who became the first person charged with criminal information leaks under President Donald Trump.

Trump compared her jail sentence to the case of his former rival in the presidential race Hillary Clinton, accused of sending sensitive information and having inappropriate discussions on private email servers.

The Clinton email scandal erupted in March 2015, when The New York Times revealed that the former secretary of state had used a personal account to conduct government business from 2009 to 2013, in violation of State Department rules.


24.08.2018 - Trump's Lawyer Warns of 'Revolt' If President Impeached
Trump's Lawyer Warns of 'Revolt' If President Impeached

US President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that there was no reason for the president’s impeachment, noting that such step would only make US citizens "revolt."

"There is no reason [for Trump's impeachment]. He did not collude with the Russians. He did not obstruct justice. Everything Cohen says has been disproved. You could only impeach [Trump] for political reasons and the American people would revolt against that," Giuliani told the Sky News broadcaster on August 23, when asked whether Trump's impeachment was inevitable.

The lawyer said that Trump had been "completely cleared" of his ex-attorney's testimony.

You have this Cohen guy, he does not know anything about Russian collusion, he does not know anything about obstruction, he is a massive liar," Giuliani said.


23.08.2018 - Trump Promises Market Crash in Case of His Impeachment (Video)
Trump Promises Market Crash in Case of His Impeachment

https://twitter.com/x/status/1032653618539888640

In an interview with Fox News, the US president has discussed the US tariffs, impeachment, his former lawyer Michael Cohen and Robert Mueller's investigation.

"I don't know how you can impeach somebody who's done a great job. If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. Without this thinking, you would see numbers you wouldn't believe," Donald Trump noted in the interview.

The president stated that he's done a great job in office, despite the critical coverage in the media in connection with the Cohen case and other controversies.

The upcoming elections will be held in the middle of US Republican President Donald Trump's term in November. During the vote scheduled for November 6, US voters will elect one-third of the US Senate, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and governors of 36 states.

Trump also mentioned his economic accomplishments, claiming that the economy would have declined if he hadn't been elected.

"I freed up, I got rid of regulations, the tax cut was a tremendous thing. But even before the tax cut, right from the first day, I got rid of regulations. I approved the pipelines, 48,000 jobs. But I did a lot of things," he said.


24.08.2018 - CIA Front Staffed by Ex-Nazis: US Government Propaganda Agency Rebrands (RadioFreeEurope - RadioLiberty)
CIA Front Staffed by Ex-Nazis: US Government Propaganda Agency Rebrands

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the little-acknowledged US government body employing thousands of journalist and media professionals, has been rebranded the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM).

In a statement, the newly-minted USAGM's CEO John F. Lansing boasted the organization operated "far beyond traditional broadcast mediums", such as television and radio — the name change was thus necessary as "the term ‘broadcasting' does not accurately describe what we do".

However, the new moniker arguably doesn't accurately describe what the organization does either.

CIA Front
Some hint as to USAGM's true nature lies in the press release itself. As Lansing states, the agency's "global priorities…reflect US national security interests", which are broadcast to "an unduplicated weekly audience of 278 million people in 59 languages and in more than 100 countries".

Further clue as to USAGM's objectives and operations can be found in USAGM's portfolio of media assets includes Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Office of Cuba Broadcasting (Television and Radio Marti), Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN). As is now openly admitted by the US government, each outlet was established to perpetuate pro-Washington propaganda — both in the nations and regions in which they broadcast, but also in the USA itself — and undermine and discredit ‘enemy' governments.

CIA Website Entry on the Creation of Radio Free Europe © Central Intelligence Agency

For instance, as the Central Intelligence Agency documents on its own website, Radio Free Europe's lie in the June 1949 creation of the National Committee for Free Europe (NCFE). Comprised of a group of prominent American businessmen, lawyers, and philanthropists — including Allen Dulles, who would become Director of Central Intelligence in 1953 — the organization was "the public face of an innovative ‘psychological warfare' project" undertaken by the CIA.

"That operation would become one of the longest running and successful covert action campaigns ever mounted by the United States," the CIA brags.

NCFE ran annual fund-raisingers — called the Crusade for Freedom — in which Americans were urged to donate "freedom dollars" to the organization, in order to break down the Iron Curtain, which every president from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon endorsed. These efforts would yield a flurry of donations, but the sums barely covered the costs of running the annual fund-raising campaigns themselves, let alone Radio Free Europe's actual budget. In reality, the CIA provided the bulk of the bankrolling — and the body remains entirely dependent on US government subsidy to this day.

Shocking Origins
However, the origins of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe go back even further — and are even more questionable.

Towards the end of World War Two, Frank Wisner — then-head of Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA — proposed 250 Nazis be brought to the US from Europe, of which 100 would work for Voice of America, and the rest would be employed at Radio Free Europe. Among them were individuals who'd been involved in Nazi Germany's 'weltanschauung' (worldview warfare) efforts, the progenitor of modern psychological warfare.

The Nazi connections to Radio Free Europe do not end there — the names of the propaganda entities created by the Nazis on the Eastern Front were in many cases copied for the new American psychological warfare organizations. For instance, the front company behind Radio Liberation (now Liberty), American Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia, was an English translation of ‘Komitet Osvobozhdeniia Narodov Rossi', which was created on the orders of Heinrich Himmler during Operation Barbarossa and attempted to unite the occupants of German-occupied areas of the Soviet Union against Communism.

The close links between Nazi Germany and the US government propaganda bodies was noted at the time — and to cover their tracks, station chiefs quickly banned the use of the term ‘Bolshevism', due to its associations with Adolf Hitler. Nonetheless, no former Nazis were fired, and they continued to promote their anti-Communist agenda to millions the world over.
(Excerpts - within the article - from Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War © Christopher Simpson)


24.08.2018 - US Senators Ask Pompeo to Release Transcript of Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki
US Senators Ask Pompeo to Release Transcript of Trump-Putin Summit in Helsinki

US Senators Robert Menendez and Jeanne Shaheen wrote a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday asking him to release relevant documents and interpreter notes from President Donald Trump's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

We respectfully request that you provide the Senate Foreign Relations Committee members relevant materials including all classified and unclassified cable traffic, memoranda of conversations, interpreter's notes and policy directive related to the meeting," the letter said.

Menendez and Shaheen expressed concern about the type of commitments made by Trump and Putin behind closed doors during their one-on-one meeting on July 16.

The senators explained the concerns were fueled by Trump's remarks in a joint press conference with Putin after the talks in which the US president appeared to accept Putin's denial of Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election.

Menendez and Shaheen told Pompeo in the letter that they were particularly interested in commitments made by the two presidents regarding Syria and Ukraine.

The senators, who are vocal supporters of sanctions against Russia, called for urgent congressional oversight of the matter, adding that the materials from the summit meetings are crucial to understanding what possible steps the two administrations will take in the near future.

Trump said after the summit that his talks with Putin were productive and he did address Russia's alleged meddling in US elections. Putin denied the allegations of meddling in the US election and suggested not to bring up this issue over and over again because it is absurd.

Russian officials have said the allegations of election meddling were invented to excuse the election loss of a presidential candidate as well as deflect public attention from actual election fraud, corruption, and other pressing concerns.


24.08.2018 - McCain Stops Medical Treatment for Brain Cancer - Family
McCain Stops Medical Treatment for Brain Cancer - Family

US Senator John McCain has decided to stop his medical treatment for cancer, his family announced in a statement on Friday.

"Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious," the statement said. "With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment."

The statement said that in the past year of treatment, the 81-year-old McCain surpassed the expectations for his survival, but added that "the progress of the disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict."

McCain had been receiving treatment in his home state of Arizona and has not been to the Senate in Washington, DC since he cast a vote in July 2017 to strike down Republicans' first attempt at a major health care overhaul proposal.


24.08.2018 - GOP Congress Nominee: I was Abducted by Aliens, But it Doesn't Characterize Me
GOP Congress Nominee: I Was Abducted by Aliens, But It Doesn’t Characterize Me

Back in 2009, Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera portrayed in detail her encounter with three gigantic blonde beings.

Сongressional GOP candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, who previously claimed to have been abducted by aliens when she was a little girl, said she preferred not to be solely associated with her extraordinary extraterrestrial experience.

It has nothing to do with what I have done,” the AP cited her as saying. “It happened when I was 7 years old,” she pointed out.


Steve DeVries @SuperSteveDV

Omg these Republican candidates keep getting weirder and weirder.

From what I can gather, this Florida woman running for a vacated GOP congressional seat claims to have been abducted by blond, Jesus looking aliens who told her about Wakanda.
5:53 AM - Aug 24, 2018

The candidate is believed to not stand a chance of replacing Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who is leaving her House seat for Miami, although Aguilera’s nomination was endorsed by the local Miami Herald last week.

Rodriguez Aguilera, the daughter of a Cuban political prisoner, said in a 2009 television interview that she had boarded on a spaceship that was occupied by aliens, further specifying that she was subsequently visited by three large blonde creatures.

“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship — not like airplanes,” Rodriguez Aguilera said back then.

Speaking to the Miami Herald last year, she said she was among “the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe.”


August 24, 2018 - Florida congressional candidate wants voters to look past alien abduction tale
https://nypost.com/2018/08/24/flori...nts-voters-to-look-past-alien-abduction-tale/

Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera campaign

MIAMI — US House candidate Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera has a long list of accomplishments to bolster her campaign in Florida. But she is perhaps best known for claiming that she was abducted by space aliens as a child.

Rodriguez Aguilera is a longshot in the race for the Miami-area seat being vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Yet last weekend, the Miami Herald endorsed her for the GOP nomination in the Tuesday primary out of a field of nine candidates.

In an interview, Rodriguez Aguilera said she is grateful for the endorsement and that her tale of kidnapping by aliens does not define her.

It has nothing to do with what I have done. It happened when I was 7 years old,” she said. “I am so proud of the Herald and what they did.”

Rodriguez Aguilera says she was taken aboard a spaceship as a young girl by blond extraterrestrials who resembled the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. She says they told her that the “center of the world’s energy is Africa” and that thousands of non-human skulls were once discovered in a cave on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

She has said she witnessed paranormal activity since then and saw a UFO at age 17. She also said she has been in touch with the aliens telepathically long after the abduction.

Even if it’s hard to believe there’s a starman waiting in the sky, Rodriguez Aguilera won’t back down.

“I stick to my guns when I believe in something,” she said.

In its Sunday editorial, the Herald reported that two of the leading Republican candidates — former Miami-Dade commissioner Bruno Barreiro and Spanish-language television journalist Maria Elvira Salazar — did not take part in the paper’s endorsement process. And beyond Rodriguez Aguilera, the editorial found the remaining candidates unprepared or unqualified.

“We realize that Rodriguez Aguilera is an unusual candidate,” the editorial noted, adding that the paper was impressed with her “boots-on-the-ground ideas and experience.”

Rodriguez Aguilera is a former City Council member in the suburb of Doral who is the daughter of a Cuban political prisoner. She previously was a social worker, ombudsman at the Miami-Dade county manager’s office and now runs a business training women in other countries how to run for political office.

“The theme of my campaign is people above politics. I train people around the world about democracy,” she said. “I have the most experience. I can go in there and start working just as I have all my life.”

Whoever emerges from the GOP field Tuesday will face one of five Democratic candidates, and the seat is considered one of the party’s best chances for a switch from the GOP.

Polls show the leader on the Democratic side is former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who was also president of the University of Miami and University of Wisconsin. The Herald, however, endorsed state Rep. David Richardson over Shalala.


Back-dated October 18, 2017 - Video Surfaces of Congressional Canadate Claiming She's Been Abducted By Aliens Why not?
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera and Aliens: Video Surfaces of Her Story | Inverse

A Miami congressional candidate has claimed that she’s been abducted by aliens, and she’s kept in touch with them since. In two Spanish-language videos unearthed by The Miami Herald, Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera recounts her experiences with extraterrestrial life.

Aguilera claimed that when she was seven, three large, blonde aliens, two female and one male, made contact with her, and have communicated with her telepathically since then. She said the aliens reminded her of the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro; a stately figure with arms outstretched. Aguilera said the aliens took her inside their spaceship, although it’s unclear whether the spacecraft left Earth.

“I went in. There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship — not like airplanes,” she said in the video, reported The Miami Herald.

The aliens apparently gave Aguilera a wealth of information. Acording to her, they said that the world’s “energy center” is in Africa, and that there are 30,000 alien skulls buried on the island of Malta, in the Mediterranean.

The videos were uploaded in 2009 and 2011, and when The Miami Herald reached out for an update on Aguilera’s extraterrestrial beliefs, she chose to be a bit more vague, telling The Herald:

For years people, including Presidents like Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter and astronauts have publicly claimed to have seen unidentified flying objects and scientists like Stephen Hawking and institutions like the Vatican have stated that there are billions of galaxies in the universe and we are probably not alone. I personally am a Christian and have a strong belief in God, I join the majority of Americans who believe that there must be intelligent life in the billions of planets and galaxies in the universe.

It’s possible that Aguilera’s PR team has advised her against making public statements about the existence of extraterrestrial blonde beings. Still, she’s definitely not the first politician to believe the truth is out there. John Podesta, a former adviser to President Barack Obama and most recently Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, has long been an alien enthusiast. In a 1998 Washington Post interview with Mike McCurry, the former Press Secretary had this to say about Podesta, who also worked for the Clinton administration at the time: “John can get totally maniacal and phobic on certain subjects,” McCurry said. “He’s been known to pick up the phone to call the Air Force and ask them what’s going on in Area 51.”

Podesta has been a tireless advocate for the government disclosure on files pertaining to UFOs and alien life. Just last week, he tweeted an endorsement of Blink 182 frontman Tom DeLonge’s To The Stars Academy, a consortium concerned with space research — including extraterrestrial life.

A former council member in Doral, Florida, Aguilera is running to replace retiring Miami Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Podesta made it into the White House, a few times. Maybe Aguilera shouldn’t be too worried about disclosing her alien interactions.

Either way, Tom DeLonge might want to give her a call.

Watch Aguilera discuss her alien experiences below:

Published on Dec 24, 2009 (8:55 min. Spanish)

Published on Dec 4, 2011 (1:42 min. Spanish)


Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera

Published on Oct 27, 2007 (9:27 min. English)
Bettra Inc. is a two folds company specializing in management, business training and consulting. It gets your business at its peak performance, it understands that each company is unique and has different needs

 

[angelburst29]

24 Aug, 2018 - ‘All he did was threaten people & assume we control the world’: Ron Paul on Bolton’s Russia meeting
‘All he did was threaten people & assume we control the world’: Ron Paul on Bolton’s Russia meeting

Donald Trump was elected president as a populist outsider who talked non-intervention, but his administration is being hijacked by neoconservatives who want to preserve the US empire, former congressman Ron Paul has told RT.

