I admit upfront that the title of my piece is obscure except for the most ardent film buffs. What does Donna Brazil have to do with "Sofia?" My Sofia refers to the character Oprah Winfrey played in the Steven Spielberg movie, The Color Purple. Sofia was a bad ass black woman who would not take a beating, willfully, from anyone, especially men.
Sofia is the type of assertive woman that Celie is not. She won’t back down from a fight and if anybody picks on her, she beats them twice as hard as they give it to her. Celie admires this quality, but often times it just causes Sofia trouble. Her assertive nature tends to rub white people the wrong way.
In addition to her assertiveness, Sofia is also extremely honest and willing to act on her emotions. When she struggles, she says so. When somebody hurts her, she says so. When she’s mad, she acts on it. This is also, of course, what gets her in trouble. Celie never emulates Sofia, but Sofia serves as a visible reminder that Celie doesn’t have to take everything lying down, she can learn to stand up and fight.
In light of Donna Brazil's verbal and written assault on the Clinton Empire, I can think of no better character example of her actions than that of Sofia. First, Donna and Sofia look alike. Here's Oprah as Sofia:
And here's Donna:
Something certainly has riled Ms. Donna up and steeled her for brawling with the Clinton machine. She does not appear willing to back down. She is trashing Hillary as an absentee candidate who, per Donna/Sofia, operated on cruise control and she also takes shots at President Too Cool for School Obama for his complete disinterest in raising money for the DNC. She, Ms. Donna, paints a picture of a dysfunctional clown show pretending to be a national political party with a purpose and sense of mission.
If you did not get a chance to see Donna today with George Stephanopoulos, here is the transcript. The Democrats, believe it or not, are accusing Donna of collaborating with the Russians. Yep, she's now just another puppet of Putin:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let's get some facts on the table first.
As DNC chair, you didn't have the power on your own to replace Hillary on the ticket?
BRAZILE: No. But as you well know, the charter of the DNC as well as the convention rules say that the chairperson, shall, in consultation with the leadership in congress and others, and so I had to put in on the the table, George, because I was under tremendous pressure after Secretary Clinton fainted to have a quote, unquote, plan B.
I didn't want a plan B. Plan A was great for me. I supported Hillary and I wanted her to win. But we were under pressure.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So how serious was this? You write that you got a call from Vice President Biden at the time. Did you mention this to the vice president?
BRAZILE: No, I did not.
I mean, look, everybody was called in to see, do you know anything? How is she doing? And of course my job at the time, George, was to reassure people, not just the vice president, but also reassure the Democratic Party, the members of party, that Hillary was doing fine and that she would resume her campaign the following week.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you still think that Biden and Booker would have won?
BRAZILE: Well, you know, I had a lot of other combinations. This was something you play out in your mind. But at the time, I was sitting next to Charlie Baker, who was her chief…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Clinton's campaign.
BRAZILE: That's right. And Charlie and I put down — we had a lot of rumors coming — I had the former chair of the DNC call me, Donald Fowler Jr. — I mean Senior — what are you doing?
Look, the bottom line is she — she resumed campaigning. I went on TV to say that the campaign was back on track.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As you can imagine, there's been quite a reaction to this, including this open letter from the Hillary for America 2016 team signed by about 100 people. They say they are shocked to learn that you were considering this. And they go on to say, "it is particularly troubling and puzzling that she would seemingly buy into false Russian fueled propaganda spread by the Russians and our opponent about our candidate's health.
BRAZILE: Well, George, at the time — like I said, I talked with Charlie Baker. But as it relates to that…
STEPHANOPOULOS: Did you mention this idea to him?
BRAZILE: No. I kept my own counsel. I'm the chair of the party, George, and I decided I wanted to be up front with someone inside the campaign. And Charlie was there sitting across from me.
But let me just address what my former colleagues, I wasn't a staff person. I did not work for the Hillary Clinton campaign. I was not on their daily strategy calls. I had nothing to do with their data analytics. I was the chair of Democratic National Committee. I was concerned about the entire party, not just the presidential, but the senatorial, congressional, and all of the other candidates.
STEPHANOPOULOS: From the sound of it, it sounds like you had a pretty dysfunctional relationship with the high command in Hillary's campaign. You even talk about telling them at some point I'm not patsy the slave?
BRAZILE: Oh, George, let me tell you something, I could not control the — the purse string of the Democratic Party. And I had to figure out what was going on within the party that the chair of the party — and remember, I wasn't just the chair, I'm also a vice chair. I was an officer for eight years, eight years under President Obama. I knew what was going on within the party.
I become chair and I'm trying to write a check for something. I raised the the money and they're like, you have got to get signed off from Brooklyn. I said Brooklyn? This wasn't a standard joint fundraising agreement. They had a memorandum of understanding. And I needed to break that, but in order to break it, I would cause a great commotion.
So, yeah, I'm not patsy the slave because I got sick and tired of people telling me how to spend the money when all I was trying to do — I wasn't getting a salary. I was basically volunteering my time. And what I was trying to do, George, was to increase the level of enthusiasm and passion for Hillary Clinton and the rest of the ticket all across the country.
STEPHANOPOULOS: They also take exception to your description of the campaign right now as an anti-septic, sterile campaign inside the headquarters. A lot of people saying that is not the campaign they knew.
BRAZILE: Well, you know what, they should take a page from Hillary's book. Take a look inside of what they did last year and then they should write their own book. Hillary wrote a book, which I enjoyed reading. It was part memoir, it was a history book. I loved reading her book. If they don't like my book, don't buy it.
But let me say this, I have every right as a former chair of the party — next year, I'll celebrate almost 50 years in American politics. The Democratic Party is 170 years old.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I get that. But how do you respond, it's not just the Clinton campaign. There's a lot of traffic on Twitter right now. I have gotten emails from Democrats.
BRAZILE: I bet.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Passionate Democrats who say they feel betrayed by all this. Any regrets?
BRAZILE: Do I regret taking on a job the second time in my life as chair of the party, cleaning up everyone's mess, taking all of the incoming, being unable to spend funds that I raised? Do I regret being on the road 100 percent of the time, being hacked by the Russians, being — being harassed, getting death threats? Do I regret any of that? George, was worse than Hurricane Katrina in terms of the emotional toll. But do I regret stranding up for what is right, helping Hillary Clinton, helping the Democratic Party?
And let me just say this, as somebody who went through the hacking experience, being able to tell the truth about what happened with the Russians, the attack on our government do I regret any of that? No. I wish I could have done more, George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But do you think this helps for the book to come out?
BRAZILE: Well, George, I mean this is a lesson of 2016. If I released it next year, they would say, Donna, you're impacting our 2018. If I released it the following — Donna, you're impacting. George, for those who are telling the me to shut up, they told Hillary that a couple of months ago. You know what I tell them, go to hell. I'm going to tell my story. I'm going the tell my story, George.
