" … according to three people with knowledge of the email.
The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.
Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.
There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. The meeting took place less than a week before it was widely reported that Russian hackers had infiltrated the committee’s servers." NY Times
————
Goldstone was not one of the magic three. If that is so, then the magic three are people who had access or have current access to this e-mail message as a result of their public employment. Because this was an e-mail message between two US residents, it must IMO have been collected under a FISA court warrant. What the given justification to the court would have been, I cannot imagine, but I feel certain that the real purpose of the intercept was to surveil the Trump camp for whatever might be useful.
What might the identities be of the magic three? IMO people whose initials are: SR, JB and JC should not be excluded from consideration.
This disclosure by the magic three is IMO a felony. pl
Sir
When will the magic 3 be referred to Mueller who have a growing number of prosecutors on the taxpayer payroll?? Nah! That ain’t gonna happen. Is the NY Times arguing that all presidential candidate oppo researchers should be investigated for meetings with any individuals who may have alleged links to foreign governments?
Does the media campaign and Mueller’s special counsel office spell “witchhunt”?
Colonel,
Yet one more attempt to delegitimize Trump, and I think this, too, will fizzle. However the mud smear campaign is becoming tedious. Do you think the Borg has something significantly bigger she is holding in reserve? How do you see this thing ending?
Ishmael Zechariah
I agree with your take.
I am astonished that the anti-Trump campaign now tries to build something from such dreck.
Some lobbyist offered dirt on Clinton in exchange for a meeting. Lobbyist ad no dirt but took the chance to peddle the cause she was paid for (nice trick). The cause had something to do with businesses related to some private Russian persons.
Meanwhile Clinton associates hired a (former) MI6 agent to actively bribe (former) Russian intelligence people and “Kremlin sources” to invent dirt stories about Trump. The Clinton campaign then actively peddled these fairy tales all over Washington DC.
Which of those cases stinks of collusion with shady Russians?
b
Although not encrypted by other than commercial means, this piece of traffic would have been considered so sensitive politically that the number of recipient people would have very small and well memorialized. It should be very easy to discern the identities. pl
From https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/09/us/politics/trump-russia-kushner-manafort.html:
“three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.”
This seems to have come from within the WH.
kabu
Probably in the Obama Administration. Do you think they are keeping something like this around in the Trump WH? The two outside the WH were probably very high in the IC. pl
Ishmael,
I see it as another part of the assault on the constitutional order. If they can’t get impeachment they will delay all legislation and regulatory action possible and continue to inflame portions of the public in an effort to support such actions. The probability of another assassination attempt like the one made on Congressman Scalise and other members of congress a few weeks ago is going to continue to increase.
Could this be true, or is it Fake?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DEdvukUXoAA2Kla.jpg
Just found this on the NYT website:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/document-Donaldtrumpjr.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
Col.,
no use arguing about facts. Either this was leaked by advisors to the Obama WH or advisors to the Trump WH. Given the history of backbiting and backstabbing in the Trump WH, both are possible. Hopefully the NYT will clarify the vague statement.
freudenschade
IMO the chance of someone in the Trump WH having leaked this is just about zero. pl
dilbert Dogbert
Don’t just send me a bunch of links. Tell me what they say. pl
Trump Jr. Just published the Emails.
Dilbert Dogbert
And? pl
Yes I do. These were Trump campaign emails where Manafort and Kushner were CCed. I am sure many others have copies. I have a much harder time believing that three individuals from the previous WH somehow copied these files and now are spending their days, six months later, not moving on with their lives and careers, but on meetings with NYT and WaPo.
Yes I agree that this is where things are headed. The Jewish globalist elites see the Trump inspired populist movement as an existential threat and will do anything to stop him, even if it means triggering a civil war in the US. These people are going all in and they don’t care about the consequences. The whole thing is pretty surreal.
b
I have now read he DJT Jr. e-mails and you are right. It is “dreck.” and a demonstration of the desperation of the left/Borg here in its efforts to destroy Trumpismo. As you know there is nothing illegal or immoral about collecting opposition information on your political opponents. Both the Republicans and Democrats do it. It is not a crime to receive oppo research and it does not matter from whom you get it. anti-trumpers are tryng to sell the ideas that the meeting was important. It was not, and that the NY Times “dreck” was leaked from the Obama WH. Th is intended to cause fear and loathing among the trump people. both of these things are ridiculous. The real story is the one I pointed to. Someone with the right clearance and access gave this info to the NY Times. We should find them and they should be prosecuted. pl
kabu
You believe tat because you desperately want to believe it. Why would anyone in the Trump WH givea damn about this. There is zero criminality involved and the meeting was not improper. your Democratic buddies do similar things all the time. If you think that bigwigs in the Obama Administration would not remember this e-mail you really are totally blind. Keep this nonsense up. you will lose even worse in 2018 if you do, pl
“Meanwhile Clinton associates hired a (former) MI6 agent to actively bribe (former) Russian intelligence people and “Kremlin sources” to invent dirt stories about Trump.”
Yes, in this case the “Clinton associates”, happen to be the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the CIA along with someone high up in MI6.
And now we are supposed to believe the “consensus of the 17 IC agencies” and of course that Team Mueller is completely impartial.
Sometimes I wonder who are trying to fool whom?
The question is why are the three amigos so confident that they will not face prosecution for their actions.
I noticed in the Project Veritas CNN expose that one of the CNN people said the orders to keep on with the Trump Russia meme was coming from that Zucker fella. A purely commercial decision or is someone giving him an order?
It’s the Jooz!!!!! Surreal isn’t the word for what you are spreading.
I think the emails are garbage that prove nothing BUT there are parts of the emails that could be a problem for Trump, for example, in the first email, Rob Goldstone says:
“The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father.
This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump”
The email sounds like Trump Jr is being asked to collude with a “Russian prosecutor” who has access to “official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary”.
Does that constitute “collusion”??
I’m not a lawyer, but I suspect this is the case they will make.
The NYT was not only told about the Trump junior emails, it was given their content.
The NYT then threatened to publish them. Trump junior preempted that buy publishing them himself.
From the latest NYT piece:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/trump-russia-email-clinton.html
/quote/
After being told that The Times was about to publish the content of the emails, instead of responding to a request for comment, Donald Trump Jr. tweeted out images of them himself on Tuesday.
/endquote/
So who gave the NYT the full emails of Trump junior who was then as now a private person with no government function?
