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From Snowden To Russia-gate – The CIA And The Media
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hongkong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the Washington Post. Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, others by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.
In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive.
In August 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon, had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they invested in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon signed a $600 million deal to provide computing services for the CIA.
In October 2013 Pierre Omidyar, the owner of Ebay, founded First Look Media and hired Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The total planned investment was said to be $250 million. It took up to February 2014 until the new organization launched its first site, the Intercept. Only a few NSA stories appeared on it. The Intercept is a rather mediocre site. Its management is said to be chaotic. It publishes few stories of interests and one might ask if it ever was meant to be a serious outlet. Omidyar has worked, together with the U.S. government, to force regime change onto Ukraine. He had strong ties with the Obama administration.
Snowden had copies of some 20,000 to 58,000 NSA files. Only 1,182 have been published. Bezos and Omidyar obviously helped the NSA to keep more than 95% of the Snowden archive away from the public. The Snowden papers were practically privatized into trusted hands of Silicon Valley billionaires with ties to the various secret services and the Obama administration.
The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is estimated to own a shameful $90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been a CIA front, George Soros' Open Society foundation is one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions".
It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue.
The Intercept burned a intelligence leaker, Realty Winner, who had trusted its journalists to keep her protected. It smeared the President of Syria as neo-nazi based on an (intentional?) mistranslation of one of his speeches. It additionally hired a Syrian supporter of the CIA's "regime change by Jihadis" in Syria. Despite its pretense of "fearless, adversarial journalism" it hardly deviates from U.S. policies.
The Washington Post, which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded" with Trump.
Just today it provides two stories and one op-ed that lack any factual evidence for the anti-Russian claims made in them.
In Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options the writers insinuate that some anonymous writer who published a few pieces on Counterpunch and elsewhere was part of a Russian operation. They provide zero evidence to back that claim up. Whatever that writer wrote (see list at end) was run of the mill stuff that had little to do with the U.S. election. The piece then dives into various cyber-operations against Russia that the Obama and Trump administration have discussed.
A second story in the paper today is based on "a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post." It claims that the Russian military intelligence service GRU started a social media operation one day after the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally removed from his office in a U.S. regime change operation. What the story lists as alleged GRU puppet postings reads like normal internet talk of people opposed to the fascist regime change in Kiev. The Washington Post leaves completely unexplained who handed it an alleged GRU report from 2014, who classified it and how, if at all, it verified its veracity. To me the piece and the assertions therein have a strong odor of bovine excrement.
An op-ed in the very same Washington Post has a similar smell. It is written by the intelligence flunkies Michael Morell and Mike Rogers. Morell had hoped to become CIA boss under a President Hillary Clinton. The op-ed (which includes a serious misunderstanding of "deterrence") asserts that Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States:
Russia’s information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here. But to get a sense of the breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The author link to this page which claims to list Twitter hashtags that are currently used by Russian influence agents. Apparently the top issue Russia's influence agents currently promote is "#merrychristmas".
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When the authors claim Russian operations are "more numerous than can be listed here" they practically admit that they have not even one plausible operation they could cite. Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe.
None of the Russia-gate stories so far has held up to scrutiny. There is no proof at all, nor reasonable evidence, that Russia interfered in elections in the U.S. or elsewhere. There is no evidence of "collusion" with the Trump campaign.
One of the most complete debunking of the false claims can be found in the recent London Review of Books: What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking. Consortium News has published many pieces on the issue as well as analyses and warnings of what may follow from it. Many other writers have caught up and debunk the various false claims. The Nation lists various cases of journalistic malpractice with regard to Russia-gate.
The people who promote the "Russian influence" nonsense are political operatives or hacks. Take for example Luke Harding of the Guardian who just published a book titled Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. He was taken apart in a Real News interview (vid) about the book. The interviewer pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence in the book to support its claims. When asked for any proof for his assertion Harding defensively says that he is just "storytelling" – in other words: its fiction. Harding earlier wrote a book about Edward Snowden which was a similar sham. Julian Assange called it "a hack job in the purest sense of the term". Harding is also known as plagiarizer. When he worked in Moscow he copied stories and passages from the now defunct Exile, run by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. The Guardian had to publish an apology.
The Mexican government controls the media by buying an immense amount of advertisement. It thus guarantees income as long as its political line is followed. The U.S. government has its own ways of controlling the media. In the 1950s to 1970s the CIA ran Operation Mockingbird which gave it control over much of the news and opinion output in U.S. media. During that time up to 400 main stream journalists were working for the CIA.
The method of control has likely changed. The handling of the Snowden affair lets one assume that the CIA induces billionaires to buy up media and to implement the CIA's favored policies through them. We do not know what the billionaires get for their service. The CIA surely has many ways to let them gain information on their competition or to influence business regulations in foreign countries. One hand will wash the other.
James Clapper as Director of National Intelligence, John Brennan as CIA head and James Comey from the FBI "assessed" that Russia influenced the U.S. presidential election. Annex B of their report, which hardly any report bothered to mention, read:
Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.
