Mr. Lucas, Don’t Take Your Readers for Fools! by Prof. Vladimir Golstein

Mr. Lucas, Don’t Take Your Readers for Fools! by Prof. Vladimir Golstein

So Edward Lucas, the columnist at The Times, the long time contributor to the notoriously Russophobic Economist and the author of 2008 The New Cold War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West, where he fully exhibits his own paranoia about the dangers of Putin’s Russia, has came up with a new theological and cultural diagnosis. Paranoia is the religion of Putin’s Russia. Not communism, not capitalism, not Orthodoxy, not atheism. Just plain old paranoia.

Why, and how? Argument number #1 is that RT has put him on the list of ten top Russophobes. Lucas’ complaint: the list is haphazard and flimsy. Fine, any list is haphazard and flimsy – it just points to some people or organizations that like to come up with ridiculous charges and accusations, not dissimilar from his own “academic” investigations. So what? Having never produced anything academic himself, Mr. Lucas can’t expect any academic study from RT, can he?


Argument #2. Mr. Lucas had found an academic study to his liking — Ilya Yablokov’s Fortress Russia — that discovered that Russian conspiracy theorists, who were on the margins in the 1990s have come to the forefront in the current situation. Yablokov has studied Russian TV and found its style paranoid. Yablokov’s conclusion: the US is a paranoid Empire to be sure, but mainstream TV does not usually cater to it, as opposed to the mainstream Russian TV. Maybe, even though CNN and Fox would surely provide serious competition.

Without any desire to defend the rather combative style of Russian TV talk shows where guests clash, fight, and play the roles assigned to them by the hosts, I am certain that these shows do address real foreign policy concerns. Any detached observer looking at the map and seeing NATO bases all around Russia is bound to ask questions. Any detached observer listening to Western news and hearing the endless bacchanalia of Russia this, Russia that, is bound to get nervous. Any detached observer, having witnessed endless the West’s bombing campaigns, wars, invasions, regime changes, mass migrations and destruction, is bound to get a bit edgy about western intentions. And it would not be paranoia. It would be plain common sense.

And what about Russian history? Hasn’t the country been invaded again and again throughout its history? The latest invasion, that of Nazi Germany, is still remembered by all Russians, since one can hardly find a family that did not lose someone in that awful war. Last time Germans and Ukrainians got together, my relatives were brutally murdered in Kiev, mowed downed – along with thousands others in Babi Yar. So even living in the United States, I do get nervous when Ukrainians, helped by their European admirers, burn people in Odessa. Genetic memory is a stubborn thing, you know. So can you really blame Russians for getting a bit anxious about the events in Ukraine, Mr. Lucas, or as the happy denizen of the murderous British Empire, that one that killed, burned, shot, and starved others, you can’t imagine what fears of prosecution are actually all about?

Wait a minute, says Mr. Lucas. “German Unification, EU and NATO enlargement, Ukrainian independence”: These recent events on the borders of Russia — are haphazard. There never was a master plan. Well, if it looks like a duck, and acts like a duck, it has to be a duck. In fact, there are rarely master plans for anything, unless we are talking about Hillary’s campaign to justify her spectacular loss of 2016 presidential campaign. What we’re witnessing, however, is the plain old confluence of interests and appetites that results in wars, sanctions and invasions. Just read some basic history, Mr. Lucas, before you present yourself as the heroic conspiracy theories slayer.


Argument # 3. Russians do a lot of mischief to themselves: corruption, bribes, oligarchs. That’s for sure. But so what? Russian corruption is bad, and one hopes that Russians will get rid of it. But it does not mean there are no countries that want to invade and loot the place, and squeeze away local oligarchs. Even paranoid people have enemies, as the maxim goes. There’s plenty to steal in Russia. Do you think, Mr. Lucas, that western oligarchs want to leave it all to Russians? Don’t underestimate your own sponsors. They don’t like it.

Furthermore, oligarchs and corruption are rampart in Great Britain and US, and still these countries are running on paranoia and arming themselves to the teeth. And what about Poland, the Baltic States, Ukraine – the countries that do indeed thrive on paranoia? But their paranoia fits western narratives, so it’s “our kind of paranoia.” As opposed to Russian paranoia, which is obviously a wrong kind of paranoia. What about the paranoia of the trigger-happy Israel, which manifests itself in endless violence and military excursions against its neighbours? So Israel has Judaism for religion, Poles have Catholicism, but Russians have Paranoia. A strange doctrine, and new.

 And then, Lucas totally reverses himself, and says – that the west should not stoke Russia’s siege mentality by a military build up on its borders and endless provocations. Finally! Lucas dares to rise to the occasion and criticize the West … but we rapidly learn why. This righteous indignation is provoked by Trump’s and Bolton’s proposal to withdraw from the INF treaty. But even this criticism is turned on its head. This new arms race is bad, because it will help Russia to “crack down, lash out and make it look more important than it is.”

In other words, NATO countries should not place their war-heads in Roumania or Poland, they should not claim that they could actually win a nuclear war (something that only American theoreticians, including former Secretary of Defense, Ash Carter, do) – they should not do any of those things because these actions will make Russians think that they are more important than they are. That would be a really dangerous case of paranoia. Much more dangerous than the destruction of life on earth as we know it.


But Lucas does not stop there; playing the role of Candide must be way too enjoyable. He claims that compiling the list of “Russophobes” is a “childish bad habit” – never mind the Magnitsky list, nor plenty of other lists compiled by the State Department, the Mueller investigation, social media police and numerous other western outlets, whose endless lists still can’t satisfy the lust for more and more sanctions against more and more individuals. Those lists are the sign of profound maturity, no doubt.
And in a true demagogic fashion, Lucas concludes: we’ve been paying too much attention to “nasty but grand Russians.” We should celebrate Russia’s “colossal contribution to world culture.” Oh, so Russia is important after all. How refreshing. Let’s wipe Russia off the map with nukes, and then enjoy Russian ballet at Covent Garden or Russian novels in their BBC adaptations.

Source: https://off-guardian.org/2018/10/25/mr-lucas-dont-take-your-readers-for-fools/?fbclid=IwAR0_JZK9AWAo587C45e5vKgiCS1lITZYsWv1ZcvrKPRCCLvhbD9kXzWTgos

Related: Guy Mettan’s Book on Russophobia Is a “Must Read” for Any Person Interested in Russia 

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How the UN Joined America’s War Against Syria by Eric Zuesse

America has been at war to transfer control of Syria over to the Saud family, who own Saudi Arabia; and America has been trying to do this ever since the first of the CIA’s coups against Syria failed in 1949. But only during the U.S. Presidency of Barack Obama did the United Nations become a tool in this American enterprise.

