Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspiracy

Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Tue Nov 01, 2016 8:52 am

Russian Intelligence Hacked DNC Emails, Say Top U.S. Officials
by Ken Dilanian and Josh Meyer
JUL 28 2016

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ASPEN, Colorado — Senior U.S. national security officials tell NBC News they are confident that Russian intelligence agencies hacked the Democratic National Committee.

The open question, they say, is whether those same intelligence agencies directly leaked material to WikiLeaks, in what would seem to be an unprecedented effort to influence the U.S. election.

The Russian government had the "motive, means and opportunity," one official said, and many officials believe it is likely the Russians gave the emails to WikiLeaks, but there is not yet definitive evidence.

"It's a leading theory, but we couldn't prove it in court at the moment," the official added.

The FBI and the NSA are now investigating who leaked the documents, U.S. officials say.

A total of nearly 20,000 emails were stolen, among other data, officials say. WikiLeaks this week began posting audio recordings it says came from DNC voicemail.

One issue is whether hackers other than Russian spies infiltrated DNC servers. That is possible, but the cyber security company hired to investigate the hack, Crowdstrike, says it only saw two breaches, both of which it attributed to Russian intelligence agencies.

A debate is already brewing within the U.S. government about how to respond if it is determined that Russia tried to interfere with the American election.

Some officials would want to make that public and formulate a clear response.

Others see it as part of the routine intelligence tit for tat that is better left in secret. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, is believed to be in the latter camp, sources tell NBC News. He is known to believe that the media is making too much of the hack, and that no one should be shocked by it.

Underlying that debate is the fact that the NSA and other agencies routinely collect intelligence about foreign election campaigns, and the CIA in the past has meddled in more than a few.
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Thu Nov 17, 2016 11:47 pm

Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta Tied to Russian Mafia, Money Laundering: Emails released by Wikileaks show Podesta shared in the Clintons' corrupt schemes via the Clinton Foundation and oligarch Viktor Vekselberg's Skolovo Foundation
by Roger Stone
Oct 16, 2016

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The attack on me by Clinton campaign chief John Podesta is an attempt to deflect attention from his criminal activities in the former Soviet Union. Podesta is at the heart of a Russian-government money laundering operation that financially benefits Podesta personally and the Clintons through the Clinton Foundation.

To be clear, although I have had some back-channel communications with Wikileaks I had no advance notice about the hacking of Mr. Podesta nor I have I ever received documents or data from Wikileaks.

The charge that I am working for Russian intelligence or any Russian interest is also false. Don’t confuse me with John Podesta’s brother, Tony Podesta, who runs the firm that got $180,000 from Uranium One, the Russian government’s uranium company to which Hillary Clinton transferred 20 percent of U.S. uranium.

Just how much money did Viktor Vekselberg, a controversial Russian billionaire investor with ties to Vladimir Putin and the Russian government, launder through Metcombank, a Russian regional bank owned 99.978 percent by Vekselberg, with the money transferred via Deutsche Bank and Trust Company Americas in New York City, with the money ending up in a private bank account in the Bank of America that is operated by the Clinton Foundation?

Wikileaks emails tie John Podesta, chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, into the money-laundering network with the confirmation Podesta had exercised 75,000 shares out of 100,000 previously undisclosed stock options he was secretly issued by Joule Unlimited, a U.S. corporation that ties back to Vekselberg connected Joule Global Stichting in the Netherlands – a shady entity identified in the Panama Papers as an offshore money-laundering client of the notorious Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

As a clear indication of guilty conscience, the Wikileaks Podesta file further documents that Podesta made a serious effort to keep the transaction from coming to light as evidenced by his decision to transfer 75,000 common shares of Joule Unlimited to Leonidio LLC, another shady shell corporation – this one listed in Salt Lake City at the home apartment of the gentlemen who registered the company.

Further research has documented that Viktor Vekselberg arranged for two transfers of unknown amounts to a private Clinton Foundation account in the Bank of America, with the funds passing though a pass-through account at Deutsche Bank and Trust Company Americas in New York City – with the first transfer made on Feb. 10, 2015, and the second on March 15, 2016.

Neither transaction shows up in any Clinton Foundation press releases or publicly disclosed financial statements.

Further research is that Viktor Vekselberg, in true Russian Mafia fashion, also owned Skolkovo, the Russian foundation set up to be a Silicon Valley counterpart Russia, designed to be Russia’s major player in the “reset” technology transfer scheme engineered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011.

Millions skimmed off Skolkovo in Russia

Russian news reports have documented that all Skolkovo Foundation money was deposited in Viktor Vekselberg’s Metcombank.

“Metcombank was the only commercial bank willing to accept the Foundation’s liquid assets in a bank account with the ability to immediately withdraw them without receiving a fine and with interest at a rate higher than the market average,” the Skolkovo Foundation http://rbth.com/news/2013/03/01/skolkov ... 23414.html said in statement made public in 2013.

That same year, Russian investigators analyzing Federal Security Service, FSB, data in Russia determined the Skolkovo Fund misappropriated 3.5 billion rubles (approximately $55 million) allotted from the Russian government’s budget for the Skolkovo technology cluster’s development – a sum that was documented to have disappeared after it was deposited with Metcombank.

In reporting the disappearance of these funds, the Russian media reported Cyprus-based Winterlux Ltd. holds nearly 100 percent in Metcombank registered in Kamensk-Uralsky, the Sverdlovsk region, and Winterlux is controlled by Vekselberg through a chain of other companies including Mendo Portfolio, Renova Industries, and Renova Holding – confirming that Vekselberg is the primary beneficiary of a chain of offshore corporations involved in international money laundering that stretch from Cyprus to the Bahamas, ending up in the British Virgin Islands.

It turns out http://www.ewdn.com/2013/03/04/skolkovo ... stigation/ that of the 31.6 billion rubles (approximately $1 billion) the Skolkovo Foundation received from the state budget from 2010 through October 2012, just 18.9 billion, or less than 60 percent, was actually spent.

