No, it is not at all astonishing, that US President elect Donald Trump is viciously attacked, slandered, and blackmailed by the CIA, culminating in a frontal assault just a few days before his inauguration. This is the time, when he has not yet the ability to defend himself by dismissing James Clapper, John Brennan, and other high ranking officials of CIA, NSA, FBI. This is the last chance for the CIA to damage Trump so severely that he needs to cow and toe their line, unable to retaliate even after the inauguration.
It could of course also be that this is just a warning shot and preparations are underway to neutralize Donald Trump just as John F. Kennedy was neutralized by Allen Dulles (an assumption many historians now consider to be correct).
Billionaire Trump would normally be a perfectly suitable candidate to lead the “greatest nation,” also called “leader of the free world,” “beacon of democracy,” or “shining light.” He and his cabinet of fellow billionaires should make sure, that the needs of the superrich are met, corporations will have free hand to increase their profits in whatever way they see fit, and resource exploitation can continue no matter how dire the ecological consequences may be.
There is only one hitch (two actually): Trump has a different idea how to deal with Russia. He wants to mend political and economic ties, increase investment, conquer the country slowly by corrupting its elite intelligentsia and entangling it in the web of global finance.
The second hitch: Trump has castigated NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) as obsolete and characterized its members as ungrateful allies who benefit from US largesse. He said that the USA can no longer afford to protect countries in Europe and Asia without adequate compensation, suggesting he would eventually withdraw US forces.
This would be very bad for US weapons producers.
Donald Trump intends to charm Vladimir Putin like Ronald Reagan charmed Boris Yeltsin. The soft method worked well for Reagan, plunging Russia into its deepest crisis since the invasion by Nazi-Germany in World War II, allowing a new emerging class of criminal looters, called oligarchs, to seize public assets, and lowering life expectancy of Russians by 10 years.
But Boris Yeltsin was a spineless party apparatchik, an opportunist, a drunkard, and he was not very bright, to say it mildly. Reagan was not bright either, but he was likable, a good performer, a perfect figurehead, willing to do everything what his advisers, representing the “deep state” or “permanent government,” told him to do.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is not Yeltsin, he is in a completely different category. Only 170 cm tall, with unassuming and quiet demeanor, he was not taken seriously for some time and when Western leaders finally realized, that he systematically stabilized Russia, reigning in the oligarchs and blocking Western interference, it was too late. Putin had solidified his position, Russia left the nightmare of the Yeltsin years behind and ascended again.
The Washington political elite, the “deep state,” “permanent government,” MIC (military industrial complex) or however one likes to call it, fears that Putin will outsmart Trump. They realize that the exploitative and wasteful economies and societies of the West have reached their limits, that vital resources like drinking water will become scarce, that inequality is increasing and with it social unrest and political instability.
They know that time is running out and that the US imperium is in danger to break apart under the heavy load of it’s internal contradictions. This may not occur immediately or even in the next years, but one day it will be.
Russia has everything what is needed to keep consumerism and extreme wealth accumulation in the Western world going on for a little while longer. Russia has the largest territory of all nations (17.1 million square kilometers) with only 143 million inhabitants. The territory includes prime forests and an abundance of untapped natural resources. Global warming will devastate many countries and make some areas near the equator uninhabitable (Arab Peninsular), but it will leave Russia nearly unscathed and even ease living conditions in Siberia and other northern areas.
The CIA and fellow “deep state” agencies also know that Russian deep rooted culture, national pride based on a rich history, and an intact social contract will make it nearly impossible to install a “comprador class” and a puppet regime.
As the soft method will not work, Russia has to be conquered by military means. The military buildup by NATO along Russian boarders is going on since month. Right now 4,000 US soldiers with 2,800 tanks and other armored vehicles have arrived in Bremerhaven to be deployed in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the Baltic states. A 800 million US$ missile system in Romania has been installed, another one is planned for Poland in 2018. Overall the USA has 70,000 troops in Europe.
A pretext to start a low level war will be easily found. The conflict in Ukraine’s Donbass region ist still simmering, with heavy shelling and casualties reported by both sides. If that is not enough, airplanes can be shot down again, front lines can unexpectedly go hot with exchange of artillery fire, terror bombings can be attributed to Russian agents.
The assault Donald Trump is now facing shows not only the power of the “deep state” but gives also an idea how a case against Russia could be constructed.
On Dezember 29 the US administration expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the embassy in Washington and the consulate in San Francisco, it also closed two compounds in New York and Maryland. A “fact sheet” claimed: “Russia’s cyber activities were intended to influence the election, erode faith in US democratic institutions, sow doubt about the integrity of our electoral process, and undermine confidence in the institutions of the US government.”
