HR 3364 Countering America's Enemies Adversaries Through Sanctions Act
The Russia Narrative: An alternate interpretation of 2016 election history:
Last week we saw our congress vote 419-3 and 98-2 for economic warfare on Russia, dragging Europe and others into a sanction regime, by sanctioning parties who buy Russian gas. For this incredible warlike act to be conducted it must support some serious charge against Russia.
The argument cited is that Russia has been meddling in the internal affairs of an innocent U.S.A. And a Innocent Ukrainian Parliament whose winners received less votes than the losers in the last election prior to civil war, an ultra rightist aligned coalition that includes celebration of Ukrainian Ultra Nationalist that allied with the Nazis and served in S.S. Stepan Bandera, who commited genocide on poles and jews.
So either is correct and Russia has made serious violations that justify sanctions attacking Russias oil and gas trade, its principal export. Ironically this may lead to an oil price hike backfiring to benefit Russia.
But what if it is incorrect. It means we have the most deluded congress imaginable and that is our duty to replace or enlighten these people particularly in the 2018 election.
Today was a bombshell day in assemblying the testimony of the critics. Recently coming across a FAIR piece,
Who has problems with the Russia Narrative
Hersh Audio Seth Rich talked to wikileaks
Hersh January The jntercept https://theintercept.com/2017/01/25/seymour-hersh-blasts-media-for-uncritically-promoting-russian-hacking-story/
Parry Consortium News
Robert Scheer Truth Dig
Truth Out
Chris Hedges
Oliver Stone
Gavin Newsom “Doesn’t do anything for our party”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H2ikdck8F4
Why the Russian Whipping Boy? In Syria as Cohen states we face a very real risk of an American Russian military conflict.
I would argue that the Russians do not have the power to swing our election. This is harder than it appears to do from outside. They may have tipped it, but the Kaine nomination (mistreatment and derision of Sanders Supporters by the establishment) and Comey and the Server were plenty of baggage,
The DNC establishment embracing the Russia story – Is a death embrace with the CIA Pentagon and Neocons. It is a dangerous game, because as Gavin Newsom says it does not address the peoples needs. People are not going to the polls over some vague Russian meddling, trump is clearly not a Russian Manchurian Candidate, he is a well known figure in America, with constant media access. Trump would not become a Russia agent because he has no need to do so. Trump would have won his personal battle even by becoming the nominee, he had no previous experience. There was no need to sell his soul to the devil.
Russia, The American Ruling Class, Clinton, Trump Sanders and what is to be done
US declares economic warfare on Russia.
The real meddling in the US election was conducted by DNC
This last week I saw my most profound disconnect with my national government that I have ever experienced in my life. The US House voted 419 to 3 to apply severe economic sanctions to Russia.
The real question is why Tulsi Gabbard went along with this, because she was the only congressperson to publicly endorse Bernie. Imagine that, we live in a supposed democracy and not one single congressperson dared to oppose Clinton.
The real meddling in the US Election was vote suppression, not by the Russians but by the American Ruling Class.
For decades we know that the poor have been targeted to be discouraged to vote, as well as anti establishment types. I would say the left, but the same thing happened to Ron Paul. Any candidate who seeks to substantially change the party policies against the moneyed interests will have their supporters targeted. The targeting is seeing to it that their votes are not cast, and if cast are not counted.
Think of it! A system that has constantly been tweaked away from one person one vote, already has enormous resistance to change built into it. This is what checks and balances were intended to do, to make radical change difficult to accomplish. But had the more egalitarian founders, such as Jefferson, Madison, Payne and even Washington foreseen that there would be yet another check on change, the suppression of votes, and for us today never mind the founders for a moment, we are screwed.
It is an old problem: a media controlled by big business, banking interests which are not averse to war when it promises more favorable profits in the war, its coverage, its post war contracts, or the supposedly quisling forces we would have the support of in the occupied country making for further business enrichment, all of these forces make change difficult.
