Done & Sworn in: 45th US president Donald Trump: The Sequels...

[Hervé]

Trump rolled up his sleeves and got started on shaking up the tree...

President Trump signals legal action against intelligence leakers undermining his Presidency

Alexander Mercouris
The Duran Thu, 16 Feb 2017 21:23 UTC

In a succession of tweets President Trump hints that a criminal investigation will shortly be launched to track down and punish the leakers who published classified information in order to bring General Flynn down.

US President Trump - as I speculated yesterday he might do - has signaled today that a leak investigation will be launched to track down and punish the leakers from within the US intelligence community who have been working overtime since before he was elected to undermine and delegitimise him.

That this is so is confirmed in a series of tweets President Trump has published today (here, here, here, and here)

The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story - RUSSIA. Fake news!

FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and "sources," is far more effective than the discredited Democrats - but they are fading fast!

The spotlight has finally been put on the low-life leakers! They will be caught!

Leaking, and even illegal classified leaking, has been a big problem in Washington for years. Failing @nytimes (and others) must apologize!

(bold italics added)

President Trump's reference to The New York Times refers to a preposterous non-story which it published yesterday in which on the strength of information provided by our old friends the 'anonymous current and retired officials' it spoke luridly of US intelligence 'detecting contacts' between Russian intelligence agents and people close to Donald Trump during the early stages of the US Presidential election campaign last year.

Since The New York Times admits that nothing untoward was discovered happening during these contacts, that some of these contacts appeared to concern straightforward business transactions, that some of the people close to Trump who were engaged in these contacts were not members of his campaign, and that it is far from clear whether they were even aware that the people they were dealing with had been identified by the US intelligence community as Russian intelligence agents, it is difficult to see anything meaningful in this story, a variant of which was also published by CNN.

Since The New York Times story does not report news it cannot be considered proper news reporting. Rather it looks like an attempt to lend colour to the paranoid but now widespread claim that General Flynn's telephone conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak were part of some vast sinister web of secret contacts between the Russians and Donald Trump's campaign.

The fact that there was nothing secret about Flynn's conversations with Kislyak, that Flynn apparently said nothing inappropriate during his conversations with Kislyak, and that Flynn and Kislyak would undoubtedly have known that US intelligence was listening to what they were saying to each other, is sufficient to show the total absurdity of this claim.

I will here express my dismay that The New York Times - a once great newspaper - is lending its authority to it.

Putting that aside, the way in which classified information was used by members of the US intelligence community to destroy General Flynn has (finally!) led to public expressions of alarm even on the part of some in the establishment media at the way the campaign against Donald Trump is being conducted.

In addition to the article in Bloomberg by Eli Lake which I discussed previously, there is also for example this article by Damon Linker in The Week:

The United States is much better off without Michael Flynn serving as national security adviser. But no one should be cheering the way he was brought down.

The whole episode is evidence of the precipitous and ongoing collapse of America's democratic institutions — not a sign of their resiliency. Flynn's ouster was a soft coup (or political assassination) engineered by anonymous intelligence community bureaucrats. The results might be salutary, but this isn't the way a liberal democracy is supposed to function.

Unelected intelligence analysts work for the president, not the other way around. Far too many Trump critics appear not to care that these intelligence agents leaked highly sensitive information to the press — mostly because Trump critics are pleased with the result. "Finally," they say, "someone took a stand to expose collusion between the Russians and a senior aide to the president!" It is indeed important that someone took such a stand. But it matters greatly who that someone is and how they take their stand. Members of the unelected, unaccountable intelligence community are not the right someone, especially when they target a senior aide to the president by leaking anonymously to newspapers the content of classified phone intercepts, where the unverified, unsubstantiated information can inflict politically fatal damage almost instantaneously......

.......no matter what Flynn did, it is simply not the role of the deep state to target a man working in one of the political branches of the government by dishing to reporters about information it has gathered clandestinely. It is the role of elected members of Congress to conduct public investigations of alleged wrongdoing by public officials.....

In a liberal democracy, how things happen is often as important as what happens. Procedures matter. So do rules and public accountability. The chaotic, dysfunctional Trump White House is placing the entire system under enormous strain. That's bad. But the answer isn't to counter it with equally irregular acts of sabotage — or with a disinformation campaign waged by nameless civil servants toiling away in the surveillance state.....

Those cheering the deep state torpedoing of Flynn are saying, in effect, that a police state is perfectly fine so long as it helps to bring down Trump.

It is the role of Congress to investigate the president and those who work for him. If Congress resists doing its duty, out of a mixture of self-interest and cowardice, the American people have no choice but to try and hold the government's feet to the fire, demanding action with phone calls, protests, and, ultimately, votes. That is a democratic response to the failure of democracy.

Sitting back and letting shadowy, unaccountable agents of espionage do the job for us simply isn't an acceptable alternative.

Down that path lies the end of democracy in America.

Even in militantly anti-Trump Britain there are now expressions of concern. The most powerful is by Julie Lenarz in an article in the rigidly pro-establishment Daily Telegraph:

Flynn's orchestrated downfall by unaccountable, shadowy agents entrusted with the country's most sensitive secrets is not just bad news for the Trump administration. It raises serious concerns over the democratic nature of the US political system.

This is not how a liberal democracy is meant to function. You may be right in thinking that Michael Flynn was a disastrous choice as National Security adviser and that his questionable ties to high-ranking Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin and Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, are compelling enough to withdraw confidence in him....

And you may be right in thinking that we are all safer without him walking the corridors of the White House. But the end does not justify the means. It was not the place of unelected members of the intelligence community to leak highly sensitive information to the public to bring down an official, a member of a democratically elected government, because he was deemed unqualified and undesirable by them.....

.....it matters, a great deal, who is holding the government accountable and how it is being done. In a liberal democracy there are proper procedures in place. It is the role of elected officials, members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, to investigate the government for breaking the law and endangering national security.

The leaking of highly sensitive material by an unelected agent to bring down an official of the government is an unprecedented breach of trust that must be unequivocally condemned. If liberal democracy means anything, regardless of political orientation, the engineered political assassination of Flynn must be denounced by Trump critics and supporters alike. And if this happened in any other country - or to any other president - we would see it as symptomatic of a decline of democracy and a corruption of the security apparatus.

The rise of the deep state cannot be the answer to bringing down the Trump administration, no matter how critical you may be of the government and its conduct. That would be a dangerous drift towards a police state not worthy of the land of the free.

As I wrote yesterday, the flagrant illegality of the way in which General Flynn's downfall was brought about has given the President the handle he needs to act against those in the US intelligence community who have been working to undermine him. His comment in his tweets today - "they will be caught!' - suggests he intends to use it. With Jeff Sessions now confirmed as Attorney General there is nothing obvious which can stop him.

I would make one final point. It is interesting that since the inauguration many of the leaks have come not just from serving US officials but from "retired" officials as well.

That all but confirms that some former officials of the Obama administration are actively involved in the campaign to undermine the new President. Presumably they are people who had access to the classified information which is now being leaked, which suggests that they held senior positions in the previous administration.

