Mueller knows that there was no collusion

Russia Gate is dead in the water and Mueller knows that Trump did not collude with Russia to win the election so why hasn't he closed his investigation? This article was written almost 3 months ago and yet here we are debunking the every day report that is going to take Trump down.

Mueller Takes Aim, but Is Trump in Trouble?

After disappearing for the midterms, Russiagate has reemerged front and center. This week’s barrage of developments in the cases of indicted Trump campaign figures Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and George Papadopoulos have renewed long-running declarations of a presidency in peril. They coincide with a fresh round of alarm over the fate of Mueller’s investigation following Trump’s ouster of Jeff Sessions and the installation of Matthew Whitaker in his place as attorney general. Leading Democrats now see the probe as so paramount that, despite having recaptured the House running on health-care issues, protecting the investigation has been deemed “our top priority” (Representative Jerry Nadler) and “at the top of the agenda” (Representative Adam Schiff).

There is nothing objectionable about wanting to safeguard the Mueller investigation, nor about concerns that Trump’s appointment of an unqualified loyalist may jeopardize it. Mueller should complete his work, unimpeded. The question is one of priorities. After all, the fixation on Mueller has not just raised anticipation of Trump’s indictment, or even impeachment—it has also overshadowed many of the actual policies that those seeking his political demise oppose him for. At this highly charged moment, it seems prudent to reconsider whether the probe remains worthy of such attention and high hopes.

Although Mueller’s final report has yet to be released, the issue that sparked the FBI investigation he inherited has already been resolved. The FBI began eyeing potential Trump-Russia ties in July 2016 after getting a tip that unpaid campaign aide George Papadopoulos may have been informed that Russia was in possession of stolen Democratic Party e-mails well before WikiLeaks made them public. But that trail went cold. It turns out that a London-based professor, Joseph Mifsud, told Papadopoulos that the Russian government might possess thousands of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. The FBI interviewed Mifsud in Washington, DC, in February 2017, but Mueller has never alleged that Mifsud works with the Russian government. Papadopoulos was ultimately sentenced to just 14 days behind bars for lying to the FBI about the timing and nature of his contacts with Mifsud. He reported to a federal prison on Monday.

The Russia probe’s other instigating figure, Carter Page, was also a low-level, unpaid campaign official. The information that led to his investigation is even more suspect. In its October 2016 application for a surveillance warrant on Page, the FBI claimed it “believes that [Russia’s] efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with [the Trump campaign].” But a key source for that supposition turned out to be the Steele dossier—the salacious, Democratic Party–funded opposition research compiled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele. And while the FBI got Papadopoulos on lying to them, Page has not been accused of any crime.

With the Russia investigation’s catalysts coming up all but empty, there is little reason to expect that the remaining campaign members who face prison time will reverse that trend. Former national-security adviser Michael Flynn awaits sentencing in the coming weeks on charges similar to Papadopoulos’s. Just as the evidence used in Manafort’s bank- and tax-fraud case underscored that he worked against Russian interests in Ukraine, Flynn’s indictment turns up another inconvenient fact for the collusion hopeful: The foreign government that Flynn colluded with on Trump’s behalf—against the US government—is not Russia but Israel.

Despite much hoopla to the contrary, Muller’s new indictment of former Trump fixer Michael Cohen contains more inconvenient facts. Cohen has pleaded guilty to a single count for lying to Congress about his role in a failed attempt to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. According to the plea document, Cohen gave Congress false written answers in order to “minimize links” between the Moscow project and Trump, and to “give the false impression” that it was abandoned earlier than it actually was. Cohen told the court that he made these statements to “be loyal” to Trump and to be consistent with his “political messaging.”

As I noted in The Nation in October 2017, the attempted real-estate venture in Russia “does raise a potential conflict of interest” for Trump, who “pursued a Moscow deal as he praised Putin on the campaign trail.” But nothing in Cohen’s indictment incriminates Trump. Much of what it details was previously known, and rather than revealing an illicit transatlantic collusion scheme, it reads more like a slapstick mafia buddy comedy. As Buzzfeed News reported in May, Cohen communicated extensively with Trump organization colleague Felix Sater—identified in the Cohen plea as “Individual 2”—who had promised to secure Russian financing for the proposed Moscow project. But the Russians never signed on, and Cohen only grew increasingly frustrated with Sater’s failure to live up to his lofty pledges. “You are putting my job in jeopardy and making me look incompetent,” Cohen wrote Sater on December 31, 2015. “I gave you two months and the best you send me is some bullshit garbage invite by some no name clerk at a third-tier bank.”