As Pat Lang has noted, this story involving Donald Trump Jr. is a total nothing burger (paraphrasing), although it is ‘fascinating’ that the news broke just as we began learning about Mr. Comey and his problems with leaking classified information.
For those who have not read them, follows are links to the statement by Mr. Trump, Jr. and the email chain.
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789418455953413
– and –
https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/884789839522140166
Follows is a bit of a rant.
As to the ‘outrage’ over this ‘story’ what about the Russian operatives with alleged ties to the Kremlin feeding allegations to a former British spy who was being paid by Mr. Trump’s opponents?
Oh right, since the allegations in the Steele dossier could have hurt Mr. Trump, we are okay with that sort of activity. Those are the ‘good’ Russians. (/sarc)
More to the point, in light of the claims made by the publicist in his email about the Kremlin having evidence of criminal wrongdoing on the part of Mrs. Clinton, will the FBI now get in touch with the Russian Government to ascertain whether there is any truth to these claims and seek to obtain the details?
When will the Democratic party and their media allies accept the election results?
How much longer will Obama loyalists within and outside of the administration leak classified administration for their own political purposes, so causing harm to the national security interests of the United States of America?
Why should the American people give any thought to electing Democratic representatives, given their obvious refusal to accept the will of the people and the peaceful transfer of power?
Okay, end of rant.
Please ask yourself what you would be saying and writing if it was Hillary Clinton meeting a Russian lawyer with links to Putin, about dirt on Trump. Please be completely honest with yourself; I’m not asking you to provide an answer here.
The late writer Gore Vidal, may he rest in peace, described the Sunday New York Times Magazine section as, “the graveyard of American prose.” The rest of the newspaper may not be much better. After glancing at the MSNBC Morning Joe program for a few minutes this morning, and seeing what the distracting topic of the day was going to be, I read the NY Times article about Donald Trump jr and the British tabloid flack Goldstone and “The Russians”.
My first thought also was: who has been intercepting or getting access to, and reading Trump jr’s e-mail messages, and giving them or describing their content to the NY Times newspaper?
The NY Times likes to tap dance around specifics; showing a little cleavage here, a little leg above the knee there, and tries to lead your imagination into filling in the details in the direction the newspaper wants you to go.
Trump jr released the e-mail messages, and they are innocuous. I will not waste time on the pathetic bleating of the politicians, especially those of the Democratic Party, culminating with Senator Tim Kaine’s statement that “this is moving into perjury, false statements, and even into potentially treason”. (Citation deliberately omitted.)
Speaking of foreign countries trying to influence the U.S. presidential election, no one denies that an “Ex” MI6 British agent/spy produced a lurid paper about Donald Trump, claiming, among other things, that he was in the presence of adult Russian females who had not been potty trained as children. That paper was designed to help a different presidential candidate, who was ….
plantman
There is not such crime as “political collusion.” If the state prosecutor wanted to give the Trump campaign information of Hillary he was free to do so and the Trump campaign was free to receive it. in the event DJT Jr. decided they Russians did not have anything worth listening to. pl
So, if there is evidence of Clinton’s “criminality” why isn’t the NYT feverishly working to get that evidence out? Instead the big news is that Junior hired a lawyer.
Do you think the Republicans would actually do that?
I like your sense of humor! We need more of that.
Over at emptywheel, a commentator named “bmaz” (a lawyer) has stated that the allegation of “felony” in your post is without merit. (He uses less terperate language.) Care to comment?
The Borg has decided the country ought to be whipped and stay whipped into a lynch mob fury for the foreseeable future and I am remind of Chuck Schumer’s words of 1/3/17 to MSNBC “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”
“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/312605-schumer-trump-being-really-dumb-by-going-after-intelligence-community
“Moon of Alabama” describes the two cases: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/07/which-campaign-truly-colluded-with-russia.html
Case 1:
A Hillary Clinton campaign cut-out hires the (former?) British intelligence agent Steele to pay money to (former?) Russian intelligence agents and high-level Kremlin employees for dirt about Donald Trump. They deliver some dirty fairy tales. The resulting dossier is peddled far and wide throughout Washington DC with the intent of damaging Trump.
Case 2:
Some lobbyist for Russian business interests contacts the Trump campaign with a promise to deliver some dirt on Hillary Clinton. She meets campaign officials but no dirt on Clinton is offered. Instead the lobbyist uses the time to lobby for the business’ cause. There is no follow up.
Question: Which of the two cases stinks of “collusion with the Russians”?
As you write, “Yes, in this case the “Clinton associates”, happen to be the Director of National Intelligence and the Director of the CIA along with someone high up in MI6..”
Whatever Clintonists touch transforms into…not gold.
Sure Dems will maximize these reports and tweets to their advantage, but D and R commentators and members of D and R administrations have expressed similar shock at the impropriety of the meeting. Do folks on this board truly feel that this was a run-of-the-mill oppo meeting?? This was not just any Russian lawyer. And certainly Manafort knew exactly who she was and what to expect.
kabu
What partisan BS. You are trying to drive the president of the US out of office so that you can have Pence? I do not provide a platform for crap the like of which you spout. pl
kabu,
What’s ironic and funny is that the emails – if you want to take them seriously – indicate that the Russian government 1. has info about Clinton collusion/insider business with Russia and 2. that the business is of a nature that would be embarrassing to Clinton and 3. Implies that Russia has something they could hold over Clinton by way of blackmail; creating the possibility that the Russians could influence her should she have won the election – essentially what the leftists are saying is true of Trump.
I think it is Clinton that needs to be investigated as a result of this leak. A very dirt politico and a compromised candidate.
I have not made up my mind regarding Trump and the Russians. I am waiting for Mueller to lay out the case, be it good, bad or indifferent. I do believe that the Democrats are overstating their case regarding this issue, in pursuit of partisan gains. However, if the exact same information came to light in a Hillary Clinton administration, Republicans and Fox News would be all over the issue 24-7 and similarly using terms like treason etc.
Lucopter, you are absolutely right.
Thank you for your astute and brave observation.
But I agree with the comment from raven in one respect:
“Astute” and “brave” are better descriptions for “what you are spreading” than “surreal”.
