HOW IN THE WORLD DID WE GET TO THIS POINT?

Who Is Making U.S. Foreign Policy?

It’s a time of trial and tribulation for America’s allies and adversaries alike. Just what is U.S. policy these days? More fundamentally, who is deciding U.S. policy?

A presidential transition always creates uncertainty. Even when the Oval Office is passed between members of the same party, approaches and emphases differ. Personal connections vary. But today the differences are within a single administration.

Indeed, in virtually no area is policy settled.

President Donald Trump came into office committed to rapprochement with Russia. Yet even before taking office his defense secretary, Jim Mattis, sounded like bombastic Sen. John McCain in calling Moscow the greatest threat facing America. Later, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson demanded Russia’s withdrawal from Crimea—a political impossibility—before bilateral relations could improve. Now the U.S. military has shot down a Syrian plane, fielded by the Assad government, a Moscow ally, triggering Russian threats against U.S. aircraft.

Indeed, the latter threatens to drag America into the Syrian war as an active combatant, fighting not only the Islamic State but also the Assad government, Iran and Russia. In fact, his National Security Council was already pressing for a more active role against both the Assad government and Iranian-backed militias supporting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, which would turn America into an active combatant in the six-year-old civil war. Yet candidate Trump criticized the Iraq War as well as proposals for entangling the United States in additional Middle Eastern conflicts. When his Republican competitors threatened to shoot down Russian planes, he called ISIS the priority. He later criticized Hillary Clinton as a warmonger, in part for her hawkish approach to the Mideast.

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WIKILEAKS EXPOSES CIA HOARDING ZERO DAY VIRUSES, CYBER VULNERABILITIES: CIA Broke Promise To Obama

Intel Behind Trump’s Syria Attack Questioned

Legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh is challenging the Trump administration’s version of events surrounding the April 4 “chemical weapons attack” on the northern Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun – though Hersh had to find a publisher in Germany to get his information out.

In the Sunday edition of Die Welt, Hersh reports that his national security sources offered a distinctly different account, revealing President Trump rashly deciding to launch 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase on April 6 despite the absence of intelligence supporting his conclusion that the Syrian military was guilty.

Hersh draws on the kind of inside sources from whom he has earned longstanding trust to dispute that there ever was a “chemical weapons attack” and to assert that Trump was told that no evidence existed against the Syrian government but ordered “his generals” to “retaliate” anyway.

Marine General Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Marine General, now Defense Secretary James “Mad-Dog” Mattis ordered the attacks apparently knowing that the reason given was what one of Hersh’s sources called a “fairy tale.”

They then left it to Trump’s national security adviser Army General H. R. McMaster to further the deceit with the help of a compliant mainstream media, which broke from its current tradition of distrusting whatever Trump says in favor of its older tradition of favoring “regime change” in Syria and trusting pretty much whatever the “rebels” claim.

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Cryptocurrencies Are Blowing Central Banks Out Of The Water

Russia-gate Flops as Democrats’ Golden Ticket

The national Democratic Party and many liberals have bet heavily on the Russia-gate investigation as a way to oust President Trump from office and to catapult Democrats to victories this year and in 2018, but the gamble appears not to be paying off.

The Democrats’ disappointing loss in a special election to fill a congressional seat in an affluent Atlanta suburb is just the latest indication that the strategy of demonizing Trump and blaming Russia for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat may not be the golden ticket that some Democrats had hoped.

Though it’s still early to draw conclusive lessons from Karen Handel’s victory over Jon Ossoff – despite his raising $25 million – one lesson may be that a Middle America backlash is forming against the over-the-top quality of the Trump-accusations and the Russia-bashing, with Republicans rallying against the image of Official Washington’s “deep state” collaborating with Democrats and the mainstream news media to reverse a presidential election.

Indeed, the Democrats may be digging a deeper hole for themselves in terms of reaching out to white working-class voters who abandoned the party in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin to put Trump over the top in the Electoral College even though Clinton’s landslide win in California gave her almost three million more votes nationwide.

Clinton’s popular-vote plurality and the #Resistance, which manifested itself in massive protests against Trump’s presidency, gave hope to the Democrats that they didn’t need to undertake a serious self-examination into why the party is in decline across the nation’s heartland. Instead, they decided to stoke the hysteria over alleged Russian “meddling” in the election as the short-cut to bring down Trump and his populist movement.

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MAINSTREAM MEDIA FAKE NEWS EXPOSED, AGAIN.

Memo to America: You should still be terrified of World War III

Open conflict between Russia and the United States is heating up in Syria. After American forces shot down a Syrian fighter jet, Russia suspended use of an Obama-era communications line used to prevent collisions and conflict, and threatened to shoot down American planes.