Nobody in Russia did anything to advance building a Trump Tower in Russia and there is no evidence that Vlad even knew about it.

So here we are many months after the Mueller investigation ended and every day we are being bombarded with "Breaking News! This is the bombshell report that is going to take Trump down!

THIS should be the bombshell report that takes Mueller down for wasting money on an investigation that he has already concluded.

The danger of people focusing so much attention on every daily aspect of Russia Gate and the things Trump says is that important news is being ignored by not only the media, but people in general. The day after Sessions was 'fired' tens of thousands of people took to the streets under the banner "protect Mueller."

Just over 24 hours after Sessions was forced to step down, tens of thousands of people turned out for protests in dozens of cities under the banner of “Protect Mueller.” While Sessions’s ouster elicited widespread anxiety over Mueller’s job safety, there was near-uniform silence over an outgoing decision by Sessions that puts at risk real lives. In his last day on the job, Sessions virtually eliminated the ability of the federal government to use consent decrees to monitor police departments accused of abuses and civil-rights violations. Billy Murphy, the veteran Baltimore attorney and civil-rights activist who represented the family of Freddie Gray, told me that he fears “a return to the dark ages” as a result of Sessions’s act. “This emboldens police corruption, police misconduct, police brutality in particular,” Murphy warned. “You’re going to see a real overkill and a real return to the worst kinds of policing that we’ve seen probably in the past 25, 30 years.… That would be a grave injury to communities of color, to women, to immigrants all over the country.”

But I'm pretty sure that the PTB don't want people seeing a further erosion of their plan to increase the police state that we are living in.

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to conflate building a Trump Tower in Russia with collusion to subvert an election.
Try as I might, I can't force myself to make an apple and an orange the same fruit.
My apologies to Hillary for my inherent mental deficiencies.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

@on the cusp Mueller might be destroying any evidence that implicates HRC and BO.

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dfarrah

Deja's picture

@dfarrah
If any evidence has existed for quite some time. Not much is ever found using FOI lawsuits that can be used due to redaction. Plus, if it takes a year for whatever ABC agency to produce what was requested, that tells me evidence is being destroyed, but whomever is requesting the info (and the courts) are told it takes time to find it all. Databases take seconds, provided the people performing the queries know wtf they're doing, and they should, since it's their job(s).

The only time we get any real, valuable info is when something is leaked, provided the people being exposed are dumb enough to put it in writing or say it out loud. That's why Assange is hated so.

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@Deja governments and companies have the ability to see all we do, yet no one on the outside has that capability? Well, I guess except for Assange and his group.

I'm just surprised that no one on our side regularly shows distributes surveillance of politicians, government officials, powerful business people, etc.

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dfarrah

snoopydawg's picture

How long has the Integrity Initiative been in business? Where has it have its hands?

There is additional suspicion that the Integrity Initiative, whose primary function is to stoke Russophobia, was one of the brains behind the Skripal incident.

The Initiative was also involved in the Steele dossier and the russophobic anti-Trump campaign. Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow, is employed by the Institute for Statecraft, the shadowy parent organization of the Integrity Initiative funded by the Ministry of Defense and Foreign Office. It was Andrew Wood who helped to disseminate the Steele dossier to U.S. Senator John McCain. McCain then gave the dossier to FBI Director James Comey. The FBI used the dossier first to get FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, and, after Comey was fired, to launch a counter-intelligence investigation (section 3) against Trump himself.

Here is a theory how all this may come together. Back in 2015 the Institute of Statecraft and its russophobic director Colonel Donnelly discussed how to increase sanctions on Russia. In 2016 the Steele dossier was created in an attempt to connect Trump to Russia. Steele's collegue Pablo Miller and his spy Sergei Skripal were quite likely involved in creating the dossier. The dossier was disseminated with the help of Donelly's Institute of Statecraft.

For some reason, Skripal probably threatened to spill the beans about the dossier after it became public, the Skripals had to be taken out. The highly scripted 'Novichok' incident in Salisbury was staged to remove Skripal and to smear Russia with an alleged murder attempt. Colonel McCourt, the trusted army nurse, was asked to help on the scene. After the Skripal incident, and with no evidence show, Russia was blamed and massive sanctions followed. The Integrity Initiative, the propaganda arm of the Institute of Statecraft, analyzes the media results of the Skripal affair and continues to stoke the anti-Russia campaign.

It might be possible that Steele's 'dirty dossier', the Skripal case and the Integrity Initiative operation are unrelated. But that chance for that now tends towards zero.

