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The hidden side of John McCain

Max Blumenthal
Consortium News
Mon, 27 Aug 2018 08:27 UTC
john mccain
© AP Photo/ Kevin Hagen
As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the "Gala Dinner with keynote speech", she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, "Adopt a Muj."

"I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and being asked, 'Have you adopted a muj?" Cobban told me. "Each one had pledged money to sponsor a member of the Afghan mujahedin in the name of beating the communists. Some were even seated at the event next to their personal 'muj.'"

The keynote speaker of the evening, according to Cobban, was a hard-charging freshman member of Congress named John McCain.

During the Vietnam war, McCain had been captured by the North Vietnamese Army after being shot down on his way to bomb a civilian lightbulb factory. He spent two years in solitary confinement and underwent torture that left him with crippling injuries. McCain returned from the war with a deep, abiding loathing of his former captors, remarking as late as 2000, "I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live." After he was criticized for the racist remark, McCain refused to apologize. "I was referring to my prison guards," he said, "and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends."

Comment: Wherever this man goes, chaos follows. Although he won't be the last of them, the world can breathe a sigh of relief, even if be a momentary one. See also:


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Cult

Social media execs meet to plan "strategy" for 2018 election

Michael Snyder
End of the American Dream
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
social media eye
Is the social media crackdown on conservatives about to get even worse? On Friday, representatives from Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Snapchat and other major social media companies gathered to discuss "strategy" for the 2018 election. Supposedly they were going to discuss how to combat the flow of "misinformation", but we know what that means. Every time the social media giants pledge to do more to crack down on "fake news", more conservatives get censored. In recent months we have witnessed the greatest purge of conservative voices in the history of the Internet, and as you will see below, even more prominent voices have been hit with bans in recent days. Of course the social media companies are pledging that their censorship efforts are being implemented in an even-handed manner, but obviously all of their meddling has greatly enhanced the probability that Democrats will emerge victorious in November.
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Vader

Bait and switch: While world watched Syria, US attempted false-flag 'attack by Russia' on Afghanistan-Tajikistan border

Andrew Korybko
Eurasia Future
Mon, 27 Aug 2018 00:47 UTC
afghanistan map

Location of the 'airstrike' in northern Afghanistan
While the world was waiting with bated breath to see whether the US would really stage yet another chemical weapons false flag attack in Syria, Washington tried to pull a fast one in Afghanistan by manufacturing a fake crisis between Russia and the Taliban.

It's no secret that the US fears the consequences of Russia's newly pragmatic approach towards the Taliban so it was only a matter of time before it tried to manufacture a fake crisis between them in order to undermine Moscow's peacemaking efforts in Afghanistan, and next week's multilateral meeting in the Russian capital pushed the US to act. Although Washington and Kabul's refusal to participate in this event will deprive it of any immediate political significance, its long-term importance is that it contributes to Moscow's efforts to gradually rebrand the Taliban as a legitimate armed opposition movement by providing them with an international venue for constructively interacting with regional diplomats.

This in and of itself will herald in a sea change in political attitudes towards this group by breaking its diplomatic isolation and enabling it to be perceived as a responsible Eurasian actor, especially in the anti-security domain against ISIS-K. For this reason, it's in the US' interests to stop next week's gathering from taking place, or at the very least, to engineer a crisis between Russia and the Taliban that would lead to the latter's refusal to participate in the event, ergo the false flag attack that just took place in Afghanistan.
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Whistle

Whistleblower exposes key player in FBI Russia probe: "It was all a set-up"

Sara Carter
SaraACarter.com
Mon, 27 Aug 2018 18:16 UTC
lovinger

Adam Lovinger
Former DOD employee uncovered a long history of questionable behavior by FBI informant

Key player in Russia probe appears to have significant ties to Russian government

Adam Lovinger, a former Defense Department analyst, never expected that what he stumbled on during his final months at the Pentagon would expose an integral player in the FBI's handling of President Donald Trump's campaign and alleged Russia collusion.

