Booman just posted a front pager called Is It a Coup If They’re Just Following the Law?
In it he quotes CNN…and a large number of other Deep State-owned, operated and controlled media sites that are saying essentially the same thing in slightly different terms…about the so-called “Russian Dossier.” You know,….the “dossier” (What a great, spy novel word that is, by the way!!!) that no one but various spooks seems to have seen?
Yeah.
That one.
Here’s what the quote says:
For the first time, US investigators say they have corroborated some of the communications detailed in a 35-page dossier compiled by a former British intelligence agent, multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials tell CNN. As CNN first reported, then-President-elect Donald Trump and President Barack Obama were briefed on the existence of the dossier prior to Trump’s inauguration.
None of the newly learned information relates to the salacious allegations in the dossier. Rather it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.
The corroboration, based on intercepted communications, has given US intelligence and law enforcement “greater confidence” in the credibility of some aspects of the dossier as they continue to actively investigate its contents, these sources say.
Reached for comment this afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said, “We continue to be disgusted by CNN’s fake news reporting.”
I also find this disgusting.
Why?
Read on.
Why?
Because there is no “there” there. So far there hasn’t been any hard news about it since it first came out all lollapaloozed by the Deep State Media Complex in early January, complete with salacious details about Trump paying Russian prostitutes to golden shower the bed in which Obama and his wife slept during their last stay in Russia. It’s all been the same “… US investigators …. multiple current and former US law enforcement and intelligence officials …” telling whomever is reporting this so-called news that “It’s the hottest thing ever!!!”
No evidence.
Just “reports” from unnamed spooks.
Here’s where the beef isn’t, where the rubber is in no way in contact with any existing road whatsoever. (Emphases mine):
…it relates to conversations between foreign nationals. The dossier details about a dozen conversations between senior Russian officials and other Russian individuals. Sources would not confirm which specific conversations were intercepted or the content of those discussions due to the classified nature of US intelligence collection programs.
But the intercepts do confirm that some of the conversations described in the dossier took place between the same individuals on the same days and from the same locations as detailed in the dossier, according to the officials. CNN has not confirmed whether any content relates to then-candidate Trump.
SHEESE, Myrtle!!! let’s impeach the sonofabitch!!!
That’s enuf fer me, right there!!!
LOL!!!
Let me refresh your memories, my leftiness brethren and sistren.
This is exactly how the U.S. got dragged into the Iraq swamp during the Bush II years.
Remember him?
Like dat. The same look on millions of stupid, gullible American faces.
Different spooks…probably… and different disinfo misinfo info,…whatever…same tactic.
I call bullshit, at least until they come public with hard facts. And even then I will be cautious. These forces have lied enough during my politically conscious lifetime to warrant at least a sort of cautious skepticism if not downright disbelief regarding anything that they say, especially when it is run out with absolutely no proof other than their spooky-spook-spook “word” that it’s true.
Booman ends up asking:
It’s interesting that the intelligence agencies continue to investigate Donald Trump’s connections to the Russians even after he’s president and even after he’s put in a new CIA director and a new Secretary of Defense. You’d think that he could put a stop to it, but somehow it doesn’t appear that he can. Trump’s National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn, is getting savaged, too.
So, what’s the shelf-life on this presidency again?
It’s “interesting” only if you understand that the working members of this deep, immovable state will not obey a rogue boss because they really believe that they are going to be able to bring him down.
And they may be right, in a tactical sense.
However, what they are trying to do strategically…in street terms…is to undermine the new capo of all capos until they can one way or another take him out, because he belongs to a new, rival gang that threatens the old gang’s VERY profitable turf.
It’s just a turf war.
If you are allied with the old gang…if you think that the direction of the U.S. culture, economy and society has been ever-upward since it began to take control during the Dulles years/assassination years…then of course you are going to root the fakers on.
If not?
Not.
Simple as that.
Your choice.
