Author: admin

Authored by Burak Bekdil via The Gatestone Institute,

Fearing a sharp decline in his approval rating, especially in view of a looming economic crisis, Turkey’s Islamist strongman, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appears to be chasing new wars with real or imaginary enemies.

Election data and research show that Turks have a tendency to unite behind their leader in times of crises or confrontation with foreign enemies. According to the Turkish pollster Metropoll, for example, Erdoğan’s approval rating peaked to 71.1% in December 2013, when he portrayed a slew of corruption allegations about him and his family as “a coup attempt.” In parliamentary elections in 2015, Erdoğan’s nationwide vote fell to 37.5% and his Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002.

Erdoğan’s approval rating rose sharply again to 67.6% after a failed putsch against his government in July 2016. At the height of the COVID-19 crisis his rating was a strong 55.8%. Metropoll said Erdoğan’s current approval rating is at 50.6%. He thinks he needs new tensions with Turkey’s past and present-day adversaries.

Most recently, condemning the historic normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Erdoğan said that “because we stand by Palestine,” he is considering withdrawing Turkey’s ambassador from the UAE. “I gave instructions to my foreign minister… We may suspend diplomatic relations [with the UAE] or recall our ambassador to Abu Dhabi,” Erdoğan added.

If he does so, Turkey will be the only country in the region that has no diplomatic relations with Armenia and Cyprus, and no ambassadorial-level relations with Syria, Israel, Egypt and the UAE. Turkey’s relations with many countries where it has full diplomatic ties are not in much better shape.

In late July, even before the UAE-Israel deal, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar told Al Jazeera that Turkey would hold Abu Dhabi, the leading emirate, accountable at the right time and place for “malicious actions committed in Libya and Syria.” He said that the UAE is “a functional country that serves others politically or militarily and is used remotely.”

Turkey evidently has deep ire for any deal that may help stabilize one of the world’s most volatile regions. On August 3, the Turkish Foreign Ministry condemned an oil agreement concluded between a US-based company and Syrian Kurds for the development of oil fields in northeastern Syria. In northwestern Syria, where Turkey controls small pockets of land, Ankara threatened to respond militarily to potential attacks on its forces.

There are “hotter” disputes, as well. Ignoring international efforts to find a diplomatic solution to maritime border disputes with its traditional Aegean rival, Greece, on August 10, Turkey resumed oil and gas exploration in the Mediterranean Sea — only days after Turkey’s government said it would delay offshore surveys to seek a diplomatic resolution with Greece.

French President Emmanuel Macron called for Turkey to be sanctioned and accused its government of violating the rights of Greece and Cyprus. In the face of increasing Turkish assertiveness, Macron also ordered the French Navy to the Eastern Mediterranean to provide military assistance to Greece. In a further move, France signed a defense deal with Cyprus. The agreement came into effect on August 1. The two-year Defense Cooperation Agreement covers energy, crisis management, counter-terrorism and maritime security cooperation between Cyprus and France.

While the standoff was deepening, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis convened his national security council. A statement issued after the meetings was reminiscent of pre-war times: “We are in complete political and operational readiness,” Minister of State George Gerapetritis said on state television channel ERT. “Most of the fleet is ready to be deployed wherever necessary.”

If you add to that perilous picture the Cypriot, Israeli and Egyptian navies, Turkey is up against formidable naval forces in the Mediterranean. In one dangerous incident on August 14, two warships, the Greek Navy’s Limnos frigate and Turkey’s TCG Kemalreis, collided in the Eastern Mediterranean.

All those Turkish-Greek tensions in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas bolster a century-long Turkish nostalgia to take back some of the Greek islands. Yeni Safak, a fiercely pro-Erdoğan newspaper, suggested that the Turkish military should invade 16 Greek islands.

The website Greek City Times commented:

“Discussion of wars and invading Greek islands is… a tactic used by the regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to distract the Turkish population from the woeful economic situation,”

Erdoğan’s idea of vote-hunting by regional troublemaking is not limited to naval adventures only. Against the background of a sudden border flare-up between Azerbaijan and Armenia on July 12, the Turkish and Azeri militaries launched a two-week long joint military exercise, involving the traditional allies’ air and ground forces.

In Turkey’s southeast, Iraq blamed Ankara for a drone attack that killed two high-ranking Iraqi military officers. The incident occurred shortly before a planned visit by Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar to Baghdad. A fuming Iraqi government said the Turkish minister was no longer welcome.

Erdoğan needs epic stories of military might against real or fabricated foreign enemies to tell an increasing number of grudging voters in the face of an ailing economy. That is bad news for the entire region.

A British academic and advisor to HMG warned Saturday during an interview that the coronavirus might be with us “forever” even if a vaccine is quickly developed.

“This is not going to be a disease like Smallpox, which could be eradicated by vaccination. This is a virus that is going to be with us forever in some form or another,” said Professor Mark Walport.

Pressed on whether he agrees with projections from WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who said Friday that he hoped the pandemic would be over in under two years, but that the possibility of a more sustained outbreak is something that can’t yet be readily dismissed, Walport claimed that tackling the virus will depend on a successful vaccine, but that mass production of a workable vaccine won’t be the last step toward fighting the virus.

“I am reasonably optimistic that it will be possible to make such a vaccine – there are a large number in development, including two that are in advanced stages from the UK,” Walport said.

However, even once a vaccine is in hand, Walport said caution might still be needed since it’s unclear whether a vaccine will offer lasting protection.