This is a piece of Moon of Alabama's essay about the Skripals case. B has put together a great piece on the Skripals being discovered by an army nurse who just happened to be in the area at the time of the attack. And no she wasn't exposed to the most deadliest nerve agent ever!

Smile

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arendt's picture

@snoopydawg

The nurse "just happened to be" the Chief Nursing Officer of the British Army, who "just happened" to have led a team on the front lines of the Ebola containment effort in Africa.

Nothing to see here. Move along.

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snoopydawg's picture

@arendt

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@snoopydawg

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@snoopydawg

...via Daily Mail

Neither Colonel McCourt nor her daughter were affected by the extremely dangerous Novichok with which the Skripals were allegedly poisoned. But what about the other persons, her son and her husband, who were also at the scene? What were they doing?

No additional information about the McCourt's has so far come to light.

Isn't it an extremely unlikely coincidence that the first person who 'by chance' attends to the Skripals is the top nurse of the British army? An experienced officer, highly connected, who is also know for handling highly infectious patients? Who wrote the script for this drama?

This is one of the many, many 'coincidences', curiosities and lies that make the official Skripal poisoning narrative so unbelievable.

There are also many indication that the case is related to other British government operations. Indeed the whole Skripal incident might well have been staged.

Pablo Miller, the MI6 agent who recruited, handled and befriended Sergei Skripal, also worked for Orbis Ltd. Orbis is the company of the 'former' MI6 agent Christopher Steele who was paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign to write the 'Dirty Dossier' about alleged Trump connections to Moscow. Soon after the Skripal incident happened, the British government released a D-Notice that prohibited British media from further mentioning Pablo Miller's name and thereby the relation of the two cases.

Long before the Skripal incident happened an experience Russia scholar asserted that the Steele dossier was written by someone trained by Soviet intelligence. It is thus quite possible that Sergej Skripal, the former Russian spy, was an informant or even author of the Steele dossier about Trump.

The recently exposed British military intelligence operation Integrity Initiative has shown extensive interest into the media echo the Skripal case had in various countries. Curiously one of its papers lists Pablo Miller, the Skripal handler, as a contact of the Integrity Initiative's leader Colonel Chris Nigel Donnelly.

There is additional suspicion that the Integrity Initiative, whose primary function is to stoke Russophobia, was one of the brains behind the Skripal incident.

(The rest of this text you captured in your comment above.)

It might be possible that Steele's 'dirty dossier', the Skripal case and the Integrity Initiativeoperation are unrelated. But that chance for that now tends towards zero.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic

What are the odds that this was indeed a psyops as have many of the thing since this darn Russian crap started?

But what makes this extremely funny is all of the personal who were dressed up in protective garb weeks after the event, when the people who first attended to the Skripals weren't and they weren't affected by the 'most deadliest nerve agent'. Sure would like to know what got the policeman down and hospitalized? Funny how we haven't heard anything from him . Ever.

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dervish's picture

have invested a lot of time and energy into following these smoke trails, and they're going to be righteously pissed off when they find out that they aren't true.

I don't think we're too far from Yellow Vests.

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"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."

@dervish @dervish Because a lot of people need this to be true, not just the rank and file believers but too many “important” people too. And don’t underestimate the ability of people to create their own reality distortion field rather than accept that everything they know is wrong.

We are long overdue for yellow vest though. That would be a silver (yellow?) lining out of all this, wouldn’t it?

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

@dervish late to convince these people that any alternative to their Trump/Russia tales exists.

They constantly slobber about removing Trump from office.

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dfarrah

wendy davis's picture

and yes, to me the crux of russia-gate is the sleight-of-hand that focuses so much ire on the wrong and long known bogus issues.

yep, that steele was part of integrity issue some of have known, but as to b's speculation about the skripals...maybe, but we may never know.

what i hadn't known (or at least remembered) was beauregard's hamstringing of consent decrees, but for the aclu to call it 'the crown jewel of the obomba administration' was grotesque. if there were any cities under such decrees under his rule, i can't think of one that actually made a positive difference, save for perhaps libby schaff's wild oakland.

and whose 1033 program sent 'surplus' tanks, sound cannons, flame-throwers (kinda kidding) to PDs all over the nation? his vaunted reform was to take back any tanks on tracks and the flame-throwers (j/k), bless his heart. in these times has the true story.

as for sheriff david clarke, his claim to be a big wheel in DT's homeland security was a total Twitter fantasy of his, but i did look him up just now and found that he's either been or was to b investigated by mueller over 'the nra spy butina' having paid 6 grand for him to go to moscow and tweet selfies of himself and butina with Join the NRA signs. or something. blink, blink.

so what will be the next trail for mueller to investigate? inquiring minds and all that...
you could run a contest, of course. ; D

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

Sigh.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

it art. but here, i found it again, see if you can make any sense of it.

but i gotta say that my vote for launching a side investigation's gotta be terry turchie!

