Princeton & NYU Professor Warns Of Dangers From Liberal Media’s “False Narratives Of A New Cold War”

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

We’re shut out now. There hasn’t been an op-ed in The New York Times or Washington Post editorial pages arguing that the United States is at least equally to blame for this new Cold War crisis. They simply will not accept those articles…So this is the problem. In a democracy we fight through discourse. If you can’t get to the mainstream media  and make the argument, then there’s no way of slowing the drift toward catastrophe.

 

– Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University

Stephen Cohen just recorded an incredibly trenchant interview regarding the extreme dangers of the recent explosion in Russia hysteria with Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

This is what the sage-like Cohen said three years ago…

The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

 

Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

And sure enough, what has come to pass.

As the following paragraphs published in Politico earlier today show… While the article itself was embarrassingly biased toward standard U.S. government talking points, some valuable history can be found amongst all the noise. Such as the following:

Related was Hillary Clinton’s enthusiasm for NATO’s further expansion into Eastern Europe. That process was based on the well-founded idea that Eastern Europe needed—indeed, was asking for—protection from Russia aggression. But Russia’s military establishment treated it as a slow-rolling invasion of their sphere of influence.

 

This reaction, too, had its roots under Bill Clinton. An expanded NATO would help ensure democracy, prosperity and stability across Europe, he believed. Moscow took a sharply different view. After one 1994 summit at which Yeltsin gave Bill Clinton his blessing to the addition of new NATO members—including Poland and Hungary, both former Soviet satellites—a communist newspaper fumed about “the capitulation of Russian policy before NATO and the U.S.” One of Yeltsin’s main political opponents said he had allowed “his friend Bill [to] kick him in the rear.” He compared the agreement to the treatment of Germany at Versailles after World War I—a recurring theme among Russian officials since the Cold War’s end.

 

Some of Bill Clinton’s top advisers correctly predicted that NATO expansion would produce a backlash in Moscow, and would create a handy narrative for would-be nationalists to posture against the West. Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Perry, told POLITICO this summer that he considered resigning over the issue out of concern for its effect on U.S.-Russia relations. But Clinton pressed ahead, kicking off a process that added a dozen new members over the next 20 years, from the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia through Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic and Romania) and into the former Yugoslavia—all places where Russia had once enjoyed uncontested influence.

 

As Obama kept the NATO train rolling, his secretary of state was fully on board. “There can be no question that NATO will continue to keep its doors open to new members,” Clinton said in February 2010.

Now without further ado, here’s perhaps the most important interview you’ll hear all month. Listen and share with everyone you know.

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Central Banker Sees “Scary” 2017

Barron’s Asia: When you look ahead to 2017, what keeps you awake at night?

 

Amando Tetangco: Short term, the Fed rate hikes — the timing and the magnitude. Of course, this would be related to the policies that the new U.S. administration will adopt. Medium-to-long term, the retreat from multi-lateralism. That is related to the performance of the global economy – the major and various economies, and emerging markets like China.

 

“Scary stuff” – that’s not the kind of utterance one would expect to hear from a central banker, but in this interview posted on Barron’s Asia with Amando Tetangco of the Philippines, “scary” is just how the central banker defines the increasingly chaotic global environment. Between Donald Trump’s shock election, Brexit, Italians showing their prime minister the door and fallout from quantitative-easing programs, 2016 has been an unusually unruly year. Will 2017 be a kinder, gentler one? Sadly no, says the governor of Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.

Barron’s Asia sat down with Tetangco in his Manila office to hear why “scary” days lie ahead.

Barron’s Asia: Many are so happy to see the back of 2016, a year of epochal political upheaval. It’s been a year when lots of financial relationships broke down, with messages from bond yields to stock prices to how oil prices affect markets going haywire. Is the worst over or are we in for rockier times in 2017?

Tetangco: I think it’s more of the latter. You mentioned politics. I think that’s a major consideration right now because it’s causing some uncertainty with this potential rise in populist policies – uncertainty because it is going to be difficult to frame economic policy when something isn’t clear. Among the important considerations in this regard would be Brexit. We don’t know yet how this is going to pan out.

Q: These populist winds are blowing though the U.S. as much as Europe these days. Has that affected how central bankers operate?

A: Yes, with this rise of populist politics, this talk about protectionism. These are scary developments, it’s scary stuff. As you mentioned, a few European countries are having elections either this year or next year, Italy and Austria just voted out the traditional politicians. Then France in the middle part of next year. And then you have, of course, the pronouncements of the newly elected U.S. president. How will he move from rhetoric to implementation? It is still up in the air and, as a result of that, it’s affecting business planning and financial market behavior.

Q: There’s much talk about the Trump Tantrum. Is the Philippines better positioned to navigate that than Association of Southeast Asian Nation, or Asean, peers?