So what are we to do ?
And who are “we”? These problems go beyond party, the problems that are challenging the ability of everyday people to conduct management and oversight through citizen government threaten people of all political persuasions, unless you enjoy only voting for large entrenched power structures, like the Bush Dynasty or the Clinton Dynasty, but even if you personally like this or that Clinton or Bush or Kennedy, the concept of the only voices in our government being selected by unnacountable powers in backroom should be repugnant to all real americans. Or sensible people of any country.
So what are “we” to do?
On the Sanders camp side, we have to prepare for the mid terms. If the political oxygen is consumed on Russia and Trump, how do you make it clear what a danger perpetuation of a congress that voted 419-3 for economic war with Russia?
To summarize:
1. The real assault to the US elections was by the moneyed interests and political establishment. In this election it was the Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton which represented this suppression. Amazingly the Republican field was fractured, was not considered likely to beat the Democrats with a popular outgoing President I suppose, and regardless the base could not unify around one Republican candidate.
2. So in the primaries we had the problem of super delegates, the problem of targeting of the poor and vulnerable to have their votes not cast nor counted, and a winning formula has been found. The formula is to fight dirty at every step, smear your opponent, refuse to accept debates or interviews that could expose your vulnerabilities, purge voter rolls, protest Republivan voter ID laws but secretly benefit from them in your own primaries, while effectively surrendering certain “Red States”. Purge the rolls, make registration more difficult, close polling stations, hand out provisional ballots, use voting machines that can be tampered with, and tamper with them. This is the cocktail that allowed HRC to steal the democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders. It will not be forgotten, it will be used again and again and again, at the municipal level, at the country level, at the state level and at the national level. Again the danger is that this was successful, and these same vote suppression systems benefited Trump in some swing states. In other words as the patchwork of vote suppression systems go, the candidate preferred by the political establishment in any given state will be harder and harder to unseat. What may have helped Clinton in Wisconsin would later help Trump there in the general.
3. What is the outrage over Russia actually based on. No one will deny that mere meetings with Russians have been given a sinister hue in a way that meetings with foreigners normally do not get such scrutiny. So we know the Russia Narrative is being promoted and abetted, in addition to any logical arguments but with nuance and emphasis. Inadvertantly calling Russia the Soviet Union, inferring that because Putin was KGB he is a crypto-communist. That we are dealing with the “Reds”, whereas Putin and his party are actually the conservatives in Russia, no a real Red Putin at this time would be quite a bit different and likely quite a bit more troublesome to US Foreign Policy. But by the 1950s “There were no communists in Russia, according to Eric Hobsbawm, but likely the fact that the communists do get greater than 20% of the vote they likely have been forced to actually re-engage intellectually with their tradition.
a. So I think it is empirical to say these allegations are being made salacious, and to try to create a fiction we are reliving a Cold War Spy Thrilller Novel. I saw a movie on the Airplane that appeared to be slickly produced with exactily this premise – sleeper agents with their sinister cyryllic embedded in America from strange far off places like Moldovia!
b. And what is the basis of all this: I think it is simple:
i. Trump asked Wikileaks and the Russians to get Hillary’s speeches and print them. Within a couple of months such occurred. HRCs people would think one of these groups obliged. Trump laid his own trap. It is unlikely Trumps request was filled by someone who heard him. It is more likely that the leaker or hacker would have done their business regardless. But if they did at his behest, the worst of all motives possible is being charged, that a foreign enemy hacked our candidate and released their private writings. Their were 3 sources of emails for Clinton. Her server which disclosed enough through judicial court ordered releases unrelated to leaks or hacks that were the most damaging, because they showed the same patterns, a mean spirited denial of service attack on Bernie Sanders, a cozy atmosphere with donors and apparent conflict of interest taking money from Saudis around the time of Clintons state dept tenure, this shows a serious lapse of judgement towards either lust for power or money, im not sure which is worse. The DNC Leaks/Hacks and the Podesta Leaks/Hacks were along the same vein but were a continuation of the same problems of dirty dealing against Sander and with Donors. At this point we see no evidence of Russian modification of Election Results in voting results. Incumbents returned to power in great numbers, and congress still votes broadly along “pre meddling lines” broad bipartisan hawkish pro military policies, a big govt social services party – and a small govt – tax breaks for oil companies party – This is from a Doonesbury strip “Read My Lips: Tax breaks for oil companies.
