Ian Welsh on Hope

Why There is More Reason to Hope Today Than in Decades. Ian Welsh. July 12, 2017.

Somewhere between the late 80s and the early nineties, with Clinton’s election, hope died. 

The post-war era had serious issues, but the post-war era, as the civil rights movement and 70s feminism showed, was handling those issues. It was moving in the right direction. Until it didn’t: until it couldn’t handle the cascade of problems from the rise of oil prices. 

In Britain Thatcher got into power, in America Reagan. They were opposed by people who preferred to try and fix the older world, those people lost. So there came the third way, which said “if you can’t beat them, join them.” Clinton and Blair and all the various folks like them wanted to do Thacherism and Reaganism but with less cruelty. 

That couldn’t, and wouldn’t, work. Clinton set up large chunks of the financial crisis; gutted welfare, set up truly cruel standards for incarceration which gutted poor black communities especially, but hurt everyone else who was poor, even if less. 

Blair, the British epitome was onside with Iraq, and blah, blah, blah. 

None of them did anything about climate change worth speaking of. Their solution to pollution in the developed world was to ship the most polluting industries to developing countries, mostly notably China, and pollution there is as bad as it ever was in the first world. 

Meanwhile, as we all know, they pursued a raft of policies whose effect was to funnel money to the rich, gutting the middle class over time (though the middle class benefited at first) and impoverishing many. This created oligarchical power structures throughout the west, abetted by technocrats insulated from control by elected politicians. 

The point here is that the trends were mostly bad. Those few good trends, such as improvements in parts of the developing world were not a result of neoliberalism (China used mercantile policies to industrialize), and in fact, as Ha Joon shows in “Bad Samaritans” growth in the developing world was slower in the neoliberal era than in the post-war era. 

We were driving ourselves towards, not disaster, but catastrophe, and not one catastrophe, but many. 

So, people thought I was pessimistic. I wasn’t. I never was. I was realistic. Because it was government and corporate policy; it was the policy of all of our elites, to do things which would have forseeable bad consequences. That was policy and they were very determined to keep doing it. 

So, there was no room for what some people mistake as optimism. Hope. The only hope was that at some point this would change. As long as we kept electing people like Clinton or Obama, there was no hope because they didn’t want to change the way the world was run. They didn’t intend to do anything which would avoid catastrophe. 

That is just how it was. 

So now everyone is running around like chickens wit their heads cut off, and I’m the calm one. 

Because there is now reason for hope. Large masses of people are now willing to vote for politicians who want to do the right thing. It is too late to avoid much of the consequences of what we have done; it is simply too late. We have methane release in the arctic, we have a great die-off of species, and it’s too late. 

But it is not too late to mitigate. It is not too late, as the first rule of holes states, “when you find yourself in a hole, first stop digging.” 

We haven’t even done that yet, really. There’s a small amount as solar becomes cheaper than coal, something which should have happened 20 year ago thru government intervention, but it’s too late. 

There is, however, now reason, with Sanders and Corbyn’s near successes: with the fact that so many would consider voting for them; with Melenchon in France coming so close, to hope that we now have an electorate willing to consider actual change to do the necessary things. 

This was not true in the past. People like Sanders and Corbyn were not taken seriously as national candidates. The idea was laughable. 

So this is hope, a bright, shining, slender thing. 

We have it now. And yet people are running around like the sky is falling. The only reason they are doing that is that most of them didn’t understand that the decisions which caused all the problems we’re having today were taken and reaffirmed for decades. If you knew where they were going, and it wasn’t hard to, you just had to look and not flinch, then nothing that is happening today; nothing, is surprising in general terms. 

The only thing that is interesting is that a large number of people, and especially young people, are turning away from doing the wrong thing, and show openness to change. Now they may choose something worse, or something better. I think they’ll take something better when offered: we saw that with Corbyn, and polls now show he’d win an election held today. 