Because this is a story of a young girl who started in American politics at the age of 9, who continues to fight each and every week of her life. I went down to Virginia last week, to kick off the canvassing campaign. Nobody paid me to do that. Nobody — I'm not on the payroll, George. I care about my country. I care about our democracy.
And I say go the hell because, why am I supposed to be the only person that is unable to tell my story?
Now, if — I have heard a lot of people tell me various things as well. But here's what they don't know. They don't know what it was like to be over at the DNC during this hacking. They don't know what it's like to bury a child. I did, Seth Rich. They don't know what it's like to protect a staff from further harassment. They don't know what it's like because they're — the high command of Brooklyn. The people who were making the decisions, even for the DNC, they didn't come and work with us. They told us to shut up and basically let them win the election. And when we tried to intervene, we had to spend money we raised to try to help them win. And that was my job as chair of the party.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Pretty clear you have no regrets at all right there.
I suppose Donna, deep in her soul, is ashamed of the role/roles she played in enabling the dysfunction that was Hillary Clinton. Passing her debate questions was wrong and probably helped Hillary a tad in besting Bernie the Socialist. But don't let the Clinton/Democrat establishment counter attack fool you. Hillary ran a crappy campaign. She clearly felt entitled to the title of President. All she had to do was show up. Donna's critique highlights the troubling fact that the Hillary campaign was a facade and a charade. There was no there there other than her claim, "I ain't Donald Trump."
One of the key takeaways from this latest episode of the Donna Brazil show is that the Democrats are still flogging the anti-Russian hysteria rather than accept the reality that the only person responsible for Hillary losing the Presidency is Hillary. As long as this state of denial persists the Democrats will continue to fail to adopt the reforms that would put them into a position to regain their political footing as a national force. They will remain divided and unfocused. That is good news for Trump. If the economy keeps growing and he stays out of new wars, the road for a second term should be smooth.
Oh man, Hillary falls on her face in the street and gets ignominiously loaded into a van like a sack of potatoes – and we all see the video – and it’s all Russian lies that there’s something wrong with her health? It wasn’t even the first time she’d fallen – and not the last. Recently she fell and appeared with a cast on her lower leg. Do the Democrats not understand how much they insult those of us still capable of objective analysis?
BTW, I still say with conviction that if she had won the election she’d be dead by now. The pressure would have finished her off. I digress….
Only a fully indoctrinated zombie can really believe that an old woman that falls on her face in the street could be POTUS. Agree that Brazile must feel guilty for her role in continuing the charade that Hillary could be a good fit for the office; a charade that was obvious to a lot of us and that obviousness of which helped elect Trump.
I don’t think we should get carried away writing a hagiography for Donna Brazil. She wouldn’t be leaking had Hillary won. Zero chance! But because she lost, the DNC has to cut off the Clinton tumour for good…enter Donna Brazil to draw first blood. She and the DNC realize how their interests have shifted.
This won’t be the first left-wing circular firing squad we’ll see. With a reinvigorated right ascendant, the dysfunction which affects people on the ‘wrong side of history’ is beginning to migrate from the right to the left.
Tacitus,
For what it is worth, I am under the impression that Donna Brazile has suddenly come around to her position because she and others (so far unnamed) in the Democratic Party are beginning to realize that the Obama years were a completely wasted opportunity for the advancement of the party’s honestly left wing leaning members, and that to continue on the same path with the likes of Hillary Clinton would be suicidal. I believe she and others are embarking on a course to finally put a nail in the coffin of the Clinton machine.
Personally, I long ago gave up expecting anything constructive to emerge from the Clinton or Obama political machines. So I am overjoyed with her attack (assuming full well, that like other members of the political establishment her actions have probably been motivated by a personal quest for power).
Nevertheless, good riddance to Hillary and Bill. Just please do not give us Biden.
The whole “Putin puppet” thing has spun off into self parody. Brazile’s response to the accusation was weak. It kind of reminds me of the stories of the Moscow show trials where the object of the trial remained a zealous adherent to the party line as they went off to the gulag – no injustice could shake their faith or their willingness to denounce others undergoing the same injustice.
Tacitus, I would further like to add that before we get carried away with worrying about Russian meddling conspiracies we (the body politic) need to take responsibility for what we have wrought over the last fifty years.
I am not just thinking about Clinton, Obama and Trump.
We all (Left and Right) have a responsibility to tone down the rhetoric and start working for the common good (not just the good of one group over another).
So George Stephanopoulos is interviewing the DNC Chair who says she felt under pressure to initiate a process to replace Clinton as their candidate, and he doesn’t ask “from where” she was feeling such pressure, or just WHO else was talking about the need to have a Plan B, or even the nature of her medical condition that was causing (at least for Brazile, among other persons) such cause for concern? Just what WAS going on with Hillary Clinton? This would seem to be such an obvious question for an ostensible “journalist” to ask. But instead of probing for an answer in real time, the Clintonistas respond, later, that Brazile’s brain must have been infected by The Russians.
“Clown show” is correct, and the circus clearly runs wide and deep.
“she also takes shots at President Too Cool for School Obama for his complete disinterest in raising money for the DNC.”
I thought it was pretty widely known that Obama saw the DNC as a tool for the Clintons. That is why he ran his own separate organization.
Steve
I agree completely with your analysis here. I very much doubt that Brazile would be writing what she has in recent days without some significant encouragement from some major power players in the Dem Party.
Many inside the Dem Party know that Hillary lost because Hillary is one of the worse national candidates ever. She has that unique ability to give a pep talk to 1000 people including 500 supporters and afterwards there are only 480 who support her. That is why the Dem pros didn’t let her campaign in Michigan and Wisconsin late in the campaign — they could see every time she addressed a crowd her support shrunk.
But in the short term Brazile will have to face the wrath of the Hillary fanatics. Stephanopoulos is one. It will be unpleasant for her but I do believe there are some very powerful back room players that are supporting her one way or the other. Their only goal is to make Hillary go away — Hillary’s recent book tour has convinced them that Hillary thinks she can win the Dem Party nomination in 2020. And the fact that there are 20 million women in the Dem party who are fanatical Hillary supporters it might even be true that she could win. That would be a disaster that would take decades, if at all, to recover from.
It was not widely known that the DNC was a Hillary tool in 2009 because it most certainly was not. Howard Dean was DNC chair until Obama won and then fired him and dismantled his efforts to build the Dem party in all 50 states and to contest down ballot races. Between 2009 and 2016 Bill and Hillary worked full time to take over the DNC. They finally succeeded once DWS became chair. It was never clear to me why Obama allowed this to happen. Probably because he really did not care about the Dem Party other than seeing it as a tool to gain power. As other narcissists Obama doesn’t care about principles that do not include themselves directly.