It will be very interesting to find out who they are. Perhaps as a result of the investigation President Trump is hinting at we will find out.

[Hervé]

Trump does something right! Very good press conference today

The Saker February 16, 2017

After a few rather disappointing days, Trump today seem to rebound. He had a press conference which I would qualify as very successful. The best thing about this was that Trump FINALLY directly attacked the media, especially CNN. Hopefully, this will be just the first step in an always possible counter-offensive. Tomorrow he will be in Melbourne, FL, just south of were I live. I will be watching that with interest.

Here is his press conference:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=1j7sSFNUuZk

The Saker

[Hervé]

Trump, Watergate, Nixon, Rockefeller: the real lesson

By Jon Rappoport Feb 22, 2017

Watergate eventually became the story of two young rookie reporters who exposed and took down a president. Nixon.

Try to think of another major story in your lifetime where the reporters themselves took center stage, and in the process nearly eclipsed their own work. Odd.

One of them, Bob Woodward, expanded his fame. The powers-that-be permitted him to go on and, with extraordinary access, write books criticizing future presidents. Woodward became the in-house attack dog. Mr. Limited Hangout.

The other reporter, Carl Bernstein, faded into relative obscurity. Well, after all, he began exposing many journalists’ connections to the CIA. That wasn’t a productive career move. It was, perhaps, a case of him biting the CIA hand that, without his knowledge, had fed him during his Watergate investigation.

What Woodward and Bernstein didn’t know, during Watergate, was this: On the mega-corporate front, the Rockefeller proposal for world control—“free trade, no tariffs”—was advancing toward fruition, and Richard Nixon was standing in the way.

This man, a crook, a president, a liar, an insecure parody of a head of state, Richard Nixon, had gone off script. He had REALLY gone off script.

In an effort to bolster US companies and protect them from foreign competition inside the United States, Nixon began erecting tariffs on a range of goods imported into the US.

If this Nixon economic plan spread to other countries, the entire global program to install “free trade” and mega-corporate emperors on their thrones for a thousand years could crash and burn.

Nixon was a Rockefeller man. He was owned by them. He’d been rescued from financial ruin by The Family, and now he was in the White House undermining their greatest dream. You can’t overstate the degree of the betrayal, from the Rockefeller point of view. You simply can’t.

Something had to be done. The president had to go. This was the real motivation behind Watergate. This was the real op. Yes, there were sub-motives and smaller contexts, as in any major op, but the prime mover was: get Free Trade back on track, and get suitable revenge on the puppet in the White House who went off the script.

Any historian who overlooks this is an outright fool or a deceiver.

Whether the Watergate break-in was planned to serve the higher goal or was pounced upon, after the fact, as the grand opportunity, is beside the point. It was there, and it was used. It became the starting point for the Washington Post, its publisher, veteran editor, and two cub reporters to break Richard Nixon into pieces.

And if the Rockefeller people needed an inside man at the White House to report on the deteriorating mental state of the president as he heated up in the pressure cooker, they had Henry Kissinger, who was another Rockefeller operative.

The Washington Post was owned by Katharine Graham, who was herself a very close friend of the Rockefeller Family. Years later, she would be awarded a medal of honor by the University of Chicago, an institution founded by John D. Rockefeller. On her death, a paid heartfelt obituary was inserted in the NY Times by the trustees, faculty, and staff of Rockefeller University, where she had served on the University Council.

And she and Nixon already hated each other by the early 1970s.

The managing editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee, was an old hand at writing promotional material, having worked in Europe crafting releases for a CIA front group. A former Naval intelligence man, he liked one of his cub reporters, Bob Woodward, who had also worked for the Navy in intelligence.

When Woodward came to Bradlee with a story about a man in a parking garage who was passing secrets from the White House/FBI about Watergate, we are supposed to believe that Bradlee naturally responded by giving the green light to a major investigation. Woodward and Carl Bernstein, another cub, would undertake it—with nothing more than Bradlee’s reputation and the future survival of the Post and Katharine Graham’s empire on the line if the cubs got it wrong.

We are supposed to believe Bradlee gave the green light, without knowing who the man in the garage was, without knowing whether Woodward could be trusted, without even getting permission from Graham to move ahead.

Bradlee, a grizzled veteran of Washington, understanding exactly what Washington could do to people who told secrets out of school, just said to Woodward and Bernstein, “You’d better be damned sure you’re right, because otherwise we’re all in trouble.”

Two untested cub reporters set loose in a cage with tigers.

The odds of that happening were nil. Bradlee had to know a great deal from the beginning, and he had to have Katharine Graham’s signal to move. The series of breaking stories would be spoon-fed to the unsuspecting young reporters. They would be consumed by their ambition to advance their careers. Bradlee was confident because he had the essentials of the scandal in hand—all the way up to Nixon, the target—well in advance of his two reporters.

To have proceeded otherwise—Bradlee was simply not that kind of fool. Whatever Deep Throat, the man in the garage, was dishing out to Woodward didn’t really matter. Bradlee already had it in his pocket. Deep Throat was merely a contrivance to allow the story to expand and grow by steps, and to permit Woodward and Bernstein to believe they were peeling layers from an onion.

The man behind the curtain was David Rockefeller.

After the whole scandal had been exposed and Nixon had flown away, in disgrace, from the White House for the last time, David Rockefeller addressed a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of the European Community (October, 1975). He was there to allay their fears about Nixon’s betrayal of the new economic world order. There was really very little he needed to say. David had already created (1973) the free-trade Trilateral Commission, an exceedingly powerful force. And a new puppet, Gerald Ford was in the White House; and Ford had appointed David’s brother, Nelson Rockefeller, as his vice president.

David told the European attendees, “Fortunately, there are no signs that these anti-[free] trade measures [of Nixon] are supported by the [Ford] Administration.”

And that was that. The global mega-corporate colossus was back on track.

The temporary rip in the Matrix had been repaired.

On a far lower level of power politics, everyone and his brother were consumed with the contrails of the scandal that had driven away Nixon and his colleagues. People were congratulating each other on the expunging of a corrupt conspiracy from public life.

The real players, of course, were still in place, stronger than ever. David Rockefeller and his aides were preparing for an even greater coup. They had chosen an obscure man with zero name recognition to be the next president of the United States. Jimmy Carter. Carter would function to forward the goals of the Trilateral Commission in bold view of anyone who knew the score.

And every president since Carter, regardless of party affiliation, has supported and extended those Globalist-corporate goals. No questions asked. Obama, who fatuously remarked during his 2008 election campaign that NAFTA “needs to be revisited,” has taken his cues like any other puppet.

When, from this perspective, you examine the global takeover of land and resources by GMO agribusiness, the destruction of small family farms, the plundering of natural resources in the Third World, the use of UN “peacekeepers” and “humanitarian groups” and intelligence agencies to create a wedge, for corporations, into these areas, you see the hand of the Rockefeller plan.

