Puppet MastersS


Bullseye

Obama should be remembered as a disgraced president who weaponized the FBI against his political enemies

Tucker Carlson
© Fox NewsTucker Carlson
On Inauguration Day, 2017, it is likely that not 1 in 100,000 Americans was thinking about Russia.

It was the last thing most people were thinking about. The Cold War had ended peacefully more than 25 years before. Moscow was no longer America's main strategic rival as it had been for 50 years. Russia had been downgraded instead to the status of a regional power consumed with disputes with obscure places like Ukraine.

In the American media, there were more stories about Russian alcoholism than there were about Russian ICBMs. But in the White House in Washington that morning, Russia was very much the main topic.

It was January 20th, the last day of the Obama administration. Outgoing National Security Adviser Susan Rice sat down at her desk to write her final memo. Rice described the presidential transition which had been underway for months.

Comment: And from the New York Post, pulling no punches:
RussiaGate is now a complete dead letter — but ObamaGate is taking its place. Just how far did the then-president go to cripple his successor?

It's now clear the Obama-Comey FBI and Justice Department never had anything more substantial than the laughable fiction of the Steele dossier to justify the "counterintelligence" investigation of the Trump campaign. Yet incessant leaks from that supposedly confidential probe wound up consuming the Trump administration's first months in office — followed by the Bob Mueller-led special counsel investigation that proved nearly the "total witch hunt" that President Trump dubbed it.

Information released as the Justice Department dropped its charges against Gen. Mike Flynn shows that President Barack Obama, in his final days in office, played a key role in fanning the flames of phony scandal. Fully briefed on the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation, he knew the FBI had come up with nothing despite months of work starting in July 2016.

Yet on Jan. 5, 2017, Obama told top officials who'd be staying on in the new administration to keep the crucial facts from Team Trump.

It happened at an Oval Office meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, intel chiefs John Brennan and Jim Clapper and national security adviser Susan Rice, as well as FBI Director Jim Comey and Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates.

"From a national-security perspective," Rice's memo afterward put it, "President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia."

This even as then-President Obama also directed that as many people as possible across his administration be briefed on the (utterly unsubstantiated) allegations against Team Trump — and as Rice and others took unprecedented steps to "unmask" US citizens like Flynn whose conversations had been caught on federal wiretaps of foreigners.

Indeed, the Obama administration went on a full-scale leak offensive — handing the Washington Post, New York Times and others a nonstop torrent of "anonymous" allegations of Trumpite ties to Moscow. It suggested that the investigations were finding a ton of treasonous dirt on Team Trump — when in fact the investigators had come up dry.

Sadly, Comey's FBI played along — sandbagging Flynn with the "friendly" interview that later became the pretext for the bogus charges dropped last week, as well as triggering the White House chaos that led to his ouster. This when the FBI had already gone over the general with a fine-tooth comb, and concluded that, no, he'd done nothing like collude with the Russians.

Meanwhile, Comey himself gave Trump an intentionally misleading briefing on the Steele dossier. That was followed by leaks that suggested the dossier was the tip of an iceberg, rather than a pack of innuendo that hadn't at all checked out under FBI scrutiny.

Pulitzer Prizes were won for blaring utter fiction; the Trump administration was kneecapped out of the gate. Innocents like Flynn were bankrupted along the way.

Say this about Obama: He knows how to play dirty.



NPC

SOTT Focus: The Worst is Yet to Come: Contact Tracing, Immunity Cards and Mass Testing

"The things we were worried would happen are happening." — Angus Johnston, professor at the City University of New York
Contact Tracing
© MSN
No one is safe.

No one is immune.

No one gets spared the anguish, fear and heartache of living under the shadow of an authoritarian police state.

That's the message being broadcast 24/7 with every new piece of government propaganda, every new law that criminalizes otherwise lawful activity, every new policeman on the beat, every new surveillance camera casting a watchful eye, every sensationalist news story that titillates and distracts, every new prison or detention center built to house troublemakers and other undesirables, every new court ruling that gives government agents a green light to strip and steal and rape and ravage the citizenry, every school that opts to indoctrinate rather than educate, and every new justification for why Americans should comply with the government's attempts to trample the Constitution underfoot.

Yes, COVID-19 has taken a significant toll on the nation emotionally, physically, and economically, but there are still greater dangers on the horizon.

As long as "we the people" continue to allow the government to trample our rights in the name of so-called national security, things will get worse, not better.

It's already worse.

Now there's talk of mass testing for COVID-19 antibodies, screening checkpoints, contact tracing, immunity passports to allow those who have recovered from the virus to move around more freely, and snitch tip lines for reporting "rule breakers" to the authorities.

If you can't read the writing on the wall, you need to pay better attention.

