As members of Congress vote to confirm Gina Haspel as the next director of the CIA, the majority of her record and her experience overseeing illegal torture programs remains classified.
The post Senate is Confirming a War Criminal as CIA Head—And They Won’t Be Shown Most of Her Record appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Luis Elizondo, former head of a secret Pentagon program studying UFOs, is now extending his recent remarks about craft witnessed in our skies…
In an interview with the UK Daily Star (2/8), Elizondo made the following boggling comments:
“For the first time, we have a compelling picture that what we are seeing is explained in our current understanding of physics, advanced physics, and quantum mechanics.”
“We do believe all these observables we’ve been seeing, sudden and extreme [UFO] acceleration, hypersonic velocities, low observability, trans medium travel, and last but not least, positive lift, anti-gravity – is really the manifestation of a single technology.”
“So it’s not five exotic technologies we’re trying to figure out, it’s one, and we think we know that one too.”
“We believe it has to do with a high amount of energy and the ability to warp space-time, not by a lot, but by a little.”
The Sun also obtained a comment from Elizondo’s colleague, physicist Hal Puthoff: “Puthoff came to the conclusion that the [UFO] craft can effectively create their own time-space bubble, which allows them to fly at such incredible speeds.”
My, my.
A space-time bubble? Warping space-time?
Elizondo claims such stunning capacities can be understood by Earth physics—but at what level? Speculative? Conceptual? Or in a way that would allow American engineers to build their own craft capable of performing staggering feats and maneuvers? It’s easy to say, “We understand this,” when no assembly is required and you just spin hypotheses. I can come up with a hypothesis which explains how multi-ton stones were transported up a mountain road, centuries ago in Peru, and fitted together perfectly, with primitive technology—as long as I don’t actually have to replicate the feat now, using ancient means. I can blow that kind of smoke.
As I’ve discussed in several previous articles, Elizondo (a former intelligence officer who ran clandestine operations in Latin America), and a host of other former Pentagon and CIA players, are now attached to rock musician Tom DeLonge and his fledgling To the Stars Academy.
This odd marriage raises questions. For example, are the high-level players using DeLonge to disseminate the UFO story as a THREAT-FROM-SPACE SCENARIO, requiring gigantic new sums of money to build defenses against extra-terrestrial attacks?
The Pentagon-CIA nexus has always positioned “UFO disclosure” in those terms. “We have a battle to fight, and we must prepare ourselves against potential alien forces. Give us more money.”
Elizondo has now doubled down. He’s claiming scientists understand how UFOs do what they do.
Let’s see some evidence.
Not just concepts and abstract equations, but hardware—located, perhaps, at the famed and walled-off Lockheed Skunk Works in Palmdale, California.
Or is Elizondo merely passing along sensational-sounding “information,” designed to rope in a new generation of UFO enthusiasts, and lead them to accept a “threat-from-space” story?
Is the “warp” really about a space-drive, or is it about Elizondo’s distortion of facts?
Jon Rappoport
The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.
The post Head of Secret Pentagon Program Says UFOs Can “Warp Space-Time”—What?? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
Former CIA agent/counterintelligence operative turned whistleblower John Kiriakou exposed agency wrongdoing in his book titled “Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.”
The Obama administration indicted him “for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it.”
He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for revealing classified information, serving from February 28, 2013 – February 3, 2015 for exposing government wrongdoing.
According to TopSecretWriters.com, he accused the CIA of child trafficking, supplying children to wealthy pedophiles globally in exchange for information the agency sought.
Trafficked children were never seen again. In a video clip, Kiriakou explained “(y)our job as a CIA agent is to break the laws of the country you are serving.
“That’s your job: Your job is to commit espionage, which in most countries is a death penalty crime.”
“Your job is to convince people to commit treason for you because they like you so much or they like the money that you’re giving them so much.”
“So, because it’s the nature of your job to break the law, they’re the rules that are written for you to carry out that job.”
Kiriakou’s latest accusation followed earlier ones. He was involved in capturing alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. He took no part in torture and other abusive interrogation practices.
CIA operations flagrantly violate rule of law principles. It operates like a global Mafia hit squad. Throughout its existence, it’s been involved in drugs trafficking – documented by Alfred McCoy’s book titled “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”
Journalist Gary Webb’s expose of CIA involvement in Nicaraguan drugs trafficking, supporting the contras, dealing with Los Angeles crack dealers, made him a target for vicious vilification – hounding him out of his profession into deep depression, either committing suicide or succumbing to foul play.
In books and articles, Peter Dale Scott explained “(s)ince at least 1950 there has been a global CIA-drug connection operating more or less continuously” to this day.
“The global drug connection is not just a lateral connection between CIA field operatives and their drug-trafficking contacts.”
“It is more significantly a global financial complex of hot money uniting prominent business, financial and government, as well as underworld figures,” a sort of “indirect empire (operating alongside) existing government.”
“(G)overnments themselves, and the links they develop with major traffickers, are the key both to the drug-trafficking problem and to its solution.”
The CIA is a sinister, secretive, unaccountable agency, operating extrajudicially. The late Chalmers Johnson said its existence “shorten(s) the life of the American republic.”
Its operations are incompatible with a free society – child and drugs trafficking, assassinations, and involvement in recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing ISIS and other terrorists are some of its many sinister activities.
Former CIA agent/whistleblower Kevin Shipp calls himself a “recovering CIA officer.”
Involvement with the agency creates awareness of its enormous harm to so many worldwide.
The post CIA Involved in Child Trafficking? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.
A week after Russian President Putin thanked US President Trump and the CIA for their warnings about a possible terror attack in St.Petersburg, TASS reports that an explosion in a storage locker in a busy supermarket in St. Petersburg has left 10 injured and dozens more evacuated.