Predictably, the Skolkovo Foundation, http://sk.ru/news/b/pressreleases/archi ... lkovo.aspx in an official statement, denied any wrongdoing, arguing that once Russian government budget funds are transferred to the Foundation, they can no longer be considered as budget means, such that the funds can be used in any way the Foundation deems legitimate, according to Russia’s budget code.

“Among the offers made [to the Skolkovo Foundation] by several banks, Metcombank’s terms were just unprecedented,” Skolkov Foundation’s Vice President for External Communications Alexander Chernov elaborated in an exchange with Kommersant, a nationally distributed newspaper published in Russia, dealing mainly with business and politics.

Metcombank provided a 5.65 percent interest rate when the average market average was around 4 percent. This permitted Chernov to argue as follows: “The extra-high rate allowed the Skolkovo Foundation to earn around 80 million rubles ($2.6 million) in interest, so what violations are we talking about?”

In April 2013, Russian government authorities raided Skolkovo, arresting executive Aleksey Belyukov for graft, in a move that clearly looked like a scapegoat had been found, https://www.rt.com/politics/vice-presid ... graft-932/ allowing the Skolkovo Foundation and Metcombank to continue their serendipitous relationship.

To date, the Russian government has not given an accounting what happened to the missing funds supposedly once deposited in the Skolkovo Foundation’s account at Metcombank

A Johnny Chung replay?

Between 1994 and 1996, Johnny Chung was a major player in Washington political finance and a star guest of the Bill Clinton White House, as a result of his donating some $366,000 to the Democratic National Committee, until it became public knowledge Chung’s funds traced back to military intelligence sources in the Chinese government.

What is suspicious about the Vekselberg connections to the Clintons and Podesta is not only Vekselberg’s generous donations to the Clinton Foundation but also his close ties to Russian military intelligence.

“Skolkovo’s link to the Russian military-intelligence apparatus is not in dispute,” noted the Government Accountability Institute’s http://www.g-a-i.org/u/2016/08/Report-S ... 012016.pdf report entitled “From Russia With Money: Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism,” issued in August this year.

The Government Accountability Institute report continued:

The U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth issued a report in 2013 (written in 2012) about the security implications of Skolkovo. The report declared that the purpose of Skolkovo was to serve as a “vehicle for worldwide technology transfer to Russia in the areas of information technology, biomedicine, energy, satellite and space technology, and nuclear technology.” Of course, technology can have multiple uses—both civilian and military. And the report noted that “the Skolkovo Foundation has, in fact, been involved in defense-related activities since December 2011, when it approved the first weapons-related project—the development of a hypersonic cruise missile engine.


Security expert and former National Security Analyst Agency analyst John R. Schindler picked up the theme http://observer.com/2016/08/hillarys-se ... nraveling/ in an article published in the Observer on Aug. 25, 2016, entitled “Hillary’s Secret kremlin Connection is Quickly Unraveling.”

“Schweizer shows that John Podesta sat on the board of a Dutch-registered company that took $35 million from the Kremlin [Joule, the same company from which Podesta got the undisclosed stock options],” Schindler wrote. “The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated—and for what—is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law.”

Schindler next turned his attention to Secretary of State Clinton.

“Even worse is how Clinton, Inc. profited from the Russian ‘reset’ that was one of the big achievements of Hillary’s tenure at Foggy Bottom,” Schindler continued. “Never mind that the reset was a disaster, culminating in Kremlin aggression against Ukraine. Hillary’s signature program at the State Department ended in unambiguous failure. Yet Clinton, Inc. did very well out of the temporary warming of relations with Moscow.”


Peter Schweizer, in his bestselling book entitled “Clinton Cash,” noted that of the 28 U.S., European, and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors or had hired former President Clinton to give speeches, concluding that Skolkovo benefactors ended up giving Clinton, Inc. somewhere between $6.5 million and $23.5 million – a figure that is indeterminate, and could yet be higher, because the Clinton Foundation has yet to reveal all its donors.

Finally, Schindler agreed Skolkovo was merely an extension of Russia’s military intelligence network.

“Therefore, it’s no surprise that Western intelligence considers Skolkovo to be an extension of Russia’s military-industrial complex—and its intelligence services,” Schindler wrote.

“A July 2013 unclassified study by U.S. European Command that surveyed Skolkovo activities http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/Collab ... olkovo.pdf suggested, in delicate language, that Russia’s Silicon Valley is ‘an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage,’” Schindler noted. “Stealing the West’s hi-tech secrets has long been a Kremlin forte, and Skolkovo is merely the newest effort to purloin our advanced technology.”
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Fri Nov 18, 2016 1:10 am

Hillary’s Secret Kremlin Connection Is Quickly Unraveling: Exactly how Clinton profited off deals with Skolkovo is something the American public has a right to know before November 8
by John R. Schindler
08/25/16

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Recent headlines have brought attention to the seedier side of Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state during President Obama’s first term. This scheme, which gives every appearance of being about pay-for-play, solicited donations from foreign big-shots in exchange for access to the boss of American foreign policy.

I’ll leave to others to assess the legality of this shady business—for now it’s the national security implications we need to discuss. It’s a big deal when the person who’s possibly our next president—and if polls are accurate, she probably will be—has sold access to foreign bidders before taking the oath of office. It’s especially worrisome when some of those foreigners are in Moscow.

I’ve previously explained how Donald Trump possesses unsavory Russian ties. He parrots Kremlin propaganda, his inner circle includes people on Moscow’s payroll, and top American intelligence officials have called him an “unwitting agent” of Vladimir Putin. This is a serious matter deserving close scrutiny.

Just as serious is how the Kremlin has forged links with nearly all the presidential candidates this year, not just Trump—so much so that, no matter who wins on November 8, Putin will, too. Hillary Clinton also possesses Moscow links that merit investigation. I’ve previously explained how Kremlin money found its way to the Podesta Group, the prominent Democratic lobbying firm that just happens to be headed by the brother of her campaign chairman, John Podesta (who co-founded the firm).

