W. Niederhut

Sandy, I noticed this morning that Ben and Mathew completely ducked the series of questions I posted for them about Trump's Russiagate scandal, while repeating the false Trumplicon trope that Russiagate was based on the Steele Dossier. So much for meaningful dialogue. In reality, the Russiagate scandal began in earnest after Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls to Kisylak-- which prompted Trump to fire James Comey and Andrew McCabe in an effort to obstruct the FBI investigation of Michael Flynn.

Lance, Another one of your clever, rhetorical tricks, eh? Your special skill seems to be the ability to mislead people by misrepresenting reality in ways that sound superficially plausible to the uninformed. In this instance, you are misrepresenting Guyenot's writings about the history of Judaism on the basis of a loony reviewer named Henry Makow who writes about anti-Semitic Illuminati conspiracy theories, etc. Obviously, you haven't read or understood Guyenot's book, From Yahweh to Zion. It begins with an historical analysis of the monotheistic, tribal cult of Yahweh--contrasting it with the polytheistic religions of the ancient Near East, in Egypt and the Hellenic world. Have you studied the Talmud? Guyenot's thesis is that, since the Exodus and establishment of the Yahweh cult, Israel has always viewed its tribe as a separate people, chosen by God. A corollary is the belief that the non-Hebrew goyim are unclean. Christ, Himself, believed as much, as we can observe in the canonical Gospels. In fact, the Babylonian Talmud teaches that the goyim have the spiritual status of beasts. These basic concepts-- originating in the post-Exodus cult of Yahweh-- are central to "Zionism," and to some of the intractable conflicts between Orthodox Israeli hardliners and the Palestinian Muslims (and Orthodox Christians.)

Well I'm shocked, shocked to hear our Warren Commission Report salesman, Lance Payette, dismiss the work of French historian Laurent Guyenot with a simplistic "anti-Semitic" trope. Is any critique of Zionism necessarily anti-Semitic? Guyenot critiques Judaism and Christianity in atheistic, anthropological terms. He views Zionism as a form of tribalism. I don't happen to agree with many of Guyenot's theological views, but I was impressed by his book, From JFK to 9/11-- 50 Years of Deep State. He, certainly, understands the scientific data.

From Jim Risen at The Intercept: Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service - But Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail Press Freedom Defense Fund May 11, 2018 Press coverage of Russian intelligence attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems during the 2016 election played an important role in alerting state elections officials to the threat because government warnings were inadequate, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week. The most detailed such news story, based on a classified National Security Agency document, appeared in The Intercept last June. A former NSA contractor, Reality Winner, has been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking a top-secret document describing the Russian attempt to penetrate voting software. The Intercept received the document featured in its June 5, 2017 Russian hacking story anonymously. (This reporter is the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, a division of The Intercept’s nonprofit parent company, First Look Media Works, which has contributed funds to Winner’s defense.) In implicitly conceding the impact of The Intercept’s story, as well as other coverage, the new Senate report detailing the committee’s investigation of Russian election meddling makes the case that the leak helped state officials around the nation begin to address the threat of Russian hacking into American voting systems. It is a remarkable and paradoxical assertion from a government that has used the full force of the law to pursue Winner for allegedly sharing the document with a news organization. The committee’s conclusions offer strong support for the argument that disclosing the document was in the public interest. The Senate report states that Russian attempts to target U.S. voting infrastructure began “at least as early as 2014” and continued through the 2016 election. The Intercept story and others published earlier may have provided a wake-up call to state and federal officials about their vulnerability to the Russian cyber campaign. The Senate report says that “many state election officials reported hearing for the first time about the Russian attempts to scan and penetrate state systems from the press or from the public Committee hearing on June 21, 2017.” The Intercept story ran less than three weeks before that hearing. The report notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued alerts that were “limited in substance and distribution” in the summer and fall of 2016. “States understood there was a cyber threat but did not appreciate the scope, seriousness or implication of the particular threat they were facing,” according to the report. “The Committee found that DHS’s initial response was inadequate to counter the threat,” the report says. The DHS’s notifications in the summer of 2016, coupled with a public statement by the DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2016, “were not sufficient warning.” Although the DHS provided warning to IT staff in the fall of 2016, notifications to state election officials were delayed by nearly a year. It wasn’t until September 2017 – “and only under significant pressure from this Committee and others”— that the DHS told chief election officials in targeted states about “the scanning activity and other attacks and the actor behind them,” according to the report. Prodded by the Senate committee and greater public awareness of the threat, the DHS is now working more effectively with state election officials, the report says. A so-called Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center has been established to share information with state and local election officials. The DHS has also hosted a classified briefing for state chief election officials and is working to provide security clearances for those officials. Among the recommendations of the Senate committee’s report is a call for the intelligence community to improve information-sharing on threats and to “put a high priority on attributing cyberattacks both quickly and accurately.” It adds that the DHS “must create clear channels of communication between the federal government and appropriate officials at the state and local levels.” It also sees a role for the media in disseminating information about such threats. “Election experts, security officials, cybersecurity experts, and the media should develop a common set of precise and well-defined election security terms to improve communication,” the report notes. Although other news outlets reported on threats of Russian intrusion into the U.S. elections system, The Intercept’s June 2017 story was distinctive in that it relied on government information not authorized for public release. The New York Times referred to The Intercept’s reporting in its own coverage of the Senate report, noting that a “National Security Agency analysis leaked last June concluded that Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on at least one maker of electronic voting equipment during the 2016 campaign, and sent so-called spear-phishing emails days before the general election to 122 local government officials, apparently customers of the manufacturer. The emails concealed a computer script that, when clicked on, ‘very likely’ downloaded a program from an external server that gave the intruders prolonged access to election computers or allowed them to search for valuable data.” The government appears to recognize that The Intercept’s story played a critical role in warning American elections officials about the threat, yet the Senate report comes at a time when the Trump administration has continued to take a draconian approach in its prosecution of Reality Winner. Prosecutors have successfully pushed to have her denied bail and have sought to argue that she caused significant damage to national security. While senior government officials like former CIA Director David Petraeus have been given what amount to slaps on the wrist in leak cases, Winner remains incarcerated even as the Senate is effectively lauding the leak for which she is charged.

