Dissident Veteran For Peace

Just over a week ago I decided to see if anyone else had written about a possible Israeli role in the SolarWinds/SUNBURST hack. Unsurprisingly, I could find no evidence of any interest in this subject by the mainstream corporate media since my post last December.

However, about a month after my post Whitney Webb did a much more thorough treatment of the subject on the The Last American Vagabond site. Her article is titled "Another Mega Group Spy Scandal? Samanage, Sabotage, and the SolarWinds Hack".

Readers may recall that I highlighted Samanage in the first numbered paragraph of my post. Webb also discusses Christopher Krebs (my paragraph #2) but does not mention the 2017 putative Israeli cell phone surveillance episode in DC that unfolded on Krebs' watch. Webb links to the same Israeli news source I linked regarding the boost in the stock prices of Israeli cybersecurity firms in the wake of the SolarWinds/SUNBURST hack.

In any case, I think Webb did very good work on this story and I recommend that you read it. Here are a couple of paragraphs from her piece:

... As Russiagate played out, it became apparent that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, but the nation was Israel, not Russia. Indeed, many of the reports that came out of Russiagate revealed collusion with Israel, yet those instances received little coverage and generated little media outrage. This has led some to suggest that Russiagate may have been a cover for what was in fact Israelgate.

Similarly, in the case of the SolarWinds hack, there is the odd case and timing of SolarWinds’ acquisition of a company called Samanage in 2019. As this report will explore, Samanage’s deep ties to Israeli intelligence, venture-capital firms connected to both intelligence and Isabel Maxwell, as well as Samange’s integration with the Orion software at the time of the back door’s insertion warrant investigation every bit as much as SolarWinds’ Czech-based contractor.

Labels: government, Israel, Russia, surveillance, technology, Trump

American society has never upheld or realized truth and justice in a manner fully consistent with American rhetoric. Yet, for most of my life I thought our society was at least headed in the right direction. No more.

In the flurry of non-stop anti-Trump (someone I never supported) lies I finally realized that somewhere, in my lifetime or before, the country took a wrong turn. It's tempting to say it happened in the last ten years but it may be more accurate that it was during the 1991 Rodney King police brutality/racism hoax and subsequent rioting when politicians and the media openly abandoned truth, justice, and integrity. The American public, in general, then showed itself to be too gullible and lazy to know or care that vital principles were being gutted.

Don't get me wrong, politicians and the media were not paragons of virtue before then but it does seem like we as a society turned the corner down into dangerous alley back then and things have gotten steadily worse ever since. Academia and the clergy have followed suit or, perhaps, helped lead the way.

In any case, I followed the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin very closely. Before the verdict I had estimated the outcome in order of probability (most to least) was as follows:

1. Hung jury
2. Full acquittal
3. Partial acquittal
4. Guilty on all charges

It's obvious I couldn't have been more mistaken. My estimation was based on the clearly erroneous assumption that the jury included at least one intelligent, rational, and principled juror. I don't have a lot of hope that Chauvin will get justice in the appellate courts.

I wish I knew what to tell people to do to turn this country away from the abyss but I don't. I can say there's no hope in Biden or Trump or most of the other denizens of the two wings of the political uniparty. What I do know is that defeatism is a faster path to destruction.

Here are a few more perspectives on the Chauvin trial and verdict:

• "It's a lie: 'Systematic police racism' and the Derek Chauvin Trial" on LawOfficer.com
• "The Derek Chauvin Trial: Reasonable doubt exists" on LawOfficer.com
• "Chauvin Guilty Verdict Completes the Total Collapse of Law, Order, and Due Process in Biden’s America" on Revolver.news
• "Candace Owens: 'This was not a fair trial. No person can say this was a fair trial.' " on Tucker Carlson Tonight via Twitter
  
• "After the Derek Chauvin Verdict: Initial Thoughts and What Comes Next" on RedState.com
• "The Chauvin verdict" on AmericanThinker.com
• "The American Crisis" by Ben Domenech via Twitter

If there were any Left-wing writers who care about truth and justice in the matter of George Floyd and Derek Chauvin then I would link to them but I am unaware of any.

21 April 2021 Addendum: In "George Floyd's Death: Test Your Knowledge" I mentioned that "the written report of the unofficial autopsy of George Floyd requested by Floyd's family and performed Michael Baden, MD, and Allecia Wilson, MD" had never been publicly released. They and their findings were much in the news last summer but unless I'm mistaken neither of them testified in the trial of Derek Chauvin nor was their report offered in evidence by the prosecution. If true, then this suggests that the "family autopsy" was primarily a media prop to advance the financial interests of George Floyd's family and lawyers in extracting a sweet financial payout.

Labels: Biden, crime, critical thinking, George Floyd, Justice, media, police, politics, race, Trump

Dear Google Content Reviewer: This post has been unpublished and approved for publication multiple times since February 2021. Each time I request review and have it approved it is unpublished again within hours. Apparently, something in the post is triggering an algorithm. Can you please tell me why this post keeps getting unpublished?

Below is the trailer from 2015's A Good American featuring William Binney, J. Kirk Wiebe, Edward Loomis, Thomas Drake (a.k.a. the "NSA Four"), and Diane Roark. Below that are several videos featuring Binney.

A Good American—naturally an Austrian, which is to say non-American, film—tells the astounding, largely untold story of pervasive corruption, incompetence, and/or deliberate misconduct by high government officials in utilizing available threat intelligence. One of the most interesting segments was the discussion of how senior commanders ignored intel that predicted the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and were never held accountable.

The heart of the film, of course, is the story of the deliberate sabotage of ThinThread, an in-house US National Security Agency program that in all likelihood would have provided actionable intel to stop the 9/11 attacks had it not been shutdown just weeks earlier. In the aftermath of 9/11, the NSA opted for a mass surveillance program carried out via lucrative private contracts. The principal developers of ThinThread—which had strong built-in privacy protections—were thwarted in trying to get other government agencies to take up the technology and, eventually, raided by the FBI after they filed a DoD IG whistleblower complaint.

See also:

• Whistle-blower: Trump likely surveilled for some time (video)
• Ex-NSA official: Spies don't believe Russia collusion story (video)

Labels: 9/11, civil liberties, Edward Snowden, film & television, government, military, National Security Agency, surveillance, Trump, United States

Political power in America is media power. It’s the power to shape consciousness ... The protest Wednesday [January 6, 2021] was an example of "hyperreality." There was no attempted coup by President Trump, nor by people wandering around the Capitol. The media created a story about an "armed insurrection," a putsch, and they seem to believe it.

