Ukraine-gate rises up: more whistleblowers!
Really, consider this an open thread on Ukraine-gate; bring what you find, as I'm just posting this for the abject hilarity of it, and have tons of chores to do...if I choose to do them. ; ) Joseph Kishore's kindly given me to steal borrow what I'd like from their site, so I'll past in the top half of his essay.
From Patrick Martin, 7 October 2019, wsws.org: US impeachment campaign escalates with claim of second whistleblower
"The conflict between President Trump and congressional Democrats escalated over the weekend, with attorneys for the CIA officer who triggered an impeachment inquiry declaring that there were other “whistleblowers” coming forward to provide testimony in support of his allegations against Trump.
Like the first whistleblower, the additional witness or witnesses were said to be intelligence officials. At least one has been interviewed by Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who declared the initial complaint against Trump, over his efforts to get the president of Ukraine to provide derogatory material on former Vice President Joe Biden and his son, to be “credible” and “urgent.”
Andrew Bakaj, the lead attorney for the first whistleblower, tweeted Saturday, “I can confirm that my firm and my team represent multiple whistleblowers.” Mark Zaid, another attorney for the first whistleblower, said the second intelligence official had firsthand knowledge of some of the allegations made in the initial complaint.
A second whistleblower, whether he or she made an independent complaint or merely bolstered the first whistleblower, would mark a further intensification of the efforts by sections of the national security apparatus either to remove Trump outright or to shift US foreign policy in a direction even more hostile to Russia.
The most direct expression of the role of the intelligence apparatus in the Democratic Party impeachment drive was the appearance Sunday of former CIA Director John Brennan on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The CIA director under Obama now receives a fat paycheck as “senior national security and intelligence analyst” for the television network.
Brennan was asked by host Chuck Todd to “assess the stability of the American government” as the CIA would assess another country. Brennan answered, “We would look at it as a very corrupt government that is under the sway, right now, of this powerful individual who has been able to just corrupt the institutions and the laws of that country.”
“I think it’s no longer, you know, a democracy,” Brennan continued, referring to Trump as “an autocrat,” and concluding, “there’s just tremendous political instability here … which is consuming the government now. And it’s not able to take care of the issues that it needs to address, whether it be on the domestic front or the national security or the foreign policy front.”
This is a remarkable declaration by an official who is one of the most bloodstained figures in recent American history. Brennan directed drone missile assassination strikes from the Obama White House before returning to the CIA to oversee its worldwide operations of murder, political subversion and plots against democracy. With the support of the Obama White House, he sought to suppress the Senate investigation into the torture program run by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration.
Brennan is voicing the views of powerful sections of the military-intelligence apparatus, which oppose Trump not only on specific foreign policy decisions in relation to Russia and the Middle East, but regard his administration as too erratic and too much driven by narrow personal and political considerations to effectively advance the interests of American imperialism as a whole.
While Trump is appealing to racism and anti-immigrant bigotry and seeking to mobilize sections of the police and military and outright fascists in his defense, his Democratic Party opponents are operating on a completely right-wing basis, working as the front men for a section of the national security apparatus.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, a Democratic senator and presidential candidate, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, cited her trips to Ukraine with two Republican warmongers, Lindsey Graham and the late John McCain. She repeated the litany of the US foreign policy elite since the 2014 US-backed ultra-right coup in Ukraine, saying, “they need our country by their side as they deal with a foreign entity, as in Russia, that shot planes down over their country, that’s annexed Crimea in their own country. They need us. And President Trump knows that.”
The handful of Republican senators who have distanced themselves from Trump have also done so on a right-wing basis. Three Republicans criticized Trump’s public appeal on Thursday for the Chinese government to investigate the activities of Biden and his son Hunter, who has extensive business operations in China. In making this statement in front of the television cameras, Trump was doubling down on his bullying of the Ukrainian government for an anti-Biden probe, carried out secretly in a July 25 phone call to President Zelensky.
Comments
can't the anonymous CIA lovin' dems...
just go bowling instead of just shootin' themselves in their collective feet??
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YedqV4Gl_us]
So... let us review
Hillary Clinton committed multiple criminal offenses when she stored classified information on her own server, but she was not charged because.....