?????? ????? ? ????? ?????? ?? ?????????????? ????????? ? ??????????https://t.co/rBds3kKfrk#????????? #????? pic.twitter.com/uHtM7mTh8p
— ????? ????? ??????? (@5tv) December 27, 2017
The explosion occurred on Wednesday evening in the Perekrestok store in the shopping center on Kondratyevsky Avenue in the northern part of St. Petersburg. As reported by TASS in the main department of the Ministry for Emergency Situations in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region, the place is pulled by the operational forces, the evacuation of the building has already been carried out.
"There was a clap in the building, the rescuers are already working on the spot, the evacuation is made, there is no fire," the administration said.
The strength of the explosion is unknown.
Live Feed from the area of the explosion...
According to a source in the emergency services, ten people were injured.
"The explosion of an unidentified device occurred in the entertainment complex" Giant Hall "on the ground floor in the area of the cells of the store" Perekrestok "(without ignition)," the source said.
According to preliminary information, four people have already been hospitalized. Six more are examined by doctors. There is no damage to the load-bearing structures. On-site sappers are working explosives.
The promotion of the alleged Russian election hacking in certain media may have grown from the successful attempts of U.S. intelligence services to limit the publication of the NSA files obtained by Edward Snowden.
In May 2013 Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong and handed internal documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) to four journalists, Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and separately to Barton Gellman who worked for the Washington Post. Some of those documents were published by Glenn Greenwald in the Guardian, others by Barton Gellman in the Washington Post. Several other international news site published additional material though the mass of NSA papers that Snowden allegedly acquired never saw public daylight.
In July 2013 the Guardian was forced by the British government to destroy its copy of the Snowden archive.
In August 2013 Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post for some $250 million. In 2012 Bezos, the founder, largest share holder and CEO of Amazon, had already a cooperation with the CIA. Together they invested in a Canadian quantum computing company. In March 2013 Amazon signed a $600 million deal to provide computing services for the CIA.
In October 2013 Pierre Omidyar, the owner of Ebay, founded First Look Media and hired Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. The total planned investment was said to be $250 million. It took up to February 2014 until the new organization launched its first site, the Intercept. Only a few NSA stories appeared on it. The Intercept is a rather mediocre site. Its management is said to be chaotic. It publishes few stories of interests and one might ask if it ever was meant to be a serious outlet. Omidyar has worked, together with the U.S. government, to force regime change onto Ukraine. He had strong ties with the Obama administration.
Snowden had copies of some 20,000 to 58,000 NSA files. Only 1,182 have been published. Bezos and Omidyar obviously helped the NSA to keep more than 95% of the Snowden archive away from the public. The Snowden papers were practically privatized into trusted hands of Silicon Valley billionaires with ties to the various secret services and the Obama administration.
The motivation for the Bezos and Omidyar to do this is not clear. Bezos is estimated to own a shameful $90 billion. The Washington Post buy is chump-change for him. Omidyar has a net worth of some $9.3 billion. But the use of billionaires to mask what are in fact intelligence operations is not new. The Ford Foundation has for decades been a CIA front, George Soros" Open Society foundation is one of the premier "regime change" operations, well versed in instigating "color revolutions".
It would have been reasonable if the cooperation between those billionaires and the intelligence agencies had stopped after the NSA leaks were secured. But it seems that strong cooperation of the Bezos and Omidyar outlets with the CIA and others continue.
The Intercept burned a intelligence leaker, Reality Winner, who had trusted its journalists to keep her protected. It smeared the President of Syria as neo-nazi based on an (intentional?) mistranslation of one of his speeches. It additionally hired a Syrian supporter of the CIA"s "regime change by Jihadis" in Syria. Despite its pretense of "fearless, adversarial journalism" it hardly deviates from U.S. policies.
The Washington Post, which has a much bigger reach, is the prime outlet for "Russia-gate", the false claims by parts of the U.S. intelligence community and the Clinton campaign, that Russia attempted to influence U.S. elections or even "colluded" with Trump.
Just today it provides two stories and one op-ed that lack any factual evidence for the anti-Russian claims made in them.
In Kremlin trolls burned across the Internet as Washington debated options the writers insinuate that some anonymous writer who published a few pieces on Counterpunch and elsewhere was part of a Russian operation. They provide zero evidence to back that claim up. Whatever that writer wrote (see list at end) was run of the mill stuff that had little to do with the U.S. election. The piece then dives into various cyber-operations against Russia that the Obama and Trump administration have discussed.
A second story in the paper today is based on "a classified GRU report obtained by The Washington Post." It claims that the Russian military intelligence service GRU started a social media operation one day after the Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally removed from his office in a U.S. regime change operation. What the story lists as alleged GRU puppet postings reads like normal internet talk of people opposed to the fascist regime change in Kiev. The Washington Post leaves completely unexplained who handed it an alleged GRU report from 2014, who classified it and how, if at all, it verified its veracity. To me the piece and the assertions therein have a strong odor of bovine excrement.
An op-ed in the very same Washington Post has a similar smell. It is written by the intelligence flunkies Michael Morell and Mike Rogers. Morell had hoped to become CIA boss under a President Hillary Clinton. The op-ed (which includes a serious misunderstanding of "deterrence") asserts that Russia never stopped its cyberattacks on the United States:
Russia’s information operations tactics since the election are more numerous than can be listed here. But to get a sense of the breadth of Russian activity, consider the messaging spread by Kremlin-oriented accounts on Twitter, which cybersecurity and disinformation experts have tracked as part of the German Marshall Fund’s Alliance for Securing Democracy.
The author link to this page which claims to list Twitter hashtags that are currently used by Russian influence agents. Apparently the top issue Russia"s influence agents currently promote is "#merrychristmas".
When the authors claim Russian operations are "more numerous than can be listed here" they practically admit that they have not even one plausible operation they could cite. Its simply obfuscation to justify their call for more political and military measures against Russia. This again to distract from the real reasons Clinton lost the election and to introduce a new Cold War for the benefit of weapon producers and U.S. influence in Europe.
