Sunday, January 15, 2017

Spy vs Spy: Russia for a Change in Atmosphere

Oh, the utter lack of self-awareness

Why am I growing leery of all this "CIA coup" talk we're hearing in the media? 

Exactly because we're hearing it in the media. I didn't cut my teeth on all those old issues of Covert Action Quarterly to just turn around and buy whatever narrative the media is flogging.


This all feels orchestrated and stage-managed to me. Like everything about this election and its aftermath. Some kind of game is playing out here, I just can't grasp at the contours of it. Which is a good thing, probably. For me.


For some reason I can quite put my finger on, it makes perfect sense that a man known to most of the public as a reality TV star is at the center of this open-air psychodrama unfolding in front of us, this contrived Clash of the Titans, this bizarro Battle of the Billionaires.

So much of this is ultimately a new media put-on, Trump battling (read: trolling) the press, shooting out tweets with his meaty fingers. The charge is being led by The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com fame) and The New York Times (owned and operated by Carlos Slim Helu, the Mexican telecom magnate), and the once-mighty/now-endangered CNN bringing up the rear.


And for a guy who's the focus of a firestorm of controversy and the ostensible target of attack from some of the most powerful forces in the country, he doesn't seem to be sweating it too much. Near as I can tell, at least. Even the ultraliberal Newsweek has the headline today: "Don't Kid Yourself - Trump Is Winning." 

That raises some red flags, by my reckoning. Is this just another performance for a seasoned reality TV hand? Have we finally come to this?


Think about it for a minute: why dump all this Russia stuff out when all the paperwork has been completed? The recounts didn't pan out, the Hamilton Elector campaign went nowhere, the Electoral College voted, the results were ratified by Congress. It's a done deal. 


These painfully-earnest celebrity videos, the Golden Globes speeches, aren't moving the needle at all. They're just inspiring eye-rolling, resentment and hathos, even among Trump-haters. No one cares about the status anxieties of the unjustly-pampered and impossibly-rich. 


Chris Rock put it best: “If poor people knew how rich rich people are, there would be riots in the streets.” 


SUCH A THING AS PRECEDENT


I'm pretty sure I know where all this is all eventually going, I'm just not sure what exact road they're planning to take. But I guarantee that a lot of people cheering on the new McCarthyism are definitely not going to like where the bus lets off. 


How do I know this, you ask?

Well, the CIA's track record isn't entirely classified is it? I mean, there's the matter of testing LSD on children as young as five, testing radiation on pregnant mothers and on the mentally-handicapped, overthrowing democratically-elected governments and setting up death squads, flooding our cities with illegal drugs...


...need I go on? I hope not.


But hey, there's an election to try to undo. So already having sold their souls (and the working and middle classes everywhere) to Wall Street, Bilderberg and Silicon Valley billionaires, the Democrats have given up their last scraps and shreds of hair, skin and sinew to the fucking CIA, of all people.

And how does the CIA apparently plan to repay them?

Well, according to this report, by installing the man who would like nothing better than to crush what is left of their party into a finely-ground powder into the Oval Office:

For these two reasons, there are people inside the CIA who would love to see the unpredictable tycoon replaced by vice-president-elect Mike Pence, a man who they feel they can work with. 
Of course, it is well-known that the CIA has an infamous record of plotting coups d’etats against democratically elected governments in other countries — for example, in the early-Fifties when it helped the Iranian military overthrow premier Mohammad Mosaddeq and reinstate the Shah, and the ousting of Chile’s president Salvador Allende in 1973. 
The atmosphere is currently so feverish in Washington that there are well-informed people who now believe that the CIA is contemplating a version of the same thing in America itself.
Wouldn't that just be a kick in the pants? Give the Left Trump's head on a platter and put their worst fucking nightmare in the White House?

Mike Pence, an inveterate partisan warrior who would not only work night and day to gut all their favorite programs but won't lead with his chin the way Trump does. A much harder target who will come armed with an increasingly-radicalized Republican Congress (led by Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan) and a seriously pissed-off police force looking for payback after eight years of Obama.  Not to mention a vengeful GOP voter base, who will baying for blood just in time for the midterms.

That's 
the CIA we all know and unlove.


But is any of this actually true? The Media has seized on Trump's tactical assent with the Russia hacking report, but that means that they are now taking the word of the CIA and Donald Trump as gospel when the only evidence presented thus far is use of Ukrainian not Russian-  malware, that hackers can obtain anywhere on the Dark Web.


Not familiar with what's going on in the Ukraine, are we? Not familiar with the "color revolution" that Obama Administration neocons engineered, that just happened to bring real-life Nazis to power? 