“[It] almost certainly will require repeated vaccinations so, a bit like flu, people will need re-vaccination at regular intervals,” he said.

The government adviser also cautioned that the percentage of new cases in the UK is rising in some parts of the country (though, to be sure, partial lockdowns and other measures have been implemented to blunt these outbreaks).

People shouldn’t get complacent just yet: there’s still a chance that the UK outbreak could spin out of control once again.

“Is there a situation where it could get out of control? Well, obviously, that is possible and that is why it is so important that we all work together,” Walport said.

“This infection is with us. We know that less than one in five people around the country have been infected, so 80% of the population are still susceptible to the virus.”

The UK was brutalized by one of the highest death totals in Europe, and one of the highest mortality rates globally as well, something that has horrifying and mystified government scientists in equal measure.

Authored by Thomas Harrington via Off-Guardian.org,

Ready for another rendition of the “no one could have known” routine made famous by all the self-proclaimed liberals who shamelessly went along with the Neo-Cons planned and lie-supported destruction of the Middle East nearly two decades ago?

As in “no one could have known” that by shutting down life as we know it to focus obsessively on a virus mostly affecting what is still a relatively small number of people at the end of their lives (yes, oh squeamish ones we must summon the courage to talk about Quality Adjusted Life Years when making public policy) we probably would:

1. Cause economic devastation and hence excess deaths, suicides, divorces depressions in much larger numbers than those killed by the virus.

2. Provide an already monopolistic and predatory online retailing establishment with competitive advantages in terms of capital reserves and market share that will make it virtually impossible at any time in the near or medium future for the country’s and the world’s small and even medium-sized businesses to ever catch up to them. And that this will plunge huge sectors of the world-wide economy into serf-like ruin, with all that this portends in terms of additional death and human suffering.

3. Cause greatly increased misery and countless additional deaths in the so-called Global South where many people, rightly or wrongly, depend on the consumption patterns of us relatively fortunate sit-at-homers to make it through the week.

4. Destroy much of what was attractive about urban life as we know it and lead to a real estate collapse of extraordinary proportions, turning even our few remaining showplace cities into crime-ridden reserves of ever more desperate people.

5. Force state and local governments, already struggling before the crisis, and unable to print at money at will like the Feds, to cut their already insufficient budgets at a time when their broke and stressed constituents need those services more than ever.

6. Push “smart” monitoring of our lives, already intolerable for anyone still clinging to memories of freedom in the pre-September 11th world, to the point where most people will no longer understand what people used to know as privacy, intimacy or the simple dignity of being left alone.

7. Train of a generation of children to be fearful and distrustful of others from day one, and to view bending to diktats “to keep them safe”, (no matter how empirically dubious the actual threat to them might be), rather than the courageous pursuit of joy and human fullness, as the key goal in life.

We will also no doubt be told that no one could have imagined or known at the time:

That governments often make policy on the basis of information they know to be largely unsubstantiated or flat-out false. Because they know (Karl Rove spilled the beans in his famous interview with Ron Susskind) that by the time the few conscientious researchers out there get around looking past the hype to debunk their initial storylines, the structures favorable to them put into place on the basis of the false narrative will have been normalized, and thus be in no danger of being dismantled.

That our educational institutions, already failing miserably in the essential democratic task of educating the young to engage in productive conflict with those whose ideas are different than their own, will only further promote dehumanization of “the other” through ever-greater reliance on the disembodied practices of remote learning. And that this, in turn, will only encourage the further growth of the “drive-by shooting” approach to “coping” with new and challenging ideas seen so often in our public “discussions” in recent years.

That further fomenting the alienated and alienating educational practices mentioned above will make than it easier than it already is for our oligarchs to enhance their already obscene levels control over our daily lives and long-term destinies through divide and rule tactics.

That according to the Institute for Democracy and Election Assistance (IDEA) fully twos thirds of elections scheduled to be held since February have been postponed due to COVID. And that this does much to accustom citizens and populations to the idea that one of their few remaining democratic rights can essentially be taken away on the basis of bureaucratic whims, creating a dangerous “new normal” that obviously favors the interests of established centers of power.

That Sweden and other countries developed much more proportionate, culture-saving and dignity-saving ways to live safely and much more fully with the virus.

That Anthony Fauci has a well-documented tendency to see every health problem as being amenable to expensive pharmaceutical solutions (some might even call it corruption), even when other less intrusive, less expensive, and equally effective therapies are available.

That the recent history of using vaccines to fight respiratory infections has been ineffective when not grotesquely counterproductive.

That during the first half of the 20th century the infectious disease of polio was a constant danger, culminating in 1952 with a devastating toll of 3,145 deaths and 21,269 cases of paralysis in a US population of 162,000,000, almost all of the victims being children and young adults. The danger then to the under-24 population (some 34 million) of being infected (.169%) paralyzed (.044%) or killed (.0092%) far outstripped in percentages and, obviously, severity anything COVID is doing to the same age group. And yet there was no talk of blanket school closures, cancelled high school, college and pro sports or, needless to say, lockdowns or masking for the entire society.

That the world lost some 1.1 million people in the 1957-58 Asian flu epidemic (more than the present COVID number of 760,000), with some 116,000 in the US (.064% of the population) and the world similarly did not stop.

That the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 killed between 1 and 4 million worldwide and some 100,000 in the US (.048% of population killed) and that life similarly was not stopped. Indeed, Woodstock took place in the middle of it.