None of the Russia-gate stories so far has held up to scrutiny. There is no proof at all, nor reasonable evidence, that Russia interfered in elections in the U.S. or elsewhere. There is no evidence of "collusion" with the Trump campaign.
One of the most complete debunking of the false claims can be found in the recent London Review of Books: What We Don’t Talk about When We Talk about Russian Hacking. Consortium News has published many pieces on the issue as well as analyses and warnings of what may follow from it. Many other writers have caught up and debunk the various false claims. The Nation lists various cases of journalistic malpractice with regard to Russia-gate.
The people who promote the "Russian influence" nonsense are political operatives or hacks. Take for example Luke Harding of the Guardian who just published a book titled Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. He was taken apart in a Real News interview (vid) about the book. The interviewer pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence in the book to support its claims. When asked for any proof for his assertion Harding defensively says that he is just "storytelling" - in other words: its fiction. Harding earlier wrote a book about Edward Snowden which was a similar sham. Julian Assange called it "a hack job in the purest sense of the term". Harding is also known as plagiarizer. When he worked in Moscow he copied stories and passages from the now defunct Exile, run by Matt Taibbi and Mark Ames. The Guardian had to publish an apology.
The Mexican government controls the media by buying an immense amount of advertisement. It thus guarantees income as long as its political line is followed. The U.S. government has its own ways of controlling the media. In the 1950s to 1970s the CIA ran Operation Mockingbird which gave it control over much of the news and opinion output in U.S. media. During that time up to 400 main stream journalists were working for the CIA.
The method of control has likely changed. The handling of the Snowden affair lets one assume that the CIA induces billionaires to buy up media and to implement the CIA"s favored policies through them. We do not know what the billionaires get for their service. The CIA surely has many ways to let them gain information on their competition or to influence business regulations in foreign countries. One hand will wash the other.
James Clapper as Director of National Intelligence, John Brennan as CIA head and James Comey from the FBI "assessed" that Russia influenced the U.S. presidential election. Annex B of their report, which hardly any report bothered to mention, read:
Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation and precedents.
That sentence is the core of Russia-gate. There are lots of claims, assertions and judgments but no proof at all that any of the alleged Russian influence really happened.
It is probably due to the undue influence of the intelligence services that media have adopted that Annex B standard for themselves. With regards to Russia (and other issues), assertions are now enough - there is no need to investigate, to find the truth or to verify claims.
* * *
How will that system work if an accident happens, some jet gets shot down and the issue escalates. Will there be any reporter left in the main stream media who is allowed to ask real questions?
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
Politico published an explosive investigative report which alleges that the Obama Administration politically interfered to obstruct a far-reaching criminal justice operation against Hezbollah in order to facilitate the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
The exposé is extensive and covers a wide array of purported activities over a ten-year period all across the US, Latin America, West Africa, Europe, and the Mideast, though the point of this analysis isn’t to summarize what’s contained in the report or to judge its veracity, but to interpret the significance of it being made public at this point in time. The codename given to the investigation into Hezbollah’s global economic network was “Operation Cassandra”, and it alleges to have discovered the mechanics behind the group’s self-sustaining financial ecosystem, some of which supposedly dealt with organized criminal activities such as drug trafficking and money laundering.
Politico’s bombshell wasn’t just the alleged facts that it uncovered, but the claims from some of the operation’s participants that the Obama Administration was undermining their work because it feared that taking action against Hezbollah would endanger Washington’s efforts to clinch the 2015 nuclear deal with the group’s patrons in Tehran. If true, then this would represent a major split within the American “deep state”, or permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies, because it suggests that the State Department and possibly even the CIA were conspiring to subvert the law enforcement duties of the FBI and DEA on behalf of the President.
The implications behind this revelation could be enormous, and at the very least they seem to confirm Republican accusations that the Obama Administration was selling out domestic security interests in order to pursue the risky and now-failed foreign policy gambit of co-opting Iran through a tacit alliance with its ruling “moderate” elites. Seeing as how some of Obama-era “deep state” figures involved in this scandal might still be working with the government, the Trump Administration could use Politico’s report as the pretext for “cleaning house” and removing or professionally neutralizing some of its institutional opponents. It’s speculated that this is what Tillerson has been trying to do for months now, but the latest findings could add a renewed sense of impetus to his efforts.
In addition, apart from the obvious consequences that this revelation could have in further worsening American-Iranian relations and reversing the Obama-era trend towards a rapprochement, there’s another international aspect that needs to be looked at, and that’s the effect that the report will have on the US’ policy towards Latin America.
Politico alleges that “Operation Cassandra” uncovered a diverse criminal network stretching all across the hemisphere, and whether fully true or partially exaggerated, this news could be used to tighten the US’ security arrangements with its regional partners in complementing the theater-wide asymmetrical counteroffensive of “Operation Condor 2.0” that’s been ongoing ever since the 2009 coup against leftist Honduran President Manuel Zelaya.
Relatedly, the allegations of Venezuelan government complicity in Hezbollah’s trans-hemispheric conspiracy could form the basis for new sanctions against the Bolivarian Republic.
All told, this developing scandal might take a while to fully unfold, but it can still be expected to influence the course of the “deep state’s” War on Trump and the US’ policy towards Latin America to one extent or another by the time that it’s all said and done with.
Famed NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden has just launched Haven, an app for people to transform any Android smartphone into a high-tech security system for detecting intrusions.
Snowden, while currently on the run from the CIA, hiding somewhere in Moscow until 2020, has found enough time to launch his new mobile security app last Friday for the sufficiently paranoid person (e.g. activists, dissidents, journalists, & etc).
"When the lead developer explained the project to his young children, they found another use for it: "We’re going to catch Santa!" " https://t.co/Beangjk90g
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 23, 2017
Haven is designed to be installed on any Android smartphone, particularly inexpensive and older devices. It operates like a home surveillance system, leveraging on-device sensors to provide surveillance of physical areas. Sensors within the Android phone monitor motion, sound, vibration and light, watching for unwanted guests to notify a user. Combining Haven with an array of sensors in any smartphone, coupled with the most secure communications technologies like Signal and Tor, the app is providing Snowden and other activists around the world with a mobile security system.