Lovinger, a whistleblower, is now battling to save his career. The Pentagon suspended his top-secret security clearance May 1, 2017, when he exposed through an internal review that Stefan Halper, who was then an emeritus Cambridge professor, had received roughly $1 million in tax-payer funded money to write Defense Department foreign policy reports, his attorney Sean Bigley said. Before Lovinger's clearance was suspended he had taken a detail to the National Security Council as senior director for strategy. He was only there for five months before he was recalled to the Pentagon, stripped of his prestigious White House detail, and ordered to perform bureaucratic make-work in a Pentagon annex Bigley calls "the land of misfit toys." His security clearance was eventually revoked in March 2018, despite the Pentagon "refusing to turn over a single page of its purported evidence of Lovinger's wrongdoing," Bigley stated. Conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, recently filed a federal lawsuit against the Defense Department to obtain the withheld records.

Lovinger also raised concerns about Halper's role in conducting what appeared to be diplomatic meetings with foreigners on behalf of the U.S. government because his role as contractor forbids him from doing so, according to U.S. federal law.
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Sheriff

Kremlin releases images of Putin's hiking holiday with colleagues in Siberia


RT
Mon, 27 Aug 2018 19:00 UTC
putin on holiday
© Kremlin
Russian President Vladimir Putin has made the most of a weekend away from Moscow, enjoying the quiet life in a Siberian nature reserve with some top Kremlin officials.

Photographs published by the Kremlin show a relaxed-looking Putin walking leisurely in the mountains and forests of the Republic of Tyva in Southern Siberia. A video also shows the president trekking with Nordic walking poles, inspecting the soil, relaxing on a boat, looking pensively across the landscape and surveying native wildlife grazing on the mountainside.

Putin's spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leader had spent Saturday and Sunday in Tyva and was accompanied by Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, the director of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) Aleksander Bortnikov and local officials on the weekend sojourn. "Putin walked in the mountains and enjoyed the natural beauty," Peskov said.

Comment: It's just Putin, keeping it real, like he always does: We wonder how many Western politicians could bear to spend their weekend together when they're not being paid for it.

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Quenelle

Pink Floyd's Roger Waters blacklisted by Ukraine for debunking Western propaganda


RT
Mon, 27 Aug 2018 20:12 UTC
Roger Waters
© Mario Anzuoni / Reuters
Roger Waters
Pink Floyd founder Roger Waters has found himself blacklisted and added to the Ukrainian database of national enemies, after statements to Russian media about Crimea and the conflict in Ukraine.

Waters, 74, is wrapping up his US+Them European tour with concerts in St. Petersburg and Moscow this week and spoke with several Russian outlets about both music and his political activism. The rock musician has been an outspoken champion of the Palestinian cause and a critic of Western-backed rebels in Syria.

On Monday, however, his name appeared in the "purgatory" database of Mirotvorets (Peacemaker), maintained by people connected with Ukraine's security and intelligence services and listing alleged enemies of the state.

Comment: You can be sure that when you're blacklisted by the neo-Nazis in Ukraine, you're doing something right.

On Waters: On Ukraine:

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SOTT Logo Radio

NewsReal: Senator McCain is Dead! Trump Impeachment For Real? Imminent Syria 'Chemical Attack'


Sott.net
Sun, 26 Aug 2018 16:00 UTC
mccain death newsreal
Senator John 'The Maverick' McCain III is dead. This week on NewsReal, Joe and Niall look back on the illustrious career of an American hero and titan of US politics, whose indelible contributions to the War Party over four decades have earned him a place in the pantheon of Exceptionalistan.

Also this week: 'revelations' in two court cases stemming from the Mueller investigation produced a terrible week for President Trump, spurring the media to again go all out with calls for his impeachment. The Washington Crazies are not actually serious about forcing Trump out, are they?

Meanwhile in Syria, state forces amassing in the country's northwest to reclaim Idlib province for Damascus are being met - yet again - with the imminent threat of another staged chemical attack, with the Russian government warning that the plot is a pretext for Western powers to launch more airstrikes against Syrian military targets.