I might jump out the window if I believed that was in the cards !
Obama cared only about Obama and that was very clear to anyone who chose to look.
PT,
Thanks for a great read on a night when I could not sleep because of events in TX.
The comment thread has been great, too.
I wonder if the Democratic Party has finally reached the point that my front yard landscaping has reached: it was time to take it out and create something new. The bushes were so overgrown and ugly, the 80’s style lava rock and railroad ties were just too ugly and had never been as cool as everyone thought at the time.
But back to the Dems. The 1988 primaries and then the 1992 primaries were so very strange, if you ask me. It was not until Obama won that I finally realized I was no longer a Democrat. But even back then, I remember writing in Bullwinkle the Moose as my candidate on the primary ticket for 1992.
There is just no clear economic position that the Democrats want to promote. Bernie’s surprising run as a Socialist frightens me. It’s just too junior high school thinking.
Hillary and Obama with their One World Government ideas are even more idiotic.
Poor Donna Brazile–she’s clinging to her nine-year-old self and thinking the issues and the times have not changed. She’s experiencing cognitive dissonance.
But I thank her for coming forward with her truth, as she sees it. And I’m so very happy that her truth has shed light on the clown show that is not only the Clinton Machine but also includes the Obama shadow puppet show.
The Democrats need to do some serious soul-searching, just as the Republicans are being forced to do with their Trump Presidency.
I hope the mess is all cleaned up and rearranged and functioning for my grandchildren when they are old enough to vote. My fear is that when they reach that age, the world will be a far different place for them than it was for us in our ealy adult lives.
“If the economy keeps growing and he stays out of new wars, the road for a second term should be smooth.”
This is the catch 22 for the US. To stay the superpower, the US must initiate wars (if destabilization does not succeed) against countries that use currency other than the US$ for international trade, otherwise the trickle becomes a flood.
That the Clintonists are so loud in their complaints against Brazile suggests to me that they’re hoping that the blessed Ms Hillary will run again in 2020 (with the same result), but if you say that the Clintonists accuse you of being a nutter. So, it looks to me that Brazile is trying to kill off Ms Hillary’s presidential dreams for 2020 without suggesting Ms Hillary’ll stand in 2020. I hope Brazile succeeds.
“Go to Hell.”
Truman couldn’t have said it better.
So I looked up this Bullwinkle character on Wiki. He and his pal had “a shared sense of optimism, persistence and traditional ethics and moral standards.”
Not carping, but I think that was quite a lot to ask a voting machine for back in 1992. Still, all’s well that ends well, though it must have been a long wait for you until Trump came along.
SST;
re: “ They don’t know what it’s like to bury a child. I did, Seth Rich.”
Could somebody enlighten me; just what the hell is this sentence supposed to mean?
Many thanks
Ishmael Zechariah
(and God does love the Infantryman-he made so many of them).
The Democrats are in an odd position. The stock market is soaring and unemployment is plummeting. After years of attributing both to the influence of Obama, they now want to claim they both are in spite of rather than because of Trump. Or, they just try to ignore the stock market and unemployment and hope that no one notices. Or they secretly hope that the stock market plummets and unemployment soars.
Meanwhile they scream about Russia and misogny as a distraction, because Americans care so much more about the Russian threat and how women are treated than they do about their retirement accounts, which consist of stocks, and jobs.
Seth Rich was a young employee murdered, to the extend I recall close to his home in Washington DC, in the larger context of the Russia-hacking gate.
In other words his murder is the basis (not much time to put it better) of the leaks versus hacking theory.
steve, my last uninformed comment on matters. Or for today. Matters I have to look into.
Could Obama have given her her own highly secured Blackberry?
One of our own German conspiracy theorists seems to assume the fact she didn’t get one just like the president did, triggered the whole Hillary, private server, email affair. I have a vague idea about the Obama and his Blackberry meme, although not much basics on the official US procedure in this context.
******
I disliked her campaign against Obama admittedly. Full discovery: the only thing I didn’t understand is why he offered her the position of Secretary of State after.
All:
Ambassador Chas Freeman on Technology, Statecraft, and Unrestricted Warfare
http://chasfreeman.net/technology-statecraft-and-unrestricted-warfare/
Countries sell the US their goods in return for USD as long as the selling country needs USD to purchase oil and other goods it needs only sold in USD…or maybe it wants USD as a buffer.
[As the single national reserve currency, the US must run trade deficits to provide the world with this liquidity. It has to, otherwise it’s credibility as the reserve currency breaks down; if it can’t provide USD, then its status as reserve currency will disappear. This doesn’t appear to be anything the current Republican and Democrat poobahs understand.]
At the moment, all USD sales (including Chinese) are for the most part parked in their treasury securities accounts at the Federal Reserve. The selling country can of course exchange its USD profits on the open exchange to their own currency (or another currency) and wire the money home, but not if the selling country wants USD. By law, no USD can leave the US banking system. So if you want to see the profits that a country like China or Japan made selling us stuff in any given year, just google for the Fed’s Foreign Treasury Securities table. They are right there in black and white.
The US does NOT need to “initiate wars…against countries that use currency other than the US$ for international trade.” What it needs to do (1) is ensure by increasing the welfare and prosperity of its own people, (2) increase wages for the middle class so that (3) purchasing imports is a benefit. The massive US purchases of Chinese goods from 1999-2008 was not the result of the increased worker wages, of a rich middle class benefiting from its good fortune and spending its money. It was massive accumulated private debt paying for those products which came crashing down in Sept 2008 and resulted in the Great Recession.
Contrary to popular belief, exports are a cost to a nation. It uses up a nation’s national resources.
The US may lose its reserve currency status by 2030 as China convinces the rest of the world to retain Yuan instead of USD. China will have to replicate the huge treasury securities daily market (currently over $750 billion daily) to nab reserve status.
In the meantime, of course, there will be trillions of treasury securities in foreign Federal Reserve accounts that will have to be liquidated, so it ain’t like the USA is going to suffer for this except for one thing. It’s going to need the new reserve currency itself to pay for foreign wars (food, fuel, logistics, etcetera). Right now it pays for this stuff with a keystroke. Costs the US zip.
Ms Brazil needs to watch her six, those who have crossed Hillary and Bill have been Arkancided. If she isn’t careful, she will be added to their body count
It may not have been widely known. I didn’t claim that. What I said was that Obama believed that, and in retrospect I think it was probably mostly true.
Steve
Unemployment is decreasing at about the same rate under Trump as it was under Obama. The stock market is also growing at about the same rate. Those are the actual numbers. Trump should get credit for maintaining the rate of improvement.
Steve
IZ, LeaNder,
Among the dedicatees of the book, apparently, is Seth Rich.