When you see the destruction of currencies and the escalation of insupportable debt, the incursion of a bewildering number of UN-affiliated groups sinking their teeth into local communities all over the planet to “manage sustainable development,” you see the plan.

And when you see “free trade” and no tariffs, you see the essentials nuts and bolts of the plan.

The innocuous-sounding “free trade” policy is the number-one priority of every American president. He must do two things: rarely speak of it, and allow it to move forward. That’s all. In return, he gets to act as if he’s the most powerful man in the world.

But if he wobbles and considers taking up a position against free trade (corporate domination of the planet), he can look back and see what happened to Richard Nixon. He can learn from that example.

He can re-learn the famous words of Zbiggie Brzezinski, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller’s intellectual flunkey:

“The nation state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state.”

Like Jimmy Carter, a president can espouse the most wide-ranging humanitarian philosophy and ascend to a cloud of beautiful altruism, admired by all. As long as he sticks to the plan.

If not, agents and reporters coming out of nowhere will try to demolish him.

—Suddenly, a swaggering, self-congratulatory, fast-talking cowboy named Donald Trump appeared as a presidential candidate. And lo and behold, he attacked Globalism by name. He claimed he would dump it in favor of American nationalism. He repeated this oath many times. And he won the election, unseating a lifelong Globalist named Hillary Clinton.

Whether Trump intends on keeping his promises and going up against the Rockefeller colossus, he has spoken of that which must not be uttered in public: the crimes of Globalism and free trade.

He has let the secret cat out of the bag. He has made people aware…

And for that, he must be punished.

What people are calling the Deep State is the collection of agents who are committed to the Rockefeller plan. They, and their media flunkeys, are swinging for the fences every time they mention Trump. They are doing everything they can to take him down.

***From their perspective, they are launching another Watergate-type operation against another Nixon in the White House.

Another time, “another Nixon”; same basic op.

—In order to protect the titanic, Globalist, corporate control of planet Earth.

This time, the rhetoric and the sentiment for nationalism and against Globalism has already spread across the world. It is percolating and boiling in many places.

Putting the lid back on is a herculean task. Therefore, the agents and reporters are doubling and tripling down on Trump. Even if he turns out to be no more than a symbol of anti-Globalism, they are determined to crush him.

They have their marching orders.

Mere blocks away from the Oval Office, the Community Organizer in Chief, after serving eight years in the White House, is now setting up a parallel presidency, with 30,000 ground-and-pound Leftist dupes at his disposal—all for the purpose of taking down Donald Trump.

You can bet Obama’s bosses have reminded him that he failed at his most important task: shepherding through the free-trade Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty. They intend to collect on their investment. They put him, a no-name, in charge of the nation, in 2008, and he is still their agent. They want results.

Soon.

They want a 2017 version of Watergate.

Jon Rappoport

=======================================

The Rockefeller plan can be summarized as : "Eliminate any and all competition, by any means."

That's best described by John Perkins' "Economic Hitman" With Guatemala and "United Fruit" or the insane production quotas imposed on the Soviets to bring down Argentina's and other nations' industries... with the accompanying sufferings.

Was all of that unleashed because those competitors were people-oriented and not satanists? If that were the case, then this article (<---) would make much more sense and would not be such a high octane speculation when considering Albert Pike's "World War III."

[Hervé]

Steele: "Trump is in Enemy Hands"

By Robert David Steele February 23, 2017

(Steele says pedophilia is "an elite privilege. Washington DC is their "ground zero". 9 min 30)

Ex CIA officer Robert David Steele says Trump is surrounded by traitors who want Mike Pence to replace him. He is focusing on keeping election promises instead of consolidating his position by purging traitors and reaching out to the 45% of the people who didn't vote.

Steele details the dangers Trump faces and the steps he needs to take.

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nfX5QhqbCpM

Latest! Trump tweeted Friday morning:

"The FBI is totally unable to stop the national security "leakers" that have permeated our government for a long time. They can't even find the leakers within the FBI itself. Classified information is being given to media that could have a devastating effect on U.S. FIND NOW."

The Three-Track Program to Destroy Trump
by Robert David Steele
(Abridged by henrymakow.com)

I have been talking to a number of people including Alex Jones, Cynthia McKinney and others, and I clearly see the outlines of the final push to impeach Donald Trump and drive him out of office. This assault on democracy, freedom, and liberty is pursuing three tracks:

TRACK ONE (CENSORSHIP):

Eric Schmidt is organizing a massive censorship and propaganda program behind the scenes. AdRoll has just illegally and without due process deprived Alex Jones of over $3M a year in ad revenue by asserting, without evidence and without legal process (and in violation of existing contracts) that Alex Jones is a purveyor of fake news that also targets demographic segments and slanders politicians. I have recommended to Alex that he engage Brendan Sullivan and Danny Sheehan and roll out an immediate $1 billion lawsuit against AdRoll and its co-conspirators Facebook, Google, Redditt, Twitter, YouTube, and Wikipedia. This is the softest of the three tracks

TRACK TWO (A VIOLENT "AMERICAN SPRING"):

George Soros is leading a massively funded effort to put a mix of paid and uninformed protestors into the streets beginning around 20 March -- tens of thousands across the country, augmented by agitators dressed in black and causing property damage, as well as mercenaries who will shoot police officers dead and strive to blame it on Black Lives Matters and other innocents. This will culminate in a massive 3 million person march on Washington that will trash the city and seek to drive Donald Trump from office if he cannot be successfully impeached.

TRACK THREE (IMPEACHMENT OR RESIGNATION):

The Mainstream Media (MSM) -- the fake news media controlled by the Rothschilds, Wall Street, and the CIA as well as the Zionists and the Saudis -- has begun to speak of treason and impeachment in relation to Donald Trump. The US secret intelligence community, notably the rogue elements at NSA and CIA that have spied with impunity on US politicians and then turned around to blackmail them (at the same time that Wall Street, the Zionists, and the Saudis bribe them), is drawing together more fake evidence that Russia "owns" Donald Trump. Impeachment proceedings are likely to begin before 1 May, the intent being to drive Trump to resign, elevate Mike Pence who in all probability has cut a deal with the globalists and the two-party tyranny that serves the globalists, and reset the two-party tyranny, destroying our one hope at liberty in this generation. Hats off to Cynthia McKinney for flagging the below video, [which shows an "ex Mossad agent pushing the fake "Russia Owns Trump" narrative."]

What Is To Be Done?
I can save the Trump presidency but he has to hear the message and be ready to act on it. As best I can tell Steve Bannon has the memorandum [below] and has probably tried to get the President to read it. Beyond that I do not know. Our President -- our legitimately elected President is now being attacked from all sides -- has two weeks to think about and act on my suggestions. I have done all any citizen-patriot could do. I speak only the truth, with the best of intentions. Donald Trump is in enemy hands. Steve Bannon has a couple of days to make get the President to focus. I pray he succeeds.

MEMORANDUM FOR THE PRESIDENT (from Steele)

WARNING: You have 30 days to settle the country. A violent "American Spring" looms.