Paul was commenting on the meeting of Trump’s new national security advisor, John Bolton, with his Russian counterpart Nikolay Patrushev in Geneva on Thursday, which the US envoy described as making “considerable progress” in relations between Washington and Moscow.

“I thought it was terrible. All he did was threaten people and assume we control the world,” the former Texas congressman told RT.

There was no joint statement after the talks, because reportedly Bolton insisted that Russia admit it meddled in the 2016 US election, and Patrushev countered by asking the US to stop interfering in the affairs of other countries.

I would consider how much we have done, especially since World War II, how many elections we have been involved in, how many coups we’ve participated in, including Ukraine… I would say in comparison this current Russiagate… is just minuscule, as far as I’m concerned,” Paul told RT. “It’s blown way out of proportion, and it’s a distraction from some of the more important issues.”
Moscow looks set in its ways and Washington remains “very much interventionist,” Paul said, citing as one example US failure to fulfil its promises not to expand NATO eastward to the borders of Russia.

“We don’t think our president really at heart endorses all these positions... yet the people he has hired do,” Paul said, bringing up his appointment of Bolton, a neoconservative hawk from the George W. Bush administration.

Bolton told reporters to “trust the American people” who elected Trump. As Paul points out, however, those people never elected Bolton and other neocons who occupy key spots in the Trump administration.

“I know a lot of American people that aren’t very happy with neoconservatives,” Paul said, arguing that they are working behind the scenes in both parties to “maintain the empire.”

“This other stuff is just distraction from who has the power, who has the purse strings, who makes the decisions,” he said. There is no discussion in US politics on deficit financing, central banking, welfare state or foreign interventions, Paul added, because both parties accept them as a given.

Commenting on Bolton’s demand that Moscow pressure Iran into getting its troops out of Syria, Paul said that while this was a “reasonable request,” it should rather apply to “any foreign nation that has troops in Syria that haven’t been invited.”

“People who aren’t invited into a country shouldn’t be there,” Paul said. US presence in Syria has no basis in either domestic or international law, while Russian and Iranian troops operate at the invitation of the government in Damascus.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for Iran to leave Syria,” Paul told RT. “But I think a good deal would be if America would leave Syria as well, and mind our own business.”


21 Aug 2018 - Seamus Bruner: ‘Contracts Flowed from Robert Mueller’s FBI to James Comey’ at Lockheed Martin
Seamus Bruner: Mueller's FBI Sent Billions to James Comey at Lockheed Martin

Bruner and Schweizer examined what they described as a “revolving door” of “cronyism” within the federal government’s national security and intelligence apparatuses, focusing on the monetization of security clearances held by former administration officials, such as John Brennan and James Clapper.

Bruner noted the growth of Comey’s net worth between 2003 and 2009, after Comey left the Department of Justice to join Lockheed Martin as senior vice president and lead counsel.

“It doesn’t really make much sense why [Lockheed Martin] would pay [James Comey] upwards of six million dollars in a single year,” assessed Bruner. “But one reason — aside from his security clearance — is that his buddy Robert Mueller is running the FBI. They begin passing 100-million-dollar-plus contracts to Lockheed Martin.”

Bruner continued, “One of these contracts was actually worth a billion dollars, and it was protested formally by the other bidder: IBM. … The contracts flowed from Robert Mueller’s FBI to James Comey’s private sector employer, Lockheed Martin, and James Comey made many millions over a short period of time.”

Bruner described Comey as “one of the prime examples of this kind of cashing in on government contacts.”

“We followed the money and realized that James Comey made well over ten million dollars from when he left the public sector in 2005 and by the time he returned to serve as FBI director [in 2009],” said Bruner. “He even made over six million dollars in a single year at the top government contracting corporation, Lockheed Martin; they get over $50 billion a year in government contracts.”

Bruner affirmed CNN’s Paris Dennard’s analysis of security clearance commodification among ex-government officials.

Bruner said, “[Paris Dennard] was absolutely right, and everybody knows that top-level intelligence folks leave the public sector and go cash in on their knowledge, experience, [and] security clearances. That’s one of the main reasons Brennan is crying so loudly–because he can’t work at a lot of these contractors without a security clearance.”

Schweizer also explained the value of security clearances held by former government officials: “In the exchange [between Paris Dennard and Phil Mudd], Mr. Mudd is being wholly disingenuous–because what he essentially said was, ‘I, personally, don’t have contracts.’ He may or may not. He may be entirely honest about that, but he knows darn well that his colleagues are neck-deep in these kinds of consulting arrangements.”

Schweizer added, “Consulting firms … all have large amounts of projects in management positions and subcontracting that they engage in, and if you want any of those … you have to have a security clearance.”

Governmental domains of national security and intelligence are vulnerable to “cronyism,” said Schweizer: “[They are] not immune to the exact same forces of cronyism and self-enrichment that we see anywhere else in government. It’s like the executive at Health and Human Services who does favors for the pharmaceutical industry and then goes and works for big pharma. The same thing happens in this space.”

Schweizer continued, “What makes [a top-level security clearance] so valuable for a guy like Brennan is he can be read into all of it, and he has access to all of it. Mark my words … if he was not doing contracting right now, he would be looking to do contracting. That’s no longer available to him [because] he has had his security clearance lost [and] cannot have access to any of that material now.”

Schweizer expanded, “John Brennan can now not get a call from, let’s say, a senior FBI official who wants to ask him a question on counterterrorism. They cannot now call and have a conversation involving anything that includes classified material. It’s going to be a big change in John Brennan’s life, and it also affects him commercially because … he cannot get consulting arrangements with these big intelligence contractors.”

Schweizer went on, “‘Compromised’ follows the money and rips the veil off of the sorts of things that go on at the highest levels of the FBI and the intelligence community.”

Bruner speculated about motivations for news media and political recalcitrance towards removal of security clearances from former government officials: “In theory, they retain their security clearances so they can advise some think tank on matters of nationals security, but I don’t think that’s the reason John Brennan and James Clapper and others are throwing temper tantrums, especially Phil Mudd. … It’s the lure of large dollars.”

Pollak asked about conflicts of interest arising from the employment of former top-level intelligence officials at cable news media outlets.

Schweizer replied, “It does create a really murky [and] conflicted arrangement that is never really discussed or disclosed while they’re on these cable news programs.”

Bruner considered Brennan and Clapper’s leveraging of security clearances to obtain positions with CNN and MSNBC:

“This Clapper-CNN relationship is really new territory, where you have the former director of national intelligence sharing information about a dossier which has now been debunked using this kind of politicized piece of opposition research and then sharing it with a news network. Who knows what amount of it was classified at the time? This is beyond your run-of-the-mill cronyism; this is really into uncharted territory and really alarming.”

Schweizer framed Comey’s “veneer” of selfless “public service” as “ridiculous.”

“The American people are very thankful to people that are out on the battlefield fighting terrorist organizations or rank and file FBI who are tracking down terror cells in the United States,” said Schweizer. “There are people that make a lot of sacrifices that never cash in the way that Jim Comey has, but Jim Comey wants to be treated as the rank and file FBI agent who just diligently did his job and performed a public service.”