From Globalist mouthpiece Foreign Policy:
Yes, There Are Bad Guys in the Ukrainian Government 
It's time for a frank conversation about some of the unsavory characters in Kiev. 
Sound policy, however, can only be based on sound analysis of the players involved. That requires conceding the point — even when made by the Kremlin — that more than a few of the protesters who toppled Yanukovych, and of the new leaders in Kiev, are fascists.
Here's video of a mass rally of the Soros-funded Ukrainian fascists. And then there's this recent story:
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazilian police have unveiled a plot led by a Ukrainian armed movement to recruit Brazilian neo-Nazis with combat experience to fight pro-Russian rebels in the European country’s civil war. 
A series of raids took place last month in seven cities on the homes of neo-Nazis in order to prevent possible attacks against Jews and gays in Porto Alegre, according to Brazilian police, who seized vast amounts of Nazi propaganda material and also illegal ammunition, reported the Zero Hora news portal.
Nice friends we have there. Still think the Russians shot that jet down?

Bizarro-World in the comics was funny. Not so much here.

RUSSIARUSSIARUSSIA


In the middle of the New McCarthyites' New Red Scare came a blockbuster headline: Trump and Vladimir Putin to hold summit. Suddenly every newly-minted CIA-lover's worst nightmare had come true- Trump really was Putin's puppet, by gum!

Only problem was the story is not true:

The Russian embassy in London has denied that Russian president Vladimir Putin will meet President-elect Donald Trump in Iceland following his inauguration on January 20. 
The Sunday Times newspaper wrote that Trump's team have told British officials that the new US leader plans to meet Putin within weeks of becoming president. But the Russian embassy in London has downplayed the report.
A spokesman for the embassy told Business Insider on Sunday that the report is "complete rubbish" and suggested that we look at the embassy's Twitter feed, where the embassy has been referring to the report as #fakenews. 
Two aides to Trump also denied The Sunday Times story, according to Reuters. "The story is a fantasy," one Trump aide told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. Another said the report was not true.
Did anyone happen to notice that the Trump team has been running ops to smoke out leaks, by its own admission? Did the unimaginably credulous press corps, desperate to throw any negative or sensationalistic headlines they could, bother to verify this story? 

These privileged pajama-boys and girls in the press are not dealing with Obama Administration whiz kids from Oberlin and Vassar anymore.

Now they're dealing with men who have killed and tortured people. A lot of men who have killed and tortured a lot of people, if you start counting all the adjutants and assistants, I'm sure. They're dealing with men who would probably like nothing more than to kill them if they can figure out a way to get away with it. Think I'm exaggerating?



How bizarre has the world you are now living in become? The liberal New Yorker is hailing Marine General James Mattis, late of Central Command, as a bulwark against the perceived authoritarianism of a New York native who spent his life in the libertine worlds of casinos, beauty pageants and network television. 

I mean, where do you start?


Need I remind you this guy's nickname is "Mad Dog?" Here's a couple quotes from his time in Iraq to let you know that he earned the moniker:

“I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.” 
“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet."
Some savior, New Yorker.

Now ask yourself; do you think these people are afraid of reporters?

WHAT IF?


Look, I could be wrong but the fact remains that the CIA had all the time in the world to take Trump down if that's what they were really after. They had the primaries, the elections, the Electoral College and both their hands up the ass of the entire mainstream media since at least the 1980s. All of it, from stem to stern.

  
This feels like something else. 

What if there was a war among the intelligence hierarchy, one side lost and this is all just face-saving? This is all just brush-clearing, steam-letting, which the victors are indulging before they bring the hammer down? What if Trump is trolling in order to draw attention away from what is coming down the pike?


Maybe this Russia unreality show is just one giant "red" herring. Maybe the War in Heaven has already been fought and settled.

Why would I think this?


The news that the Clinton Global Initiative is closing down might have something to do with it. The Clintons used this mammoth cash machine as an extremely effective power base while out of office and cultivated unimaginable wealth, power and influence with it:

Since Bill Clinton launched CGI as an arm of the Clinton Foundation in 2005, its members made more than 3,550 commitments and pledged to raise $125 billion to meet them, according to a Bloomberg News calculation based on annual reports. 
The group says its work has affected 430 million people in 180 countries. In philanthropy circles, CGI is widely credited with creating a new framework for giving and action, convening powerful figures from government, business and charities to address global problems. Members would pay for the privilege to meet and brainstorm solutions, then make financial commitments, often multi-year plans costing tens of millions of dollars.
This closing is based on paperwork filed with the State of New York and yet no major media outlet will cover the story. Why? Mainstream site Politico reported on the mass layoffs there back in September.

What's different now?


Maybe this will give you a clue. 

I'm no prophet. Prediction is a tough racket, given the random variables constantly swirling around, banging into one another like protons in an atom smasher. But I can say this- the powers that be played the Global game and there was one clear, unambiguous winner: Communist China.

It's why China seems to be the odd man out at Davos this year, Monopoly board under its arm, forlornly trying to get an increasingly-reluctant world to play along again. 
And after a number of years-absence, China's horrific smog problems are headline news again. 

I believe there is a new Cold War coming. But collating all the stories and taking the measure of the Trump junta, I don't believe it will necessarily be with Russia.