You are under attack on three fronts:

The Extreme Left & the controlled "fake news" MSM, US Neo-Conservatives led by Dick Cheney, funded by foreigners The Deep State of entrenched senior officials combined with Senators and Representatives being blackmailed and bribed to betray the Republic. You are not under attack from Iran or Russia - all your existential fights are right here.

There are four things you need to do immediately in order to survive:

Our President, Under Siege! Switch out Preibus and Flynn -- smart choices for the transition, they are undermining you now, Tillerson and Mattis probably agree they both need to go.

You need a loyal Chief of Staff who can manage complexity, and a National Strategy Advisor with balance. Introduce the Electoral Reform Act of 2017 and demand that it go through - this is the only way you will survive the looming demise of the Republican Party; the only way you legitimize your accidental 27% presidency with a majority of the public; and the only way you free Members from foreign and financial community bribery and blackmail.

Create the non-profit educational Trump Channel backed up by an Open Source Agency. Clear the existing press area in the White House, turn that into Trump Studios, and offer a daily fireside chat as well as short daily briefs by your principals in turn on each threat, each policy, each budget - bypass the fake news media, educate the public, and use PollMole to see what 200 million think on a Presidential Dashboard.

Unleash the FBI, with NSA support, against the Deep State. You may have already started this, the Republican and Democratic Party pedophiles are the Achilles heel. We can isolate 500 other embedded traitors (financial, religious, ideological) in 90 days. There are four things you can do to be the greatest President in modern history.

Diversify your senior team - adding Cynthia McKinney and Dennis Kucinich - and Ralph Nader and Jesse Ventura in some capacity - will strangle the extreme left and open up the middle. Take your diversified team on the road - 50 states in 30 days. Organize a Grand Strategy Summit, televised for public consumption - the ultimate reality show. The last one was done in 1953 by Ike Eisenhower.

Address all high level threats and all Cabinet policy domains in context of achieving a balanced budget. Organize a Revenue Summit, televised for public consumption, in which you invite Dr. Edgar Feige of Wisconsin to brief his idea of an Automated Payment Transaction Tax that allows you to eliminate all other taxes, especially income taxes.

This fractional tax puts the tiny burden where it should be: on Wall Street instead of Main Street. Allow the public to scrutinize the alternatives you have been considering. You will be a hero. Invite every citizen in debt to sign a Debt Renunciation Pledge on a non-profit website, authorizing you to negotiate, on their behalf, a reduction of the three trillion dollars in student debt, elderly medical debt, and small business and family credit card debt. This will connect you to 150 million or more citizens and empower you against Wall Street. Background: Former CIA Spy Has A Surprising Message For Trump


uPDATE 1: The President made a huge mistake with McMaster, who is over-rated and has no idea that nine of the ten high-level threats to humanity are not military.

UPDATE 3: Trump has the memo, Bannon is fighting it, Preibus is gone (just a matter of when, I recommend that all the changes be announced at the same time).

UPDATE 6: Bannon is destroying Trump. Nothing wrong with fulfilling promises to the 27% that voted for Trump but ignoring the 26% that hate him and the 47% that did not vote; ignoring the imminent demise of the Republican Party and failing to build the Trump base beyond the two-party tyranny; and ignoring the three-part campaign by the Deep State, Clinton left and Cheney right to destroy Donald Trump is sheer idiocy.

Bannon needs to be kicked out of the White House and put on the road to the base while adults help Trump deal with the whole and take down the State. If Trump does not get a grip on the eight points in the Memorandum, he is toast by 2018 and perhaps as early as May Day 2017.

NOTE: Judas Preibus received the 10-Page Message in mid-December, in time to make the Inauguration Address a Unity Address focused on unrigging the system. Judas Preibus is committed to stopping Donald Trump from unrigging the system, he did not deliver the memorandum to the President.


Related- Thursday, Steve Bannon gives upbeat view of Trump's progress (YouTube)

Makow- Trump Admin Infested with Pedophiles?

Robert Steele: Donald Trump, The Accidental President -- Under Siege! A Soft Coup Rages within a Closed Rigged System...

Gregg Phillips: Three Million Illegal Votes -- Data Backs Up Assertion by Donald Trump (Analytics, Algorithms, and Hundreds of Millions of Data Points)

Robert Steele: RIGGED - Twelve Ways the Two-Party Tyranny Rigs the US Electoral System to Block Out Independents, Small Parties, and 70% of the Eligible Voters

[Chester]

I hate reading something I "don't want to imagine as possible"... maybe I could say "sadly seems quite possible."

I am glad I do it anyways.

Thanks Herve... today represents a shift in my view - not because of your above post #144 alone... but because this post represents "the straw that broke the camel's back" for me.

[TargeT]

Posted by Hervé (here)
Steele: "Trump is in Enemy Hands"

By Robert David Steele February 23, 2017

Starting to feel very "cult of personality"...

Not sure I like the way Steele's stuff is reading, lime light grasping never leads to good things.

[waves]

Posted by Hervé (here)
Steele: "Trump is in Enemy Hands"

By Robert David Steele February 23, 2017

.....

Hmmm... having second thoughts about Mr. Steele. Seen a lot of him during and since the election. On one hand seemed to be saying a lot of right things but seems to be really ramping up intensity now. Wondering if he set the stage for a future role in an agenda. Funny thing about this 'warning' is that it's the exact pattern we've seen countless times before of a so called warning actually being a promotion of what he's supposedly warning about. It's THE tool of psy-ops.

Step Two is to take this show on the road and repeat repeat repeat - "there WILL be blah blah blah..."

On Alex Jones a day or so ago no matter what Alex tried to ask him and change the conversation direction to something else, he literally repeated his agenda over and over and over.

Not that he isn't partially right about Trump's enemies, but it especially feels like a extra push for civil unrest.

I'm stepping back and watching his so called messages with this in mind now. His 'warnings' are exactly what the left would want to happen and the best effort to help try to make it happen is to define it and repeat it, and he's gathered a large audience watching, reposting and repeating him now too.

[Hervé]

The Clinton system to discredit Donald Trump

by Thierry Meyssan | Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 28 February 2017
عربي Español فارسى français Deutsch русский Português ελληνικά Türkçe norsk

This article is a warning - in November 2016, a vast system of agitation and propaganda was set up in order to destroy the reputation and the authority of President Donald Trump as soon as he arrived in the White House. It is the first time that such a campaign has been scientifically organised against a President of the United States, and with such resources. Yes, we are indeed entering a post-Truth age, but the distribution of rôles is not what you may think it is.

David Brock is considered to be one of the masters of agit-prop (agitation & propaganda) in the 21st century. A personality devoid of scruples, he is able to defend a cause as well as destroy it, according to the needs of his employer. He is at the head of an empire of mass manipulation.

The campaign waged against the new President of the United States by the sponsors of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the destruction of the Greater Middle East is on-going. After the Womens’ March on 22 January, a March for Science is scheduled to be held not only in the USA, but also throughout the Western world on 22 April. It’s goal is to show that Donald Trump is not only a misogynist, but also an obscurantist.

