- Retired Green Beret Warns Mainstream Media Is A Tool For Destroying America
A deliberate attempt is being made by the MSM (Mainstream Media) to destroy the remaining fabric of American society and force the country’s disintegration and absorption into a global government.
They don’t have very far to go: since the 1960s, a family-centered culture that was the “hub” of the greatest nation this world has ever seen…that bastion of the family has been eroded and all but destroyed. The replacement “culture” has been one of drug use, pornography, “sloth” within all the generations… young, middle-aged, and elderly, and a fostered unwillingness to take responsibility for anything of value. The country is an entitlement nation that “asks not what you can do for your country, but what can you take from it.” The family is not even referred to in that manner anymore. I have read the term “consumer units” to refer to households, as well as “household groupings.”
Communities… true communities where individuals and families contribute to the overall welfare of the area and each other… are almost nonexistent. This has been replaced with Communism, currently undergoing its “genesis” from the soft form of socialism and the semi-laissez faire authoritarianism that is exemplified by the surveillance state. The socialism will turn into communism, as Lenin (Ulyanov, if you prefer) pointed out to us. A forced “communal” mindset is being blared at us by every weapon the Media has in its arsenal: the radio, newspapers, television, and the Internet/Social Media monster.
Daily, the paradigm is shifted, and the consciousness of the people is being battered with wave after wave of unrelenting actions. No publication better exemplifies the heinous nature of the Media’s intentions than Time Magazine. A Feminist Agenda is being peddled under the guise of “equality,” but in reality it is a sinister operation carried out by nefarious individuals masquereding as “reporters,” “editors,” and “columnists,” meant to polarize groups and to foster a sense of “blame” or “guilt” with every action.
As an example, the September 18, 2017 issue of Time Magazine has an Editorial Page (page 4) by Nancy Gibbs, Editor-in-Chief, that explains how 12 women were on the cover of Time as “Firsts,” or “groundbreaking” women who the magazine holds up as positive examples. Hillary Clinton and Ellen Degeneres are two of those examples that are upheld and lauded. Funny how they didn’t slap a picture of Hillary Clinton on the cover around the time of Benghazi, Libya, or when she resigned her position as Secretary of State. They didn’t put one up there of Victoria Nuland, either, or Rosanne Barr. Paula Deen was also left out.
Time didn’t skip a beat with it’s cover of its December 18, 2017 issue entitled “The Silence Breakers: the voices that launched a movement,” with the theme being women who came forward with stories of sexual harassment. Missing from that ensemble was Asia Argento, who was accused of sexually harassing a man. January 29, 2018 issue with the photos of 48 women on the cover, with the lead article entitled “The Avengers: First they marched. Now they’re running.” This issue is all about women running for public office.
Not “Public Servants,” but Avengers: the characterization of every one of these articles.
If a woman takes that stance when running for office…the stance of an “Avenger” instead of a public servant, then she is doing more than a disservice to her constituents: she is committing fraud. Underlying the public oath she will take if she wins is the fact that it is done for a nefarious reason…to exact revenge against male dominance or discrimination, whether real or imagined. This is not the characterization needed by someone who holds public office, a public servant who is supposed to champion the interests of all.
But the true crime is committed by the magazine: this is a form of hate speech treading upon eggshells. Under the guise of freedom of speech and freedom of the press (and protection under the 1st Amendment of the Constitution) they can say anything they want, right? How about where these pieces by time were meant to polarize groups and set off one group (in this case men) to be vilified…would not this be a form of “hate speech?” Just as you are not allowed to shout “fire” in a movie theater when there is none…an action that will lead to an arrest…how are these MSM people able to force this nonsense on the rest of us? Every cover, and every article has an agenda.
To be sure, there is no such thing as perfect reporting, because that would mean that complete objectivity has been attained, and there is no such thing. The problem lies in the fact that this is not a matter of objectivity: it is a matter of complete “slant” and deliberate obfuscation of the facts in order to mold public consciousness (they have no “conscience”) and shift it toward Communism. They trick you: they uphold “community,” but what they really mean is Communism, plain and simple. You’re a part of the group, complete with slogans and “groupthink,” until you do something as an individual, and then you either are ostracized, punished, or cast out.
In a sheer case of reverse discrimination, males…Caucasian males, to be exact, are denounced, ridiculed, and degraded at every turn. The President of the United States is the most visible Caucasian male, and he has been the lead “scapegoat” for all of the ills that befall the “woe is me!” crowd of whining entitlement-centered voters whose only true qualification for voting is being born in the United States (we hope). Mueller is a white male, and here is how they did it: pitted two white males against one another, and the Left wins, no matter who wins!
Mueller and his witch hunt have been a relentless, circuitous pursuit with no clear-cut objectives and no end to the hunt. If he “found” something, it makes the President look bad. If nothing happens, then it still casts a “shadow of doubt” on the President…sometimes equally damaging as an action…and Mueller ends up appearing as a bumbling clown….two white males in a negative light, no matter what the result.