Of course, they’ll take something worse if it means change from the status quo, too. 

We’ve seen that. 

But they are willing to Change, and that means there is Hope. 

So, the sky is creaking, but that’s already pre-determined and running around screaming about it as if surprised is pathetic. 

Meanwhile, we may be able to reduce the worst of what is to come, rather than continually trying to make it worse. 

And that, my friends, is reason for hope.

Climate Links: July 9, 2017

no shit...
Hopes of mild climate change dashed by new research. Damian Carrington, The Guardian. July 5, 2017.

Hopes that the world’s huge carbon emissions might not drive temperatures up to dangerous levels have been dashed by new research. 

The work shows that temperature rises measured over recent decades do not fully reflect the global warming already in the pipeline and that the ultimate heating of the planet could be even worse than feared.

The uninhabitable Earth: when will climate change make the Earth too hot for humans? David Wallace-Wells, NY Mag. July 9, 2017.

It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand.

not sure about this line (given how F'g alarmed I am):

"no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough."

but I certainly agree with the remainder of that particular paragraph:

when it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination. The reasons for that are many: the timid language of scientific probabilities, which the climatologist James Hansen once called “scientific reticence” in a paper chastising scientists for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was; the fact that the country is dominated by a group of technocrats who believe any problem can be solved and an opposing culture that doesn’t even see warming as a problem worth addressing; the way that climate denialism has made scientists even more cautious in offering speculative warnings; the simple speed of change and, also, its slowness, such that we are only seeing effects now of warming from decades past; our uncertainty about uncertainty, which the climate writer Naomi Oreskes in particular has suggested stops us from preparing as though anything worse than a median outcome were even possible; the way we assume climate change will hit hardest elsewhere, not everywhere; the smallness (two degrees) and largeness (1.8 trillion tons) and abstractness (400 parts per million) of the numbers; the discomfort of considering a problem that is very difficult, if not impossible, to solve; the altogether incomprehensible scale of that problem, which amounts to the prospect of our own annihilation; simple fear. But aversion arising from fear is a form of denial, too.

‘The Models Are Too Conservative’: Paleontologist Peter Ward on What Past Mass Extinctions Can Teach Us About Climate Change Today. David Wallace-Wells, NY Mag. July 10, 2017.




Canada Undermines Targets for Protecting Oceans by Increasing Oil Exploration. Jerri-Lynn Scofield, naked capitalism. July 3, 2017.

Ugo Bardi on the Camper's Dilemma

Facing the Climate Bear: The "Camper's Dilemma". Ugo Bardi, Cassandra's Legacy. Jun. 26, 2017.

You and a friend are camping in a forest that you know is inhabited by hungry bears. Imagine that for some reason you lost contact with the civilized world and that you are on your own to get back home. You are both unarmed and bears can easily outrun you and kill you. What's the best strategy for you to survive? Here are some considerations on the "Camper's Dilemma" based on the level of danger. 

1. Danger is low -> collaboration. You know that there are bears in the forest, but you have no evidence that there is one close by. You and your friend agree that you should cooperate and make as little noise as possible, leave no food leftovers, give no evidence of your presence. 

2. Danger is high -> deception. You saw the bear the bear saw you, but your friend didn't. You don't tell what you saw to him, on the contrary you deny having seen any bear around. At the first occasion, you tell your friend that you will take a short walk in the forest, looking for berries, while he should take care of the camp until you come back. As soon as you are out of sight, you start running as fast as you can, leaving your friend to face the bear, alone. 

3. Danger is immediate -> competition. The bear suddenly appears in front of you, attacking. You and your friend turn around and run at the fastest possible speed. You know that, in order to survive, you only need to outrun your friend, not the bear.

...

The camper's dilemma, as described here, is very similar to the prisoner's dilemma with the difference that the outcome is not just a penalty: if you lose the game, you die. The camper's dilemma is also "graded" in the sense that the best strategy depends on the level of danger. In a low danger situation, both players should easily understand that collaboration is the best strategy. But, as danger becomes more and more evident and immediate, betrayal starts to look like a better strategy.