The fact that he is the ex-organiser of the Miss Universe pageant, and that his third wedding was to a model, is apparently enough to prove that he holds women in contempt. The fact that the President contests the rôle played by Barack Obama in the creation of the Chicago Climate Exchange (a long time before his Presidency) and rejects the idea that climatic disturbances are caused by the expulsion of carbon into the atmosphere attest to the fact that he understands nothing about science.

In order to convince US public opinion of the President’s insanity – a man who says that he hopes for peace with his enemies, and wants to collaborate with them in universal economic prosperity - one of the greatest specialists of agit-prop (agitation & propaganda), David Brock, set up an impressive system even before Trump’s investiture.

At the time when he was working for the Republicans, Brock launched a campaign against President Bill Clinton which would eventually become Troopergate, the Whitewater affair, and the Lewinsky affair. Having changed his colours, he is today in the service of Hillary Clinton, for whom he has already organised not only the demolition of Mitt Romney’s candidacy but also her riposte in the affair of the assassination of the US ambassador in Benghazi. During the first round of primaries, it was Brock who directed the attacks against Bernie Sanders. The National Review qualified Brock as «a right-wing assassin who has become a left-wing assassin».

It is important to remember that the two procedures of destitution of a serving President initiated since the Second World War were set in motion for the benefit of the deep state, and not at all for the benefit of democracy. So Watergate was entirely managed by a certgain «Deep Throat» who, 33 years later, was revealed to be Mark Felt, the assistant of J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI. As for the Lewinsky affair, it was simply a way of forcing Bill Clinton to accept the war against Yugoslavia.

The current campaign is organised in secret by four associations:

Media Matters is tasked with picking up on Donald Trump’s mistakes. You read his bulletin every day in your newspapers – the President can’t be trusted, he got this or that point wrong.

American Bridge 21st Century has collected more than 2,000 hours of videos showing Donald Trump over the years, and more than 18,000 hours of other videos of the members of his cabinet. It has at its disposition sophisticated technological equipment designed for the Department of Defense – allegedly not in working order – which enables it to look for contradictions between their older declarations and their current positions. It should be extending its work to 1,200 of the new President’s collaborators.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington — CREW is a firm of high level lawyers tasked with tracking anything that could create a scandal in the Trump administration. Most of the lawyers in this association work pro bono, for the cause. These are the people who prepared the case for Bob Ferguson, the Chief Prosecutor of the state of Washington, against the immigration decree (Executive Order 13769).

Shareblue is an electronic army which has already connected with 162 million internauts in the USA. It’s job is to spread pre-ordained themes, for example:

• Trump is authoritarian and a thief.

• Trump is under the influence of Vladimir Putin.

• Trump is a weak and quick-tempered personality, he’s a manic-depressive.

• Trump was not elected by the majority of US citizens, and is therefore illegitimate.

• His Vice-President, Mike Pence, is a fascist.

• Trump is a billionaire who will constantly be faced with conflicts of interest between his personal affairs and those of state.

• Trump is a puppet of the Koch brothers, who are famous for sponsoring the extreme right.

• Trump is a white supremacist and a threat to minorities.

• Anti-Trump opposition just keeps growing outside Washington.

• To save democracy, let’s support the democrataic parliamentarians who are attacking Trump, and let’s demolish those who are co-operating with him.

• Overthrowing Trump will take time, so don’t let’s weaken in our resolve.

This association will produce the newsletters and 30-second videos. It will base itself on two other groups – a company which makes documentary videos, The American Independent, and a statistical unit, Benchmark Politics.

The whole of this system – which was set up during the transitional period, that is to say before Donald Trump’s arrival at the White House – already employed more than 300 specialists to which should be added numerous voluteer workers. Its annual budget, initially calculated at 35 million dollars, was increased to the level of about 100 million dollars.

Destroying the image – and thus the authority – of the President of the United States, before he has had the time to do anything at all, can have serious consequences. By eliminating Saddam Hussein and Mouamar Kadhafi, the CIA plunged their two countries into a long period of chaos, and the «land of Liberty» itself may suffer severe damage from such an operation. This type of mass manipulation technique has never before been levelled at a head of state in the Western world.

For the moment, the plan is working – no political leader in the world has dared to celebrate the election of Donald Trump, with the exception of Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation Pete Kimberley

[Hervé]

"They're Like The Praetorian Guard" - Whistleblower Confirms NSA Targeted Congress, The Supreme Court, & Trump

by Tyler Durden
Mar 25, 2017 11:25 PM

Authored by Chris Menahan via InformationLiberation.com,

NSA whistleblower William Binney told Tucker Carlson on Friday that the NSA is spying on "all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House."

Binney, who served the NSA for 30 years before blowing the whistle on domestic spying in 2001, told Tucker he firmly believes that Trump was spied on.

"They're taking in fundamentally the entire fiber network inside the United States and collecting all that data and storing it, in a program they call Stellar Wind," Binney said.

"That's the domestic collection of data on US citizens, US citizens to other US citizens," he said.

"Everything we're doing, phone calls, emails and then financial transactions, credit cards, things like that, all of it."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=lkChOSdOgcc

"Inside NSA there are a set of people who are -- and we got this from another NSA whistleblower who witnessed some of this -- they're inside there, they are targeting and looking at all the members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Congress, both House and Senate, as well as the White House," Binney said.

"And all this data is inside the NSA in a small group where they're looking at it. The idea is to see what people in power over you are going to -- what they think, what they think you should be doing or planning to do to you, your budget, or whatever so you can try to counteract before it actually happens," he said.

"I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.

Rather than help prevent terrorist attacks, Binney said collecting so much information actually makes stopping attacks more difficult.

"This bulk acquisition is inhibiting their ability to detect terrorist threats in advance so they can't stop them so people get killed as a result," he said.

"Which means, you know, they pick up the pieces and blood after the attack. That's what's been going on. I mean they've consistently failed. When Alexander said they'd stop 54 attacks and he was challenged to produce the evidence to prove that he failed on every count."

Binney concludes ominously indicating the origin of the deep state...

"They are like the praetorian guard, they determine what the emperor does and who the emperor is..."

Who's going to stop them?

[Hervé]

"I mean, that's just East German," Tucker responded.

Check this post (<---) to get an idea of how effective the propaganda psy-op has been, in order to generate that kind of "spontaneous" comment...

[avid]

Praetorian Guard is key, well worth researching, so pertinent. Thanks Hervé
Sorry, can't do this at the moment... Here's a piece about the Praetorian Guard
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/03/...etorian-guard/

[Honesty]

..........

[Hervé]

Former Obama insider, Evelyn Farkas, reveals she was involved in "helping to spy on Trump for Obama"

Alex Christoforou The Duran
Wed, 29 Mar 2017 00:00 UTC

Farkas admitted to having first hand knowledge that the Obama administration spied on a US presidential candidate’s transition team in order to gather “intelligence” for political use, information which was then leaked to the media through Obama January executive order 12333.