From the report in the ‘Bezos blog’ on Saturday:
‘Brazile describes her mounting anxiety about Russia’s theft of emails and other data from DNC servers, the slow process of discovering the full extent of the cyberattacks and the personal fallout. She likens the feeling to having rats in your basement: “You take measures to get rid of them, but knowing they are there, or have been there, means you never feel truly at peace.”
‘Brazile writes that she was haunted by the still-unsolved murder of DNC data staffer Seth Rich and feared for her own life, shutting the blinds to her office window so snipers could not see her and installing surveillance cameras at her home. She wonders whether Russians had placed a listening device in plants in the DNC executive suite.’
(See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/brazile-i-considered-replacing-clinton-with-biden-as-2016-democratic-nominee/2017/11/04/f0b75418-bf4c-11e7-97d9-bdab5a0ab381_story.html?utm_term=.a1d535d6ce59 .)
The murder of Rich is not actually the basis of the ‘leaks versus hacking’ theory.
The merits and demerits of the claims made by the VIPS group – William Binney and others – that a proper analysis of the ‘cyber’ evidence definitively establishes that a leak was at issue have been discussed at length on SST.
For my own part, I think that some of the strongest evidence in favour of the ‘leak’ hypothesis relates to rather neglected subject of the British intervention in your election.
It is, of course, absolutely preposterous that the FBI did not themselves examine the DNC servers, but relied upon an analysis by Dmitri Alperovitch of ‘CrowdStrike.’
This claimed that, although the hackers were masters of their craft, the virtuosity of Alperovitch et al had managed to establish that the GRU were prime suspects.
The day following, the former GCHQ employee Matt Tait claimed that he had initially been sceptical, but had been persuaded when he identified, among other things, ‘Felix Edmundovich’ – founder of the Cheka – in the ‘metadata’ of the materials from ‘Guccifer 2.0.’
If anything had ‘incompetent British info-op’ written over it, it was this. For one thing, how can reconcile Alperovitch’s claim that the GRU hackers were virtuosi, with the suggestion that they were stupid enough to leave such an obvious clue?
And then, even someone with an amateurish interest in Russian history might be expected to be aware that relations between the leaders of the Red Army and the secret police created by that Lithuanian-Polish noble ‘Felix Edmundovich’ were not always cordial. True, the great ethnically Polish general, Rokossovskiy, who had been very brutally tortured by Dzerzhinsky’s people, was not personally involved in heading off his successor Beria’s bid for power.
But Zhukov’s troops frustrated it, Konev headed the tribunal, and Batitsky – personally – shot him. If you have seen your comrades tortured, a few million of your soldiers die, as also civilians, and your country come close to defeat, because of the activities of the secret police, you may be liable to be a bit ‘bitter and twisted.’
It takes people like Christopher Steele to be this ignorant about Russian history.
And indeed, it appears that the Clinton people brought in Steele – fresh from his success in bringing in the corrupt judge Sir Richard Owen to cover up the fact that MI6’s attempts to restore the corrupt oligarchs Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky to power had run out of control, resulting in Litvinenko accidentally ingesting polonium – to try and sort things out.
Involved with the attempts by MI6 to reinstall a ‘comprador élite – Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, and then Browder – in power in Russia was the production of ‘evidence’ designed to demonstrate that terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation etc, could all be laid at the door of the KGB and its supposed successors – Putin and his ‘siloviki’ associates.
As we saw a few days back, people like ‘Mike’ still fall hook, line and sinker for the ‘evidence’ produced by Litvinenko about Russian links to the PKK. (I do not normally quote Pete Seeger, but sometimes one has to say ‘When will they ever learn?)
Unfortunately, on this occasion Steele could no longer rely on his readers being totally gullible – and was clearly in a panic-stricken hurry. So much was this so that the ‘dossier’ for which he was supposedly responsible actually contradicted the versions of Alperovitch and Tait.
Yet more serious, it included preposterous claims which, predictably, produced lawsuits from the Alfa oligarchs (mispelled ‘Alpha’ in the dossier) and Aleksej Gubarev.
The most plausible explanation of the sequence of events involves first, the hypothesis that the DNC materials were obtained by a leak, rather than a hack – and second, the hypothesis that Rich was involved in the leak.
However, it is important to grasp what this does, and does not establish.
1. Particularly if those involved were aware that a leak involving Rich was at issue, even had they been genuinely convinced that his murder was a complete coincidence, they would have had every reason to panic. If this was so, they might have seen few options but to go into ‘full McCarthy’ mode;
2. Even if they believed that the murder was not coincidence, this would not establish that Hillary et al were the only suspects. As has become eminently clear, Democratic Party power structures, in common with many others in the West, are penetrated and infiltrated by all kinds of people from all kinds of places – both by electronic and more traditional, ‘humint-type’ means;
3. If someone wanting to prevent Hillary Clinton’s election, who was aware that Rich had been involved in leaking materials, was looking for a ‘Machiavellian’ strategy – what better than to have Rich assassinated?
It is a characteristic of ‘information operations’ that they commonly seek to, as it were, ‘snooker’ the opponent. And to create a situation where Hillary Clinton could not produce the real ‘alibi’, without admitting to the fact that Rich had had been involved in leaking the DNC materials, could have been a masterstroke.
This would, ironically, have made the Russians possible suspects. And it may indeed be that Donna Brasile suspects this – just as it may be that she suspects the Clintons, and does not want to say so openly.
In this, however, as in much else, I think the Russians are not very likely suspects. I think that Putin et al are scratching their heads, watching the spectacle of Americans descending into the kind of orgy of scapegoating in which their grandparents, or in the case of older people parents, were often involved, on one side or another (if not both) with utter bemusement.
It’s not only a matter of Technology and Statecraft, so called “homo sapiens” LOVES killing and even the risk of being killed just for the adrenaline rush, look at the biggest success in video games:
The Existential Terror of Battle Royale
Well, to be honest, I was a Ted Cruz voter.
But, since you mention Trump, you might also look up the Russians that Dudley Do-Right, Bullwinkle, and Rocky were always having deal with: Natasha and Boris.
DH,
re: ” And it may indeed be that Donna Brasile suspects this – just as it may be that she suspects the Clintons, and does not want to say so openly.”
Thank you for this thoughtful exposition. I have been puzzling over the MO of the Rich murder w/o buying the official narrative- but there is no proof. However there are too many coincidences. I believe we are past the canonical three. Now, if something happens to Brazile in the next few years: attempted robbery, slip-and-fall, traffic accident, heart attack, colitis, suicide, kidnapping by Martians…perhaps we would be past TTG’s level of evidence for reaching a conclusion.