I agree with most here that Fredo’s meeting with a Russian lawyer is a tempest in a teapot. So he wanted dirt on Clinton. That’s just politics. It’s how the sausage is made. It’s no more evidence of collusion than the Republican and then the Democratic parties looking for Trump dirt from a former MI6 officer. Another source of outrage is the charge that Fredo lied about foreign contacts on his SF-86. That’s also bullshit. Mark Zaid, a DC lawyer who does this stuff for a living, explained how this contact does not rise to the very specific level required for reporting foreign contacts on the SF-86. This all may be a political problem, but certainly is not a legal problem.
None of this would have even affected the election if it was revealed in October. Sure a small number of voters that just don’t anything to do with those damned Rooskies would be turned off, but that’s it. The political damage now centers around the cover up. The months of denials of any contact with Russians was stupid. I don’t know why Trump just didn’t compile a list of previous contacts and business/financial connections back in January or February. It was common knowledge that Trump had past Russian business contacts. Why deny it. Yeah there’d be partisan uproar, but it wouldn’t amount to much. At the end of the day, Trump is still a bullshit artist and a conman, but he’s also our legally and rightfully elected President. We have to learn to deal with all of that.
What surprises me about this incident is that the Dems and the liberal neocon supporters are keeping at it – the whole anti-Trump propaganda. They are trying to dredge up some dirt but can’t find any and this is the result. The question is why, though. In any other scenario you would expect reasonable people to accept defeat and move on with life. Not the tribe of liberal neocons. Very strange!
Or maybe not strange at all if there is a grand masterplan behind all this. It might be that the public media is being saturated by anti-Trump propaganda till the American people accept the Russian meddling nonsense without thought (and many right thinking people already do). On top of it, there is an incredible amount of propaganda aimed at making Trump look foolish/incompetent/stupid.
In my view, all this is being done with a view to steal the results of the election in which the American public elected Donald Trump. The tribe didn’t like it and will never accept it. Things like this Trump jr emails and the meeting (without any basis in fact or reason) are just keeping the air poisoned so that no one complains when the knife is put through the heart (of the election results). The final stroke will come, soon I would guess. It might have nothing to do with Russian meddling for all you know.
Careful Americans – your democracy is in the process of being stolen by the same bunch who were so assiduous in their love of it (outside the US of course) that they have made a mess of the middle east having invaded countries and killed millions in the name of democracy. They are the same bunch who have killed in its name before and will kill again, here, if given a chance. Careful!
Hypothetically speaking…
What if agents of the Russian government did collude with the Trump campaign to help get him elected? What if it is proved that there was active coordination, including actions like hacking into DNC and state elections servers? Would this then be illegal? How would/could this be dealt with?
Elrond
He is wrong. The unauthorized release of intercepted SIGINT is a felony. pl
Don’t you all think that it’s important to learn of any contact that candidates or prospective candidates have with foreign powers. By all means continue the scrutiny of the Trump campaign. OTOH, shouldn’t we also be investigating those
candidates who fly to Tel Aviv to profess undying allegiance to the Israeli state. What promises have THEY made to that foreign power. The Middle East is an extremely volatile region ; we have a right to know of any potential commitment that our political leaders have made.
Will THEY be investigated? Oh look, a squadron of flying pigs !!!
Colonel,
Clearly a coup is underway. Classified government decryptions, conversations and private e-mails are handed over to corporate media with the expressed purpose of taking down President Trump. This is all extra-legal since the only way to remove the President is by impeachment. It is tied into the information operation that is demonizing an aggressive Russia for meddling in the 2016 election and hindering NATO/Israel/Gulf Sheiks schemes for Syria and Ukraine. That the Russian Federation has 7,300 nuclear warheads, of which 1,790 are strategically operational, is ignored.
I believe that there is a cabal of new aristocrats and multi-national corporations who want another chance to loot Russia, neuter democracy and end taxation. Donald Trump hinders this. Thus, he has to go. It is frightening. We are in more dangerous times now than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I don’t know. The July 9 NYTimes article described its sources as “according to three advisers to the White House briefed on the meeting and two others with knowledge of it.” I and others took this to mean advisors working in the White House now. It doesn’t specifically say that. But that is the clear intended message. Current “advisors” leaking something like this seems to indicate a lot of pressure and corresponding attempts to manage public perceptions. Fairly desperate attempts. Former Obama officials are implacably hostile, but they are not under any particular pressure.
The meeting itself is a classic nothing burger. There are laws that could be brought to bear, but the legal situation is muddy enough that years would pass before the courts would actually do anything. Like most of the whole Trump-Russia affair, it’s the reaction from the White House that persuades people that there is something real there. It seems to be the discovery process they’re afraid of, not any particular charge. The charges are all pretty weak. They don’t seem to be getting any traction among Trump voters who are the only audience that matters. But it sure looks like there is something there there that they don’t want exposed to daylight.
Lucopter – I read with astonishment your remarks about “The Jewish globalist elites” and “these people are going all in”.
AIPAC is a force, no doubt about that. Christian Zionism is a factor in American politics, that’s also clear – in my view it is the determining factor in American Foreign policy as far as the ME is concerned, although I do accept that most here might not see it as such.
There are many such lobbies and interest groups. The Ukrainian lobby in Australia and Canada. The Polish lobby. I suppose the Israeli lobby, given that strong Christian Zionist support, is the most influential in the States. It is legitimate to identify all such lobbies and to examine the effect they have on American Foreign Policy. Again in my view, not a beneficial one.
But to go from there to propounding an international Jewish elite conspiracy is ridiculous. What next? The Bilderbergers? The Vatican? The Babylonians? I’ve even seen the Queen put forward as the kingpin of a NWO conspiracy. Such talk cuts the ground out from under your feet if ever you should wish to put forward a serious argument.
Though I have to agree with you, looking at what’s happening in Europe, the States, and in my own country, that it’s now verging on the surreal. Who could have imagined, even twenty years ago, that we’d all find ourselves in such a mess? But I must deprecate the idea that we can pin it all on this or that particular little group. That’s a get-out if ever I saw one. In the end, after we’ve sworn at the politicians and the cronies and the assorted hangers-on, there’s only one group we can truly pin it on. Us.
Dr. K,
DeNile is a river that starts way out west and flows past Foggy Bottom, Staten Island with some side trips through the windy city.