That the decisions to get on with life in all of these cases were probably not the result, as some today might be tempted suggest, of a lack of scientific knowledge or lesser concern for the value of life, but rather a keener understanding in the more historically-minded heads of that time that risk is always part of life and that aggressive attempts to eliminate this most ubiquitous human reality can often lead to severe unwanted consequences.

That there were many prestigious scientists, including Nobel prize winners, who told us as early as March that this virus, while new, would in greater or lesser measure behave much like all viruses before it and fade away. And, therefore, the best way to deal with it was to let it run its course while protecting the most vulnerable people in society and letting everyone else live their lives.

That significant information platforms banned or sidelined the views of these high-prestige scientists, while aggressively circulating the words of jokers like Neil Ferguson at Imperial College, whose stupid and alarmist predictions of COVID mortality (the latest in a career full of stupid and alarmist, but not coincidentally, pharmaceutical-industry-friendly predictions), gave politicians the pretext for setting in motion perhaps the most aggressive experiment in social engineering in the history of the world.

That just as the levels of mortality from the virus were diminishing rapidly in the late spring and early summer of 2020, thus raising hope for a much-needed return to normality, there was seamless bait and switch in the major media from a discourse centering on the logical and laudable goal of “flattening the curve” to one centered on the absurdly utopian (and not coincidentally vaccine-oriented) goal of eliminating new “cases”.

That having the news media focus narrowly and obsessively on the growth of “cases” when 99%+ of them are completely non-life-threatening was journalistic malpractice of the highest order, comparable to, if not exceeding in its sinister effect that which was generated by the media’s wholly unsubstantiated talk of mushroom clouds and WMD two decades ago, talk that led (so sorry brown people) to the deaths of millions and the destruction of entire civilizations in the Middle East.

That government and corporate power holders, having successfully habituated people to engage in major solidarity-destroying social changes through the repetition of the largely meaningless term “case“, will surely come to rely on it and other breathlessly repeated, albeit largely empty, signifiers to paralyze society at will, especially at those times when the people appear to be waking up and coming together to demand a change In the existing balance of social power.

That as numerous existing and emerging studies seem to demonstrate, hydroxychloroquine is, when combined with other similarly affordable drugs, a safe and rather effective early-stage treatment for COVID 19.

That the negative studies on hydroxychloroquine effectiveness published at two of the most prestigious medical journals in the world The Lancet and the New England Journal of Medicine, and which were adduced time and again at a key moment in the early debate of possible COVID treatments to debunk the drug’s effectiveness, were found to be based on forged data sets. (see earlier entry on how power centers play the game of perception lag with false information to achieve long-term structural changes)

That suggesting world-class professional athletes in their 20s and 30s, or even their less talented and less fit high school and college counterparts, were running a risk of mortal consequences in even minimal numbers by playing in the midst of the COVID spread was, in light of known age-related numbers on the disease’s lethality, at best ridiculous and, at worst, a very cynical fear-mongering ploy.

Repeat after me, “no one could have possibly known these things” and then check your screen to see, as citizens of Oceania, whether you are supposed to be worried this week about the threat from Eurasia or Eastasia.

And, of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you to mask up real tight, especially in light of the CDC numbers — you’ll have to forgive here for breaking with the rich tradition of pure panic-driven narrative and moving to the realm of empirical figures — which tell us that up until this point in our “everything must change” crisis:

• 0.011% of the US population under 65 have died of COVID

• 0.005% of the US population under 55 have died of COVID

• 0.0009% of the US population under 35 have died of COVID

• 0.0002% of the US population under 25 have died of COVID

• 0.00008% of the US population under 15 have died of COVID

And as for the most “high risk” people?

• 0.23% of the US population over 65 have died of COVID

Though they’ve tried to sell it otherwise, this thing has very little, if anything, to do with great-grandma’s Spanish flu of 1918.

Indeed, it not even completely clear if it is cumulatively worse in terms of loss of life than the influenzas outbreaks of 1957-58 or 1968-69 that most everyone slept through. But, I guess that doesn’t matter when there’s a narrative to keep.

Might it be time to ask if there might be something else afoot with all this?

Authored by Ray McGovern via ConsortiumNews.com,

The New York Times is leading the full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump…

The fresh orgy of anti-Russian invective in the lickspittle media (LSM) has the feel of fin de siècle. The last four reality-impaired years do seem as though they add up to a century. And no definitive fin is in sight, as long as most people don’t know what’s going on.

The LSM should be confronted: “At long last have you left no sense of decency?” But who would hear the question — much less any answer? The corporate media have a lock on what Americans are permitted or not permitted to hear. Checking the truth, once routine in journalism, is a thing of the past.

Thus the reckless abandon with which The New York Times is leading the current full-court press to improve on what it regards as Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s weak-kneed effort to blame the Russians for giving us Donald Trump. The press is on, and there are no referees to call the fouls.

The recent release of a 1,000-page, sans bombshells and already out-of-date report by the Senate Intelligence Committee has provided the occasion to “catapult the propaganda,” as President George W. Bush once put it.

As the the Times‘s Mark Mazzetti put it in his article Wednesday:

“Releasing the report less than 100 days before Election Day, Republican-majority senators hoped it would refocus attention on the interference by Russia and other hostile foreign powers in the American political process, which has continued unabated.”

Mazzetti is telling his readers, soto voce: regarding that interference four years ago, and the “continued-unabated” part, you just have to trust us and our intelligence community sources who would never lie to you. And if, nevertheless, you persist in asking for actual evidence, you are clearly in Putin’s pocket.