The app was developed by Freedom of the Press Foundation, Guardian Project, and Snowden. According to the Guardian Project, the app’s prototype funding was provided by FoPF, and donations to support continuing work can be contributed through their site: https://freedom.press/donate-support-haven-open-source-project/.
According to the Guardian Project, this is how the app works,
Haven only saves images and sound when triggered by motion or volume, and stores everything locally on the device. You can position the device’s camera to capture visible motion, or set your phone somewhere discreet to just listen for noises. Get secure notifications of intrusion events instantly and access the logs remotely or anytime later.
On-device sensors monitor for disturbance, and then logs the data:
Further, the group explains why Haven is well suited for Android devices and does make the claim, a version for the iPhone is on the horizon.
While we hope to support a version of Haven that runs directly on iOS devices in the future, iPhone users can still benefit from Haven today. You can purchase an inexpensive Android phone for less than $100, and use that as your “Haven Device”, that you leave behind, while you keep your iPhone with you. If you run Signal on your iPhone, you can configure Haven on Android to send encrypted notifications, with photos and audio, directly to you. If you enable the “Tor Onion Service” feature in Haven (requires installing “Orbot” app as well), you can remotely access all Haven log data from your iPhone, using the Onion Browser app. So, no, iPhone users we didn’t forget about you, and hope you’ll pick up an Android burner today for a few bucks!
If one of the sensors was triggered, a notification would be sent to one of the following platforms:
My partner has been testing Haven for a few months with a spare phone. Every time you open the closet, it sends a picture by Signal. In addition to impressive intrusion detection capabilities, you can also use it to send helpful reminders! ? https://t.co/FHi1bjFsLP pic.twitter.com/IS58HzDVha
— lex.txt (@lex_is) December 22, 2017
As for Snowden, he remains in an asylum somewhere in Moscow until 2020 when his residence permit expires.
With the launch of Haven, it seems as Snowden is attempting to change the calculus of risk for when US authorities come hunting for him once more.
If all else fails, Snowden might have just invented a baby monitor for the broke millennial.
Update: as of 9:30am ET, the @JulianAssange accounts has returned, although it appears to be a truncated or restored one, which shortly after its reappearance shows just over 1,000 followers.
A "returned" Assange tweeted the following cartoon.
— Julian Assange ???? (@JulianAssange) December 25, 2017
* * *
Julian Assange"s Twitter account was mysteriously deleted on Christmas Eve, leaving perhaps the most important witness in the Trump-Russia investigation cut off from the rest of the world while he sits in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Attempting to access Assange"s Twitter account results in the following message:
This page only appears when an account has been deleted, not suspended - by either Twitter or the account owner.
It wasn"t clear whether the account was suspended or deleted by Twitter or Assange himself -- or why or for how long. Twitter wasn"t commenting
This tweet by the WikiLeaks Task Force - an official WikiLeaks handle, suggested that people shouldn"t jump to conclusions, as "haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish," before wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
Julian"s account disappears, so haters and conspiracy theorists rush to post the usual attention seeking rubbish. Ah, Twitter.
Merry Christmas, people.https://t.co/oCBOW2Tc5L pic.twitter.com/GmdXG36Xt3
— WikiLeaks Task Force (@WLTaskForce) December 25, 2017
The official Wikileaks Twitter account was still live but wasn"t mentioning the Assange account.
According to CBS, an account purporting to be an alternative Assange account was claiming Twitter had deleted his official one ahead of a blockbuster story he"s preparing to break. There was no confirmation that Assange was authoring that alternative account -- and that account has now been suspended by Twitter.
Meanwhile, Journalist Charles Johnson - who traveled with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) to London to meet with Assange in August, posted the following on Facebook after Assange"s Twitter account went down:
Moreover, on December 1, WikiLeaks" official account tweeted "Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks" with an embedded video referencing perpetual war, and the hashtags #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine
Merry Christmas from @WikiLeaks https://t.co/lmsmphuH2Nhttps://t.co/cGRnpjx6O8https://t.co/PkYqIcOZJW #Yemen #Libya #Iraq #Syria #Pakistan #Afghanistan #Somalia #Ukraine
— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) December 1, 2017
Some have suggested that the events are part of some Christmas-linked plan, although so far there has been no confirmation.
The account deletion comes on the heels of a break-in last Monday at the Madrid office of WikiLeaks lawyer Baltasar Garzon"s, in what police described as a "very professional" operation. Garzon told El Periodico and Ser magazine "They had not taken what they have been looking for," and client security "has not been affected," however police are analyzing his computer equipment to determine whether any files were taken or copied.
Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange published a tweet calling a Jimmy Dore video "Brilliant" - prominently featuring Assange"s interview with a Dutch television host in which the WikiLeaks founder strongly implies that slain DNC IT staffer Seth Rich was the source of emails published by WikiLeaks during the 2016 election. (Assange clip at 21:30)
During the clip, Assange can be seen nodding his head in response to a question about Rich:
In August, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher travelled to London with journalist Charles Johnson for a meeting with Assange, where Rohrabacher said the WikiLeaks founder offered "firsthand" information proving that the Trump campaign did not collude with Russia, and which would refute the Russian hacking theory.
Rohrabacher brought that message back to Trump"s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, to propose a deal. In exchange for a presidential pardon, Assange would share evidence that would refute the Russian hacking theory by proving they weren"t the source of the emails, according to the WSJ.
“The possible “deal”—a term used by Mr. Rohrabacher during the Wednesday phone call—would involve a pardon of Mr. Assange or “something like that,” Mr. Rohrabacher said. In exchange, Mr. Assange would probably present a computer drive or other data-storage device that Mr. Rohrabacher said would exonerate Russia in the long-running controversy about who was the source of hacked and stolen material aimed at embarrassing the Democratic Party during the 2016 election.”