However, recent revelations indicate that Hillary’s dubious Kremlin ties go far deeper. A new report by Peter Schweizer, who’s spent years investigating the dubious and convoluted finances of Clinton, Inc., raises troubling questions about just how deep Hillary’s Moscow’s ties are—and whom exactly they’re with.

Schweizer shows that John Podesta sat on the board of a Dutch-registered company that took $35 million from the Kremlin. The company was a transparent Russian front, and how much Podesta was compensated—and for what—is unclear. In addition, Podesta failed to disclose his position on that board to the Federal government, as required by law.

‘In the old days, the KGB had to recruit spies to steal Western technology—now they do deals with you.’

Even worse is how Clinton, Inc. profited from the Russian “reset” that was one of the big achievements of Hillary’s tenure at Foggy Bottom. Never mind that the reset was a disaster, culminating in Kremlin aggression against Ukraine. Hillary’s signature program at the State Department ended in unambiguous failure. Yet Clinton, Inc. did very well out of the temporary warming of relations with Moscow.

As part of the reset, Hillary encouraged and enabled American and European investment in Russia, particularly in high-tech firms. A key role was played by the Skolkovo Innovation Center, a sprawling complex in Moscow’s western suburbs that was established in 2009 as Russia’s answer to Silicon Valley. With encouragement from the State Department, American companies jumped aboard. Cisco pledged $1 billion of investment in Skolkovo in 2010, and Google and Intel quickly joined the bandwagon. All three “just happened” to be major investors in the Clinton Foundation too.

This was the consistent pattern. As Schweizer explained, “Of the 28 U.S., European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or had hired former President Clinton to give speeches. How much money these Skolkovo benefactors gave to Clinton, Inc. cannot yet be determined, but Schweizer concluded that it’s somewhere between $6.5 million and $23.5 million, with the proviso that since the Clinton Foundation has yet to reveal all its donors, the true figure could be much higher.

Then there’s the matter of what Skolkovo actually is. In truth, it’s nothing like Silicon Valley except in outward appearance. It’s a fully state-driven enterprise—funded largely by the Kremlin and acting on its orders. It does the bidding of the Russian government, and President Putin has taken intense interest in his high-tech complex, understanding its value to the country’s defense and security sector.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that Western intelligence considers Skolkovo to be an extension of Russia’s military-industrial complex—and its intelligence services. A July 2013 unclassified study by U.S. European Command that surveyed Skolkovo activities suggested, in delicate language, that Russia’s Silicon Valley is “an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.” Stealing the West’s hi-tech secrets has long been a Kremlin forte, and Skolkovo is merely the newest effort to purloin our advanced technology.

The FBI was less guarded. In April 2014, in a rare public statement, the Bureau’s Boston field office warned American firms about dealings with Russian entities, naming the Skolkovo Foundation as a particular source of concern. Terming it “a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research, development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial applications,” the FBI added that Skolkovo had commercial contracts with Kamaz, a Russian defense firm that builds armored vehicles. “The FBI fears that Kamaz will provide Russia’s military with innovative research obtained from the Foundation’s U.S. partners,” warned the Bureau.

Then there’s the matter of Skolkovo’s links to Russian intelligence, particularly the powerful Federal Security Service or FSB. Schweizer dryly notes, “Skolkovo happens to be the site of the FSB’s security centers 16 and 18, which are in charge of information warfare for the Russian government.” This is the polite way of saying that some of Russia’s state-linked hackers are at Skolokovo. It’s more than a little ironic that the hackers who have pillaged the Democratic National Committee and stolen Hillary’s emails may be sitting in the very hi-tech compound that Clinton, Inc. helped Russia develop.

These assessments by the Pentagon, the FBI and Schweizer are unclassified. In private, Western security experts are less guarded. “It’s an obvious Kremlin front,” explained a Pentagon intelligence official about Skolkovo. “In the old days, the KGB had to recruit spies to steal Western technology, now they do deals with you. The theft is the same.”

One European intelligence official added that his country’s security service concluded, after close observation, that several top Skolkovo officials are actually FSB officers: “We’ve seen guys from Skolkovo acting like intelligence collectors, not tech entrepreneurs,” he elaborated.

In the heady days of the reset, back in Obama’s first term when America’s foreign policy establishment hoped to get on Vladimir Putin’s good side, perhaps helping Moscow develop its own Silicon Valley seemed like a good idea. However, Hillary Clinton should have been more careful about partnering with the Kremlin in a sector that’s so important to our national security.

Above all, Clinton, Inc’s shady pay-for-play scheme should have never made a buck off technology transfers to Russia’s military and intelligence services. Exactly how Hillary profited off deals with Skolkovo—and how much—is something the American public has a right to know before November 8.

John Schindler is a security expert and former National Security Agency analyst and counterintelligence officer. A specialist in espionage and terrorism, he’s also been a Navy officer and a War College professor. He’s published four books and is on Twitter at @20committee.
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Fri Nov 18, 2016 2:22 am

A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump: Has the bureau investigated this material?
by David Corn
October 31, 2016

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On Friday, FBI Director James Comey set off a political blast when he informed congressional leaders that the bureau had stumbled across emails that might be pertinent to its completed inquiry into Hillary Clinton's handling of emails when she was secretary of state. The Clinton campaign and others criticized Comey for intervening in a presidential campaign by breaking with Justice Department tradition and revealing information about an investigation—information that was vague and perhaps ultimately irrelevant—so close to Election Day. On Sunday, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante. He sent Comey a fiery letter saying the FBI chief may have broken the law and pointed to a potentially greater controversy: "In my communications with you and other top officials in the national security community, it has become clear that you possess explosive information about close ties and coordination between Donald Trump, his top advisors, and the Russian government…The public has a right to know this information."

Reid's missive set off a burst of speculation on Twitter and elsewhere. What was he referring to regarding the Republican presidential nominee? At the end of August, Reid had written to Comey and demanded an investigation of the "connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump's presidential campaign," and in that letter he indirectly referred to Carter Page, an American businessman cited by Trump as one of his foreign policy advisers, who had financial ties to Russia and had recently visited Moscow. Last month, Yahoo News reported that US intelligence officials were probing the links between Page and senior Russian officials. (Page has called accusations against him "garbage.") On Monday, NBC News reported that the FBI has mounted a preliminary inquiry into the foreign business ties of Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chief. But Reid's recent note hinted at more than the Page or Manafort affairs. And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump—and that the FBI requested more information from him.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer says. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."