Bad Guys

Spygate mystery: Why did Killary & Obama seem so determined to impede and topple Trump?

obama hillary clinton
© AP / Evan VucciFormer Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton greets President Barack Obama after he delivered his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington.
US Attorney John Durham who is currently conducting an investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia probe should take a look at a role played by Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation in sparking and fanning the Russiagate scandal, says Wall Street analyst Charles Ortel.

The newly released House Intelligence Committee's transcripts shed some more light on Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor who apparently told then Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos in March 2016 that Moscow had "damning" Hillary Clinton emails. According to one of the transcripts, Mifsud was heard bragging he was a member of the Clinton Foundation.

Document

'No excuse for this': House Dems' 1,815-page bill would bail out corporate lobbyists and the wealthy as first priorities

Pelosi
© Getty Images/Chip SomodevillaHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi during her weekly news conference at the U.S. Capitol April 30, 2020.
House Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a sprawling 1,815-page, $3 trillion coronavirus relief package that spurns many of the key demands of progressive activists and lawmakers while including proposals that immediately provoked backlash, such as a tax cut for the wealthy and a provision that would allow corporate lobbying organizations to take part in federal small business loan program.

Formally titled the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, the bill (pdf) would provide $1 trillion in additional funding for state and local governments, extend beefed-up unemployment benefits through January of next year, authorize an additional round of one-time $1,200 stimulus payments for adults earning up to $75,000 per year, expand federal nutrition benefits, provide $25 billion for the U.S. Postal Service, establish a hazard pay fund for frontline workers, and increase spending on Covid-19 testing.
"It is too small even if it passed as is. As a starting point for negotiation it is going to be a disaster." — Jon Walker, freelance journalist
While there is much in the bill that progressives support, observers who combed through the nearly 2,000 pages of legislative text were quick to highlight sections and omissions that they deemed unacceptable.

Comment: The money for this bailout legislation comes from...1) taxpayers, 2) printing presses, 3) China?


Nuke

In a world gone mad, China must build more nukes to make disarmament possible

missiles
© Getty Images/Feng LiNuclear-capable missiles are displayed on parade in Beijing, 2009.
As the US threatens to withdraw from the New START treaty over Chinese non-participation, domestic pressure from inside China builds for a larger strategic nuclear arsenal. Could this be a good thing?

In an op-ed published in Chinese newspaper Global Times, its editor-in-chief Hu Xijin, argued that China should seek to upgrade its strategic nuclear arsenal from its current level of about 200 antiquated weapons to a modernized force comprising more than 1,000 nuclear weapons, including more than 100 modern mobile DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), each armed with 10-12 nuclear warheads, capable of striking the US mainland.

The deployment of DF-41 missiles, when combined with China's new JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and nuclear-armed H-20 strategic bombers, would give China a capable nuclear TRIAD that rivaled those of the US and Russia.

While Hu Xijin's op-ed received considerable support on Chinese social media, there was some pushback. Zhao Tong, a senior fellow in nuclear policy at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, based in Beijing, has argued that even in a climate of deteriorating Sino-American relations, any effort on the part of China to build a viable strategic nuclear arsenal on par with that of the US was counterproductive and dangerous.

Comment: Ramp up to damp down is a dangerous gambit if neither 'honor' nor 'level heads' rule. 'If China is starting from scratch', this strategy may not outlast a nuclear provocation - be it intended or accidental.


Bullseye

Ray McGovern: New House documents crumble the twin pillars of Russiagate

Shawn Henry
© FBI.govCrowdStrike CEO Shawn Henry, former head of FBI cyber crime investigations unit.
Crowdstrike's reports on the DNC server breach have never been publicly released.
House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau's cyber crime investigations unit.

Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

The following excerpts from Henry's testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:

Heart - Black

Obvious truth comes out: U.S. Syria rep says his job there is to make war a quagmire for Russia

us soldier syria
© DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES/GETTYA U.S. soldier is pictured near a Russian military armoured personnel carrier near the village of Tannuriyah in the countryside east of Qamishli in Syria's northeastern Hasakah province on May 2, 2020.
The U.S. special representative for Syria has urged continued American deployment to the war torn country in order to keep pressure on U.S. enemies and make the conflict a "quagmire" for Russia.

Special Representative James Jeffrey said Tuesday during a Hudson Institute video call that President Donald Trump's "maximum pressure" approach towards Syria was paying dividends, and rejected concerns that the American deployment there could turn into a drawn out and costly project akin to Afghanistan or Vietnam.

"We are pursuing what we think is a smart policy," Jeffrey said of the U.S. approach to Syria, where at least 500 American soldiers are still deployed alongside allied local forces and to support operations against remaining Islamic State militants.


Comment: Not very reliable, coming from a total idiot.