On various Time Magazine covers are an assortment of males who are vilified: The President, Steve Bannon, Vladimir Putin. They also put one up of Harvey Weinstein, the vehicle to open the door and charge all human males in the United States who have ever looked at a woman. Amazing how the charges did not surface and Weinstein was not “quite so villainous” before the 2016 election when he was contributing heavily to the Democrats and to Hillary Clinton.
We have focused on one magazine, but this same pattern is rampant in all of the publications. September 21, 2018’s issue of “The Week” depicts the President with his back towards us, and in front of him are six black masked-and-garbed individuals staring at him. The caption reads, “The Resistance: Why Trump’s own staff is conspiring to thwart his impulses.”
See this, and see it for what it is: “…Trump’s own staff is conspiring to thwart his impulses.”
His impulses? That the President acts on impulse, and not on thought-out decisions with deliberation behind them…that is the lie this magazine wishes to push on the public. It is not only in this regard that the country is being destroyed. You don’t see anything of any worth in these publications that contributes to the overall good of society, because they don’t wish that.
The Media does not want a “good” society: they want a degenerate society that is either cowed into compliance, or so focused within and upon all its filthy acts that it does not care what goes on around it. Such leads to submission and enables control.
The Media has blinded the people by showing them what they wish to see: themselves. The Media has purposefully, deliberately lowered the standards. The Media (inclusive of Hollywood, mind you, and the movies and television) have presented aberrant behaviors and actions that denigrated and destroyed the former social fabric. They have enabled others of their ilk (Communists in Politics and in Business) to foster a new “Third World” society, including the abolition of the middle class and the ending of where government is the final answer and solution to all problems.
Read. Read the “Communist Manifesto,” and the Planks of Communism, and you will see in print what was written decades ago, that is happening here and now in the U.S. Read Alexander Sozhenitsyn’s works to see what happens at the “final tipping point” of the full-blown change of a nation into a Communist totalitarian society.
And read the newspapers, the magazines, and the like: it will all jump right out at you. We are at a tipping point where the economy is not stable, where there are many elements that could turn into tremendous social conflicts and upheavals domestically, and the rest of the world is little by little “decoupling” from the Petrodollar and reliance upon American markets.
Throughout all of this, the Media has been there to make it worse, to skew the news, and to force societal transformation and paradigm shift through its propaganda toward a Communist society and the relegation of American sovereignty toward global governance.
- Most Americans See A Sharply Divided Nation; The Fourth Turning Is Here
The October 2018 AP-NORC Poll national survey with 1,152 adults found 8 in 10 Americans believe the country is divided regarding essential values, and some expect the division to deepen into 2020.
Only 20% of Americans said they think the country will become less divided over the next several years, and 39% believe conditions will continue to deteriorate. A substantial majority of Americans, 77%, said they are dissatisfied with the state of politics in the country, said AP-NORC.
The nationwide survey was conducted on October 11-14, using the AmeriSpeak Panel, the probability-based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Overall, 59% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling his job as president, while 40% of Americans approve.
More specifically, the poll said 83% of Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the job, while 92% of Democrats and 61% of Independents strongly disagree.
More than half of Americans said they are not hearing nor seeing topics from midterm campaigns that are important to them. About 54% of Democrats and 44% of Republicans said vital issues, such as health care, education, and economic activity, Social Security and crime, were topics they wanted to hear more.
Looking at their communities, most American (Republicans and Democrats) are satisfied with their state or local community. However, on a national level, 58% of Americans are dissatisfied with the direction of the country, compared to 25%, a small majority who are satisfied.
Most Americans are dissatisfied with the massive gap between rich and poor, race relations and environmental conditions. The poll noticed there are partisan splits, 84% of Democrats are disappointed with the amount of wealth inequality, compared with 43% of Republicans. On the environment, 77% of Democrats and 32% Republicans are dissatisfied. Moreover, while 77% Democrats said they are unhappy with race relations, about 50% of Republicans said the same.
The poll also showed how Democrats and Republicans view certain issues. About 80% of Democrats but less than 33% of Republicans call income inequality, environmental issues or racism very important.
AP-NORC Poll – Which issues are extremely or very important?
“Healthcare, education and economic growth are the top issues considered especially important by the public. While there are many issues that Republicans and Democrats give similar levels of importance to (trade foreign policy and immigration), there are several concerns where they are far apart. For example, 80% of Democrats say the environment and climate change is extremely or very important, and only 28% of Republicans agree. And while 68% consider the national debt to be extremely or very important, only 55% of Democrats regard it with the same level of significance,” said AP-NORC.
Although Democrats and Republicans are divided on most values, many Americans consider the country’s diverse population a benefit.
Half said America’s melting pot makes the country stronger, while less than 20% said it hurts the country. About 30% said diversity does not affect their outlook.