It doesn't seem to me (but I may be wrong) that theorists have examined this kind of game, so for the time being these considerations must remain qualitative. They are nevertheless enlightening when applied to the current world situation, in particular to the looming disaster generated by climate change.

For instance, the Paris climate treaty may be seen as part of a collaborative strategy, but considering that it has been always know that it is insufficient to avoid the climate disaster, it may also be seen as part of a deception effort. At the same time, some governments have taken an more or less explicitly denialist stance; for instance the US, Canada, and Russia. These governments may believe that their geographical situation may allow them to outrun the climate bear or, anyway, that they have sufficient resources to avoid the worse, at least for a fraction of their population. As I discussed in a previous post, some of the world's elites may have already reached the conclusion that the climate bear is coming fast and that they might as well save themselves and let the poor be eaten [MW: or beat each other to death, a la evil villain Sam Jackson's plot in The Kingsman (2014)].  

Of course, this interpretation cannot be proven and it may well be wrong. It is also true that there is still space for a collaborative strategy that would solve the climate problem by means of a fast energy transition. Nevertheless, the camper's dilemma game provides a perspective of the current situation that I wouldn't dismiss as impossible, and not even as unlikely.

for more:
When governments operate in cheating mode: Italy during WWII. Ugo Bardi.

These events perfectly illustrate how the elites can deceive the people in order to save their necks. 

...

It seems to be a general observation that, when facing a serious threat, the elites of a country can reason that the best strategy for them is to cheat the people and save themselves.

The Failure of the 4th Estate: Media Propaganda B.S., Public Insouciance and Human Stupidity

Suicide by stupidity. JHK. July 7 2017.

But if Mr. Trump agrees to work with Mr. Putin despite a list of Russian transgressions beginning with the annexation of Crimea and ending with its interference in the 2016 presidential election, he will also look weak while Mr. Putin can claim that he reconstructed the relationship.
—The New York Times

America wakes up to astonishing bullshit from its so-called Newspaper of Record in this lead front-page propaganda dump du jour. Granted, American education has succeeded in destroying the critical faculties of at least three generations so that the public drowns in a soup of unreality every day. In the news business now, as in the national life generally, anything goes and nothing matters.

One has to wonder, though, about the editors who serve up this baloney. Are they mere servelings of the Rand Corporation, Raytheon, and other parties with an interest in the war business, or can they possibly believe their own extrusions of fabricated agit-prop?

For instance, the imputed Russian “annexation of Crimea,” as if the place was some kind of nostalgic, sore-beset Ruritania of independent princes, colorful peasants, and earnest postal clerks cruelly enslaved by bloodthirsty Cossacks. No, Crimea had been officially a province of Russia since exactly 1783 — which was, by the way, the same year that the American Revolution officially ended via the Treaty of Paris.

After the Russian Revolution (1917) the Crimean peninsula became an autonomous province of the Soviet Union, meaning it remained a part of what was then Russia. In 1954, Nikita Khrushchev turned the administrative duties over to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was then also a province of the greater USSR, i.e. Russia. Through the entire modern era, Crimea has been the site of the USSR’s, and now Russia’s, only warm-water naval bases. Ask the average American college student why that is, and you will surely receive a blank stare.

Crimea is a peninsula on the Black Sea, which connects to the Mediterranean Sea. Hence Crimea’s strategic value. For a few short years in the 21st century, following the breakup of the USSR, the now-independent Ukraine had possession of Crimea and essentially rented the existing naval bases to Russia. That provided a much needed revenue stream for the struggling country, which was also utterly dependent on imported Russian natural gas supplies, which Ukraine had to pay for.