Ashli Babbitt was also caught in a fantasy. The "QAnon" story told her President Trump was fighting a cosmic struggle against evil. She joined in that struggle. Unfortunately, as in The Matrix, if you die in the simulation, you die in real life. In his concession speech last night, President Trump didn't mention her. He wouldn't say her name.

If anything, QAnon is an opiate because it tells Americans the system still somehow works. It tells well-meaning, naïve people that their country still exists, the old values endure, the Founders' vision lives on, and everything will turn out fine. That illusion died with Ashli Babbitt.

Our rulers apparently believe what they are saying. They think they're fighting a dictator, that Ashli Babbitt and people like her deserve to die, and that there must be a cleansing before the egalitarian paradise arrives. We know what happens when fanatics stop at nothing in the name of equality.

People can try to live in a dream, but reality finally breaks in. For decades, President Donald Trump crafted his media image as a businessman, patriot, and strategist. He may believe himself to be a Great Man. Tens of millions of Americans who saw their country being stolen from them put their trust in him. He let them down — not because he is an aspiring dictator, but because he is erratic, self-absorbed, and doesn't truly understand what is happening to the country.

Ashli's surname is the same as Sinclair Lewis's title character in Babbitt, about a middle-class guy who seeks meaning in a conformist world. Babbitt rebels against middle-class values. Today, those values seem idyllic. Today, it is rebellion to uphold natural values of morality, family, and patriotism.

Perhaps Ashli Babbitt died for a false idol, a leader who didn't deserve her loyalty. Perhaps I'm too hard on President Trump, who has been continuously betrayed and sabotaged. Either way, Ashli Babbitt's sacrifice was not pointless. Whatever her mistakes, she was right to believe her country is ruled by a hostile elite. The form her rebellion took was wrong, but she died for her beliefs. Especially in a time when our rulers make saints out of thugs, we should remember Ashli Babbitt, who served a country that killed her.

Source: "Her Name Was Ashli Babbitt" by Gregory Hood on American Renaissance, January 8, 2020. 

Labels: media, politics, quotations, resistance, Trump, voting

On December 8, 2020, I wrote about the State of Texas' motion in the Supreme Court to allow it to file a complaint over alleged problems in the 2020 election in several states. Back then I made two observations relevant to the present post.

First, I said: "I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late." Second, I said: "If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges."

The Supreme Court did indeed reject Texas' motion. Here's the full text of the Court's unsigned order:

The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.

Now, it's clear Texas does not have an interest in how other states elect their own state officials. But the notion that they have no "judicially cognizable interest" in how other states elect the one President and VP of all of the United States defies logic and facially undermines constitutional republicanism. I'm not suggesting there were no reasonable grounds to deny Texas' motion but, rather, that the one the Court came up with was unreasonable. 

Supporters of Biden like to mention that many of the federal judges denying 2020 presidential election challenges have been Trump appointees. The implication is that the legal challenges have been so hollow that even Trump loyalists had to reject them.

There may truth to this but it doesn't follow that because Trump nominated these judges that they would necessarily do him any favors. That is the whole point of lifetime appointments for federal judges—to try to insulate them from political influence.

Also, Trump "relied on outside conservative legal organizations and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell" to select and manage the confirmation of his judicial nominees. Moreover, these are people who were on the judiciary career path long before anyone took a Trump presidency seriously and who always knew they would likely be on the bench long after Trump was gone. They might even despise Trump but were willing to accept a nomination (or, possibly, reject an election lawsuit) to advance their own careers and political commitments.

Thus, there are scant grounds to think Trump necessarily got special or even fair consideration of his post-election legal complaints. I'm not saying he was treated unfairly but that you cannot infer much from the fact that some Trump judicial appointees rejected his election claims.

###

The January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters are criminals who should be prosecuted. They are also fools and idiots who played right into the hands of the "progressive" authoritarians and their program of racism and repression.

Trump has now been impeached a second time on purely political grounds—they're afraid he'll beat them in another election. Barring a miraculous transformation I hope Trump quietly retires to another, far away country.

In any event, I read the new article of impeachment and it presents no sound legal basis to claim that Trump criminally incited the rioters. If prosecutors believe there is probable cause that Trump committed a crime then they should seek an indictment.

Instead, the Democrats and their media allies are simply hyping and milking the riot for every political advantage they can extract no matter how dishonest the effort. Referring to the upcoming impeachment trial, Jonathan Turley writes: "A private citizen is being called to the Senate to be tried for removal from an office that he does not hold." 

The Democrats had some conceivable legitimate grounds to impeach Trump while he was president though not on events connected to Russia or Ukraine. For instance, the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was, arguably, illegal under US and international law. It was also dangerous and counter to American strategic interests. Yet, because that attack was perceived to be in Israel's interests impeachment was never on the agenda for it.

Trump might also have been impeached for his attempt to suborn Mike Pence to violate the Constitution and federal law by unlawfully interfering with the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021. But, no, to impeach Trump for that would draw more unwanted attention to Pence who refused Trump's entreaties and followed the law while also undermining the Dems specious and profoundly hypocritical claims that for members of Congress to lawfully object to certification "borders on sedition or treason" and such.

###

The election of Donald Trump was always a symptom of the larger problems of, in no special order, economic inequality, toxic consumerism, empire, corporate globalization, Democratic race grifting for power, and the corruption of the media and political elites. Trump ran on a campaign that showed awareness of some of these problems but he was seemingly always a con man exploiting the justified grievances of millions of Americans. He betrayed them and never rose to the call of his office or of history.

Unfortunately, Trump's disastrous term has only worsened matters and emboldened "progressive" authoritarians to step up the repression of their political enemies, including the White working class, in general (which is not to say the GOP were ever their allies). This is Trump's fault, the fault of his many enemies, and, to no small extent, the fault of voters duped by him.

Biden claims he wants to unify the country but—and I hope I'm wrong when I say this—that's a lie to judge from so many of his other utterances and policy plans. When I saw recent photos of the unprecedentedly large military presence in the Capitol for the inauguration I was reminded of all the unpopular, repressive governments the US has propped in foreign countries over the years. Are chickens coming home to roost?

Virginia National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 13, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by SSgt Bryan Myhr).

New Jersey National Guard members in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 12, 2021 (U.S. Air National Guard photo by MSgt Matt Hecht).