The meeting with a Russian operative (Natalia Veselnitskaya) at Trump tower, was an obvious setup. Veselnitskaya who had no information relevant to the campaign met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glen Simpson, before and after her meeting at Trump tower. Veselnitskaya was given a visa to allow her to come to the US just before the meeting was set up. The meeting with Veselnitskaya was used as a justification for the intelligence agencies to spy on the Trump campaign. Fusion GPS was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.
The Steele dossier was put together by an ex British intelligence agent working for Fusion GPS and US intelligence agencies used it as a justification to spy on the Trump campaign.
Seymour Hersh in a phone conversation with Ed Butowsky (that Hersh did not know was being taped) said that Seth Rich had leaked the DNC material to Wikileaks and that John Brennan was responsible for concocting the whole Russia hacking hoax. Brennan would almost certainly have been appointed National Security Advisor under Clinton and is, in my humble opinion, a dangerous fascist.
Essays at this site have also pointed toward the collusion between US intelligence agencies and foreign intelligence agencies (notably British but others as well) to try to get dirt on Trump.
All this indicates to me that Russia did little or nothing to interfere with the 2016 election, but the US intelligence agencies with John Brennan as the mastermind did interfere with the election but miscalculated and Trump won, leaving Brennan et al. pissed as hell.
Although William Barr is an ex CIA guy, he and John Durham may be finding information that would pin election meddling on the US intelligence agencies and John Brennan and maybe doesn't like what he is finding out (pure speculation on my part). So CIA plants in the White House suddenly become whistle blowers and Democrats with links to the intelligence community suddenly become pro-impeachment and are absolutely appalled that Trump is behaving like Trump. The Democrats and the intelligence agencies are bringing out their stuff gradually to make sure that it stays in the news.
On a good day, Trump commits three or four impeachable offenses before lunch, and I will grant that Trump is despicable and scary as hell, but the intrusion of the US intelligence agencies into politics and the collusion of the media with these fascists worries me more than Trump.
holy sufferin' sailfish!
you've blown me away with your memory, and at least twelve things i'd never even known! bravo, bravo, bravo, amigo! notably, re hersh's (unknown to him) taped phone call. i'd add that craig murray's long said that he'd met with the leaker (in a park?), and he wasn't russian. it was a leak, not a hack!
what i'd only learned a few days ago was that the thug mike pompeo was alledgedly listening to the zelenskiy call as well.
yeah, patrick martin agrees with you, and with me:
i'd checked with bernhard at MoA cuz he's enjoyed this show, but he hasn't anything new about this up, just: turkey and the kurds in syria. but RT's added this twist:
‘Ukrainegate goes to Pentagon: House Democrats subpoena DoD & OMB as part of Trump impeachment probe’, 7 Oct, 2019
i sweep off my plumed hat before you, roy blakely. er....may i rent some space in your brain pan? ; )
p.s. on edit: will we only find any results from the barr/durham (sadly, not quite church committee) at some final report?
Nailed it
Nice and accurate summary of the events that have led to this point in time. But just to add some more zing to your comment I'll add this:
Seth Rich: Mossad psyops?
This is just one of many articles about how Seth's role in the DNC leak might not have been what people think it was. I have no opinion whether this is true or not, but I would just dismiss it. We know that the shooting was hinky. Seth left the bar at 1:30, but wasn't shot until 4:30 and some CIA dude's car got broken into and his gun was stolen. Lots of other details about around his death. Being okay and talking in the ally and then being deceased while Donna Brazil was wondering the hospital hallways.... who the hell knows what really happened?
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Never thought of that angle
but it would explain some things well. Speaking of Mossad, I notice that Lex Wexner and the fair Ghislaine are back in the news.
Ghislaine is still walking free
Isn't there enough information on her role in Epstein's escapades to have her arrested? If so, but she isn't going to be I'm going with Israel protecting her. Whitney Webb on mintpress has some more essays on Epstein and Israel and spying on us.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Yes, there is enough evidence to arrest her
and convict. There was enough evidence to charge and convict her when Epstein was charged and convicted, but she was not charged. No doubt Mossad and likely CIA interference prevented her being charged. Israel/Mossad will protect her until they can't. If too much comes out she will "commit suicide" like Epstein and her father.
This right here
There is always Music amongst the trees in the Garden, but our hearts must be very quiet to hear it. ~ Minnie Aumonier
In some quarters, the prime suspect is ...
... John Bolton.
I find that rather hilarious.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
i've considered both
bolton and brennan, so who's to say? both would have motives, w/ bolton: revenge.
