Month: July 2021

More Reasons Not to Believe US News Reports About Russia

I have followed Ray McGovern’s work for many years. He works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city


Ray McGovern, retired CIA official and a man with a conscience

Washington.

His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

His latest article at AntiWar.com is entitled “New York Times Pushing the Envelope on Russia.” Mr. McGovern dismantles the latest story accusing the Russian government of hacking US agencies.

All demagogic governments think they need an enemy, real or imagined. Nothing unites a people like the fear of a common enemy. It’s an ancient tactic used to distract people from their own government’s failures and to unite them around an otherwise disreputable government establishment.

Naturally, career politician Joe Biden understands these things very well, as do the various agencies and corporate powers that benefit from keeping the American people misinformed and distracted.

The corporate media are not to be trusted, folks. Not at all…

Here is Ray’s piece:

If Wednesday morning’s passive-voice (“Russian hackers are accused of”), evidence-free New York Times article titled “Attempted Hack of R.N.C. and Russian Ransomware Attack Test Biden” has a familiar ring, look who wrote it. The senior author is David Sanger, the NYT’s chief Washington correspondent. Based on Sanger’s unenviable record, the story he wrote with Nicole Perlroth can be dismissed as a proverbial nothingburger with Sanger sauce.

The article claims that Russian hackers breached a contractor for the Republican National Committee (RNC) last week “around the same time that Russian cybercriminals launched the largest global ransomware attack on record”. Sanger and co-author Nicole Perlroth cannot resist editorializing in the first paragraph that the “incidents are testing the red lines set by President Biden” at the June 16 summit with Russian President Putin. Biden, they noted, “presented Mr. Putin with a list of 16 critical sectors of the American economy that, if attacked, would provoke a response”.

The NY Times does not seem to know if the RNC is included among those 16. Indeed, there is little sign that the Times actually knows what those 16 critical sectors are. No worries, the Russians nonetheless “are accused” of activities that “test those red lines”.

The Times, and Sanger in particular, have shown themselves receptive to parts of our government (especially the security services) as well as to those who need an enemy to justify huge defense spending – all of whom have a deep vested interest in painting Russia and Putin in the most dangerous colors. It is a safe bet that this is what is going on here.

Sanger was first off the blocks in parroting former CIA Director John Brennan’s concoction, in the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, that Putin personally directed the “hacking of the DNC emails”. Those who rely on the NT Times do not know this yet, but testimony taken under oath by the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 5, 2017 revealed that no one – not the Russians, no one – hacked those emails.

That testimony was made public on May 7, 2020, 14 months ago, but the mainstream media have suppressed it. Clearly, it does not fit the Times’s narrative. The modus operandi of today’s NYT seems to be “only the news that fits we print”. See: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/sh21.pdf. AND New House Documents Sow Further Doubt That Russia Hacked the DNC.

Still, it is hard to believe how Sanger nor Perlroth (who specializes in cyber security) can pretend to be unaware of the that House Intelligence Committee testimony.

While for the past five years Sanger has been concentrating on the “threat” from Russia and parroting grist from his CIA feeders, he has a long unenviable record as mouthpiece for those asserting WMD in Iraq, to those claiming falsely that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has used chemical weapons, to those contriving the story about the Russians paying bounties to the Taliban to kill U.S. troops.

His most disreputable performance came in the months before the March 2003 attack on Iraq. For example, Sanger reported “Weapons of Mass Destruction” as flat fact no fewer than seven times in this article of July 29, 2002.

Call me “quaint” or “obsolete”, but back in the day we intelligence analysts looked closely at a source’s record before we put his/her words into a serious report.


	


	





	

		
		
Mehdi Hasan Explains Today’s Supreme Court Decision Upholding New Arizona Voting Laws
	


	
	
	

		
I am sure that almost everyone knows by now that, all across the country, Republican state legislatures are proposing a variety of new election laws


Journalist, Mehdi Hasan


that will effectively disenfranchise large numbers of voters, particularly the elderly and people of color.