See also: Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV

 

Labels: Biden, class, Democrats, Empire, Iran, Israel, law, media, military, politics, race, repression, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

See also: "Update: Israel & the SolarWinds/SUNBURST Hack"

Labels: China, government, Israel, Russia, surveillance, technology, Trump, USS Liberty, video

Yesterday, the Texas Attorney General filed a motion to have the US Supreme Court consider the State of Texas' complaint on 2020 presidential election irregularities and improprieties in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The four defendant states have already submitted their certificates of ascertainment regarding their presidential electors to the National Archives.

In the complaint, which, again, the Court has not yet agreed to hear, Texas is thus asking the Court to order:

E. If any of Defendant States have already appointed presidential electors to the Electoral College using the 2020 election results, direct such States' legislatures, pursuant to 3 U.S.C. § 2 and U.S. CONST. art. II, § 1, cl. 2, to appoint a new set of presidential electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, or to appoint no presidential electors at all.

In sum, as I read it, Texas wants either the four defendant states' Republican-controlled legislatures or the US House of Representatives pursuant to the 12th Amendment ("the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote") to decide the election.

Here are my thoughts:

1. The Texas action is the best pled and most concise case I've seen so far alleging problems in the 2020 presidential election. It's far better than the dumpster fire pleadings offered by Sidney Powell that I've read.

2. I think the State of Texas should have standing but that is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition and it's motion comes awfully late.

3. I have not followed the lower state and federal court election cases closely enough to say how persuasive the evidence is of substantial issues with the election so I will not presume to know how the Supreme Court should or will rule (I mention this because the Texas complaint appears to rely heavily on lower court filings and opinions). If the allegations are substantially true as pled then I would hope the Court would agree to hear the complaint; however, I am skeptical that Texas is on solid legal and evidentiary ground.

4. I think the statistical evidence offered by Charles J. Cicchetti, PhD is flawed, unpersuasive, and harmful to the case. Cicchetti tested the hypothesis "that other things being the same" Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden "would have an equal number of votes" (see Cicchetti Declaration at ¶¶ 11-13). But we know "other things" beyond alleged election irregularities were far from the same in 2016 and 2020. For example, among other things, Trump was running as an incumbent heading an administration beset by personnel instability, incompetence, and a lack of discipline.

5. If, as seems likely, the Supreme Court refuses to hear this complaint then it's probably game over for all the election challenges.

6. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear this complaint then it's a game changer and, although I never want to underestimate their capacity for dishonesty, the mainstream media will probably be compelled to drop their mantra that claims of election irregularities are "baseless", etc. We'll probably also see violent protests by Trump haters.

7. If the Supreme Court agrees to hear this complaint then to open up the possibility that Trump stays in the White House for another term the Supreme Court would have to invalidate the election results in at least three of the four defendant states. If they do agree to hear the complaint then I predict they will overturn the election results in fewer than three states and send Biden to the White House with an unchanged or, more likely, smaller Electoral College margin.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations III
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations V
  

Labels: Biden, law, media, politics, Supreme Court, Trump, voting

Who said it?: "Even assuming there's nothing nefarious about the national election why has the cascade of irregularities around this country occurred virtually in a news blackout?" 

If you guessed Tucker Carlson or some other right-wing crank then you are mistaken. It was MSNBC's Keith Olbermann talking with Newsweek senior editor and columnist Jonathan Alter days after the 2004 presidential election. Back then, Media Matters for America was complaining:

Media conservatives have labeled MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann a "voice of paranoia" and accused him of perpetuating "idiotic conspiracy theories" for his sustained spotlight on the numerous local news reports of voting irregularities during the November 2 presidential election. Olbermann's emphasis during Countdown with Keith Olbermann on voting irregularities has been part of a critique of what he has called the "Rube Goldberg voting process of ours" -- as well as a criticism of the major media outlets' failure to report on the irregularities.

So, in 2020, is Media Matters still complaining now that the shoe is on the other foot and the mainstream, pro-Democrat corporate media is engaged in a full court press to ignore, deny, and dismiss alleged irregularities in the 2020 presidential election and to denigrate anyone who makes or reports the allegations?

Why, yes, they are complaining ... about "Donald Trump's attempts to steal and thwart the election" and they are cataloging "right-wing media figures who have supported Trump's efforts to spread false claims and conspiracy theories about the election". In short, they have hypocritically done a complete about-face.

You see, it was not so long ago that some Democrats and other left-of-center folks took allegations of electoral irregularities and concern about voting machines very seriously or at least put on a good show of it. Election integrity activists produced an Emmy-nominated 2006 documentary, Hacking Democracy, and started groups such as VoteTrustUSA, VotersUnite, and Black Box Voting (all now moribund). Now that Biden has presumptively won the 2020 election such talk, from Democrats and their media lackeys, at least, is verboten.

Back in the day it was Diebold that lefties were mainly concerned about. Diebold, renamed as Premier Election Solutions, was sold to Dominion Voting Systems in 2010. That same year Dominion also bought assets of Sequoia Voting Systems.

In 2010, Project Censored published "Election 2008: Vanishing Votes, Disappearing Democracy And Media Misdirection" by Brad Friedman. Friedman, who is anti-Trump and now sees no evidence of voting irregularities wrote:

There was, of course, reason for everyone to be concerned, particularly about voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems, Inc. The company had been on the verge of bankruptcy and hostile takeover all year, and—though they had told federal investigators that they had divested from Smartmatic, their Venezuelan-owned, Hugo Chavez-tied parent company, in late 2006, after a hue and cry from Republicans—all of their systems’ Intellectual Property rights had secretly remained under the ownership of the Venezuelan firm.

The Venezuelan connection has, of course, recently been echoed by Sidney Powell along with allegations about Dominion. Though the Project Censored crowd seems uninterested in her allegations. 

Also, in 2010, Project Censored published a revision of a 2006 piece by Dennis Loo titled: "No Paper Trail Left Behind: the Theft of the 2004 Presidential Election". Loo writes:

Welcome to a world where statistical probability and normal arithmetic no longer apply! The Democrats, rather than vigorously pursuing these patently obvious signs of election fraud in 2004, have nearly all decided that being gracious losers is better than being winners, probably because – and this may be the most important reason for the Democrats' relative silence – a full-scale uncovering of the fraud runs the risk of mobilizing and unleashing popular forces that the Democrats find just as threatening as the GOP does.