Incidentally, Mueller’s report apparently was insufficient, only two years in the making, and just 448 pages. The Senate committee’s magnum opus took three years, is almost 1,000 pages — and fortified. So there.

Iron Pills

Recall how disappointed the LSM and the rest of the Establishment were with Mueller’s anemic findings in spring 2019. His report claimed that the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion” via a social media campaign run by the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and by “hacking” Democratic emails. But the evidence behind those charges could not bear close scrutiny.

You would hardly know it from the LSM, but the accusation against the IRA was thrown out of court when the U.S. government admitted it could not prove that the IRA was working for the Russian government. Mueller’s ipse dixit did not suffice, as we explained a year ago in “Sic Transit Gloria Mueller.”

The Best Defense …

… is a good offense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of its study — call it “Mueller (Enhanced)” — and the propaganda fanfare — come at a key point in the Russiagate/Spygate imbroglio. It also came, curiously, as the Democratic Convention was beginning, as if the Republican-controlled Senate was sending Trump a message.

Durham

One chief worry, of course, derives from the uncertainty as to whether John Durham, the US Attorney investigating those FBI and other officials who launched the Trump-Russia investigation will let some heavy shoes drop before the election. Barr has said he expects “developments in Durham’s investigation hopefully before the end of the summer.”

FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith already has decided to plead guilty to the felony of falsifying evidence used to support a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to surveillance to spy on Trump associate Carter Page. It is abundantly clear that Clinesmith was just a small cog in the deep-state machine in action against candidate and then President Trump. And those running the machine are well known. The president has named names, and Barr has made no bones about his disdain for what he calls spying on the president.

The cognoscenti and the big fish themselves may be guessing that Trump/Barr/Durham will not throw out heavier lines for former FBI Director James Comey, his deputy Andrew McCabe, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, for example. But how can they be sure? What has become clear is that the certainty they all shared that Hillary Clinton would be the next president prompted them not only to take serious liberties with the Constitution and the law, but also to do so without taking rudimentary steps to hide their tracks.

The incriminating evidence is there. And as Trump becomes more and more vulnerable and defensive about his ineptness — particularly with regard to Covid-19 — he may summon the courage to order Barr and Durham to hook the big fish, not just minnows like Clinesmith. The neuralgic reality is that no one knows at this point how far Trump will go. To say that this kind of uncertainty is unsettling to all concerned is to say the obvious.

So, the stakes are high — for the Democrats, as well — and, not least, the LSM. In these circumstances it would seem imperative not just to circle the wagons but to mount the best offense/defense possible, despite the fact that virtually all the ammunition (as in the Senate report) is familiar and stale (“enhanced” or not).

Black eyes might well be in store for the very top former law enforcement and intelligence officials, the Democrats, and the LSM — and in the key pre-election period. So, the calculation: launch “Mueller Report (Enhanced)” and catapult the truth now with propaganda, before it is too late.

No Evidence of Hacking

The “hacking of the DNC” charge suffered a fatal blow three months ago when it became known that Shawn Henry, president of the DNC-hired cyber-security firm CrowdStrike, admitted under oath that his firm had no evidence that the DNC emails were hacked — by Russia or anyone else.

(YouTube)

Henry gave his testimony on Dec. 5, 2017, but House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff was able to keep it hidden until May 7, 2020.

Here’s a brief taste of how Henry’s testimony went: Asked by Schiff for “the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data”, Henry replied, “We just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

You did not know that? You may be forgiven — up until now — if your information diet is limited to the LSM and you believe The New York Times still publishes “all the news that’s fit to print.”  I am taking bets on how much longer the NYT will be able to keep Henry’s testimony hidden; Schiff’s record of 29 months will be hard to beat.

Putting Lipstick on the Pig of Russian ‘Tampering’

Worse still for the LSM and other Russiagate diehards, Mueller’s findings last year enabled Trump to shout “No Collusion” with Russia. What seems clear at this point is that a key objective of the current catapulting of the truth is to apply lipstick to Mueller’s findings.

After all, he was supposed to find treacherous plotting between the Trump campaign and the Russians and failed miserably. Most LSM-suffused Americans remain blissfully unaware of this, and the likes of Pulitzer Prize winner Mazzetti have been commissioned to keep it that way.

In Wednesday’s article, for example, Mazzetti puts it somewhat plaintively:

“Like the special counsel … the Senate report did not conclude that the Trump campaign engaged in a coordinated conspiracy with the Russian government — a fact that the Republicans seized on to argue that there was ‘no collusion’.”

How could they!

Mazzetti is playing with words. “Collusion,” however one defines it, is not a crime; conspiracy is.

‘Breathtaking’ Contacts: Mueller (Enhanced)

Mark Mazzetti (YouTube)

Mazzetti emphasizes that the Senate report “showed extensive evidence of contacts between Trump campaign advisers and people tied to the Kremlin,” and Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), the intelligence committee’s vice chairman, said the committee report details “a breathtaking level of contacts between Trump officials and Russian government operatives that is a very real counterintelligence threat to our elections.”

None of that takes us much beyond the Mueller report and other things generally well known — even in the LSM. Nor does the drivel about people like Paul Manafort “sharing polling data with Russians” who might be intelligence officers. That data was “mostly public” the Times itself reported, and the paper had to correct a story that the data was intended for Russian oligarchs, when it was meant for Ukrainian oligarchs instead. That Manafort was working to turn Ukraine towards the West and not Russia is rarely mentioned.