Obama entered the White House in 2009 secretly hoping to be able to overthrow Syria’s Government; and when the CIA-assisted “Arab Spring” uprisings in the Arab world started flowering in 2011, the U.S. Government had the important U.N. operatives fully on-board assisting the U.S. Government to assist this overthrow — to hand Syria to the Sauds (the Sauds being America’s most important international ally, and the world’s richest family) to control.

By the time of June 2011, the Obama State Department, under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was already deep into planning the overthrow not only of Syria’s Government (planning the international recruitment of jihadists to do that), but of Ukraine’s Government (planning international recruitment of nazis to do that).

Related: Dr. Paul Craig Roberts: "Truth Is Evaporating Before Our Eyes"



Although the common view is that America’s main allies are European, that viewpoint is no longer true. Today’s America is allied mainly with the Sauds, and with Israel, which latter is the Sauds’ chief lobbying arm both in North America and in Europe, because Christian-majority populations are far more sympathetic to Jews than to Moslems. For a politician to be publicly sympathetic to Jews is much better for a politician than for him/her to be publicly sympathetic to Muslims. So, Israel carries the Sauds’ lobbying water, not only their own.

On 3 December 2011 (near the end of the year when the “Arab Spring” started), the independent investigative journalist Sibel Edmonds headlined “US Media: Distorters of Reality & Gravediggers of Truth”, and she reported:

Follow Up — The Continued Blackout on West’s Secret Training & Support Camp in Turkey for War on Syria

12 days ago, on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April-May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I had received the information for that story from multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US…

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites — still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM [Main Stream Media] first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared.”

I was the last resort. … This goes down as one more example of very many cases of intentional, willful censorship by the US mainstream media and their so-many-times-proven role as distorters of reality and gravediggers of the truth.

Keeping the “MSM” on-board was likewise something that went back as far as the CIA’s “Operation Mockingbird” had started in 1948 with the cooperation of all of the United States’ mainstream ‘news’-media, and of virtually all of the ‘alternative’ news-media.

Related: [Video] Deep State Is A Parallel Government Working Against America

The case against the latter, the ‘alternative’ media, was documented by Stuart Jeanne Bramhall here and here; and by me here; with both of us relying heavily upon the encyclopedic researches from Bob Feldman, who is the major historian of the corruptness of almost all of America’s ‘progressive’ ‘news’ media — the present medium being obviously among the few exceptions that actually is progressive, and this article is simultaneously distributed to all media, so all media have been invited to publish it.

The corruptness of self-declared conservative ‘news’-media is virtually automatic, since their chief function is to aggrandize the aristocracy — doing that is what defines them; they are clearly doing what they are paid to do, whereas the non-conservative media need to use subterfuges to do it, in order for them to seem to be supportive of the poor, which conservative media don’t even pretend to support.

Trump to U.N.: "We Reject the Ideology of Globalism"

Right and left, America’s ‘news’-media are loaded with rot — especially regarding foreign countries, including Syria. Here are a few CIA documents from 2012 showing how obsequiously American ‘journalists’ respect and adhere to their CIA minders.

Aristocrats everywhere do business internationally and have much more of a personal interest in foreign relations than does the average person; so, lying about international relations is especially important to them, in order to control the masses on these matters, matters which aristocrats are especially determined to control. The aristocracy are the people who determine which nations are “allies” and which nations are “enemies.” The public don’t control that.

This is why the CIA, which is an agency of the U.S. aristocracy, has at least all of the mainstream ‘news’-media trumpeting their lies on foreign affairs. Aristocrats control their country’s foreign policies. Their international corporations demand this control, and tell the politicians what to do in foreign matters. The ‘news’-media provide the back-up for the politicians’ lies.

They’re all on the same team, the aristocracy’s team.

They all are agents for the aristocracy, against the public — and not only against whichever foreign aristocracies are labeled “enemy” nations (i.e., as being suitable targets for the given aristocracy’s military — places where the U.S. aristocracy’s weapons-manufacturing corporations such as Lockheed Martin don’t sell their wares but instead upon which those wares are to be used, as targets, the opposite end of the international weapons-trade from the “allies,” which are the markets-side, instead of the targets-side).

Related: [Video] Deep State Blocks Key FISA Docs Release!

International relations is relations between aristocracies. The publics are ignored.
So, if democracy exists anywhere or at all, then it exists only in regards to domestic issues. However, studies have shown that even on domestic issues, the U.S. Government ignores the U.S. public — the U.S. is totally an aristocracy; it’s no democracy at all, not even on domestic issues, such as Medicare-for-all.

That’s the reason why Sibel Edmonds found herself to be a “last resort.” That was a euphemism referring actually to a dead-end for the important news — for the type of news that would have contradicted the Obama Administration’s infamous joyous lie-based “We came, we saw, he died!” (the Libya case), and now the follow-on invasion and destruction of Syria.

Trump continues Obama’s aggressions; he doesn’t end them. It doesn’t make much difference whom the occupant of the White House is, at least not regarding foreign relations, because the same aristocracy remains in control of U.S. foreign relations, even though that might be a different faction of this aristocracy — Obama representing the liberal billionaires, and Trump representing some of the conservative ones, but they are different segments of the same aristocracy; nobody in such a Government represents the public.

Here’s how psychopathic the U.S.-and allied aristocracies are:

A video shows at 2:18 that it was taken on “27/11/2012,” and it’s titled, “EMIR OF QATAR AND PRIME MINISTER OF TURKEY STEAL SYRIAN OIL EXCAVATORS – ENGLISH SUBTITLES”. Both Qatar’s Emir and Turkey’s Prime Minister are enormously wealthy individuals, but they wanted still more.

Both were there using their being heads-of-state so as to assist not only their own wealth but America’s and Europe’s aristocracies to steal and sell oil and oil-well equipment from the Syrian public — from Syrians’ Government — for the benefits not only of those aristocrats but also of Al Qaeda and of ISIS (two jihadist groups trying to overthrow Syria’s Government).

As Syrian News reported this, on 28 November 2012, “Emir of Qatar & Muslim Brotherhood Prime Minister of Turkey send their Al Qaeda FSA terrorists to Syria to destroy the country, kill the people and destroy whatever they can of its infrastructure so their companies would have jobs in the future to rebuild as they think they will win the war against Syria.”