#Resistance heroes? Ex-FBI official says bureau tried to keep ‘progressives out of office’ (VIDEO)’, RT jan. 20

yeah, i know; tell me to go dust this sluttish hogan...bake a cannabis cake or somethin'.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

Everything about it was dumb but original. Butina with the help of the NRA almost turned Russia into the murder capital of the world, usurping America's long standing title. (It's hard to imagine the Kremlin on board with this effort to flood Russia with handguns.)

It was a nefarious plan. Presumably, Gun obsessed Americans would feel so demoralized at losing the "World Record Gunshot Death Championship for a Nation Not in a Civil War," they'd begin to embrace Russian thinking. They'd drink more vodka and start to demand their own dachas for rest and recuperation. And target practice.

They caught Butina just in time. All her schooling in the US, down the drain as soon as she applied it to the real world like they taught her.

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

a thumb; thanks for satirizing it for us. that sheriff clarke is the one whose name i couldn't think of when snoopy had given us a joint mike whitney, michael hudson, paul craig roberts 'origins of russia gate'. not to honk on about it, but some time ago a café commenter brought some piece whitney wrote about the murder of seth rich. i tracked it down dutifully, but at the center of the 'investigation' was that self-same black sheriff, and OMG, what a bloody waste of my time going into that deep dark badger hole. what a fucking wack-job.

@SheriffClarke24 Oct 2018 "Check out my unapologetic, PC-free zone new website. You can keep up with everything Sheriff Clarke from this site. It's twitter-censor-proof. Libs must be accompanied by an adult. http://www.AmericasSheriff.com"

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

Bless their hearts. The whole Butina thing is thin; thin because there is no credible "counter-party" to Butina and her whacky doings in Russia. She's like a Russian Popodopolus. Both were playing a fantasy game in their heads, trying to be somebody. They are everyone's useful idiots in a stable full of useful idiots.
::

The real story is hidden beneath all this fluff.

It centers on the unlikely Carter Page (who is constantly painted as a fool by the Feds). A real FISA judge is involved, Rosemary Collyer. There's even a real Russian spy, Evgeny Buryakov. But most important, there's a real Deep State muckitymuck running the show. John Carlin was Robert Mueller's right-hand man, back when he directed the FBI.

The thing is — the Russian Hoax (and the wire tapping of the Trump campaign) began five months earlier than we realized. By then, John Carlin was head of the National Security Division (NSD) under the Justice Department, which is responsible for protecting the country against international and domestic terrorism, espionage, and national security threats. Carlin's job included providing legal oversight of the NSA's surveillance activities (National Security Agency). He was also the Deep State's Wizard behind the curtain in the Russian dossier fiasco.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/nsd/staff-profile/former-assistant-atto...

Carlin's other duties during the 2015-2016 election run up also included:

• Representing the government before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) and the Committee on Foreign Investments

• Acting as lead investigator into breaches of public and private sector e-mail systems and protocol (like Hillary Clinton's email leaks and her private access given to others of non-secure top secret information)

• Overseeing the investigations and prosecution of espionage cases, and cases involving the illegal export of military and strategic commodities (like Uranium One)

• Managing cases of foreign hacking into domestic computer systems (like attempting to rig the election of a U.S. President)

• Selecting, approving, and allowing top security clearances for 70 private contractors like Fusion GPS and CrowdStrike to have unrestricted access to the nation's surveillance data (which the court later ruled to be illegal)

• Writing and signing FISA warrants

Approving surveillance of 30,055 American citizens during the 2016 Presidential Campaign (which the court later ruled to be illegal)

.
These accomplishments, however, are not part of any investigation, of course. And they never will be. It's a matter of national security.

The first Presidential debate between Trump and Clinton took place on September 26th, 2016. The next day, Carlin abruptly quit his job with the Federal government.

::

"Nobody in a Senior Department post resigns three weeks before an election when you think Hillary Clinton is going to win," said Joe diGenova. He is a former Special Prosecutor from the District of Columbia who has a private law practice. One of diGenova's current clients is President Donald J. Trump.

Carlin suddenly quit. Why?

"The answer is simple. It is all about the dossier," said diGenova, who is building a firewall against the Deep State and any delusions they might have about impeachment. By now, he knows where all the bodies have been buried. And, so does President Trump, if there is a showdown.