Recent revelations regarding the false data given the FISA court by an FBI lawyer to “justify” eavesdropping on Trump associate Carter Page show the Senate report to be not up to date and misguided in endorsing the FBI’s decision to investigate Page. The committee may wish to revisit that endorsement — at least.

On the Steele Dossier, the committee also missed a ruling by a British judge against Christopher Steele, labeling his dossier an attempt to help Hillary Clinton get elected. Consortium News explained back in October 2017 that both CrowdStrike and Steele were paid for by the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign to push Russiagate.

Also missed by the intelligence committee was a document released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month that revealed that Steele’s “Primary Subsource and his friends peddled warmed-over rumors and laughable gossip that Steele dressed up as formal intelligence memos.”

Smearing WikiLeaks

The Intelligence Committee report also repeats thoroughly debunked myths about WikiLeaks and, like Mueller, the committee made no effort to interview Julian Assange before launching its smears. Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, who partnered with WikiLeaks in the publication of the Podesta emails, described the report’s treatment of WikiLeaks in this Twitter thread:

2. the description of #WikiLeaks‘ publishing activities by this #SenateIntelligenceCommittee‘s Report appears a true #EdgarHoover‘s disinformation campaign to make a legitimate media org completely radioactive

3. Clearly, to describe #WikiLeaks and its publishing activities the #SenateIntelligenceCommittee’s Report completely rely on #US intelligence community+ #MikePompeo’s characterisation of #WikiLeaks. There is not even any pretense of an independent approach

4. there are also unsubstantiated claims like:
– “[WikiLeaks’] disclosures have jeopardized the safety of individual Americans and foreign allies” (p.200)
– “WikiLeaks has passed information to U.S. adversaries” (p.201)

5. it’s completely false that “#WikiLeaks does not seem to weigh whether its disclosures add any public interest value” (p.200) and any longtime media partner like me could provide you dozens of examples on how wrong this characterisation [is].

Titillating

Mazzetti did add some spice to the version of his article that dominated the two top right columns of Wednesday’s Times with the blaring headline: “Senate Panel Ties Russian Officials to Trump’s Aides: G.O.P.-Led Committee Echoes Mueller’s Findings on Election Tampering.”

Those who make it to the end of Mazzetti’s piece will learn that the Senate committee report “did not establish” that the Russian government obtained any compromising material on Mr. Trump or that they tried to use such materials [that they didn’t have] as leverage against him.” However, Mazzetti adds,

“According to the report, Mr. Trump met a former Miss Moscow at a party during one trip in 1996. After the party, a Trump associate told others he had seen Mr. Trump with the woman on multiple occasions and that they ‘might have had a brief romantic relationship.’

“The report also raised the possibility that, during that trip, Mr. Trump spent the night with two young women who joined him the next morning at a business meeting with the mayor of Moscow.”

This is journalism?

Another Pulitzer in Store?

The Times appends a note reminding us that Mazzetti was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on Donald Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia.

And that’s not the half of it. In September 2018, Mazzetti and his NYT colleague Scott Shane wrote a 10,000-word feature, “The Plot to Subvert an Election,” trying to convince readers that the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) had successfully swayed U.S. opinion during the 2016 election with 80,000 Facebook posts that they said had reached 126 million Americans.

That turned out to be a grotesquely deceptive claim. Mazzetti and Shane failed to mention the fact that those 80,000 IRA posts (from early 2015 through 2017, meaning about half came after the election), had been engulfed in a vast ocean of more than 33 trillion Facebook posts in people’s news feeds – 413 million times more than the IRA posts. Not to mention the lack of evidence that the IRA was the Russian government, as Mueller claimed.

In exposing that chicanery, prize-winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter commented:

“The descent of The New York Times into this unprecedented level of propagandizing for the narrative of Russia’s threat to U.S. democracy is dramatic evidence of a broader problem of abuses by corporate media … Greater awareness of the dishonesty at the heart of the Times’ coverage of that issue is a key to leveraging media reform and political change.”

Nothingburgers With Russian Dressing: the Backstory

The late Robert Parry.

“It’s too much; it’s just too much, too much”, a sedated, semi-conscious Robert Parry kept telling me from his hospital bed in late January 2018 a couple of days before he died. Bob was founder of Consortium News.

It was already clear what Bob meant; he had taken care to see to that. On Dec. 31, 2017 the reason for saying that came in what he titled “An Apology & Explanation” for “spotty production in recent days.” A stroke on Christmas Eve had left Bob with impaired vision, but he was able to summon enough strength to write an Apologia — his vision for honest journalism and his dismay at what had happened to his profession before he died on Jan. 27, 2018. The dichotomy was “just too much”.

Parry rued the role that journalism was playing in the “unrelenting ugliness that has become Official Washington. … Facts and logic no longer mattered. It was a case of using whatever you had to diminish and destroy your opponent … this loss of objective standards reached deeply into the most prestigious halls of American media.”

What bothered Bob most was the needless, dishonest tweaking of the Russian bear. “The U.S. media’s approach to Russia,” he wrote, “is now virtually 100 percent propaganda. Does any sentient human being read The New York Times’ or The Washington Post’s coverage of Russia and think that he or she is getting a neutral or unbiased treatment of the facts? … Western journalists now apparently see it as their patriotic duty to hide facts that otherwise would undermine the demonizing of Putin and Russia.”

Parry, who was no conservative, continued:

“Liberals are embracing every negative claim about Russia just because elements of the CIA, FBI and National Security Agency produced a report last Jan. 6 that blamed Russia for ‘hacking’ Democratic emails and releasing them to WikiLeaks.”