On November 8, I wrote: "I doubt that Trump's campaign will be able to muster evidence of election irregularities substantial enough to overturn the presumptive Biden victory. I am inclined to believe that he actually lost the election due to his unpopularity, not error or fraud." I still believe that but more strongly than ever I also believe there probably were significant election irregularities.

It seems the reason we are told over and over again that Biden is the "president-elect" and allegations of election problems are "baseless" is precisely because the mainstream strongly suspects or knows the allegations are not baseless at all. I also believe that the undisciplined and incompetent Team Trump is likely not up to the task of getting to the truth and, in any case, they have Democrats, the media, establishment Republicans, and the Deep State working against them.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations II
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations IV
  

Labels: Biden, Democrats, media, politics, Republicans, Trump, Tucker Carlson, voting

The first election I remember with any clarity is the 1976 race between Ford and Carter. Since then I've participated in every presidential election, including two where I served as a precinct officer.

Over and over, every four years, I've heard people say: "This is the most consequential election of our life time" or words to that effect. I was never convinced that was true until this year. The American corporate media have never been known for rigid devotion to the full truth and political neutrality but they seldom engaged in such sustained blatantly and overtly dishonest reporting as followed the 2016 election of Donald Trump. 

The media's usual modus operandi was to manipulate people through omission, de-emphasis, and spin. For example, in 2011, Barack Obama became the first known US president to order the assassination of an American citizen "without due process of law". In actuality, the Obama administration fought successfully in court to ensure there would be no due process for US citizens on its "kill list".

These facts should have been blared relentlessly in headlines along with critical op-eds until Obama was successfully impeached. To be sure, there was media coverage of these outrages but nothing commensurate with the gravity of the offenses or even approaching the outrage ginned up by the media's blatantly false characterization of Trump's 2017 remarks regarding violent protests in Charlottesville. To this day, most Americans I speak with about it have little or no idea about Obama's assassination of American citizens not to mention his unapologetic killings of thousands of non-citizens, including hundreds of children.

However, this year's election was the culmination of four years of an unprecedented, near-complete decoupling from truth except when it supported the narrative. In some ways this started with Black Lives Matter and was fanned by Obama but it increased by orders of magnitude when Trump was elected. Since then we've been subjected to an emotionally and ideologically driven outpouring of hate and, often, blatant lies.

In all my life, I've never seen the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry join in such sustained lockstep to villify and remove an American president and to demonize the people who put him in office. There's no conclusive evidence this will end when Trump is gone.

The naked, unrestrained quest for power and domination by any means of the Democrats and their allies is frightening. Few useful lies are too incredible to report and few inconvenient truths are so important that they can't be denied, misrepresented, or ignored. Unfortunately, many Americans uncritically rely on the mainstream media and are too busy, too lazy, or too indoctrinated to thoughtfully question what they are told, let alone what they are not told or allowed to view, hear, and judge for themselves.

A case in point is today's press conference with RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Trump campaign adviser Kayleigh McEnany, and campaign General Counsel Matt Morgan. These three spoke for over 20 minutes on concerns about the election practices in some states and the lawsuits filed to deal with them.

McDaniel said, from Michigan alone, the campaign had 131 affidavits and over 2,800 incident reports concerning election irregularities. McEnany alleged that 682,479 ballots were counted in Allegheny County—where Philadelphia Pittsburgh is located—where no Republican poll watchers were permitted to observe the canvassing.

I'm not going to go through all the claims put forth, you can watch the press conference and make up your own mind. However, McDaniel was correct when she stated: "If the shoe were on the other foot. If it were this close the other way. If president Trump was in the lead in all these states ... the media would be screaming, 'This isn't over, the race isn't over, we need more time to count and make sure it's right.' But because it's Biden and a very slight lead the media demands the race is over and there's nothing to see here."

And, in fact, there has been a virtual corporate media blackout of the press conference today. Fox News started to show it and then quickly decided to censor it. The Washington Post covered the Fox News censorship but not the substance of the press conference. On their flagship afternoon news program National Public Radio has a nearly two-minute long segment the Bidens' dogs' new Twitter account but nothing about the allegations raised in the press conference. In fact, NPR apparently hasn't covered anything White House Press Secretary McEnany has said since Oct. 28.

If you truly care about technically free and fair elections in an admittedly flawed political system the time is now to step up against the Democrats and the media's potential, if unlikely, coup-in-the-making. Do it for your country and yourself, do it out of respect for the ideals of freedom of information and representative democracy. Tell your friends and family what is happening. Tell your political representatives that you want all credible allegations of electoral error and impropriety fully and transparently investigated.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations I
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations III

 

Labels: critical thinking, Democrats, media, National Public Radio, Obama, politics, Trump, voting

Around noon yesterday, the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets anointed Joe Biden as the "president-elect". Consistent with a plan Axios described on Nov. 3, Biden publicly assumed the mantle of leadership that same day.

Yesterday, I also searched the New York Times archive. As it turns out, they didn't refer to George W. Bush as the "president-elect" until December 13, 2000, the day of Al Gore's concession speech.

Yet, in 2020, despite the fact that the incumbent president has not conceded defeat and has made allegations of voting irregularities that he says he will litigate the mainstream media has already declared the election decided and settled. This comes less than four days after Election Day, following a highly unusual and hotly contested election, and before a single state has certified their election results.

I doubt that Trump's campaign will be able to muster evidence of election irregularities substantial enough to overturn the presumptive Biden victory. I am inclined to believe that he actually lost the election due to his unpopularity, not error or fraud. However, there appears to be enough anecdotal evidence of election errors and fraud (see e.g. here and here and here) to warrant targeted, thorough, and transparent investigations.

Nevertheless, true to form and in stark contrast to their reporting on canvassing problems in 2000, the mainstream media has repeatedly asserted there are no problems with the elections results. They may be right but this is a continuation of their unprincipled sabotage of the Trump presidency since before his inauguration. There were plenty of legitimate reasons to oppose Trump—I did and still do—but the media was not content stick with those and with honest reporting.

If the allegations of election problems are demonstrably false then why not demonstrate their falsehood with evidence instead of bare assertions repeated incessantly? If the claims are false then a proper investigation would, to most people, strengthen confidence in the integrity of the process and results. Of course, that presumes people value such integrity above their preferred outcome.

And sure, there are some people who will never believe that Trump lost in a technically free and fair election but why the rush to anoint Biden? Why not wait until the states certify enough results to give the winner 270 electoral college votes?