When the elected president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych, was overthrown in 2014, with the help of the US State Department and CIA, Russia was obliged to secure its naval bases in Crimea — where the overwhelming majority of citizens were culturally and linguistically Russian anyway. A referendum ratified the transfer of Crimea back to Russia. Apart from these procedural details, it must be obvious that Russia would never have ceded its strategic naval bases on the Black Sea to Ukraine, especially when that beleaguered country was being manipulated by the USA and NATO into becoming an adversarial presence on Russia’s border.

At the same time, the US and NATO have been running war games near Russia’s border in the Baltic region and American soldiers have been deployed into Lithuania. What war are they preparing for exactly? What is supposedly at issue (besides America’s apparent lust for war)?

That last question applies equally to the incessantly repeated trope that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election. What is supposedly at issue? The New York Times has been making this empty allegation for a year now, without every specifying exactly how Russia might have “interfered.” In the process, the newspaper has squandered its credibility on what looks exactly like a witch hunt — a campaign against dark and mysterious supernatural forces. It is doing great harm to an already badly-educated, misinformed, economically distressed, drug-addled American public. It also looks like plain old war-mongering.

Coverage of the Trump-Putin meeting during the G-20 conference this week is being played like a WWF championship bout. Which president is weak or strong? Which one will be a loser of a winner? This is no way to cover geopolitical relations. The United States and its news media look like they want this country to commit suicide by stupidity.

Putin’s Assessment of Trump at the G-20 Will Determine Our Future. PCR. July 7, 2017.

The backdrops to the Putin/Trump meeting are the aspirations of Israel and the neoconservatives. It is these aspirations that drive US foreign policy.

What is Syria about? Why is Washington so focused on overthrowing the elected president of Syria? What explains the sudden 21st century appearance of “the Muslim threat”? How is Washington’s preoccupation with “the Muslim threat” consistent with Washington’s wars against Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, and Assad, leaders who suppressed jihadism? What explains the sudden appearance of “the Russian threat” which has been hyped into dangerous Russophobia without any basis in fact?

The Muslim threat, the Russian threat, and the lies used to destroy Iraq, Libya, and parts of Syria are all orchestrations to serve Israeli and neoconservative aspirations.

The Israel Lobby in the United States, perhaps most strongly represented in Commentary, The Weekly Standard and The New York Times, used the Septemer 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon to urge US President George W. Bush to begin “a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from Power in Iraq.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century
See also: http://www.ihr.org/leaflets/iraqwar.shtml

Saddam Hussein was a secular leader whose job was to sit on the anomosities of the Sunni and Shia and maintain a non-violent political stability in Iraq. He, Assad, and Gaddafi suppressed the extremism that leads to jihadism. Saddam had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11, and under his rule Iraq constituted a ZERO threat to the US. He had been a faithful vassal and attacked Iran for Washington, which had hopes of using Iraq to overthrow the Iranian government.

Removing secular leaders is what unleashes jihadism. Washington unleashed Muslim terrorism by regime change that murdered secular leaders and left countries in chaos.

Fomenting chaos in Iraq was the beginning for spreading chaos into Syria and then Iran. Syria and Iran support Hezbollah, the militia in southern Lebanon that has twice driven out the Israeli Army sent in to occupy southern Lebanon so that Israel could appropriate the water resources.

The neoconservatives’ wars against the Middle East serve to remove the governments that provide military and financial support to Hezbollah. By spreading jihadism closer to the Russian Federation, these wars coincide perfectly with the US neoconservative policy of US World Hegemony. As expressed by Paul Wolfowitz, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy:

“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union. This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”

Israel wants Syria and Iran to join Iraq and Libya in American-induced chaos so that Israel can steal the water in southern Lebanon. If Syria and Iran are in chaos like Iraq and Libya, Hezbollah will not have the military and financial support to withstand the Israeli military.

The neoconservatives have broader aims than Israel’s. The neoconservatives want Syria and Iran in jihadist turmoil so that the neoconservatives can send jihadism into the Russian Federation and into China. China has a Muslim province that borders Kazakhstan. By causing internal problems for Russia and China, the neoconservatives can reduce Russia and China’s abilities to hinder US unilateralism.