Bob noted that the ‘hand-picked’ authors “evinced no evidence and even admitted that they weren’t asserting any of this as fact.”

It was just too much.

Robert Parry’s Last Article

Peter Strzok during congressional hearing in July 2018. (Wikimedia Commons)

Bob posted his last substantive article on Dec. 13, 2017, the day after text exchanges between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page were made public. (Typically, readers of The New York Times the following day would altogether miss the importance of the text-exchanges.)

Bob Parry rarely felt any need for a “sanity check.” Dec. 12, 2017 was an exception. He called me about the Strzok-Page texts; we agreed they were explosive. FBI Agent Peter Strzok was on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s staff investigating alleged Russian interference, until Mueller removed him.

Strzok reportedly was a “hand-picked” FBI agent taking part in the Jan 2017 evidence-impoverished, rump, misnomered “intelligence community” assessment that blamed Russia for hacking and other election meddling. And he had helped lead the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s misuse of her computer servers. Page was Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s right-hand lawyer.

His Dec. 13, 2017 piece would be his fourth related article in less than two weeks; it turned out to be his last substantive article.  All three of the earlier ones are worth a re-read as examples of fearless, unbiased, perceptive journalism. Here are the links.

Bob began his article on the Strzok-Page bombshell:

“The disclosure of fiercely anti-Trump text messages between two romantically involved senior FBI officials who played key roles in the early Russia-gate inquiry has turned the supposed Russian-election-meddling “scandal” into its own scandal, by providing evidence that some government investigators saw it as their duty to block or destroy Donald Trump’s presidency.?

“As much as the U.S. mainstream media has mocked the idea that an American ‘deep state’ exists and that it has maneuvered to remove Trump from office, the text messages between senior FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok and senior FBI lawyer Lisa Page reveal how two high-ranking members of the government’s intelligence/legal bureaucracy saw their role as protecting the United States from an election that might elevate to the presidency someone as unfit as Trump.”

Not a fragment of Bob’s or other Consortium News analysis made any impact on what Bob used to call the Establishment media. As a matter of fact, eight months later during a talk in Seattle that I titled “Russia-gate: Can You Handle the Truth?”, only three out of a very progressive audience of some 150 had ever heard of Strzok and Page.

And so it goes.

Lest I am accused of being “in Putin’s pocket,” let me add the explanatory note that we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity included in our most explosive Memorandum for President Trump, on “Russian hacking.”

Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental. The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.

It was a year ago that the Pentagon first announced it would move forward with plans to deploy intermediate range ballistic missiles to Asia “within months” — an ambitious timeline which of course never materialized, nevertheless a prospect that’s remained on the table ever since, driving tensions higher as part of what Beijing has slammed repeatedly as Washington’s “Cold War mentality”.

In a new statement China’s Foreign Ministry has vowed it will take “countermeasures” should any US ally in the region agree to host American missiles.

“The US attempt to deploy land-based, medium-range missiles is consistent with its increasing military presence in the Asia Pacific and so-called ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ over the past years, is a typical demonstration of its Cold War mentality,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said on Friday.

“If the US side goes ahead with its plans (for deploying intermediate range missiles in the Asia-Pacific Region – TASS), China will take the necessary countermeasures to protect its interests in the field of security,” the statement continued.

“China is calling upon the Asia-Pacific countries to realize the real purpose of US actions and their grave effects and to avoid pulling chestnuts out of the fire for others,” Zhao added.

Further calling it a “blatant provocation” the statement underscored that it’s part of a broader pattern of Washington’s erosion of global and regional stability through its “words and deeds”.

Beijing slammed any potential future missile host nation in Asia as revealing some countries act as mere pawns of the US. “We also call on countries in the Asia Pacific region to be soberly aware of the true intention behind and severe consequences of the US move, and refrain from acting as a pawn for the US,” Zhao said.

At least initially, it would likely only be Guam that would see any early missile deployment.

The lengthy and fierce comments came in response US Special Presidential Envoy for Arms Control Marshall Billingslea indicating in a recent interview with Japanese media that the US will discuss the prospect of hosting missiles with some countries in the region.

Authored by Sam Jacobs via Ammo.com,

If you’re under the age of 40 and you’re reading this, chances are very good that your interest in the liberty movement was sparked by three-time presidential candidate and veteran Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Paul inspired an entire generation of Libertarians, Constitutionalists and limited-government Conservatives with his 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns.

It might surprise you to learn that Paul is not originally from Texas, but Pittsburgh, where he was born to a dairy farmer and his wife. He graduated from Gettysburg State College in 1957, with a degree in biology. He earned his medical degree from Duke’s School of Medicine in 1961. From 1963 to 1965, he was a flight surgeon in the United States Air Force, before moving over to the Air National Guard from 1965 to 1968. Upon discharge, he relocated to Texas to start a private practice in obstetrics and gynecology.

While he had been reading Austrian economics and Libertarian political philosophy for years beforehand, he finally decided to run for Congress when President Richard Nixon took the nation off of the gold standard in 1971. He lost his first attempt at public office in 1974, but won a special election in 1976, losing the regular election later that year by a mere 300 votes. He defeated his opponent in 1978, serving until 1985, then again from 1997 to 2013.

The Beginning of Ron Paul’s Political Career

While in Congress, Paul spoke in favor of a return to the gold standard with Senator Jesse Helms, as well as against a reinstatement of the draft favored by President Jimmy Carter and the majority of Republicans in Congress.