The Russian dossier is a collection of concocted "field interviews" written by a political strategy company, Fusion GPS. The FBI paid for it first. The Hillary Clinton Campaign bought in, and she paid $12.4 million for her share. What it cost the FBI is still unknown pending public information disclosure law suits.

Meanwhile, did you you know that a FISA warrant cannot be issued on an American citizen?

Neither did I.

Ye gawds! Years of investigation and speculation and like the dumb Americans we are,, we miss the one most obvious clue! The FISA warrants couldn’t have been issued on Carter Page. He’s an American. Right?

Well, the Deep State operates using their own rules:

It turns out that Carlin refused to lie to the FISA court a second time. The first time, in June 2016, Carlin signed a false FISA warrant. It was false because Carlin named Carter Page a Russian spy. An FBI press release dated March 11, 2016:

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/evgeny-buryakov-pleads-guilty-manha...

In the meantime, the Trump Campaign had already been wired for months. Getting the FISA warrant was part of a cover-up, just in case.... Carlin knew Page was an American citizen and FBI informant, but he signed the warrant to get the paper trail rolling.

Carlin knew that others in the FBI could continue the warrants and have "plausible deniability" of the true identity of Page. They could lie to the FISA court saying that they were unaware that Carter Page was an American citizen.

Of course, Hillary was going to win, right?

Among other activities, John P. Carlin is now a contributor at CNBC.
_______________________
The FISA court can only approve warrants on non-Americans, according to Judge Rosemary Collyer, Presiding Judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

::

Unfortunately, this is not the story I am interested in.

I'm trying to track down how Americans became too brain-damaged and gullible to save themselves.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
snoopydawg's picture

@wendy davis

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wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

video; i really hadn't found him all that credible, and whoever had put the cointelpro stuff in was a bit off the mark, i'd say. but fun, in any event, given: FBI!

but i did want to let folks know this info: ‘How to Watch the Only Total Lunar Eclipse of 2019, Plus a Supermoon tonight’, nasa.gov (super blood wolf moon, purdy kewl. it's dagnabbit, cloudy here, but mr. wd says MST it'll be from about 8-10 tonight. moon just rose...

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wendy davis's picture

@wendy davis
TMI charges might fit here, and i admit i can worry an issue overtime like a dog with a bone.

but more re: 'obomba's crown jewel consent decrees'. a couple tankies on twitter had thread on the 'fake, self serving reparations' for homan square dark site prison victims recently. the atlanta black star had quoted rahm as saying his PD was doing everything correctly', of course.

but the CPD was put under consent decree first under oboma in 2015 (AG loretta lynch, what an unfortunate name), then again in 2018, i assume under sessions, post laquan mcdonald assassination. 4 po-po charged, three acquitted, van dyke sentence to 7 years? recently.

anyhoo, i'm glad you featured some of aaron matés lengthy exposé as i got the names and deeds jumbled, not having followed along all these interminable years....and had backed out.

on later edit: the point i was trying to make was how insanely partisan NGOs can be, as well as compromised like human rights watch, amnesty int'l national, avaaz, and others who frequently simply bat for the imperium and go to bat for say, the palestinians once in a blue moon (hrw, iirc).

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@wendy davis

Whichever lucrative grant is up for grabs. You stick in some recent stories that make you sound like the donor's very own PR firm. Then, it's on to the next crazy grant. I've gone through a lot of think tank news letters. People skip over the stories that are "off" and write it off to "far and balanced." Obviously, they all "must" do it. It's a gator eat gator swamp.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

on think tanks and grants, but i'd really meant human rights and civil liberties organizations. but then, 'look into the funding sources' is applicable, and to say the truth, as to HRW and Shamnesty int'l...i've forgotten (such a surprise, i know). ; )

Shamnesty: NATO: keep up the progress! (afghanistan, chicago nato summit, etc.

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wendy davis's picture

@Pluto's Republic

Amnesty International’s Troubling Collaboration with UK & US Intelligence, Some troubling connections contradict Amnesty’s image as a benevolent defender of human rights and reveal key figures at the organization during its early years to be less concerned with human dignity and more concerned with the dignity of the US and UK’s image in the world', Alexander Rubinstein, mintpressnews.com jan 17, 2019

it's a long and breathtaking historical narrative, including the organization's interference against patrice lumumba, a direct cause of fred hamton's assassination, and almost two million paid to...OMG: the dalai lama.