Syrian News headlined on 5 September 2015, “What Did Syrians Do to Deserve the Hatred of the Whole World” and commented:

Syrians stood by each oppressed nation in the planet, all liberation movements from the colonial powers had their main offices in Syria, including South African anti-apartheid party…this is how the colonial powers revenge.

It is beyond kafkaesque to realize that virtually the entire world chants its enmity against the Syrian people, and their country, and that the rest have not even noticed.

On 2 September, “greatest psy op of the last century,” al Jazeera, degraded a photo of a drowned Syrian boy, into an emoticon, to use for a new round of imperial malfeasance against the SAR [that being an acronym for Syria’s Government]. It seems to be of no importance, that al Jazeera (renamed “al Khanzeera,” “the pigsty,” by Libyan patriots, during the destruction of their country), is owned by the absolute monarchy Qatar — “pronounced ‘gutter’”), the little Gulfie gas station that has spent over 3 billion dollars in looting and bombing Syria.

Twenty-four hours later, a Google search of “drowned Syrian boy” yielded over 10 million ‘hits’ (a number which has jumped to over 14 million, 48 hours later), reports which neglect to mention there was no Syrian refugee crisis before the mass-murderers of the colonial powers, and their Levant and Gulfie rabid dogs decided to “arab spring” Syria…

On Sunday, 23 August, the city of Damascus came under massive mortar and missile attacks by the Obama-Cameron moderate death squads. Seven days later, the Syrian Arab Army [Syrian Government’s Army] Facebook page posted the following:

“The city of Damascus had 4.5 to 5 million inhabitants in 2011. Today and due to the war there are over 8.5 million inhabitants in the city; most of which were forced outside of their homes by the “moderate rebels” backed by NATO in general specifically the U.S. Turkey and France; also backedand financed by the terrorist nations of the Gulf…

The cacaphony of murderous silence among the Vichy [nazi] media and sham activists and NGOs [charities that are funded by U.S.-and-allied aristocracies] has increased, exponentially, in perverse rhyme, with the increase in the bombings of the villages of Kafraya and al Foua, in Idlib countryside. In mid-August, the Syrians of these villages had been the beneficiaries of more than 1,500 missile attacks — from moderate rebel mass murderers — that have destroyed 60% of their houses…
The punishment of the Syrian people for refusing the Obama plan of regime change cannot be missed in this organized ongoing assault by NATO and stooges for the past 4.5 years…

On 28 February 2018, Syria News bannered “Deep State Hyenas Flaunt [Flout] Law, Ravenous for More Syrian Blood” and opened:

The globalist deep state hyenas have reached a new low in delirious frenzy against Syria. While screaming international law! they flaunt [flout] it, and flaunt their insatiable lust for Syrian blood. The mania of the terrorists in suits is so out of control that they appear to have abandoned their chemical conspiracy planned for Idlib. Instead, they scream in unison for the preservation of serial killers occupying eastern Ghouta. 

Savages they would call by rightful names in western countries are converted to innocent women and children [in Western media]. These hyenas ignore more than 1,000 terrorist mortars and missiles fired by Ghouta terrorists into Damascus. They hold the Goebbels Big Lie proudly over their heads, knowing their elite club is one of destruction, that none of its members will speak the truth…
The deep state hyenas introduced the foreign-armed, foreign-paid, and foreign takfiri [jihadists] of al Ghouta onto the world stage in August 2013. The stupid, inbred, savages accidentally slaughtered many of their own, and thus ratted out having been given chemical weapons by Prince Bandar, because he neglected to give them proper instruction on their use.

The admission was of no matter to the perpetual warriors, including Nobel Peace Laureate cum war criminal, POTUS Obama. Nor was concern voiced by the humanitarian bastards that several of the dead Syrians were recognized as having been kidnapped in Latakia countryside (similarly, the hyenas were too sedated to report on the moment long awaited, when 58 Syrian women and their children abductees were released in exchange for imprisoned terrorists of al Qaeda)…

On 21 February, UN High Commissioner on Human Rights [sic] Zeid Ra’ad al Husseini frothed at the mouth over the “monstrous annihilation” in Eastern Ghouta. He tossed words like international humanitarian law, and war crimes about [against the Government].

That article has a lengthy section which opens:

THE UN: HYENAS LEADERSHIP

Animals running in packs require leadership. Who is better qualified to lead beasts known to take advantage of other animals’ kills for easy prey, devouring every part including bones, than the well-manicured and polished diplomats of the United Nations?

All of that is true, and it even understates the reality. For example, though the article documents that Jordan, next door to Syria, is a key part of America’s effort to overthrow Assad, it fails to note that Zeid Ra’ad al Husseini, that cited high U.N. official on Syria, is a Jordanian Prince. He’s doing what the royal family of Jordan do. Otherwise, that article is an excellent description of the U.N.

Administration’s extreme prejudices in favor of the U.S. game-plans for conquest, especially for their conquest of Syria.

However, on 3 March 2018, Syria News revealed that an even more important U.N. official on Syria has also been working secretly with the U.S. to assist overthrow of Syria’s Government. Headlining “Rotten, Secret Diplomatic Meeting that Launched UN Frenzy against Syria”, they reported that,

In possession of a diplomatic telegram [TD], Pan Arabic al Akhbar gave a detailed report 24 February on the nefarious, colonialist plot:

In a somewhat familiar but precise English, Benjamin Norman – a diplomat in charge of the Middle East at the British Embassy in Washington – reports in a confidential diplomatic telegram of the first meeting of the “Small American Group on Syria” (United States, Great Britain, France, Saudi Arabia and Jordan), held in Washington on January 11, 2018.

Related: Democrats Attempt to Block Trump’s Order to Declassify Russia-Probe Documents

In this five-page TD, he reveals the details of the “Western strategy” in Syria: partition of the country, sabotage of Sochi, framing of Turkey and instructions to the UN Special Representative Staffan de Mistura who leads the negotiations of Geneva. A Non Paper (8 pages) accompanies this TD in anticipation of the second meeting of the “Small Group”. It was held in Paris on January 23, mainly devoted to the use of chemical weapons and the “instructions” sent by the “Small American Group” to Staffan de Mistura.

In fact, Trump is now protecting both Al Qaeda and ISIS in order to conquer Syria. And he has the U.N.’s backing in this. On Friday, 7 September 2018, America’s Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty headlined “UN Syria Envoy Warns of ‘Perfect Storm’ for Disaster in Idlib” and reported that:

The U.N. envoy for Syria warned Friday that all the ingredients exist for a “perfect storm” of a humanitarian catastrophe if the Syrian government, backed by Russia, carries out a large-scale military offensive on the northwestern province of Idlib.
“The dangers are profound that any battle for Idlib could be — would be — a horrific and bloody battle,” Staffan de Mistura told U.N. Security Council members via videoconference. “Civilians are its potential victims.”