Schweizer continued, “The research that Seamus has done in this book shows that that’s just simply not the case. It’s a revolving door, and they ought to be seen and recognized as such. The veneer of, ‘I’ve always done things that are just in the national interest’ is ridiculous. What you find in this national security and intelligence space is the same thing you find elsewhere in government, which is, a lot of times, individuals, when they’re in government, they create opportunities for their own services within the private sector so when they leave and go into the private sector, they’re set up very well. It seems pretty clear that some of that has happened with Comey-Mueller.”

Schweizer offered recommendations for curbing corrupt exploitation of security clearances by ex-government employees.

“You’re not entitled to this,” stated Schweizer. “We appreciate their service to the country, but a guy who has been in the U.S. Marine Corps for 20 years [gets] a retirement pension, but they don’t get some special access to government information whenever they want and for as long as they want because of public service. I think the notion of need-to-know is clear.”

Schweizer concluded, “If you are not involved in some important government oversight program, some review board, some internal classified think tank effort [like] war-gaming — if you’re not doing something like that — you don’t have an entitled right to have access to this information. You just don’t. The number of people with top-secret security clearances in the United States is astronomically high. It’s way too high. It numbers into the millions.”

 

[Ant22]

24.08.2018 - McCain Stops Medical Treatment for Brain Cancer - Family
McCain Stops Medical Treatment for Brain Cancer - Family

US Senator John McCain has decided to stop his medical treatment for cancer, his family announced in a statement on Friday.

"Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: he had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious," the statement said. "With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment."

The statement said that in the past year of treatment, the 81-year-old McCain surpassed the expectations for his survival, but added that "the progress of the disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict."

McCain had been receiving treatment in his home state of Arizona and has not been to the Senate in Washington, DC since he cast a vote in July 2017 to strike down Republicans' first attempt at a major health care overhaul proposal.

"Surpassed the expectations for his survival"? Funny that, I'd say he failed my expectations badly. Caitlin Johnstone's recent post about McCain made me chuckle:

https://www.facebook.com/CaitlinAJohnstone/photos/a.188775657823/10154975892392824/?type=3&theater




She also wrote an article on Medium:

Do NOT Let Them Make A Saint Of This Asshole – Caitlin Johnstone – Medium

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.” ~ Arundhati Roy

John McCain’s family has announced that the Arizona Senator has opted to end treatment for brain cancer and live out his final few days in peace, presumably under the best hospice care money can buy. And I sincerely hope that it is peaceful. My statements about my desire for John McCain to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later have been highly publicized, and I stand by all of them, but I don’t wish him a painful or agitated end.

And, also, I am going to keep hammering on how very important it is that we refuse to bow to the aggressive demands from establishment loyalists that we be respectful of this warmongering psychopath and his blood-soaked legacy.

McCain is at the top of the trends list on Twitter in the US as I write this, and clicking on his name brings up countless blue-checkmarked establishment loyalists from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide sternly admonishing us all to put aside our differences and show reverence for this brave, noble hero in his final days. They are using guilt, sympathy and patriotism to bully their followers into showing reverence for a man who has dedicated his entire political career to facilitating the violent slaughter of human beings at every opportunity, and in so doing they are sanctifying his legacy.

One of the most aggressively protected narratives in corporate liberal circles is that John McCain is a hero whose very name should be uttered with the greatest reverence. It gets traction with rank-and-file Democrats because supporting McCain for his opposition to Trump allows them to feel as though they are non-partisan free thinkers, in exactly the same way Trump supporters believe their hatred of McCain makes them non-partisan free thinkers. In reality, McCain is just one of the many bloodthirsty neocons like Bill Kristol and Max Boot who have aligned themselves with the Democratic party in recent years in order to better advance their warmongering agendas.

It is those agendas that are being promoted with the hero worship of John McCain. By committing the outrageous heresy of mocking, ridiculing and scorning that sacred cow, we are fighting the attempts of the empire loyalists and war propagandists to normalize and sanctify the act of inflicting neoconservative military bloodbaths upon innocent people around the world.

If you want to see a world with more and more John McCains, with more and more US wars of aggression and regime change interventionism, then by all means play right along with his public beatification. If you want to see a world where neoconservative war whores are treated with the revulsion, disdain and rejection they deserve, then now is your chance to help create that world. Refuse to be shamed and guilted into polite silence and move in the exact opposite direction from where the establishment shepherds are herding you.

You don’t have to be as brash about it as I am if that’s not your cup of tea. But now, while they are telling us that we are not permitted to speak about McCain’s unforgivable record of facilitating military bloodshed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, it is precisely the time to speak. By publicly disrupting the narrative of McCain’s sanctification, we make it harder for the war propagandists to manufacture consent for more war. It really is that simple.

So just look at the emotional environment that the empire lackeys are trying to create, and create the exact opposite, loudly and without apology. Fight the seriousness and solemnity with mockery and ridicule. Fight the reverence and hero worship with irreverence. The more people see this being done, the harder it will be to shame and bully everyone into playing along with the normalization and celebration of a career that is drenched in the blood of children. By making it clear in the most irreverent ways possible that you are happy to see McCain go, you are giving others permission to step outside of the lines they’re being herded into, and you are helping to create a world where murderous warmongers are marginalized instead of celebrated.

You will be told that you do not have permission to say such things. You have permission to say such things. You will be told that you are being impolite to John McCain’s family. The families of mass murderers are not entitled to our politeness. You will be told that you are making yourself look bad. Creating a world where neoconservative war whores experience an appropriate amount of rejection is more important than looking good. Kill their propaganda narratives with mockery and irreverence and help usher in a new world where it is no longer considered okay to be a psychopathic neocon.

Let death get its wish. Let death die so that life may live. So long, John McCain, you despicable death cultist. I wish you and everyone like you a peaceful, painless, permanent end.

 

[angelburst29]

August 25, 2018 - John McCain's Mother — 106 and 'Spunky' — Knows Her Son is Gravely Ill, Says Friend
John McCain's Mother — 106 and 'Spunky' — Knows Her Son is Gravely Ill, Says Friend

© Erik Campos/The State/MCT/Getty Roberta and John McCain

Sen. John McCain‘s mother Roberta is aware that her son is stopping treatment for stage-four brain cancer, PEOPLE has learned.

“Roberta is 106, but she’s spunky,” a close family friend exclusively tells PEOPLE. “She knows he is ill.”

On Friday, the McCain family announced that the 81-year-old politician — who was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a median survival rate of just 15 months, in July 2017 — made the decision to stop treatment.

(Note: John McCain's Mother Roberta had a twin sister, Rowena Wright Willis who died on August 6, 2011 at age 99.)
Roberta McCain, John’s Mother: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com


25.08.2018 - Trump Under Fire for Failing to Mention McCain Who Discontinued Cancer Treatment
Trump Under Fire for Failing to Mention McCain Who Discontinued Cancer Treatment

On August 24 McCain's family announced that the veteran senator had decided to end his treatment for brain cancer, citing its reduced efficiency due to his age and aggressiveness of the glioblastoma.

While speaking at a Republican Party dinner in Ohio on August 24 US President Donald Trump failed to mention one specific Republican senator, John McCain. The senior senator from Arizona is suffering from terminal brain cancer and recently announced that he is abandoning treatment. At the function, Trump touched upon a broad spectrum of issues, such as the murder of Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts by an illegal migrant, Democrats' migration policy and even mentioning Kim Kardashian-West, calling her "a good wife."