Does this mean the FBI is investigating whether Russian intelligence has attempted to develop a secret relationship with Trump or cultivate him as an asset? Was the former intelligence officer and his material deemed credible or not? An FBI spokeswoman says, "Normally, we don't talk about whether we are investigating anything." But a senior US government official not involved in this case but familiar with the former spy tells Mother Jones that he has been a credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive, and important information to the US government.

In June, the former Western intelligence officer—who spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and who now works with a US firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients—was assigned the task of researching Trump's dealings in Russia and elsewhere, according to the former spy and his associates in this American firm. This was for an opposition research project originally financed by a Republican client critical of the celebrity mogul. (Before the former spy was retained, the project's financing switched to a client allied with Democrats.) "It started off as a fairly general inquiry," says the former spook, who asks not to be identified. But when he dug into Trump, he notes, he came across troubling information indicating connections between Trump and the Russian government. According to his sources, he says, "there was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."

This was, the former spy remarks, "an extraordinary situation." He regularly consults with US government agencies on Russian matters, and near the start of July on his own initiative—without the permission of the US company that hired him—he sent a report he had written for that firm to a contact at the FBI, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates, who asked not to be identified. (He declines to identify the FBI contact.) The former spy says he concluded that the information he had collected on Trump was "sufficiently serious" to share with the FBI.

Mother Jones has reviewed that report and other memos this former spy wrote. The first memo, based on the former intelligence officer's conversations with Russian sources, noted, "Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years. Aim, endorsed by PUTIN, has been to encourage splits and divisions in western alliance." It maintained that Trump "and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin, including on his Democratic and other political rivals." It claimed that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump during his visits to Moscow and could "blackmail him." It also reported that Russian intelligence had compiled a dossier on Hillary Clinton based on "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."

The former intelligence officer says the response from the FBI was "shock and horror." The FBI, after receiving the first memo, did not immediately request additional material, according to the former intelligence officer and his American associates. Yet in August, they say, the FBI asked him for all information in his possession and for him to explain how the material had been gathered and to identify his sources. The former spy forwarded to the bureau several memos—some of which referred to members of Trump's inner circle. After that point, he continued to share information with the FBI. "It's quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on," he says.

"This is something of huge significance, way above party politics," the former intelligence officer comments. "I think [Trump's] own party should be aware of this stuff as well."

The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment regarding the memos. In the past, Trump has declared, "I have nothing to do with Russia."

The FBI is certainly investigating the hacks attributed to Russia that have hit American political targets, including the Democratic National Committee and John Podesta, the chairman of Clinton's presidential campaign. But there have been few public signs of whether that probe extends to examining possible contacts between the Russian government and Trump. (In recent weeks, reporters in Washington have pursued anonymous online reports that a computer server related to the Trump Organization engaged in a high level of activity with servers connected to Alfa Bank, the largest private bank in Russia. On Monday, a Slate investigation detailed the pattern of unusual server activity but concluded, "We don't yet know what this [Trump] server was for, but it deserves further explanation." In an email to Mother Jones, Hope Hicks, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, maintains, "The Trump Organization is not sending or receiving any communications from this email server. The Trump Organization has no communication or relationship with this entity or any Russian entity.")

According to several national security experts, there is widespread concern in the US intelligence community that Russian intelligence, via hacks, is aiming to undermine the presidential election—to embarrass the United States and delegitimize its democratic elections. And the hacks appear to have been designed to benefit Trump. In August, Democratic members of the House committee on oversight wrote Comey to ask the FBI to investigate "whether connections between Trump campaign officials and Russian interests may have contributed to these [cyber] attacks in order to interfere with the US. presidential election." In September, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrats on, respectively, the Senate and House intelligence committees, issued a joint statement accusing Russia of underhanded meddling: "Based on briefings we have received, we have concluded that the Russian intelligence agencies are making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election. At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes of the election." The Obama White House has declared Russia the culprit in the hacking capers, expressed outrage, and promised a "proportional" response.

There's no way to tell whether the FBI has confirmed or debunked any of the allegations contained in the former spy's memos. But a Russian intelligence attempt to co-opt or cultivate a presidential candidate would mark an even more serious operation than the hacking.

In the letter Reid sent to Comey on Sunday, he pointed out that months ago he had asked the FBI director to release information on Trump's possible Russia ties. Since then, according to a Reid spokesman, Reid has been briefed several times. The spokesman adds, "He is confident that he knows enough to be extremely alarmed."
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Mon Nov 21, 2016 6:41 pm

Elevate Trump
by Tara Carreon
November 20, 2016

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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Tue Nov 22, 2016 6:00 am

Julian ASSANGE
by Afshin Rattansi
November 21, 2016



Afshin Rattansi goes underground with Julian Assange. We talk to the founder of Wikileaks about how his recent DNC leaks have no connection to Russia.

Excerpt:

[AFSHIN RATTANSI] Any Russian connections between Hillary Clinton and Russia? Any Russia connections there?

[JULIAN ASSANGE] Hillary Clinton has done quite well strategically to try and draw a connection between Trump and Russia, because she has so many connections of her own. Now, my analysis of Trump and Russia is that there is no substantial connection. Why do I say that? Because Trump was trying to invest in Russia before Putin in the 1990s. And after Putin. In fact, nearly all the way up to the present moment. And he’s had no success! He did not manage to build hotels and so on in Russia. So that shows how insubstantial his contacts are.

There’s an extremely well-documented pattern of when Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State, those people – companies, governments – who wanted a decision by the Secretary of State in their favor, making large donations to the Clinton Foundation, or in some other cases, business deals with the people around Hillary Clinton.