Thanks again
Ishmael Zechariah
Maybe I’m reading too much into it now, but back in February Donna Brazile hinted at something more than just politics or losing the election:
“…There are things we did in 2016 that I’m not proud of,” she said. “I’ve said I’m sorry millions of times, and I’ll continue to say it. I’m a Catholic girl.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/donna-braziles-emotional-farewell-to-dnc-we-came-up-short-i-will-not-sugar-coat-it-230913753.html
If any Democratic Party operatives or leader-thinkers are reading this thread, I say to them this:
Dear DemParty Operatives,
I want the DemParty to be a New Deal Reactionary party. The New Deal was a good deal for most of us. I miss my New Deal. I want my New Deal back.
If you nominate another evil Clintonite or another filthy Obamazoid, I will vote for Trump all over again.
If you nominate a bland nobody, then I will at least be free to vote for a Protest Candidate.
steve,
I wonder how useful these numbers even are. Since “unemployment” numbers are based on people without jobs who are actively countable as looking for work, the people who have given up on even looking any more are not counted.
A truer number might be the number of people who “could be” working versus the number of people who actually are working. That would give a picture of actual jobs growth.
This is facinating and it makes a lot of sense. Can you point me to any sources that could back any of this up?
“And indeed, it appears that the Clinton people brought in Steele – fresh from his success in bringing in the corrupt judge Sir Richard Owen to cover up the fact that MI6’s attempts to restore the corrupt oligarchs Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky to power had run out of control, resulting in Litvinenko accidentally ingesting polonium – to try and sort things out.”
“Involved with the attempts by MI6 to reinstall a ‘comprador élite – Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, and then Browder – in power in Russia was the production of ‘evidence’ designed to demonstrate that terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation etc, could all be laid at the door of the KGB and its supposed successors – Putin and his ‘siloviki’ associates.”
MRW
I doubt the Chinese currency will ever be world’s reserve currency: China has enough political problems of its own (Xi has supposedly become nominally the most powerful Communist Party chief in decades, which means, in practice that all heck is about to break loose over the top spot in China, I think. Chinese leaders don’t try to assume all the formal power if they have enough informal power to spare.) What’s more likely is that countries will try to hoard apolitical assets, like gold. This has depressing (in multiple senses) economic implications written all over it.
MRW – you know your way round this stuff and I don’t, so I’m (again) diffident about disagreeing with you but –
1. It is the underlying flow of goods and services that (in the long term) determines whether an economy is viable.
If the flow is not balanced then the fact that a currency is the reserve currency offers a breathing space but it does not offer a solution. The only true solution is to produce more and buy less.
This is why the Trump presidency is so important. He knows that in its international trading America must produce more and buy less. There were indications during his campaign that he is aware the breathing space is running out. If he can use whatever breathing space is left to get the American economy viable again he will have succeeded. If he runs out of time, or can’t get the economy right, he will have failed. It’s on a knife-edge and this is why we should all, Americans and non-Americans alike, be holding our breath and hoping he makes it.
2. There is a school of thought among economists that says this is all nonsense. Particularly in the case of a reserve currency it’s thought that printing money is merely a question of sophisticated book-keeping. I’m afraid that’s not true. If it were, then why not print a heap of currency and buy a few thousand bridges from China to upgrade derelict American infrastructure? Just pay for the stuff “with a keystroke”. If it would “cost the US zip”, why not?
You know why not. There are limits, even with a reserve currency. I think you and I would agree on that, even if we may not agree on where precisely those limits are.
The Colonel’s been very generous with his space on this subject in the past so perhaps here is not the place to repeat or to expand previous arguments. I do think though, certainly in Europe and maybe in America too, that the arguments about Trump’s style, and the bitter political infighting going on at the moment both sides of the Atlantic, obscure that fact that now is make or break time for the Western economies. If it’s not used right we’re going to look back on this time and bitterly regret how we frittered it away in inconsequential disputes.
There are other serious problems too. We can’t not be aware of them given that we’re both readers of this site; but I think we’re both also aware that this underlying economic problem is urgent and cannot be ignored or magicked away with make-believe economic prescriptions.
iirc, Clinton would not concede to Obama – who needed to raise money and start campaigning against McCain… I always assumed she was promised the SOS position if she would accept the inevitable. On the flip-side, Obama didn’t have any problem with his cabinet being selected for him… who knows?
I would never, under any circumstances vote for Trump. However, with to the rest of your comment I say: RIGHT ON!!!
MRW
Thanks for your reply. You mention the offshoring of manufacturing.
Manufacturing is or has generaly been an advanced country’s largest source of employment. Without work, how do people pay for imported goods? With the offshoring of manufacturing, western countries talk of service based economy for employment but this I consider a parasitic industry. Services are required but only in amounts for service the agriculture/manufacturing and technology sectors which actualy produce goods.
Re trade, import export. Goods that an entity has an abundance of, have always been traded for other goods that a scarce, but are abundant elsewhere. This should be the basis of any trade.
In looking at the US now, I have the impression of someone who has sold the family farm by offshoring manufacturing, and pinned its hopes on ponzi schemes and maintaining the US$ as global trade currency.
David E. Solomon,
I can understand your distaste at the concept of voting for Trump. To me, Clinton presented a very special case. We had to stop the Clinton before it killed again, and the only way I could think of to do my little part in that was to vote for Trump. So that is what I did.
The Democratic Party has to be declintaminated and disobamafied. If that can’t be achieved, then it has to be exterminated. To me, voting for Trump and if necessary voting for Trump after Trump after Trump is the only thing I can do to help disinfect the party or if it can’t be disinfected, then exterminate it.
What interests me is that she appears to have bought into the “Russian hack” story. Either that or she is still involved in promoting it for her own reasons.
Since the DNC emails were a leak, not a hack, the question remains as to how the Clinton campaign managed to pull off this hoax. Given that the DNC refused to allow the FBI to investigate the alleged hack, how is it that Brazile has no knowledge of the fact that the hack was a hoax? Did the Clinton campaign and their officers in the DNC keep Brazile in the dark about the collusion between the campaign, the DNC and CrowdStrike?
Because there is no question that someone high up in the DNC had to collude with the Clinton campaign to cover up the fact that the hack was a false flag hoax intended to deflect from the leak and to tar and feather Trump with being Russia’s “useful idiot.”
If Sy Hersh is right and there is an FBI report that explicitly asserts Seth Rich was the source (or one of the sources) of the DNC leak, then that implies a full-scale coverup including the FBI, the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and CrowdStrke – and possibly others including Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian Embassy, and parties in Ukraine.
A real investigation into this end of things would HAVE to be seriously revealing. It’s doubtful that a conspiracy of this magnitude could be totally made invisible to a serious investigation.
But if the FBI is compromised, as it appears, who’s going to do the investigation?
>>> Bernie’s surprising run as a Socialist frightens me. It’s just too junior high school thinking.
Odd you would say that. Everything he suggests is working well in some part of the world–much of it in many parts.
I guess the problem is the ‘rest of the world’ is still in junior high school, and Americans are the true adults.