Sure, I can see Trump making deals with the new gangs, just as did some of the new Mafia make deals with the Irish, the Albanians, the Russians, the drug cartels, etc. in order to gain turf. Hell, I can even see him paying somebody to piss on a bed. He’s a sicko, no doubt. But I have no truck with the old Mafia, either. They are all sick, sociopathic liars and murderers.
So I ask y’all…is it a coup if it’s made by posting false news?
And if it is?
Are you sure you want to support it?
I’m not.
AG
P.S. Brendan asks in acomment below:
What if you DON’T agree that the direction of “U.S. culture, economy and society has been ever-upward “, but you also believe that the direction of US culture under Trump will be an even steeper slope downward?
Then it is time to fight against both downward-tending world views.
Unless of course you live in a permanently two-dimensional world, at which point nothing much is going to change except the speed of the decay.
Your choice.
Me?
I fight against the dying of that light, be it slow or fast.
You?
P.P.S. My answer to Deus X Machina’s comment below is now a standalone post. An Answer to Davis X Machina’s Comment On My Recent Elizabeth Warren Post
Please post your comments there.
Thank you…
AG
It may be a generational thing.
You, I and a few others became “politically conscious” during the Orwell era. Back when censorship was prevalent enough that we learned how to find out what was being hidden. From that we also learned how to suspect big lies and seek out the truthtellers. “Politically conscious” during the Vietnam War (lots of big lies), the end of Hoover’s reign, and the reign of Nixon was our learning stomping ground and many of the suspected big lies were subsequently exposed soon enough that we hadn’t forgotten our suspicions.
Three other advantages. The volume of news was small enough that most of it could be absorbed by individuals. The news from radio and TV came to us in bite sized chunks; no more than a hour a day, and that allowed for space/time to exercise critical thinking skills, if one were so inclined, and/or discussions and feedback from others on the issues. There was little to no crossover between entertainment and news and information that an informed citizenry in a democracy (as weak as it was) needed. (Russian citizens were similarly adept at spotting all the propaganda bs.)
The brains of those that grew up consuming less than two hours a day of TV/video are different from those that grew up consuming five+ hours a day. Now it’s closer to 24/7, and 22+ is still crap but not recognized as such because they’ve always lived in the Huxley era Had the media landscape and consumption patterns not changed so dramatically from that of 1970, could GWB have so easily got his war on?
Yes, this!
And mass media (one story, three networks) to narrowcasted cable to always-on internet with international and state-sponsored sources.
It had its drawbacks. The homogeneity of adults during the decade and a half after WWII was a function of narrowcast. Less education and naive trust in the new media explains that. More education and limited or restricted TV viewing combined with real print and TV journalists created too many that could think and see through propaganda and adverts. More TV and dumbing down school curriculum took care of that (DFHs) problem.
Also, fewer outlets (far fewer compared to today) meant it was far easier for TPTB at Langley, the FBI and the Pentagon to manage and control what went out over the airwaves and in print. That left the Deep Boys with plenty of extra time for plotting coups here and abroad, for tomfoolery, and of course for their golf game.
Occasionally a media outlet, even a small one, would slip by unnoticed — until that is the outlet decided to do an unflattering piece on the CIA. Then they took notice and retaliated. Ramparts magazine comes to mind.
The 1960s were the age of massive cognitive dissonance as the civil rights movement undid the white consensus about the Civil War and Vietnam undid McCarthyism. Lots of DFHs sought an end to their cognitive dissonance through reading and study–the great age of paperback book sales.
Well, LBJ, Nixon and Edgar — you didn’t have to be a scientist of rocketry to figger out they were lying. And about the big things.
23 minutes a night of news on the national broadcasts. That was barely enough to cover what was going on in Kansas, let alone the entire country and the rest of the world. Thing is, we were accustomed to this kind of highly selective and packaged news, and 23 minutes (x the 3 big networks) nearly seemed like a lot because, in part, previously (prior to Sept ’63) the networks only gave us 15 minutes of news nightly.
