Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Russia-Gate called out by Edward S Herman

I've been wondering how to write a definitive take down of Russia-gate, which sadly has sucked in many of my friends looking for a cheap and easy way to dump Trump.

I saw Russia-gate as dangerous war mongering and distraction right from the beginning, and of course I will not forget that it began with denunciations of the Wikileaks release of DNC emails proving active DNC favoritism for Clinton over Sanders, which had previously been vehemently denied by the mainstream media which had been busy inventing cheap shots to discredit Sanders supporters.  The ultimate orientation of Russia-gate as a weapon against anti-imperialism, anti-neoliberalism, and other independent thinking was not hard to discern.

Edward S. Herman, who co-authored Manufacturing Consent with Noam Chomsky in 1988, had already done the definitive work this past July, shortly before his death.  He cites precedents back to 1917.  Russia-phobic fake news has never been a purely Republican or conservative thing; liberals have often played key and supporting roles.  Palmer of the Palmer Raids was a liberal Democrat.  Robert F Kennedy came very close to being McCarthy's chief counsel.

Now, the producer of a Pacifica 14 part series on Julian Assange, Randy Credico, has been subpoenaed to testify in a private transcribed interview (aka star chamber) by the Russia-gate inquisitors.  He had declined to testify voluntarily, and now says he would prefer a public hearing, where he could call out the McCarthyism.

One breaking headline after another emerges, for more than a year now, with no actual evidence for Russia (by which is meant Putin) colluding in the election with the Trump and his aides.  And yet, as Herman said, the mainstream media continues to take the veracity of all the claims for granted, simply piling on more.

The currently breaking Flynn plea bargain may only be unusual in that the basic story has been around so long.  Flynn talked to the Russian ambassador in the lame duck interim between when Trump won the selection and took office.  This would seem to a sane person to be a good thing, for an incoming security advisor to talk with to ambassadors, particular of one so central to US concerns as Russia.

Now, however, we have the actual details that Flynn didn't previously report.  He didn't previously report having asked the Russians, on behalf of Netanyahu, Kushner, and Trump, if Russia would kindly veto the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel for the settlements.  The background is that Obama had decided to abstain this time, instead of the usual double veto (vetoed from UN Security council law, and also vetoed from history--virtually never reported in the mainstream media--the very many votes taken to censure Israel which are double vetoed by the US).  So this was not Russian influence--it was Israeli influence that was motivating this conversation, trying to get Russia to do something (which, in this case, it failed to do, Russia did not veto the Security Council resolution, and for the first time that I can remember going back 30 years, the UNSC condemned Israel, fwiw).

This first part is of course the part that won't get told as much in the...zionist imperialist...media.

The second part we've heard before, it was once again to ask the Russians for a favor.  The Russians were asked not to retaliate for Obama's final set of sanctions.  Well this may have been somewhat effective as the Russians did indeed withhold retaliation...for a few months.  Once again, this does not seem like a bad thing in itself, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the 2017 election.  But it was part of the deep state effort to pressure Trump to be tough on Russia.  And that was a bad thing that doesn't get talked about in the mainstream media at all.  And, it was effective, before long Trump was back to playing the tough game with Russia, though still the mainstream media was saying it wasn't truly serious or serious enough.  And that's another bad thing, which has little to do with Trump but everything to do with how the deep state works through controlling the media to push for a more imperialist militarist corporatist policy.

Here's a good discussion at Mondoweiss.  One commenter notes that acting on behalf of Israel to undermine still acting President Obama, it could be argued, could be interpreted as treason, as well as violation of the Logan act--which many people feel is unenforceable.  But if Israel influence in government were called out in a McCarthy style hearing, there wouldn't be any elected government officials left.


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