“However, differences emerge by party identification, gender, location, education, and race. Democrats are more likely to say having a population with various backgrounds makes the country stronger compared to Republicans or Independents. Urbanities and college-educated adults are more likely to say having a mix of ethnicities makes the country stronger, while people living in rural areas and less educated people tend to say diversity has no effect or makes the country weaker,” said AP-NORC.
Overall, 60% of Americans said accusations of sexual harassment with some high-profile men forced to resign or be fired was essential to them. However, 73% of women said the issue was critical, compared with 51% of men. The data showed that Democrats were much more likely than Republicans to call sexual misconduct significant.
More than 40% of Americans somewhat or strongly disapprove of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court after allegations of sexual harassment in his college years. 35% of Americans said they heartily approved of Kavanaugh’s confirmation.
The evidence above sheds light on the internal struggles of America. The country is divided, and this could be a significant problem just ahead.
Why is that? Well, America’s future was outlined in a book called “The Fourth Turning: What Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous With Destiny.”
In the book, which was written in the late 1990s, authors William Strauss and Niel Howe theorize that the history of civilization moves in 80-to-100 year cycles called “saecula.”
The idea behind this theory dates back to the Greeks, who believed that at given saeculum’s end, there would come “ekpyrosis,” or a cataclysmic event.
This era of change is known as the Fourth Turning, and it appears we are in the midst of one right now.
The last few Fourth Turnings that America experienced ushered in the Civil War and the Reconstruction era, and then the Great Depression and World War II. Before all of that, it was the Revolutionary War.
Each Fourth Turning had similar warning signs: periods of political chaos, division, social and economic decay in which the American people reverted from extreme division and were forced to reunite in the rebuild of a new future, but that only came after massive conflict.
Today’s divide among many Americans is strong. We are headed for a collision that will rip this country apart at the seams. The timing of the next Fourth Turning is now, and it could take at least another decade to complete the cycle.
After the Fourth Turning, America will not be the America you are accustomed to today. So, let us stop calling today the “greatest economy ever” and start preparing for turbulence.
- China Is Challenging The US In Central America, And Washington Can't Do Anything
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Central America late last week when he criticized China’s rising influence there by questioning the intentions behind its investment activity.
This prompted the country’s media to angrily respond earlier this week and lambast the US for trying to “drive a wedge” into Sino-Latin American relations.
Washington is worried that Central America is slipping out of its hegemonic control after tiny El Salvador broke ties with Taiwan in August and recognized Beijing as China’s legitimate government in exchange for economic support, which some observers feared could catalyze a chain reaction in this part of the world where the self-proclaimed country counts a handful of its dwindling supporters.
From the US’ perspective, China’s rising economic influence is clearly having political consequences that might one day manifest themselves in these countries gradually turning away from Washington like a few of them have recently done with Taipei, which could lead to the US losing its unipolar control over the region that it condescendingly regards as its “backyard”. Even Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez hinted at what he called the “opportunity” that China’s growing diplomatic role in the region could provide despite he himself having remained in power up until now after winning a disputed election late last year that was controversially endorsed by the US.
El Salvador’s Foreign Minister Carlos Castaneda (L) shakes hands with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing on August 21, 2018
Speaking of “opportunities”, a new one has suddenly materialized after Trump threatened to curtail the aid that his government was giving to the three “Northern Triangle” countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador as part of the so-called “Alliance for Prosperity” after they failed to stop thousands of their citizens from participating in the latest Caravan Crisis, which provides the perfect pretext for China to economically intervene in their support on the condition that the remaining two follow San Salvador’s lead and switch their recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
This potential pivot could give China indirect control over the US’ border security by making it responsible for stability in those countries after replacing American aid there.
It’s already recognized that many of these migrants are motivated to flee their homelands by powerful push factors such as systemic mismanagement, corruption, drugs, unemployment, and gang violence, which were what the US’ “Alliance for Prosperity” assistance was supposed to address, but it might be China that ends up doing so if Trump scales back these programs like he’s planning and Beijing steps in to replace it. Just as disturbing of a scenario for the US is if this has a knock-on effect that enhances Chinese influence in Mexico after its leftist president-elect AMLO takes office at the beginning of December, thereby representing an unprecedented challenge to the US’ political dominance in the entire Western Hemisphere.
The Catch-22 that the US finds itself in is that its reactionary Hybrid War response could just make the Migrant Crisis even worse, so it’s unclear what America can or will do to retain its hegemony here.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Crypto Miner Offers Junk Loan With 12% Coupon
Investors’ insatiable demand for yield has pushed issuance of the riskiest types of debt, i.e. “leveraged loans”, to record highs in 2018 (as risky loans cannibalize the market for junk bonds due in part to the bankers selling these loans claiming they can ‘magically eliminate all risk’, even as some companies hit leverage ratios as high as 15 times earnings, by packaging them into “diversified” CLOs and other structured debt products)…
…Debt investors are turning to ever-murkier areas of the debt market, despite warnings from former Fed Chair Yellen and others who have expressed concerns about the systemic risks posed by the $1.6 trillion in outstanding leveraged loans, where rising interest rates could trigger a spike in defaults.