Pacifica,
How is socialism working in Venezuela or Zimbabwe?
>>>Goods that an entity has an abundance of, have always been traded for other goods that a scarce, but are abundant elsewhere.
I think what MRW was thinking of, here, is the fact that in colonized economies, commodities are extracted even though there is a conspicuous lack of goods and services. Thus, basic resources are exploitatively extracted in ways that do not serve the society’s/nation’s overall economy, which is a net expense. Meanwhile, the colonizing power processes those resources to create an abundance of products which it then exports to whatever group can pay for it. With the decline in manufacturing, its ratio of commodity-to-manufacturing exports has increased significantly, thus
Just an observation: in the 90s and 00s, exported products the world over notably withered in terms of quality and longevity; waves of style and fashion increased their periodicity, while the substance and utility of those exports steadily declined–Ikea, Wal-Mart, etc. There are very few objects purchased, these days, that are capable of lasting long enough to serve as an heirloom, or that may be disassembled and re-applied to build something else. Pretty much everything winds up in a landfill in a matter of years, if not months.
Yap.
And unemployment doesn’t measure under-employment, where people are working a job, but one that doesn’t pay them enough, and where their capabilities as a worker are under-utilized.
I know a lot of computing engineers who are working 15-20 hours a week as an engineer, and the rest of the time pushing burgers and mowing lawns.
FouthAndLong,
HRC might push you. Which makes me rethink what happened to Ron Brown since she had flown over there a week before he did. Oh, and Donna became terrified about the death of Seth rich and what might happen to her.
Ishmael,
Colitis?!? LOL!! Yes, I’m watching too.
>>>What interests me is that she appears to have bought into the “Russian hack” story. Either that or she is still involved in promoting it for her own reasons.
It could well be that she’s just playing along to make her personal account of the Clintonites’ dirty deeds more appealing to Clinton’s and Podesta’s hard-core supporters.
Regardless if she does actually believe or not, it’s simply not in her interest to fight that particular point, and entirely in her interest to just let it be. What I found surprising was her mention of Seth Rich; as Habakkuk pointed out above, there is no reason to assume that Rich was murdered as retaliation for leaking the e-mails; yet Brazile must know that for a lot of people out there, that is precisely what the conclusion has been. Thus, her bringing up Rich’s murder–which has been forgotten, I think, by most core Democrats (but I may be wrong about that)–on a national news program was a big surprise, for me.
Richardstevenhack,
“If Sy Hersh is right and there is an FBI report that explicitly asserts Seth Rich was the source (or one of the sources) of the DNC leak”
Sy Hersh never confirmed this as anything but gossips. So does not matter how often you’ve repeated this disinformation, it will not be a fact.
Sylvia,
A good starting point is a piece of mine posted here on SST immediately following the publication of Owen’s report, and the subsequent exchanges of comments.
(See http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/01/david-hakkuk-on-sir-robert-owens-inquiry.html .)
At the end of the post, I link to three pieces which my collaborator David Loepp and I posted on his page on the ‘European Tribune’ site in December 2012 – see http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:46/diary . His research opened up the critical Italian end of the story, which none of the – utterly useless – MSM journalists had attempted seriously to explore, in so doing establishing the crucial role of the ‘information wars’ about ‘suitcase nukes’ getting into the hands of terrorists in the whole affair.
In turn, these pieces link to earlier ones by him and myself.
Almost all the material we discussed, and a great deal more, was made available to me in memoranda to Owen’s team, which I was informed were read. So it can be demonstrated very easily that his decision to ignore the problems our researches raised was deliberate.
On the role of Christopher Steele I have commented extensively here on SST, and also occasionally on Paul Robinson’s ‘Irrussianality’ blog and the ‘Unz Review’ site. Comments will come up if you Google ‘ “David Habakkuk” “Christopher Steele”’.
Briefly. What seems generally agreed is that Steele headed the Russia Desk at MI6 between 2005 and 2009 – also the period when Sir John Scarlett, instrumental in creating the famous ‘dodgy dossier’, which played a crucial role in facilitating the disastrous invasion of Iraq, headed the organisation.
When in January the BuzzFeed dossier was first published, and Steele credited as author, it was reported in the ‘Telegraph’ that he had been ‘selected as case officer for the FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko, whose state-sponsored assassination in 2006 affected him deeply.’
(See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/01/12/christopher-steelethe-former-british-spy-created-donald-trump/ .)
However, people seem to have got leery about emphasising the Litvinenko connection. Following Steele’s reappearance in March, a report in the ‘Guardian’ co-authored by Luke Harding concluded:
‘Several of the lurid stories about him that have appeared in the press have been wrong, said friends. The stories include claims that Steele met Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident who was murdered in 2006 with a radioactive cup of tea, probably on Putin’s orders.
‘As head of MI6’s Russia desk, Steele led the inquiry into Litvinenko’s polonium poisoning, quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot. He did not meet Litvinenko and was not his case officer, friends said.’
(See https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/mar/07/former-mi6-agent-christopher-steele-behind-trump-dossier-returns-to-work .)
The phrase about Steele ‘quickly concluding that this was a Russian state plot’ is utter rubbish, and Harding should know this. In my SST post, I detailed briefly the way in which the claims about how the vehicle(s) on which Litvinenko travelled into London on the day he was supposedly poisoned, and how the vehicle was identified and found to be clear of contamination, changed.
In the early stages of Owen’s hearings, it became clear that, on the basis of interviews supposedly conducted by then Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt with Litvinenko shortly before his death, a completely new version of this journey was being presented by Counter Terrorism Command.
So we ended up with a sequence: From car, to No 134 bus identified by a £1.50 ticket, to No 134 bus identified by Oyster Card, to 134 bus identified by Oyster Card together with tube, to No 234 bus identified by Oyster Card together with tube. In itself, the changing stories – most of which were discussed by me in submissions to Owen’s team – generate the strongest possible of ‘prima facie’ cases that the interviews, and the forensic evidence which supposedly supports central claims made in them, are both forgeries.
Following the presentation of the new version to the Inquiry, I wrote to the journalists who have been involved in the earlier mutually contradictory reports, pointing out the inconsistency. Shortly before my discussion on SST was posted, I wrote to Luke Harding and his colleagues at the ‘Guardian’, providing detailed chapter and verse about the way that the claims made to journalists had changed.
Again, I know that the materials were noted, but no attempt was made by any of those involved was made either to modify or to defend the paper’s unquestioning adherence to the MI6 line.
As for my suggestion that Steele was intimately involved in ‘rigging’ the Inquiry, this is, I admit, supposition. However, there is every reason to believe that he was very closely involved in the ‘information operations’ practised by people in the circles around Berezovsky and the Yukos oligarchs – in particular Litvinenko, Yuri Shvets, and Mario Scaramella.