That is what Syria is about. It is not about anything else.

The “Muslim threat” appeared suddenly with the 9/11 attack on the WTC and Pentagon. The attack was instantly blamed on Muslims. Although the US government maintained that it had no idea that such an attack was in the works, the US government knew instantly who did it. Quite clearly, it is impossible to know instantly who did an attack about which the government had no idea. In what has become the hallmark of every “terrorist attack,” IDs left at the scene conveniently identified the “terrorists.”

There are now 3,000 architects and engineers who put their reputation on the line by challenging the official story of the collapse of the WTC buildings. According to all known science, the official explanation of the destruction of the 3 high-rise WTC buildings is strictly impossible. There is endless evidence online provided not by ignorant presstitutes, conspiracy theorists, and lying politicians, but by real experts. Just go to the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth website, to the Firefighters and First responders for 9/11 Truth website, to the Pilots for 9/11 Truth website. Research what some foreign government officials have to say about the absurd story told by the US government. That any percentage of the US population believes the obvious false official 9/11 story is proof of the total failure of education in America. Much of the population is incapable of thought. People simply accept whatever the government tells them regardless of the absurdity of the explanation.

Where did the alleged “Muslim threat” come from? What produced it? 9/11 happened before Washington destroyed in whole or part seven Muslim countries, killing, maiming, orphaning, and displacing millions of Muslims who are now overrunning Washington’s vassal states in Europe. Such wars on innocents could produce terrorists, but 9/11 was prior to Washington’s wars against Muslims.

Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda were Washington’s allies against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda most certainly did not have the inside information and inside connections to outwit all 17 US intelligence agencies, the National Security Council, all intelligence agencies of Washington’s NATO vassals and Mossad, and airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning.

Moreover, in the last video attributed to bin Laden by independent experts, bin Laden said he had no motive for any such attack and had nothing to do with it. Generally speaking, real terrorists claim responsibility whether they did it or not in order to build the movement by showing its capability. It makes no sense that “the mastermind” allegedly determined to overthrow the West would disavow the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on a major power. The United States was completely humiliated by its impotence against a handful of Muslims with nothing but box cutters. This humiliation is a world record that will stand forever. It is impossible that the alleged terrorist, bin Laden, would repudiate such an accomplishment.

This fact alone proves that Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

Anyone who believes the official 9/11 story, like anyone who believes Oswald killed JFK, like anyone who still believes that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and Al-Qaeda connections, that Assad used chemical weapons, who believes the Gulf of Tonkin lie, who believes that Sirhan Sirhan killed RFK, that Russia invaded Ukraine, etc., is too far gone to ever be rescued from The Matrix in which they live.

I do not know if the insouciance and gullibility of peoples in the West extends into Latin American, Africa, and Asia. Some of the people in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, whose governments are slated for regime change by Washington, must be aware that they are not in control of their own fate. But how widely spread is awareness of Washington’s lust for world hegemony? The only signs of awareness are the initial and limited agreements between Russia and China.

To this day, not a single European government has made the connection between Washington’s wars, supported by Europe, and the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars that are overrunning Europe, intent on collecting welfare from European peoples while raping European women. We hear all sorts of complaints about the refugees, but never is a connection made between the refugees and Washington’s European supported wars.

Washington so successfully portrayed itself during the Cold War as peace, justice, and truth astriding the white horse that the world cannot see Satan sitting in the saddle.

Now that Washington’s 16 years of inhumane war against Muslim populations have destroyed the lives of millions of peoples, why aren’t there 9/11s every day? Instead are there only a few alleged terror attacks carried out by individuals, which appear to many to be orchestrated false flag events, such as individuals running over people with trucks in France and England, shooting up a French deli and magazine office. But nothing in the US, “the Great Satan.” Very suspicious.

