Tag Archives: Deep State

US establishment in hysterics that Trump-Putin summit might succeed, by Jim Jatras

Posted on July 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

Of course, no matter what emerges from the Trump-Putin summit, the US establishment will label it a failure. From Jim Jatras at rt.com:

There are many reasons the bipartisan US establishment hates Trump. His heresies from neoliberal orthodoxies on immigration and trade are prominent. But top among them is his oft-stated intention to improve relations with Russia.

That’s fighting words for the Deep State and its mainstream media arm, for which demonizing Russia and its president Vladimir Putin is an obsession.

The fact that Donald Trump made his intention to get along with Moscow a priority during his 2016 campaign, both against his Republican primary rivals and Hillary Clinton (who has compared Putin to Hitler) was cause for alarm. This is because far more than even the frightening prospect that the 70-year state of war on the Korean Peninsula might end, US reconciliation with Russia would yank the rug out from under the phony justifications for spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to counter a “threat” that ceased to exist over a quarter century ago. Absent hostility to Russia that money has no reason to keep sustaining the power, privilege, and prosperity of a horde of moochers and profiteers, both at home and abroad.

That’s why when it was reported soon after his January 2017 inauguration that Trump was seeking to open dialogue with the Kremlin and set an early summit with Putin there was a hysterical counteraction. As described just over a year ago by conservative columnist and former presidential candidate Patrick Buchanan:

“Trump planned a swift lifting of sanctions on Russia after inauguration and a summit meeting with Vladimir Putin to prevent a second Cold War. The State Department was tasked with working out the details. Instead, says Daniel Fried, the coordinator for sanctions policy, he received ‘panicky’ calls of ‘Please, my God, can you stop this?’. Operatives at State, disloyal to the president and hostile to the Russia policy on which he had been elected, collaborated with elements in Congress to sabotage any detente. They succeeded. “It would have been a win-win for Moscow,” said Tom Malinowski of State, who boasted last week of his role in blocking a rapprochement with Russia. State employees sabotaged one of the principal policies for which Americans had voted, and they substituted their own.

To continue reading: US establishment in hysterics that Trump-Putin summit might succeed

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Deep State Goes to Silicon Valley, by Bill Bonner

Posted on June 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

America’s high tech companies and the government’s intelligence agencies are locked in a giant group hug. From Bill Bonner and bonnerandpartners.com:

War is the health of the [Deep] state,” said 19th century writer Randolph Bourne. Of course, war is also very costly and harmful to individuals.

As Ike Eisenhower – who led U.S. troops in the last successful government program of the 20th century, World War II – pointed out:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, and from those who are cold and are not clothed.

More than the financial cost is the expense in dignity, shame, and common sense. Every war since Eisenhower’s day has drawn down the nation’s meager stocks of intelligence and integrity; now, there is hardly anything left.

Each one required people to believe ever more preposterous and extravagant delusions; now, they are ready to believe anything.

Sinister Dots

We pause to reveal our strategy. We are preparing to connect some sinister dots.

Specifically, we want to explore how the tech industry got into bed with the Deep State, and what a monstrous offspring this union may produce.

In China, a “social credit” score is already being used to deny airline travel and even access to dating sites to people who get a low score in “civic virtue” for speaking against the government online or smoking in non-smoking areas.

And in the U.S., social media already “scores” both customers and businesses. If you don’t measure up to the standards of Airbnb, Rocket Mortgage, or Uber, you may not be able to rent an apartment, get a mortgage, or reserve a taxi.

Facebook, Google, and other Big Tech companies already police the internet for what they identify as “fake”… or perhaps merely inconvenient… news.

Amazon – whose owner also owns Washington’s “newspaper of record,” The Washington Post – has become a “death star” for retail industries, according to billionaire businessman John Malone. It now controls the vital space between what people want… where they get it… and how they pay for it.

Truck drivers are already controlled – both in terms of hours driven and speed – electronically. GPS technology already knows how fast we are supposed to drive. How long will it be before our speed is limited electronically?

And most recently, secret “spy hubs,” used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect and monitor billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats, have been identified in eight major U.S. cities.