Michael, Have you read historian Alison Weir's book, Against Our Better Judgment? It presents the historical context of JFK's efforts to work with Nasser to mediate a balanced resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel: Weir, Alison: 0884862811789: Amazon.com: Books

Ben, This quote is a good example of what is wrong with your ballyhooed CJR reference articles. Instead of focusing on the actual evidence in the Mueller Report, the authors focus on the media circus surrounding Mueller's bumbling comments to Congress, after Barr had shut down Mueller's investigation and lied about the Report. Also, notice that the author is joking with Dean Baquet about Mueller's bumbling Congressional testimony, while neglecting to cover the infamous story about Dean Baquet putting the kibosh on any 2016 pre-election NYT articles about Trump's involvement with Russia-- including decades of Trump Organization business deals with the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs. Baquet was a key player in sabotaging Hillary Clinton's 2016 candidacy. You, obviously, still need to learn the facts about Russiagate. Here are some questions for you to contemplate. Why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls with Kisylak? Why did Trump fire James Comey and Andrew McCabe? Why did Trump repeatedly try to obstruct Mueller's investigation, and float pardons to Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Stone, and other 2016 campaign associates, during the Mueller investigation? Why did Trump's associates repeatedly lie about their 2016 Russian contacts? Why did Trump refuse to answer Mueller's questions-- repeatedly claiming that he "couldn't recall" any details? Why did Trump lie about his 2016 Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and plans? Why did Trump announce in Helsinki that Putin had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. election (before Reality Winner leaked an NSA document proving that Trump and Putin were lying?) Why did Bill Barr refuse to release the unredacted Mueller Report, and misrepresent Mueller's findings? Why did Brett Kavanaugh block the release of grand jury testimony from the Mueller investigation?

Matt, Ben's CJR articles (above) don't demonstrate that, "Russiagate was a hoax," at all. But people need to study the facts to understand that. So, you are quite correct to re-focus Ben on the actual facts about Russiagate. I took the time to post a detailed summary of the Russiagate facts for Ben and Mathew this week. They had no response to the summary. What was it Paul Simon wrote -- "Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest?"

Just cancelled our second flight this week (for tomorrow) out of Love Field. Too icy to drive anywhere in north Texas. Incidentally, our utility bills up in Colorado also surged this winter. I think the culprit is the price of natural gas.

It seems like 70% or more of this thread in recent months has been dedicated to people reading and then correcting Mathew Koch and Ben Cole's misconceptions about Russiagate, Trump's J6 coup attempt, and, now, Trump's Ukraine-gate/Zelensky extortion scandal in 2019. A big part of the problem is that Mathew and Ben never studied or listened to the damning evidence in the cases of Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate, or J6-- i.e., the Mueller and Senate Intel Reports, the Ukraine-gate impeachment testimony, or the J6 Committee testimony. Rather, they have misinterpreted these Trump scandals on the basis of disinformation and false alternate narratives in the MAGA-verse media. I have already posted references and summaries of the Russia-gate and J6 evidence for Ben and Mathew. Here is a good summary of the damning Ukraine-gate impeachment testimony against Trump and Giuliani, by members of Trump's own administration-- including Trump's former EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland, former Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovich, and Trump's former NSC Russia expert, Dr. Fiona Hill. I'll wager that Ben and Mathew never watched the Ukraine-gate impeachment testimony in the House. Key players in the Trump impeachment probe and what they testified to Congress - ABC News (go.com) December 4, 2019

Paul, Guyenot is a genius-- a real polymath. He has a background in engineering, anthropology, and history from the Sorbonne.