‘He would get nothing, obviously, if what he gave us was not proof,’ Mr. Rohrabacher said.
When Trump was asked in late September about the Assange proposal, he responded that he"d "never heard" of it, causing Rohrabacher to unleash on John Kelly, who he blamed for blocking the proposal from reaching the President, Rohrabacher told the Daily Caller:
“I think the president’s answer indicates that there is a wall around him that is being created by people who do not want to expose this fraud that there was collusion between our intelligence community and the leaders of the Democratic Party,” Rohrabacher told The Daily Caller Tuesday in a phone interview.
“This would have to be a cooperative effort between his own staff and the leadership in the intelligence communities to try to prevent the president from making the decision as to whether or not he wants to take the steps necessary to expose this horrendous lie that was shoved down the American people’s throats so incredibly earlier this year,” Rohrabacher said.
Contributing to the notion of deep-state interference, CIA director Mike Pompeo referred to WikiLeaks as a "hostile intelligence service" in April, calling Julian Assange "a fraud, a coward hiding behind a screen" for exposing information about democratic governments rather than authoritarian regimes. This quite the ironic statement, considering Pompeo used leaked emails from WikiLeaks as proof "the fix was in" against President Trump.
Mike Pompeo was sharing Wikileaks documents on his Congressional Twitter account less than a year ago pic.twitter.com/cl5P6vnXSE
— Jessica Schulberg (@jessicaschulb) April 13, 2017
Let"s also not forget Donald Trump proclaiming "I Love Wikileaks!" less than a month before the 2016 election.
So Julian Assange - ostensibly the most important witness in the Russia hacking investigation, offered to prove that Russia was not the source of the leaked emails in exchange for a pardon. This proposition was conveyed through Rep. Dana Rohrabacher to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, who Rohrabacher says never allowed the deal to reach Trump for consideration. Months later, WikiLeaks attorney Baltasar Garzon"s office was raided in a "very professional" operation which is being labeled an attempted robbery. Hours after the break-in, Julian Assange tweets a Jimmy Dore video containing his own strong implication that Seth Rich was the source of the leaked emails, and six days later his Twitter account is gone.
That said, tweets directly from the WikiLeaks urge not to jump to conclusions.
Assange"s account deletion also comes on the heels of several new Twitter rules rolled out on December 18, which many feared was the beginning of a "purge" of conservative accounts over user behavior both on and off the platform. The rules are aimed at people who associate with hate groups that "use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes" - however nothing Assange has done comes close to fitting that description.
So did Julian Assange delete his Twitter account - and if so, why? Was this yet another rogue Twitter employee lashing out on their last day, as was the case with President Trump"s temporary account deletion in early November? Or did Twitter delete the account of one of the most important figures in the 2016 election.
Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,
Trump saved St. Petersburg after the CIA tipped off the FSB about an impending terrorist attack there.
Russia immediately acted on the information and arrested several terrorist suspects who were said to be plotting an attack on the famous Kazan Cathedral, and President Putin was so grateful for the many lives that were saved as a result of this joint cooperation between the two Great Powers that he even called Trump and extended his personal thanks to the CIA and its Director.
This was a model-breaking moment for some because it shattered their worldview of the US, Trump, and especially the CIA as inherently evil forces obsessed with plotting against Russia.
That’s not to say that these three are angels, but just that the pursuit of their interests can sometimes take surprising forms such as the recent example of high-profile anti-terrorist cooperation with Russia that was so useful to Moscow that President Putin felt obliged to thank the CIA, something which would have otherwise been unthinkable for the former head of the FSB to do in the presently tense atmosphere of the New Cold War.
This just goes to show that Russia genuinely appreciates what the US did and is willing to work with it on all areas of shared interests across the world, which brings the analysis around to discussing why Washington would uncharacteristically engage in an act of goodwill such as this one towards its rival.
There’s of course a catch, and it’s that the US did the right thing for self-interested reasons that aren’t visibly or immediately apparent but have to do with its envisioned role in determining the outcome of the Russian-led “political solution” to the War on Syria.
The US has thus far been largely sidelined from this process, but has informally found a way to nevertheless make itself indispensable to it through the 2000 troops that it’s deployed in northeastern Syria and the 10 bases that it built there in support of the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” that now occupy this oil-rich and agriculturally wealthy one-third of the country.
In exchange for saving the lives of an untold number of people in President Putin’s hometown, the US expects Russia to respect its post-war interests in northeastern Syria by encouraging Damascus to agree to the northeastern region’s Kurdish-led “decentralization”, a goal which also overlaps with Moscow’s own for vastly different reasons.
Russia therefore isn’t opposed in principle to this implicit quid-pro-quo because it stands to benefit from expanding its “balancing” strategy in Syria to include the US, as this opens up the potential for furthering the long-desired objective of a so-called “New Détente” with Washington. That’s not to say that Russia will succeed in this scenario or that it’s even moving in that direction per se, but just that the US hopes that it will, otherwise the CIA might neglect to inform the FSB the next time they discover another imminent terrorist plot.
Russia has reacted fiercely to the end of week breaking news that President Trump plans to approve the legal sale of US antitank missiles and possibly other advanced systems to the Ukrainian government in a move that could change the battlefield calculus of the war between Ukrainian and Russian-aligned forces in the Donbass region along the Russian border. ABC News described the "total defense package of $47 million includes the sale of 210 anti-tank missiles and 35 launchers" which will be sure to harm Trump"s longtime stated goal of improving relations with Moscow.
Though Kiev has long had limited access to US lethal arms through private contracts with American and international arms producers, this represents a significant escalation involving the likelihood that advanced US systems would be used directly on Russian-aligned militias in the eastern Donbass region and potentially Russian forces along the border. Up until now, the White House has been reluctant to escalate the war so openly, as it did when it supplied anti-Assad fighters in Syria with sophisticated TOW anti-tank missiles.