Raven,
You said it.
fredw
Aw, c’mon. The Trump WH staff did not exist when this meeting and these tweets went down. How would they even have these tweets, e-mails or whatever they are? Do you think they were distributed to present WH advisers. The NY Times, like all print media lies about sources and distorts source descriptions to avoid burning them. I should know. My identity as a source has often been hidden by major media. pl
Elrond,
Marcy has made conclusions she hasn’t got the evidence to substantiate, as in “So, yeah, the dumbass son not only incriminated himself…”
She should explain what crime might that be since meeting with Russians to gather opposition research isn’t a crime. Then there is the simple question of how Marcy determined that the NSA did not intercept these emails and conclude there wasn’t anything to them? She’s never had a clearance nor had any “need to know” on what the NSA has collected orhow it gets analized. All she’s done in this instance is jump to a very partisan conclusion.
TTG,
I agree. There’s less to this than the Pavel Datsyuk connection I wrote up in a comment to you months ago. Trump should have dumped this whole pile out there a while ago.
Well, one current WH advisor, Jared Kushner, was at that meeting, and it has been suggested a) that he and Trump Jr. (and other members of the supposedly contentious Trump team) may not be on the same page, and b) that Kushner, himself under some potential investigative pressure, might want to deflect attention onto Trump Jr. Being on the inside in the WH, might Kushner somehow have gained access to “these tweets, e-mails or whatever they are” without Trump Jr. knowing of this? Further, If I were Trump Sr. and my son were as much a loose cannon as Trump Jr. seems to be, I might have taken steps to keep close track on him.
You’re badly mistaken about the Christian Zionists. The Israeli lobby was heavily influencing US Middle East policy long before the Christian Zionists raised their heads.
If right-wing Christians are so politically powerful, why haven’t they won success nationally with their other issues (abortion, gay rights, ect)?
Hello Sir,
I certainly don’t know enough to form an educated opinion on this, but it does seem like a stretch to me to assume that the instigators of this “scoop” were prominent members of the previous administration. If someone were sitting on this since last summer, wouldn’t it have had far greater impact (from a partisan perspective) to release it when Comey was fired? I find it somewhat more persuasive to think that there is some internecine conflict at work here.
Regards,
mongo
What I gather from my lawyer friends is that the mob chasing T Jr. have hung their legal hat on the FEC law’s prohibition against a campaign accepting “other thing of value”…
It doesn’t seem to matter that T Jr. didn’t actually get anything, but then we’re in vendetta territory.
11 CFR 110.20 – Prohibition on contributions, donations, expenditures, independent expenditures, and disbursements by foreign nationals (52 U.S.C. 30121, 36 U.S.C. 510)….
§ 110.20
(b)Contributions and donations by foreign nationals in connection with elections. A foreign national shall not, directly or indirectly, make a contribution or a donation of money or other thing of value, or expressly or impliedly promise to make a contribution or a donation, in connection with any Federal, State, or local election.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/11/110.20
Larry Kart
Your theory of the case is that JK released information about Donald Jr. to get out o the spotlight? Who are the other two NY Times informants? pl
Naive. They can do both at the same time. Besides, lots of individuals from the previous WH are spending a lot of time now trashing the current admin with accusations.
Ditch everything from the ? on. Your link causes us, the readers here at Pat Lang’s site to be tracked. Here’s the link as it should be shown properly: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/07/11/us/politics/document-Donaldtrumpjr.html
Click on it. You’ll see it takes you to the same place.
But why would SR, JB and JC be willing to risk felony charges? These are seasoned stagers and hardly so stupid to run that risk if the Veselitskaya affair were the best they can offer. If they are the culprits, they must have more. But that begs the question, why reveal only this, and why now.
Also I notice that the NYT speaks of three “advisers to the WH” who were “briefed on the meeting” and two “others” with “knowledge” of the meeting, plus “three ‘people’ with knowledge of the [Goldstone] email” (which is not the same as “knowledge of the meeting”), so I count already 8 people who were privy to this affair AND willing to leak it to the NYT.
BTW Colonel, I can only love a country where Dante is distributed at barbershops!
I think there are two separate cases here. One case in which all voters care about an issue and another in which only some voters care about an issue. It’s when the second case applies that a minority can have a disproportionate effect.
I’d suggest that on such issues as abortion, gay rights, gun control, immigration, there are few American voters who don’t have views, often strong views, and those views feed into the mix of considerations that determines their individual vote.
It’s the politicians’ job to work out or to intuit how to work that mix on the local and national level. Even in a clean system that would at first sight look like an impossibly complex job. But the politician observes that most voters don’t mix their views on various issues in a random or unpredictable manner. The voter who inclines, say, to approving abortion might also be more likely to approve gay marriage. Enough voters clump their views predictably enough on enough issues for the politician to establish or maintain a platform, or coherent bundle of policies, on which he can stand.
It gets lopsided – you get a leveraging effect – when some voters add to their clump issues that are priorities to them but not to others. We see this effect at its clearest when, say, a hospital is to be closed and that meets with heavy local opposition. The contesting politicians already have their established platforms and usually those platforms are to some degree balanced. The politician who can add saving the hospital to his platform is likely to get more votes. In extreme cases, where local feeling is very strong, a politician can dispense with the rest of the platform and win on the hospital issue alone. That can let in a single ticket local independent because the established politicians standing on a national platform are necessarily more constrained in what they can promise on the issue. But such instances are rare because the established politician will try to stretch his platform to accommodate such issues. In the States where, at least to an outsider, national party platforms usually seem more flexible than here, the politician will almost certainly try to stretch his platform. Why not? If he can add single issue votes to his established mix then he’s more likely to win. But his opponent will also be swayed by such considerations and the result is that both sides go for saving the hospital. Since no one much outside the area feels strongly about the issue, or even knows about it, then it’s quite possible the hospital will get saved even though that might be dead against the national priorities of both parties.
That is, as I said, an extreme case and at least in this country one sees it very rarely. But the leveraging mechanism operates in far less extreme cases. If some voters care about an issue and the others don’t then that issue is more likely to be supported by the politicians. They get the votes of the people who care and they don’t lose the votes of the people who don’t care.
Do Christian Zionists care enough about supporting Israel to add that issue to their mix? Do other Americans not care that much about the issue and therefore won’t have it in their mix? If the answer is “yes” to both questions then that explains the near automatic support of Israel amongst American politicians. They are more likely to get the votes of the people who care. They are less likely to lose the votes of the people who don’t care.