He retired from Congress in 1984 to run for Senate, losing the Republican primary to Phil Gramm.

After his time in Congress, he focused on the private promotion of liberty, publishing the Ron Paul Survival Newsletter and the Ron Paul Freedom Report with Lew Rockwell, who had previously been his congressional chief of staff. He also sold precious metals under the auspices of Ron Paul Coins.

In 1988, he made his first run for the presidency as a Libertarian, defeating Native American activist Russell Means (who had previously seconded Larry Flynt in his bid for the Libertarian Party line) and coming in third nationwide. He considered running again in 1992, but instead decided to back Pat Buchanan’s campaign against President George H.W. Bush.

Coming Back to Congress

Paul returned to Congress after a 1996 election with a huge assist from friends Nolan Ryan, Steve Forbes, and Pat Buchanan.

However, it was his 2008 presidential campaign that began to change the world of liberty. There is arguably no one more responsible for the spread of the liberty movement than Ron Paul, whose 2008 campaign electrified young people who would likely have largely been Democrats previously. The average Ron Paul supporter in 2008 was not the country club Republican or movement Libertarian one might have pegged, but more likely to be a tech-savvy college kid than anything else.

Thus, throughout the 2008 primary season, the acolytes of Ron Paul dominated political debate on the Internet and social media, the latter of which was still in its infancy at this point. Ron Paul’s campaign was the most searched for and his YouTube channel had even more followers than Barack Obama’s.

None of this translated into a terribly successful campaign. His highwater mark was a 25 percent second-place showing in Montana. He chose not to enter the general election as a third-party candidate, but did not endorse the eventual nominee, John McCain. Paul often claimed that he did not run as a third-party candidate because he had signed a binding agreement preventing him from doing so. He chose instead to endorse the four major third-party candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Bob Barr (this despite his previous role in Ruby Ridge), the Constitution Party’s Chuck Baldwin, and independent Ralph Nader.

In 2012, Ron Paul was still considered an outsider, but had considerably raised his national profile since 2008. He remained hot on the heels of front-runner Mitt Romney throughout the entire Republican primary, but once again came up short of the nomination. Much like in 2008, he refused to endorse Mitt Romney and even refused to give a speech at the convention because it would have to be vetted by Romney’s team.

Ron Paul’s Criticisms of the Republican Party

While Paul was a life-long Republican, he was often highly critical of the party and its leadership. Indeed, he was one of the only Republicans to vote against Ronald Reagan’s 1981 spending bill, despite being one of the first elected officials to endorse Reagan in both 1976 and 1980. He even had some extremely harsh words to say about Reagan while running for president in 1988. He called the Reagan administration “a dramatic failure,” continuing by saying that “Reagan’s record is disgraceful. He starts wars, breaks the law, supplies terrorists with guns made at taxpayers’ expense and lies about it to the American people.”

Since retiring from elected office and the presidential race, Ron Paul has become a fierce critic of the NSA and surveillance, as well as a supporter of Edward Snowden, whom he considers to be a great hero and champion of freedoms for Americans. He also founded the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity underneath the broader umbrella of his Foundation for Rational Economics and Education. He offers the Ron Paul Curriculum (developed by Gary North) free for homeschooled children from K-5 and paid for 6-12.

The Ron Paul Liberty Report has received more than 17 million views as of April 2019.

In 2016, Ron Paul became the oldest person to ever receive an electoral vote when a faithless elector in Texas voted for him.

Veterans of the Ron Paul rEVOLution are active in the liberty movement today. And how great is it that a man who has never smoked a cigarette in his life inspired a generation of pot-smoking techies to join the fight for liberty?

You can bet your last Ron Paul Dollar (remember those?) that Dr. Paul will be speaking hard truths, bucking the system and standing his ground until the day he dies. Libertarians will likely never find a champion quite like him.

President Trump took a swipe at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in a pair of Saturday tweets, accusing the “deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA” of delaying human vaccine trials by “making it very difficult for drug companies to get people” (test subjects) so that trial results aren’t known until after the 2020 election.

“Must focus on speed, and saving lives!” Trump concluded, tagging FDA Commissioner Stephen Hawn, who he appointed to the role.

The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives! @SteveFDA

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020

Trump also slammed the FDA, rubbing the agency’s nose in their June decision to revoke its emergency authorization of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for the treatment of COVID-19. 

“Many doctors and studies disagree with this!” tweeted Trump – resurrecting a June 15th ‘Twitter moment’ noting the revocation.

Many doctors and studies disagree with this! https://t.co/fpLVJZMvHS

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 22, 2020

Hydroxychloroquine – used by many countries as both a front-line early treatment and a prophylactic against COVID-19 – saw sharp pushback from public health officials and Democrats after President Trump recommended it, almost as if the need to prove him wrong and push new treatments was more important than exploring whether HCQ was indeed effective if used early, particularly in conjunction with zinc and the antibiotic azithromycin.

Indeed, the first wave of studies on HCQ focused on mid-to-late stage COVID-19 infections, and found marginal improvement – or in one study, harm, from the use of the popular antimalarial drug. Since then, studies have emerged that HCQ is extremely effective when used early –

In July, the state of Ohio withdrew their ban on the use of HCQ to treat COVID-19.

he anti-HCQ push has infected Silicon Valley as well – as tech giants have been labeling pro-hydroxychloroquine content as ‘misinformation’ – most recently banishing a press conference by a group of doctors touting the drug from just about every platform.