Now, one particular instance is the approval by Secretary Clinton of selling 20% of the U.S. uranium reprocessing rights to a Russian company to be exported to Russia. So at that time, a large donation was made by those Russian interests to the Clinton Foundation. In addition, Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, was on the board of a company named Joule Unlimited, and Joule Unlimited held some of these rights, and received a $ 35 million investment from Russia!

[AFSHIN RATTANSI] That’s a Russian government company?

[JULIAN ASANGE] And also, Russians were on the board also with Podesta.

[AFSHIN RATTANSI] So the kind of email revelations from Wikileaks reveal that Hillary Clinton is a Kremlin stooge?

[JULIAN ASANGE] I wouldn’t say “Kremlin Stooge,” but there is a much deeper connection on record with Hillary Clinton and Russia than we have with, that we are presently aware of with, Donald Trump.

[AFSHIN RATTANSI] Well, some journalists would argue that it’s actually the subject of the revelations that’s more interesting to the American voter about the election, while the media is fascinated whether the Kremlin is working with you, whether you work for the Kremlin, basically.

[JULIAN ASANGE] No, but I think it’s a genuine question you should ask the sources of information. The least, however, in case of Wikileaks publications. Why do I say that? Well, the principal reason why you want to know the source of some statement is to understand whether it’s true or not, even a big issue in the case of other media organizations who are simply making claims and not publishing original documents. I give you an example, a very, very interesting example.

I’ve done some research on the Turkish coup. Now, it’s not spoken about in the West, but within Turkey, the Turkish newspapers, are publishing elements of a theory that the United States was directly involved in the coup. The U.S. Intelligence backed Fethullah Gülen who is based in Pennsylvania as the head of the Gulen cult that has been implicated in the coup. In fact, according to the Turkish government, he is the leading actor in the coup.

[AFSHIN RATTANSI] He’s wanted by President Erdogan?

[JULIAN ASANGE] Yes, and he put out extradition requests. But one of the key independent points of evidence, not coming from interrogation in Turkey where people might have been placed under duress, is that in the middle of the coup, NBC published that Erdogan was on his way to Germany to seek asylum. And they say this was told to them by a U.S. military source. So what the hell is going on there? Because that went all the way around the world, and was used to further the chances of success of the coup within Turkey, because if the president has fled, then he’s lost control.
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Mon Dec 12, 2016 5:58 am

Intelligence figures fear Trump reprisals over assessment of Russia election role
by Spencer Ackerman in New York
@attackerman
Sunday 11 December 2016

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• Wyden: CIA, agencies and Congress must ‘guard against political pressure’
• Rex Tillerson: appointment that would confirm Putin’s US election win

Legislators overseeing the CIA and other intelligence agencies have told the Guardian they will be vigilant about reprisals from Donald Trump over an internal assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to ensure Trump’s victory.

Fears of retaliation rose within US intelligence agencies over a tense weekend that saw Trump publicly dismiss not only the assessment but the basic competence of the intelligence apparatus.

“When the president-elect’s transition team is attempting to discredit the entire intelligence community [IC], it has never been more important for the IC and Congress to guard against possible political pressure or retaliation against intelligence analysts,” Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, told the Guardian.

Like his Democratic colleagues on the panel, Wyden is pressing Barack Obama for additional public disclosures revealing Russian electoral interference. Such pressure has placed the CIA and other intelligence agencies between the incoming president to whom they will soon answer and a chorus of legislators, mostly but not exclusively Democrats, who consider the Russia hack a national emergency.

It is not possible to gauge precisely how deep fears of retaliation run within the intelligence world. Two currently serving intelligence officers told the Guardian this weekend they had not heard their colleagues express such concerns.

One noted that civil-service laws prevented Trump from launching a purge, but also called attention to a report that Trump is combing through the energy department bureaucracy to identify people “who have attended climate change policy conferences”.

Former intelligence officers told the Guardian they considered retaliation by Trump to be all but a certainty after he is sworn into office next month. Trump still has several appointments to make at the highest levels of the intelligence apparatus, picks which are likely to be bellwethers for the new president’s attitudes toward the agencies.

There is not just smoke here. There is a 10-alarm fire, the sirens are wailing, the Russians provided the lighter fluid
Glenn Carle, former CIA officer


“There is not just smoke here. There is a blazing 10-alarm fire, the sirens are wailing, the Russians provided the lighter fluid, and Trump is standing half-burnt and holding a match,” said Glenn Carle, a retired CIA officer and interrogator.

“The facts hurt, Trump won’t like the truth, and he will without question seek to destroy those individuals or organizations that say or do anything that he thinks harm his precious grandiosity.”

After congressional Democrats called for additional briefings and public disclosures about an intelligence consensus that Russia made a deliberate decision to intervene in the election, Barack Obama ordered a new review of the evidence.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that intelligence sources believe the Russians decided to penetrate the Democratic National Committee’s digital networks with the goal of aiding Trump, not merely to spread uncertainty about the outcome of the election.

In response, Trump attacked the credibility of the intelligence agencies on which he will rely for early warning of security emergencies and geopolitical developments. His transition team said in a statement: “These are the same people who said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said Trump “cannot abide the idea that Russian hacking helped his campaign” and was lashing out in a manner that undermined confidence in his handling of intelligence.

“If Trump is willing to disregard sound intelligence now, and demean the hard-working and patriotic Americans who produced it, I fear what he will do as president when confronted with unpleasant truths,” Schiff said.

“Will he accept the best insights of our agencies, or punish them for daring to contradict his assumptions?”

Trump’s clash with the CIA comes at a moment of acute turmoil within intelligence circles. Obama officials jeopardized the tenure of National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers in a seemingly thwarted bureaucratic reorganization of the US surveillance and cybersecurity apparatus. Congressional sources have told the Guardian they expect to hold a public hearing on the issue in January.

Should Trump go through with the reshuffle, it will leave him appointing an NSA director as well as a director of national intelligence, after James Clapper announced his resignation last month. Trump has also been noncommittal about retaining the FBI director, James Comey, whose bureau houses significant sympathy for Trump.