Ron, I'm visiting my in-laws in Denton, Texas this week. We had to cancel our flight back to Denver today (from Love Field) because I-35 is too icy for the drive to Dallas. No power outages here so far. I hope you and your family are o.k.

Indeed, Mark, and religious tolerance/freedom is a very old American ideal, appearing originally in Roger Williams' charter for the Rhode Island and Providence Plantations colony in the 1630s. Williams advocated religious tolerance and freedom in response to the rigid Puritan theocracy in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Which is why the oldest synagogue in the U.S. is Newport, Rhode Island's Tauro Synagogue.) The ideal of religious tolerance and freedom-- and the separation of church and state--was later championed by Thomas Jefferson and our Enlightenment era Founding Fathers, many of whom were Deists. So, it is, indeed, a myth that the U.S. was founded on Christianity-- although the Puritan Bay Colony had been.

Correct.

Paul, Laurent Guyenot is a Sorbonne graduate, a serious scholar, whose work has little to do with anti-Semitic tropes about "Jewish bankers," etc. As an example, he has written in considerable detail about the history of James Angleton's close ties to the Mossad.* Most of us agree that the CIA was involved in JFK's assassination. So, is it really a stretch to theorize that the Mossad may have collaborated with Angleton and the CIA in some fashion? The issue for JFK and Ben Gurion was Dimona, Israeli survival, and nuclear proliferation. Another possible Israeli angle in the JFK assassination was Jack Ruby's association with L.A. mobster Mickey Cohen, who was, in turn, an associate of Irgun leader Menachem Begin. * Angleton, Mossad, and the Kennedy Assassinations, by Laurent Guyénot - The Unz Review

Yes, Chris it's amusing to read about how our American political leaders in the early 19th century agonized over their tiny Federal budgets and debts at that time in history. The U.S. debt in the post-Reagan era is truly gargantuan in comparison. What we are dealing with in modern U.S. history is the Republican "Starve-the-Beast" strategy; 1) cut taxes for the wealthiest 2%, then 2) balance the budget by cutting Federal spending on the 98%-- on Medicare, Social Security, education, healthcare, etc. This is happening currently with Kevin McCarthy's GOP Sedition Caucus in the U.S. House-- although it sounds like Trump has convinced McCarthy to stop talking about using the debt ceiling negotiations to force cuts in Social Security and Medicare funding. The line in the sand for the Republicans-- as in 2011-- is to refuse to increase their historically low tax rates for billionaires.

And, right on cue this morning, here's Robert Reich talking about FDR's 90% top tax rate and the Reaganomic tax cuts that created our national debt... The biggest story you've never heard about today's federal debt (substack.com) January 31, 2023

John, I agree that the Democrat Party in the U.S. has not done enough for the poor, but the Republicans have done nothing. Their policies have consistently focused on enriching the rich. Recall that our Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt raised the top income tax rate dramatically during the Great Depression, (to 90%) while establishing our Social Security retirement system. It is true that JFK, a Democrat, lowered the top tax rate (from 90% to 70%) in the early 60s, but Reagan and the Republicans have lowered it far more dramatically during the past 40 years. (See the graph below.) Also, the Democrats established Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, which have greatly benefited the poor. Republicans opposed all three healthcare initiatives.

Kirk, I think you would agree that, in reality, Trump was always a pseudo-populist. As a Trump Organization mogul, he hired non-union workers-- including illegal aliens. He always despised poor people. Obviously, he was able to convince a lot of poor, angry, white people to vote for him in 2016 and 2020, but he never had their best interests in mind-- just the opposite. He even slipped up in a December 2017 Fox interview with Maria Bartiromo by admitting, "I represent rich people," and bragging that his tax cuts would, "make a lot of people richer." As for "populism," David Axelrod pointed out that Trump was the (Hegelian) Anti-Obama in 2016-- the Great White Birther candidate for the NOBAMA-ers who wanted to Put Whitey Back in the White House. But, in economic policy matters, Trump was always another Koch/GOP Trojan Horse. He cut more taxes for billionaires, approved the Keystone Pipeline for Big Oil, and tried to sabotage Obamacare. IMO, DeSantis will use the same pseudo-populist strategy of Anti-Woke-ism going forward.