Live audio broadcast from 16:00 UTC / 12:00 US Eastern / 18:00 Central European. Video upload available Monday 27th August here: NewsReal with Joe & Niall

Running Time: 01:27:48

Download: MP3

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Attention

China's strategic interests in Central America

Andrew Korybko
Global Research
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
Carlos Castaneda/Wang Yi/Trump
© Daily Express
El Salvador FM Carlos Castaneda • China FM Wang Yi • President Donald Trump
El Salvador's decision to break off ties with Taipei and "defect" to Beijing obviously had a lot to do with the economic aid that China promised it, but the People's Republic is embracing the Central American nation for strategic reasons that go far beyond the symbolism of international recognition and include the establishment of an influential foothold in the US' "backyard".

El Salvador's Shocking "Defection"

The US was shocked by El Salvador's decision earlier this week to break off ties with Taipei and "defect" to Beijing, so much so that it ominously declared that it will "reevaluate" its relationship with the country. The Central American state's presidential spokesman explained that his government was motivated by economic factors, remarking that
"Fundamentally, it's an interest in betting on the growth of our country with one of the world's most booming economies. El Salvador can't turn its back on international reality."

Comment: China, in one bold stroke, has the US damned if it does, damned if it doesn't.

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Chess

Spiritual empowerment and defense readiness: Iran's 'Trump card' for US-Israeli aggression

Kevin Barrett
The Saker
Thu, 23 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
Psychopathichessboard
© sttpml.org
Do religion, spirituality, and ethics have any strategic significance?

Increasingly, since the time of Machiavelli, the Western answer to that question has been "no." According to the dominant view of Western elites, religious factors are usually a strategic liability rather than an asset. A spiritual soldier, according to this view, is less willing to fight. An ethical commander is less willing to make the hard decisions that lead to victory. And a religious society is likely to be scientifically and technologically backwards, and therefore unequipped with the latest weapons systems and strategies.

This dominant Machievellian view has been influenced by Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan. Hobbes famously argued that humans have emerged from a state of nature, the war of all against all, by gradual conquests of ever-larger kingdoms, each of which is tyrannically ruled by a single sovereign. The sovereign tyrant crushes anyone who spreads disorder or challenges his authority, thereby pacifying his realm and facilitating commerce and technological innovation. All human progress, according to Hobbesians, is the product of tyranny. Therefore, tyranny is good! What's more, by wars of aggression the tyrant enlarges the boundaries of his state, brings more peoples and lands into his realm, and thereby creates even more peace and prosperity. Therefore, wars of aggression are good!

The Machievellian-Hobbesian view, through a Nietzschean transmutation of values, takes what all non-psychopathic humans know is evil - tyranny and aggressive warfare - and redefines it as good.

Simultaneously, it takes what all non-psychopathic humans know is good - resistance to tyranny and refusal to submit to, or perpetrate, aggression - and redefines it as evil.

Comment: See also: Are Americans governed by secondary psychopaths?

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Attention

Be careful what you ask for: Time wasted with Manafort, Cohen and Russiagate

Jim Kavanagh
CounterPunch
Fri, 24 Aug 2018 00:00 UTC
Trump WH walking
© Syracuse.com
So, Paul Manafort, described by the New York Times as "a longtime lobbyist and political consultant who worked for multiple Republican candidates and presidents," was convicted of bank fraud, tax fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account. And Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, pled guilty to tax evasion, bank fraud (making false statements to obtain loans), and breaking campaign finance laws by paying off two women who claimed to have had sexual affairs with Trump. Because Cohen says those payoffs were made at Trump's direction, that is the one charge that directly implicates Trump.

On the basis of the these results, the NYT editorial board insists:
"Only a complete fantasist ... could continue to claim that this investigation of foreign subversion of an American election, which has already yielded dozens of other indictments and several guilty pleas, is a 'hoax' or 'scam' or 'rigged witch hunt.'"
Democrats concur, saying the results "put the lie to Mr. Trump's argument that Mr. Mueller was engaged in a political investigation."
But these crimes are tax fraud, money laundering, and credit app padding that have nothing to do with Donald Trump, and campaign-finance violations related to what a critic of Trump aptly describes as "a classic B-team type of bumbling screw-up of covering up mistresses." I question the level of word play, if not fantasizing, necessary to claim that these crimes validate "this investigation of foreign subversion." None of them has anything to do with that. The perils of this, that, these, and those.

Do these results disprove that the Mueller probe is "a political investigation"? I think they imply quite the opposite, and quite obviously so.

Comment: A one-two punch to the logic of the left.

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