To continue reading: Deep State Goes to Silicon Valley

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The Real Revolution Has Nothing To Do With Donald Trump, by Caitlin Johnstone

Posted on June 9, 2018 | Leave a comment

Both the Trump as savior and Trump as devil incarnate crowds miss the point. From Caitlin Johnston at medium.com:

It’s been a weird last couple of days. I wrote an article about WikiLeaks’ dismissal of “QAnon”, the anonymous 8chan poster that hundreds of thousands of conspiracy newbies believe is sharing secret, coded information about Donald Trump’s heroic war against the US deep state.

Ever since I hit publish I’ve been getting a bunch of angry Q enthusiasts in my social media notifications accusing me of being a shill for the establishment. Because I don’t believe someone who says that we should all trust the President of the United States. Blind faith in the executive branch of the US government is anti-establishment now.

As bizarre as these interactions have been, they are still vastly more pleasant than my typical interactions with the faction I see as QAnon’s mirror image, the Russiagaters. Though enthusiasts of the Russiagate conspiracy theory are far more nasty and vituperative than the Q crowd, there are many similarities. Like QAnon, Russiagate is fueled by about ten percent information and ninety percent desperate need to believe. Like QAnon, Russiagate is so thinly substantiated it doesn’t begin to look legitimate until you’ve spent weeks crawling down the rabbit holes of its bulletproof echo chambers and squinting just right at everything you see until it feels true. Like QAnon, the evangelists of Russiagate center their revolutionary sentiment around President Donald Trump. Like QAnon, they shouldn’t.

Trump campaigned on a non-interventionist policy. Thus far what that looks like is increasing US military presence in Syria and Afghanistan, edging toward direct confrontation with Russia, and pushing regime change in Iran. But it’s all 4-D chess against the deep state, right?

— @caitoz

Donald Trump is not a Russian agent. Declaring that the US will never recognize Russia’s annexation of Crimea, arming Ukraine, a Nuclear Posture Review with a much more aggressive posture against Russia, expanding NATO, throwing out Russian diplomats, open regime change policy against Russian allies, attacking Russian media by forcing RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, and many other world-threatening new cold war escalations make this administration the most aggressively hawkish against Moscow that we have seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Kremlin did not recruit an asset only to have it act against the Kremlin interests with far more aggression than preceding administrations, and anyone who thinks that it did has had some very bad luck with thinking.

To continue reading: The Real Revolution Has Nothing To Do With Donald Trump

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How the Government Became a Deep State Puppet, by Bill Bonner

Posted on May 31, 2018 | 1 comment

Somebody once said if voting meant anything they wouldn’t let us do it. The “they” must have been referring to the true powers in the US government, the Deep State. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

When you’ve got a chainsaw, you cut down a tree.

And when you’ve got control of monetary and fiscal policy… you go to work on an economy.

In both cases, you leave them in pieces.

Knuckleheaded Experiment

The difference between the next crash and the last two is that this time, the feds have less room to maneuver. At the end of an expansion cycle, like the one America has had for almost ten years, the federal government should be running a surplus.

That’s the whole idea of countercyclical fiscal policy. When the economy is hot, you’re supposed to be cool, with budget surpluses. When the economy cools off, you then heat it up with more spending.

But currently, the U.S. government is conducting a pro-cyclical fiscal experiment.

It’s late in the expansion cycle, but it’s already borrowing heavily, with annual deficits already programmed to reach $2 trillion by 2028. And that’s without a crash or a recession.

Good luck with that.

Meanwhile, over at the Fed, another knuckleheaded experiment is going on. It has left real rates (adjusted for inflation) below zero for nearly a decade, even though a recovery, such as it was, began in 2009.

This, too, is unprecedented… and almost surely disastrous.

That, of course, is what we’re waiting to find out.

But what we’ve been looking at lately is how the dots connect, in a straight line – from Bad Guy Theory… to the Deep State… to the Empire… thence to bankruptcy, chaos, and catastrophe.

Deep State Puppets

As we pointed out on Tuesday, an empire is not just a bigger government. It is a different animal, as different from a small, local democracy as a pussy cat from a sabre-toothed tiger.

In a small government, citizens can run the show. They know what is going on, and have a say in what happens next.

In a global Deep State Empire, on the other hand, citizens play largely symbolic roles. They vote, but their votes don’t really matter. They voice their opinions, but no one really cares what they think.

They have their representatives in Washington, but these officials, too, are largely ornamental. They talk, but they don’t say anything. They vote on laws, but only after they’re told which laws to pass.