And in the latest indication of just how irrationally exuberant investors (and, more to the point, the bankers who are enabling them) have become, Bloomberg reports that bitcoin-focused companies are using some of their assets as collateral for junk syndicated loans that allow investors in risky debt to gain some exposure to the asset bubble du jour of yesteryear – aka cryptocurrencies, which have remained mired near their lows even as other alternative currencies (gold) have seen prices – and volatility – picking up.
Coinmint, which is in the process of converting a disused aluminum smelter near the US-Canada border formerly owned by Alcoa into the world’s largest digital-currency mining center, has decided to fuel its ambitious expansionary plans (even as crypto prices have sagged far below their highs from late 2017) with a $50 million loan over 5 years to purchase and install servers and miners at its sprawling mine. For the privilege of borrowing, the company, which has negligible revenues given that it’s key asset – the crpto mine – has yet to open for business, is willing to pay 12% a year in interest, according to BBG’s sources.
Coinmint’s smelter-turned-mine in Massena, NY.
As BBG points out, the high rate and the opportunity to gain crypto exposure (which could pay off if bitcoin prices ever embark on another bull run) could entice lenders, despite the obvious risks.
While the amount the company wishes to borrow is small by credit-market standards, the interest rate for the senior secured revolving-credit facility may entice lenders. Coinmint has proposed an interest rate of as much as 12 percent a year, a person familiar with the matter said, which is higher than the average yields on the lowest-rated U.S. junk bonds.
The loan is a rare opportunity for credit investors to gain exposure to digital currencies, which remain largely isolated from traditional financial markets. In spite of the risks, it’s also a way to bet on the viability of crypto assets, which have had a torrid year, with some tokens plunging as much as 90 percent.
“When you’re talking about lenders getting into a new space that they’re not as comfortable with, they will look at us as higher-risk, and use that as an excuse to charge higher rates,” said Prieur Leary, co-founder of Coinmint. He declined to comment on the specific terms of the loan.
What’s more, Coinmint is hoping to invest $700 million in launching its mine, which means a return to the debt trough is likely, if not inevitable.
Coinmint said earlier this year it would invest up to $700 million in revamping its Massena plot, which was an active smelter for Alcoa Corp. until 2014. The new loan facility will form part of this funding, Leary said.
And unsurprisingly given that simply creating and selling digital tokens to raise money has suddenly gone out of vogue amid a crackdown by the SEC, Coinmint isn’t the only crypto firm looking for funding in traditional capital markets.
Coinmint isn’t the only crypto company to seek to finance its growth in the credit market. Debt was also part of a recent round of finance for BCause LLC, a U.S. mining and trading company, according to founder Thomas Flake.
But despite the risks, the bankers who put these deals together have every reason to celebrate: After a series of major booms and busts, and with crypto prices stuck in the toilet, at least they have found a way to profit off crypto in 2018.
- Facebook Censorship Of Alternative Media "Just The Beginning," Warns Top Neocon Insider
Authored by Max Blumenthal and Jeb Sprague via GrayZoneProject.com,
At a Berlin security conference, hardline neocon Jamie Fly appeared to claim some credit for the recent coordinated purge of alternative media…
This October, Facebook and Twitter deleted the accounts of hundreds of users, including many alternative media outlets maintained by American users. Among those wiped out in the coordinated purge were popular sites that scrutinized police brutality and U.S. interventionism, like The Free Thought Project, Anti-Media, and Cop Block, along with the pages of journalists like Rachel Blevins.
Facebook claimed that these pages had “broken our rules against spam and coordinated inauthentic behavior.” However, sites like The Free Thought Project were verified by Facebook and widely recognized as legitimate sources of news and opinion. John Vibes, an independent reporter who contributed to Free Thought, accused Facebook of “favoring mainstream sources and silencing alternative voices.”
In comments published here for the first time, a neoconservative Washington insider has apparently claimed a degree of credit for the recent purge — and promised more takedowns in the near future.
“Russia, China, and other foreign states take advantage of our open political system,” remarked Jamie Fly, a senior fellow and director of the Asia program at the influential think tank the German Marshall Fund, which is funded by the U.S. government and NATO.
“They can invent stories that get repeated and spread through different sites. So we are just starting to push back. Just this last week Facebook began starting to take down sites. So this is just the beginning.”
Fly went on to complain that “all you need is an email” to set up a Facebook or Twitter account, lamenting the sites’ accessibility to members of the general public. He predicted a long struggle on a global scale to fix the situation, and pointed out that to do so would require constant vigilance.
Fly made these stunning comments to Jeb Sprague, who is a visiting faculty member in sociology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and co-author of this article. The two spoke during a lunch break at a conference on Asian security organized by the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin, Germany.
In the tweet below, Fly is the third person from the left who appears seated at the table.