This lack of attention to a fellow Republican, who happens to be dying, didn't go unnoticed by US politicians and social media users who took to Twitter to express their fury at Trump's "lack of compassion."


Roland Scahill ✔ @rolandscahill

Trump took time out to send warm wishes to Kim Jong-Un but hasn't said a thing about John McCain...
5:22 PM - Aug 24, 2018

Twitterians recalled his caustic comment from 2015, when he said he doesn't think of McCain as a war hero, and suggested that Trump should apologize for that now.

Some noted that Democrats were especially active in scolding Trump's silence on McCain's condition.

Trump and McCain have had difficult relations since 2015, when Trump said he doesn't consider the Republican senator a hero, because he was captured. He also failed to mention his name during the announcement of the Defense Authorization Act, which was named after the senator.

McCain has opposed several of Trump's initiatives and even appointments. He, notably, helped organize opposition against the repeal of Obamacare, urging both parties to vote against Trump's initiative. He also opposed Gina Haspel's nomination as a head of the CIA in 2018. According to media reports, McCain doesn't want Trump to attend his funeral, when he dies.


25.08.2018 - Trump Lashes Out at Sessions Again: 'He Doesn't Understand What's Happening'
Trump Lashes Out at Sessions Again: 'He Doesn't Understand What's Happening'

US President Donald Trump has been attacking Attorney General Jeff Sessions for two days in a row, lashing out at him in a new wave of criticism.

"Jeff Sessions said he wouldn't allow politics to influence him only because he doesn't understand what is happening underneath his command position. Highly conflicted Bob Mueller and his gang of 17 Angry Dems are having a field day as real corruption goes untouched. No Collusion!" Trump said in a tweet.


Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over “classified” information. Gee, this is “small potatoes” compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.
7:10 AM - Aug 24, 2018

Trump earlier tweeted that he wants Sessions to "look into all of the corruption on the other side," emphasizing, "Come on Jeff, you can do it, the country is waiting!"


Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

“Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr......
6:17 AM - Aug 24, 2018

A conflict between the US president and the Attorney General started after the arrest of a 26-year-old former Air Force linguist, who became the first person charged with criminal information leaks under President Donald Trump.

The US President compared the 63-month jail sentence to the case of his former opponent in the presidential elections Hillary Clinton, blamed for sending sensitive information and having inappropriate discussions on private email servers.


18.08.2018 - Clinton Saga Continues: Watchdog Publishes New Batches of Hillary's Emails
Clinton Saga Continues: Watchdog Publishes New Batches of Hillary’s Emails

The email scandal continues to haunt Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of state and ex-Democratic presidential nominee, as Judicial Watch, a non-profit conservative organization, has unearthed two new batches of Clinton's emails and called for a new investigation into her mishandling of classified government data.

It seems that Hillary Clinton's email saga is far from being over: Judicial Watch, a government watchdog, has uncovered five more confidential emails circulated among the ex-secretary of state's team through her private and unsecure email server.

The watchdog pointed out that the new documents "include material classified 'confidential' on negotiations between Northern Ireland and UK, as well as negotiations with Israel, Palestine, and France." They also include a reference to Clinton's meeting with American billionaire and founder of Open Society Foundations George Soros and a memo from Sid Blumenthal, Hillary Clinton's longtime confidant, related to the change of government in Kyrgyzstan.

Judicial Watch has published two batches of new emails comprising 184 and 45 pages, respectively. The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the State Department that were filed almost three years ago, on May 6, 2015.

The Clinton email scandal erupted in March 2015, when The New York Times broke that the former secretary of state had used a personal account to conduct government business from 2009 to 2013, in violation of State Department rules.

The news came just a month before the announcement of the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign. It was reported that in December 2014 Clinton's lawyers handed tens of thousands of files over to the government, however, she reportedly withheld about 30,000 emails under the pretext that they were of a personal nature.

On July 10, 2015, the FBI launched a full investigation into "potential unauthorized transmission and storage of classified information" on ex-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's personal email server. The agency revealed that a substantial part of correspondence contained classified information. Still, after a year-long probe FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges against Clinton on July 5, 2016.

In late October 2016 Comey resumed the probe into Clinton's emails after some of them had been found on a laptop owned by Anthony Weiner, the husband of top Clinton aide Huma Abedin. A few days later, Comey stated that the FBI had not changed its previous conclusions with regard to the Democratic presidential nominee. The FBI director's flip-flops coincided with the final phase of the Clinton election campaign and were largely seen as the nail in the coffin for her presidential bid.

Horowitz Report: A New Chapter in Clinton Email Case
The FBI inquiry into the Clinton email case triggered a lot of controversy both in the Republican and Democratic camps and prompted Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz to launch a separate probe into Comey's activities.

Horowitz's report, released on June 14, 2018, exposed controversial practices and anti-Trump bias demonstrated by some FBI employees. It also emphasized that ex-FBI chief Comey was "insubordinate" when he recommended no charges be brought against Hillary Clinton.

However, according to Judicial Watch the aforementioned steps are not enough: "These classified Hillary Clinton emails that she tried to hide or destroy show why it is urgent that the DOJ finally undertake an honest criminal investigation," the watchdog underscored on August 17."

These emails show how the prior investigation by the Comey-Strzok-McCabe-Lynch crowd was a joke. It is past time for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to order a new investigation of the Hillary Clinton email scandal," the Judicial Watch statement says.


25.08.2018 - US Judge Rejects Trump's Order to Ease Firing Federal Staff - Report
US Judge Rejects Trump's Order to Ease Firing Federal Staff - Reports

The judge, explaining his ruling, stated that the US president’s order "undermines federal employees right to bargain collectively."

The order, signed by US President Donald Trump in May, would shorten the period of Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), a last-chance opportunity for federal employees flagged for removal or demotion to turn around their performance record, to 30 days in all branches of the government.

DETAILS TO FOLLOW

 

[angelburst29]

One year after his diagnosis of brain cancer, US Senator for Arizona John McCain passed away at the age of 81. He is survived by his mother Roberta, his ex-wife Carol, his wife Cindy and his seven children and four grandchildren.

26.08.2018 - US Senator John McCain, Former Presidential Nominee Dead at 81
US Senator John McCain, Former Presidential Nominee Dead at 81

Early Life and Family
John McCain was born August 29, 1936, at the US Naval Air Station in Coco Solo, Panama Canal Zone — a territory of the US from 1903 to 1979. He was his parents' second child: his sister Jean Alexandra McCain was born in 1934.

A military brat, McCain's childhood was a transient one, but the family eventually settled in Virginia after the end of World War II. A spirited and rebellious child, McCain was nicknamed "Punk" in high school for his combative disposition.

Like his father and grandfather before him, McCain entered the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland — but there his rebellious streak continued. He received over 100 demerits each year he spent at the academy, earning him the dubious honor of joining the "century club." He graduated in 1958 at the bottom of his class, 894th out of 899.

Out of the academy, McCain was commissioned as a naval aviator. In his early days, he was seen as a sub-par flier, even crashing his practice aircraft in 1960, narrowly escaping without major injury. His skills improved with time, although he was always noted as a daring and sometimes reckless aviator. In July 1967, McCain shipped off to join Operation Rolling Thunder, the three-year US bombing campaign against Vietnam. (Article continues.)