While the US State Department claims the move is "defensive" in nature, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov charged the US with deliberately "crossing the line" and pushing the Ukrainian authorities "towards new bloodshed," adding that "American weapons can lead to new victims".
Ukrainian army soldiers perform a weapons exercise at a training ground outside Lviv, western Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2015. Image source: AP via Common Dreams
"Kiev revanchists are shooting at Donbass every day, they don"t want to conduct peace negotiations and dream of doing away with the disobedient population. And the United States has decided to give them weapons to do that," Ryabkov said. He further slammed the US as an "accomplice in igniting a war" whose political leadership is “blinded by Russophobia and eagerly applaud the Ukrainian nationalist punitive battalions.”
Indeed a number of outspoken Russia hawks in Congress were enthusiastic over the possibility of heavier and direct arms flow to Ukraine, including John McCain, Bob Corker, and Tom Cotton - all supporters of the original Ukraine Freedom Support Act signed into law by President Obama in December 2014, though never fully enacted.
So you"re telling me Putin ordered his puppet Trump to arm Ukrainians that are hostile to Putin?
This is some crazy 5th dimensional chess. https://t.co/AH4Ma9YShs
— Serge (@Zinvor) December 23, 2017
Cotton for example - recently rumored to be Trump"s pick for CIA Director - said of the new initiative for arms exports to Ukraine: "This is a break from failed Obama era policies to make Russia pay a cost for its aggression. With this decision, the Trump administration is reminding Vladimir Putin and his cronies that they lost the Cold War, and we won’t tolerate their bullying of our friend Ukraine."
But Russian leaders have warned that through the decision the US may be dragged deeper into a quagmire which could result in direct confrontation with pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine"s east. Aleksey Pushkov, member of the Russian Senate security committee, told RT News that delivery of the more advanced systems like the Army"s M-148 Javelin Portable Anti-Tank Missile would require US military advisers on the ground, which could be targeted by separatist forces.
Pushkov told RT, the US “has enough problems already to allow itself to be involved in adventures of the [Ukrainian] regime. And we know too well how adventurous Kiev may be.” This comes as authorities in Kiev are already requesting that Washington adds anti-aircraft missiles to its shopping list as well, according to multiple reports.
Meanwhile German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a statement calling for "disengagement and the withdrawal of heavy weapons" in the Ukrainian conflict, a scenario now much further away from taking shape than ever. But after years of covert American involvement in the Ukrainian proxy and civil war which has raged since 2014 - and which a leaked recording confirmed was precipitated by the US State Department - it appears that hawks like McCain, Cotton, and Corker are finally getting their way.
Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
The first time when it became clear to me that I live in a dictatorship was in 2014 when reading, prior to its publication, the landmark (and still the only) scientific empirical study to address the question as to whether or not the United States federal Government is, authentically, a democracy — or, whether, alternatively, it"s instead more of a dictatorship, than a democracy.
This study documented conclusively that America"s Government is the latter.
So, on 14 April 2014, I headlined “US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy, Says Scientific Study”. Subsequently, my editor linked it to the published article at the Journal where the study was published, Perspectives on Politics, from the American Political Science Association, and the full study can be read there.
On 30 April 2014, was posted at youtube the video that remains, to this day, the best and clearest ordinary-language summary of what that badly-written academic study proved. See its explanation here:
That summary’s title is also better than the title of my article was; this excellent video headlines “Corruption is Legal in America”, which is another accurate conclusion from that study. Every American citizen should know what this 6-minute video says and shows from the academic study, because it explains how the super-rich, as a class, steal from everyone else (everyone who isn’t super-rich): They do it through corruption.
Then, that same person who created the video did another presentation of it, but this time with text accompanying the video, and this article was titled "One graph shows how the rich control American politics”, and it indeed showed how. The super-rich carry out their control via corruption, which is legal in America and which can be done vastly more by rich people than by poor people — poor people simply can’t buy the Government, and any who would even attempt to do so would be using only the illegal means, which the US Supreme Court says constitutes the only illegal means, and that"s blatant bribery, which is lower-class corruption, not the far more lucrative type of corruption that super-wealthy individuals have access to. Only the forms of corruption which are available only to the super-rich are legal in America. That’s the reason why the super-rich keep getting still-richer, while the rest of the population are lucky if they don’t become poorer.
On 28 July 2015, former US President Jimmy Carter was frank about this situation; as a caller at a progressive radio show, he said this about America’s soaring top-level corruption:
It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it"s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and US Senators and congress members. So, now we"ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. ...
At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell."
Three days later, Huffington Post published my article about that statement, which was headlined “Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the US Is No Longer a Democracy,” and it had over 60,000 likes on Facebook (here the article is shown a bit earlier, when it had 56,000) but HuffPo reduced that number down to its currently shown number, 18,000; and this article turned out to have been the last submission of the 100+ that they accepted from me. They"ve rejected all of my submissions after it. No explanation was ever given, and I never heard anything from them again.
The scientific article about America’s Government had reviewed 1,779 pieces of proposed legislation during the period from 1981 to 2002, and it found that only what the super-rich wanted to become law did become law: “The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy,” they said. That’s certainly not a democracy.
There has been speculation as to how far back historically America’s government-by-the-aristocracy (or, simply, America’s being an aristocracy — a rule over the public by the few super-rich, an “oligarchy”) has been in effect. Prior to Ronald Reagan’s Presidency, going back to the time when FDR died in office in 1945 as the President, the distribution of income and of wealth was much more equal in America than it started to become as soon as Reagan entered the White House and began the subsequent dominance of supply-side economics, which is based upon the supply-push belief that wealth trickles down from the few rich, instead of (as FDR believed) in a demand-pull way, that it percolates up from the many poor. FDR believed that what drives an economy is needs, not the products and services to fill needs. Reagan believed in the opposite, Say’s law, which says that whatever is produced will fill needs (or at least desires) — that production is what drives an economy, and that needs (and desires) just take care of themselves. So, FDR focused on “the common man” and especially the poor, but Reagan focused on “entrepreneurs” or the owners of businesses. (The middle class isn’t an issue here, but is simply the richer portion of the poor. Historically that has been the case. For example, America’s middle class has declined while the poor have mushroomed, but the top 5% are getting all of the gains; and most of that is going to the top 1% or even less. So: “poor” here includes the middle-class; and, to refer to “middle-class America” is now like referring to a dying breed — but it’s a breed of poor, not of rich.)