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snoopydawg's picture

@wendy davis

Seems to me that story slid off the net quickly and I don't remember hearing what was done about it. Of course ole Barack wasn't going to pin it on his buddy Rahm after all the history that they had together.

And hey.. did Barry reprimand Rahm for sitting on McDonald's murder until after he was reelected? 7 years for murdering someone in cold blood. We should be thankful that he got any prison sentence at all since cops have been told that they can pretty much get away with murder. Gotta keep their morale up in case they are needed to stop the yellow vests movement here.

I thought Obama just stopped giving cops grenades?

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wendy davis's picture

@snoopydawg

investigation into homan square. now jon burge himself was gone already by then, sentenced to 7 years in prison, iirc. were any of the torturing guards and prison officials prosecuted? i'd forgotten to look it up, but i doubt it somehow.

not only did rahm sit on the murder, but he actually suppressed the dashcam video of van dyke shooting laquan 16 times, well not only do O and rahm have history, but remember? 'i'm not the president of Black People, but All amerikans'.

now if i try to quote much of red kahina's charges in this 2018 twitter storify thread, i'll hash it up. but i did write down that she said 'of the 98 reparations claiments, only 59 got anything, and boy, howdy, is she rightfully scalding about it.

but wsws.org spells out the van dyke trial today, the jury's decision, the judge's having reduced the conviction from murder to...second degree manslaughter, maybe?

but i looked it up, and as anita alvarez (who'd never brought any case) had just lost her re-election, it was a judge who'd appointed the special prosecutor.

O rescinded grenades, eh? lol.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

...months ago, as you say. It's been open in my tabs that long, I guess. I especially liked the way he handled the Felix Sater character, who had Cohen so strung out with his serial resurrections of the "deal" every few months. They were always a dud. He's a George Popodopolis-type character who just really, really wanted to make something happen and be the "man" — but he didn't have the connections in Russia. More to the point, nobody in Putin's world had time for some gaudy and pretentious chain hotel in Moscow — if they ever even heard about it. They were busy running a nation. God knows what kind of a nuisance Sater made of himself in Russia. The messages went nowhere. No acknowledgment. It's really kind of pathetic. Plus, it was an old and tired story. Trump had been working on a Moscow hotel deal for more than 20 years and getting nowhere. Nobody wanted his "namesake" hotel in central Moscow. The closest he ever got to a deal was a potential location way out in the Moscow exburbs alongside the Motel 6's, managed by the Hindus.

I'll bet you that Sater is still trying to put that deal together. Probably has fantasies about calling the White House with the good news, if he ever gets a call back from anyone important.

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The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
Deja's picture

@Pluto's Republic
Never made sense to me. Even the neolib wing of the msm reported way back that Trump had tried for a hotel in Moscow well before putting his hat in the ring for a prez run. Of course now, it's a different narrative on those channels. He didn't really want a hotel, he wanted Vlad's help to overthrow the evil queen before the coronation.

And the whole thing about getting rid of Comey as being some big deal. Don't most, if not all, presidents clean house when they move in? I'm surprised he didn't fully do it, frankly. (I'm betting he wished he had done a better job, now, in hindsight of course.) It's obvious now, that Trump learned what an untrustworthy slime ball the guy is/was. Why on earth should a president be expected to keep a wolf on staff to watch the hen house?

Side note: I read on the ticker tape under ABC GMA (have it on as I'm getting ready for work, in hopes of seeing the local weather forecast), that the big deal now, is the money paid for use of one of his hotels. I guess he and his entourage could have paid to stay somewhere else owned by some foreign company, and then the neolib msm would be screaming treason or some other such nonsense. It boils down to he's damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. The stays were supposedly set up in advance and signed off on by someone. Not sure who.

Russians Hotels around every corner lol.

We know that Obama got pushback from day one, but he didn't get this type of 'The Sky is Falling' type of desperate, official flailing and gnashing of teeth, or did I miss it?

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@Deja

...at this late date about his DC hotel. He has a 60 year lease on the old post office building which became the hotel. Mind you, all this was done in 2013, if I remember right. And he signed it over to outside management while he was President. This was signed off by all the officials at the time.

But now it is a national crisis.

Just a little self awareness and intellectual honesty would be refreshing. On the other hand, I remind myself that the world is watching this; watching and taking precautions, finding better allies, safer money, learning. That is a final point of hope that might get this whacked-out wannabe-empire to exercise some self-control.

Comey was a turd. A well known turd. He betrayed Trump repeatedly. Even Ron Rosenstein advised him to fire Comey. But then, Trump filled his entire cabinet with turds. He gets rid of them and brings in more turds. He's a poor judge of political types and moochers. He's not a professional politician. He still hasn't figured out how the Deep State is manipulating him. No one told him about Empire.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Pluto's Republic
One site is still pushing this bullsh*t.