A rare opportunity to discuss Asian security in Berlin, with an excellent group of experts from the region @SWPBerlin pic.twitter.com/Ogdc9d5BVK
— Garima Mohan (@GarimaMo) October 15, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The remarks by Fly — “we are just starting to push back” — seemed to confirm the worst fears of the alternative online media community. If he was to be believed, the latest purge was motivated by politics, not spam prevention, and was driven by powerful interests hostile to dissident views, particularly where American state violence is concerned.
Jamie Fly, rise of a neocon cadre
Jamie Fly is an influential foreign policy hardliner who has spent the last year lobbying for the censorship of “fringe views” on social media. Over the years, he has advocated for a military assault on Iran, a regime change war on Syria, and hiking military spending to unprecedented levels. He is the embodiment of a neoconservative cadre.
Like so many second-generation neocons, Fly entered government by burrowing into mid-level positions in George W. Bush’s National Security Council and Department of Defense.
In 2009, he was appointed director of the Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), a rebranded version of Bill Kristol’s Project for a New American Century, or PNAC. The latter outfit was an umbrella group of neoconservative activists that first made the case for an invasion of Iraq as part of a wider project of regime change in countries that resisted Washington’s sphere of influence.
By 2011, Fly was advancing the next phase in PNAC’s blueprint by clamoring for military strikes on Iran. “More diplomacy is not an adequate response,” he argued. A year later, Fly urged the US to “expand its list of targets beyond the [Iranian] nuclear program to key command and control elements of the Republican Guard and the intelligence ministry, and facilities associated with other key government officials.”
Fly soon found his way into the senate office of Marco Rubio, a neoconservative pet project, assuming a role as his top foreign policy advisor. Amongst other interventionist initiatives, Rubio has taken the lead in promoting harsh economic sanctions targeting Venezuela, even advocating for a U.S. military assault on the country. When Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign floundered amid a mass revolt of the Republican Party’s middle American base against the party establishment, Fly was forced to cast about for new opportunities.
He found them in the paranoid atmosphere of Russiagate that formed soon after Donald Trump’s shock election victory.
PropOrNot sparks the alternative media panic
A journalistic insider’s account of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, Shattered, revealed that “in the days after the election, Hillary declined to take responsibility for her own loss.” Her top advisers were summoned the following day, according to the book, “to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up … Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.”
Less than three weeks after Clinton’s defeat, the Washington Post’s Craig Timberg published a dubiously sourced report headlined, “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news.’” The article hyped up a McCarthyite effort by a shadowy, anonymously run organization called PropOrNot to blacklist some 200 American media outlets as Russian “online propaganda.”
The alternative media outfits on the PropOrNot blacklist included some of those recently purged by Facebook and Twitter, such as The Free Thought Project and Anti-Media. Among the criteria PropOrNot identified as signs of Russian propaganda were “Support for policies like Brexit, and the breakup of the EU and Eurozone” and “Opposition to Ukrainian resistance to Russia and Syrian resistance to Assad.” PropOrNot called for “formal investigations by the U.S. government” into the outlets it had blacklisted.
According to Craig Timberg, the Washington Post correspondent who uncritically promoted the media suppression initiative, Propornot was established by “a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds.” Timberg quoted a figure associated with the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security, Andrew Weisburd, and cited a report he wrote with his colleague, Clint Watts, on Russian meddling.
Timberg’s piece on PropOrNot was promoted widely by former top Clinton staffers and celebrated by ex-Obama White House aide Dan Pfeiffer as “the biggest story in the world.” But after a wave of stinging criticism, including in the pages of the New Yorker, the article was amended with an editor’s note stating, “The [Washington] Post… does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet.”
PropOrNot had been seemingly exposed as a McCarthyite sham, but the concept behind it — exposing online American media outlets as vehicles for Kremlin “active measures” — continued to flourish.
The birth of the Russian bot tracker — with U.S. government money
By August, a new, and seemingly related initiative appeared out of the blue, this time with backing from a bipartisan coalition of Democratic foreign policy hands and neocon Never Trumpers in Washington. Called the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), the outfit aimed to expose how supposed Russian Twitter bots were infecting American political discourse with divisive narratives. It featured a daily “Hamilton 68” online dashboard that highlighted the supposed bot activity with easily digestible charts. Conveniently, the site avoided naming any of the digital Kremlin influence accounts it claimed to be tracking.
The initiative was immediately endorsed by John Podesta, the founder of the Democratic Party think tank the Center for American Progress, and former chief of staff of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Julia Ioffe, the Atlantic’s chief Russiagate correspondent, promoted the bot tracker as “a very cool tool.”
Unlike PropOrNot, the ASD was sponsored by one of the most respected think tanks in Washington, the German Marshall Fund, which had been founded in 1972 to nurture the special relationship between the US and what was then West Germany.
The German Marshall Fund is substantially funded by Western governments, and largely reflects their foreign-policy interests. Its top two financial sponsors, at more than $1 million per year each, are the U.S. government’s soft-power arm the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the German Foreign Office (known in German as the Auswärtiges Amt). The U.S. State Department also provides more than half a million dollars per year, as do the German Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development and the foreign affairs ministries of Sweden and Norway. It likewise receives at least a quarter of a million dollars per year from NATO.