ii. Who does not buy the Russian Interference Argument?
iii. Dissident CIA NSA State Dept, as well as Mattlock, Reagans Ambassador, Mearscheimer, Stephen Cohen, people with a memory of the promises we made the USSR when it broke apart, and realize we did win the idealogical war, and there is no need to further torment them. These are people who do not see the world as the same global game of risk our national security establishment envisions.
iv. Wikileaks affiliated UK ambassador Craig Murray asserts that it was a leak not a hack by a disgruntled staffer. We have exactly one unsolved murder of a high level DNC staffer who Kim .Com claims he is certain was a sanders supporter, with attacks on anyone questioning the highly inconvenient timing of his shooting after the leaks but before the Russia allegations. This fellow is Seth Rich, the police video has not been released, the autopsy has not been released, the bullet caliber or weapon type was never disclosed, the police did not question the last people who saw Mr Rich as I understand it. Assange of Wikileaks has called for an investigation of Seth Rich’s murder. This possible direction is ignored by the MSM by and large.
v. But what can you expect of a network of corporations who are managed from a small group of universities and are bred for being in the ruling class, as it allways has been, in late stages of civilizations. They run her campaign they run the media outlets, and they are employed by the most wealthy and powerful institutions. The six great equity houses, blackrock state street, t. rowe price, fidelity, etc the great banking houses, such as goldman sachs, the great tech companies such as Amazon. Google , Time Warner, Comcast. Although each parties interest is indeed different, the great glue of spending and windfall profits has been the national security state. The national security state is winning, Russia is the perfect foil, fueling huge military and intelligence and mobilizartion build up justifications. We cannot lose, we can only gain!
vi. The first victim of war is the truth. The truth is that what is the worst case?
1. Russia hacked into Podesta’s emails and gave them to wikileaks or helped someone who did.
2. Russia probed US electoral eqpt.
vii. This makes us think or our own conduct ? What is normal for intelligence agencies to do? In my opinion the US China and Russia are all crawling each others computers and routers, both corporate and govt. I would say election systems that are crawled robotically are quite different from targeting, but compared to the US record in the middle east, in South America, in Russia itself, it does seem a bit like the pot calling the kettle black.
viii. If I was Putin and wanted to get dirt on Clinton leaked to the Press, I would not use my intelligence services. I would fund shadow groups in the Balkans etc with no direct line of accountability, just as I believe Clinton never ordered SR killed, because others would take care of this. It is a matter of setting tone, perhaps all Putin would have to have done is express comradeship with Mr Trump after his request for the hacks would become a fervent goal of crypto putinites all over the dark web! This is the sort of junk that inhabits the brain of these people.
However on reviewing the evidence, also the silence of some, most skeptics of the US National Security State, people who tended to be spectical about Iraq, about Libya, about the Patriot Act, most of these people are skeptical of the evidence provided from the Intelligence Agencies, and in fact as Debbie at the Sane Progressive has called out the VIPS report that shows it looks like the DNC may have tried to frame Russia, planting Cyrillic metadata into a document that was directly downloaded to a flash drive likely on the east coast of the US around July 5. Specifically “Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computers, and then doctored to incriminate Russia.
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper (right) talks with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office, with John Brennan and other national security aides present. (Photo credit: Office of Director of National Intelligence)
After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device, and that “telltale signs” implicating Russia were then inserted.