Congressional Republicans are in an uncomfortable position, between a president of their own party and Russia, a traditional adversary.

Devin Nunes, a California Republican who chairs the House intelligence committee, said on Saturday Russian electoral hacking was “no surprise”. He also blamed Obama for coming late to the threat out of “delusions of ‘resetting’ relations with Russia” – a policy that Trump is also pursuing.

On Sunday, anti-Trump GOP hawks Lindsey Graham and John McCain offered a different path, joining with leading Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed to plead for a bipartisan inquiry into the alleged Russian hacking, which they said endangered the country.

“We have an obligation to inform the public about recent cyberattacks that have cut to the heart of our free society,” the senators said in a joint statement.

“Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks.”

Also on Sunday, Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat on the investigations-heavy House oversight committee, pressured the Republican committee chairman, Jason Chaffetz, and speaker of the house Paul Ryan to “join us now in our effort to launch a robust and truly bipartisan investigation of Russian interference in our election that puts our nation’s interests over the interests of any political party”.

Carle, the retired CIA officer, said Trump’s temperament had played into Russia’s hands and put the president-elect on a collision course with the CIA.

He said: “Look, in my professional assessment as an intelligence officer, Trump has a reflexive, defensive, monumentally narcissistic personality, for whom the facts and national interest are irrelevant, and the only thing that counts is whatever gives personal advantage and directs attention to himself.

“He is about the juiciest intelligence target an intelligence office could imagine. He groans with vulnerabilities. He will only work with individuals or entities that agree with him and build him up, and he is a shockingly easy intelligence ‘target’ to manipulate.”

Were Trump an intelligence officer himself, Carle said, “he would be removed and possibly charged with having accepted the clandestine support of a hostile power to the harm of the United States”.

A senior intelligence official who was not cleared to talk to reporters supported the push to declassify additional material on the “serious matter” of the alleged Russian electoral interference, since “it happened on our watch”.
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:09 am

OPEN LETTER FROM MILITARY LEADERS
September 6, 2016

The 2016 election affords the American people an urgently needed opportunity to make a
long-overdue course correction in our national security posture and policy. As retired senior
leaders of America’s military, we believe that such a change can only be made by someone who
has not been deeply involved with, and substantially responsible for, the hollowing out of our
military and the burgeoning threats facing our country around the world. For this reason, we
support Donald Trump’s candidacy to be our next Commander-in-Chief.

For the past eight years, America’s armed forces have been subjected to a series of ill-considered
and debilitating budget cuts, policy choices and combat operations that have left the
superb men and women in uniform less capable of performing their vital missions in the future
than we require them to be.

Simultaneously, enemies of this country have been emboldened, sensing weakness and
irresolution in Washington and opportunities for aggression at our expense and that of other
freedom-loving nations.

In our professional judgment, the combined effect is potentially extremely perilous. That
is especially the case if our government persists in the practices that have brought us to this
present pass.

For this reason, we support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to
secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order
domestically. We urge our fellow Americans to do the same.

1. General Burwell B. Bell III, US Army, Retired
2. General Alfred G. Hansen, US Air Force, Retired
3. Admiral Jerry Johnson, US Navy, Retired
4. General Crosbie “Butch” Saint, US Army, Retired
5. Lieutenant General William G. Boykin, US Army, Retired
6. Lieutenant General Marvin Covault, US Army, retired
7. Lieutenant General Gordon E, Fornell, US Air Force, Retired
8. Lieutenant General Harley Hughes, US Air Force, Retired
9. Lieutenant General Thomas McInerney, US Air Force, Retired
10. Lieutenant General Timothy A. Kinnan, US Air Force, Retired
11. Lieutenant General Hugh G. Smith, US Army, Retired
12. Lieutenant General David J. Teal, US Air Force, Retired
13. Lieutenant General William E. Thurman, US Air Force, Retired
14. Vice Admiral Mike Bucchi, US Navy, Retired
15. Vice Admiral Edward Clexton, Jr. US Navy, Retired
16. Vice Admiral R.F. Schoultz, US Navy, Retired
17. Vice Admiral Donald Thompson, US Coast Guard, Retired
18. Vice Admiral Jerry Unruh, US Navy, Retired
19. Major General Joe Arbuckle, US Army, Retired
20. Major General John Bianchi, CSMR, Retired
21. Major General Henry D. Canterbury, US Air Force, Retired
22. Major General Jeffrey Cliver, US Air Force, Retired
23. Major General Tommy F. Crawford, US Air Force, Retired
24. Major General Felix Dupre, US Air Force, Retired
25. Major General Neil Eddins, US Air Force, Retired
26. Major General David W. Eidsaune, US Air Force, Retired
27. Major General William A. Gorton, US Air Force, Retired
28. Major General Kenneth Hagemann, US Air Force, Retired
29. Major General Gary L. Harrell, US Army, Retired
30. Major General Geoffrey Higginbothan, US Marine Corps, Retired
31. Major General John D. Logeman, Jr., US Air Force, Retired
32. Major General Homer S. Long, US Army, Retired
33. Major General Billy McCoy, US Air Force, Retired
34. Major General Robert Messerli, US Air Force, Retired
35. Major General John Miller, US Air Force, Retired
36. Major General Ray O’Mara, US Air Force, Retired
37. Major General George W.“Nordie” Norwood, US Air Force, Retired
38. Major General Robert W. Paret, US Air Force MC, Retired
39. Major General James W. Parker, US Army, Retired
40. Major General Richard Perraut, US Air Force, Retired
41. Major General Sidney Shachnow, US Army, Retired
42. Major General Mark Solo, US Air Force, Retired
43. Major General John Welde, US Air Force, Retired
44. Major General Kenneth W. Weir, US Marine Corps, Retired
45. Rear Admiral Phillip Anselmo, US Navy, Retired
46. Rear Admiral Thomas F. Brown III, US Navy, Retired
47. Rear Admiral Robert C. Crates, SC, US Navy, Retired
48. Rear Admiral Mimi Drew, US Navy, Retired
49. Rear Admiral Ernest Elliot, SC, US Navy, Retired
50. Rear Admiral James H. Flatley III, US Navy, Retired
51. Rear Admiral Byron Fuller, US Navy, Retired
52. Rear Admiral Dale Hagen, US Navy, Retired
53. Rear Admiral Charles F. Horne III US Navy, Retired
54. Rear Admiral Grady L. Jackson, US Navy, Retired
55. Rear Admiral J. Adrian Jackson, US Navy, Retired
56. Rear Admiral Frederick C. Johnson, US Navy, Retired
57. Rear Admiral Jack Kavanaugh, SC, US Navy, Retired
58. Rear Admiral Charles R.Kubic, US Navy, Retired
59. Rear Admiral Rich Landolt, US Navy, Retired
60. Rear Admiral William J. McDaniel, MD, US Navy, Retired
61. Rear Admiral E.S. McGinley II, US Navy, Retired
62. Rear Admiral Douglas M. Moore Jr. SC US Navy. Retired
63. Rear Admiral John A. Moriarty, US Navy, Retired
64. Rear Admiral David R. Morris, US Navy, Retired
65. Rear Admiral Ed Nelson, US Coast Guard, Retired
66. Rear Admiral Philip R. Olsen, US Navy, Retired
67. Rear Admiral Robert S. Owens, US Navy, Retired
68. Rear Admiral W.W. Pickavance, Jr., US Navy, Retired
69. Rear Admiral Leonard F. Picotte, US Navy, Retired
70. Rear Admiral Brian C. Prindle, US Navy, Retired
71. Rear Admiral William J. Ryan, US Navy, Retired
72. Rear Admiral William L. Schachte, Jr., US Navy JAGC, Retired
73. Rear Admiral William R. Schmidt, US Navy, Retired
74. Rear Admiral Hugh P. Scott, US Navy, MC, Retired
75. Rear Admiral Gregory Slavonic, US Navy, Retired
76. Rear Admiral Charles Williams, US Navy, Retired
77. Rear Admiral H. Denny Wisely, US Navy, Retired
78. Brigadier General Remo Butler, US Army, Retired
79. Brigadier General George P. Cole, Jr. US Air Force, Retired
80. Brigadier General Philip M. Drew, US Air Force, Retired
81. Brigadier General Jerome V. Foust, US Army, Retired
82. Brigadier General Thomas W. Honeywill, US Air Force, Retired
83. Brigadier General Charles Jones, US Air Force, Retired
84. Brigadier General Mike D. Jones, US Army, Retired
85. Brigadier General Thomas J. Lennon, US Air Force, Retired
86. Brigadier General Mark D. Scraba, US Army, Retired
87. Brigadier General Hugh B. Tant III, US Army, Retired
88. Brigadier General Robert F. Titus, US Air Force, Retired
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Mon Dec 12, 2016 11:01 pm