As I have documented at the link here:

Idlib has consistently been showing as being, by far, the most-pro-jihadist of all of Syria’s Governates, in the annual polls that the British polling organization, Orb International, has taken since 2014, throughout Syria. Idlib has been showing there as being over 90% in favor of jihadists and of jihadism — and specifically in favor of organizations such as Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Staffan de Mistura and Prince Husseini refer to this matter as instead a “humanitarian catastrophe” if Syria, Russia, and Hezbollah, do what they will need to do in order to end the invasion of Syria by U.S., Saudi Arabia, Turkey, UAE, Kuwait, and Israel (and the jihadists they hire).



The U.N. officials are treating this matter not as a thoroughly illegal invasion and military occupation of the sovereign nation of Syria, but instead as what will be a “humanitarian catastrophe” if Syria and its allies attack the area of Syria whose current residents are over 90% jihadists and supporters of jihadists. Syria and its allies are to be blamed for invading that jihadist cauldron, while U.S. and its allies are to be held immune from prosecution for their having used those jihadists, during the past 7 years — used them to invade and occupy not only Idlib but other parts of Syria.

Thus, the U.N. is not only holding U.S. Presidents and other international invaders above international law, but it is now positively assisting them under the fake rubric of “humanitarian” concerns, so as to support the U.S. alliance’s invasions and military occupations. The U.N., which was supposed to have been opposing international aggression is now assisting it when ‘the right leaders’ do it.

This is no organization supporting democracy — it is the opposite: an international scheme to back the U.S. alliance’s invasions and military occupations. War is ugly. Apparently, the U.N. has become even uglier than that — supporting the invaders and military occupiers of a sovereign nation.
This is the reason why Syria and its allies have placed on-hold their planned elimination of the jihadists in Idlib and will create a DMZ between Idlib and the adjoining areas of Syria. Further details and context on that can be seen here. Perhaps now, the high U.N. officials who have been claiming that the elimination of those jihadists would produce a “humanitarian catastrophe” will change their tunes and publicly acknowledge that it would instead be a practical necessity.

Source: https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/25/how-the-un-joined-americas-war-against-syria/

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[Video] Deep State Is A Parallel Government Working Against America

The deep state has been trying to organize the FBI, DOJ, and CIA against President Trump and the American people.




Related:

• [Video] Deep state traitor Rosenstein The Rat Must Go 
• [Video] Deep State Blocks Key FISA Docs Release!  
• Alex Jones - Infowars

Source: https://www.real.video/5839371405001

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[Video] Deep state traitor Rosenstein The Rat Must Go

 In a surprise show of unbiased journalism, The New York Times dropped a bombshell detailing conversations Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein had with then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and FBI lawyer Lisa Page and fellow Justice Department and FBI officials in the spring of 2017, during the tumult following Trump’s firing of FBI director James Comey.

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Source: https://www.real.video/5838748475001

Related: [Video] Deep State Blocks Key FISA Docs Release!

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[Video] Who Putin Is Not by Prof. Stephen F. Cohen

Falsely demonizing Russia’s leader has made the new Cold War even more dangerous.

Stephen F. Cohen, professor emeritus of Russian studies and politics at Princeton and NYU, and John Batchelor continue their (usually) weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments, now in their fifth year, are at TheNation.com.) This post is different. The conversation was based on Cohen’s article below, completed the day of the broadcast.

“Putin is an evil man, and he is intent on evil deeds.”
—Senator John McCain

 

“[Putin] was a KGB agent. By definition, he doesn’t have a soul.”

 

“If this sounds familiar, it’s what Hitler did back in the 1930s.”

—2016 Democratic Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton

The specter of an evil-doing Vladimir Putin has loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Henry Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia’s leader since 2000: “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one.”

The specter of an evil-doing Vladimir Putin has loomed over and undermined US thinking about Russia for at least a decade. Henry Kissinger deserves credit for having warned, perhaps alone among prominent American political figures, against this badly distorted image of Russia’s leader since 2000: “The demonization of Vladimir Putin is not a policy. It is an alibi for not having one.”

Related: Driving out militants from Syria’s Idlib now top priority – Putin

But Kissinger was also wrong. Washington has made many policies strongly influenced by the demonizing of Putin—a personal vilification far exceeding any ever applied to Soviet Russia’s latter-day Communist leaders. Those policies spread from growing complaints in the early 2000s to US-Russian proxy wars in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria, and eventually even at home, in Russiagate allegations. Indeed, policy-makers adopted an earlier formulation by the late Senator John McCain as an integral part of a new and more dangerous Cold War: “Putin [is] an unreconstructed Russian imperialist and K.G.B. apparatchik…. His world is a brutish, cynical place…. We must prevent the darkness of Mr. Putin’s world from befalling more of humanity.”

Mainstream media outlets have played a major prosecutorial role in the demonization. Far from atypically, The Washington Post’s editorial-page editor wrote, “Putin likes to make the bodies bounce…. The rule-by-fear is Soviet, but this time there is no ideology—only a noxious mixture of personal aggrandizement, xenophobia, homophobia and primitive anti-Americanism.” Esteemed publications and writers now routinely degrade themselves by competing to denigrate “the flabbily muscled form” of the “small gray ghoul named Vladimir Putin.” There are hundreds of such examples, if not more, over many years. Vilifying Russia’s leader has become a canon in the orthodox US narrative of the new Cold War.

As with all institutions, the demonization of Putin has its own history. When he first appeared on the world scene as Boris Yeltsin’s anointed successor, in 1999–2000, Putin was welcomed by leading representatives of the US political-media establishment. The New York Times’ chief Moscow correspondent and other verifiers reported that Russia’s new leader had an “emotional commitment to building a strong democracy.” Two years later, President George W. Bush lauded his summit with Putin and “the beginning of a very constructive relationship.”

Related: Syria Conflict: Results Of Meeting Between Rouhani, Erdogan, Putin In Teheran

But the Putin-friendly narrative soon gave away to unrelenting Putin-bashing. In 2004, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof inadvertently explained why, at least partially. Kristof complained bitterly of having been “suckered by Mr. Putin. He is not a sober version of Boris Yeltsin.” By 2006, a Wall Street Journal editor, expressing the establishment’s revised opinion, declared it “time we start thinking of Vladimir Putin’s Russia as an enemy of the United States.” The rest, as they say, is history.