The orchestrated event of 9/11 was the neoconservative’s “New Pearl Harbor” that provided the excuse for wars that advanced their purpose and Israel’s. It was the neoconservatives themselves who said that they needed a “new Pearl Harbor” in order to begin their wars in the Middle East.
Why don’t Americans and Europeans know this? The answer is because the US and Europe do not have independent medias. They have presstitutes.

Washington created “the Russian threat” when the Obama regime’s frame-up of Assad on his alleged use of chemical weapons failed. The UK PM David Cameron pledged Great Britain’s cover for Washington’s invasion of Syria, but the UK Parliament voted no. No more UK coverups for Washington’s war crimes, said the Parliament. Russia stepped in and said, no need for more war. We have an agreement with Syria. We are going to collect all chemical weapons and turn them over to the US for destruction. The US is probably using these chemical weapons turned over by naive Russians for the false flag chemical attacks in Syria.

Stymied in their war aims against Syria, the neoconservatives turned with fury against Russia. How dare the insignificant Russians get in the way of the exceptional, indispensable people! We will teach Russians a lesson! Washington unleashed on the democratically elected government of Ukraine the US-financed NGOs in the amount of $5 billion according to Assistant Secretary of State neoconservative Victoria Nuland. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2fYcHLouXY

Not realizing its vulnerability, Russia was focused on the Sochi Olympics and suddenly found that Ukraine had undergone a US coup and was committing violence against the Russian populations in Ukraine. Previously in history Soviet leaders had assigned Russia provinces to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the USSR. These Russians faced with violence by the neo-Nazi government installed in Kiev by Washington demanded to be reunited with Russia from whence they had come.

Russia agreed to take back Crimea because of the Russian Black Sea Naval Base, but refused the other Russian areas, Donetsk and Luhansk. Hoping against all rationality to convince Europe that Russia was non-aggresive, Russia refused the Russian breakaway republics and left them to the mercy of the Kiev neo-Nazis that continue to attack them in violation of the agreements.

The Russian government’s tolerance for provocations and insults makes the Russian government look like a weakling to the American neoconservatives, who continue to demonize Russia and its president and to press for more sanctions and more bases on Russia’s borders. Prior to his meeting with Putin, Trump, according to the BBC, called “on Russia to stop ‘destabilising’ Ukraine and other countries, and ‘join the community of responsible nations.’” How is that for standing truth on its head?

The Russian desire for Western acceptance could end up compromising Russia’s sovereignty. Washington is figuring out how much sovereignty Russia will give up in exchange for being granted acceptance by the West.

The Russians are also endangered by their belief that Muslim terrorism is a world threat. It is a delusion for the Russian government to think they can reach an agreement with Washington to fight terrorism jointly. The Russians simply cannot accept that terrorism is Washington’s weapon directed against them.

The only reason Muslim terrorism exists is that Washington created it. Washington first used jihadism against the Soviet army in Afghanistan. Then against Gaddafi in Libya. Then when Obama’s plan to invade Syria on the trumped-up chemical weapons charge was blocked by the UK Parliament and Russia, Obama sent ISIS to overthrow Assad. General Flynn, who was the director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency stated this matter-of-factly on Al Jazeera. Flynn said it was a “willful decision” of the Obama administration to send ISIS to overthrow Assad. This is why Russia’s hopes of a common front against ISIS never made any sense.

Jihadism is Washington’s best weapon with which to destabilize Russia. Why would Washington help Russia to defeat this weapon?

There is so much fake news and disinformation spread in the Western media that it even affects the Russians, perhaps even the Chinese.

Even Western analysts who reject the official Syria story still buy into the lie that Assad is a dictator.

When Putin meets with Trump, Putin will have to assess whether Trump is a real president or just another front man for the powerful interest groups that run Washington’s empire.

If Putin concludes that Trump is merely a front man, then Putin has no alternative but to prepare for war.