To continue reading: How the Government Became a Deep State Puppet

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Good Week for the Deep State, by Bill Bonner

Posted on May 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

Grease is the word, it’s what keeps the Deep State functioning. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

It’s been a good week for stocks… and a good week for the Deep State.

On Wall Street, it almost seemed like the good ol’ days, as the Dow rose to a seven-week high and inflation readings remained low.

Investors thought they saw more good things coming.

Deep State stocks were winners. Bank of America rose nearly $1.60 during the week, as of this morning. General Dynamics went up more than $6.50. Raytheon made a $10 gain.

Swamp Deals

Up on the Hill, meanwhile, Gina Haspel managed to dodge questions about her role in torture and the destruction of evidence.

In a better world, she would probably be swinging from a scaffold with a noose around her neck, not looking forward to a cushy job as CIA director.

But she is being promoted for her loyalty, her long service… and the fact that she seems ready to do just about anything without asking questions.

In Iran, Israeli prime minister Bibi Netanyahu and American billionaire Sheldon Adelson managed to turn up the dial on tension in the Middle East by getting The Donald to nix the Iranian nuclear deal. It was fairly easy; after all, Adelson was one of Trump’s major campaign donors.

We saw how the swamp works yesterday. You want influence; you pay for it.

Trump’s budget chief, Mick Mulvaney put it to the American Bankers Association straight:

We had a hierarchy in my office in Congress. If you’re a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you’re a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you.

Naked Deep State

So now we see how a low-life lawyer like Michael Cohen brought in $4.4 million in consulting fees since Donald Trump was elected: He offered to fix things with his boss.

And we see Iran’s big mistake: It didn’t hire the best lobbyists… and didn’t contribute to The Donald’s campaign. If it had slipped a billion or so in Michael Cohen’s pocket, maybe the president would have declared Israel a rogue state!

But let us pull back the covers to take a gander at the naked Deep State itself.

 

To continue reading: Good Week for the Deep State

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Seven Days in May, by Doug “Uncola” Lynn

Posted on May 8, 2018 | 1 comment

There has never been anything quite like the Deep State’s open and illegal attempt to depose President Trump. From Doug “Uncola” Lynn at theburningplatform.com:

As the political coup against President Donald Trump continues, I was recently reminded of a 1964 film entitled Seven Days in May starring Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, and Ava Gardner.  Paradoxically, the screenplay was written by Rod Serling, the same guy who created and narrated The Twilight Zone.

Coincidence?  But I digress.

Serling’s screenplay was, in fact, based upon the novel of the same name that was written by the authors Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II.  Published during the first year of John F. Kennedy’s presidency, the book was actually read by JFK who not only shared it with those in his circle, but also encouraged the production of the film.  Unfortunately, however, President Kennedy never lived to see the movie play on the big screen.

 The story of Seven Days In May describes a coup d’etat against a sitting president who desired peace with the Russians. Those behind the conspiracy believed the Russians could not be trusted and therefore took matters into their own hands by way of a scheme dubbed ECOMCON (Emergency Communications Control).  The strategy was to assume command over America’s telephone, communications, radio, and television networks in an attempt to forestall the president’s plan from being implemented by Congress.The plot seems eerily familiar, no?

The narrator of the film’s classic movie trailer frames it thusly:

 

There are some who will say:  ‘It can never happen here’.  But this is the story of how it could happen in seven days of intrigue, of blackmail, of terror; an eternity of suspense.  This is the astounding story of a military plot to overthrow the government of the United States; which, if successful, will change the fate of every American.

Does life imitate art?  You decide.

To continue reading: Seven Days in May

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Trump’s Deal With the Deep State, by Bill Bonner

Posted on April 22, 2018 | Leave a comment

Fake wars are everywhere. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

A cigarette that bears a lipstick’s traces

An airline ticket to romantic places

– Billie Holiday, “These Foolish Things (Remind Me of You)”

BALTIMORE – South Beach…

Last week, we were sitting in the hotel restaurant in Miami Beach having breakfast…

A man – about 30 – was leaning on the counter. His dirty pants were falling down. He wore a black t-shirt with a skeleton on it. He put his head down on the counter… and said something incomprehensible.

He got a cup of coffee… and staggered over to a chair and flopped down, talking to himself.