A: I think so. Our relationship with the U.S. in terms of exports and foreign investments relative to GDP is below the average for Asean. And then you’ve got the buffers that you have built up over the years with structural reforms and our well-articulated policy framework, which should serve us well. One of the things that is often mentioned is that, if Trump actually pursues what he said during the campaign, there could be an effect on the BPO (business-process outsourcing) sector in the Philippines. But the jobs that are being performed here are not in direct competition with America or jobs many American workers want to do. And on illegal immigrants, this may not directly affect remittances significantly because we believe the majority of Filipino migrants of the U.S. are either permanent residents or are legally documented.

Q: But what if the U.S. turns inward, trade-wise, as Trump proposes?

A: While the U.S. is the second-largest destination of Filipino exports, the trade with Asean countries has been expanding significantly. In fact, Asean accounts for about 20% of Philippine exports right now. This is almost the same as the 21% share of Japan in the Philippine exports. And Asean is still a growth area, so we can continue to see some further growth in demand from the Asean countries. For buffers, you’ve got broadening economic growth drivers. It’s not only services now but also manufacturing and construction on the demand side. The growth in the third quarter was 7.1%. Third quarter growth brought to 71 consecutive quarters of uninterrupted growth in the Philippine economy. So 71 quarters, that’s a long time. We also have monetary space in terms of interest rates.

Q: The Philippines has experienced its own political upheaval since the election of President Rodrigo Duterte. Your 10-year stint at BSP ends in July. Do you worry about your successor’s ability to navigate messy politics?

A: So far this administration, just like the previous ones, has essentially left monetary to the central bank and I believe members of the executive have a good appreciation of the importance of independence of the central bank. At the same time, I think the BSP also built up a good reputation and remains credible. To me, being credible and being a competent organization — these are all important ingredients for being able to maintain your independence and so far that’s what we have experienced.

Q: Assuming you don’t serve a third term, which would require a law change, what advice would you give the next occupant of this office?

A: I liken my experience as governor to the captain of the ship. For instance, I must know the course with certainty. I must have an intimate understanding of the vessel and its equipment. I must delegate to and trust the ship’s officers because you can’t do it alone. I have to take care of my crew. I must provide clear and active communication internally within the institution and lead coordination externally with other government agencies and multilateral institutions, and rules and regulations must be complied with because there are certain rules that govern the operations of the central bank. So you have to be familiar with those, and you have to comply with those regulations. The journey must be inclusive.

Q: When you look ahead to 2017, what keeps you awake at night?

A: Short term, the Fed rate hikes — the timing and the magnitude. Of course, this would be related to the policies that the new U.S. administration will adopt. Medium-to-long term, the retreat from multi-lateralism. That is related to the performance of the global economy – the major and various economies, and emerging markets like China.

Q: Have zero-rate policies outlived their usefulness?

A: Perhaps at some point these policies tend to be less effective. But my own assessment is that this will likely continue for some time to come. Rates will stay very low. The thing is we have to be mindful of the financial stability impact of very low interest rates. Corporates and financial institutions can be encouraged to take on more risk. And we will need to monitor that. In fact, a lot of countries are now focusing on the increase in corporate leverage in their economies.

Q: And I guess there’s a question about how the next White House reacts to Fed hikes.

A: Well that’s the other thing. That adds another source of uncertainty – how the Fed is going to react to Trump, too. But at the same time, if these policies that have been indicated by Trump are implemented, then the Fed may have to do something on the monetary side as we see higher spending and higher inflation.

Q: You don’t seem worried about China hitting a wall. What if Trump goes ahead with 45% tariffs? 

A: Oh, everybody would be affected, sure.

The whole global economy will be affected and therefore the emerging markets would be affected as well. I think what’s important now is that countries are able to manage their own economies.

Q: So, the new zeitgeist on Asia is “it’s the politics, stupid?”

A: If you look at what you know people like Donald Trump and others are saying, there seems to be a retreat from multi-lateralism, I guess partly because of the lack of economic growth in the global scene. Retreat from multi-lateralism has a lot of implications. Countries will start looking inward. They will look for domestic sources of growth. To this, I think, countries can sort of moderate the impact of a weak external environment.

Q: Is anti-globalization fever here to stay?

A: The question is can this be sustained? How resilient can countries be in this kind of environment? Then, where is the benefit of increasing welfare that can be derived from globalization. Where has it gone? Where is it going? The move towards more inward looking policies is understandable under the current conditions. But there is also a need to expand the sources of growth through technology, through capacity building, through the right policies. So countries have, I think, room to go in that direction. But no one can really tell up to where it can go. At some point, we need to go back to multi-lateralism. Hopefully, not too far off into the future.

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Why The Bill Of Rights Is Failing

Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

225 years ago today, the first ten amendments were added to the new Constitution of 1787. Those amendments have come to be known as the Bill of Rights, and taken as a whole, these amendments represent what can only be described as one of the few parts of the Constitution worth applauding today. 