The US government and NATO are top donors to the German Marshall Fund
Though the German Marshall Fund did not name the donors that specifically sponsored its Alliance for Securing Democracy initiative, it hosts a who’s who of bipartisan national-security hardliners on the ASD’s advisory council, providing the endeavor with the patina of credibility. They range from neocon movement icon Bill Kristol to former Clinton foreign policy advisor Jake Sullivan and ex-CIA director Michael Morell.
Jamie Fly, a German Marshall Fund fellow and Asia specialist, emerged as one of the most prolific promoters of the new Russian bot tracker in the media. Together with Laura Rosenberger, a former foreign policy aide to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Fly appeared in a series of interviews and co-authored several op-eds emphasizing the need for a massive social media crackdown.
During a March 2018 interview on C-Span, Fly complained that “Russian accounts” were “trying to promote certain messages, amplify certain content, raise fringe views, pit Americans against each other, and we need to deal with this ongoing problem and find ways through the government, through tech companies, through broader society to tackle this issue.”
Yet few of the sites on PropOrNot’s blacklist, and none of the alternative sites that were erased in the recent Facebook purge that Fly and his colleagues take apparent credit for, were Russian accounts. Perhaps the only infraction they could have been accused of was publishing views that Fly and his cohorts saw as “fringe.”
What’s more, the ASD has been forced to admit that the mass of Twitter accounts it initially identified as “Russian bots” were not necessarily bots — and may not have been Russian either.
“I’m not convinced on this bot thing”
A November 2017 investigation by Max Blumenthal, a co-author of this article, found that the ASD’s Hamilton 68 dashboard was the creation of “a collection of cranks, counterterror retreads, online harassers and paranoiacs operating with support from some of the most prominent figures operating within the American national security apparatus.”
These figures included the same George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security fellows — Andrew Weisburd and Clint Watts — that were cited as experts in the Washington Post’s article promoting PropOrNot.
Weisburd, who has been described as one of the brains behind the Hamilton 68 dashboard, once maintained a one-man, anti-Palestinian web monitoring initiative that specialized in doxxing left-wing activists, Muslims and anyone he considered “anti-American.” More recently, he has taken to Twitter to spout off murderous and homophobic fantasies about Glenn Greenwald, the editor of the Intercept — a publication the ASD flagged without explanation as a vehicle for Russian influence operations.
Watts, for his part, has testified before Congress on several occasions to call on the government to “quell information rebellions” with censorious measures including “nutritional labels” for online media. He has received fawning publicity from corporate media and been rewarded with a contributor role for NBC on the basis of his supposed expertise in ferreting out Russian disinformation.
Clint Watts has urged Congress to “quell information rebellions”
However, under questioning during a public event by Grayzone contributor Ilias Stathatos, Watts admitted that substantial parts of his testimony were false, and refused to provide evidence to support some of his most colorful claims about malicious Russian bot activity.
In a separate interview with Buzzfeed, Watts appeared to completely disown the Hamilton 68 bot tracker as a legitimate tool. “I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” Watts confessed. He even called the narrative that he helped manufacture “overdone,” and admitted that the accounts Hamilton 68 tracked were not necessarily directed by Russian intelligence actors.
“We don’t even think they’re all commanded in Russia — at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia,” Watts conceded.
But these stunning admissions did little to slow the momentum of the coming purge.
Enter the Atlantic Council
In his conversation with Sprague, the German Marshall Fund’s Fly stated that he was working with the Atlantic Council in the campaign to purge alternative media from social media platforms like Facebook.
The Atlantic Council is another Washington-based think tank that serves as a gathering point for neoconservatives and liberal interventionists pushing military aggression around the globe. It is funded by NATO and repressive, US-allied governments including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Turkey, as well as by Ukrainian oligarchs like Victor Pynchuk.
This May, Facebook announced a partnership with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab) to “identify, expose, and explain disinformation during elections around the world.”
The Atlantic Council’s DFRLab is notorious for its zealous conflation of legitimate online dissent with illicit Russian activity, embracing the same tactics as PropOrNot and the ASD.
Ben Nimmo, a DFRLab fellow who has built his reputation on flushing out online Kremlin influence networks, embarked on an embarrassing witch hunt this year that saw him misidentify several living, breathing individuals as Russian bots or Kremlin “influence accounts.” Nimmo’s victims included Mariam Susli, a well-known Syrian-Australian social media personality, the famed Ukrainian concert pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a British pensioner named Ian Shilling.
In an interview with Sky News, Shilling delivered a memorable tirade against his accusers.
“I have no Kremlin contacts whatsoever; I do not know any Russians, I have no contact with the Russian government or anything to do with them,” he exclaimed.
“I am an ordinary British citizen who happens to do research on the current neocon wars which are going on in Syria at this very moment.”