With Saudi and Russian ties, Clinton machine’s tentacles are far reaching, according to Panama Papers
by Ben Norton
April 8, 2016

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A key gear in the Clinton machine that has sucked in hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying on behalf of the Saudi absolute monarchy has also worked for Russia’s biggest bank.

The Podesta Group is one of the most influential Democratic Party-linked lobbyists in the U.S. And it is headed by a top Hillary Clinton fundraiser who has been referred to as the “Hillary moneyman.”

Sberbank, the largest financial institution in Eastern Europe, hired the Podesta Group to help powder up its public image, The Observer reports.

This is just one of the many findings in the so-called Panama Papers, a trove of 11.5 million documents that expose how political and economic elites from around the planet are stashing their money in secretive tax havens.

In March, the Podesta Group registered with the U.S. government as a lobbyist for Sberbank.

The bank plays an enormous role in the Russian economy. It controls almost 30 percent of Russia’s aggregate banking assets
, employs a quarter-million people and “is functionally an arm of the Kremlin, although it’s ostensibly a private institution,” The Observer notes.

Many right-wing publications and neoconservative figures have jumped on this story in hopes of trying to tie the Clintons to Russian President Vladimir Putin, the preferred trumped up bogeyman in the U.S. establishment today.

Hillary Clinton herself is not directly implicated, just one of her biggest campaign bundlers. What is more important about the story, however, is not that it exposes some kind of nefarious Russian plot — as questionable “NSA spook” author John Schindler appears to suggest with Cold War-esque hand-wringing in his Observer article — but rather that the Clinton machine is ultimately loyal to the dollar and to the dollar alone.

In this political universe, the biggest bank in Russia — a U.S. enemy — is joined by the theocratic dictatorship in Saudi Arabia — a close U.S. ally.

The Podesta Group has a hefty contract with the Saudi regime, for which the firm provides “public relations” services on behalf of King Salman’s royal court.

Saudi Arabia paid the Podesta Group an initial “project fee” of $200,000, along with unspecified further payment, according to documents filed with the Justice Department Foreign Agents Registration Act office.

Tony Podesta, CEO of the Podesta Group, co-founded the public affairs firm in 1998 with his brother John, himself a prominent Clinton operative.

John Podesta has played a variety of roles in the Clinton machine. He served as chief of staff under President Bill Clinton, and is now the chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Prominent Democrat Party-aligned Washington think tank the Center for American Progress was also founded by John Podesta, who was its first president.

The Panama Papers reveal a bit more about the Saudi royal family, which has used a series of British Virgin Islands shell companies to take out at least $34 million worth of mortgages for houses in London and “a luxury yacht the length of a football field.”

The Podesta Group is by no means the only D.C.-based lobbying firm that shills for the Saudis. A slew of other Washington lobbyists join the Podesta Group in working on behalf of the theocratic Saudi regime, which governs according to a strict, fundamentalist interpretation of Islamic law; funds and exports extremism throughout the world; regularly beheads dissidents; and refuses to grant basic rights to women.

At the 2016 Summit on Saudi Arabia, the first international conference to challenge the U.S. relationship with the Saudi regime, Saudi human rights lawyer Abdulaziz al-Hussan recalled that, when he worked as a human rights lobbyist in the West, he was constantly “depressed by how nobody wanted to say anything about human rights in Saudi, because of all the money.”