While most of the Constitution is concerned with centralizing government power, raising tax revenue, protecting the institution of chattel slavery, and hammering the independent states into a consolidated political union, the Bill of Rights, on the other hand, was concerned with limiting government power: 

Bizarrely revered by many as a "pro-freedom" document, the document now generally called "the Constitution" was originally devoted almost entirely toward creating a new, bigger, more coercive, more expensive version of the United States. The United States, of course, had already existed since 1777 under a functioning constitution that had allowed the United States to enter into numerous international alliances and win a war against the most powerful empire on earth.

 

That wasn't good enough for the oligarchs of the day, the crony capitalists with names like Washington, Madison, and, Hamilton. Hamilton and friends had long plotted for a more powerful United States government to allow the mega-rich of the time, like George Washington and James Madison, to more easily develop their lands and investments with the help of government infrastructure. Hamilton wanted to create a clone of the British empire to allow him to indulge his grandiose dreams of financial imperialism. 

Fortunately, there were some who stood in the way of the people we now refer to as "the Founding Fathers." They were the anti-federalists — the good guys who stood against Washington and his friends — and who demanded a Bill of Rights before they would even consider ratifying the new Constitution. 

In the end, however, the Bill of Rights was far weaker than it should have been. It was, essentially, just a bone the Federalists threw to the opposition in order to get the new Constitution ratified. The anti-Federalists, after all, couldn't even conceive of a federal government as enormous, bloated, and powerful as the US government is today. Living in a world where the individual state governments were both highly democratic and powerful in relation to the central government, the anti-Federalists figured they had enough tools at their disposal to prevent the sort of centralization that has taken place over the past two hundred years. The optimistic anti-Federalists were, unfortunately, wrong. 

But, there was much more than could have been done had the anti-Federalists insisted. William Watkins offers some insights today into what could have been: 

The state conventions that ratified the Constitution suggested over 200 amendments to the Constitution to cure structural problems. For example, Virginia offered a lengthy amendment on the judicial power. The proposal, in the main, would have limited the federal judiciary to the Supreme Court and various admiralty courts established by Congress. State courts would serve as the trial courts of the Union with the possibility of appeal to the Supreme Court. Virginians rightly feared that the federal judiciary would become an engine of consolidated government and sought to limit its power.

 

Massachusetts feared the new power of taxation in the federal government. Massachusetts, through the pen of John Hancock, offered a proposal that would have prohibited Congress from levying direct taxes … As a check on the national government, Massachusetts wanted the states to retain some control on Congress’s demands for revenue.

 

Massachusetts also proposed an amendment dealing with concerns about inadequate representation. Massachusetts asked that the Constitution be amended to guarantee “one representative to every thirty thousand persons . . . A ratio in excess of one representative for every 30,000 people would not, in Massachusetts’s opinion, be a true and viable representation. How disappointed would Hancock and Company be to see that today we average 1 representative for about every 750,000 person. Do we have truly representative government? Not in the eyes of the patriots from Massachusetts who understood that true representation can only take place on a human scale.

 

Rather than sitting back today and mindlessly celebrating the “high temple” of our constitutional order, Americans should dust off copies of the substantive amendments proposed by the state ratifying conventions but ignored by Madison and the Federalist majority in the first Congress. (Massachusetts’ Amendments, Virginia’s Amendments, New York’s Amendments, North Carolina’s Amendments). 

The Bill of Rights Means Nothing Without the Liberal Ideology The Produced It 

Better, more limiting, and more numerous amendments may indeed have been helpful. 

But, no law written on parchment can control the size and scope of government if the population is willing to accept more state control over their lives. 

The fact remains that the American public generally tolerates countless violations of the Tenth Amendment, the Ninth Amendment, the Sixth Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, and the Second Amendment. The federal government routinely seizes private property without due process, fails to provide for speedy trials, passes federal gun control laws, and invents powers for itself that are reserved to the states and the citizens alone. Even the First Amendment is now being targeted by the feds who are the throes of limiting freedom of speech and freedom of the press by labeling objectionable ideas as "fake news" and thus not so-called protected speech. 

These attacks will be tolerated if the public is willing to go on doing so. After all, the Bill of Rights itself never actually limited government power. Government power — to the extent it has actually been limited — was limited because citizens valued the ideas reflected in the Bill of Rights. 

Once the public abandons the ideology behind the Bill of Rights, then the Bill of Rights will cease to mean anything, even if it still ostensibly remains in force. 

Not surprisingly, as the public ideological views have changed, the Constitution has failed to limit the power of the central government. Murray Rothbard observed this long ago when he wrote: 

From any libertarian, or even conservative, point of view, it has failed and failed abysmally; for let us never forget that every one of the despotic incursions on man’s rights in this century, before, during and after the New Deal, have received the official stamp of Constitutional blessing. 

Rothbard was echoing Lysander Spooner who wrote:

But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.