With the latest Facebook and Twitter purges, ordinary citizens like Shilling are being targeted in the open, and without apology. The mass deletions of alternative media accounts illustrate how national security hardliners from the German Marshall Fund and Atlantic Council (and whoever was behind PropOrNot) have instrumentalized the manufactured panic around Russian interference to generate public support for a wider campaign of media censorship.
In his conversation in Berlin with Sprague, Fly noted with apparent approval that, “Trump is now pointing to Chinese interference in the 2018 election.” As the mantra of foreign interference expands to a new adversarial power, the clampdown on voices of dissent in online media is almost certain to intensify.
As Fly promised, “This is just the beginning.”
- Porn-Watching Federal Worker Infects Gov't Network With "Rogue Russian Malware"
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a new audit of a computer network at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resouces Observation and Science (EROS) Center satellite imaging facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
OIG initiated an investigation into suspicious internet traffic discovered during a regular IT security audit of the USGS computer network. The review found that a single USGS employee infected the network due to the access of unauthorized internet web pages.
Those web pages were embedded with harmful malware, and then downloaded onto a government-issued laptop, which then “exploited the USGS’ network.”
A digital forensic team examined the infected laptop and found porn. After further review, it was determined the USGS employee visited 9,000 web pages of porn that were hosted mainly on Russian servers and contained toxic malware.
OIG found the employee saved much of the pornographic content on an unauthorized USB drive and personal smartphone, both of which were synced to the government computer and network.
“Our digital forensic examination revealed that [the employee] had an extensive history of visiting adult pornography websites” that hosted dangerous malware, the OIG wrote.
“The malware was downloaded to [the employees’] government laptop, which then exploited the USGS’ network.”
The forensic team determined two vulnerabilities in the USGS’ IT security review: website access and open USB ports. They said the “malware is rogue software that is intended to damage or disable computers and computer systems.” The ultimate objective of the malware was to steal highly classified government information while spreading the infection to other systems.
The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Rules of Behavior explicitly prohibit employees from using government networks to satisfy porn cravings, and the IOG found the employee had agreed to these rules “several years prior to the detection.”
The employee was discharged from the agency, OIG External Affairs Director Nancy DiPaolo told Nextgov.
However, this is not the first time government workers have been figuratively caught with their pants down.
Over the last two decades, similar incidents have occurred at the Environmental Protection Agency, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the IRS.
Last year, a D.C. news team uncovered “egregious on-the-job pornography viewing” at a dozen federal agencies and national security officials have reportedly found an “unbelievable” amount of child porn on government devices, said Nextgov.
It seems that porn watching on government devices is so widespread that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced legislation banning porn at federal agencies — three separate times.
Government workers have a porn addiction problem, and it is now jeopardizing national security.
- There Is A Strange, "Plume-Like" Cloud Hanging Over Mars
Authored by Gavin Hanson via The Daily Caller,
A “curious” plume-shaped cloud that appeared near Mars’s equator is growing and now casts a long trail from an alien volcano, Oct. 10 photographs from the European Space Agency (ESA) show.
Photos from the ESA’s Mars Express Orbiter show a cloud extending from behind a massive Martian volcano named Arsia Mons.
ESA’s #Mars Express has been observing the evolution of an elongated cloud hovering near Arsia Mons volcano. The clouds spotted on images from @esamarswebcam show water-ice cloud driven by the slope’s influence on the air flow
Read more: https://t.co/QQ0hnbTbTC pic.twitter.com/SreuAalAun— ESA (@esa) October 25, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
While the cloud, which could be “visible even to telescopes on Earth,” is hanging over the volcano, it is not being ejected from it despite its proximity, according to a Thursday ESA press release.
“In spite of its location, this atmospheric feature is not linked to volcanic activity but is rather a water ice cloud driven by the influence of the volcano’s leeward slope on the air flow — something that scientists call an orographic or lee cloud — and a regular phenomenon in this region,” the ESA’s statement said.
Mars’s cold, thin atmosphere is seasonally obscured by ice clouds, but scientists believe the summer’s major dust storm might have spurred on the creation of this cloud.
Abnormal levels of dust in the atmosphere and Arsia Mons’s gigantic, 12-mile high profile worked together to form the abnormal whisp, scientists say.
The formation of water-ice clouds is sensitive to the amount of dust in the atmosphere (remember the #Marsstorm in June/July?) ☁️ The cloud was also observed with OMEGA (left) & High Resolution Stereo Camera (right) on #Mars Express, providing extra #data to study the phenomenon pic.twitter.com/OSGHfEKSw0
— ESA Science (@esascience) October 25, 2018
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The massive dust storm knocked NASA’s Opportunity rover offline when it blotted out the sun and prevented the 15-year-old rover’s solar panels from recharging it, according to a NASA blog post. Scientists hoped once the storm cleared, skies would “clear enough for the solar-powered rover to recharge and attempt to ‘phone home.’”