And why take the wholly unprecedented step of censoring the POTUS on radio and television when he spoke on Thursday? TV and radio are the primary or only sources of news for many. Here's the speech that your corporate media guardians did not want you to see or hear in order to make up your own mind.

See also:

• Lessons of the 2020 Election
• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations II

Labels: Biden, media, politics, Ralph Nader, Trump, voting

Donald J. Trump has endured more than four years of constant public drubbing by most of the mainstream media, academia, and the entertainment industry. Trump survived the bogus Russiagate conspiracy and a failed impeachment related to Biden family dealings in Ukraine. A significant number of establishment Republicans betrayed their party to publicly campaign for Biden. Biden has collected far more campaign money ($1,380.1 million vs. $863.6 million) than Trump.

In many ways Trump's presidency has been an incoherent mess marked by numerous self-inflicted wounds, including but not limited to, bad policies and inept policy implementation. Yet, despite all this and during the worst pandemic in 100 years and the worst economy in 90 years, Trump once again defied the pollsters and pundits to mount a strong challenge to the presidential nominee of Democratic Party. It looks like Republicans will hold the Senate and cut the Democratic majority in the House to single digits. Meanwhile, in solid blue California voters soundly rejected an attempt by political elites to remove an anti-discrimination clause from the state constitution.

This all begs the question: Will Democratic (or Republican) elites learn the right lessons from the 2016 and 2020 elections and resolve to work "to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty"? Nah.

See also:

• Anointing Biden & Election Irregularity Allegations I
• "Tucker Carlson: A Vote for President Trump Is a Vote Against America's Ruling Class" by Joey Pietro for The Western Journal
  
• "Ketman And The Left's Problem" by Rod Dreher for The American Conservative

Labels: Biden, COVID-19, media, politics, race, Russia, Trump, Tucker Carlson, voting

Thanks to a fawning, largely uncritical media and a feckless, gullible public, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York was able to falsely position himself this year as the COVID-19 anti-Trump. In May, The Guardian published an op-ed titled "Andrew Cuomo is no hero. He's to blame for New York's coronavirus catastrophe". The authors noted:

Andrew Cuomo may be the most popular politician in the country. His approval ratings have hit all-time highs thanks to his Covid-19 response. Some Democrats have discussed him as a possible replacement for Joe Biden, due to Biden’s perceived weakness as a nominee. And there have even been some unfortunate tributes to Cuomo’s alleged sex appeal.

All of which is bizarre, because Cuomo should be one of the most loathed officials in America right now. ProPublica recently released a report outlining catastrophic missteps by Cuomo and the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, which probably resulted in many thousands of needless coronavirus cases ...

Federal failures played a role, of course, but this tragedy was absolutely due, in part, to decisions by the governor.

Nevertheless image triumphed once again over reality, as The Atlantic put it last August: 

The opening night of the Democrats’ virtual convention was the beginning of a coronation for Joe Biden, but it was also a victory march for Andrew Cuomo, New York’s governor and a supposed hero of the coronavirus pandemic. “For all the pain and all the tears, our way worked,” Cuomo declared in his five-minute speech. “And it was beautiful.”

“Beautiful” is an odd way to describe a virus that has killed more than 25,000 New Yorkers, or about 15 percent of the total number of Americans who have died from COVID-19. But Cuomo has long been a curious leader for Democrats to hold up as an emblem of successful leadership during the pandemic: He has somehow presided over the worst and deadliest coronavirus outbreak in the country while eluding the widespread criticism that has surrounded both President Donald Trump and New York City’s Democratic mayor, Bill de Blasio.

Earlier today I had bizarre conversation about one of Cuomo's many failures. In 2015, the New York State Task Force on Life and the Law (TFLL), its members appointed by Cuomo, released its "2015 Ventilator Allocation Guidelines".

The TFLL estimated that during the "peak week" of a severe "1918-like" pandemic scenario the state would have a ventilator shortfall of 15,783 units (p. 30). Instead of urging the state's leaders to come up with a plan to close the shortfall of ventilators and trained personnel to operate them the TFLL accepted a shortage of life-saving equipment as a fait accompli. The TFLL was focused on rationing ventilators without any analysis of whether the shortage could be ameliorated through advance preparation. Cuomo implicitly, if not explicitly, agreed he could live with the projected shortage and the deaths that would entail.

Their solution, then, was to create a triage plan that, by design, likely consigned hundreds, if not thousands, of patients to a needless death when the pandemic arrived this year. When I pointed out this to my friend she defended Cuomo asserting there was little or nothing he could have done differently. I replied he could have said: This is unacceptable, we need to figure out how to close this gap. She claimed, "That's not how government works." I'll never understand why some people make excuses for corrupt and/or inept politicians.

In 1984, the governor's father, Mario Cuomo, who was then himself governor of New York, gave one of his best known speeches at the Democratic national convention. His vision of government included the idea that people should be "protected in those moments when they would not be able to protect themselves." Andrew Cuomo echoed this notion when, in 2017, he asserted of the subway "crisis": "There is no time for delay and there is no tolerance for a lack of commitment on this issue ... The fundamental responsibility of government is to respond in a timely and effective way when people need help."

If Cuomo's TFLL could identify the problem then they could also have come up with a better solution. Moreover, Cuomo could have demanded one. No, he can't magically conjure ventilators or the money to buy them but experts have been predicting a serious viral pandemic for years. Cuomo (and governors and legislators across the country) had the ability and responsibility to ensure his state was better prepared for it.

Instead in March, Cuomo lied or betrayed a profound ignorance. As Colin Kalmbacher at Law & Crime wrote:

On Wednesday morning, during his quotidian Coronavirus press briefing, the three-term Democratic governor told an easily verifiable falsehood about New York’s state of health.

“No one has these ventilators and no one ever anticipated a situation where you would need this number of ventilators to deal with a public health emergency,” Cuomo said–explaining the Empire State’s recent move toward rationing the highly in-demand medical devices.

“So we have purchased everything that can be purchased,” he added. “We’re now in a situation where we’re trying to accelerate production of these ventilators, and a ventilator is a complicated piece of equipment.”

But Cuomo’s claim that “no one ever anticipated” the “number of ventilators to deal with a public health emergency” is directly undercut by a report from New York State itself–under his own administration–released halfway into Cuomo’s second term in office.

Like Cuomo, the New York State Commissioner of Health he appointed, Howard A. Zucker, was also given to uttering falsehoods. In a letter accompanying the TFLL's report he claimed: "Protecting the health and well-being of New Yorkers is a core objective of the Department of Health." So, Zucker knew about the anticipated ventilator shortage and the "death panel" solution to deal with it. 