From a legal standpoint, this state of affairs was easy to bring about because in practice the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, means whatever the Supreme Court says it means. But, even the Court is limited by the public's ideological views and the public's willingness to tolerate the Court's rulings. If the public is willing to accept the seizure of private property in the name of the War on Drugs or the War on Terrorism, then we should not be surprised when government agencies do so. If the public is willing to grant the federal government powers that are clearly not found in the Constitution itself, the fact that the Bill of Rights legally prohibits such things will be of little consequence. 

As written, the Bill of Rights is a beneficial summary of many of the limitations that should be placed on government power. Without a public rooted in an ideology that supports and demands respect for the Bill of Rights, however, the words will ultimately mean nothing at all.

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Obama, The Divider in Chief, Invokes Reagan ‘Rolling Over in His Grave’ in Attempt to Shame Republicans into Hating Putin

The agitprop out of the White House isn’t working these days, thanks to the advent of fake news of course. Following weeks of hysteria, following Donald J. Trump’s triumphant victory of Hillary Clinton and Obama’s legacy, Obama took to the podium for one last time to divide Americans — this time invoking the revered late President Ronald Reagan — saying he’d be ‘rolling over in his grave’ now had he known that over a third of republicans approve of Putin in some random poll.

If Obama truly wants to know why Americans are willing to accept the words of Putin, undoubtedly a strong man leader, over his — he should take a look in the mirror and then gander over to his computer to re-read all of the Wikileaks from John Podesta’s email that Putin so graciously made available to us all. They speak volumes about the corruptness and the rot permeating in our capitol. Even without the emails, we see the neocon strategy of persistent war and deceit hollowing out this nation — devouring its resources, emptying its treasury, and there is nothing redeeming about it.

During the press conference, Obama provided his media with incontrovertible evidence that Russia was behind the WikiLeaks, saying ‘not much happens in Russia without Putin’s approval.’

Russia has a land mass of 6,592,800 sq miles and Putin controls every single inch of it. This is retard level thinking.

Moreover, Obama says he told Putin to ‘cut it out’ when he last saw him in China, warning him of serious consequences. Luckily for us, Putin got scared and ceased all further hackings. However, the damage had already been done and the Wikileaks released.

I suppose this type of lazy thinking appeals to a certain subset of America, else why would he make such infantile statements?

The Divider in Chief, one last time reminding himself and the press that XENOPHOBIA against Russians is good. The Russians are a useless sort, who produce nothing of interest, a very small and weak country, only capable of wiping out the entirety of America 10x over via very large nuclear detonations. Oh, and you pesky republicans love Putin because you’re sooo political.

This is what some might call ‘idiotic diplomacy’, mocking and deriding a rival nation to the point of war, a war that could exterminate life on planet earth for at least a millennia. Genius.

 

Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

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George Soros Is Funding Facebook’s “Third-Party Fact Checking” Organization Targeting “Fake News”

Behind almost every liberal crusade of the past several decades, from the blocking of voter ID laws to the Syrian refugee crisis, there has been one man quietly pulling the puppet strings from the background: George Soros.  So imagine our complete shock when we discovered Soros to be the financing source behind Facebook’s “third-party fact checking” organization retained to flag, and thus eliminate, “fake news.”

Just yesterday, Facebook posted the following press release to their website detailing their plans to use a “third-party fact checking organization,” known as The Poynter Institute, to flag “fake news.”  The role of the “fact checkers” will be to review news stories and flag anything they deem to be “fake” so that it can be deprioritized on Facebook’s news feed.

FaceBook

 

Of course, that raises any number of questions including what will be deemed to be “fake news” (e.g. will dissenting opinions be deemed “fake”) and who exactly gets to oversee such a powerful position that basically has been given carte blanche to censor media outlets of their choosing?  Surely such an organization would have to be an extremely transparent, publicly funded, bi-partisan group, right?

Well, not so much apparently.  A quick review of Poynter’s website reveals that the organization is funded by the who’s who of leftist billionaires including George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, and Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Network.  Well that seem fairly bipartisan, right?   

Poynter

 

But don’t worry, Poynter would like to assure you that they’re committed to “nonpartisan and transparent fact-checking.”

Poynter

 

Of course, as Fox News pointed out back in 2011, it was Poynter that taught a “journalism” class that urged journalists to downplay the threat of terrorist organizations by comparing death tolls of terrorist attacks to those associated with malaria and HIV/AIDS. 

But to illustrate this point, the course references the number of people killed by various causes, implicitly suggesting journalists change the way they report on jihad-related deaths.

 

“Of the hundreds of murders that occur each day, journalists are far more likely to report on jihad-related incidents than other violence. As a result, news consumers have developed a skewed impression of the prevalence of jihad, relative to other forms of conflict. Context is essential in covering this global story in a way that does not amplify fears of jihad,” the course says.