That sentence is the core of Russia-gate. There are lots of claims, assertions and judgments but no proof at all that any of the alleged Russian influence really happened.
It is probably due to the undue influence of the intelligence services that media have adopted that Annex B standard fro themselves. With regards to Russia (and other issues) assertions are now enough – there is no need to investigate, to find the truth or to verify claims.
How will that system work if an accident happens, some jet gets shot down and the issue escalates. Will there be any reporter left in the main stream media who is allowed to ask real questions?
@142 blue
I offer Andre Vltchek’s latest: Panic of Boris Johnson in Moscow – Agony of Rotting Empire
“For many years, one effective way for the Empire to control the world was to spread dark cynicism and nihilism, in order to ‘pacify’, to immobilize its colonies and even its own people living in Europe and North America. Now this strategy is backfiring: British and North American citizens are not only passive and unwilling to fight for the internationalist and left wing ideals, they are also unimpressed, even disgusted with their own rulers and regime. Yes, most of them are cynical about such countries like Russia, China or Venezuela, but they are also cynical about the corporatism, capitalism, as well as Western domestic and foreign policy. They are not willing to commit to anything. They trust nothing. They believe in very few things.”
Vltchek is speaking of the ending of hundreds of years of oppression that has affected all of us – not one of us in this world can have escaped the long and deep influence of the imperialism of centuries that is now coming to its end in our very lifetimes. It is very important to see this, and not miss it!
There is a downward spiral of nihilism in this thread that says nothing meaningful, and offers only despair. What kind of communication is this?
We live in an age when the old empire is dying and can no longer scare us. It can no longer subjugate anyone who simply and strongly refuses to be cowed.
I recommend the article to all readers here, and take great pleasure in quoting more slices from it:
The Empire is rotting and it is in agony. It panics. It fights for its life.
Peace is dangerous. If the world is at peace, it is indisputable that the Western Empire would lose, in no time. It would be defeated on social, moral, creative and even economic fronts.
[…]
Now the masks have fallen off, and the ugly, gangrenous face of imperialism has been clearly exposed. Britain is simply not in the mood for refinements. It is brutal. It was always brutal. Now it is also, finally, honest.
It is all absolutely frightening, but it is also good, truly significant, that the West is suddenly behaving with such clarity.
[…]
As the Syrian city of Aleppo was celebrating its first anniversary of liberation, grateful citizens were carrying, in reverent silence, portraits of Russian soldiers who spilled their blood for the liberation of their nation.
The Syrian people know, they clearly understand, who ignited the war, and who came to their rescue.
Boris Johnson can insult Russia as much as he desires, but one thing he cannot deny: there are no men, women and children carrying portraits of British soldiers, be it in Iraq or Afghanistan, in Syria, Libya or Yemen.
And this last part is the key. The fact is we whites in the west are only a small part of the world, and if we disappear in a nihilistic despair, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that all the rest of the world – all that world that was enslaved and exploited by European imperialism and colonization – sees very clearly what is happening, and measures the relative strengths, and sees who has the power, and who will inherit the future.
Not one gram of negative energy can change the course of history that says the western plunder is coming rapidly to an end, and the former slaves will inherit this world, in a great upswell of positive energy.
We have a choice to join with them, as kindred.
Posted by: Grieved | Dec 28 2017 5:08 utc | 140
@FB | Dec 28, 2017 6:55:19 PM | 193
So, it was not true that you had no clue about Bannon…Of course, you all here know him very well….
About White American men victimhood, just the banned article pointed out one more of the things Bannon and Trump share, which is allegations by women for abuse…And the thing is, for what I have been able to test, that a majority of all these “alt-righters” and Trump supporters seem to be people really “frustrated” with modern women, many of them fat, old, and embittered men who keep grudges against nowadays women for whatever reasons dating all their vital trajectory, and so, found in a “new ideology” blaming feminism for all their troubles what they had always dreamt. Add to this a banner against “political correctness” and there you have that they felt in heaven, since full time haters always ready to slander whoever at their shot-scope, this custom probably dating since childhood. If we were able to know, they most probably are those who always mortify others at home, at job, well, at every place….Amongst these there are real psychopaths and anti-socials….
Then there are the real nazis, amongst these those kinda illustrated who found in this “initiative” an opportunity to inaugurate the IV International Reich where they would be rehabilitiated and brought from the sewers, where they had to hide after WWII, to the positions in society an power where they should have always been….according to them….since so exceptional people…who, morevoer, are the whites amongst the whites….
Thus, you find many positive things in Nazi ideology?
Sorry to hear, but what is not true is that Hitler and his Nazi Party made anything for the working people since the first thing they did, once they grabbed power and set fire at the Bundestag, was to wipe out all liberties and human rights, except for those of their supposed “arian race”, and erase all the communists and labour activists who, precisely, were the representatives of the German working people before the German corporations and businessmen, from the suface of Earth. Hitler himself was an specimen of those described above, a complexed little man full of hatred, most probably a psycopath himself.