However, the extreme corruption at the top in this country is showing up more sharply than ever in recently declassified US Government documents about the JFK assassination — showing up as having begun much earlier than had generally been suspected, begun at least by the time when President Kennedy came into office on 20 January 1961. Kennedy found himself surrounded by the military-industrial complex that his predecessor, Eisenhower, had cultivated while he was in the White House and that “Ike” hypocritically warned the American public against, on his way out of office, only on 17 January 1961 — three days before Kennedy’s inauguration. Some of these corrupt people were ones whom Kennedy himself had brought in. Not all of them were Ike’s holdovers. But Kennedy was apparently shocked, nonetheless.
The beginnings of this profound corruption might be traced still farther back to moles in the Government (such as the Dulles brothers, Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush) who had built their careers after World War I by means of plying and mastering the revolving door between the Government’s foreign-policy Establishment and Wall Street.
Starting at the very end of WW II, in 1945, agents of these moles ended FDR’s Office of Strategic Services and started Truman’s CIA. Right from the get-go, the CIA was deeply corrupt, as the following 2.5-hour BBC documentary from 1992 makes clear:
Operation Gladio - Full 1992 documentary BBC
It documents from testimony of former CIA operatives in Europe, that the CIA had been hiring European aristocrats and committed fascists and even ‘former’ Nazis, to set up terrorist incidents in Europe rigged so as to be blamed by the public against communists and against any entities that were favorable in any way toward the Soviet Union. Numberless Europeans were injured and killed in terrorist incidents that were set up by the CIA to be, basically, anti-communist propaganda. This CIA operation was called “Gladio,” and it continues to this day, even though communism itself is gone.
Subsequently, a video was done that’s far briefer, 50 minutes, and which starts with interviews of some of the survivors of these CIA-NATO operations, so that it’s far more from the victims’ perspective than was the BBC’s lengthier documentary:
NATO’s Secret Armies (2009)
When Kennedy became President, he found himself surrounded by advisors who were urging him such as, on 22 March 1962, John Kennedy’s own brother and US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy did, when RFK held a meeting to discuss “the possibility of US manufacture or acquisition of Soviet aircraft” because:
“There is a possibility that such aircraft could be used in a deception operation designed to confuse enemy planes in the air, to launch a surprise attack against enemy installations or in a provocation operation in which Soviet aircraft would appear to attack US or friendly installations in order to provide an excuse for US intervention. If the planes were to be used in such covert operations, it would seem preferable to manufacture them in the United States.”
And, also like this (on 12 April 1962, from a Major General and CIA officer — see it on page 16):
“We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington. The terror campaign could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States. We could sink a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated). We could foster attempts on lives of Cuban refugees in the United States even to the extent of wounding in instances to be widely publicized. Exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, the arrest of a Cuban agent and the release of prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement also would be helpful in projecting the idea of an irresponsible government.”
Even JFK’s own brother RFK, and Secretary of ‘Defense’ Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk — plus lots of holdovers from the Eisenhower Administration — thought that this sort of thing would be worth the President of the United States considering. Fortunately, JFK didn’t.
Michael Ellison had gotten to see a bit of the 12 April 1962 document decades earlier and he reported it on 2 May 2001 in Britain’s Guardian under the headline “Memos disclose US cold-war plot to frame Castro”. Ellison wrote that “The idea was an element in a wider scheme that ‘may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the US government’, asserts James Bamford.” Since Bamford is perhaps the world’s leading journalist and historian who has written about the NSA (books such as his 1983 The Puzzle Palace), for even him to have expressed surprise in 2001 that the US Government, at its top level, was predominantly staffed by people who were racking their brains to figure out ways to fake Soviet terrorism and attacks so as for the US and NATO to have a pretext to invade the Soviet Union, indicates how much more cynical we all have become after George W. Bush’s lies about ‘Saddam’s WMD’ as pretexts for the US and its collaborators to invade and destroy Iraq in 2003. Not only was John Kennedy surprised to discover it in 1962, but James Bamford was surprised to discover it even as late as 2001. Bamford in 2001 might not have said what he said there if he had seen that 1992 BBC documentary, which showed that the top level of the CIA had been like this from the time when the CIA started in 1947. But with so much history behind us now and which had still been classified information, and thus non-public, until 2001 when Bamford said that the 12 April 1962 document described “may be the most corrupt plan ever created by the US Government,” we today are hardly surprised at all to discover it.
The corruption at the top of the US Government has long since overflowed its banks, out into the public’s consciousness. Not all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put the myth of US Government decency together again.
The desperation of U.S. liberals to find some truth in the claims that Donald Trump’s campaign staff colluded with Russian state actors is approaching infinity.
FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s testimony to the House Intelligence Committee all but confirms that the only ‘proof’ the FBI and Special Counsel Robert Mueller have of collusion is the discredited “Trump Dossier.”
This dossier was compiled by Christopher Steele and sold to the Clinton Campaign as opposition research by Fusion GPS. McCabe stonewalled the HIC on this matter but couldn’t point to anything in the dossier that the FBI verified to be true other than publicly-known knowledge of Carter Page visiting Moscow in 2016.
And the last time I checked (as least for now) visiting Moscow is not a crime.
Neither is what Michael Flynn did a crime either, but let’s not bring facts in to dash the hope of the terminally insane.
McCabe has to stonewall on this issue otherwise he and the rest of the FBI are guilty of acting on behalf of Hillary Clinton to assist in spying on her political opponent. Because that’s where all of this leads if people would take their ideological blinders off for five seconds and look at what we actually know as opposed to what we ‘just know to be true.’