Who has Putin really been during his many years in power? We may have to leave this large, complex question to future historians, when materials for full biographical study—memoirs, archive documents, and others—are available. Even so, it may surprise readers to know that Russia’s own historians, policy intellectuals, and journalists already argue publicly and differ considerably as to the “pluses and minuses” of Putin’s leadership. (My own evaluation is somewhere in the middle.)
In America and elsewhere in the West, however, only purported “minuses” reckon in the extreme vilifying, or anti-cult, of Putin. Many are substantially uninformed, based on highly selective or unverified sources, and motivated by political grievances, including those of several Yeltsin-era oligarchs and their agents in the West.

By identifying and examining, however briefly, the primary “minuses” that underpin the demonization of Putin, we can understand at least who he is not:

§ Putin is not the man who, after coming to power in 2000, “de-democratized” a Russian democracy established by President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and restored a system akin to Soviet “totalitarianism.” Democratization began and developed in Soviet Russia under the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, in the years from 1987 to 1991.

Yeltsin repeatedly dealt that historic Russian experiment grievous, possibly fatal, blows. Among his other acts, by using tanks, in October 1993, to destroy Russia’s freely elected parliament and with it the entire constitutional order that had made Yeltsin president. By waging two bloody wars against the tiny breakaway province of Chechnya. By enabling a small group of Kremlin-connected oligarchs to plunder Russia’s richest assets and abet the plunging of some two-thirds of its people into poverty and misery, including the once- large and professionalized Soviet middle classes. By rigging his own reelection in 1996. And by enacting a “super-presidential” constitution, at the expense of the legislature and judiciary but to his successor’s benefit. Putin may have furthered this de-democratization of the Yeltsin 1990s, but he did not initiate it.

Related: [Video] Live - Vladimir Putin, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban Hold Joint Press Conference

§ Nor did Putin then make himself a tsar or Soviet-like “autocrat,” which means a despot with absolute power to turn his will into policy. The last Kremlin leader with that kind of power was Stalin, who died in 1953, and with him his 20-year mass terror. Due to the increasing bureaucratic routinization of the political-administrative system, each successive Soviet leader had less personal power than his predecessor. Putin may have more, but if he really was a “cold-blooded, ruthless” autocrat—“the worst dictator on the planet”—tens of thousands of protesters would not have repeatedly appeared in Moscow streets, sometimes officially sanctioned. Or their protests (and selective arrests) been shown on state television.


Political scientists generally agree that Putin has been a “soft authoritarian” leader governing a system that has authoritarian and democratic components inherited from the past. They disagree as to how to specify, define, and balance these elements, but most would also generally agree with a brief Facebook post, on September 7, 2018, by the eminent diplomat-scholar Jack Matlock: “Putin…is not the absolute dictator some have pictured him. His power seems to be based on balancing various patronage networks, some of which are still criminal. (In the 1990s, most were, and nobody was controlling them.) Therefore he cannot admit publicly that [criminal acts] happened without his approval since this would indicate that he is not completely in charge.”

§ Putin is not a Kremlin leader who “reveres Stalin” and whose “Russia is a gangster shadow of Stalin’s Soviet Union.” These assertions are so far-fetched and uninformed about Stalin’s terror-ridden regime, Putin, and Russia today, they barely warrant comment. Stalin’s Russia was often as close to unfreedom as imaginable. In today’s Russia, apart from varying political liberties, most citizens are freer to live, study, work, write, speak, and travel than they have ever been. (When vocational demonizers like David Kramer allege an “appalling human rights situation in Putin’s Russia,” they should be asked: compared to when in Russian history, or elsewhere in the world today?)

Putin clearly understands that millions of Russians have and often express pro-Stalin sentiments. Nonetheless, his role in these still-ongoing controversies over the despot’s historical reputation has been, in one unprecedented way, that of an anti-Stalinist leader. Briefly illustrated, if Putin reveres the memory of Stalin, why did his personal support finally make possible two memorials (the excellent State Museum of the History of the Gulag and the highly evocative “Wall of Grief”) to the tyrant’s millions of victims, both in central Moscow? The latter memorial monument was first proposed by then–Kremlin leader Nikita Khrushchev, in 1961. It was not built under any of his successors—until Putin, in 2017.

Related: Putin Someone is harvesting Russian bio samples for obscure purposes

§ Nor did Putin create post–Soviet Russia’s “kleptocratic economic system,” with its oligarchic and other widespread corruption. This too took shape under Yeltsin during the Kremlin’s shock-therapy “privatization” schemes of the 1990s, when the “swindlers and thieves” still denounced by today’s opposition actually emerged.

Putin has adopted a number of “anti-corruption” policies over the years. How successful they have been is the subject of legitimate debate. As are how much power he has had to rein in fully both Yeltsin’s oligarchs and his own, and how sincere he has been. But branding Putin “a kleptocrat” also lacks context and is little more than barely informed demonizing.

A recent scholarly book finds, for example, that while they may be “corrupt,” Putin “and the liberal technocratic economic team on which he relies have also skillfully managed Russia’s economic fortunes.” A former IMF director goes further, concluding that Putin’s current economic team does not “tolerate corruption” and that “Russia now ranks 35th out of 190 in the World Bank’s Doing Business ratings. It was at 124 in 2010.”

Viewed in human terms, when Putin came to power in 2000, some 75 percent of Russians were living in poverty. Most had lost even modest legacies of the Soviet era—their life savings; medical and other social benefits; real wages; pensions; occupations; and for men, life expectancy, which had fallen well below the age of 60. In only a few years, the “kleptocrat” Putin had mobilized enough wealth to undo and reverse those human catastrophes and put billions of dollars in rainy-day funds that buffered the nation in different hard times ahead. We judge this historic achievement as we might, but it is why many Russians still call Putin “Vladimir the Savior.”

§ Which brings us to the most sinister allegation against him: Putin, trained as “a KGB thug,” regularly orders the killing of inconvenient journalists and personal enemies, like a “mafia-state boss.” This should be the easiest demonizing axiom to dismiss, because there is no actual evidence, or barely any logic, to support it. And yet, it is ubiquitous. Times editorial writers and columnists—and far from them alone—characterize Putin as a “thug” and his policies as “thuggery” so often—sometimes doubling down on “autocratic thug”—that the practice may be specified in some internal manual. Little wonder so many politicians also routinely practice it, as did recently Senator Ben Sasse: “We should tell the American people and tell the world that we know that Vladimir Putin is a thug. He’s a former KGB agent who’s a murderer. ”




Few, if any, modern-day world leaders have been so slurred, or so regularly. Nor does Sasse actually “know” any of this. He and the others imbibe it from reams of influential media accounts that fully indict Putin while burying a nullifying “but” regarding actual evidence. Thus another Times columnist: “I realize that this evidence is only circumstantial and well short of proof. But it’s one of many suspicious patterns.” This, too, is a journalistic “pattern” when Putin is involved.