That also explains the extraordinary mess that is Western foreign policy generally. Unlike the domestic issues such as you mention like gay rights or abortion, where most people do care one way or the other, not all that many people care about or even have the time to attend to what is done abroad. Therefore the leveraging effect of what is quite often a small minority or interest group can be decisive.
And that’s talking about a clean system – what the system is in theory. When you have a system where the politicians are sometimes bought and the normal sources of information often constrained then many voters not only won’t care, they can’t know what the foreign policy is. In those circumstances it’s not surprising that disasters like the Ukraine or Syria occur. It’s surprising there aren’t more of them.
Who is the SR initials?
For what it’s worth, this today reports a more recent surfacing of the issue: “The emails were discovered in recent weeks by Mr. Kushner’s legal team as it reviewed documents, and the team amended his clearance forms to disclose it, according to people briefed on the developments, who like others declined to be identified because of the sensitive political and legal issues involved.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/russia-trump.html?_r=0
If true, that would indicate current leakers rather than leftovers.
Another thread: http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/07/12/who-dished-the-dirt-on-donald-trump-jr/
Walker – apologies – “Single issue” above, not “single ticket”. That is, an exceptional case where the voter is swayed by only one issue. Hope the rest is clear, though there’s more to single issue minority voting than is looked at here.
Good question. But why assume that the seemingly powerful Kushner doesn’t have reasonably close allies among other WH advisors and/or people in the WH who have the same or similar enemies? Yes, the idea of JK and possible associates trying to deflect attention onto Trump Jr. in order to get out of the spotlight seems so short-term as to be hare-brained, but it wouldn’t be the first such idea to emanate from inside or around this WH. If I can think one person to take a close look at here as a key potential conduit/braintruster, it would be JK’s attorney Jamie Gorelick.
The Love for Israel permeates England, France and a number of other Western Diocletian states; this is an alliance-wide phenomenon and not confined solely to US.
New Zealand and Australia supply blank passports to Israeli assassins, did US put a gun to the heads of those governments to do so? I do no think so.
With all due respect, I think very few people anywhere on the political spectrum will agree with you there. We now know beyond any doubt that if collusion didn’t happen between the Trump campaign and Russian contacts, it was only because there was no dirt on Clinton that the Russians could deliver. There may or may not be any criminal act involved – there’s some argument about that – but regardless, Junior has taken a wrecking ball to his father’s administration’s defenses with regard to Russian interference in the election. If the newly chosen line of defense is that it doesn’t matter because nothing came of the attempted collusion……it is difficult to know what to say to that.
What will come of all this is a different topic. At the very least, Robert Mueller now has a whole new set of issues on his plate.
Babak Makkinejad,
‘The Love for Israel permeates England, France and a number of other Western Diocletian states; this is an alliance-wide phenomenon and not confined solely to US.’
If you will permit me to be slightly tongue-in-cheek, I think you are a bit like a ‘neoconservative’ back in 1989, convinced that because Soviet spokesmen ‘talked the talked’ they actually believed what they said.
People do not understand that the promiscuous exploitation of the ‘cult of the Shoah’ by Zionists has led to it being ‘Sovietised.’ It is part of the ‘new Brezhnevism’ which has taken over both in the United States and Western Europe.
What further compounds the problem is precisely the – distinctly Stalinist – suspicion of the ‘commissars’ that underneath the apparent conformity of the ‘goyim’ lie deep reservoirs of Jew-hatred.
See, for example, the April 2015 article published by the ineffable Jeffrey Goldberg in the ‘Atlantic’, under the title ‘Is it Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?’, at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/is-it-time-for-the-jews-to-leave-europe/386279/ .
In fact, the disintegration of the cult is sending all kinds of people – including, crucially – Jews, in all kinds of different directions.
There is a kind of complex intellectual anarchy, as people search for new self-definitions, which needs to be ‘mapped out’. But for that, a ‘rectification of names’ is indeed required.
To give you an instance of the complexity: For me, whose culture is in critical respects Anglo-Jewish, when I try and locate Binyamin Netanyahu on a map of Jewish life in Britain, he looks like the kind of East End second-hand car dealer from whom, if you are once fool one to buy, you do not repeat the mistake. He has been busily smirking away the ‘cult of the Shoah.’
Moreover, one does not read the ‘Jewish Chronicle’ for intellectual stimulus. As part of ‘fieldwork’, I look at a lot of sites with whose point of view I may not particularly happen to agree.
Often, doing so provides intellectual stimulus. But writers like Stephen Pollard, Jonathan Freedland, and David Aaronovitch are beyond belief pedestrian and dull.
Stephanie
There is no crime entitled “political collusion.” pl
WaPo has a rather illuminating story on Ms. Veselnitskaya
(BTW, why are Russian names so long? What does all that mean?)
“Russian lawyer who met with Trump Jr. has long history fighting sanctions”
By Michael Kranish, Tom Hamburger, David Filipov and Rosalind S. Helderman, 2017-07-12
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr-has-long-history-fighting-sanctions/2017/07/11/05e2467c-65b1-11e7-94ab-5b1f0ff459df_story.html
quote:
The story of how she ended up in the meeting can be traced to her role as an attorney representing a Russian-owned company,
Prevezon Holdings.
Veselnitskaya, 42, has deep experience in Russian political and legal matters. She has practiced law since 1998.
She served in the prosecutor’s office of Moscow Region for three years, where she has said her work included “overseeing the legality of statutes” adopted by legislators.
She founded a law firm, Kamerton Consulting, specializing in corporate and property disputes.
She has said that her firm’s clients include “large state-owned and private corporations, as well as clients from the real estate and banking sectors.”
Sorry, should have added this excellent Guardian story to the WaPo story:
“Who is Natalia Veselnitskaya: low-level lawyer or Kremlin power broker?”
by Shaun Walkdr, 2017-07-12
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/12/who-is-natalia-veselnitskaya-low-level-lawyer-or-kremlin-power-broker
This article adds the following tidbits:
Nevertheless, in recent years she had taken on a high-profile case
that aligned with Kremlin objectives and was followed closely by top officials.
A source who knows her also told the Guardian
she has a long-standing personal connection with
Yuri Chaika, Russia’s powerful prosecutor-general.
Chaika’s name is particularly relevant,
because it seems likely that Rob Goldstone,
the publicist who emailed Donald Trump Jr
suggesting he meet with the Russian lawyer,
was referring to Chaika as
the potential source of the information on Clinton.