Really, the networks just did the bare minimum they felt they could get away with under the existing FCC laws of the time, in order to keep their broadcast licenses and keep the feds away.
Actually, you did. If you were over a certain age and didn’t have the advantage of a quality education at least through the tenth grade and hadn’t developed the habit of reading. It seems to be long forgotten that government and media propaganda matured during WWII and continued after the war. It was a huge effort to mobilize the citizenry to embrace the fight and accept all the personal sacrifices required. Demobilizing was similarly problematical. For example, women had become accustomed to having a job and a paycheck (and savings accounts because there wasn’t that much to buy). The task was to get them out of the labor force to open up jobs for returning service members. Women didn’t spontaneously decide that they wanted to be housewives and produce lots of babies. It was sold to them.
The age of first marriage declined during those years and the number of children increased from what it had been in the years since the beginning of the Great Depression. “The Feminine Mystique” came along at the end of that period as wtf happened.
Why did the Cold War sell so easily? Easy to forget that the Vietnam War was also an easy sell in the beginning, but unlike the beginning of the Cold War, the young weren’t so enmeshed in the glory and romanticism of WWII.
Well , people were far more trusting of govt and big institutions back then, making it al the easier to sell them anything. Then Dallas came and the Gulf of Tonkin Res, and people’s eyes slowly began to open.
However, on the war front, in the early stages, you had cheerleaders like the reassuring Uncle Walter helping the sell. David Halberstam and the NYT were also on board, iirc — having to go to war isn’t the best thing, but far worse to not make a major commitment was the reasoning.
(at our local elementary school, early 1966, I vividly remember we 5th and 6th graders were given a friendly slide show, with follow up Q&A, from a smiling local newsman pitching the war. Get to them early.)
And dissenters were watched, IDed and often attacked as disloyal by the Johnson admin. LBJ after a while thought the major media were out to get him — communist-influenced– this despite the fact he had major friends like Bill Paley (CEO of CBS), Richard Salant (president CBS News) and WaPo publisher Kate Graham as friends helping him to sell his war.
Interesting: on a recent radio interview with a prolific author/researcher who is undertaking a new book on certain events of the 60s, she remarked that LBJ post-presidency had one regret about VN: not a regret of starting it as one might think, but a regret of not suppressing news reporting about it. But for that, thought Lyndon, he would have had another 4-year term.
…people were far more trusting of govt and big institutions back then, making it al the easier to sell them anything.
That “trust” was earned in the 1930-45 era. Even if ordinary people had learned in real time or shortly thereafter that USG WWII propaganda was ubiquitous, they would have approved of the effort as being for the good of the nation.
At a certain point they concluded that Joe McCarthy had gone too far. But they didn’t known squat about the Dulles brothers nefarious doings or that the NYTimes and WaPo were in the pocket of US intell agencies and politicians.
wrt the 23 minutes of news. There was also local news. However, the big difference was the newspapers were the more important and more widely consumed source for news. And individuals chose their print sources based on a political/economic orientation. Union and blue collar workers weren’t limited to capitalist/conservative publications and damn well knew which were New Deal newspapers and which were biased in favor of the ownership class.
Unfortunately, war and the military were bipartisan. Patriotic.
And newspapers (and news magazines) had more in-depth articles, not 20 second sound bites ending in “more after we return”, meaning another 30 seconds 45 minutes later. Television news today is almost unwatchable. Notice how as you switch channels, CBS, NBC, ABC, and FOX have EXACTLY the same story on with often EXACTLY the same words?
The twitter/text generation prefers it like that.
In addition to the networks becoming more bottom-line oriented with nightly news expected to pull in the numbers, society became more fast-paced with the introduction of home computers. Greed and technology combined to reduce our attention spans.