After a few minutes, he got up. He clutched his pants, which were almost around his knees. He wobbled. He lurched. He headed for the door and disappeared out through it.

Then, a woman… voluptuous… pretty… dressed in white jeans, with a very low-cut t-shirt came in the same door.

She looked in our direction. She said something. We couldn’t make it out… Was she asking the time of day? Directions? We smiled.

She came towards us and sat down next to us on the couch.

She whispered…

“Would you like a massage?”

Two young men came in. Shorts. T-shirts. Almost identical outfits. But one wore his baseball cap backwards. They held hands. Smiled at each other. They got cappuccinos.

They left.

South Beach.

Deceit and Delusion

But now, we are back in Baltimore, visiting our new granddaughter. Then, we’ll be off again, back to Ireland.

There was a time when we looked forward to traveling. Buying an airline ticket to a romantic place promised a thrill, an adventure… and a learning experience.

Now, we’d rather stay home. But now, the cost of not traveling is higher than the benefit of staying home. We’re taking care of business, in other words. And as business has grown, so has the need to take care of it.

But let’s turn to our familiar beat – the world of money. Or, more particularly, the world of deceit and delusion known as “economics.” Unromantic. Tawdry. But fascinating.

Staged Revenge

When we left off last week, we were looking at fake wars. As you know, these are wars that no one wants to win, since their real purpose is to shift wealth from the public to the war-fighting industries.

Our point was that even fake wars sometimes spin out of control – when people forget what kind of war they’re fighting, for example.

Early in the week, U.S. president Donald J. Trump was taking the trade war far too seriously. Then, his Deep State handlers must have straightened him out on that; before the week was over, he declared that he wanted to get back into the Trans-Pacific Partnership!

To continue reading: Trump’s Deal With the Deep State

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The Deep State Takes A Hostage—Orange Comb-Over And All, Part 3, by David Stockman

Posted on April 15, 2018 | Leave a comment

Has the Deep State captured Trump? David Stockman says yes. From Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

Part 1

Part 2

The Donald seems to be taking a Deep Breath on his Syria bombfest, but the Deep State has him by the orange hairs. So we doubt the delay will last much longer.

That’s because our Art of the Deal genius is getting bamboozled yet again. They are telling him that wiping out up to a dozen Syrian airfields, military installations and a dog-eared factory or two that can be identified as chemical weapons sites will amount to some pretty serious Shock & Awe where it counts: That is, the mere witnessing of it will cause the Fat Boy of Pyongyang to brown his ample trousers, thereby getting his “mind right” for the upcoming summit.

That’s exactly the kind of macho-bargainer stuff that the Donald thrives on, and is further proof that the Deep State has figured out exactly how to press his buttons.

To be sure, Trump is no innocent victim. He voluntarily made himself hostage to the War Party by surrounding himself with failed generals and the most rabid war-mongers to be found in the Imperial City—-John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Gina Haspel.

Indeed, you have to wonder. How could anyone with even a half-baked notion of America First think that a hard core interventionist like John Bolton should be brought up right close and personal to the POTUS ear lobes, Walrus mustache and all?

But whatever the Donald was thinking when he made such horrendous choices for his top national security posts, these denizens of the War Party have wasted no time shoving their own agenda right down his throat.

And at the top of that agenda is systematic, relentless escalation of provocations against Russia and Iran. That’s because confrontation with these demonized states is the best way to keep Imperial Washington (and therefore the entire country) on a war-footing and the national security gravy train overflowing with fiscal largesse.

As we indicated in Part 1, the impending attack on Syria is actually a shot across the bow aimed at Tehran and Moscow. The cover story is simply a humanitarian sounding ruse. Ostensibly, Bashar Assad is being administered a good hard spanking via a barrage of cruise missile birch switches.

That begs the question, of course, of how homeland security is actually enhanced by selectively spanking some malefactors and not others.

To continue reading: The Deep State Takes A Hostage—Orange Comb-Over And All, Part 3

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Trump vs. the Permanent Government, by Justin Raimondo

Posted on April 5, 2018 | 1 comment

The permanent government is having a hard time adjusting to the idea that the US might actually withdraw from one of its wars. From Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com:

The battle to put America first isn’t easy

The other day President Trump told his audience at a rally in Ohio that US troops are leaving Syria “very soon.” “Let others take care of it,” he said, “it’s time to build up our own country. It’s time to bring them home.”