August 25, 2018 - U.S. Senator John McCain dead at 81 from brain cancer
U.S. Senator John McCain dead at 81 from brain cancer

In more than three decades in Congress, McCain became known as a political maverick willing to stick to his convictions rather than go along with party leaders.

John McCain, the war hero who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in the 2008 election, has died. He was 81.

His office says the Arizona senator died Saturday afternoon. He had battled brain cancer.

In 1967, his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam. He was severely injured and spent more than five years as a prisoner of war.

He was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1986. A conservative on most issues, he pushed for campaign finance reform and the effort to account for those missing in Vietnam.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then won it in 2008. But he and running mate Sarah Palin lost to Barack Obama.

In more than three decades in Congress, McCain became known as a political maverick willing to stick to his convictions rather than go along with party leaders — an independent streak that has drawn a mix of respect and ire.

Most recently, he has been a thorn in the side of President Donald Trump, keeping up his criticism of the White House even while undergoing severe medical treatment in Arizona.

In July, he issued a searing rebuke of Trump’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling it a “tragic mistake” and “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory.”

The son and grandson of Navy admirals, McCain is a former Navy pilot. He was elected to Congress in 1982 and to the Senate four years later, replacing the retired Barry Goldwater.

McCain underwent surgery in July 2017 to remove a blood clot in his brain after being diagnosed with an aggressive tumor called a glioblastoma. It’s the same type of tumor that killed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy at age 77 in 2009.

McCain rebounded quickly, however, returning to Washington and entering the Senate in late July to a standing ovation from his colleagues. In a dramatic turn, he later cast the deciding vote against the Republican health care bill, earning Trump’s enduring wrath.

McCain’s condition worsened last fall, and he has been in Arizona since December. A source close to McCain who asked not to be identified said Friday the senator was at his Arizona ranch with his family. He is a long-term survivor of melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. But doctors classified his brain cancer as a “primary tumour,” meaning it’s not related to his former malignancies.

McCain ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, then won it in 2008 before losing the general election to Obama.

When Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015, McCain embraced his new influence as chairman of the Armed Services Committee, pushing for aggressive U.S. military intervention overseas and eager to contribute to “defeating the forces of radical Islam that want to destroy America.”

Asked how he wanted to be remembered, McCain said: “That I made a major contribution to the defence of the nation.”

Former Connecticut Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a close friend, said Friday that “becoming John McCain’s friend has been one of the great blessings of my life. Today I am praying for him and his family.”

Mitt Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, said on Twitter, “No man this century better exemplifies honor, patriotism, service, sacrifice and country first than Senator John McCain. His heroism inspires, his life shapes our character. I am blessed and humbled by our friendship.”


August 25, 2018 - John McCain dead at 81 (Photos - Video)
John McCain dead at 81

 

[Ant22]

Sen. John McCain‘s mother Roberta is aware that her son is stopping treatment for stage-four brain cancer, PEOPLE has learned.

“Roberta is 106, but she’s spunky,” a close family friend exclusively tells PEOPLE. “She knows he is ill.”

On Friday, the McCain family announced that the 81-year-old politician — who was diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer with a median survival rate of just 15 months, in July 2017 — made the decision to stop treatment.

August 25, 2018 - John McCain dead at 81 (Photos - Video)
John McCain dead at 81

We can count ourselves lucky: just imagine McCain following his mom's footsteps and still being around at 106.

 

[Nienna]

U.S. Senator John McCain dead at 81 from brain cancer

Well, this is a great day!

 

[angelburst29]

26.08.2018 - Donald Trump Excluded from John McCain's Funeral Service - Reports
Donald Trump Excluded from John McCain's Funeral Service - Reports

The US President had a rocky relationship with high-profile Republican McCain, who has publicly criticized his hardline immigration policy and recently bashed his performance at the Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin and at the NATO summit.

US president Donald Trump hasn't been invited to John McCain's funeral at Washington's National Cathedral, The New York Times reported on Saturday.

At the same time, the list of participants will include his two predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush, who have been asked to give eulogies. Vice President Mike Pence has also been invited to attend the full dress funeral service, the newspaper said, citing two Republicans familiar with the arrangements. The report echoed details of the memorial service that leaked in May.


27.08.2018 - Trump Scrapped White House Plan to Issue Statement Praising McCain
Trump Scrapped White House Plan to Issue Statement Praising McCain - Reports

President Trump and recently-deceased five-term Republican Senator from Arizona John S. McCain had been at loggerheads long before the former's presidential inauguration, and it seems like the status-quo has not changed even after McCain's death.

According to the Washington Post, this Sunday Trump rejected a statement made by White House staffers which aimed to praise McCain as a “hero” and give him credit for his military service. The final statement was edited by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, chief of staff John Kelly and other White House aides over the weekend.

Trump declined to release the statement, saying that he preferred to tweet his condolences. The US president’s tweet following McCain’s death on Saturday, in which he did not offer many kind words for the Republican maverick. "My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain," Trump tweeted after reports confirmed that McCain had died. "Our hearts and prayers are with you!"


Donald J. Trump ✔ @realDonaldTrump

My deepest sympathies and respect go out to the family of Senator John McCain. Our hearts and prayers are with you!
8:44 PM - Aug 25, 2018


27.08.2018 - McCain to be Buried in Annapolis on September 2 - Statement
McCain to Be Buried in Annapolis on September 2 – Statement

Late US Senator John McCain will be buried next Sunday in Annapolis, Maryland, his office said.

"On Sunday, September 2, 2018 … a private memorial service will take place in the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland, honoring the life of Senator John McCain. Following the service, a private burial ceremony will be celebrated at the U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery and Senator McCain will be laid to rest next to his Naval Academy classmate and lifelong friend, Admiral Chuck Larson," the statement reads.

McCain's body will also lie at the Arizona State Capitol on Wednesday and at the United States Capitol on Friday, his office said.

 

[angelburst29]

2018-08-26 - John McCain: A Life at War
John McCain: A Life at War - Eurasia Future

America’s war in Vietnam

While American veterans of the Second World War are referred to domestically as “the greatest generation” and veterans of the war in Korea more grimly referred to as “the forgotten generation”, for the young Americans who fought in the disastrous war in Vietnam, there was no single legacy but instead multiple and often conflicting ones.

In 1968, the high casualty rate during the Tet Offensive turned public opinion in the United States largely against the war in Vietnam. While the hippy culture and left-wing anti-war movement of the late 1960s was never as mainstream throughout America as it was in certain districts of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles, Tet was the beginning of the end when it came to mainstream America’s support for the war in Vietnam.

There was no greater symbol of the moderate centre-left antiwar movement than Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy who looked set to win the primary of the Democratic party and face the same Richard Nixon that his brother John faced in the 1960 election. Tragically, while needless deaths were piling up in Vietnam, prominent political assassinations were doing much the same in the United States. Not long after the assassination of civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy was gunned down at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The US had lost another Kennedy and by 1975 what most Americans already knew became fact: The United States had lost its war in Vietnam.

The veterans coming home from the war were not greeted with the ticker tape parades of world war veterans nor were they afforded the ability to silently slip back into civilian life as the generation of Americans who fought in Korea were. Many Vietnam veterans became part of the antiwar movement itself as many famously threw their medals of honour into the streets or onto the steps of the US Capitol. Others succumbed to drugs or alcohol while homelessness still plagues some surviving Vietnam veterans. Others yet joined police forces and became teachers but few were afforded the dignity of previous generations of veterans who “won the wars” in which they fought.