I doubt that Bolton is in charge of this
Machiavellian intrigue is not his modus operandi. He is only slightly less crude and stupid than Trump. His firing might have contributed to the intelligence community pulling the trigger on this, however.
you may be right
as rain, but what i'd meant that he may be one of the 'anonymous whistleblowers'. lying liar brennan, of course, was a signatory to the letter six or so CIA dems had penned to pelosi.
and to laurel: of course it's much like russiagate if not the exact same thing. good on ya.
This Coup reminds me of that movie
"Murder on the Orient Express." While the inspector was questioning the travelers on the train trying to identity which one was the murderer, it turned out that all of the travelers on the train actually participated in the murder.
First we see all these characters from different departments of the government and related occupations participating in an elaborate conspiracy in an attempt to overthrow a US Presidential Election. Now, three years later we see the same group of people attempting to mount an impeachment based on flimsy grounds.
They're the same people, but who is running them?
Could it be the media monopolies? I watch them twisting and repackaging the narrative every half hour. They tweak the story to match daily events, or invent a new excuse for the Biden Bros (all of them in the same way at the same time). They fabulate Trump's intentions, or take something Trump just said and weave the "shocking' words into their coordinated narrative. This time, however, the CIA plays a starring role as the frightened victim/whistleblowers (because Mueller used up all the available chumps). But they are all the same people.
What a coincidence that this is coming just as the investigation into the origins of the Russia Hoax is heating up, and the DOJ is trying to decide who to charge with crimes. Not to say there is anything wrong with the timing. This would be a good time to to push for impeachment — before the election. It would just be so much better if they didn't have such a blatantly hypocritical "crime" to go after. It's embarassing.
(I did predict that Trump would step down before he finished his first term. Perhaps this may lead to that.)
The DC Bubble denizens may not be picking up on this — and it sure surprised me — but it appears that the American people can actually smell the stink on the psyop. This may amount to nothing, and the end justifies the means, I suppose. But, if the Coup fails and Trump goes on to win a second term, it's not like Americans were ever going to get universal care or free college or an end to the wars from the Democrats. Besides, the People will be distracted by the hardships of Great Depression 3.0, which the media will package and pound as Trump's fault — all $72 trillion dollars worth.
The straw that broke........
Heh. You noticed that too, eh?
Let's hope so. I'd love to see America's reaction to this be laughter. Probably not, considering the massive degree of propaganda that's out there, but at some point even the brainwashed American sheep are going to say, "Enough of this shit!"
Then – I want to see them get mad. Really, really mad.
what a superb metaphor!
re-enacting the Playbook already having been written by agatha christie!
but nah, the Ds dinnae want to impeach Boss Tweet on anything that might have dragged St. Obomba into it, remember O's having taken blonde female talking head miz
'look forward, not backward' re: charging anyone in dubya's administration with war crimes, torture, etc.? knowing that he'd be doing exactly the same thing? and boy, howdy, that and worse...as Trumpelina's worse in many respects.
no sure on media bubbles, save for hearing about 'news' after the fact. our teevee never watches 'the news'. can the amerikan people smell the stink on the psyop?
but this is great, Pluto:
and the 'wall street, not main street will be bailed out again' cliché will ride again. Unless....
Wall Street has to be bailed out.
The US really has no choice if it wants the dollar to have purchasing power. But do they have to give the bankers seven-figure bonuses this time?
If we were smart, the banks would be nationalized and the profits would pour into servicing the national debt.
no, wall street doesn't actually
need to be bailed out, but that's what the banksters scared the public last with time. main street has never recovered. but that was my 'unless'...unless there is a socialist rebellion and all banks are public banks at the very least, preferably nationalized, as well as the federal reserve.
howie hawkins' socialization of...' platform list is great, but yanno what he's running on? his green new deal; bah.
The key phrase
From the wsws.com piece you quoted:
Or to shift US foreign policy in a direction even more profitable to Raytheon and other MIC players. Consider Volker, suddenly a key player in impeachment hearings:
It's apparently OK for Volker to coerce Ukraine into buying missiles that enrich his client Raytheon at American taxpayer expense. Just think how many Raytheon weapons Volker could have given Ukraine if he'd had a full-time position with the U.S. government!
your comment bears more thought
and scrutiny than i can imagine tonight. after a day of chores, our ten-year-old fridge died. trying to find a replacement online with our specifications online for a few hours has made my crap eyes even blurrier than usual. when did fridges get so mcMansions huuuuge?
ah, okay.
got it; Simply Satire, lol. i wuz over-thinking it in my blurred haze.