The special representative said the Trump administration has chosen "a very limited American military presence for a very specific goal: to go after ISIS, supporting military operations of other countries in various ways — Turkey, Israel — and focusing on economic and diplomatic pressure."


Comment: There's perhaps the main reason, nested in amongst a bunch of nonsense.


"Our military presence — while small — is important to this whole overall calculation, so we urge the Congress, the American people, the president to keep these forces on," Jeffrey added.

Cowboy Hat

Best of the Web: American gangsters: Juan Guaido had White House meeting with boss of US mercenary firm behind bungled Venezuela coup - interrogation tape

Guaido, Coup stuff
© AFP/Getty Images/Mario Tama; Miraflores Palace/Handout via ReutersPretender Juan Guaido and captured equipment from attempted coup
US-backed Maduro opponent Juan Guaido met with the head of the notorious Silvercorp, the American company believed to have been involved in the failed attempt to kill the Venezuelan president, a captured plotter has alleged.

Jordan Goudreau of Silvercorp had met with Guaido, the self-proclaimed interim leader of Venezuela, in Washington DC in March. That's according to the testimony of Captain Antonio Sequea, who confessed to being one of the firm's contacts on Venezuelan soil.

The video, shared with the media by Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Rodriguez, shows how Sequea revealed that the Silvercorp head - a former Green Beret - first "distanced himself from us" but then resumed communication and brought some "good news" to the apparent Guaido camp.


Comment: The rot has set in so deeply, even their overthrows of foreign govts are completely hare-brained!

It's miraculous civilization hasn't fallen apart before now. At this point, we're surely running on fumes...

See also:


Clipboard

DNI Grenell: List of Obama officials involved in Flynn 'unmasking' now declassified

Power/Rice/Obama
© White House Photo/Pete SouzaSamantha Power • Susan Rice • Barack Obama
Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has declassified a list of former Obama administration officials allegedly involved in the "unmasking" of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's communications with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak during President Donald Trump's transition period, according to ABC News.

Grenell brought the list of officials to the Department of Justice last week, an unnamed official told the news outlet. No further details of the intelligence official's visit to the Justice Department are known.

In 2017, former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice reportedly told the House Intelligence Committee she "unmasked" several Trump associates to find out why United Arab Emirates' crown prince, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, visited New York without notifying the Obama administration.

Samantha Power, Obama-era U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), is also believed to have made up to 260 requests to "unmask" U.S. citizens tied into surveillance of non-U.S. citizens, according to Fox News. She reportedly requested information seen in the days leading up to Trump's inauguration. Then-Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) later revealed Power testified that a portion of the "unmasking" requests made in her name were made by others.

Comment: Here is the ABC News video of Justice Department dropping Flynn case:

Meanwhile, the Justice Department does not intend to release the list of officials who requested unmaskings of the Trump campaign and administration officials and deferred to the ODNI for any further comment.

In addition, the department has been reviewing unmasking as part of U.S. attorney John Durham's broader review of the activities of investigators in 2016 and 2017 during the Russia probe.

Critics, including nearly 2,000 former DOJ officials, have argued the move was part of a pattern of Barr looking to undermine an investigation that was politically damaging for President Donald Trump. They want Barr to resign over his intervention in the case.

Susan Rice has admitted to "unmasking" names within intelligence reports to give her context for how they pertain to the overall briefing material in the President's Daily Briefing. With dozens of people with access to President Obama's PDB, Rice's unmasking of the intelligence report names gave dozens of people direct access to unmasked intelligence - including Obama officials who could, perhaps did, use the PDB for specific and intentional political purposes.



Laptop

Merkel: Claims hard evidence proves she was a Russian hacker victim, tries to mend ties with Russia

Merkel
© Reuters/Hannibal HanschkeGerman Chancelor Angela Merkel
Germany's chancellor has lamented what she claimed was irrefutable proof of a Russian "hacking attack" on her Bundestag office but said she is working day and night to fix relations with Moscow despite the "painful" incident.

Chancellor Angela Merkel accused Russia of carrying out an online intrusion into her Bundestag constituency office back in 2015, as she spoke to MPs on Wednesday.

"I can honestly say that it hurts me," she said of the alleged hack attack, claiming there is "hard evidence" that some unspecified "Russian forces" were behind the theft of data, based upon the results of a "properly done" investigation.

Still, Merkel said she is working hard to foster diplomatic ties between Moscow and Berlin "every day," even if the hacking activity doesn't make it any easier.

Russia denied the allegations when they first emerged back in 2015, and has continued to do so in the years since. However, Moscow is yet to comment on Merkel's fresh remarks.

Comment: Merkel paints herself as a passive victim of outrageous fortune against a backdrop where everyone is spied upon, including heads of state. And, she took the easy way out...blaming Russia.