 

The Poynter course estimates jihad groups have killed about 165,000 people over the past four decades, mostly in Iraq. It notes the biggest toll in the United States was the approximately 3,000 killed on Sept. 11, 2001.

 

“To give those numbers some context, the FBI reports that approximately 15,000 people in the U.S. are murdered each year. All around the world, more than half a million people are murdered annually, according to the World Health Organization,” the course says. “At its peak, jihad organizations have accounted for less than 2 percent of this toll — in most years, they account for well under 1 percent. (A half-million individuals die each year from nutritional deficiencies, more than 800,000 from malaria, and 2 million from HIV/AIDS.)”

Would that count as “advocating or taking a policy position” on an issue?

So congrats on choosing a “nonpartisan” fact checker, Mr. Zuckerberg.  We eagerly await the creation of a competitive social media outlet, one that promotes truly free and independent thought, which you have surely just spawned with the creation of your new “department of censorship.”

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Obama Blames Russia For Hacking, Slams “Domestic Propagandists” For Rise Of “Fake News”

As of this moment, president Obama is on his way to Hawaii, having just concluded his final press conference for 2016, and one of the last in his tenure as president. What did we learn in the rambling speech that lasted nearly two hours and saw one of the White House reporters faint? Not much that wasn’t already insinuated, if not proven, repeatedly: Obama stuck to the script, and said Russia “in fact” had “hacked into the DNC,” but that the actual voting process was not compromised. The White House was just trying to “let people know” what was going on, and the media interpreted the reasons.

While Obama took questions about Syria, China and Trump’s transition team, Obama mostly spoke about Russia and the allegations by US intelligence agencies that Moscow had hacked the US election. Obama said that his administration allowed the public “to make an assessment” by letting people know that “the Russians were responsible for hacking” the Democratic National Committee earlier this year, adding that the intelligence community did its job “without political influence.”

Citing alleged cyber security threats to the US, Obama said he had “told Putin to cut out the hacking” and indicated there would be consequences. which however he would not disclose.

“Our goal continues to be to send a clear message to Russia or others not to do this to us, because we can do stuff to you,” he said, adding that Washington’s response to Moscow’s alleged interference is being done “in a thoughtful, methodical way.” “Some of it we do publicly, some of it we will do in a way that they know but not everybody will,” Obama told reporters, adding that “the message will be directly received by the Russians and not publicized.”

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“It’s not like Putin is going around the world publicly saying, ‘Look what we did, wasn’t that clever’ – he denies it,” Obama said.

When meeting with Russia’s President Putin in China in September, Obama said he confronted him directlyon the matter. The US leader told Moscow “to cut it out,” and apparently since then Washington “didn’t see further tampering with the election process.”

By then, however, WikiLeaks had already published the DNC documents. In October they began publishing the emails of Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta, and the media “wrote about it every day,” Obama said.

Obama also told journalists that Hillary Clinton had a “disadvantage” in the presidential campaign because of “how the US media covered her.”

“I don’t think she was treated fairly during the election. I think the coverage of her and the issues was troubling,” he said, calling the leaks “an obsession” of the press.

“It’s worth us reflecting how it is that a presidential election of such importance… came to be dominated by a bunch of these leaks,” Obama told reporters, accusing the “divided, partisan, dysfunctional political process” for making the US vulnerable to “potential manipulations that were not particularly sophisticated.”

“This was not some elaborate complicated espionage scheme,” Obama said, again accusing Moscow of having hacked into the Democratic party emails, both Clinton’s and Podesta’s, that contained “pretty routine stuff” such as John Podesta’s risotto recipe. What Obama failed to note is that the Podesta email hack provided an unvarnished, unfiltered and unique glimpse into the Washington corruption and cronyism at the very top levels, something the ordinary public could only dream of getting access to prior to the “Russian hack.”

Also, despite insisting Russia was responsible for making the DNC and Podesta documents public, Obama repeated several times that the actual election was not tampered with.

“My principal goal leading up to the election was making sure the election itself went off without a hitch, that it was not tarnished, and that it did not feed any sense in the public that somehow tampering had taken place with the actual process of voting. And we accomplished that,” Obama said.

“I can assure the public that there was not the kind of tampering with the voting process that was the concern,” he said later, answering another question. “The votes that were cast were counted, and counted appropriately.”

Incidentally, Obama did not miss the opportunity to take the low road, and mock Russia, saying “They’re a small country, they’re a weak country, they don’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy.”

 

US cyber security faces a “constant challenge,” the president said, adding that Washington has been warning other countries against cyberattacks. The US has been working on creating international norms in the field of cyber security, but along with defensive capabilities Washington also has “some offensive capabilities,” he warned.

Attributing a cyber attack to a particular government can be difficult, and is “not always provable in court,” he cautioned.