I read Piper's book Final Judgment a few years ago. It was heavy on allegations and thin on evidence, IMO-- mainly focused on JFK's Dimona conflict with Ben Gurion, and the thesis that Meyer Lansky was the de facto head of the Mafia in the U.S. If I recall correctly, Piper also theorized that Jack Ruby was working for Lansky, Micky Cohen, Menachem Begin, et.al.

John, The subject of why Hillary won in 2016 by 3 million votes, but lost the Electoral College tally by a combined 80,000 votes (in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania) is complex. One professor in Wisconsin later estimated that roughly 23,000 legitimate Democratic ballots had been "disqualified" in metropolitan Milwaukee alone. Democratic Detroit had a similarly low tally. And we know that the Russian GRU hacked voter registries in multiple states. The Democrats established the first framework for universal healthcare coverage in U.S. history in 2009. Republicans repeatedly voted to de-fund it, after 2009, and damaged it in 2017 with a rider in their Trump/GOP Tax Cuts For Billionaires Act. Where are you getting the notion that Democrats "betrayed" the working class? (From Benjamin Cole?)

Phillip Nelson?

John, My responses to your post are in blue (below.) John wrote: Thanks for that, William, though a link to the article would have sufficed. Mathew Koch explicitly requested a summary, in lieu of my link to the Mueller Report. There seems to be some ambiguity about the whole matter as suggested in the following extract from Wikipedia: "The (Mueller) report concludes that the investigation 'did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.'" "Did not establish" is the key phrase here, John, and it is misleading in that Mueller did not establish Trump's innocence in Russiagate. Trump and his campaign staff, including Paul Manafort, repeatedly lied to Mueller's investigators about their 2016 campaign contacts with Russian assets--including GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik-- and/or refused to answer questions. (Trump, himself, repeatedly claimed he "couldn't recall" details in his written response to Mueller's questions.) Trump also obstructed/stonewalled the Mueller investigation by floating pardons to Flynn, Manafort, Gates, and others, during the investigation. And, in fact, Trump pardoned Manafort and Stone after they were both convicted of felonies (which were prosecuted in an effort to get at the suppressed facts about Russian collusion with the Trump campaign.) But Mueller explicitly stated that his investigation did NOT exonerate Trump in the Russiagate scandal, and that, in fact, Trump had repeatedly engaged in obstruction of justice-- for which Mueller was not allowed to indict him. It's also worth noting that on 1st December 2020 Attorney General William Barr stated, "FBI and Justice Department investigators found no evidence of irregularities that would have changed the outcome of the presidential election". Bill Barr is a former CIA lawyer who was the mastermind of the Reagan/George H.W. Bush Iran-Contra scandal cover up. After his narrow, party-line Senate confirmation as AG in 2019, Bill Barr lied about a great many things. He shut down Mueller's investigation of Russiagate, then redacted and misrepresented Mueller's Report publicly to create the false impression that Trump and his campaign associates had been exonerated. Here's the latest on Bill Barr's imploding campaign to rehabilitate his reputation. Bill Barr's 'hollow and self-serving' image rehabilitation tour shredded in scathing NYT editorial - Raw Story - Celebrating 18 Years of Independent Journalism While it certainly seems there was much sculduggery going on, it remains the case that the main reason the Democrats lost the 2016 election was, as I've already said repeatedly, their chronic betrayal of of those who Hillary Clinton called the "deplorables". Not accurate at all, John. Hillary Clinton was systematically smeared by the U.S. mainstream media in the weeks and months leading up to the 2016 election, as described by subsequent media studies from the Harvard University Berman Center and the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review. She was also smeared by endless Republican "investigations" of the Benghazi pseudo-scandal, from 2012-16. As for alleged "betrayal" of the American working class by the Democrats, recall that the Republican Party has repeatedly cut taxes for billionaires during the past 40 years, (largely creating the U.S. national debt) while simultaneously trying to sabotage and de-fund healthcare legislation benefiting American workers-- Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare.

French historian Laurent Guyenot has published a lengthy essay this month about JFK-Destiny Betrayed, which also includes some commentary about the recent interview of Oliver Stone and James DiEugenio by Canadian journalist Eloise Boies. Guyenot has high praise for James DiEugenio and JFK-Destiny Betrayed. His only criticism is focused on some questions about LBJ's putative role in the murder plot, and the Israeli/Dimona nuclear proliferation angle. JFK and America’s Destiny Betrayed, by Laurent Guyénot - The Unz Review January 21, 2023

Joe, Just to clarify, Mathew Koch was the guy who posted the comment, "I'm starting to consider you mentally ill," in response to my post summarizing the Mueller Report, which Mathew had requested (above.)

As people age, and lose frontal lobe gray matter, their personality disorders often become more obvious... 🤥 Trump Likens Himself to Late, Great Gangster Al Capone (mediaite.com)