- Iran Unleashes Death Sentence To "Sultan Of Coins" For Rigging FX Markets
While most market watchers have grown numb to the headlines about various western bankers and traders rigging markets (from Libor to precious metals to FX), who receive wrist-slaps and sternly-worded emails for their misdeeds; things are a little more serious in Iran…
One day after US authorities acquitted a “cartel” of currency riggers, accused of manipulating FX markets against clients in a multi-billion-dollar, multi-year scam; Radio Free Europe reports that Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld death sentences given to two financial traders convicted of illegal currency trading and “disrupting the economy.”
With Washington waging all-out financial warfare against Iran, forcing its currency to collapse…
As RFERL.org reports, Iranian authorities on October 22 identified the two men as Vahid Mazloumin and Mohammad Esmail Ghasemi, whom local media dubbed the “Sultan of Coins” after he was arrested and found hoarding two tons of gold coins that he allegedly used to manipulate the Iranian currency.
Many Iranians have stocked up on gold coins and other safe haven investments as the rial has plummeted this year to record lows against the U.S. dollar.
While most Wall Street analysts attribute the currency’s fall mostly to the pressure from U.S. sanctions, which Washington started reimposing in August, the government has responded to the economic crisis by blaming local currency traders for the rial’s fall and setting up special courts to try them for alleged capital crimes.
The two men sentenced to death first went on trial on September 8 over charges of “disrupting the economy” through the creation of a network trading in illegal currency and gold coins, Iranian media reported.
Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehi said the swift conclusion of their cases before the Iranian Supreme Court serves as a “warning to opportunists” who aim to “disrupt the economy” during the time of the “enemy’s pressure” on Iran — in an apparent reference to the economic sanctions that the United States is reimposing since withdrawing from Iran’s nuclear agreement in April.
Authorities are clearly making an example of the two currency traders who were sentenced to death were convicted of “spreading corruption on earth,” a term used for crimes punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.
RFERL notes that a third person, Hamid Bagheri-Dermani, was also accused of corruption and sentenced to death in preliminary hearings. His case is still up for appeal before the Supreme Court.
So, the lesson of the day is simple – if you want to manipulate markets for your own good, move to the land of the free (from consequences)… and ‘suck it up buttercup’ if you’re hard-earned fiat currency collapses into worthless paper.
- Why Public Debt Is A Problem – And Trade Deficits Aren't
Authored by Carmen Elena Dorobăț via The Mises Institute,
As the U.S. trade deficit has been widening for the fourth month running, markets and business experts appear once again bewildered by the events and unsure how to react to them.
On the one hand, they had vehemently opposed the increase in trade tariffs and the trade war that has made headlines this year.
But on the other hand, they now find that U.S. trade deficit reaching its largest level on record – the precise deficit tariffs purported to narrow – is very worrying.
Furthermore, as they scramble to adjust their costs and production plans to the increasing uncertainty of world trade relations – including here not only U.S.’s trade disputes with China, but also UK’s planned exit from the EU and the fraught relationships at the WTO – global companies are also paying less attention to the Fed’s and other central banks’ monetary policies.
It is not hard to see why they are confused. Political turmoil is bound to make navigation of global markets much more difficult, and smooth planning almost impossible. At the same time, the fallacy that trade deficits are detrimental to a nation in and of themselves is very deeply rooted in public opinion. By comparison, government deficits and easy monetary policies — the real culprit behind eroding wealth and falling purchasing power — get a lot less bad press than they deserve.
It is thus worth reminding ourselves that trade deficits themselves are not at all problematic. As Mises (2009, 448) explained:
While an individual’s balance of payments conveys exhaustive information about his social position, a group’s balance discloses much less. It says nothing about the mutual relations between the members of the group. The greater the group is and the less homogeneous its members are, the more defective is the information vouchsafed by the balance of payments.
If one wants to describe a country’s social and economic condition, one does not need to deal with every single inhabitant’s personal balance of payments. But one must not form other groups than such as are composed of members who are by and large homogeneous in their social standing and their economic activities.
The problem lies with government spending and monetary inflation, precisely those activities that global businesses have been taught either to ignore or, worse, to embrace and lobby for. Privately contracted debts, such as those part of a trade deficit, are privately paid. Publicly contracted debts, however, such as those recorded in government debts and budget deficits, and financed with credit expansion, are paid by the taxpayers. The same Mises (2009, 227-8):
But if the government invests funds unsuccessfully and no surplus results, or if it spends the money for current expenditure, the capital borrowed shrinks or disappear entirely, and no source is opened from which interest and principal could be paid. Then taxing the people is the only method available for complying with the articles of the credit contract. In asking taxes for such payments the government makes the citizens answerable for money squandered in the past. The taxes paid are not compensated by any present service rendered by the government’s apparatus. The government pays interest on capital which has been consumed and no longer exists.
Here’s also a short excerpt from Murray Rothbard, explaining in less than two minutes and in characteristic style, why trade deficits are innocuous compared to public debt:
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...