According to the email chain that Trump Jr himself published on Twitter,
Goldstone said he was making the proposition after a Russian businessman, Aras Agalarov,
had met “Russia’s crown prosecutor”
and received information about Hillary Clinton.
…
She was the defence lawyer for Denis Katsyv,
a Russian businessman accused of laundering a portion of the proceeds from a $230m tax fraud uncovered by the lawyer Sergei Magnitsky,
who later died in jail and whose name was used in the sanctions act.
————-
See also
“The story behind the Russian lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr. last year”
by Eliza Relman, 2017-07-12
http://www.businessinsider.com/natalia-veselnitskaya-russian-lawyer-donald-trump-jr-2017-7
The male version would be Veselnitsky. –skaya just indicates the gender. Vesel- or Весель in Cyrillic generally means jolly or cheerful
Col.,
looks like the circle of people in the know about these emails is a little bit larger. See this NYT story about Kushner’s legal team. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/us/politics/russia-trump.html
The conventional wisdom is pointing to figures in the Trump WH as the likely leakers. It will be interesting to see if your theory about Obama WH figures is confirmed or not.
Given my experience with runaway cc and bcc emails in private organizations, I’d be surprised if these emails were all that secret.
I think the conclusion that those email leaks necessarily came from with US IC or WH present or past betrays a lack of imagination wrt how numerous and varied Is Trump’s opposition. From foundations concerned with climate change to Mexican or Chinese or German government Intel, and many points in between, his opposition is legion. And well funded and technically resourced.
Now that may sound silly, and certainly my initial reaction would have been identical to Colonel Lang’s, who is very very likely correct here. But to a lawyer, as you mention, it is not legally rigorous.
Trump has made exceedingly powerful and sophisticated enemies. On the order of advanced sovereign states of the 21st century. Well able to slipstream within this apparently domestic media circus. Including organizations more than capable of penetrating US intel, up to the point infiltration
I am not sure the Obama people did leak this. I think this is very damaging for them, this looks like the event that was arranged to trigger the FISA request. This is almost the starting point to the whole spying campaign. For what it is worth our old friend Roger Stone blames JK.
I believe the lawyer lady, she was set up. Obviously they needed someone who could plausibly be tied to the Russian government, she had a working relationship with GPS Fusion so could be manipulated into meeting Don Jr. This Goldstone chap is tied in with the Azeris who owned the Miss World event and met Trump when he went to their event in Moscow, presumably he was chosen for this reason. No surprise the media has now duly raised this Trump relationship with the Azeris.
LondonBob
I do think it is the top level Obama people. They are both reckless and desperate. JB is capable of anything. pl
I suppose that Donald Trump ought to consider himself lucky that no one among his enemies in US is cognizant of the fact that Azeris are Shia Muslims and thus belong to that Enemy of the West called “Party of Ali” to which belong Syria, Yemen, Iran, and Iraq.
fourthandlong
I am sorry that you find me lacking in imagination. That is an opinion I have not heard often. The question is not one of “legal rigor.’ The real question is one of access to the e-mails. Who would have had access to the E-mails? These were private e-mails between people who were not in office. Actually DJT Jr has NEVER been in office. Nor has he had a government security clearance. Did the people at the meeting release the e-mails to the NY Times? Why would they do that? Did the Russians release the e-mails to the NY Times? Why would they do that? Would DJT’s correspondent have released the e-mails? Why would he do that? Would the Trump Tower office staff have released the e-mails (if they had access to them)? Why would they do that? Well, who is left who would have had access to the e-mails? pl
LondonBob,
The more I think about the opening lines of the email thread, the more I am convinced that it was always intended to be a set-up; an entrapment.
The whole part about Russia’s ongoing support of the Trump campaign….that is just weird stuff to have in the email. I suppose if Putin himself were sending the email, it would make more sense. However, it is totally out of place for the Brit to be saying. How would he know anything about Russian support ongoing or otherwise? Why would the Russians ask for him to include a statement about what should be secret collusion? They wouldn’t.
Jr should have smelled a rat. But he got carried away with the possibility of getting some useful info to use against Clinton. Inexperience.
IMO, they were hoping that Jr would reply to that aspect of the email in a way that could be construed to be incriminating. He didn’t and that’s why the email thread was original used. Now, because at least Jr didn’t question the ongoing Russian support, the thread is being produced. It’s down to this being all they’ve got left in the anti-trump/Russia collusion arsenal.
Agreed, that this could have been part of the “evidence” that was being gathered to support a FISA warrant.
IMO, what I thinking totally supports Col Lang’s suggestion of who is behind the leak (the three sets of initials)
Thank you for your comments.
I read Goldberg’s piece, it is a sad testimonial to a confused minds; searching, as it where, for an anchor.
I do not have any suggestions for the predicaments of Europe – clearly the Enlightenment Project failed the Jews of Europe but, withdrawing into some sort of fortress is not going to resolve the issues of multiple religions in Europe that are at war over the disposition of Palestine.
I have the same sense when I look at Binyamin Netanyahu.
I’m a bit late on commenting on this. I think a point that is being missed is that while Mr. Trump (jr.), Mr. Manafort, and Mr. Kushner talking (as far as I can tell) to Veselnitskaya is not illegal lying to federal investigators is. If anything will get the Trump family and associates into trouble it will be this point.
Anyone involved in this cannot talk to each other to ‘get their stories’ straight. That would be illegal. Leaking all of this is one way to tell all parties involved “Hey, this is what I’m going to tell the feds” without tripping over the various laws. I’m not saying anyone has lied to federal investigators but IF they did the feds now have them over a barrel.
The problem is that Title 18, United States Code, Section 1001 gives the federal government way too much power.
> Title 18 … makes it a crime to: 1) knowingly and willfully; 2) make any materially false, fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation; 3) in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative or judicial branch of the United States. Your lie does not even have to be made directly to an employee of the national government as long as it is “within the jurisdiction” of the ever expanding federal bureaucracy.
http://corporate.findlaw.com/litigation-disputes/how-to-avoid-going-to-jail-under-18-u-s-c-section-1001-for-lying.html
No, there is not. However, as my post said, an argument is being made:
http://time.com/4854592/donald-trump-jr-russia-email-laws/
‘If Bauer is right, then some argue that he could be in legal jeopardy even if the meeting didn’t result in any valuable information changing hands, as Trump Jr. has claimed. “The fact that he . . . met with her is an overt act that may support criminal intent,” Notre Dame University law professor Jimmy Gurule told USA Today. “Ignorance of the law is no defense.”‘
As the article notes, there is disagreement on the matter, hence my reference to an argument being made. I doubt that any prosecution will be forthcoming.