So what are we missing here? The critics are not satisfied, the jury is out, it is hard to prove or disprove, yet the authorities are cock sure about it. If it is a ruse it is one of the most brazen and elaborate possible, if it is a disinformation campaign it is one of the most shockingly brazen and politically effective in history.
Based on the evidence we possess, we cannot conclude that Russia is guilty of anything. No court has found them so, and the court of the sceptics does not believe them! If some serious people like Sy Hersh or Noam Chomsky, and not just one, but at least a couple do not reverse position and say ok what I see makes this highly probable, then will I believe the congress. They know no more than I, intelligence briefings or not, because the insider knowledge has never outranked common sense and skepticism.
So what must we do? It appears that we have 419 cowards and fools in our congress, and 3 that at least on this issue are not? This shows the need for a wholesale replacement of Congress and a frightening yawning disconnect.
When you just looks at facts and not feelings or “local color”, look at the machinery of the US and Intl Corporate System it is overwhelming and depressing. More inequality, more rigged crony capitalism enriching a few, as well as many deserving professionals and entrpeneurs, fortunately. But we have entered a time when capital roams industries are consolidated to 5 or 6 players on the US Level and similar concentrations of main competitors elsewere. These six chosen companies are guaranteed a fat meal ticket, a large burden on households and national dollars for services which could be provided much more cost effectively, such as insurance, banking and medicine, and the completely wasteful military industrial cancer raging in our national body.
This modern industrial war machine is incredibly profitable, grants incredible power to its wielder, and is killing people and blowing things up all over the world on a daily basis with its new favorite enemy Islamic extremism, an enemy that could have been largely avoided had we not propped up absolute monarchies with our military might.
We have been involved indirectly in the deaths of more than ten million people since WWII, holding 3rd place in number killed by invasion in the last 100 years.
So it is a time for progressives and sane conservatives and other thinkers not only progressives to make common cause, to agree the rules that should not favor the rich excessively through cronyism and state sponsored cartels like the FCC runs. We each have our own true north however we have a common destination before we part ways, a path we should try to tread together, whether in the spirit of Justin Amash, Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders or even Dwight Eisenhower.
No to Comfortable rent seeking cartels protected from new start ups by govt protection.
No to a rapacious national security state that devours 1 in 6 dollars we produce when prisons and police are added, about twice or three times what other countries spend.
Yes to international arms reductions negotiations to free up more of our resources and labour to productive peace time activities such as civilian manufacture and technology, and education and construction, transport and mass transit, research, the humanities. My uncle was an art historian and art professor he ended up working for the military, which is fine, but it tells you something. The military can afford art teachers where other schools might not have many posts. Would it not be better to reduce the military in size and have more such posts in the civilian economy.
Yes to auditable elections, where everyone can vote, and that we lead the world in our voting best practices to maximize participation and integrity.
Yes to ensuring journalism survives without being undermined by corporate interests govt propaganda interests, and national security subversion. How do we ensure real investigative journalism is allowed to thrive? We need leakers, we need people who will tell us what is really going on in government.
Yes to a peaceful foreign policy that encourages trade and tourism and cultural exchange, with appropriate controls. For example should we not require a minimum wage and the right to unionize in any country we have zero or low tariffs with? Maybe we should require a 5$ min wage for workers we use in most favored nation status.
Yes to allowing ordinary citizens to run for office.
When the traditionally right affiliated people of sensible patriotic disposition and their progressive traditionally left may part ways, after clearing away certain corruption, rigging, disinformation we will have our split: over the role of govt in our society. The left wants our necessities increasingly guaranteed to be affordable, and the conservatives seeing competition as being necessary.
I think you could have both:
Yes to allowing some states the right to experiment with competition for necessities, and other states and counties using govt to meet those needs and cooperatives and credit unions to pick up the slack.
A necessity could be obtained privately, through a coop or through a govt serfvice. Why not allow the 3 forms to exist in different places and times, in some communities you would have community owned medical system, in other communities it would be a govt subsidy, it could be a coop. or people could use their money to buy these services.
