Monthly Archives: May 2019

Julian Assange Must Never Be Extradited, by Matt Taibbi

The Espionage Act as applied to the Julian Assange indictment could set a precedent that destroys freedom of the press. From Matt Taibbi at rollingstone.com:

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange today sits in the Belmarsh High Security prison in southeast London. Not just for his sake but for everyone’s, we now have to hope he’s never moved from there to America.

Related: Everything Julian Assange Is Accused of, Explained

The United States filed charges against Assange early last month. The case seemed to have been designed to assuage fears that speech freedoms or the press were being targeted.

That specific offense was “computer hacking conspiracy” from back in 2010. The “crime” was absurdly thin, a claim that Assange agreed (but failed, apparently) to try to help Chelsea Manning develop an administrative password that could have helped her conceal identity as she downloaded secrets. One typewritten phrase, “No luck so far,” was the damning piece of evidence.

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Assange Indictments Hide the Context of War, by Robert Koehler

You’d never know what Assange disclosed from his indictment. From Robert Koehler at antiwar.com:

The U.S. government protects itself, not democracy. That’s what is most apparent about its 18-count indictment of Julian Assange, not to mention the ongoing imprisonment of Chelsea Manning, for the leaking and release of State Department and military documents and videos a decade ago.

The current reporting on the indictment is mostly about Assange himself: his expulsion from the Ecuadoran embassy in London after he’d been holed up there for seven years; the sexual assault charges against him in Sweden; and, of course, his role as a “tool” of the Russians, along with his flip-flopping appeal to both the political left and right (depending on the nature of the controversy WikiLeaks is stirring up). What a story!

Almost entirely missing is anything about the leaks themselves, except vague references to them, such as this comment by John Demers, assistant attorney general for national security: “This release made our adversaries stronger and more knowledgeable, and the United States less secure.”

These words are remarkable bullshit and have resonance only to the extent that the actual leaked data is missing from the discussion, such as the infamous Apache helicopter video of 11 unarmed men (in US military parlance, “insurgents”) – including a Reuters photographer and his driver – being shot and killed from above on a street in Baghdad, and two children being injured.

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Troika Fever, by Danny Sjursen

Catchy names like Troika of Tyranny are only applied to the US government’s enemies, but might not that catchy name apply to the US government’s friends in the Middle East? From Danny Sjursen at tomdispatch.com:

Key American Allies in the Middle East Are the Real Tyrants

American foreign policy can be so retro, not to mention absurd. Despite being bogged down in more military interventions than it can reasonably handle, the Trump team recently picked a new fight — in Latin America. That’s right! Uncle Sam kicked off a sequel to the Cold War with some of our southern neighbors, while resuscitating the boogeyman of socialism. In the process, National Security Advisor John Bolton treated us all to a new phrase, no less laughable than Bush the younger’s 2002 “axis of evil” (Iran, Iraq, and North Korea). He labeled Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny.”

Alliteration no less! The only problem is that the phrase ridiculously overestimates both the degree of collaboration among those three states and the dangers they pose to their hegemonic neighbor to the north. Bottom line: in no imaginable fashion do those little tin-pot tyrannies offer either an existential or even a serious threat to the United States. Evidently, however, the phrase was meant to conjure up enough ill will and fear to justify the Trump team’s desire for sweeping regime change in Latin America. Think of it as a micro-version of Cold War 2.0.

Odds are that Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, both unrepentant neocons, are the ones driving this Latin American Cold War reboot, even as, halfway across the planet, they’ve been pushing for war with Iran. Meanwhile, it’s increasingly clear that Donald Trump gets his own kick out of being a “war president” and the unique form of threat production that goes with it.

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What Does It Mean to Live in a Multipolar World? We May Be About to Find Out, by Marshall Auerback

Many people talk about the emergent multipolar world order, but few try to define what that will mean. from Marshall Auerback at nakedcapitalism.com:

The breakdown in the Sino-U.S. trade talks has led a number of commentatorsto suggest that America’s “unipolar moment” of post-Cold War preeminence is over, as Washington lashes out against a rising China, whose economic rise threatens America’s historic dominance. Direct military violence is highly unlikely, given the inherent fragility of high-tech civilization. We therefore may see Cold War–style conflict between the two superpowers, as relations in trade or national security matters become increasingly poisoned.

So what happens to the rest of us? Will a hitherto globalized world increasingly retreat into bifurcated competing blocs, much as occurred under the original Cold War? Or can the rest of the world develop a more muted and stable form of multilateralism?