* * *

Separately, in a tangential discussion about a topic dear to much of the “alternative media”, Obama shifted attention to the local media, and blamed talk radio and other “domestic propagandists” for the rise of “fake news,” including fictional news items published by state-sponsored actors.

“If fake news that’s being released by some foreign government is almost identical to reports that are being issued through partisan news venues, then it’s not surprising that that foreign propaganda will have a greater effect. It doesn’t seem that far-fetched compared to some of the other stuff folks are hearing from domestic propagandists,” Obama said.

“To the extent that our political dialogue is such that everything is under suspicion, everybody’s corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons, and all of our institutions are, you know full of malevolent actors, and if that’s the story that is being put out there, then when a foreign government introduces that same argument, with facts that are made up, voters who have been listening to that stuff for years, who have been getting that stuff every day from talk radio or other venues, they’re going to believe it.”

As they should, especially if it’s true.

Obama continued, lamenting that “our political dialogue is such that everything is under suspicion, everybody’s corrupt and everybody is doing things for partisan reasons,” and said “our vulnerability to Russia –or any other foreign power– is directly related to how divided, partisan, dysfunctional our political process is.”

“So if we want to really reduce foreign influence on our elections, then we better think about how to make sure that our political process, our political dialogue is stronger than it’s been.”

In other words, please stop criticizing the government as you are responsible for generating further partisan divisions, especially if the line of attack is similar to something the “propaganda” Russian press may put out.

While we would be the first to agree with this statement – if it were accurate – we can’t help but think to last week’s passage of the “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016“, whose ultimate purpose is to enforce a crackdown on any media – foreign and domestic – that the administration views as hostile.

Which is why we found Obama’s parting statement, that “the Russians can’t weaken us, but Putin can weaken us if we buy into notions that it is ok to intimidate the press“, particularly ironic.

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Is This Why Snowden Had to Break the Law to Become an NSA Whistleblower?

Submitted by Nick Bernabe via TheAntiMedia.org,

National Security Agency (NSA) inspector general George Ellard, an outspoken critic of whistleblower Edward Snowden, personally retaliated against another NSA whistleblower, Adam Zagorin reported at the Project on Government Overreach (POGO) on Thursday.

An intelligence community panel earlier this year found that Ellard had retaliated against a whistleblower, Zagorin writes, in a judgment that has still not been made public.

The finding is remarkable because Ellard first made headlines two years ago when he publicly condemned Snowden for leaking information about the NSA’s mass surveillance of private citizens, wherein Ellard claimed that Snowden should have raised concerns through internal channels. The agency would have protected him from any retaliation, Ellard said at the time.

Politico reported on Ellard’s 2014 comments:

“‘We have surprising success in resolving the complaints that are brought to us,’ he said.

 

“In Snowden’s case, Ellard said a complaint would have prompted an independent assessment into the constitutionality of the law that allows for the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone metadata. But that review, he added, would have also shown the NSA was within the scope of the law.

 

“‘Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do,’ Ellard said.”

Yet documents confirmed earlier this year that Snowden had, indeed, reported concerns to several NSA officials—who took no action and discouraged him from continuing to voice concerns. Moreover, as Snowden told Vice News:

“I was not protected by U.S. whistleblower laws, and I would not have been protected from retaliation and legal sanction for revealing classified information about law breaking in accordance with the recommended process.”

Ellard’s 2014 criticism of Snowden appears particularly threadbare after he has been found personally guilty of whistleblower retaliation.

The judgment also came from an external panel of Ellard’s fellow intelligence agency watchdogs. Zagorin writes:

“[L]ast May, after eight months of inquiry and deliberation, a high-level Intelligence Community panel found that Ellard himself had previously retaliated against an NSA whistleblower, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight. Informed of that finding, NSA’s Director, Admiral Michael Rogers, promptly issued Ellard a notice of proposed termination, although Ellard apparently remains an agency employee while on administrative leave, pending a possible response to his appeal from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.

 

“The closely held but unclassified finding against Ellard is not public. It was reached by following new whistleblower protections set forth by President Obama in an executive order, Presidential Policy Directive 19. (A President Trump could, in theory, eliminate the order.) Following PPD-19 procedures, a first-ever External Review Panel (ERP) composed of three of the most experienced watchdogs in the US government was convened to examine the issue. The trio—[Inspectors General (IGs)] of the Justice Department, Treasury, and CIA—overturned an earlier finding of the Department of Defense IG, which investigated Ellard but was unable to substantiate his alleged retaliation.”

 

“The finding against Ellard is extraordinary and unprecedented,” Stephen Aftergood, director of the Secrecy Program at the Federation of American Scientists, told Zagorin. “This is the first real test drive for a new process of protecting intelligence whistleblowers. Until now, they’ve been at the mercy of their own agencies, and dependent on the whims of their superiors. This process is supposed to provide them security and a procedural foothold.”

Ellard served as inspector general of the NSA for nine years, Zagorin notes.