The foreign policy Establishment, the military, and the pro-jihadist “humanitarian interventionists” of the liberal-left (e.g., Nicholas Kristof), went ballistic. Oh noes! You can’t do that! What about Bashar al-Assad, the Very Bad Dictator who’s been protecting religious minorities from US-funded head-choppers? He’ll be left in power, and we can’t have that! The Democrats on Twitter reacted by denouncing Trump – because wars are bad only if Republicans start them.

While the counterintuitive moral posturing of the Nicholas Kristofs of this world probably has a minimal impact on the decision-making process in the White House, the US military does indeed have a say – and they, along with their civilian allies in the sprawling national security bureaucracy, aren’t afraid to contradict a sitting president. As the Washington Post gleefully reports:

“President Trump on Tuesday repeated his desire to quickly ‘get out’ of Syria, even as his top commander for the Middle East outlined the need for an ongoing military presence there.

“‘A lot of very good military progress has been made over the last couple of years, but the hard part, I think, is in front of us,’ said Gen. Joseph L. Votel, head of U.S. Central Command. Upcoming efforts, he said, include the military’s role in ‘stabilizing [Syria], consolidating gains’ and ‘addressing long-term issues of reconstruction’ after the defeat of the Islamic State.

“The two spoke simultaneously in Washington. Votel, joined in remarks at the US Institute of Peace by the administration’s top diplomatic envoy to the U.S.-led coalition against the militants and by the head of the US Agency for International Development, discussed the need to align military operations with those of diplomatic and aid activities on the ground.

“Barely a mile away, Trump told a White House news conference that ‘I want to get out. I want to bring our troops back home.’”

To continue reading: Trump vs. the Permanent Government

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Snowden Explains Deep State’s Influence on Presidents Obama, Trump, by Jay Syrmopoulos

Posted on March 23, 2018 | 3 comments

No matter what’s said in the campaign, a US president can’t get away from the influence and power of the Deep State. From Jay Syrmonopoulos at truthinmedia.com:

Famed whistleblower Edward Snowden was recently interviewed by Italian publication La Repubblic. The publication noted the 5-year mark of Snowden’s historic act of blowing the whistle on the NSA’s expansive surveillance programs and that “many thought he would end up very badly, but when he connects via videolink for this interview with la Repubblica, he seems to be doing very well: the frank smile and peaceful face of someone who is easy in his mind.”

In an excerpt from the exclusive interview, Snowden explained how the presidencies of both Obama and Trump are shaped by the Deep State following an illuminating question by journalist Stefania Maurizi.

Stefania Maurizi: We saw that President Obama, who was an outsider to the US military-intelligence complex, initially wanted to reign in the abuses of agencies like the CIA and the NSA, but in the end he did very little. Now we see a confrontation between president Trump and so-called Deep State, which includes the CIA and the NSA. Can a US president govern in opposition to such powerful entities?

Edward Snowden: Obama is certainly an instructive case. This is a president who campaigned on a platform of ending warrantless wiretapping in the United States, he said “that’s not who we are, that’s not what we do,” and once he became the president, he expanded the program.  He said he was going to close Guantanamo but he kept it open, he said he was going to limit extrajudicial killings and drone strikes that has been so routine in the Bush years. But Obama went on to authorize vastly more drone strikes than Bush. It became an industry.

As for this idea that there is a Deep State, now the Deep State is not just the intelligence agencies, it is really a way of referring to the career bureaucracy of government. These are officials who sit in powerful positions, who don’t leave when presidents do, who watch presidents come and go, they influence policy, they influence presidents and say: this is what we have always done, this is what we must do, and if you don’t do this, people will die.

It is very easy to persuade a new president who comes in, who has never had these powers, but has always wanted this job and wants very, very badly to do that job well. A bureaucrat sitting there for the last twenty years says: I understand what you said, I respect your principles, but if you do what you promised, people will die. It is very easy for a president to go: well, for now, I am going to set this controversy to the side, I’m going to take your advice, let you guys decide how these things should be done, and then I will revisit it, when I have a little more experience, maybe in a few months, maybe in a few years, but then they never do.

To continue reading: Snowden Explains Deep State’s Influence on Presidents Obama, Trump

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