That same day the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security published a 13-page “Joint Activity Report” on what it called “Grizzly Steppe,” or malicious cyber activity by Russia “to compromise and exploit networks and endpoints associated with the US elections.”
On January 7 Director of National Intelligence James Clapper released an “Intelligence Community Assessment,” which states that “Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
These reports were based on assessments and judgements without factual prove, acknowledged even in the reports themselves: “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof to show that something to be a fact.” “High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or certainty.” “Such judgments might be wrong.”
The reports also conflated alleged cyberattacks with the activities of Russian “state-controlled” media outlets which were critical of US democratic processes and the candidate Hillary Clinton. Criticism of the US political system and of certain candidates is seemingly not considered to be a First Amendment right (free speech) but is regarded as an undue interference and a malicious activity.
One has to ask if only Russian entities, or all media outlets, web journals, blogs, (including the one which you are just reading) have to refrain from criticism.
The reports about Russian hacking could not be based on facts, because the FBI had no direct access to the servers involved and was compelled to carry out its investigation based upon the technical report of Crowdstrike, a private cyber security company payed by the Democratic Party.
Crowdstrike attributes its claims that Russian intelligence was behind the cyber intrusion to a report by the German domestic intelligence service (BfV) about a cyber attack on the German Parliament in 2015. “Many of these attack campaigns,” the German report, published in January 2016, noted, “have technical similarities, such as malicious software families, and infrastructure — these are important indicators of the same authorship. It is assumed that both the Russian domestic intelligence service FSB and the military foreign intelligence service GRU run cyber operations.”
These are still not proven facts, but assumptions, one could call it “educated guesses.”
Russia for sure has capable mathematicians, programmers, and hackers and it is not unlikely, even plausible, that they tried to get access to US-networks just like US cyber warriors try all the time to get access to Russian networks.
Yet, even if Russians were behind the leaked Podesta emails, wouldn’t it be a beneficial and most welcome service to make the electorate aware of a candidates weaknesses? The email leak was not smear and slender, it was not denigration, it just made transparent the thinking and the true intentions of the candidate.
Why should this be wrong?
The CIA, with unprecedented clarity, throughout the election campaign overtly threw its weight behind Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and sought to defeat Donald Trump.
For former CIA and NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, Trump was “the useful fool, manipulated by Moscow, secretly held in contempt, but whose blind support is happily accepted and exploited.”
Former CIA Director Michael J. Morell in August informed the readers of the New York Times in an opinion piece, that Trump was “not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.” Russia’s Putin “had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decades long international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump posed a threat to it.
On January 10, the CIA unleashed its until now tawdriest and most aggressive assault via news channel CNN, who reported about a 35-page dossier alleging that Russia has compromising information on Trump, including corruption and despicable personal conduct (sexual perversion). A few hours later the full dossier was published by BuzzFeed.
It has become known since then that the paper was compiled by Christopher Steele, an ex-MI6 agent and founder of Orbis Business Intelligence. It was available both to spy agencies and the press because its author had been shopping it around broadly for publication. Initially almost without exception, the press considered it unreliable and wouldn’t touch it. Hardliner and war-hawk Senator John McCain delivered the report to the FBI, but the FBI didn’t follow it up.
Ted Malloch, a Trump insider, says that Steele’s report had been commissioned by the Jeb Bush campaign and that Democrats took over the contract after Bush dropped out. This has been since backed up by some evidence.
The document accuses Trump of treason, corruption, and salacious private conduct, yet cites no evidence of any kind but instead relies on stories by a string of anonymous Russian officials.
According to the dossier Vladimir Putin has an eight year plan to run Donald Trump as a “Manchurian candidate” and Trump is an active and knowing partner in Putin’s scheme. The dossier also alleges that Trump’s lawyer and adviser Michael Cohen held meetings in Prague with Russian hackers to arrange payment, along with senior officials of the Russian security services (the FBI has found no evidence that Cohen traveled to the Czech Republic).
James Clapper issued a statement in the aftermath of a conversation with Trump on the Steele dossier, suggesting that the agencies had “not made any judgment that the information in this document is reliable.”
Senior Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling TV host Rachel Maddow that Trump was being “really dumb” by challenging the intelligence community because of “all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them.”
Maybe he is right — we will find out soon.
One possible outcome will be a bruised and battered President Trump, who tries to avoid the slightest impression that he pursues a detente with Russia, quietly waiting for his chance of revenge, while the spy agencies are paralyzed by the turf war and experienced personal are scrambling for the exit.
Not a bad outcome from the point of anti-imperialism.
But this is US-America, a violent society where the gun rules, and no one should be surprised, if a lone gunman miraculously bridges all security barriers and assassinates President Trump, to be killed instantly after having done his job.
Related:
A sober look at the US elections
A sober look at the US elections
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