Trump told his lawyer to lie under oath about his business dealings with Russia. That’s a straight-up crime—and it is a crime that has nothing to do with carrying out the duties of his office, or trying to win an election with unethical tactics. It is a crime that anyone—not just a president—could commit. It is the crime of a corrupt person who wanted to cover up actions he had already lied about publicly, actions that would have severely damaged his political standing.

*

Anyone going to work for Trump knows they got to lie even under oath to get the job and keep it so of course Trump told Cohen to lie lie and lie some more, this common sense fact is up there with "the Sun rises in the East and sets in the West".

so far no one has blamed Russia for planting the story. But. ...

It has occurred to me that the reports that Trump suborned perjury might have been planted by the trump team, just like the discredited news report about Bush’s being AWOL that got Dan Rather fired. Feed a lie to the Media then say I told you so when it turns out to be false. Just sayin’.

Many there think that the GOP has been bought out by Russia because Russia laundered money through the NRA and the reps that have taken the money are now being blackmailed.

Oh and I forgot to mention the NRA now that they they have been caught with a Russian mole and accepting Russian cash will the GOP still take NRA cash?

Just how will they explain that away its not like Mueller has finished his investigation and cleared the NRA it would look real bad for the GOP if Mueller finds evidence of more crimes by the NRA.

Can a Non Profit like the NRA be accused of treason and shut down?

I go there so you don't have to. But I'm thinking my days are numbered.

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Deja's picture

@snoopydawg
The whole 'NRA mole was a Russian spy' story seems more of the same hysterical bullshit to me. Is there any evidence that Vlad, himself, was behind donations from anyone? And, being a non profit, can we be sure who donated what? Do we know all the amounts and names of donors to the Clinton scam non profit?

Goose/gander comes to mind, but maybe I just don't understand it all.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Deja

of course the NRA has been donating to the GOP and dems for a long time, but because of the Russia hysteria people think that any Russian lobbyist is working directly for Vlad. Look at the tale of the two women Russian lobbyists. The one that met with Trump Jr. had her passport problems fixed by Obama's state department so that she could make the meeting. The other Russian lobbyist is sitting in prison. I don't remember the details of why she was arrested so any help will be appreciated.

Do we know all the amounts and names of donors to the Clinton scam non profit?

Ah, but we do know many of the foreign governments, organizations, companies and people who donated to her 'foundation' and many of them did that while she was SOS and running interference with the state department for them. People go on and on about how Trump is breaking the Emoluments clause which he is, but then they overlook what Hillary did. And after she did her thing those same people would then hike over hundreds of thousands to hear Bill speak.

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Deja's picture

@snoopydawg
Seen it here, even.

We are trying to impeach Trump! Stop bringing up how bad Obama and Hillary were. That doesn't matter now, and they are nowhere near as bad. We're trying to get the Orange Psycho out of the White House so we can get back to business as usual and win back the White House in 2020. It's a win for the good guys! I'm with Her and everyone she and the DNC recommends, so just leave her out of it! /s and this Bad

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snoopydawg's picture

@Deja

When you say #ImWithHer, this is what I hear, and it isn't pretty

I just want you to understand what I hear when you say "I'm with her." I hear:

You support fracking.

You support lying to people routinely.

You support allowing government officials to deliberately circumvent Freedom of Information Act statutes for the preservation and accessibilty of records.

You support wars against people who never attacked us and had no means to attack us.

You are okay with the fact that a million innocent - and I do mean completely innocent - men, women and children were massacred to give US access to oil.

You support a candidate who so completely bungled health care when she tried to craft a bill that not even the Democratic Congress under her husband's Democratic presidency could stomach bringing it to a vote.

You support a candidate who didn't speak out or care when millions of voters - primarily Bernie supporters - were mysteriously dropped from voting rolls in Arizona, in New York (especially in Brooklyn, where Bernie grew up), and in California. If it benefitted her - who cares about Democracy?

You are so desperate to see a woman elected you will overlook how she brought "triangulation" into politics to cut progressives out of their Democratic Party voice, choosing to support Wall Street over Main Street.

You support war crimes - the killing of civilians outside the context of an actual war, as the US has done with drone strikes.

You support punishing, not thanking, Edward Snowden for releasing info that helped millions and hurt no one.

You support fascist coups in third-world countries that overthrow democratically elected leaders (Honduras, e.g.).