Deep State Begins Anti-Russia Media Blitz Ahead Of Trump-Putin Meeting. ZeroHedge. July 6, 2017.

With all eyes on the 'handshake' as Putin and Trump come face-to-face for the first time as world leaders, it seems the Deep State is desperately fearful of some rapprochement, crushing the need for NATO, and destroying the excuses for massive, unprecedented military-industrial complex spending.

...

So in summary - 3 stories pinning Russia for shameful acts against 'Murica that just happen to hit hours before Trump shakes hands with Putin... ensuring that unless Trump slams Putin to the ground like a wrestling-CNN-logo, he will be adjudged as being soft... and therefore clearly in cahoots with the Russian leader. Seriously, do the Deep State realy think Americans are that dumb? (rhetorical question)

The Undeniable Pattern Of Russian Hacking. MoA. July 6, 2017.

A wide review of news sources finds an undeniable patter of international "Russian hacking" claims:

• Many, if not all such accusation, are based on say-so by some anonymous "official" or self-promoting "expert".
• Many, if not all such accusation, are rebutted within a few days or weeks.
• News about any alleged "Russian hacking" is widely distributed and easy to find.
• News of the debunking of such claims is reported only sparsely (if at all) and more difficult to retrieve.

Update (June 7 3:00am Est):

To frame today's Trump-Putin talks at the G20 meeting in Hamburg (and to prove the above, timely post correct?) U.S. media issued three new story today implicating "Russian hacking". The stories are made up of rumors, fearmongering and of reports of banal phishing attempts on some administrative systems. While all three implicate Russia they naturally contain ZERO evidence to anything related to that country.


Russia steps up spying efforts after election, CNN - Jul 6 2017


Hackers Are Targeting Nuclear Facilities, Homeland Security Dept. and F.B.I. Say, NYT - Jul 6 2017


Russians Are Said to Be Suspects in Nuclear Site Hackings, Bloomberg - Jul 6 2017

In the very likely case that the above described pattern of "Russian hacking" holds, all three stories will be debunked within the next few days or weeks.

Patching it up with Putin. Pat Buchanan. July 6, 2017.

President Donald Trump flew off for his first meeting with Vladimir Putin —with instructions from our foreign policy elite that he get into the Russian president’s face over his hacking in the election of 2016.

Hopefully, Trump will ignore these people. For their record of failure is among the reasons Americans elected him to office.

What president, seeking to repair damaged relations with a rival superpower, would begin by reading from an indictment?

President Eisenhower did not begin his summit with Nikita Khrushchev by berating him for crushing the Hungarian freedom fighters in 1956 — a more grievous crime then hacking the emails of John Podesta.

President Kennedy did not let Russia’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba in 1962 prevent him from offering an olive branch to Moscow in his widely praised American University address of June 1963.

President Nixon, in first meeting Leonid Brezhnev, did not denounce him for extinguishing the Prague Spring. Were Trump to start his first summit with Putin by dressing him down, why meet with him at all?

Trump would do better to explore where we can work together, as in ending Syria’s civil war and averting a new war in Korea.

Moreover, when it comes to interference in the internal politics of other nations to bring about “regime change,” understandably, Putin might see himself as more sinned against than sinning.

Should Trump bring up the email hacking in 2016, Putin could ask him to explain U.S. support for the violent coup d’etat that overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian government in Ukraine, a land with which Russia has been intimately associated for 1,000 years.

Consider the behavior of post-Cold War America, after Moscow gave up its empire, pulled all its troops out of Europe, let the USSR dissolve into 15 nations and held out a hand in friendship.

We gathered all the Warsaw Pact nations and three former Russian Federation republics into a NATO alliance targeted at Russia. We put troops, ships and bases into the Baltic on the doorstep of St. Petersburg. We bombed Russia’s old ally Serbia for 78 days, forcing it to surrender its birth province of Kosovo.

...