Yet, in March of this year, Newsday reported: 

"I always felt if you can improve the life of others — whether an individual or many — you should," he [Zucker] said in an interview. "I learned practicing clinical medicine that I have to do everything possible ... it's our role in society."

"But I never expected this kind of situation," he said of the coronavirus threat."

Zucker has mostly flown under the radar compared to his boss but his COVID-19 performance prompted one editorial titled: "New York health chief Howard Zucker: Call him Dr. Death".

By April, Cuomo was throwing tens of millions of dollars around to try to buy ventilators at elevated prices from people who often couldn't deliver. If instead, he had ordered 15,783 ventilators in 2015 when his Task Force released its report then the state would likely have had a stockpile on hand during the COVID-19 crisis for less than 0.14% of the state's 2015-16 disbursements.

For the calculation above, I used a 2020 ventilator retail price via ProPublica of $12,495 per unit. I have no doubt that price is actually significantly higher than a competitive bidding process in 2015 would have obtained. If the state had spread the acquisition out over five years then the cost would have been less than 0.03% of the annual budget.

In any event, it seems both unsurprising and clear that few high-profile politicians of either major party actually concern themselves much with the victims of COVID-19, whom they largely regard as superannuated drags on the economy or otherwise disposable people. They don't say this out loud but their policies speak volumes. Instead of taking effective steps to save lives and safely re-open the economy, Democrats blame Trump, Republicans blame China (or engage in various forms of denial) and, in the meantime, the US has the largest COVID-19 death toll and one of the highest per capita COVID-19 death rates in the world.

Labels: Biden, COVID-19, Democrats, government, health, media, medicine, politics, science, Trump

Whoopi Goldberg poses with members of the Proud Boys in Florida in 2019.

After the sh*tshow that was last night's presidential "debate" the mainstream media's major talking point is the allegation that Trump refused to "condemn white supremacists". Never mind that, beginning no later than August 2017, Trump has repeatedly "condemned white supremacists". Never mind, too, that White supremacism is virtually a non-issue in modern America.

In any case, the media frenetically seized on Trump's failure to condemn a group fingered by Biden—the Proud Boys. Earlier today, I ran a search on "proud boys" + "hate group". Every news hit on the first page of results claimed, assumed, or implied that the Proud Boys is a violent "hate", "white nationalist", and/or "white supremacist" group, mostly on the strength of allegations by the disreputable ADL or SPLC. In typical fashion, spineless Republicans and Fox News piled on.

Here's the strange thing, as even some of its detractors acknowledge, the Proud Boys is a multi-racial group. Here's what one critic wrote earlier today:

Indeed the group has a membership that includes those of Black, Hispanic, and Asian backgrounds. This fact would be the core argument against the Proud Boys being termed a "white nationalist" group, which goes along with its also-problematic rebranding to center on the coded language of "Western values."

"Proud Boys is a multi-racial fraternity with thousands of members worldwide," a lawyer for McInnis asserted in 2018. "The only requirements for membership are that a person must be biologically male and believe that the West is the best."

So, how is a Progressive goodthinker supposed to reconcile the Proud Boys' racial/ethnic diversity (good) with White people/hate (bad)? Injunction 1: Who said you were allowed to think? Your betters have told you what to believe, just accept that the Proud Boys are a hate group and leave it at that. Injunction 2: If you disobey Injunction 1, realize that their refusal to accept (White) racial guilt proves their crime. It goes like this:

However, the group's [i.e. the Proud Boys'] website includes a list of core values [see also here] as tenets: "Minimal Government, Maximum Freedom, Anti Political Correctness, Anti-Drug War, Closed Borders, Anti-Racial Guilt, Anti-Racism, Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment), Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment), Glorifying the Entrepreneur, Venerating the Housewife, Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism."

The impossible notion of couching "anti-racism" together with "anti-racial guilt" is informative, in the implicit suggestion that Proud Boys do not hate non-whites as long as they (whites) aren't guilted into taking ownership of their privilege or past sins of racialized violence. In other words, per their ideology, "others" can join as long as they fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority.

In fact, all ethical and thinking people reject both racism and racial guilt. Moreover, the Proud Boys nowhere, that I have seen, claim or imply that non-White members are "others" who must "fully adhere to white-centered, libertarian ideals of freedom, and inherent superiority."

In one of the rare, more balanced accounts USA Today reported:

Current Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is Afro-Cuban, says the group has "longstanding regulations prohibiting racist, white supremacist or violent activity," Ronald D. Coleman wrote in an email to USA TODAY. Coleman said he is a spokesman for the Proud Boys.

"We do not care what color you are or what your background is ... if you love America ... we consider you a brother," Tarrio said in a written statement provided by Coleman. The group condemns racism, fascism, communism and socialism, the statement says.

As for the allegations of violence. I have little doubt that some of the Proud Boys and/or its associates have instigated violence and they should be arrested and tried for it. However, I have watched a lot of video of the violent encounters and they, overwhelmingly, seem to be defensive on the part of the Proud Boys.

One recent example occurred this summer in Kalamazoo. The USA Today report quoted above said simply: "When the Proud Boys met with counterprotesters in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in August, the tensions boiled over into fights requiring law enforcement to step in." The reporter did not see fit to tell his readers that Kalamazoo police determined, and provided video showing, that "counterprotesters" initiated the violence (see also here).

In a largely ignored statement issued before Kalamazoo police had their press conference the Michigan chapter of the Proud Boys said, in part:

For those in Kalamazoo city government who claim to reject our values of hate – we merely ask who do we hate? African American Proud Boys, Asian Proud Boys, Jewish Proud Boys, Arab Proud Boys, Hispanic Proud Boys were all represented as photo and video documentation of our protest prove. We hate no one, but we do pity those that must resort to violence when confronted ... by those who vote for a different political party than they do, and support the current President of the United States.

All this is not to say the Proud Boys are angelic beings who can think or do no wrong but all the evidence of which I am aware indicates that the mainstream media has generally shamefully misrepresented them for transparently political purposes.

Labels: Biden, critical thinking, media, politics, race, Trump, Tucker Carlson, video, White folks

No honest or rational person would ever accuse me of being a supporter of Donald Trump. That said, Trump's response to Bob Woodward's question about "White privilege" is almost perfect and worth listening to.