The Supreme Court has just upheld the legality of two such laws in Arizona.


In contrast to the CBN anchor, Gordon Robertson, who simply vents his spleen against “liberals” while misrepresenting everything at stake in these current voting rights contests, Mehdi Hasan provides a well-informed discussion (approximately 13 minutes) of what is at stake in this Supreme Court decision.






Let’s remember some important details crucial to understanding the context of the court’s decision.


    

  • The gutting of the 1965 Voting Rights Act began in 2013 when the Supreme Court invalidated the provision requiring Southern states to seek federal approval for any intended changes to their state’s voting laws. This pernicious ruling, which Justice John Roberts defended by saying, “Our country has changed,” opened the barn door of voter disenfranchisement and let all the ghost horses of Jim Crow run loose again.
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  • Consequently, the conservative lament about the dangerous feds who are working to “take control over state elections” (watch the CBN link above) is ahistorical malarkey. The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government supervisory and enforcement power over every state proposal for a change in its election laws. What is happening now is the step-by-step destruction of that crucial supervision. Do we really need another reminder of the many ways Southern states effectively denied their African-American citizens the right to vote? Excuse me, but John Roberts is a bone-head. No, it is clear that America has not changed, Justice Roberts.
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  • Republicans recognize that there is a direct correlation between the numbers of people who vote in an election and the likelihood that they will lose. Donald Trump admitted this himself during his reelection campaign, acknowledging that if everyone was allowed to vote, Republicans would never win another election. It is not rocket science to figure out that the current slate of voter restriction proposals is intended to suppress citizens’ access to the voting booth. These bills are being called “the new Jim Crow” for very good reasons. The Republican party is working to ensure that they will not lose the next presidential election, pure and simple.
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  • Finally, ALL of these voter restriction proposals are premised on a lie. Time and again Republicans defend their odious proposals as admirable efforts to “protect v0ter integrity.” They then proceed as if Trump’s mountain of lies about significant, nation-wide “voter fraud” were all accurate and substantiated. In other words, these voter suppression proposals are being offered to correct a non-existent, mythical problem. (Read the latest report identifying this problem written by a Republican state legislator in Michigan). They are a modern, political equivalent of medieval practice of blood-letting — let’s kill the patient with a thousand cuts while pretending that we are doctors!
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The leaders in the Republican party continue to march towards authoritarianism, proving day after day that they really do not believe in democracy or the right of every citizen to vote.


Now, the US Supreme Court is helping them.

	


	





	

		
		
Col. Andrew Bacevich, “Donald Rumsfeld Was a Disaster”
	


	
	
	

		
Andrew Bacevich offers a candid obituary of former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who died this week. Bacevich speaks with a level of moral


Andrew Bacevich


clarity that you will not find in the main stream outlets which specialize in the hagiography of establishment figures.


Bacevich is the president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He’s a retired colonel and Vietnam War veteran. He is also professor emeritus of international relations and history at Boston University and author of several books. His most recent book, just out, is titled After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed. In May, he wrote a piece for The Boston Globe headlined “My son was killed in Iraq 14 years ago — who’s responsible?”


I have read a number of Bacevich’s books and they have all been informative, historically astute, and prophetic in their conclusions. I highly recommend anything Col. Bacevich writes.


He is also a devout Roman Catholic whose Christian faith informs his perspective on life and international relations. He cares deeply about everyone’s humanity, and so, is regularly a critic of US policies overseas.


Take a few moments to hear the truth about Rumsfeld’s legacy. It ain’t pretty. The video is approximately 18 minutes long. Below is Bacevich’s summary of Rumsfeld’s legacy:


Donald Rumsfeld


I don’t expect that there’s going to be any revision of Donald Rumsfeld’s reputation in the future. He was a catastrophically bad and failed defense secretary who radically misinterpreted the necessary response to 9/11, and therefore, caused almost immeasurable damage to our country, to Iraq, to the Persian Gulf, more broadly. And I don’t think there’s any way to disguise that.