McCain’s captivity

Unlike many of the young men drafted into the military and forced against their better judgement to fight in a war they did not want to fight and could barely understand, John McCain came from a long line of military men and did not hesitate to fight in the war in Vietnam.

In 1967, McCain was flying a A-4E Skyhawk above Hanoi when it was shot down. McCain was captured alive and imprisoned for five years. When he was released, he received something of a unique heroes welcome in the midst of a war were the American street increasingly felt no heroism came into play. By the time McCain was released from prison in 1973, the United States would see the Watergate scandal, economic stagnation and the oil crisis take precedence over the last stages of the war in south east Asia.

It would take another decade before McCain could maximise his image as a “war hero” as in the 1970s the US simply did not have time for heroes. This was the age of a crumbling presidency, a Dollar that was no longer as good as gold and a time when the jingoistic Hollywood films of the 1940s were replaced by Apocalypse Now – the surreal masterwork whose fictional storyline based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darnkess captured the nations’ feelings abut the failed, futile and freakish American war in south east Asia.

A Republican maverick beloved by his political opposition

John McCain entered the US Congress in 1983. The era of Ronald Reagan whose policies McCain generally supported tended to see the restoration of jingoism in the American psyche in a sharp contrast to the previous decade when cynicism dominated the political landscape. McCain went from the US House of Representatives to the US Senate after easily winning election in 1986. McCain would be consistently re-elected to his Senate seat and would in fact die prior to relinquishing it.

McCain’s record as a Senator was always controversial. In terms of domestic policy he was something of a renegade as he endorsed multiple policies that were generally associated with the Democratic party and American liberalism. Whether campaign finance reform, joining the Democrats in opposing the tobacco industry, voting in favour of restrictions on enterprise in order to address climate change, opposition to pork barrel spending and a position that was seen as many Republicans as “soft” on Mexican immigration, McCain ended up making many enemies in his own party while winning a surprising amount of respect from prominent Democrats.

It was from the position of a political maverick that McCain entered the 2000 presidential race campaigning to become the nominee of the Republican party. Ultimately, he lost to George W. Bush who at the time was seen as being safer pair of hands when it came to traditional Republican issues including tax reductions, fiscal conservatism and perhaps ironically an opposition to interventionist wars.

A time for war

Until the late 1999 US war on a crumbling Yugoslavia, John McCain’s voting record on military interventionism was quite mixed. He initially opposed involvement in Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and also opposed Bill Clinton’s notorious intervention in Somalia. McCain also deviated from the Republican mainstream in supporting the ban on arms sales to Iraq long before George H. W. Bush decided to pivot from an Iraqi ally to an opponent of Saddam Hussein’s government.

It was only after 1999 that John McCain’s reputation as someone who never met a war he did not like became solidified. After the 9/11 atrocity, McCain became an outspoken proponent of the neocon strategy of so-called “preemptive war” which in reality meant aggressive war cloaked in an exceptionalist ideology. While McCain’s status as a maverick in domestic politics meant that he was kept at arms length by the neocons of the Bush White House, McCain’s status as someone who actually went to war helped bolster the credentials of the neocon movement whose composition was largely formed around self-described intellectuals who almost to a man avoided serving in the Vietnam war.

While McCain was something of the useful cheerleader for the neocons, it was only after 2008 that his status as a political hero was cemented in the most unlikely fashion.

From rivals to partners: Obama and McCain

In 2008, McCain won his party’s primary and would face off against the young, articulate black Senator Barack Obama who won a hard fought primary campaign against his main rival Hillary Clinton. Few modern Presidential candidates fought a campaign as poorly as McCain. Where Obama’s campaign was centred on the themes of optimism, hope and a rejection of the wars of the Bush years, McCain’s looked like more of a retirement party than a presidential campaign. When McCain made the choice of asking Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his running mate, things went from bad to worse. Palin’s frequent rhetorical faux pauxs and her apparent ignorance regarding foreign policy made it clear that McCain had lost the election long before polling day.

McCain returned to the Senate where he opposed many of Obama’s flagship domestic proposals along with his fellow republicans. But after Obama won a second term, McCain became a kind of unofficial member of the Obama White House, appealing to a candidate who campaigned on a platform of peace to go to war.

Obama followed McCain’s suggestions in respect of continuing to pursue war in Afghanistan, invading Libya in 2011 and funding anti-government militants in Ukraine and Syria. As Obama like Bush before him went from a peace candidate to a staunchly pro-war President, McCain was there at every turn praising the moves for war while criticising only the fact that they did not go far enough.

Long before the arrival of Donald Trump, McCain painted both Russia and China as supreme enemies of the United States while he frequently dismissed criticisms that in Syria the US was on the side of jihadist terrorists while undermining a secular government that was fighting them. He further never apologised for being photographed with open neo-Nazis in Ukraine even when occasionally confronted with questions regarding such policies.

In many respects, McCain’s Indian summer was during the second term of Barack Obama where his pro-war attitudes were able to help Obama divide the Congressional opposition while lending a form of credence through experience to the Obama White House which was notorious for being home to more Harvard men than military veterans.

From Republican maverick to liberal hero: McCain in the age of Trump

While John McCain was always viewed with suspicion by many members of his own party for his unpredictable domestic policy stances, in the age of Trump, John McCain became something he never was at any prior moment in his life. McCain’s opposition to and bitter personal rivalry with Donald Trump led McCain to become the darling of a post-modern liberal movement that embraced the pro-war policies of the Obama era and rallied around anything and everything that Donald Trump clearly hated.

McCain may well have been as surprised as anyone that his pet issues of opposing anything mildly Russian and calling for more rather than less war in the Middle East were now the calling cards of a Democratic party mainstream that began to see McCain as a grandfatherly figure both for his hardline militant foreign policies and his open disdain for Donald Trump. This saw McCain being largely abandoned if not excoriated by pro-Trump media personalities and activists, something he appeared to revel in as it only increased his prestige among liberals and anti-Trump neocons.

The Trump-McCain rivalry continued until McCain’s dying day. Neither man ever made peace with the other and Donald Trump’s self-evidently obligatory Tweet of condolences is notably briefer than statements made by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush.

McCain and the world

McCain was if anything more polarising around the world than he was at home. In the countries where the US waged McCain supported wars, he is remembered as a supreme menace who at times led the Obama administration by the nose into places where even George W. Bush did not dare to tread. Among Takfiri factions in Syria and Libya, among the neo-fascists in Ukraine, the ultra-nationalists of Georgia and the Kurdish separatists throughout Syria, Iraq and Turkey, the MEK terror group in Iran, the royalist Iranians in the United States and the breakaway regime in Taipei, McCain will clearly be missed.

McCain – hero, villain or failure?

McCain will certainly always be a hero to some and a villain to others and all for the same reasons. The more overriding question therefore is, was John McCain’s political life a success or a failure?

The English parliamentarian Enoch Powell famously said “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs“. Insofar as McCain never attained the office of Presidency he longed for and as he died at a time when his Republican party is being led by a man who in terms of policy and personal proclivities is literally the “anti-McCain” – one could say that John McCain’s political career was a prolonged series of disappointments with the rise of Trump merely being the most visible.