America's Syria policy was and continues to be absolutely moronic. But this alarming development is also a reminder that there is simply no alternative to diplomatic engagement with Russia, the world's only other nuclear superpower. That's something both the American military, and liberals fired up over Trump's Russia scandal, would do well to remember.

In the discussion about climate change risk management, I have argued that somewhat unlikely disaster scenarios deserve serious consideration, because it's worth a substantial cost to avoid even a small chance of a huge harm. (It's basic insurance reasoning.) The same is true of nuclear war.

An all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia is one of the few things that could threaten human extinction. Hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, would be killed in the immediate attack, blowing the world economic system apart, and beginning what would probably be several years of nuclear winter, devastating agriculture. People might survive in remote locations — perhaps Australia and New Zealand — but it's not at all guaranteed in such an extreme scenario. It would be the worst disaster in history, by several orders of magnitude.

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Syria: Why the sudden escalation after US shoots down a Syrian aircraft?

Hodgkinson’s Disease: Politics and Paranoia in the Age of Trump

James T. Hodgkinson, the would-be assassin of Republican congressmen, wasn’t a radical. If you look at his published output – a series of letters to his local newspaper in Belleville, Illinois, as well as the majority of his Internet postings – it’s mostly about matters nearly every progressive cares about: taxes (the rich don’t pay enough), healthcare (the government must provide), income inequality (it’s all a Republican plot). All in all, a pretty unremarkable worldview that any partisan Democrat – either a Bernie Sanders supporter, as Hodginkinson was, or a Hillary fan – could sign on to.

So what drove him over the edge?

One of his more recent Facebook posts was a link to a petition that called for “the legal removal of the President and Vice-President, et. al., for Misprision of Treason.” Hodgkinson had signed it and he was asking his readers to follow suit: “Trump is a Traitor,” he wrote, “Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”  He was also a big fan of Rachel Maddow, who – incredibly — has spent the majority of her airtime ranting about “The Russian Connection,” as this Intercept piece documents. Hodgkinson was also a member of a Facebook group ominously dubbing itself “Terminate the Republican Party,” an appellation Hodgkinson apparently took quite literally. The group has over 13,000 members. The main page of the Terminators is adorned with a cartoon of Putin manipulating Trump like a puppet.

When Hodgkinson left his home and his job to travel to Alexandria, Virginia, he told his wife he was going to “work on tax issues.” But is that what motivated his murderous spree? Do “tax issues” really seem like something that would inspire someone to plan and carry out an assassination attempt that, but for the presence of Capitol police on the scene, would have certainly resulted in a massacre?

Hodgkinson clearly believed that the President of the United States was an agent of a foreign power. He had signed on to the idea that Trump not only benefited from a Russian campaign to discredit Hillary Clinton, but that he is engaged in a war against his own country. As Maddow put it in one of her more unhinged broadcasts:

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Grenfell Tower Fire in London is Evidence That WTC 7 Was a Controlled Demolition

Democrat Shamelessly Calls for Gun Control, Rather Than Having Concern for Wounded GOP Colleagues

Congressional Democrats who were practicing for Thursday night’s game with Republicans near the field where House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was shot gathered to pray for their colleagues. A photo posted on social media by Representative Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) shows about 25 of them huddled together in their dugout with their heads bowed. Kihuen posted this comment along with the photo: “Me [sic] and my House Democrat colleagues saying a prayer for our House Republicans and Senate GOP baseball colleagues after hearing about this morning’s horrific shooting at their practice field.”

The alleged shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, of Belleville, Illinois, somehow obtained a semi-automatic rifle (Illinois has some of the country’s strictest gun control laws in place) and then somehow managed to ship it to Arlington, Virginia, also home to anti-gun politicians who have enacted almost equally draconian laws. There is little doubt that the shooter, now deceased (thanks to the intervention of an armed law-enforcement officer), was acting out his rage against Trump and his Republican supporters in Congress. Selwyn Duke, writing in The New American, said that “Hodgkinson was a leftist who … posted a link to a Change.org petition in late March that included the notation that ‘Trump is a Traitor. Trump has Destroyed our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.’”

The executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation, Alan Gottlieb, said Hodgkinson was galvanized by hatred generated by the left:

This hate speech that has been going on since Donald Trump was elected.… It gets their voter base agitated and this is what happens as a result….

When liberal leftists support the assassination of President Trump on stage, what do you expect to happen? Hate speech and actions incite this kind of violence.

Second Amendment supporters were quick to point out that it “took a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun,” a phrase popularized years ago by a top NRA official. As Mike Adams wrote on his Natural News blog: “Once again a man with a gun was able to stop a mass murderer, proving yet again that guns help save lives by stopping insanely violent left-wing murderers who only seek death and destruction.”