Leaving aside other world leaders with minor or major previous careers in intelligence services, Putin’s years as a KGB intelligence officer in then–East Germany were clearly formative. Many years later, at age 65, he still speaks of them with pride. Whatever else that experience contributed, it made Putin a Europeanized Russian, a fluent German speaker, and a political leader with a remarkable, demonstrated capacity for retaining and coolly analyzing a very wide range of information. (Read or watch a few of his long interviews.) Not a bad leadership trait in very fraught times.

Moreover, no serious biographer would treat only one period in a subject’s long public career as definitive, as Putin demonizers do. Why not instead the period after he left the KGB in 1991, when he served as deputy to the mayor of St. Petersburg, then considered one of the two or three most democratic leaders in Russia? Or the years immediately following in Moscow, where he saw firsthand the full extent of Yeltsin-era corruption? Or his subsequent years, while still relatively young, as president?

As for being a “murderer” of journalists and other “enemies,” the list has grown to scores of Russians who died, at home or abroad, by foul or natural causes—all reflexively attributed to Putin. Our hallowed tradition is that the burden of proof is on the accusers. Putin’s accusers have produced none, only assumptions, innuendoes, and mistranslated statements by Putin about the fate of “traitors.” The two cases that firmly established this defamatory practice were those of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was shot to death in Moscow in 2006, and Alexander Litvinenko, a shadowy one-time KGB defector with ties to aggrieved Yeltsin-era oligarchs, who died of radiation poisoning in London, also in 2006.

Related: 'Best military & diplomatic solution': Putin, Erdogan talks end with deal averting Idlib crisis

Not a shred of actual proof points to Putin in either case. The editor of Politkovskaya’s paper, the devoutly independent Novaya Gazeta, still believes her assassination was ordered by Chechen officials, whose human-rights abuses she was investigating. Regarding Litvinenko, despite frenzied media claims and a kangaroo-like “hearing” suggesting that Putin was “probably” responsible, there is still no conclusive proof even as to whether Litvinenko’s poisoning was intentional or accidental. The same paucity of evidence applies to many subsequent cases, notably the shooting of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, “in [distant] view of the Kremlin,” in 2015.

About Russian journalists, there is, however, a significant, overlooked statistic. According to the American Committee to Protect Journalists, as of 2012, 77 had been murdered—41 during the Yeltsin years, 36 under Putin. By 2018, the total was 82—41 under Yeltsin, the same under Putin. This strongly suggests that the still–partially corrupt post-Soviet economic system, not Yeltsin or Putin personally, led to the killing of so many journalists after 1991, most of them investigative reporters. The former wife of one journalist thought to have been poisoned concludes as much: “Many Western analysts place the responsibility for these crimes on Putin. But the cause is more likely the system of mutual responsibility and the culture of impunity that began to form before Putin, in the late 1990s.”
§ More recently, there is yet another allegation: Putin is a fascist and white supremacist. The accusation is made mostly, it seems, by people wishing to deflect attention from the role being played by neo-Nazis in US-backed Ukraine. Putin no doubt regards it as a blood slur, and even on the surface it is, to be exceedingly charitable, entirely uninformed. How else to explain Senator Ron Wyden’s solemn warnings, at a hearing on November 1, 2017, about “the current fascist leadership of Russia”? A young scholar recently dismantled a senior Yale professor’s nearly inexplicable propounding of this thesis. My own approach is compatible, though different.

Whatever Putin’s failings, the “fascist” allegation is absurd. Nothing in his statements over nearly 20 years in power are akin to fascism, whose core belief is a cult of blood based on the asserted superiority of one ethnicity over all others. As head of a vast multiethnic state—embracing scores of diverse groups with a broad range of skin colors—such utterances or related acts by Putin would be inconceivable, if not political suicide. This is why he endlessly appeals for harmony in “our entire multi-ethnic nation” with its “multi-ethnic culture,” as he did once again in his re-inauguration speech in 2018.

Russia has, of course, fascist-white supremacist thinkers and activists, though many have been imprisoned. But a mass fascist movement is scarcely feasible in a country where so many millions died in the war against Nazi Germany, a war that directly affected Putin and clearly left a formative mark on him. Though he was born after the war, his mother and father barely survived near-fatal wounds and disease, his older brother died in the long German siege of Leningrad, and several of his uncles perished. Only people who never endured such an experience, or are unable to imagine it, can conjure up a fascist Putin.

There is another, easily understood, indicative fact. Not a trace of anti-Semitism is evident in Putin. Little noted here but widely reported both in Russia and in Israel, life for Russian Jews is better under Putin than it has ever been in that country’s long history.

§ Finally, at least for now, there is the ramifying demonization allegation that, as a foreign-policy leader, Putin has been exceedingly “aggressive” abroad. At best, this is an “in-the-eye-of-the-beholder” assertion, and half-blind. At worst, it justifies what even a German foreign minister characterized as the West’s “warmongering” against Russia.

In the three cases widely given as examples of Putin’s “aggression,” the evidence, long cited by myself and many others, points to US-led instigations, primarily in the process of expanding the NATO military alliance since the late 1990s from Germany to Russia’s borders today. The proxy US-Russian war in Georgia in 2008 was initiated by the US-backed president of that country, who had been encouraged to aspire to NATO membership. The 2014 crisis and subsequent proxy war in Ukraine resulted from the long-standing effort to bring that country, despite large regions’ shared civilization with Russia, into NATO. And Putin’s 2015 military intervention in Syria was done on a valid premise: either it would be Syrian President Assad in Damascus or the terrorist Islamic State—and on President Barack Obama’s refusal to join Russia in an anti-ISIS alliance. As a result of this history, Putin is often seen in Russia as a belatedly reactive leader abroad, not as a sufficiently “aggressive” one.