There’s an awkwardness between the promise of anti-Hillary information in the Don Jr-Goldstone correspondence and the subsequent meeting’s conversation on adoption laws. The set up looks strange, almost comical. Is this the best the Kremlin can do? What’s going on?
Veselnitskaya is not credible as an informant on Hillary dirt, but she is credible as a Magnitsky Act-lobbyist. A theory is therefore that the original play was to tie the Dirty Dossier with the Magnitsky Act. The goal was to connect Veselnitskaya with Trump and then with anti-Magnitsky Act lobbying on Capitol Hill (five days after the meeting with Don Jr she visited Capitol Hill.) The Dirty Dossier showed that Putin had something on Trump, and Putin is now using Trump to remove sanctions…
But then something happened: someone leaked Hillary’s e-mails. “Putin hacked Hillary’s e-mails” became the overwhelming story. (And it was hard to see how Trump could be of help to Putin in this activity).
Originally, the Don Jr-Goldstone correspondence was not important: the e-mails were probably not meant to be published. The promise of dirt on Hillary was probably a sales pitch invented by Rob Goldstone, to get access to Trump. So now when the plotters in desperation have released the correspondence, no one understands anything. Why does Putin promise dirt on Hillary but deliver talks on adoption? All the beautiful work of ex-MI6 agents, linking Dirty Dossiers to Capitol Hill lobbying, is lost in confusion.
per
don’t post things twice. pl
“Well, who is left who would have had access to the e-mails?”
As I suggested in a previous post, Kushner’s legal team — “The emails were discovered in recent weeks by Mr. Kushner’s legal team as it reviewed documents, and the team amended his clearance forms to disclose it…” NYT 7/11.
My candidate for would-be mastermind here is Kushner’s lead attorney Jamie Gorelick, a name some may recall from the past.
Larry Kart
Why would Kushner’s legal team release this to the post? to incriminate his brother in law? This doesn’t sound like you, Larry. pl
Sorry about that.
Sorry, it is me, but thanks for your faith that normally I’m more sensible.
I’m certainly not familiar with, can’t even begin to imagine, the family dynamics of the Trumps and Kushners, but leaving aside the presence or absence of warm family feelings, I’m thinking that if anyone in this menage has significant legal concerns at this point, it is Kushner, not Trump, Jr., and that the release of this material — to which, if one believes that 7/11 NYT story to which I linked, Kushner’s legal team had access — might be an attempt, albeit (so it would seem) an absurdly short-sighted one, to deflect attention from Kushner. Again, from where you and I sit, that doesn’t make much sense other than in the shortest of short runs, if then, but it wouldn’t be the first time that something these people did didn’t make much sense.
Further, to repeat myself, from the time she first popped into view as Kushner’s lead attorney, I’ve been wondering what the heck Jamie Gorelick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Gorelick
with all her various connections as a former high-ranking DOJ official and, I assume, veteran DC water carrier, is doing here. Yes, everybody’s got to be someplace, and a lawyer might be just a lawyer, but Gorelick’s presence at Kushner’s shoulder makes my spider sense tingle.
P.S. A tidbit from Gorelick’s past:
“While serving as Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton, Gorelick spoke in favor of banning the use of strong encryption and called for a key escrow system to allow the Federal government access to encrypted communication.”
Col.,
Admittedly, the Washington Examiner is barely a news source, but a former college roommate of mine was at the event and confirms Stone’s statement. Stone is certainly a dirty trickster, and this isn’t the first time he’s accused Kushner of being a leaker. Did Kushner leak the emails? Curiouser and curiouser.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/roger-stone-reveals-initials-of-who-he-says-is-leaker-of-donald-trump-jrs-emails/article/2628473
freudenschade
Was Stone at the meeting? If not, how does he know this? You are a left winger. It is very funny that you use Roger Stone as evidence from a Q&A at a Young Republicans meeting that was published in the Washington Examiner. Someone told me that Stone tried the same line out on him on an air flight a couple of days ago. I will say to you as I did to Larry Kart, do you really think that Kushner deep-sixed his brother in law? pl
Larry Kart
Yes, but what is the relevance of that? pl
As to whether I really think Kushner deep-sixed his brother-in-law, I know it’s a fable, but a scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog is afraid of being stung, but the scorpion argues that if it did so, they would both drown. The frog agrees, but midway across the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them both. When the frog asks why, the scorpion replies that, “It’s my nature.”
As for the relevance of Gorelick calling as Deputy AG under Clinton for a system to allow the Federal government access to encrypted communication, it suggests to me that she has swum though fairly dark waters before and may think that she still knows her way through them.
Perhaps the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. After all it was Kushner’s father who did exactly that – deep-sixed his brother -in -law. He attempted to blackmail (smear?) said brother -in -law by hiring a prostitute to seduce him, taped the encounter, and threatened to reveal the tapes. When the attempt was rebuffed Kushner’s father showed the tapes to his brother -in -law’s wife, his own sister. A real class act. Lesson learned? Perhaps the vaunted Trump family loyalty is not a two-way street.
Major Donor Admits Hiring Prostitute to Smear Witness
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/nyregion/major-donor-admits-hiring-prostitute-to-smear-witness.html
Christ, what a sewer these so-called upstanding citizens live in.
“I am convinced that it was always intended to be a set-up; an entrapment.”
Seems that way considering the language of Goldstone’s initial email.
David Habakkuk – sometimes a phrase jumps out at you and you say “That’s it”. Yours is such a phrase – “It is part of the ‘new Brezhnevism’ which has taken over both in the United States and Western Europe.” We’re marking time, aren’t we, at least in Europe, while the ancien regime gets ready to lumber out of the way. How long – years, decades? And what horrors will replace it, or do we have it in us to transition to something better?
Babak – “Love of Israel”? You see more than I do but in this case I must confess that I don’t see it your way at all. I’ve just been hearing from a friend who lives close by some “Schlagende Verbindungen” – a type of student fraternity – in Germany. When drunk they sing the Horst Wessel lied and get banned from the local beer houses as a result. Nice tune but the words are iffy. The students will go on, some of them, to run German industry and they’ll be influential. In some small towns and villages in the former East Germany you’ll find entire communities of cradle Nazis just as you’ll find them in Croatia or the Ukraine. West German progressives move there sometimes because property’s cheap; and sometimes, I gather, move out again pretty quickly. None of these groups could fairly be described as philo-semitic.