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TOP TEN Moments From A.G. Sessions' Testimony

NBC’s Kelly Hits Putin with a Beloved Canard

NBC’s Megyn Kelly wielded one of Official Washington’s most beloved groupthinks to smack Russian President Vladimir Putin over his denials that he and his government were responsible for hacking Democratic emails and interfering with the U.S. presidential election.

In her June 2 interview with Putin, Kelly noted that all “17 intelligence agencies” of the U.S. government concurred in their conclusion of Russian guilt and how could Putin suggest that they all are “lying.” It’s an argument that has been used to silence skeptics for months and apparently is so useful that no one seems to care that it isn’t true.

For instance, on May 8, in testimony before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper conceded publicly that the number of intelligence agencies involved in the assessment was three, not 17, and that the analysts assigned to the project from CIA, FBI and NSA had been “handpicked.”

On May 23, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, former CIA Director John Brennan confirmed Clapper’s account about the three agencies involved. “It wasn’t a full inter-agency community assessment that was coordinated among the 17 agencies,” Brennan acknowledged.

But those public admissions haven’t stopped Democrats and the mainstream media from continuing to repeat the false claim. In comments on May 31, failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton repeated the canard, with a flourish, saying: “Seventeen agencies, all in agreement, which I know from my experience as a Senator and Secretary of State, is hard to get.”

A couple of days later, Kelly revived the myth of the consensus among the 17 intelligence agencies in her interview with the Russian president. But Putin passed up the opportunity to correct her, replying instead:

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The Weaponization of Information in the War of Terror

The Imperial City Unhinged----J. Edgar Comey's Big Fat Nothingburge

Comey’s ballyhooed testimony contains nothing not already known, nothing remotely about obstruction of justice, and, in fact, nothing that matters at all. It’s just a replay of the self-serving tommyrot Comey has been leaking all along.

Indeed, it’s the Nothingburger that proves Imperial Washington has become completely unhinged in its groundless RussiaGate hysteria; and is stumbling toward a lawless defenestration of a sitting president in the name of a hypocritical obeisance to a tortured version of “the law”.

It is a smoking gun in only one sense: It proves why the sanctimonious Comey should have been fired on day one and why the apparent Wall Street assumption that it can count on “Washington governance as usual” is so dangerously misguided.

As to the latter, our point is very simple. What we have is an entirely unstable, unsustainable hothouse economy and financial system that is completely dependent upon the ministrations of the state and its central banking branch. The giant bubble that was reflated after the 2008 crisis will soon violently implode and take the economy down with it—-unless it is again arrested and bailed-out by extraordinary Washington action.

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The Untold Story of The USS Liberty Cover Up

Bilderberg confab in Virginia highlights concerns about Trump

Every time the secretive Bilderberg Group has met at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia, U.S. policy has been at the forefront of discussions between the government and corporate gurus who gather behind tight security. In 2002, the hotel hosted the Bilderbergs as President George W. Bush was leading the United States into a war with Iraq. And in 2008 and 2012, the major items for discussion at the Chantilly venue were the U.S. presidential elections, both of which saw wins for Barack Obama.

This year, the Bilderbergers are discussing in Chantilly the ramifications of the Donald Trump presidency on the “international order.” Also on the agenda are the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum to quit the European Union; information warfare and the dissemination of “fake news;” the threat of “populism” as seen around the world, especially in France, the Philippines, Turkey, the Netherlands, Austria, and most of all, the United States; and how populism is threatening globalist institutions like the EU, NATO, and the United Nations.

The attendance list of those gathered in Chantilly from June 1–4 represents the usual collection of the elite of government, business, and the media. Turkey is represented by a large number of diplomats, journalists, and business leaders, which is likely an indication of the concerns the Bilderbergers have about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s transformation of Turkey into a Eurasian Islamist power not linked to the European Union.

Former CIA Director John Brennan is present at the conference representing Kissinger and Associates, his new employer. As is the case with almost every Bilderberg Conference in the last 50 years, Brennan’s nonagenarian boss, Henry Kissinger, is also present at the confab. The CIA is well-represented at this year’s Bilderberg meeting, with former CIA Director David Petraeus and Deputy Director David Cohen also in attendance. The Trump administration is represented by National Security Adviser General H. R. McMaster, his assistant Nancy Schadlow, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. Peter Thiel, Trump’s friend and president of Thiel Capital, is also at Bilderberg. The presence of any Trump administration official at Bilderberg will not be appreciated by Trump’s anti-globalist base, which is well-represented by vocal protesters gathered outside the security perimeter of the Marriott.