By pushing hard on the buyers coop concept, we could counterbalance permitting private school tax ded uctions.
Then you have all the cultural issues, abortion, religion, immigration, multiculturalism.
Well folks the US was founded on multi culturalism. It has been a nation of immigrants, by 1776 there were a lot of people in the new world besides just English colonists.
For the moment the true north must be to get people elected in 2018, awakened to the threat of the current distortion of reality promoted and believed in by our leaders. People who do not vote to remove our rights in favor of security who take our money and give it to military contractors, who scapegoat foreign states to fuel the national security spending orgy.
But on the proactive side we must seek a dialogue between conservatives and liberals on how to usher in a better world with the miracles of technology, which could lead to complete automation. If the people own the robots this will be heaven, if a few own the robots that you must toil to buy the services of, it will be hell.
The True North for a progressive could be the true north for a conservative, if we accept that we can provide guaranteed universal high quality necessities through a combination of private vendors, customer owned coops (buying clubs) and public services.
My own studies involve having real courage to re-envision your region. But all that is for another day.
I post a great summary documentary below of the real elecfion meddling which was by the Party establishments, and the DNC Clinton use of every dirty trick in the book to cheat Bernie Sanders. But of course Clinton Supporters, that is the congress and the media and the corporations do not want to hear this. They would prefer a different version of events, that a shadowy foreign power was nefariously underming Clinton. Clinton was a very vulnerable candidate due to her own baggage and she consistently brazsenly ignored her own parties left, “leaving them at the door step” on election day.
419-3 our house votes to declare economic warfare on our 3 enemies de joure, Russia Iran and North Korea. All Democrats voted to punish Russia on still unproven vague allegations of “meddling”
This attacks Russia’s economic lifeline, Russia is heavily dependent of its oil and gas exports.
Why would Putin hate Clinton? Because the Clintons harmed Russia more than any other party in its history since Hitler and Genghis Khan. Ironically bringing him to power at boot.
Post Pro Logue
1. Our True North as a species and civilization, to eliminate wont and make a transition realizing the potential paradise we could create for ourselves if we dared to dream. As an industrial engineer I can assure you we have increased our productive capacity by a factor of 100 fold since 1700, but nature does have its limits. We have to see that effectively we are sharing the worlds capacity in shares of 1/billionth per family, but that division as it increases will begin to limit what is possible, especially if we want to pass on to future generations the same productive capacity of earths mineral wealth, oceans, crops, water, forests and air.
2. Russia narrative suffocates our national concentration to work on shaping a positive future for our nation along these lines.
3. With 98-2 and 419-3 votes, if Russia Narrative View is flawed or not overwhelmingly accurate we have no room for dissent in our congress. If this view is flawed our entire laedershio are dupes of the national security establishment consensus.
4. This means we need to put all our effort into getting candidates elected in 2018 who do not pursue these deluded policies.
5. Guns or butter. The fleecing of the people of their wealth liberty and where there taxes are spen productively are all under attack.
6. Due to the voting irregularities that were widespread in 2016 – we need to both have an online registry where everyone logs their vote – so we can check it against the official results. This is like an exit poll of your own voters that could be 100% accurate.
7. The need to restore integrity into our government so that we do not have a congress entirely bought, bleating the same point of view, with cultural divide differences. Conservatives, Independents Republicans Greens want to live in a fair free non corrupt society.
8. If they still steal the seats we need to really put our feetdown and riot and protest. If we lose we riot. We do not allow society to continue. To do this we need to have an entire alternate system. We have to suspend mortgage payments and declare a citizens takeover, preventing police from carrying out evictions. It cannot be tolerated.
We must have an online page where our candidates votes are allowed to be recorded publicly. If our register show we have more votes in a precinct than the official tally we riot. We absolutely stop the system. We cannot allow systemic disenfranchisement or party vote total altering.