P.S: Sorry for not answering you on your request about The Saker, but I have also explained briefly the issue at another thread to another commenter and I do not want to insist more on that issue to not tire the people here. Yes it was me who worked as moderator during a year there until some things happened, apart from the increasing censure, that made for me impossible to continue doing so. Then I decided to continue posting as commenter, still keeping good relation with the owner, although he had already failed to me in the moderation issue, to find that the censure started being applied to me in a harsh way especially by the mod with whom I have had that issue, who was besides a newcomer… I recurred to the owner and gave him a damn….Then the tone of the blog started changing, new people I deem belonging to the La Rouche organization arrived and started targetting me, the US election campaign arrived and I was insulted and slandered there at pleasure by the same group because of my stance against The Donald, especially by the commenter under nick “Bro93”, even when the moderation policy forbids it. Finally, after one of my last “honest” interchanges with one of the authors there who published a post criminalizing Motorola, that same who had posted before another one criminalizing María Zakharova, I found that I had been banned for life, when the author had only warned me publicly….I discoverd it by asking another mod….
Posted by: elsi | Dec 29 2017 1:56 utc | 196
Elsi…@197 said…
Thus, you find many positive things in Nazi ideology?
No I didn’t say that…
Sorry to hear, but what is not true is that Hitler and his Nazi Party made anything for the working people…
I’m afraid you are mistaken my dear…
Let’s start with a relatively ‘neutral’ source…wikipedia…
‘…The Nazis came to power in the midst of Great Depression. The unemployment rate at that point in time was close to 30%…’
‘…Hitler also spent large amounts of state revenues for a comprehensive social welfare system to combat the ill effects of the Great Depression, promising repeatedly throughout his regime the “creation of a socially just state…”’
‘…the NSV instituted expansive programs to address the socio-economic inequalities among those deemed to be German citizens…’
‘…With 17 million Germans receiving assistance under the auspices of National Socialist People’s Welfare (NSV) by 1939, the agency “projected a powerful image of caring and support.”[36]
…’The National Socialists provided a plethora of social welfare programs under Nazi’s concept of Volksgemeinschaft which promoted the collectivity of a “people’s community”…
…The NSV operated “8,000 day-nurseries” by 1939, and funded holiday homes for mothers, distributed additional food for large families, and was involved with a “wide variety of other facilities…”’
‘…The Nazi social welfare provisions included old age insurance, rent supplements, unemployment and disability benefits, old-age homes, interest-free loans for married couples, along with healthcare insurance…’
‘…One of the NSV branches, the Office of Institutional and Special Welfare, was responsible “for travellers’ aid at railway stations; relief for ex-convicts; ‘support’ for re-migrants from abroad; alcoholics; and the fight against illicit drugs and epidemics…”’
The NSV was the The Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt, meaning “National Socialist People’s Welfare”…
One of the NSV projects was a project ‘so that none shall starve or freeze…’
The Winterhilfswerk des Deutschen Volkes [“Winter Relief of the German People”]…
The interest-free loans for married couples mentioned above were to buy homes…the term of the loan was a maximum of 10 years…
Every child born erased one fourth of the loan…so four children meant you owned your house…
Hitler ordered the Ferdinand Porsche’s Volkswagen [the people’s car] into production…and similarly made it available to workers as with homes…
These are inconvenient historical facts in today’s society of brainwashing…
The tax burden was very progressive…
‘…In 1938 Germans in the lowest tax brackets were 49 percent of the population and had 14 percent of the national income, but paid only 4.7 percent of the tax burden.
Those in the highest income category, who were just one percent of the population but with 21 percent of the income, paid 45 percent of the tax burden.
See D. Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution (1980), pp. 148, 149.
There is much more to this story Elsi…
You see…covering up historical facts is wrong…even if we don’t like those facts…
I personally despise Hitler for his racism against Slavs and Jews…
And he was a fool to think he could invade Russia…which ended up crushing him like a bug…
I have no pity for this psychopath…but historical facts must not be covered up…for whatever reason…
The Socialist part of Hitler’s politics was very real…that is why the people followed him so fanatically…
Look at what the Plutocrats and the puppets who serve them in Washington do today…
You want to own your own home…no problem…we have a 50 year mortgage for you…
You can look forward to actually owning your home by the time you reach 80…
Not after 10 years or four children…
You want a healthcare plan for everybody…?
Sorry…no can do…
You see it would cut out instantly the multi-trillion dollar profits of the insurance company parasites…?
We must learn from historical experience wherever we can get it…
We are in tough times today…the white working class that Bannon is conning is suffering under this economy designed to enrich a few parasites…
But how many of the deplorables do you think realize this is all a conjob…?
They are True Believers…
Even though they are believing a fairy tale…
But what do you think would happen if these white Americans knew how Hitler actually treated his own working people…?
Think about that for a minute…
Do you think they might string up fakes like Bannon from the nearest lamppost…?
This Bannon who is simply a conman of the parasite class [ex-Goldman alumnus no less]…
Posted by: FB | Dec 29 2017 3:12 utc | 198
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