Embedded in the “aggressive Putin” axiom are two others. One is that Putin is a neo-Soviet leader who seeks to restore the Soviet Union at the expense of Russia’s neighbors. He is obsessively misquoted as having said, in 2005, “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” apparently ranking it above two World Wars. What he actually said was “a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” as it was for most Russians.
Though often critical of the Soviet system and its two formative leaders, Lenin and Stalin, Putin, like most of his generation, naturally remains in part a Soviet person. But what he said in 2010 reflects his real perspective and that of very many other Russians: “Those who do not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union have no heart, and those that do regret it have no brain.”

The other fallacious sub-axiom is that Putin has always been “anti-Western,” specifically “anti-American,” has “always viewed the United States” with “smoldering suspicions.” A simple reading of his years in power tells us otherwise. A Westernized Russian, Putin came to the presidency in 2000 in the still-prevailing tradition of Gorbachev and Yeltsin—in hope of a “strategic friendship and partnership” with the United States. Hence his abundant assistance, following 9/11, to the American war in Afghanistan. Hence, until he believed Russia would not be treated as an equal and NATO had encroached too close, his full partnership in the US-European clubs of major leaders.

Given all that has happened during the past nearly two decades—particularly what Putin and other Russian leaders perceive to have happened—it would be remarkable if his views of the West, especially America, had not changed. As he remarked in 2018, “We all change.” A few years earlier, Putin remarkably admitted that initially he had “illusions” about foreign policy, without specifying which. Perhaps he meant this, spoken at the end of 2017: “Our most serious mistake in relations with the West is that we trusted you too much. And your mistake is that you took that trust as weakness and abused it.”

If my refutation of the axioms of Putin demonization is valid, where does that leave us? Certainly, not with an apologia for Putin, but with the question, “Who is Putin?” Russians like to say, “Let history judge,” but given the perils of the new Cold War, we cannot wait. We can at least begin with a few historical truths. In 2000, a young and little-experienced man became the leader of a vast state that had precipitously disintegrated, or “collapsed,” twice in the 20th century—in 1917 and again in 1991—with disastrous consequences for its people. And in both instances, it had lost its “sovereignty” and thus its security in fundamental ways.

These have been recurring themes in Putin’s words and deeds. They are where to begin an understanding. No one can doubt that he is already the most consequential “statesman” of the 21st century, though the word is rarely, if ever, applied to him in the United States. And what does “consequential” mean? Even without the pseudo-minuses spelled out above, a balanced evaluation will include valid ones.

For example, at home, was it necessary to so strengthen and expand the Kremlin’s “vertical” throughout the rest of the country in order to pull Russia back together? Should not the historic experiment with democracy have been given equal priority? Abroad, were there not alternatives to annexing Crimea, even given the perceived threats? And did Putin’s leadership really do nothing to reawaken fears in small East European countries victimized for centuries by Russia? These are only a few questions that might yield minuses alongside Putin’s deserved pluses.

Whatever the approach, whoever undertakes a balanced evaluation should do so, to paraphrase Spinoza, not in order to demonize, not to mock, not to hate, but to understand.

Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/who-putin-is-not/

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[Video] FBI Ignores Trump’s Order To Release Documents Unredacted

 Bloomberg is reporting that the FBI is planning to ignore President Trump and redact information he told them not to. This is another attempt by the deep state to obstruct a democratically elected president and his America First agenda.

Related: [Video] Infowars Full Show - FBI Corruption, Kavanaugh Accuser To Testify, Free Alex Jones Rally On Saturday - Sept 19, 2018



Source: https://www.real.video/5837294632001

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FBI, DOJ Plan Redactions Despite Trump’s Document Order

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump has demanded the “immediate declassification” of sensitive materials about the Russia investigation, but the agencies responsible are expected to propose redactions that would keep some information secret, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Justice Department, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence are going through a methodical review and can’t offer a timeline for finishing, said the people, who weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the sensitive matter.

The White House issued a statement on Monday listing material that Trump wants declassified immediately, echoing demands of Republican lawmakers who share his contention that the continuing investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was tainted by anti-Trump bias well before Robert Mueller was named special counsel to run it.

Among Trump’s demands was the full public release of all text messages concerning the Russia probe by Justice Department official Bruce Ohr and by several former officials, including two who were fired -- former FBI Director James Comey and his deputy, Andrew McCabe. One person described the order to release text messages as unprecedented, and another said additional talks will probably be held with the White House over the matter.

QuickTake: All You (and Trump) Should Know About Impeachment

The Justice Department and FBI are expected to submit their documents and proposed redactions to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which will assemble all the material into a package and hand it over to the White House, according to the people.

While the agencies want to guard against revealing classified sources and methods about the ongoing Russia investigation, doing so could put them in direct conflict with Trump, who as president has the power to override the agencies and declassify material on his own.

It’s too early to say if any officials would resign in protest should Trump do that, one person said. Trump could ask the agencies to go back and scrub the redacted material further.

Critics, including leading congressional Democrats, contend that Trump has crossed a line by ordering release of the documents in order to interfere with and undermine the Russia investigation in which he’s a key figure.

“President Trump, in a clear abuse of power, has decided to intervene in a pending law enforcement investigation by ordering the selective release of materials he believes are helpful to his defense team and thinks will advance a false narrative,” Representative Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement on Monday.

Triggering Review

Trump took the rare step of ordering material released after a group of conservative House Republicans asked him to do so.

“When the president issues such an order, it triggers a declassification review process that is conducted by various agencies within the intelligence community, in conjunction with the White House counsel, to seek to ensure the safety of America’s national security interests,” a Justice Department spokesman said in a statement. “The department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already working with the Director of National Intelligence to comply with the president’s order.”

Some of what Trump requested was well known to the Justice Department and FBI and was already under review for potential declassification.

They have already been reviewing whether and how to release more of a previously secret warrant application to eavesdrop on Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s presidential campaign who was flagged by intelligence agencies as a target of Russian interest. Page hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing and has said that while he had conversations with Russian officials, he wasn’t an agent of the Russian government.

The agencies also have been reviewing whether and how to release reports of interviews with Ohr on his role in the Russia inquiry.

But another part of the White House statement caused confusion because it asked for “all FBI reports of interviews prepared in connection with all Carter Page FISA applications.

Confidential Informant

The Justice Department is interpreting that request to mean information about the use of a confidential informant during the early parts of the investigation, one person said. The department had previously briefed the “Gang of Eight,” Republican and Democratic congressional leaders and heads of the Intelligence committees, on the informant.

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly attacked the FBI and Justice Department for relying partly on a dossier on Trump compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele in order to get the warrant on Page. They contend that Justice and FBI officials didn’t fully disclose that Steele was paid in part by Trump’s rival in the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton.