A correction in that quote:
The truth always makes things clearer:
What is now called East Ukraine was a region of Russia that the Soviets attached to Ukraine in the 1950s to manage due to infrastructure damage from World War II that made it hard to service from Moscow.
Ditto for Crimea, the official home of the Russian Navy for 250 continuous years.
Matt Taibbi has a decent piece
on the subject in the October 6 Rolling Stone. He goes into some detail describing what happens to real whistleblowers, e.g.,
noting that most of them end up alone and broken, whereas,
and finally gets around to how they frame the story they're pushing:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/whistleblower...
He’s right; this whole thing is unfolding like yet another puffed up, phony Russiagate. Rather than insult our collective intelligence with barely plausible narratives, why don’t they simply present us with good, clearly laid out reasons, arguments, for choosing any given candidate over Donald Trump in 2020? It really can’t be that hard to do.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
of course taibbi's wrong:
snowden's not in jail, but julian assange is dying in belmarsh gitmo. snowden, greenwald, et.al. have long dubbed julian 'the bad whistleblower' (since kim dotcom's town hall in aukland in 2104), and 5 of the intercept's 'fearless journalists' have burned and smeared him over time.
perhaps i'll post it as a stand alone, but one journalist has reviewed snowden's new book and his mis-match about 'supporting' assange.
I caught that seeming omission
and then realized that Taibbi does not consider Julian Assange a whistleblower because he's not; he's a journalist, a publisher. Yes, Snowden, Greenwald and Poitras have shown rather skewed and negative attitudes toward Assange for several years now, and I cannot understand why. There's something going on with Snowden; for instance, the bulk of the material he exposed has never been published. I suspect he cooperates to some extent with the authorities in hopes of gaining greater freedom of movement. This interesting Mint Press News review of Snowden's book shows some of the ways in which Snowden is unfair to Assange -- "Edward Snowden’s Julian Assange is an Unfamiliar Julian Assange: There is an unquestionable contradiction between Snowden’s opposition to Assange’s arrest and the rhetorical games he plays with Assange’s character in his memoir, Permanent Record."
I know this much: every video I've seen of Assange discussing his work displays a man of integrity, intellect, and almost a kind of nobility, and all who know him well seem to love him. It's sickening that the smear campaign seems to be the weapon of choice these days.
Lurking in the wings is Hillary, like some terrifying bat hanging by her feet in a cavern below the DNC. A bat with theropod instincts. -- Fred Reed https://tinyurl.com/vgvuhcl
i haven't any idea what taibbi
says about julian assange for various reasons, but my point was that at least as far as i know, snowjob's not in jail, but julian's dying in prison. and yes, it was patrick anderson's review of which i'd been speaking, although i hadn't come close to finishing it. i will for certain, as the beginning looked very promising.
one of snowden and greenwald's biggest chiches with wikileaks and assange is that the former vet all snowden revelations w/ the military and intel services so as 'not to harm the US war cause'; wikileaks and asange are anti-war, anti-imperial.
yeah, i wrote up two diaries on GG having closed down the snowden docs, then a second on the Intercept (apt title, by the by) having published X number of New Ones, all big zeroes.
in my very biased opinion, GG's and snowden's weak-sauce libertarian politics suck. ; ) but that's a much longer story.
time for me to shut down,
thank you all for contributing so much. i reckon this will serve well for tonight's closing song. ; )
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-7IHOXkiV8]
i'll be back later once i've taken care of some
RL obligations, but i figured i've just got to treat you all to this first:
“Meet the Press” anchor Chuck Todd grills senator: “You don’t trust the FBI and CIA?”, Barry Grey, wsws.org, oct. 8, 2019
grey notes many of the ironies and hypocricies of the senators, of course, but spends a lotta ink on john brennan, including this:
but i figured i'd treat you to some of the Big Show, and have grabbed a few tweets so you'll be able to appreciate the Toad's and Brennan's Patriotism™. ; )
Just read this article this morning...
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52354.htm
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
thanks for the link;
laurel's brought excepts from the rolling stone version upthread.
yeah.. I saw that after I posted...
"Without the right to offend, freedom of speech does not exist." Taslima Nasrin
twice is preferable to
nunce, to coin a phrase. ; )