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STAGGERING - NEW INFO - MEDIA being PAID to OVERTHROW America

Trump, Brennan and the Intel Community’s Iron Wall of Secrecy

Is Russiagate an investigation of foreign meddling into US elections or retaliation for Washington’s stunning defeat in Syria?

The opening of the Russiagate investigation closely coincides with the Battle of Aleppo, which was the turning point in the 6 year-long Syrian War. In July 2016 –the same month the FBI reportedly began its Russia hacking investigation — Russian-led forces launched their long-awaited Aleppo military offensive. Syrian, Iranian and Hezbollah fighters surrounded the city cutting off critical supply lines to the Sunni militants who remained inside a rapidly shrinking cauldron. In a bitterly-contested, winner-take-all slugfest, loyalist troops flushed the terrorists out of their hideouts and spider holes, corralled them into smaller, isolated pockets,  and forced them to either surrender or retreat. After months of aerial bombardment and door-to-door urban warfare, the opposition collapsed,  the Syrian Army regained control of the city, and the broken jihadist militias fled eastward towards Raqqa, Deir Ezzor and beyond.

The CIA’s defeat was a humiliating blow to Director John Brennan whose support for mostly foreign-born extremists was supposed to achieve Washington’s regime change aspirations with less fallout than a full-blown ground war like Iraq.  But the plan failed miserably casting serious doubt on Washington’s ability to maintain its regional hegemony or global domination. Russiagate, which is less of an ‘investigation’ than it is a public relations ‘smear campaign’,  is the predictable reaction to Washington’s colossal defeat in Aleppo. It is an attempt to expand on the economic sanctions-meme, that is, to use all the tools at one’s disposal to wage war on the enemy. Russia has become the single greatest obstacle to Uncle Sam’s imperial ambitions; it is the emergent threat of which Paul Wolfowitz warned during the Bush years.  This is why Russia is relentlessly demonized by the media, penalized with harsh economic sanctions, and disparaged among the allies.  And this is why Brennan launched Russiagate. It’s a form of asymmetrical retaliation, 4th Generation “hybrid” warfare, all of which falls under the heading of  “Full Spectrum Dominance”, the cornerstone of the Pentagon’s war doctrine.

According to Mother Jones, it was not the FBI that initiated the “Trump-Russia connection”.. but ..”Former CIA Director John Brennan says he was the one who got the ball rolling.”

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Free Press Wins! Bilderberg Members Confronted At Airport

What Did John Brennan and Anonymous Sources Really Say?

The Washington Post and a number of other mainstream media outlets are sensing blood in the water in the wake of former CIA Director John Brennan’s public testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. The Post headlined a front page featured article with Brennan’s explosive testimony just made it harder for the GOP to protect Trump. The article states that Brennan during the 2016 campaign “reviewed intelligence that showed ‘contacts and interaction’ between Russian actors and people associated with the Trump campaign.” Politico was also in on the chase in an article entitled Brennan: Russia may have successfully recruited Trump campaign aides.

The precise money quote by Brennan that the two articles chiefly rely on is “I encountered and am aware of information and intelligence that revealed contacts and interactions between Russian officials and US persons involved in the Trump campaign that I was concerned about because of known Russian efforts to suborn such individuals. It raised questions in my mind whether or not Russia was able to gain the co-operation of those individuals.”

Now first of all, the CIA is not supposed to keep tabs on American citizens and tracking the activities of known associates of a presidential candidate should have sent warning bells off, yet Brennan clearly persisted in following the trail. What Brennan did not describe, because it was “classified,” was how he came upon the information in the first place. We know from the New York Times and other sources that it came from foreign intelligence services, including the British, Dutch and Estonians, and there has to be a strong suspicion that the forwarding of at least some of that information might have been sought or possibly inspired by Brennan unofficially in the first place. But whatever the provenance of the intelligence, it is clear that Brennan then used that information to request an FBI investigation into a possible Russian operation directed against potential key advisers if Trump were to somehow get nominated and elected, which admittedly was a longshot at the time. That is how Russiagate began.

But where the information ultimately came from as well as its reliability is just speculation as the source documents have not been made public. What is not speculative is what Brennan actually said in his testimony. He said that Americans associated with Trump and his campaign had met with Russians. He was “concerned” because of known Russian efforts to “suborn such individuals.” Note that Brennan, presumably deliberately, did not say “suborn those individuals.” Sure, Russian intelligence (and CIA, MI-6, and Mossad as well as a host of others) seek to recruit people with access to politically useful information. That is what they do for a living, but Brennan is not saying that he has or saw any evidence that that was the case with the Trump associates. He is speaking generically of “such individuals” because he knows that spies, inter alia, recruit politicians and the Russians presumably, like the Americans and British, do so aggressively.

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