A central purpose of these was to counter suggestions by Putin that Russia and the West had a common interest in combating jihadist terrorism by claiming that this ‘overt’ agenda concealed a ‘covert’ agenda of sponsoring precisely such terrorism. A key part of this was the forging of evidence designed to show that the notorious Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich, while acting as an agent of the FSB and under Putin’s personal ‘krysha’, had been attempting to obtain a ‘mini-nuclear bomb’ (aka ‘suitcase nuke’) for Al Qaeda.
It is amply clear that precisely the figures who were involved in these attempts, in one way or another, were deployed by Steele in the ‘cover-up.’ In essence, Owen’s Inquiry provided a forum for the group to provide amended versions of the dubious claims they had made earlier, without any attempt whatsoever at critical cross-examination.
By the time the Inquiry opened, however, Berezovsky – the key figure – was dead. As is clear from submissions from his lawyers, he had been requested by the Inquest team to provide a fresh witness statement by 22 March 2013.
(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090719/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2012/12/Berezovsky-11.3.13-50092292_1.pdf .)
As part of the campaign by to salvage their prospects in the libel suits which the dossier have provoked, BuzzFeed produced, back in June, a series of pieces whose centrepiece was entitled ‘From Russia With Blood: 14 Suspected Hits On British Soil That The Government Ignored.’
(See https://www.buzzfeed.com/heidiblake/from-russia-with-blood-14-suspected-hits-on-british-soil?utm_term=.lr8kvlMq6#.ojO6DAJEO .)
Of the deaths supposedly to be laid at the door of the Russians, I dealt in the exchanges of comments on the original SST post with those of the Menatep lawyer Stephen Curtis, Berezovsky’s long-term partner – and Lugovoi’s patron – Arkadi ‘Badri’ Patarkatsishvili, and Berezovsky himself.
As to the last, if his death the day after he was supposed to provide a witness statement was not suicide – which it may have been – to say that the ‘cui bono’ arguments to do not point to Putin is something of an understatement.
In addition to the fact that at this time the Russian authorities would have been licking their lips at the prospect of cross-examining him at the Inquest, we know that he was negotiating with Putin for a return to Russia.
As it happens, Berezovsky’s former head of security, Sergei Sokolov, did return to Russia, bringing with him what puported to be a cache of documents which, among other things, was supposed to establish that William Browder was the agent of an MI6 destabilisation plot, in which Navalny played a key role.
As Gilbert Doctorow brought out in an invaluable discussion in April 2016, these documents are far from problem-free.
(See http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/agent-william-f-browder-smoking-gun/ri13858 .)
However, the conventional wisdom about the Magnitsky affair which Browder has so assiduously disseminated is clearly claptrap. At this point, moreover, given the involvement of Fusion GPS in this, we come sharply up against some very odd puzzles in relation to the dossier.
This morning, I learnt that Harding is once again acting as a conduit for Steele’s ‘information operations.’ A report on the ‘Publishers Weekly’ site which opened:
‘Just as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion begins issuing its first indictments, Penguin Random House plans to release Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win by Luke Harding, a book that claims to offer new details on the ongoing controversy over foreign meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
‘The new book, which Harding began writing in January, will be published by Vintage Books on November 16.’
We also learn that:
‘Harding also claims to have met with Christopher Steele, the former MI6 British intelligence officer behind the infamous dossier on Donald Trump’s tainted Russian connections, in a London pub in December 2016 before the dossier’s existence was revealed.’
(See https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/promotionalss/article/75310-vintage-to-release-collusion-a-new-book-on-trump-russia-controversy.html .)
This, at least, is extremely probable. And it gives further reason to suppose that we may be dealing with a coordinated conspiracy, involving leading figures in the ‘intelligence communities’ on both sides of the Atlantic, and corrupt journalists, to cover up what they have done, by means involving the subversion of the constitutional order in the United States.
I am not at all sure that this piece can be copied here, but I will give it a try: From This Morning’s Globe and Mail:
============================================================
Opinion
One year later: How Donald Trump ate our brains
Margaret Wente
Margaret Wente
16 hours ago
November 6, 2017
One year ago tomorrow, Americans were flocking to the polls. The entire media establishment was gearing up to declare a Hillary victory. I had dutifully written my column in advance.
Late in the afternoon on election day, my editor called. “What if she doesn’t win?” she asked. I laughed merrily. “Impossible!” I said. She agreed. But she told me to prepare for Plan B, just in case.
Some time after 9 p.m., Hillary lost Ohio. The election party I was at had fallen grimly silent. I beat a hasty retreat to my computer and bashed out Plan B. I hazily recall that it predicted the end of democracy as we knew it.
That was not completely off the mark. Since then, like a berserk bull elephant, Donald Trump has been smashing the democratic norms we took for granted. He has flouted every rule of civilized decorum. His tweets have kept his worldwide audience outraged, amused, and mesmerized. The Donald Trump Show is the greatest reality show of all time, and we – to our discredit – are hopelessly addicted. By obsessing over him full-time, we give him exactly what he wants.
Much of the media commentary on Mr. Trump has achieved a sort of numbing repetition. He’s awful! He’s even more awful than you thought! We caught him in his 137th lie! Pundits write these things as if they were a revelation. Every few days they write that Mr. Trump has finally gone too far this time. He went too far with the Muslim travel ban. He went too far when he fired James Comey. This time he’s in real trouble!
But he never is. That’s why you should take the latest Russia revelations with a shovel full of salt. So far, there is no sign that Mr. Trump can or will be legitimately removed from office, even though he will surely cross a line next week too.
Many people predicted that Mr. Trump would become more presidential once he took the oath of office. These people were deluded. Others warned that he’d be the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler. They too were foolish. Mr. Trump is simply a garden-variety populist who wants to use his office to enrich his family fortunes. The main surprise of his first year is that the world has more or less survived him. His authoritarian impulses have been checked by his short attention span and impressive incompetence, as well as by the tendency of courts and government officials to obey the rule of law and ignore instructions they don’t like.
That’s the heartening part. The disheartening part is the utter disarray of both Republicans and Democrats, who seem equally unable to find a way forward. The few Republicans of principle have fled the party (except for John McCain, whose days are numbered), and the others are terrified of alienating the base. The Democrats are busy tearing themselves to shreds. They don’t grasp that identity politics has been the ruin of them. Last week, someone at the Democratic National Committee sent out a memo to recruit new tech talent, requesting that the memo not be shared with “cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.” Which pretty much tells you why the party is in so much trouble.
Who knows what will rise from the ashes of the old-line parties? Right now they both deserve Americans’ contempt. And despite Mr. Trump’s plunging popularity, his platform is still a winner: Stay away from stupid foreign wars, get a grip on immigration, pursue nationalist economic policies, and show a middle finger to the elites. You might not like it. But show me someone with a better one.