Evelyn Farkas says Barack Obama was indeed spying on candidate Trump.

#Obamagate picks up more speed, as the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Obama White House, Evelyn Farkas, has admitted that Donald Trump was spied on, and that Obama tried to hide both the source, and how the information was being disseminated to "the hill."

Farkas was on MSNBC's Morning Joe, when she made the stunning revelation that she was involved in "helping to spy on Trump for Obama."

Farkas unknowingly ratted out her former boss Barack Obama on the liberal left propaganda outlet, MSNBC...

"I was urging my former colleagues, and, and frankly speaking the people on the Hill [Democrat politicians], it was more actually aimed at telling the Hill people, get as much information as you can - get as much intelligence as you can - before President Obama leaves the administration.

Because I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior [Obama] people who left; so it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, um, that the Trump folks - if they found out HOW we knew what we knew about their, the Trump staff, dealing with Russians - that they would try to compromise those sources and methods; meaning we no longer have access to that intelligence.

So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew that there was more. We have very good intelligence on Russia; so then I had talked to some of my former colleagues and I knew that they were also trying to help get information to [Democrat politicians

Farkas admitted to having first hand knowledge that the Obama administration spied on a US presidential candidate's transition team in order to gather "intelligence" for political use, information which was then leaked to the media through Obama January executive order 12333.

MSNBC, the network working oh so hard to remove Trump from office in what has become Russian election meddling fake news, has now helped debunk their entire Trump impeachment effort...Farkas clearly shows that Donald Trump, not Russians, was the target of the illegal surveillance.

Excerpt:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cVGp2FZmVA4

Via The Conservative Treehouse...

It would appear Ms. Farkas was so caught up in the discussion, she didn't quite realize the significant admissions she was making about the Obama administration spying on Donald Trump's team and generating classified intelligence for Ms. Farkas (and others) to spread to Capitol Hill politicians. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski recognized the 'oh-snap' admission and tried to play it off,...but by then it was too late.

With the help of MSNBC, simultaneous to her admission of first-hand specific knowledge of the administration spying on Mr. Trump, Ms. Evelyn Farkas outs herself as the key source for a New York Times report which discussed President Obama officials leaking classified information to media.

Considerable irony jumps to the forefront when you recognize, the New York Times tried to protect Evelyn Farkas as the source of their reporting by stating:

"More than a half-dozen current and former officials described various aspects of the effort to preserve and distribute the intelligence, and some said they were speaking to draw attention to the material and ensure proper investigation by Congress. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing classified information, nearly all of which remains secret." (link)

Looks like Devin Nunes and the House Intelligence Committee has a new person to bring in for testimony. A positive development because at this rate the media leakers will out themselves without much need for investigation.

I wonder what the criminal penalties are for having access to intelligence and sharing it with Democrat politicians ["The Hill People"].

Farkas' admission starts at the 04:50 mark...

Full clip:

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=cVGp2FZmVA4

Comment: Potential 'smoking gun' showing Obama administration spied on Trump team, source says

[turiya]

Yuuge!!! Good find & thanks for posting...

[Helene West]

Posted by turiya (here)
Yuuge!!! Good find & thanks for posting...

Don't get your hopes up. Another let down.
it's not being spun the way the conservative news is translating it. Msnbc are spinning exactly the opposite. I agree she is admitting something questionable on her part towards the end but they sail through it and this is no breaking expose...She practically admits the dems are felons by saying the leaks are happening because they are all worried about crazy man Donald. Of course it is not their place to commit felonies because of their opinions or ideology but they are getting away with it.
No matter how guilty the dems are they become more ferocious...
the repubs need to be equally ferocious but they aren't

[Hervé]

Confirmed: Susan Rice 'unmasked' Trump team

Tyler Durden Zero Hedge
Mon, 03 Apr 2017 08:05 UTC

Once again it appears that Trump was right: the conspiracy theory that a close Obama associate worked to "unmask" the Trump team, resulting in the ongoing media spectacle over "collusion" between Trump and the Kremlin, has been confirmed, first by Mike Cernovich, and now by Bloomberg itself.

As noted last night, Journalist and author Mike Cernovich dropped an exclusive bombshell - naming Obama's National Security Advisor Susan Rice as the official responsible for the 'unmasking' of the incoming Trump team during 'incidental' surveillance. This was apparently discovered after the White House Counsel's office reviewed Rice's document log requests:

The reports Rice requested to see are kept under tightly-controlled conditions. Each person must log her name before being granted access to them.

Upon learning of Rice's actions, [National Security Advisor] H. R. McMaster dispatched his close aide Derek Harvey to Capitol Hill to brief Chairman Nunes.

Cernovich pointed out, as revealed in an article by Circa, that President Obama began loosening the rules regarding "incidental intercepts" starting in 2011 - making it easier for the US Government to spy on individuals who are not the primary target(s) of a surveillance operation.

As his presidency drew to a close, Barack Obama's top aides routinely reviewed intelligence reports gleaned from the National Security Agency's incidental intercepts of Americans abroad, taking advantage of rules their boss relaxed starting in 2011 to help the government better fight terrorism, espionage by foreign enemies and hacking threats.

And guess who had authorization to unmask individuals who were 'incidentally' surveilled? Former CIA Director John Brennan, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Obama's National Security advisor Susan Rice. Also of note is the claim that New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman has been sitting on the Susan Rice story for at least two days:

This reporter has been informed that Maggie Haberman has had this story about Susan Rice for at least 48 hours, and has chosen to sit on it in an effort to protect the reputation of former President Barack Obama.

Fox News anchor Adam Housley tweeted on Friday that the surveillance that led to the unmasking began before Trump was the GOP nominee, and that the person who did the unmasking is a "very senior" and "very well known" person in the surveillance community - and not someone in the FBI. As ZeroPointNow noted, "this of course begs the question of whether or not President Obama would have ordered Rice to perform the unmasking."

* * *

Until this morning, the Cernovich report was unconfirmed, with many in the "legacy media" accusing Cernovich, who recently was profiled on 60 Minutes for being a prominent member of the "fake news" dissemination team for being - what else - fake news. However, moments ago Bloomberg's Eli Lake confirmed that it was indeed Susan Rice who was responsible for the repeatedly "unmasking" multiple members of the Trump team, in what may be dubbed yet another "conspiracy" to delegitimize the current US president.

From Eli Lake:

White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."

As Lake adds, the National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration.

Rice has not yet responded to a Bloomberg email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration.

Making matters worse, Rice appears to have lied: while she has not spoken directly on the issue of unmasking, last month when she was asked on the "PBS NewsHour" about reports that Trump transition officials, including Trump himself, were swept up in incidental intelligence collection, Rice said: "I know nothing about this," adding, "I was surprised to see reports from Chairman Nunes on that account today."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=sH0akjRDJsY

Ironically, it's the same Susan Rice who two weeks ago tweeted the following:

Susan Rice‏Verified account @AmbassadorRice

Susan Rice: When the White House twists the truth, we are all less safe. Why veracity matters to our security.