After all, we are well past the point where parts of the globe are increasingly carved up via competing ideologies (e.g., capitalism vs. communism), given today’s broad embrace of various permutations of capitalism, or divided via proxy wars, or the “great game” of colonial expansion. Today, most nations focus on maximizing the relative productivity of their own respective economies, as opposed to establishing their ideological bona fides as quasi-colonial client states for either the United States or the former Soviet Union. Another important dimension to recognize is that what we understand to be global or international is, for the most part, owned and controlled by industrialized countries: 93 percent of foreign-owned production is controlled by Organization for Economic Cooperation (OECD) economies. Even the historic tendency to focus on state power should be questioned in this moment. In 2016, 69 of the world’s largest 100 economies were corporations, with their own range of interests and methods of functioning.

One of the (self-serving) fears governing the end of American hegemony is that in its absence, the world will inevitably revert to some sort of brutal Hobbesian “state of nature” characterized by a balance of power clashes, in which the strong dictate to the weak.

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Macron’s Security Service Threatens French Journalists With Prison And Fines, by Tyler Durden

France vies with the US and Great Britain to see who can discard their formerly robust protections of civil liberties the quickest. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

France has been turning up the heat on journalists who expose government wrongdoing, according to AFP.

The latest, Le Monde journalist Ariane Chemin, said was questioned by French security services for 45 minutes after she refused to reveal her sources for a report exposing alleged corruption and cronyism within President Emmanuel Macron’s inner circle.

“They asked me many questions on the manner in which I checked my information, which was an indirect way of asking me about my sources,” said Chemin – who wrote a series of articles on Macron’s former bodyguard Alexandre Benalla, who was fired after video emerged of Benalla roughing up a protester. The incident, and Chemin’s ongoing reporting, resulted in a spate of resignations by government officials.

A file photo of Le Monde journalist Ariane Chemin. Photo: Eric Feferberg / AFP

According to AFPLe Monde‘s managing director, Louis Dreyfus, was also questioned by the General Directorate for Internal Security (DGSI) on Wednesday. “Everything is done to make it intimidating,” Dreyfus wrote in an editorial describing his own DGSI interrogation.

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Julian Assange Shows ‘Trauma’ Symptoms, UN Torture Expert Says, by Kaye Wiggins

Julian Assange’s treatment in Britain’s Belmarsh prison raises grave concerns. From Kaye Wiggins at bloomberg.com:

Julian Assange leaves Southwark Crown Court in a security van on May 1.

Julian Assange leaves Southwark Crown Court in a security van on May 1.

Photographer: Jack Taylor/Getty Images

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is suffering from “intense psychological trauma” as he serves a British jail sentence, and his human rights could be seriously violated if he’s extradited to the U.S., the United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture said.

Assange is suffering from extreme stress and chronic anxiety, Nils Melzer, who visited him in jail this month, said Friday in a statement. If transported to the U.S. he may face a life sentence or possibly the death penalty if new charges are added, Melzer said, urging the U.K. government not to send him there.

The comments come after Assange’s attorney said her client was unwell when the Australian failed to show up for a London court hearing on Thursday in his extradition battle. The 47-year-old is serving a 50-week sentence in the U.K.’s Belmarsh jail for skipping bail and has been moved to the prison’s health ward, according to Wikileaks.

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What a Hash Mueller Made of It, by Patrick J. Buchanan

There are many similarities between the way Robert Mueller is trying to play both sides of the fence in his Russiagate investigation and the way James Comey did so in his investigation of Hillary Clinton. Neither gentleman seems capable of straightforward speech. From Patrick Buchanan at buchanan.org:

What is it about special counsel Robert Mueller that he cannot say clearly and concisely what he means?

His nine-minute summary of the findings of his office, after two years of investigation, was a mess. It guarantees that the internecine warfare that has poisoned our politics continues into 2020.

If it was the intention of the Russian hackers and trolls of 2016 to sow discord within their great power rival, they have succeeded beyond their dreams.

Consider. Of the charge of conspiracy to collude with the Russians to hack the emails of the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mueller said, “there was insufficient evidence to charge a larger conspiracy.”

This suggests that there was at least some evidence to conclude that Donald Trump’s campaign did conspire with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to fix the 2016 election, just not enough evidence to sustain a charge of treason.

Didn’t they use to call this McCarthyism?

On obstruction of justice, Trump attempting to impede his investigation, Mueller said: “If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so.”

“Mueller Declines to Absolve Trump” was The New York Times headline.

That tells us that Mueller would not give Trump absolution. But why would Trump need absolution, if he did not commit the crime?