Woodward: But let me ask you this. I mean, we share one thing in common. We're White, privileged, who- my father was a lawyer and a judge in Illinois, and we know what your dad did.

Do you have any sense that that privilege has isolated and put you in a cave to a certain extent, as it put me, and I think lots of White, privileged people in a cave. And that we have to work our way out of it to understand the anger and the pain, particularly Black people feel in this country. Do you feel–

Trump: No. You really drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you? Just listen to you. Wow. No, I don’t feel that at all.

At the end of a 60 Minutes clip poor, old Bob incoherently whines about how Trump "was ridiculing me for reflecting what the whole movement after George Floyd is". Well, Bob, people who embrace fraudulent movements such as Black Lives Matter and destructive, specious concepts such as "White privilege" have certainly earned any ridicule directed at them.

Labels: media, politics, race, Trump

My primary source of daily news is National Public Radio, which, in my experience, was never a fountain of unadulterated truth. In the Trump era, although they profess otherwise, NPR has pretty much abandoned any vestige of a commitment to non-partisan truth-telling. Trump Derangement Syndrome has done that to a lot of people.

That said, I have always been keenly aware that NPR and other Left-liberal-Democratic outlets hold no monopoly on biased, dishonest journalism. The story and image below from Breitbart is a case in point.

I think the issue of transgender athletes, especially primary school and college amateurs, competing against cisgender athletes of the gender to which the transgender athletes have transitioned is not amenable to an obvious, straightforward solution. However, publishers, editors, and journalists with integrity will strive not to mislead their audience or play to their emotions. They will present them with all relevant facts about an issue. Sadly, such integrity is largely missing from outlets such as NPR and Breitbart.

Notice that the photo Breitbart used for their article (really a rehashed press release) is credited but un-captioned. I can only assume this is because Breitbart does not wish to trouble their readers with some facts that don't fit their agenda.

First, the short-haired wrestler dominating the other wrestler with a neck hold is Mack Beggs of Texas. Second, in that 2018 photo Beggs is a transgender boy competing against girls because he was prohibited from competing against boys. Beggs is not a "biological male" identifying as a girl/woman.

There are other facts the average reader would be unlikely to discern from the article alone. The press release Penny Starr all but plagiarized is from WOLF, a radical feminist organization. Here are a few things they believe:

•     That female humans, the class of people called women, are oppressed by men under a male-supremacist system called patriarchy.
•     That patriarchy is organized around the extraction of resources from female bodies and minds in the service of men, including reproductive, sexual, emotional, and labor resources.
•     That gender is a hierarchical caste system that organizes male supremacy. Gender cannot be reformed – it must be abolished.
•     That we are enmeshed in overlapping systems of sadistic power built on misogyny, white privilege, stolen wealth, and human supremacism, and all of those must be dismantled.

Breitbart and its readers are not known for their opposition to "patriarchy" and the other issues WOLF decries. But, tellingly, they'll climb into bed with WOLF to unite against transgender athletes.

Another undisclosed and ironic fact is that the Idaho law touted in the Breitbart article—even if it survives judicial scrutiny—would not prevent another transgender boy such as Mack Beggs from wrestling girls. You see the "Fairness in Women's Sports Act" only requires that "Athletic teams or sports designated for females, women, or girls shall not be open to students of the male sex." Under the Idaho law a transgender boy is a girl and permitted to compete against cisgender girls. So, all in all, the photo selected for the article could hardly be more misleading.

Labels: gender, law, LGBT, media, National Public Radio, politics, Trump

An automated release of documents this week by the FBI has stirred up a minor Twitter storm. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports the release announcement "spark[ed] anger and confusion".

According to an FBI apology posted on August 19, 2020:

Earlier today FOIA materials were posted to the FBI's Vault and FOIA Twitter account via an automated process without further outlining the context of the documents. We regret that this release may have inadvertently caused distress among the communities we serve.

The apology doesn't say what the "materials" in question were nor does it mention that the offending tweet was deleted. As it turns out the FBI released its file on the "Protocols of Learned Elders of Zion", which you can, for now, still access in the FBI's "Vault". The deleted tweet can be viewed here.

It appears someone decided to try to put a lid on the whole matter because people were starting to pay attention and it wasn't all in support of the 'angry and confused' folks. Thus, three of the four non-FBI tweets quoted in the JTA article have now disappeared too.

They probably needn't have worried as—except for high-profile stories that simply cannot be ignored such as Jonathan Pollard, Jack Abramoff, Jeffrey Epstein, and Harvey Weinstein—the mainstream media seldom reports on matters that may offend Jews or cast them in a negative light. Examples of buried stories that warrant greater coverage are the ongoing nefarious activities of Chabad, including the $40 million in federal funds allegedly defrauded by the Michigan Jewish Institute. The Trump DoJ put an end to this particular inquiry early this year.

In any case, one of the more pointed replies to the FBI's now deleted tweet quoted from a 2015 article by Yossi Sarid in Haaretz on Republican Jewish operatives waging a "campaign of intimidation ... to stop Democratic lawmakers from skipping Netanyahu's upcoming Congress speech". Here's the excerpt:

In these very moments, the protocols are being rewritten. Rich Jews are writing them in their own handwriting. They, in their wealth, are confirming with their own signatures what anti-Semites used to slander them with in days gone by: We, the elders of Zion, pull the strings of Congress, and the congressmen are nothing but marionettes who do our will. If they don’t understand our words, they’ll understand our threats. And if in the past, we ran the show from behind the scenes, now we’re doing it openly, from center stage. And if you forget our donations, the wellspring will run dry.

Labels: Chabad, conspiracy, crime, fraud, government, Israel, Jews, media, quotations, Rothschild, Trump, Zionism

Arson in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020

In the wake of the George Floyd protests and riots a particular quote from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. has been repeatedly trotted out (see e.g. here and here and here). As Time noted after the Freddie Gray riots: "One quote from Martin Luther King, Jr., has become a touchstone for those who seek to understand [sic] why those individuals have taken to the streets: 'A riot,' King said, 'is the language of the unheard.' " (On the origins of this quote see the 2013 CBS News piece "MLK: A riot is the language of the unheard".)

It is doubtful that there has been any time in American history when more Black people occupied positions of prominence in the media and power in politics. Even Demon Trump has the same percentage of Black cabinet members as Obama did in his first term.

In Minneapolis, the police chief and the state attorney general are both Black men. The city's representative in Congress is a Somali-American woman. There are apparently four Black members on the city council, one of whom is the son of the state attorney general.