5:22 PM - 21 Mar 2017

Lies aside, according to the Bloomberg reports, "Rice's multiple requests to learn the identities of Trump officials discussed in intelligence reports during the transition period does highlight a longstanding concern for civil liberties advocates about U.S. surveillance programs. The standard for senior officials to learn the names of U.S. persons incidentally collected is that it must have some foreign intelligence value, a standard that can apply to almost anything. This suggests Rice's unmasking requests were likely within the law."

Perhaps, but they also served a key political purpose: to create a media firestorm of controversy involving the Trump team, and to delegitimize Donald Trump as much as possible.

Furthermore, the news about Rice also may explain what Bloomberg dubs the "strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks."

It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons.

The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to

be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee.

In a tacit admission by Lake that Rice may have crossed numerous boundaries, the Bloomberg reporter adds "much about this is highly unusual: if not how the surveillance was collected, then certainly how and why it was disseminated."

However the real question goes back to square one: did Obama order the unmasking, and if so, to what political purpose?

-----------------------------

SOTT Comment: Cernovich Explains How He Learned About Susan Rice

Ever since Mike Cernovich dropped the bombshell report over the weekend outing Obama's National Security Advisor, Susan Rice, as the person behind the unmasking of the identity of various members of Trump's team who were 'incidentally' surveilled during the 2016 campaign (see "Confirmed: Susan Rice "Unmasked" Trump Team"), a report which was subsequently confirmed by Eli Lake of Bloomberg earlier this morning, everyone has been wondering who within the Trump White House or the intelligence community supplied him with such a massive scoop.

But, as it turns out, Cernovich didn't need a 'deep throat' within the NSA or CIA for his blockbuster scoop, all he needed was some well-placed sources inside of a couple of America's corrupt mainstream media outlets. As Cernovich explains below, his sources for the Susan Rice story were actually folks working at Bloomberg and the New York Times who revealed that both Eli Lake (Bloomberg) and Maggie Haberman (NYT) were sitting on the Susan Rice story in order to protect the Obama administration.

"Maggie Haberman had it. She will not run any articles that are critical of the Obama administration."

"Eli Lake had it. He didn't want to run it and Bloomberg didn't want to run it because it vindicates Trump's claim that he had been spied upon. And Eli Lake is a 'never Trumper.' Bloomberg was a 'never Trump' publication."

"I'm showing you the politics of 'real journalism'. 'Real journalism' is that Bloomberg had it and the New York Times had it but they wouldn't run it because they don't want to run any stories that would make Obama look bad or that will vindicate Trump. They only want to run stories that make Trump look bad so that's why they sat on it."

"So where did I get the story? I didn't get it from the intelligence community. Everybody's trying to figure out where I got it from. I got it from somebody who works in one of those media companies. I have spies in every media organization. I got people in news rooms. I got it from a source within the news room who said 'Cernovich, they're sitting on this story, they're not going to run it, so you can run it'."

"If you're at Bloomberg, I have people in there. If you're at the New York Times, I have people in there. LA Times, Washington Post, you name it, I have my people in there. I got IT people in every major news room in this country. The IT people see every email so that's how I knew it."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=DT_gzLWbXHA

And while this could certainly be interpreted as a clever ploy to protect his real sources, Cernovich's video comments seem to be validated by both his tweet from yesterday afternoon...

...and the fact that Eli Lake of Bloomberg was able to conveniently confirm Cernovich's story with his own article this morning.

All of which just begs the question of what other stories the mainstream media is sitting on in an effort to protect their chosen candidates.

[Hervé]

Disgusted...


War is a racket: Trump owned stock in Raytheon, up $1Billion overnight

Matt Agorist The Free Thought Project
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 19:12 UTC

Each one of the 59 Tomahawk missiles fired by the US Navy, by order of Trump, at the Syrian air base in Homs cost somewhere between $800,000 and $1.4 million — per missile. This obviously expensive surge in US military spending subsequently sent the manufacturer's stock soaring. It also sent the Free Thought Project on an investigation into the types of stocks in which President Trump invests. What we found is shocking, but sadly, typical.

Tomahawk missiles are manufactured by a company, with whom most people are familiar, Raytheon.

According to Raytheon's website: "Today's Tomahawk Block IV cruise missile can circle for hours, shift course instantly on command and beam a picture of its target to controllers halfway around the world before striking with pinpoint accuracy. Tomahawk can be launched from a ship or submarine and can fly into heavily defended airspace more than 1,000 miles away to conduct precise strikes on high-value targets with minimal collateral damage. Launching the weapon from such a long distance helps to keep sailors out of harm's way."

However, some may not be familiar with the fact that according to the President's most recent FEC disclosure, the Trumps actual own or have owned stock in Raytheon. That's right, the 59 missiles, that Trump hurled at Syria — which cost taxpayers somewhere between $47 million and $82 million — could've actually turned a profit for the president.

The report showed that Trump also owns or has owned stock in many well-known companies including Apple, Nike, Whole Foods, Google, Philip Morris, McDonald's, Facebook, and Morgan Stanley, among many others — including many other defense contractors who stand to make billions off Trump's aggression.

It is important to note that in December of 2016, Trump spokesman, Jason Miller told The Post that Trump liquidated all of his assets. However, we've yet to see any proof of this and will not see any proof until at least 2018.

"We need to know, has he put them in conflict free assets ... or has he bought other stocks or assets that would create new conflicts?" Norm Eisen, who served as ethics counselor to President Obama asked. "It's all the more reason that we need a prompt and full financial disclosure. If he did liquidate all his stocks, what did he do with the money? What bank is the money in? What did he buy? It's a lot of money."

According to Business Insider, shares of Raytheon gained 3.54 points, a roughly 2.3 percent increase, in pre-market trading following Thursday night's strike.

Of course, 2.3 percent doesn't sound like a whole lot, however, if we take into account the effect it has on Raytheon's total market value, it is definitely significant. On Thursday, Raytheon closed at $150.75 and on Friday morning, it opened at $154.62. This shot the company's market value up from $44.1 billion to $45.4 billion — nearly one and a half billion — in a day.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing saw similar gains.

Also, according to Open Secrets, Trump wasn't just giving to Raytheon but they were also giving to him.

According to Trump's most recent Financial Disclosure Report, his stock holdings were held in accounts with Barclays, Oppenheimer, JPMorgan, and Deutsche Bank. However, the way that the disclosure from the FEC is structured only requires presidential candidates to list their holdings in broad ranges. So, we don't know how large of a stake he had in these companies.

Trump's situation, however shocking, is nothing new. Consequently, the last time there was talk of military action in Syria, in 2013, Raytheon's stock soared to an all-time high.

According to US officials, arms manufacturers have added shifts and hired workers, but they warn that this may not be enough to keep up with the world's demand for weapons of mass destruction.