The revelation about Ellard echoes other reports of retaliation against whistleblowers from the internal watchdogs meant to protect them, and further affirms Snowden’s repeated argument that he had no choice but to go public with his mass surveillance leaks.

“More generally,” observes Zagorin, “there are few if any incentives for intelligence whistleblowers to report problems through designated authorities when the IG of [the] NSA is found to have retaliated against such an individual.”

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Forget Keith Olberman (Who?): Rand Paul and Justin Amash Are Leading the Resistance To Trump

Donald Trump is going to become next January (sorry, Hamilton Electors), and he’ll be working with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress (Congreff?). From a libertarian perspective, there are some grounds for cautious optimism, but there are more reasons to be deeply worried by all this. Trump sounded distinctly authoritarian notes during the campaign and he’s no fan of free speech, free trade, and anything remotely resembling open borders. On foreign policy, he’s bounced back and forth from straightforward denunciations of 21st century interventions into the Middle East and North Africa as terrible and bragging that he’d “bomb the shit” out of ISIS. His tax plan would make national debt massively bigger and he’s hardly a fiscal hawk, either. His daughter is already making calls to push a taxpayer-funded maternity-leave program and his infrastructure plans, vague as they are, have boondoggle written all over them.

So who is going to stand up to him? The Dems are a sorry lot as a group, whether they backed Bernie or were with Hillary. They put up no serious resistance to foreign-policy disasters under George W. Bush and Barack Obama and few of them gave a shit about civil liberties. Too busy pushing for higher national minimum wages during a crap economy and lobbying for student-loan relief for the relatively small number of in-debt brats of a middle-class too dumb or insecure to send their kids to relatively inexpensive state schools, I guess. And the Republicans? Come on! Beta-dogs such as Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are already cowed by The Donald and puckered lower lip. How many sad sacks in Congress were like Utah’s Jason Chaffetz who cried “Never Trump!” for like 15 minutes before tweeting on October 26, “I will not defend or endorse @realDonaldTrump, but I am voting for him.” Most Republicans, bless their pointed little heads, just want to roll with a winner. They like being good little boys and, less often, girls. They’ll go along with much of what Trump wants, especially if when it comes to Muslim bashing (and bombing), baiting immigrants, and taking it to those rapist Mexicans who stopped coming here around 2007 because their own country is a better place for them given what America has become. Lord knows that the last time the Party of Lincoln ran the White House and Congress, things went off the rails like a crazy train, at least when it comes to the size, scope, and spending of the federal government. Each of those things grew exponentially and here we are, with nothing to show for that binge other than a debt hangover the size of Mt. Rushmore.

With that as a backdrop, here’s some good news, via Politico: “Libertarians emerging as Trump resistance.” Katie Glueck points specifically to Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Justin Amash in her piece, among other elected officials, but gives props to the larger “liberty movement” as well. That’s groups such as Reason, Cato, the Campaign for Liberty (which grew out of Ron Paul’s presidential aspirations), and more. One of the reasons why such groups are in a good place is because they (we!) put principles before politics. The GOP doesn’t exist to do anything particular as much as it exists to fill seats in Congress and elsewhere. Libertarians, who disagree even on who should be considered libertarian, agree that politics and policy is too important to be left to the folks elected to Congress and the White House.

Consider Amash first. He endorsed Trump and voted for him once he became the Republican nominee. But he’s not putting up with demagoguery:

When Trump started bleating about slapping 35 percent tariffs on goods produced by companies who outsourced jobs, Amash responded, “This would be a 35% tax on all Americans—a tax that especially hurts low-income families. Maybe the slogan should be #MakeAmericaVenezuela.”

Here’s a blast from Rand Paul about Trump’s flirtation with naming former U.N. Amb. John Bolton to a big job at the State Department:

“My efforts to insert myself into the public debate are not to oppose Donald Trump, they’re to support what Donald Trump said in the campaign,” Paul said, speaking at a time when Bolton was under more serious consideration to lead the State Department (though Paul has reiterated his opposition to Bolton in any role since then). “Regime change made us less safe, and the Iraq War allowed for chaos. … I agree on those things Trump said. I would just hate for, at the very beginning, that those things he professed on the campaign trail to be diminished or besmirched by having someone in charge of the State Department who doesn’t agree with Donald Trump.”

Like Amash, Paul endorsed Trump and voted for him. And like Amash, Paul is drawing lines in the sand about what he will or won’t support. In an interview earlier this week, Paul told me that he could never support diplomats or appointees who had failed to learn the lessons of the Iraq War, the Libyan interview, and what’s unfolding in Syria now. The key insight, he said, was that regime change almost leads to “something worse than what we had.” He also stressed that he will refuse to vote for any budget plan that never achieves balance—which the current Republican budget “blueprint” fails to do.