So, how is it that the Minneapolis rioters are supposedly "unheard"? What are they saying and who isn't listening? More importantly, why is it that when pundits, politicians, and other propagandists quote King about the "language of the unheard" they seldom quote the text below from his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech?

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem: it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.

In a real sense nonviolence seeks to redeem the spiritual and moral lag that I spoke of earlier as the chief dilemma of modern man. It seeks to secure moral ends through moral means. Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

I believe in this method because I think it is the only way to reestablish a broken community. It is the method which seeks to implement the just law by appealing to the conscience of the great decent majority who through blindness, fear, pride, and irrationality have allowed their consciences to sleep.

In 1968, shortly before his death, King reiterated his position on the "language of the unheard" while "condemn[ing] riots", saying: "... I am still committed to  militant, powerful, massive, non-violence as the most potent weapon in grappling with the [race] problem from a direct action point of view ... And I feel that we must always work with an effective, powerful weapon and method  that  brings about tangible results."

Labels: Black America, Christianity, crime, critical thinking, Ilhan Omar, Martin Luther King, nonviolence, Obama, police, quotations, race, Trump, violence

Yesterday, the AP and NPR both reported that the US Justice Department "is dropping the criminal case" against Michael T. Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser. This is not quite correct.

The criminal case against Flynn was made when he pled guilty three times to the charge of lying to FBI agents although, more than two years later, he tried to withdraw his guilty plea. What actually happened yesterday was that the DOJ filed a motion in United States v. Flynn asking the trial judge "to dismiss the criminal information" against Flynn.

So, the ball is in the judge's court, not the DOJ's as has been implied in media coverage. And I wouldn't be completely surprised if Judge Emmet Sullivan declines to grant the DOJ's motion. In any case, the gist of the DOJ's motion is not so much that Flynn didn't lie to the FBI agents, though they do cast doubt upon that, but that Flynn never should have been questioned by the FBI in the first place.

As a long time Russiagate skeptic, I am sympathetic to this argument and I can see a case to be made in Flynn's favor on the grounds of procedural, but not substantive, justice. And make no mistake procedural justice is important.

However, there are a lot of aspects to this case that, barring additional evidence, temper any sympathy I have for Flynn or make me skeptical that dropping the case is really warranted in the name of procedural, let alone substantive, justice.

It's worth pointing out that Flynn wasn't some naive apprentice carpenter from Kalamazoo who fell in with the wrong crowd. Flynn was a long-time, loyal servant of the Empire operating at the highest levels of a corrupt system, including a stint under Obama as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Here's my list of, for lack of a better term, aggravating circumstances:

1. No one held a gun to Flynn's head to force him to: a) meet with FBI agents in his White House office, b) without his attorney present, and c) without recording the interview.

2. Flynn pled guilty, in open court, on two separate occasions to the charge of "making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001 and also signed a written plea agreement to that effect, not to mention his public mea culpa. Here it's worth considering key portions of the transcript of Flynn's abortive sentencing hearing (click on images to enlarge them):


Many of the claims that Flynn and the DOJ are now making in favor of letting Flynn off the hook were already addressed by Flynn himself at his sentencing hearing.

3. Flynn reportedly cooperated fully with the Mueller investigation when he thought it served his interests to advance the Russiagate farce. It's worth pointing out that the Mueller investigation began during the Trump administration and was opened by none other than Rod Rosenstein, a Trump appointee.

4. The Trump administration possesses but refuses to release the actual recordings or transcript of recordings, in redacted form or otherwise, of Flynn's conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak. These recordings were reportedly made during the Obama administration under a FISA warrant. This is particularly irksome because of all the well-founded complaints about the Obama administration's abuses of power.

5. William Barr took over as Attorney General on February 14, 2019. The investigative phase of the Mueller probe ended on March 22, 2019, and the office was completely shut down on May 29, 2019. Yet, the Trump-Barr DOJ steadfastly prosecuted Flynn until yesterday and, although Mueller recommended no prison time for him, the Trump-Barr team reversed course and called for him to be locked up just last January.

6. Finally, like Trump and nearly all DC politicians, Flynn is a partisan and/or tool of the Israel Lobby. Flynn's first substantive post-election conversation with Kislyak was doing the bidding of Israel in trying to get a UN Security Council vote against Israel's illegal settlements blocked (see here and here). This aspect of the case was detailed in two pages (pp. 167-168) of the first volume of the Mueller Report, buried among the hundreds of other pages of text, and has been largely ignored in the mainstream US media (but not as much in the mainstream Israeli media).

Furthermore, it has even been covered up in some legal pleadings filed against Flynn. The criminal information that the DOJ now seeks to have dismissed says that: "the defendant falsely stated and represented to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in Washington, D.C., that ... On or about December 22, 2016, FLYNN did not ask the Russian Ambassador to delay the vote on or defeat a pending United Nations Security Council resolution ..." No mention whatsoever is made in the information of which country was the subject of that resolution or why Flynn would reach out to the Russian ambassador to discuss it.

Similarly, most Americans have no idea that Israel was the country funneling arms to Iran as part of the illegal Iran-Contra affair. Likewise, the name of the country whose forces killed them fails to appear in the posthumous Navy Cross citations of Philip McCutcheon Armstrong and Francis Brown. Nor does it appear in the Medal of Honor citation of William Loren McGonagle. The marker for the five sailors and one Marine killed in the attack on the USS Liberty and buried in a mass grave at Arlington National Cemetery also gives no indication of who killed these men or the other 28 buried elsewhere who died with them on June 8, 1967.

In sum, I am by no means convinced that ending the case against Flynn satisfies any norms of procedural justice and the attempt seems to me to be primarily a political act of one group of crooks looking out for one of their own. Flynn appears to be clearly guilty of the substantive matter for which he was charged and repeatedly pled guilty.

On the other hand, I would definitely support investigating and prosecuting, as warranted, the allegations of FBI and prosecutorial misconduct in Russiagate (FWIW, I think the creation and release of the whole second volume of the Mueller Report was an abuse of power). Congressional action against law enforcement and prosecutorial abuse, not to mention mass surveillance, is long overdue. How about repealing the Logan Act and the Espionage Act, too? I won't hold my breath waiting for any of these things to happen.

Last revised: 13 May 2020

Labels: crime, Empire, Israel, Israel Lobby, Michael T. Flynn, Obama, Robert S. Mueller, Russia, Trump