That first plank is why I’m not losing so much sleep over North Korea. So long as the deranged dotard and the little rocket man stick to silly name-calling, nuclear war does not seem like that great a threat. The real threat is the void in the international order where American power used to be. Nobody takes the U.S. seriously any more. There is only one great power in the world right now – only one country with visionary leadership, a long-term strategy to build global alliances and influence, a thriving economy, sophisticated military technologies, and a confident, optimistic populace who believe their country’s destiny is to take its place at the centre of the world stage. This country is, of course, China.
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China’s leader, Xi Jinping believes that the United States has lost its leadership, its moral authority and its mind. He’s right. All he needs to do is stand by and watch as the greatest country in the world devours and tweets itself to death.
As for those of us stuck in Trumplandia and its hinterland, there’s only one thing we can do to protect our brains from further rot. Lock the door, draw the curtains, and pull the plug. Do not watch or read the news. Treat ourselves to a nice, long break from the Trump reality show. We probably won’t miss a thing. The show will still be on when we get back.
How about Norway, Fred?
David, don’t misread this feedback. I am aware of the VIPS technical file transfer argument that suggests leaks versus hacking. I forget the anonymous expert’s aka behind it.
*****
But if I may respond from a more personal layer, one of the people that attracted me in the larger early post 9/11 US conspiracy scene, “Bob”, he may have attracted me since his diction was the highest linguistic challenge in the larger context. I spent quite a bit of time in deciphering some of his comments.
He claimed to be a resident of Washington DC, which made me take a closer look, based on his comments. He also claimed to be, or was, an early IT geek.
Up to that date, I had admittedly the more general impression it was the US capital, with no doubt a lot of lobbyists around. More arbitrarily: I am aware of a German merchant of arms that after he officially resigned/retired from his job here in Germany spent quite some time there. I suppose as expert of the larger scene … So to speak unofficially, as far as the firm is concerned. At least it looked like that. Shifting from regular pay to some type of percentage he got for his deals?
But I surely wasn’t aware to what extend some of “Bob’s” more cryptic statements made a lot of sense in the real Washington DC beyond the P.O.S.H. scene, I had no clue about that. He made me take a closer look in my desire tounderstand.
******
In hindsight, I admit, this might have been a good larger context to stage a murder that may never be resolved. But why? What’s the exact time table? Could Donna Basile’s publication tell us anything about that? And how could the “Clintoites” and “Obamacrats” cum Crowd Strike have been involved?
Before we let our imagination fly, that is. 😉
Hard to believe: “George W. Bush Receives a Character Award at West Point” http://www.unz.com/article/duty-honor-atrocity/
Who knows, but there are maybe some fearless and influential patriots among the brass who are ready to spill the beans about the deterioration at the West Point. The words “gutting and renovation” are coming to mind.
Norman
She dedicated her book to Seth Rich. Sure shot at HRC, Wasserman and anyond else who tries to come for her.
Or Taiwan, France, Germany, Italy, or….
Pacifica Advocate,
I remember back during the Clinton Administration period when someone was bragging about the millions of new jobs Clinton had created. I remember replying: ” yes, and someone I know has three of them.”
David E. Solomon,
” Cis-gender straight white males need not apply”, eh? From someone within the DNC, eh?
It would be nice to know the names of the people who wrote and sent that memo. I suspect whoever wrote and sent it was part of the Clintonite conspiracy against Sanders.
At least the risk of nuclear war with Russia is lower than it would be under a President Clinton. At least the Clintonites don’t get to create a jihadi Islamist Emirate in Syria. And let us remember that it was the Free Trade Clintonites in conspiracy with the Free Trade Republicans who got MFN for China passed, and engineered the mass-transfer of thingmaking from America to China to begin with.
But yes. At some point we will have to begin commenting about the details of what the ongoing Trump damage has been and is.
Sy Hersh backtracked for any number of likely reasons:
1) He was caught on tape unbeknownst to himself. Obviously he is not happy.
2) He is working on a “long form journalism” story on the whole Russiagate affair. Obviously he is not happy that the release of the tape may have caused potential media buyers to back off.
3) One of his senior contacts in a US intelligence agency (the FBI or NSA, it’s not clear) may have been compromised by being mentioned in the tape. This could jeopardize ALL of his contacts, on which he depends for his articles. Obviously he is not happy.
The audio tape stands on its own. He doesn’t need to confirm it. All he has done is hand wave to try to shut it down before it does any more damage to his efforts to find out what really happened. This is consistent with his personality as an impatient curmudgeon and someone who suffers fools badly.
The FACT remains that he said what he said and not in a manner of “gossip”.
I agree it was unusual for her to bring up Rich. Personally I have no idea whether Rich was deliberately murdered or not.
On the Sy Hersh tape, he admits he doesn’t know either and supports the idea that it could have been a mugging gone bad.
Given that Hersh said that according to the FBI report, Rich had told others about his actions “in case anything happens to me, it won’t solve their problems”, that’s pretty clearly a suggestion that he feared for his life over the leak.
So it’s natural to immediately suspect deliberate murder based on that alone. But it’s not outside the bounds of coincidence that he wasn’t.
Tell us about Venezuela. I wonder where socialism is working so well. And, I was born in the U.S. instead of in Russia because my great-grandparents, all of them, fled the socialist/communist hordes who were coming into their village and killing people who didn’t agree.
And can you explaing why Bernie’s own wealth, as well as his wife’s, isn’t being voluntarily donated to the common good.
In 2008 when donna was working for backtrack. A young lady that posted on a blog that I went to was e-mailing her. Now we were Hillary fans and not for backtrack. This young lady was planning to vote for the first time. This is an important time in a young person’s life. Finally you are grown up to vote for your choice for a president of the USA. Because this young lady was a Hillary supporter Donna told her ” stay home”. I never forgot that. I have daughters and taught them that it was their job to vote. Too many women over the years fought for women to get that right.
helenk3
So, you would vote for any woman rather than a man. This is very sexist. pl
Donna Brazile is no saint. She threw the 2008 primary to Obama by disqualifying delegates from MI and FL where Hillary was leading.
Plus her political savvy was zero. She was campaign manager for Al Gore. Prior to that she had worked on the campaigns of Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale, Dick Gephardt. All losers. So why did they give her the post of DNC chair? She was no strategist.
Very valid point.
Anna,
A constitutional monarchy.
Pacifica,
You did not answer my question.
tried to read brazile’s “hacks”
but the title says why i only got half way:
she mercilessly kept pounding the russian
hacks BS.
some items why the democrats are worthless: brazile, dean, clintons, obama, biden, debbie shultz, sanders.
the repubs have an equal number why they are equally cesspool material.
only trump, the hated by both parties and the deep blacks, is different.
trump is the change with hope.