But on the other hand, McCain was also a success in so far as he was the pro-war Vietnam veteran who died being praised by the Democratic party whose most charismatic would-be leader in the late 1960s condemned the war that McCain happily fought in. While never allowed into the neocon club, McCain also won the hearts of the neocons in an age of Trump when they needed all of the allies they could find.

Perhaps the biggest tribute paid to McCain came from a man he continually insulted, heaped scorn upon and even lied about through his final decades. Even before his death, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the following about McCain, “Well, honestly, I like Senator McCain to a certain extent. And I’m not joking. I like him because of his patriotism, and I can relate to his consistency in fighting for the interests of his own country”.

Given the fact that what McCain said about the Russian President was consistently negative and given the fact that McCain authored policies which helped to endanger Russia’s national security, perhaps McCain’s career was neither a success nor a failure but instead is best described as one which strove for consistency and ended up being mired in contradiction. Today, McCain’s loved one’s are waking up to a personal loss and a strange reality wherein the President of Russia has nicer things to say about Senator John McCain than does the President of the United States. In this sense, the real rule of politics is to always expect the unexpected.


26.08.2018 - John McCain Was the Embodiment of the US Deep State - Journalist
John McCain Was the Embodiment of the US Deep State – Journalist


2018-08-23 - Trump Ought to Invoke Israel to Save His Presidency and Turn “Russiagate” on Its Head
Trump Ought to Invoke Israel to Save His Presidency and Turn "Russiagate" on Its Head - Eurasia Future

Israel: the only issue where America and Russia find common ground

For a President so accused of “Russia collusion” that most would-be positive steps taken alongside Moscow have effectively ended before they had a chance to even be attempted, it is noteworthy that one of the few areas where the US and Russia have cooperated involves Israel and Tel Aviv’s self-identified “security concerns”. Specifically, the US endorsed Russia’s role as guarantor that Iranian and non-Syrian forces aligned with Iran (primarily Lebanon’s Hezbollah) would withdraw from the areas surrounding the 1967 Purple Line which continues to serve as the de-facto border between the occupied Golan Heights and the rest of Syria.

At their recent Helsinki summit, Russia and the US also pledged to cooperate on further measures to “insure Israel’s security” while after the meeting Donald Trump remarked that Russian President Putin is a “fan of Bibi”, meaning Benjamin Netanyahu and that the meeting in Helsinki was “good for Israel”. In both of these statements, Donald Trump was speaking accurately. The meeting in Helsinki gave Israel just about everything it sought prior to the meeting while the Russian President is as Trump stated, on incredibly good terms with Netanyahu.

America’s pro-Israel political landscape

In the United States, it is difficult for one to get elected to a major political office if one does not support Israel. The combination of pressures from the powerful Israel lobby based in the US, the still powerful Evangelical Christian lobby which is overwhelmingly Zionist, the surging American centre-right which tends to support Israel and remain skeptical of any Arab movement for a variety of reasons and the permanently pro-Israel military industrial complex mean that if one wants political office in the US, it is necessary to like Israel and it doesn’t hurt to love Israel.

It is with this context in mind that I wrote the following statement immediately following Trump’s Helsinki summit with the Russian President:

“Therefore it would behove Trump in these Machiavellian times to publicly accuse those who have openly criticised his Helsinki Summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin of advocating policies that would harm Israel’s security or to put it in
the Israeli lexicon ‘threaten Israel’s right to exist’. Such an accusation is political kryptonite among the US elite”.​

Donald Trump must link Russophobia with undermining Israel

While one doesn’t claim there is any moral clarity offered in this policy, in terms of tactical politicking, it represents a kind of proverbial nuclear option which forces Donald Trump’s opponents on the defensive by challenging their support of Israel, something which in many ways is the American equivalent of challenging a Chinese politician’s loyalty to the Communist Party of China. The reality of the situation is such that Putin praised Trump for cooperating over “Israel’s security concerns” while Trump in turn praised Putin’s strong support of Israel and then Israel’s Premier Benjamin Netanyahu made an online video praising both Trump and Putin for their mutual position.

In this sense, undermining America’s relationship with Russia could harm these security arrangements and furthermore undermining Donald Trump over his allegedly “close ties” with Russia could undermine an historic Russo-American agreement over Israel, the likes of which would have been impossible during much of the Cold War era.

Rather than constantly be on the defensive against accusations that he is too close to Russia, Trump can turn this entire “witch hunt” around by suggesting that those making the accusations are themselves undermining Israel’s security, an accusation which would put anyone in mainstream US politics on the defensive.

A collapsing Democratic party

In terms of domestic strategy, at a time when calls for Trump’s impeachment from his prototypical domestic antagonists are once again being raised in the aftermath of his former lawyer now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Trump has nothing to lose by playing the Israel card, especially months before November’s mid-term Congressional elections. This is especially true as a new wing of the Democratic party, one detested by mainstream Democrats as much as Republicans seems to have committed an act of political heterodoxy in the American context. The so-called “Democratic Socialist” coalition who look to Senator Bernie Sanders as a kind of political Godfather now has a leading deputy in the form of the young Congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez comes from a generation and social class in the United States whose members appear to believe that supporting Palestine is a “fashionable cause”. When Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez admitted on a televised interview that her support for Palestine was derived from a position of foreign policy ignorance rather than a profound understanding of the Middle East, it became clear that for many in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s peer group, Palestine is just another fashionable cause to be changed with the seasons. However, perception is often more important than fact in politics and the anti-Israel perception of Ocasio-Cortez and her all too young cohorts is now ripe for exploitation by any experienced political tactician.

Retired centrist Democratic Senator and long time Israel supporter Joseph Lieberman spoke openly about what many mainstream Democrats think about Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders but rarely say in public.

According to Lieberman,

“Really the point was, what is the Democratic party going to be? I am still a Democrat and when I see somebody that really says she is a Socialist, she is a very charismatic, captivating candidate but if you look at the policies, those are not policies that will be supported very many places across America. If her win makes her into what Kellyanne Conway calls it “the new face of the Democratic party”, the Democratic party will not have a bright future…
As I said in the column in the Wall Street Journal today, she didn’t talk too much about foreign policy during the campaign. She obviously by her own acknowledgement does not know that much about foreign policy. But when she did talk about it, it was from the Democratic-Socialist organisation policy book. It is very pro-socialist around the world…. Let me put it this way, it is too quick to criticise Israel so she during the campaign actually said at one point that the Israeli action to defend against the massing of troops on the border in Gaza by Hamas, was a massacre. That is very hot language and not fair”.​

Conclusion

Perhaps without intending to do so, Lieberman has given Trump a clear playbook for not only seeing his Republican Party win the midterm elections but a playbook to help Trump see off a potential future impeachment attempt. All Trump needs to do is to challenge his opponents in respect of not being sufficiently pro-Israel while then associating any insufficiently pro-Israel opponents with the confused policies of the Ocasio-Cortez brigades.

To wrap things up, Trump must continually remind Americans that his meeting with Vladimir Putin was praised by Israel and achieved an historic feat of Russo-American cooperation regarding Israel.

If Trump uses this theme relentlessly not only will he avoid impeachment but he will likely win a second term in the White House.

Lieberman urges voters to reject Ocasio-Cortez's candidacy

Published on Jul 18, 2018 (6:37 min.)