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Washington’s Mighty Warriors: Draft Dodgers and Scoundrels, by Philip Giraldi

The people pushing hardest for war within the Trump administration have never been in one. From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:

Remember Shakespeare’s line “he jests at scars that never felt a wound?” That epithet could have been written with National Security Advisor John Bolton in mind. Bolton was notoriously a draft dodger during the Vietnam War, like his current boss, not due to any scruples regarding what was occurring, but out of concern for his own sorry ass. He is now credibly believed to be the driving force behind the punishment being meted out to Venezuela and, far more dangerously, of the creeping escalation that is taking place in the Middle East that is seeking to draw Iran into a misstep that would lead to war. Bolton, who has received the “Defender of Israel” award, has long been an outspoken advocate for attacking Iran and now he has the power to do just that.

The psychopaths in the White House have been pretending that the United States “and its allies” are being threatened by Iran, a ridiculous conceit in and of itself as the Persians are hugely outgunned by the local U.S. presence as well as by the weapons in place in the region in the hands of the Saudis and Israelis. Israel is, one might recall, armed to the teeth through the beneficence of the United States and is also the region’s only nuclear armed power by virtue of the theft of U.S. technology and enriched uranium. The Saudis, meanwhile, are about to receive another $8 billion American made weapons due to the “Iranian threat.” That Trump has arranged the arms sale on his own questionable authority as an “emergency response” seems to bother some in Washington and the media, but no one will ultimately do anything about it as everyone inside the Beltway hates Iran due to the assiduous work of the Israel Lobby.

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You Should Be Laughing At Them!

You Should Be Laughing At Them!

They get us into wars and never get us out. They get us into debt and never get us out. They want to run your life, but couldn’t run a lemonade stand.

And they laugh at us?

They’re the establishment, the powers that be–call them what you will. Guided by the unshakeable belief that they’re entitled to rule, they’ve made a holy mess of America…and the world. Their Ivy League credentials only confirm that degrees are often bestowed on idiots.

In the Kingdom of Lies, ruled by the Arrogant and the Absurd, truth is an enemy. So are satire and humor. If the pompous proclamations and inevitable ineptitude of these bozos leave you unsure whether to laugh, cry, or emigrate, why not laugh?

What if the Fountain of Youth fell into the wrong hands?

If there were a way to reverse aging, the establishment’s decrepit fossils would want it. Brilliant researcher Ted Wirth and his team of scientists discover a hormone that extends the lives of lab mice. The government comes a calling…the powers that be have a plan.

In war-torn Syria, among the many nations keeping the fate of Syria out of the hands of Syrians, a battle rages. Or does it? A suicide mission destroys a vital American industrial asset. It’s terrorism. Or is it? The world’s grand masters are moving the pieces in a game only they understand. Or do they?

An author that can generate the phrase “Blow it out your ass, Mr. President. Send in Vice President Winslow.” and make it believable gains my immediate applause and appreciation. To do so within a novel that so explicitly describes the pure evil wielded by the power brokers and administrators of our world and the degradations heaped on the rest of mankind with no thought of their own moral depravity, is genius.

Teddy H. Jones, Amazon reader review

Are you looking for…

A satire that will make you laugh, think, shake your head, wince, and howl with rage…sometimes at the same time?

Characters you’d like to know? And characters you’d like to banish from the planet?

A story with something to say about good and evil…without preaching or screeching?

Answers to all your questions about geopolitics, with plenty of pages left over for intrigue, action, romance, sex and satire?

You’ve just found all of the above…and much more!

Read Prime Deceit in an afternoon…it will stay with you for years.

Take it from readers’ enthusiastic comments on Amazon.

I could easily see this book as a big budget Hollywood production with an A list cast. It would need almost no alterations. It is tightly crafted, compelling, current, dramatic, and thrilling. Apart from its style, this book perfectly reflects the skepticism of the public in regards to the most powerful institutions of our day.

Robert Gore is a find, and a gifted writer.
Titus Flavius

Finally a book that is well written fiction based on plausible characters, not caricatures, without the blatant preaching of a thinly-veiled conspiracy theory; a book to actually enjoy reading.
John

Full disclosure, I also had received a pre-publication ebook from the author for review. Just as another poster did, I also purchased the book because I like it so much. Yes, I got it free and then went and bought it anyway!

I would classify this book as a real page turner and like all of Robert’s books, once you start it, you simply do not want to put it down.
Jean Dunne

This novel grabbed me from the first page and didn’t let go till the last. In fact, I’m not sure it has let go yet . The plot is chilling because it is so plausible. The rejuvenation technology is not so far from actual current research, and the depth of corruption of the elites seems right in line with current reality as well. Long after finishing it, my mind keeps coming back to it like a tongue testing a sore tooth. This or something much like it could really be happening.
David or Judy Wood

Strike a revolutionary blow against the powers that be! 

Amazon Paperback

Kindle Ebook

Without Taxation….

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2019/05/30/without-taxation/