Democrats have said information other than the Steele dossier was used to obtain the warrant on Page.

The initial warrant request called Page “an agent of a foreign power” and said “the FBI believes Page has been the subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian government,” according to the document.

©2018 Bloomberg L.P.

Source: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/2018/09/19/rbi-gives-yes-banks-rana-kapoor-only-three-more-months-as-md-and-ceo

 

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[Video] DOJ on compressed timeline to declassify Russia probe docs

President Trump orders the declassification of key documents related to the start of the investigation; Catherine Herridge reports on the timeline.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQJ20dSKnHI

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[Video] Jason Chaffetz, former Chairman of House Oversight Committee: The deep state is real

Jason Chaffetz, former Chairman of House Oversight Committee: The deep state is real

There is a concerted effort to protect Barack Obama and bring down President Trump, the Fox News contributor and author of 'The Deep State' says on 'Fox & Friends.'

Related: The Deep State: How an Army of Bureaucrats Protected Barack Obama and Is Working to Destroy the Trump Agenda

Former Congressman and current Fox News contributor Jason Chaffetz explains how we ended up with a politicized federal bureaucracy that actively works to promote the Democrat party agenda and undermine Donald Trump.

The liberal media loves to characterize the Obama years as free of scandal. They pretend this is true because virtually every office in the executive branch worked to withhold evidence of wrongdoing, silence witness testimony, destroy federal records, classify embarrassing information, and retaliate against truth tellers. Yet these same tight-lipped lifers leaked like a sieve once President Trump was sworn in, freely promoting the illusion that everything he does is the new Watergate.
Sometimes even conservatives portray the Deep State as nothing more than dumb inefficient bureaucracy. In fact, it’s the opposite; the Deep State is intentional, unconstitutional, and organized.
In Deep State, Jason Chaffetz reveals an entrenched leadership within the civil service that resists exposure, accountability, and responsibility.  At the highest levels, they fight back, outlast, and work the system for their own advantage.  And they certainly don’t like disruptive forces such as Donald Trump.

As Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Chaffetz was the tip of the spear challenging the Deep State and trying to hold them accountable. He and his colleagues took on the powerful forces at the IRS, the EPA, the DOJ, the Department of State, and more.  The deeper he dove in, the more shocking he found the brazen approach by the power brokers.  The balance of power has shifted. The Deep State has gotten used to operating anonymously and without consequence.  This is a problem bigger than we can even imagine and getting worse.  Unless we do something dramatic to wrest back control, we risk losing the ability to successfully challenge wrongdoing by the most powerful bureaucracy in the world. 

In Deep State, Chaffetz highlights the Deep State’s tactics, illuminates the problems, and offers a way to fight back and win. It is important to expose the stories, but if the American People are going to win, Congress is going to have to do things differently.  This book helps the concerned citizen understand what must be done--so they can demand real change.

 Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fk041pvYtsQ

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Lisa Page: It’s Possible ‘There Would Be Literally Nothing’ to Russia Collusion Story Before Mueller Appointment

Lisa Page: It’s Possible ‘There Would Be Literally Nothing’ to Russia Collusion Story Before Mueller Appointment

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Former FBI lawyer Lisa Page admitted under oath that a text exchange with FBI agent Peter Strzok meant that “it still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing” to the Russia collusion story on the eve of Robert Mueller’s appointment to investigate that issue as special counsel, according to a Sunday Fox News report.

In July, Page and Strzok were called to testify before a joint session of the House Judiciary and House Oversight Committees about their text exchanges.

According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General (DOJ-IG) Michael Horowitz in May 2017, Strzok texted Page to let her know he was considering joining Mueller’s investigation, which was just beginning. He told her he wanted to join to “fix it” after the Clinton mail investigation and complete “unfinished business,” stating he was willing to forgo an assistant directorship to be part of “[a]n investigation leading to impeachment.” But Strzok still had reservations about joining Mueller. As the DOJ-IG report puts it:

May 18, 2017: Mueller was appointed Special Counsel on May 17, 2017. The next day Strzok and Page exchanged text messages in a discussion of whether Strzok should join the Special Counsel’s investigation. Strzok wrote: “For me, and this case, I personally have a sense of unfinished business. I unleashed it with MYE [Midyear Exam, the investigation into Clinton’s emails]. Now I need to fix it and finish it.” Later in the same exchange, Strzok, apparently while weighing his career options, made this comparison: “Who gives a f*ck, one more A[ssistant] D[irector]…[versus] [a]n investigation leading to impeachment?” Later in this exchange, Strzok stated, “you and I both know the odds are nothing. If I thought it was likely I’d be there no question. I hesitate in part because of my gut sense and concern there’s no big there there” [Emphasis added].

In the closed-door section of her testimony, revealed for the first time in Sunday’s Fox News report, Page confirmed that Strzok meant there was no proof of collusion. “I think this represents that even as far as May 2017, we still couldn’t answer the question,” Page, who had been attached to the FBI’s investigation of Russian election interference for nine months, told Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX).

“No, I don’t think so. I think it’s a reflection of us still not knowing,” Page said when Ratcliffe pressed her on the texts’ meaning, but then added:

It still existed in the scope of possibility that there would be literally nothing, probably not nothing nothing, as we probably knew more than that by that point.But in the scheme of the possible outcomes, the most serious one obviously being crimes serious enough to warrant impeachment; but on the other scale that, you know, maybe an unwitting person was, in fact, involved in the release of information, but it didn’t ultimately touch any senior, you know, people in the administration or on the campaign. And so the text just sort of reflects that spectrum [Emphasis added].

Since that exchange, the Special Counsel’s Office has continued to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia for an additional 16 months without announcing any evidence of such collusion.

In a tweet on Monday, President Donald Trump seized on these revelations as further evidence of the “witch hunt” he has long claimed the Mueller Probe to be:

“Lisa Page Testimony- NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BEFORE MUELLER APPOINTMENT.” @FoxNews by Catherine Herridge. Therefore, the case should never have been allowed to be brought. It is a totally illegal Witch Hunt!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2018

Page’s text message exchanges with Strzok, with whom she was having an extra-marital affair, have been the focus of intense congressional and public scrutiny since Inspector General Horowitz uncovered the pair expressing intensely anti-Trump messages to each other as the decisions to investigate Russian interference were being made at the FBI. Page resigned her position in May, and the FBI fired Strzok last month for his conduct.

Source: https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/09/17/lisa-page-possible-literally-nothing-russia-collusion-story-before-mueller-appointment/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

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