To that end, Yale epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch has accused Dr. Anthony Fouci of waging a “misinformation campaign” against the drug – appearing on “Good Morning America” in late July where he further downplayed the drug – claiming that “the overwhelming prevailing clinical trials that have looked at the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine have indicated that it is not effective in [treating] coronavirus disease.”

Wrong.

Several new studies have shown efficacy if used early, while countries that have deployed HCQ in just that manner have significantly fewer deaths per million residents (via c19study.com, which tracks HCQ studies).

HCQ’s efficacy was known by mid-July, when the FDA removed its authorization:

It’s not perfect as HCQ was also used in Belgium and Spain and later in Italy, but the idea is that Western Europe as a whole never embraced the ‘treat early and often’ strategy. Mostly they tried it with sick patients, didn’t work..moved on

They mainly followed the WHO position

— Gummi Bear (@gummibear737) July 16, 2020

Meanwhile, over 700 physicians from all 50 states have called on President Trump to issue another Emergency Use Authorization on HCQ. 

The physician signatories specialize in the following kinds of medicine:

Emergency: 47
Surgery: 74
Anesthesiology: 48
Cardiology: 20
Dentistry: 3
General/Family/Internal: 371
Neurology: 12
Pediatrician: 28
Psychiatry: 44
Radiology: 24
Women’s health: 30
Alternative: 20

— Jenny Beth Martin (@jennybethm) August 22, 2020

Dr. Fauci’s NIH is suppressing #Hydroxycholoroquine. @RealDonaldTrump should ask Dr. Fauci about NIH’s refusal to conduct or support real research on HCQ despite the likely efficacy of this safe drug as a #coronavirus treatment and preventative.

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) August 22, 2020

 

Via Priceonomics.com,

The Coronavirus pandemic has upended the real estate market so far in unexpected and varied ways. Record low mortgage interest rates combined with people spending most of their time at home has caused a boom in home buying many housing markets despite widespread unemployment.

Not only that, but people are moving and considering new locations. Office closures mean that many people are working from home and some employers have suggested this may be a permanent trend. All these trends are conspiring together to cause people to consider moving to new places across America.

Along with Priceonomics customer RefiGuide.org, we decided to perform an analysis for people looking to buy a home based on affordability. If you are tired of living in a place where homeownership is out of reach because of high prices compared to incomes, where else should you consider living?

We found that the most affordable housing markets in America were uniformly located in the South and Midwest. The most affordable place we looked at in America was Youngstown, Ohio where the median household income in one year is more than the typical purchase price of a home. On the other hand, almost all the least affordable places to buy a home were in California. Of all the markets we examined, Newport Beach was the least affordable market in the country.

***

Before diving into the results, it’s worth spending a moment on the methodology and data. In this analysis, we are primarily interested in affordability of housing in an area.  To do so, we compared two metrics – income and the cost of a house. How far will the prevailing median household income go toward the purchase price of a home in the city. All income data is derived from the US Census 2018 data and housing data from Zillow’s June 30, 2020 market estimates. We looked at the 609 largest “places” (a designation in the US Census for cities and towns) in America.

Below are the top 50 most affordable places in America. To calculate the affordability we took median annual income as percentage of home prices in the area.

Chart via RefiGuide.org

The most affordable place in America is Youngstown, Ohio, followed by Jackson, Mississippi. In both places, the median household income is higher than the purchase price of a house! Every single city on the most affordable list is located in the South or Midwest. Of the 609 places in America, only 50 places have an affordability score over 36%. The vast majority of places in America are much less affordable.

Next, let’s look at the least affordable housing markets in America. The following chart shows the places where the local income does not go particularly far toward a home purchase:

Chart via RefiGuide.org

The least affordable place in America is Newport Beach, California, followed by Santa Monica, California. In these places, the typical annual income covers just 5.3% of a home’s purchase price. In fact 24 out of the top 25 places on the least affordability list are located in California. A few cities in New York, Colorado, Hawaii and Florida also make the list that’s generally dominated by California.

From the two above charts, it seems clear that there is a geographic pattern in affordability. Next, let’s look at the average affordability of all the places in a given state taken together.

Chart via RefiGuide.org

The most affordable state in America for homebuyers is Mississippi, followed by Ohio and Oklahoma. Each of the top 12 most affordable states are in the South and Midwest. The least affordable states are Hawaii, Washington DC, and California. The least affordable places are all in the West and East of the country.

Lastly, let’s look at the 50 largest housing markets according to Zillow. These places tend to have the most job opportunities and largest economies, which can be a major factor in the long term affordability of a city, even in the area of remote work.

Chart via RefiGuide.org

Of the largest 50 housing markets in America, Detroit, Michigan is the most affordable where a household’s salary covers 83.4% of the home’s purchase price. Each of the top 5 cities are in the South or Midwest. San Francisco is the least affordable major city in the country, followed by Los Angeles and Oakland. The top 6 of the top 10 cities are in California with New York, Honolulu, Boston and Miami also making the least affordable major cities list.

***

Housing affordability has long been a hot button issue in America. Over the last decade housing prices have increased at a tremendous rate and made homeownership beyond the reach of many Americans.

A couple of different forces are affecting the housing market as a result of the pandemic. On one hand many people are laid off, meaning many people in the economy are housing insecure. On the other hand, many Americans are using the pandemic to reassess where they want to live. To assist those that are considering a move, below is a data sheet for the housing prices, median income, and affordability rate of over 600 places in America.

***

Note: If you’re a company that wants to work with Priceonomics to turn your data into great stories, learn more about the Priceonomics Data Studio.