Everyone involved in this sordid affair should be tried for espionage and treason.
Those prominent liberals running around protesting the mere thought of Donald Trump shutting down the Mueller investigation to ‘protect the sanctity of our elections’ are a bunch of simpering morons.
And I’m sick to death of the blatant and rank hypocrisy when it comes to election fraud in this country.
For this reason alone, the Mueller investigation should be shut down.
Look, anyone taking the rumor seriously that Donald Trump was close to shutting Mueller’s investigation down should have their head examined. This was a blatant plant by the Washington Post (and the CIA, let’s get real) to create exactly the kind of response from the Wil Wheatons of our world.
These people are simply ab-reacting noradrenaline junkies living in their amygdalas 24/7 while the world moves on without them.
Oh, important thing that I forgot: There are hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans who are prepared to take to the streets when Trump tries to fire Mueller, DAG Rosenstein, or otherwise shut down the investigation. We’re organizing here: https://t.co/0NjevMQ4oN (13/12)
— Wil ‘Kick the Nazis off the tweeters’ Wheaton (@wilw) December 19, 2017
I don’t know if we can stop it from happening, or if there are even enough Republicans in government who are capable of putting our country ahead of their party. But read up and know your history, just in case: https://t.co/79YhjPcKq9 (12/12)
— Wil ‘Kick the Nazis off the tweeters’ Wheaton (@wilw) December 19, 2017
If this isn’t the picture of someone in serious need of psychotherapy then …
In the same week we also get this little ditty by Newsweek. You don’t think these things aren’t coordinated to evoke this kind of response in ‘soy-boy’ Wheaton?
Painter, who worked under former president George W. Bush, appeared on MSNBC to discuss the widely criticized Fox News segment that suggested the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign could be considered a coup.
“The commander in chief is Donald Trump,” Painter said. “There is a risk of him using that power to destroy our democracy, whether you call it a coup or anything else. It’s not from the critics of Donald Trump that the danger is posed, it’s the fact that the man who is commander in chief of our military is engaged in obstruction of justice.”
The salient point here is why would Trump shut down Mueller?
Mueller has nothing on him. The longer this goes on the worse it looks for everyone involved and Trump comes out looking like the victim of a political witch-hunt.
Trump knows and has known from the beginning that there was nothing to investigate.
The only question has been whether Mueller could invent something through nigh-onto-illegal pressuring of people like Flynn, caught in the usual FBI web of procedural dishonesty, to turn on Trump and perjure themselves to avoid a prison sentence.
In fact, the more I think about the sequence of events, the more I think the meeting between Trump and Mueller the evening before Mueller was appointed as Special Counsel involved Trump telling Mueller, “Good luck finding anything, Bob, I’ll hang you by your own rope when this is all over.”
If I were in Trump’s position I would have done exactly that. I would have goaded Mueller into this, knowing full well that Uranium One was out there. This would have lit a fire under Mueller to cast a wide net, turn over every rock looking for any kind of dirt. Doing so would expose the whole rotten mess and Mueller looks like a guy running around investigating himself in the end.
Remember, Trump is the one that brought up Uranium One in the first place on the campaign trail.
In response, Hillary, as she always does, then accused Trump of that which she was actually guilty of – colluding with the Russians and using her position for personal gain.
The people who want to believe in Russia-Gate are missing this in their zeal to rid the world of Trump to validate their own failing world-view.
The longer this investigation goes on the more it will uncover the truth about what happened. In my mind, all the Mueller is doing now is compiling the actual case to exonerate himself over Uranium One and throw the rest of the FBI under the bus.
Given what we already know, I’d say Bob’s done a good job of this and it’s time for him to step aside and let this play out.
Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,
Every year, Facebook gets tens of thousands of requests for data from governments worldwide, including search warrants, subpoenas, or calls to restrict certain kinds of content. And, according to a new report, those requests are increasing at an alarming rate.
According to QZ.com, in the United States, the requests rose by 26% from the last six months of 2016 to the first six months of 2017, while globally, requests increased by about 21%. Since 2013, when the company first started providing data on government requests, the US number has been steadily rising - it has roughly tripled in a period of four years.
This is alarming many and causing a concern about privacy. Joe Joseph, from the Daily Sheeple, isn’t sugarcoating the reality of Facebook either. “Duh. This is exactly what Facebook was designed to do,” says Joseph.
“You have to remember that Zuckerberg had “seed money” and that seed money came from CIA front companies that put a lot of resources into this and…basically think about it as like, sowing seeds; if you will. They knew that Facebook was gonna bear fruit.
I don’t think they realized just how big it would become. But I can tell you that they get so much information and intel from social media: I don’t think that it would go away even if we wanted it to.”
The government keeps requesting the information, and Facebook continues to comply with the government’s demands.
In the first six months of 2013, it granted the government - which includes the police - 79% of requests (“some data was produced” in these cases, the company says); in the first six months of 2017, that share rose to 85%. “We continue to carefully scrutinize each request we receive for account data — whether from an authority in the U.S., Europe, or elsewhere — to make sure it is legally sufficient,” Chris Sonderby, the company’s general counsel, wrote in a post. “If a request appears to be deficient or overly broad, we push back, and will fight in court, if necessary.”
But Joseph thinks Facebook is just trying to pacify the easily manipulated sheeple of society.
“This is pretty troubling when you think about what you put out there, what they collect, and Facebook only being one of the many avenues that they have,” Joseph says.
“The United States is collecting your data. Whether you like it or not. They are scooping up everything. And they’re taking it and they’re storing it in their facility at Bluffdale, Utah which has the capacity at this time to store every communication on the face of this earth for the next one hundred years.”
“It’s unbelievable,” Joseph continues. “This is stuff that is unacceptable to me, but I’m sure, to a lot of you. And these companies have really gone too far…they can reconstruct your life and make anyone they want a patsy.”