Have I mentioned here, for instance, how annoying Rachel Maddow is with her cutesy opening 13 minutes, comm’l free, where she proceeds to unwind a long-winded often rambling story that is supposed to all tie up at the end, but which could have been told in 3 minutes? Tighten that up, and lose all her safe, trendy anti-Putin rants, and I might watch her show again.
This is a much larger issue than what can be covered in a an off-topic diary comment thread.
However, it should be noted that TV news decades ago wasn’t a profit center and losses were accepted as a public service.
The text/twitter generation gets their news online.
Its not the younger generations that watch much tv anymore. Once you get used to downloading your entertainmet (for free, without commercial breaks), commercial breaks becomes so visible. Hence the need to stop pirates before everybody stops watching.
Yes, but how many stories can be covered in a meaningful way with two lines of text?
I get most of my news from blogs! Obviously, it’s slanted, but there is commentary from various blog members, often spirited. Otherwise, from satellite radio, which is not nearly as full of ads. TV is almost unwatchable because of ads.
A disturbing trend is youtube. Youtube is great for some things like demonstrations of how to prune a tree properly. I saw an intriguing headline at Barry Ritzholtz’s blog the other day. Unfortunately there was just a link to a 30 minute youtube video. A two page summary accompanying the link would have been useful. But the bare link? TLDR. Are we all illiterate now? Can no one read anymore? I for one can absorb the printed word a lot better than watching a taking head for 30 minutes.
Are we all illiterate now?
Functionally, it’s very high. As the Orwell vs. Huxley graphic presented, text censorship won’t be required because nobody will want to read.
The whittling down of news stories might have started a bit before the Reagan era: In 1978 I had the opportunity to attend a Franco-American symposium at l’ENS in Paris. One afternoon was devoted to media coverage in the cultural and political realms. A media studies prof participant noted an interesting fact which seemed to surprise and alarm: in 1968 the US television networks average political sound byte on the nightly news was 48 seconds.
By 1978, according to data from a major east coast university (which one I can no longer recall), the average political sound byte on the nightly news in the US was down to 8 seconds (if memory serves). That’s quite a dramatic change in just a decade, and it occurred before we got our home computers.
Local news has definitely deteriorated, badly. In the major cities where I lived at least, local news was done rather well, a full hour of it, including regular reports on what was going on in the lege in Sacramento. I stopped watching decades ago when it became all car chases and Eyewitless News.
I do miss a few things about newspapers: the vastly improved LA Times under Otis Chandler and their investigative reporting and meaty stories; also comparing observations on the news with people reading the paper in the local gathering places. It helped me get a good sense of what people were thinking in addition to offering an opening to meet new people. Now people have their devices and more often than not are not reading the paper online.
Newspapers became more and more corporatized and bland as the 70s progressed, with objectivity and bottom line concerns increasingly taking over. Papers were never quite as politically clear and party oriented as they were traditionally in Europe.
” Had the media landscape and consumption patterns not changed so dramatically from that of 1970, could GWB have so easily got his war on”
Yes. When democratic politicians want to start a war they are usually able to get the public behind them.
It was, after all, the democratic forces in Athens that were the imperialists. The parallels between Athens and the US were noted by a few in the lead up to the Iraq War.
A pretty good argument can be made this has nothing to do with the types of communications.
○ German H&K won’t deliver key parts – ATK Orbital XM25 grenade launcher violates 1868 St. Petersburg declaration
“If you are allied with the old gang…if you think that the direction of the U.S. culture, economy and society has been ever-upward since it began to take control during the Dulles years/assassination years…then of course you are going to root the fakers on.”
What if you DON’T agree that the direction of “U.S. culture, economy and society has been ever-upward “, but you also believe that the direction of US culture under Trump will be an even steeper slope downward?