You think it's appropriate to assassinate foreign leaders, period. ("We came, we saw, he died," Hillary giggled after assassinating Gaddafi in Libya, leaving it now a haven for terrorists.)

You support a woman whose policies as Secretary of State dramatically increased instability in the Middle East and Africa.

You support the woman whose State Department got the mandated minimum wage of $0.61/hour in Haiti down to $0.31/hour.

I can go on and on. But when you say ‪#‎ImWithHer‬, this is what I hear. And it makes me shudder.

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Deja's picture

@snoopydawg

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Yah, you are right. Mueller knows the collusion bit is just bullshit. I think Mueller is setting up more people on process crimes, declare victory, and call it a day. He has to throw the Russiagate cult some red meat, but it will not be Trump unless in som peripherial way from which collusion cannot legally deduced.

I noticed a word being banded about: "inflitration". There was an article in Young Turks and from some Clinton Foundation about Russian inflitraion of the religious right, in one case involving Christian home schooling.

The latest front in Russian infiltration: America’s right-wing homeschooling movement
This is the latest connection between Russia and the American religious right.
https://thinkprogress.org/americas-biggest-right-wing-homeschooling-grou...

Apparently the Russians were trying to establish contacts with various right wing religious groups. One involved a Christian oriented home school organization. The Russians were going to use those contacts to put their voodoo powers on American leaders and turn them into Putin zombies.

The funny thing is that I think it would be the Russian authorities and Orthodox church which are pissed at any inflitration. Since the break up of Soviet Union and Warsaw Pack, American Christians who belong to evangelizing sects have seen Eastern Europe as a fertile ground for converting the Slavic heathens. Russian enacting laws which attempted to restrict evanglizing for Protestant based sects. After 9-11 I was on a plane that had a bunch of "missionaries" who had just come from heathen Poland spreading the world of Jesus.

But TYT and Think Progress as just engaging in the worst sort of Russian xenophobia. Basically it criminalizes contacts with Russians for any purpose. It pushes a world conspiracy not much different than the real German Nazis pushed about Jews who were engaged in a master plot to take down Western civilization.

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster

I kept following links to see a connection from the home schooling group to Russia and finally found this:

"I really believe that Russia is the leader of the free world right now," Heimbach told Business Insider in a recent interview. "Putin is supporting nationalists around the world and building an anti-globalist alliance, while promoting traditional values and self-determination."

Heimbach described the US' current foreign policy as aggressive and imperialistic, and he criticized NATO's military buildup in eastern Europe as an example of how the US is trying to promote a "global conflict" with Russia.

And while he views Russia as a "model for civilization" and "a beacon for nationalists," Heimbach emphasized that the movement goes beyond Russia and traditional left-right politics.

"This isn't just a European or a right-wing movement," he said. "We're trying to position ourselves to be a part of this worldwide movement of globalism versus nationalism. It's a new age."

Like Heimbach, alt-right leader Richard Spencer — the head of the white nationalist think tank the National Policy Institute — has argued that the US should dispense with its globalist policies by pulling out of NATO, resetting its relationship with Russia, and courting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whom he has described as "a civilized person" and "source of stability in this chaotic world."

Spencer's ties to Russia, which he has called the "sole white power in the world," go deeper. He was married until October to Russian writer and self-proclaimed "Kremlin troll leader" Nina Kouprianova, whose writing under the pen name Nina Byzantina regularly aligns with Kremlin talking points.

For example: Byzantina recently described reports that thousands of civilians in rebel-held east Aleppo, Syria, are under siege by the Russia-backed Syrian government as "fake news."

The webzine Spencer founded in 2010 — called Alternative Right — accepted contributor pieces from Aleksandr Dugin, the far-right, ultra-nationalist politician who encouraged Putin's incursion into Ukraine and whose work has been translated into English by Byzantina on her blog. (It does have a caveat: "The views of the original author do not necessarily reflect those of the translator.")

Now I'm not up on the nationalist movement that much I'll admit, but I agree with some of the things listed here.

The other websites I visited were about why some parents want to home school their kids. Common Core is education by route. Parents should have the right to have their kids not exposed to things they don't want them to. It's their right. But I'm wondering how this article would have been written 4 years ago before Trump ran for president?

But TYT and Think Progress as just engaging in the worst sort of Russian xenophobia. Basically it criminalizes contacts with Russians for any purpose.

They aren't alone in doing this. Thanks for your comment.

I think Mueller is setting up more people on process crimes, declare victory, and call it a day.

Did you read Amanda's essay here about Mueller?

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@snoopydawg

That's all that's about.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.