Nor could that many in France or in Eastern Europe. I’d hazard a guess that you’d really only find philo-semitism in the English speaking countries of the West, and that’s wearing a bit thin because we’re becoming more aware of the Israelis’ propensity for beating up on the locals.
So “Love of Israel” might not be as strong this side of the Diocletian line as it maybe was. My view, as we’ve discussed before, is that the Israelis would do well to take their winnings while they’re still ahead.
Thank you for your comments with which I must disagree. One only needs to look at the political economic and military posture of Fortress West to surmise its deep love and affection for Israel; e.g. Germany supplying weapons to Israel for free, France furnishing them with all they needed to build nuclear weapons…
LET US NOT KID OURSELVES HERE.
Babak – I’ve seen no reliable data on popular support for Israel in the West and don’t know if there is any such data. As for Western Government support you know more about that than I can. I’m an optimist and like to believe that what we think does eventually influence what our politicians do but I accept that the facts are against me at present on that so I defer to your opinion.
The thing is that I don’t believe it’s safe for any country to be so dependant for its very existence on what people or politicians in other countries think of them or do for them. That’s even more the case for a country founded on incomplete ethnic cleansing and located in an area where half a billion of the surrounding peoples are either hostile to them, indifferent to them, or whose governments are merely co-operating with them for short term advantage.
Putting all considerations of fairness on one side the fact is that the Israelis are there and aren’t going to be not there without a further round of ethnic cleansing just as horrifying as the original round. Do any of us want to see that? I don’t and nor does anyone else. Therefore some way has to be found of ensuring that they can stay there safely.
At present they’re on the crest of a wave and the existence of the country is secured by the support of the West, in particular by the overwhelming military and diplomatic power of the United States. I’ve argued, maybe incorrectly, that that American support is at root guaranteed by the lock on the American electoral process exercised by the American pro-Israel religious groups: those fundamentalists, Evangelicals and Mormons for whom the existence of Israel is a doctrinal imperative. But even if I’m right that’s a pretty fragile lock. Just take the American religious fundamentalists and look at how their doctrinal imperatives have shifted over the last hundred years or so. We think of fundamentalist beliefs as unalterable but of course they’re not. Lacking a formal hierarchical structure, and therefore lacking the inertia such a structure provides, they’re even more subject to sudden shifts. Relying on the electoral weight afforded by such a constituency cannot guarantee long term security for Israel.
And if I’m wrong and the Christian Zionists aren’t the determining factor, then the guarantee of American support for Israel is even more fragile. What does it depend on then? A powerful lobby and the fact that many American politicians see Israeli interests as converging with their own in the ME. A solid enough base for the short term but it’s building a house upon sand to think it’ll last for ever.
Therefore I reckon that the line taken by some Israelis, including as you know many senior officers of the IDF, is correct. That is, that now would be a good time for Israel to make the necessary territorial concessions and there’s unlikely to be a better.
EO wrote:
This seems like the “straw-man argument” on steroids.
EO cleverly and cunningly, I might say, uses the question “What next?”
to segue from the issued of
how much power and influence do the Jews have and
how they use that power
(with a current relevant example being Jeff Zucker)
to start babbling about “Bilderbergers”, “Babylonians”, and “a NWO conspiracy” (whatever that is; I have no idea).
EO, if you can’t see that this is a straw-man argument,
how are we supposed to take YOU seriously?
It is also an example of a quantification error:
Just because some conspiracy theories are not valid
does not mean that all are not valid.
Keith Harbaugh – your examination of the passage you quote is correct in all respects. That passage is not a valid argument.
That is because it is not an argument. It’s a bit more fancy than that. It is a subjective categorisation. With no attempt at argument or proof I place the notion that there is such an international Jewish conspiracy in the same category as the notion that the Babylonians are running the show. The passage is simply a way of saying “nonsense”. And of saying what sort of nonsense I think it is.
Nor can there be any attempt at argument or proof. That’s because there’s no evidence advanced to argue about, or to prove right or wrong.
Lacking evidence there is only intuition to go on. Your intuition is that such a conspiracy exists. Mine is that it doesn’t. We can go no further than that.
Well, we can go a little further perhaps. “Ridiculous” was a touch uncivil. Could we substitute the less confrontational word “unsubstantiated” and part more amicably than we met? By the way NWO is “New World Order”. That’s really heavy duty and puts the poor old international Jews in the shade. I’m not entirely sure what the NWO does, but whatever they get up to it is my devout hope that the Queen will knock them into shape one day and then we can have proper foxhunting back again.
Just a footnote. Since this is SST I felt I ought to back up my comment with a reference.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_Order_(conspiracy_theory)
Only Wikipaedia, but a mine of information. There seem to be many NWO’s. I had thought there was only one. Some of them were quite ambitious:-
“To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire …”
Looks like the Her Majesty’s going to be busy. That and foxhunting too. It’s a lot to have on one’s plate.
But all this backs up your thesis rather than mine. We’ve had ideologues and crusaders around since the year dot, some of them powerful, who’ve harboured all sorts of crazy visions. If then, why not now? I’m reminded of Bush’s call to Chirac on Iraq, from which it seems Bush was thinking more of End Times than strategy when contemplating invasion. Blair, in his own way, did a bit in that line too. Come down to earth a little and you find such aberrations as PNAC or the Yinon plan or the Grand Chessboard taken quite seriously by legions of men in suits who otherwise look perfectly sane. It conjures up a world in which our leaders are not merely incompetent but driven by swivel-eyed Messianic aspirations. One begins to understand Putin’s alarm as he sees the lunatic juggernaut heading his way.
But you and I still fall out when it comes to conspiracy. The various interest groups may think they are conspiring. They may be deliberately attempting to, and may even believe they are doing so with success. They may all be working, as I think our host has indicated, within some common consensual framework. But the result, especially when we look at foreign policy, resembles more an overturned ants nest than anything purposeful. Our problem is not that “They” are steering us to perdition. It’s that while “They” are getting up to their various bits of nonsense, sometimes deadly nonsense I’ll grant you, there’s no one minding the shop.