Oh gosh! ‘Hell, I can even see him paying somebody to piss on a bed. He’s a sicko, no doubt.’ I can’t see him doing that. How can you? Clue me in. I’m getting the sinking feeling that four years from now I’ll still turn to this blog and learn how President Donald Trump is finally on the verge of really, actually, undoubtedly being heckled out of office, completely imploding…while in fact he’s out campaigning for his second term. Shelf life is often not more than an arbitrary determination required by law to sell perishables: the shelf life of the perishable presidency is written in stone, that is, two times eight.
AG:
I have no idea if you are still reading stuff, but here is this diary…
I know that you are about my age (mid 60s), and have been a professional musician for a long time, perhaps permanently.
Here is my question: Is it possible today to survive (pay the rent, buy food and gas) as a professional musician?
My son, about 5 years ago, became more and more obsessed with music. He has an undergrad degree but is totally unwilling to get a conventional job to pay the rent. We are enabling him for this year by paying it. Starting in May, we won’t.
He is a guitarist and singer (makes up in volume for what he lacks in tonal control) in a band in St Louis.
If you would care to respond and give me thoughts, I’d be happy to read them.
I am presently not generally responding to any comments because of the troll infestation here, but I will make an exception for this question.
Yes, it is possible.
But…and it is a BIG but…you need to be a pro in every sense of the word. Of course there are the over-hyped, no-playing exceptions to this rule, but if you really understand how to make music, how the music works, how to play in good tune and good time etc., a living is more than available.
I would say that every year in NYC some several hundred high-level, aspiring musicians move here or graduate from several good schools in the area and stay to make a career. maybe more. Same same in different cities throughout the U.S…smaller populations, smaller numbers. Maybe half of them succeed over the long run and maybe two-thids of the half that does not succeed find work as teachers on any number of levels.
A master’s degree helps, and so does real talent.
A healthy obsession with the music doesn’t hurt, either.
The ones with real talent and real desire almost always make it if they do not fall by the wayside from some kind of personal weakness.
Bet on it.
AG
Thanks for your courteous response.
I won’t be in NYC anytime soon, but when I am next there, possibly I might try to catch you playing. I might request an off-record contact method. I can give you a disposable email if you would be willing to work that way.
I am easy to find. Go to my user page.
AG
TarheelDem on John Schindler after Obama called off the “surgical strikes” to destroy Syria – Fri Sept. 13, 2013
“Still fighting the Cold War. Notice the reference to
Truman. Does not think the Cold War is over.”
From BooMan’s fp story – Neo-Con Nonsense
About John M. Schindler …
○ Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (2003)
○ A “What-If” of the Cold War: Operation Bourbon (2012)
I don’t understand why Schindler doesn’t criticize Obama’s use of Al Qaida linked militants to fight the Syrian Civil War.
From his book about Bosnia, Izetbegovic and betrayal by the CIA to send arms to Tuzla (Croatian Pipeline) and inserting Islamist warriors to fight the Serbs. The Soros Group also played a role to oppose Russia – see Dutch woman Mable Wisse-Smit.
“Unholy Terror at last exposes the shocking story of how bin Laden successfully exploited the Bosnian conflict for his own ends–and of how the U. S. Government gave substantial support to his unholy warriors, leading to blowback of epic proportions.”
Unnamed US sources citing unnamed Russian officials, offering no quotes or further details owing to the classified nature of the material.
Gee, what’s not to believe?
The gov’t propaganda on Russia seems to be ramping up again, after a week or two lull perhaps to determine whether Donald was actually going to follow through on that stuff from the campaign about seeking to work with the Russians. Apparently they’ve concluded he needs some more encouragement to STFU and toe the line on the neocon New Cold War.
This will be interesting. He would be advised to have his appointees clean house asap in the intel agencies and at the Pentagon. But easier said than done, as Rbt Parry was noting the other day about the relative paucity of non-neocon/liberal interventionist types out there to choose from.
Yes, let’s bring back the Cold War, because I need to practice my “duck and cover”. Maybe I can spend my pension on a fallout shelter.