As the US sends tens of thousands of warheads to Saudi Arabia so they can bomb schools and hospitals in Yemen, they are dropping hundreds of bombs in Iraq and Syria.

Instead of realizing that the bombs and US foreign policy are the actual sources of terrorism, war monger politicians like Bush, Obama, and now Trump use fear to steal your tax dollars to feed this machine.

Thanks to the invasive and murderous US foreign policy, there is no shortage of 'Islamic Extremism' to attack in the Middle East. Not only is Saudi Arabia receiving US arms, but so are many of the other Gulf states as well as Syrian 'rebels.'

After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Major General Smedley D. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket," which sums this scenario up quite well.

What separates Butler from other historical military figures is that he is one of only 19 people in history to win the Medal of Honor, twice. So, when a highly decorated, two-star general takes to the stage to assert that war is a racket, people listen — most people, anyway.

In one of his speeches, Butler decried war and pointed out how so many people died just to benefit a very small 'inside' group. The speech read in part,

WAR IS A RACKET. IT ALWAYS HAS BEEN.

IT IS POSSIBLY THE OLDEST, EASILY THE MOST PROFITABLE, SURELY THE MOST VICIOUS. IT IS THE ONLY ONE INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE. IT IS THE ONLY ONE IN WHICH THE PROFITS ARE RECKONED IN DOLLARS AND THE LOSSES IN LIVES.

Sadly, very few people inside this detached and brutal government ever come to realize the true nature of war. As the threat of World War III looms across the planet, the American taxpayers are being fleeced to build the weapons with which this world war will be carried out — all the while, the commander and chief is reaping the benefits.


Related:
Raytheon stocks jumped 1.47%.
Lockheed-Martin trading up .28%

[Helene West]

The 'Free Thought Project' article above to me is just a hit piece.

I wrote this on a similar thread as similar thoughts and feelings get thrown around by the events of this past weekend:

What if trump didn't have much of a choice? What if we are really less free than we want to imagine?

Criticizing trump implies that he has choices. By extension we feel we have choices. We have a vested interest in contending he had options.

The more we concentrate on trump and on all the independent or imaginary choices he supposedly has the less we will be concentrating on how powerless we really are, that would be even more uncomfortable than any disappointment in trump.
Whether it's trump, clinton, bush, obama or congress, no one is asking us anything. We just watch.

Whatever your interpretation of what transpired over the weekend it was definitely a surprise to most. I just hope we're not in for any bad financial surprises on top of political ones.

[turiya]

Posted by Helene West (here)
The 'Free Thought Project' article above to me is just a hit piece.

I wrote this on a similar thread as similar thoughts and feelings get thrown around by the events of this past weekend:

What if trump didn't have much of a choice? What if we are really less free than we want to imagine?

Criticizing trump implies that he has choices. By extension we feel we have choices. We have a vested interest in contending he had options.

The more we concentrate on trump and on all the independent or imaginary choices he supposedly has the less we will be concentrating on how powerless we really are, that would be even more uncomfortable than any disappointment in trump.
Whether it's trump, clinton, bush, obama or congress, no one is asking us anything. We just watch.

Whatever your interpretation of what transpired over the weekend it was definitely a surprise to most. I just hope we're not in for any bad financial surprises on top of political ones.

SEE POST ON ANOTHER THREAD....Trump will be leaving it up to Congress...[...]

[Mod-edit: I removed the repost since it can be viewed at the above link, Hervé]

[Hervé]

Tulsi Gabbard under fire after refusing to accept 'Assad did chemical attack' without evidence

RT
Mon, 10 Apr 2017 09:17 UTC

Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. Representative for the 2nd District of Hawaii © Alex Wong/WFP

Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has provoked a backlash from senior Democrats after refusing to take Syrian President Bashar Assad's complicity in the Idlib chemical attack at face value and demanding proof.

Speaking live on CNN in the aftermath of the US missile strike against the Syrian airfield near Homs, Gabbard said she remained "skeptical" of the allegations, and reminded the host of the destructive invasions in Libya and Iraq, the latter based on a false intelligence pretext. The Democratic representative from Hawaii also called out US President Donald Trump for the "reckless" and "unconstitutional" attack.

The remarks infuriated some "progressive" Democratic figures, including former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chair Howard Dean and former Hillary Clinton policy director Neera Tanden, now the President of the Center for American Progress, a pro-Democratic Party think tank. The two suggested on Twitter that Gabbard, who also famously visited Syria for a covert "fact-finding" mission, should be expelled from Congress for her doubt of Assad's guilt.

"People of Hawaii's 2nd district - was it not enough for you that your rep met with a murderous dictator? Will this move you?" Tander wrote on Twitter on Friday, referring to Gabbard's recent comments she made to CNN.

Dean, who served as Vermont Governor from 1991 to 2003 and led the DNC from 2005 to 2009, branded Gabbard's stance on Syria "a disgrace."

"Gabbard should not be in Congress," he wrote on Twitter on Sunday. Asked by one of the users why the former Governor did not display a similar indignation over "Hillary Clinton's mistakes," Dean responded: "Engaging in dialogue isn't the problem. It's claiming there is doubt Assad uses chemical warfare."

In an interview to the channel which aired on Saturday, Gabbard refused to be convinced by the undisclosed evidence that Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have cited when justifying the launch of 59 Tomahawk missiles against a Syrian airbase.

Despite being repeatedly pressed by CNN's Wolf Blitzer to unconditionally accept the so far unrevealed intelligence, Gabbard retorted: "Last time I checked, Wolf, the Congress has the authority and responsibility for declaring war, for authorizing use of military force."

"Whether the President or the Pentagon or the Secretary of State say they have the evidence the fact remains that they have not brought that evidence before Congress, they have not brought that evidence before the American people and have not sought authorization from Congress to launch this military attack on another country," Gabbard said.

She went on to argue that the US has been waging an illegal proxy war aimed at toppling the Syrian government "for years," which has only resulted in the "suffering of the Syrian people, hundreds of thousands of people dead, millions of refugees and the strengthening of terrorist groups in Syria like Al-Qaeda and ISIS."

Gabbard, who is an Iraq War veteran and sits on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees, cited the Iraqi invasion as an example of "completely destructive, counterproductive war."

The congresswoman courted controversy after going on a private fact-finding mission to Syria earlier this year, after it was revealed that she met with Assad, as well as with civil, religious, and opposition leaders and civilians.

"Their message to the American people was powerful and consistent: There is no difference between 'moderate' rebels and Al-Qaeda / Al-Nusra or ISIS - they are all the same," Gabbard said at the time, drawing strong criticism from the US establishment, with many accusing her of cozying up to Assad.

She has been a vocal opponent of Washington's support for the rebels in Syria, arguing that weapons often end up in the hands of the terrorists.

In December, Gabbard introduced the Stop Arming Terrorists Act, designed to stop the US government from providing direct assistance to terrorist entities, urging to "prohibit the Federal government from funding assistance to countries that are directly or indirectly supporting those terrorist groups."

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=evrkUqoDAoU