Al-Hussan condemned “hypocrite governments in the West, who support the violation of human rights for business interests.”


Yet the Podesta Group is by no means the only part of the Clinton machine with ties to Saudi Arabia.

The Saudi regime is one the largest donors to the Clinton Foundation. It has poured between $10 million and $25 million into the organization, which has been accused of carrying out an international money laundering scheme.

Perhaps most egregious of all, huge arms deals approved by Hillary Clinton’s State Department also happened to place weapons in the hands of governments that donated money to the Clinton Foundation — including the autocratic Gulf regimes in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — an investigation the International Business Times found.

Moreover, Bill Clinton has garnered enormous fees for speeches in Saudi Arabia, investigative reporter Michael Isikoff points out, including $600,000 for two talks while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state.

In his report on the Clinton machine’s ties to Saudi Arabia, Isikoff also notes that two “of the Clinton lobbyist-bundlers, Richard Sullivan and David Jones, are principals in a firm that, until late last year, represented the Russia Direct Investment Fund, a sovereign wealth fund co-founded by Vladimir Putin when he was prime minister.”

All of these actors are moving parts in the enormous Clinton machine, which has its tentacles everywhere, and — as journalist Matt Taibbi infamously wrote of Goldman Sachs — “relentlessly jams its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Ben Norton is a politics reporter and staff writer at Salon. You can find him on Twitter at @BenjaminNorton.
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Re: Clinton Journalist Has Meltdown After His Russian Conspi

Postby admin » Tue Dec 13, 2016 7:34 am

The CIA’s Absence of Conviction
by Craig Murray
11 Dec, 2016

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I have watched incredulous as the CIA’s blatant lie has grown and grown as a media story – blatant because the CIA has made no attempt whatsoever to substantiate it. There is no Russian involvement in the leaks of emails showing Clinton’s corruption. Yes this rubbish has been the lead today in the Washington Post in the US and the Guardian here, and was the lead item on the BBC main news. I suspect it is leading the American broadcasts also.

A little simple logic demolishes the CIA’s claims. The CIA claim they “know the individuals” involved. Yet under Obama the USA has been absolutely ruthless in its persecution of whistleblowers, and its pursuit of foreign hackers through extradition. We are supposed to believe that in the most vital instance imaginable, an attempt by a foreign power to destabilise a US election, even though the CIA knows who the individuals are, nobody is going to be arrested or extradited, or (if in Russia) made subject to yet more banking and other restrictions against Russian individuals? Plainly it stinks. The anonymous source claims of “We know who it was, it was the Russians” are beneath contempt.

As Julian Assange has made crystal clear, the leaks did not come from the Russians. As I have explained countless times, they are not hacks, they are insider leaks – there is a major difference between the two. And it should be said again and again, that if Hillary Clinton had not connived with the DNC to fix the primary schedule to disadvantage Bernie, if she had not received advance notice of live debate questions to use against Bernie, if she had not accepted massive donations to the Clinton foundation and family members in return for foreign policy influence, if she had not failed to distance herself from some very weird and troubling people, then none of this would have happened.

The continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

I had a call from a Guardian journalist this afternoon. The astonishing result was that for three hours, an article was accessible through the Guardian front page which actually included the truth among the CIA hype:

The Kremlin has rejected the hacking accusations, while the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has previously said the DNC leaks were not linked to Russia. A second senior official cited by the Washington Post conceded that intelligence agencies did not have specific proof that the Kremlin was “directing” the hackers, who were said to be one step removed from the Russian government.

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”

“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

“If what the CIA are saying is true, and the CIA’s statement refers to people who are known to be linked to the Russian state, they would have arrested someone if it was someone inside the United States.


“America has not been shy about arresting whistleblowers and it’s not been shy about extraditing hackers. They plainly have no knowledge whatsoever.”


But only three hours. While the article was not taken down, the home page links to it vanished and it was replaced by a ludicrous one repeating the mad CIA allegations against Russia and now claiming – incredibly – that the CIA believe the FBI is deliberately blocking the information on Russian collusion. Presumably this totally nutty theory, that Putin is somehow now controlling the FBI, is meant to answer my obvious objection that, if the CIA know who it is, why haven’t they arrested somebody. That bit of course would be the job of the FBI, who those desperate to annul the election now wish us to believe are the KGB.

It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

In the UK, one single article sums up the total abnegation of all journalistic standards. The truly execrable Jonathan Freedland of the Guardian writes “Few credible sources doubt that Russia was behind the hacking of internal Democratic party emails, whose release by Julian Assange was timed to cause maximum pain to Hillary Clinton and pleasure for Trump.” Does he produce any evidence at all for this assertion? No, none whatsoever. What does a journalist mean by a “credible source”? Well, any journalist worth their salt in considering the credibility of a source will first consider access. Do they credibly have access to the information they claim to have?

Now both Julian Assange and I have stated definitively the leak does not come from Russia. Do we credibly have access? Yes, very obviously. Very, very few people can be said to definitely have access to the source of the leak. The people saying it is not Russia are those who do have access. After access, you consider truthfulness. Do Julian Assange and I have a reputation for truthfulness? Well in 10 years not one of the tens of thousands of documents WikiLeaks has released has had its authenticity successfully challenged. As for me, I have a reputation for inconvenient truth telling.

Contrast this to the “credible sources” Freedland relies on. What access do they have to the whistleblower? Zero. They have not the faintest idea who the whistleblower is. Otherwise they would have arrested them. What reputation do they have for truthfulness? It’s the Clinton gang and the US government, for goodness sake.

In fact, the sources any serious journalist would view as “credible” give the opposite answer to the one Freedland wants. But in what passes for Freedland’s mind, “credible” is 100% synonymous with “establishment”. When he says “credible sources” he means “establishment sources”. That is the truth of the “fake news” meme. You are not to read anything unless it is officially approved by the elite and their disgusting, crawling whores of stenographers like Freedland.

The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.
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