This is what real resistance looks like: Fighting members of your own “team” when they stray from the principles they claim to support and on which they were elected. I don’t agree with Amash and Paul on everything (maybe not even most things), but I know that happy as hell to see these guys brawling not with a bunch of loser Democrats over phony issues but with their own kind over Very. Important. Issues. And political principles.

That will take us a whole lot closer to limited government than the sort of “resistance” that Keith Olbermann is putting up in short video clips at GQ.com, arguably the last step before the gutter for a guy who bounced from ESPN to MSNBC to Current to…what next?

Here’s Reason’s podcast with Rand Paul. Listen by clicking below. Subscribe to the Reason Podcast at iTunes and never miss an episode.

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Must Read of the Day – ‘Sorry, Not Sorry: Neither the Media Nor Their Owners are Going to Change’

Counterpunch published an excellent piece earlier today by Jason Hirthler titled: Sorry, Not Sorry: Neither the Media Nor Their Owners are Going to Change.

Here are my favorite excerpts:

The leftist heretic and popular scourge of religion Christopher Hitchens wrote in his superb Bill Clinton takedown, No One Left to Lie To, that the essence of American politics is “the manipulation of populism by elitism.” Unfortunately, this tactic didn’t work so well for the Clintons in November, as the reviled populists had the last irrational, racist, sexist, brutish and barbaric word on the matter (according to assembled liberal punditry). But the statement still rings true. This is, after all, the job description of corporate media. As The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald says, the “supreme religion of the U.S. press corps is reverence for power.” Their priesthood is a cabal of anonymous sources; their catechism is war everlasting. And so, the vulgar philistines on the plains, who foolishly prefer peaceful relations, steady work, and free healthcare to profiteering wars abroad, must be endlessly misled.

continue reading

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‘Faithless’ Electors Will Not Receive Intelligence Briefing, NPR Says

The list of Democrat electors that demanded an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election prior to casting their vote continued to grow.  As of last night we noted that 40 democrats had signed the petition and, as of this morning, the list has grown to 55.  Not surprisingly, the list is loaded with disaffected Hillary supporters from Democratic strongholds like California and Virginia. 

 
 

Original 10:

  • Christine Pelosi (CA)
  • Micheal Baca (CO)
  • Anita Bonds (DC)
  • Courtney Watson (MD)
  • Dudley Dudley (NH)
  • Bev Hollingworth (NH)
  • Terie Norelli (NH)
  • Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
  • Clay Pell (RI)
  • Chris Suprun (TX)

Newly Added Electors:

  • Sandra Aduna (CA)
  • Edward Buck (CA)
  • Donna Ireland (CA)
  • Vinz Koller (CA)
  • Katherine Lyon (CA)
  • John P. MacMurray (CA)
  • Stephen J. Natoli (CA)
  • Andres Ramos (CA)
  • Shawn Terris (CA)
  • Gail Teton-Landis (CA)
  • Olivia Reyes-Becerra (CA)
  • David Scott Warmuth (CA)
  • Shirley Weber (CA)
  • Denise Wells (CA)
  • Gregory H. Willenborg (CA)
  • Laurence Zakson (CA)
  • Jerad Sutton (CO)
  • Robert Nemenich (CO)
  • William Marovitz (IL)
  • Nancy Shepherdson (IL)
  • Nazda Alam (MA)
  • Dori Dean (MA)
  • Jason Palitsch (MA)
  • Parwez Wahid (MA)
  • Paul G. Yorkis (MA)
  • Lillian Holmes (MD)
  • Lesley Israel (MD)
  • Robert Leonard (MD)
  • Salome T. Peters (MD)
  • Noyola Archibeque (NM)
  • Melissa Mark-Viverito (NY)
  • Stuart Appelbaum (NY)
  • Hazel Ingram (NY)
  • Stephanie Miner (NY)
  • Melissa Sklarz (NY)
  • Andrea Stewart-Cousins (NY)
  • Timothy Norman Powers Rowan (OR)
  • Brad Martin (OR)
  • Sam H.W. Sappington (OR)
  • Beth Caldwell (WA)
  • Bret Chiafalo (WA)
  • Deb Fitzgerald (VA)
  • Terry C. Frye (VA)
  • Jeanette Sarver (VA)
  • Martha Allen (VT)

Of course, as we concluded yesterday, this effort to block Trump will almost certainly be a complete failure.  That said, the point isn't really to block Trump, but rather to do as much as possible to undermine the legitimacy of his presidency as possible before he takes office. 

*  *  *

And now, with just 2 short days until their vote is due to be cast – following the will of the American citizens they are supposed to represent – the 55 so-called "Hamilton" Electors will reportedly not be receiving an intelligence briefing over reported Russian meddling in the US Presidential Election.

As The Hill reports, sources to NPR said the electors will not receive any national intelligence before they cast ballots this Monday.

Whether this means they will vote their conscience (with no factual information) or vote the will of the people is still unclear.

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