… on Easter

From a Mortal Point of View
By Joe Gilmore
(Excerpt)

From a mortal point of view,
resurrection
is one of the things
you do best,
Laughing God.

If you don’t mind our saying so,
rolling back stones;
stunning the guardians of death;
stationing startling angels;
upending expectations
which lean, full weight,
on yesterday;
disappearing around corners
of imperial decrees
and holy dogmas,
then rising up,
laughing,
in the flowers
on Pilate’s porch —

These are truly
Brer Rabbit maneuvers
on a briar patch earth.

If you don’t mind
mortals saying so,
you are surely
a virtuoso performer,
making the music
of resurrection
unaccompanied.
Easter blessings to all!

Honest Journalists Discuss Plight of Julian Assange

Three real/live/courageous journalists, a collective credit to the profession, spoke earlier today on a panel discussion of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.

The video-ed discussion, presented by Don’t Extradite Assange can be watched at:https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/17/watch-assange-extradition-john-pilger-stefania-maurizi-and-charles-glass/

Charlie Glass, who was ABC News chief Middle East correspondent from 1983–93, mentioned Consortium News and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity in citing, at the beginning of his remarks (minute 20:20), Ray’s April 10 article “What if Ignored Covid-19 Warnings Had Been Leaked to WikiLeaks?”
See: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/10/ray-mcgovern-what-if-ignored-covid-19-warnings-had-been-leaked-to-wikileaks/

Extra dividend: John Pilger reminded Ray today of the interview he did of him in 2003 for the documentary “Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror”. Pillger cited the following portion of the interview, which came after John’s question as to whether the intelligence “justification” for the attack on Iraq was a “charade”.  (This part did make the final cut):

McGovern:   “It was 95 per cent charade.” 

Pilger:   “How did they get away with it?”

McGovern:  “The press allowed the crazies*** to get away with it.”

Pilger:   “Who are the crazies?”

McGovern:  “The people running the [Bush] administration have a set of beliefs a lot like those expressed in Mein Kampf… these are the same people who were referred to in the circles in which I moved, at the top, as ‘the crazies’.”

Pilger: “Norman Mailer has written that that he believes America has entered a pre-fascist state. What’s your view of that?”

McGovern:  “Well… I hope he’s right, because there are others saying we are already in a fascist mode.”

*** For more on “the crazies”, see “Coming Attraction: Lunatic Loose in West Wing”, April 5, 2018, at:  https://consortiumnews.com/2018/04/05/coming-attraction-lunatic-loose-in-west-wing/

How to Get Rid of a POTUS [President of the United States]

By “John Quincy Adams” (pseudonym), April 13, 2020
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/04/13/how-get-rid-of-potus/

The text follows, but the original (URL above) has many excellent live links.  (Is it widely known, for example, that Trump may give Alaska to Russia in return for political favors?)

In the Soviet Union there was an expression “The Organs of State Security” or “Organs” for short. Their supposed power in the USSR was one of the things that separated them from what we used to call “the free world”. Not so much any more – the American Organs came very close to getting rid of the so-called Most Powerful Man in The World. They made only one mistake; they probably won’t next time.

The impeachment of US President Donald Trump is over, or at least this iteration is. This was not a normal impeachment, it was an attempt by the Deep State, the Organs of State Security, the Blob, the Borg – later we will learn what its members call it – to remove a president of the United States. After some false starts, it succeeded at every step except the very last one. But, as they say, practice makes perfect and the Organs have learned from their mistake.

Note that such a removal only becomes necessary when the Organs have failed to block a challenger, a Bernie Sanders or Tulsi Gabbard for example, who might question the status quo. But, in 2016 they failed and, to the amazement of the wise ones, Trump won the election. His remarks about getting along with Russia showed that he might wander off the path The Organs had laid out. The Organs got to work. They first stirred up opinion that he was so unfit for office that getting rid of him would be laudable, no matter how it was done. Not so difficult given the small number of “news” media owners in the USAwell trained to take their lead from “anonymous sources in the intelligence community” and not so difficult because the losers were so bitter. He was -phobic – islamo-, trans-, homo-. He was -ist – rac-, sex-, class-. Limited mental abilities, psychological instability, personal deficiencies, incapable, dangerous. An entire theory of incapacity was built on a typo. Each attempt faded and was forgotten – faithless Electors, 25th Amendment, Logan Act – nobody remembers the details, but the stink remains.

But these produced no effective actions. There are only two ways to get rid of an American president if you are unwilling to wait until the next election – murder or impeachment. Media hysteria creates an atmosphere but it doesn’t get anything done.

It’s an experiment – this fails, that fails, try something else. So the Organs moved to another idea – treason as grounds for impeachment. The seeds had been planted – “All 17 intelligence agencies” agreed that he was the nominee of a hostile foreign power. Three years on an inquiry intended to provoke him, but he resisted the provocations and, eventually the inquiry had to admit it found nothing. But the accusation is always there – enemies of the Organs, Tulsi Gabbard, Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein are accused of being puppets of the foreign power.

Trump talks a lot and, sooner or later, will say something the Organs can seize on and twist. And he did. A phone call to a subservient foreign leader provided the opportunity and The Organs of State Security took it. One operative became a “whistleblower” – he didn’t overhear the phone call, didn’t know what it said but did know that a fellow operative was “visibly shaken“. Another operative actually said it out loud.

In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.

Read that again because it’s an important stage in the History of the Decline and Fall of America. “Inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency”. That’s what they think should make foreign policy, not transient presidents (never mind Art 2 Sec 2). This is the moment when even the dullest should have understood that yes there is a Deep State, the Organs do exist and its operatives call it The Interagency.
The president is already unpopular, many think he must be removed and now The Interagency says he is a traitor. The opposing party stages a show in which “witnesses” from The Interagency testify that he is a traitor because he says or will say, does or will do something that violates “the consensus views of The Interagency”. Like trade Alaska to Russia for support. The House brings bills of impeachment charging that he has weakened national security (The Interagency told us so) and obstruction of justice (many members are ex-prosecutors and built their careers on plea bargains and obstruction of justice charges; that charge is an automatic reflex.)

But the plot failed in the Senate. The Interagency must be wondering what would have happened had it produced, at the right time, compromising information on 20 or 30 senators.

We recapitulate. Should someone who threatens The Interagency manage the improbable feat of climbing over the obstacles and becoming president, The Interagency will

1. Start a campaign at which obedient media scribes, quoting “people familiar with the matter“, throw all the accusations they can find or imagine. Details will be forgotten but surely, with such clouds of smoke, there must be some fire somewhere. Easier still if members of The Interagency become TV pundits themselves.

2. Gather all the compromising information The Interagency has – the NSA keeps everything – on Congressmen and be prepared to deploy it. Easier still if members of The Interagency become members themselves.

3. Wait for some event in which the POTUS goes against The Interagency Consensus.

4. Use the compromising information in the House to start an inquiry which listens to testimony from Interagency operatives that the POTUS has violated The Interagency consensus and threatened national security.

5. The House charges him with 1) endangering national security and 2) obstruction of justice.

6. Use the compromising information to get enough Senators to vote to remove.

7. Repeat as necessary until every candidate understands who really runs things.

And that’s how to do it.

And The Interagency nearly pulled it off – 20 or 30 Senators, confronted with evidence of sexual or financial peccadilloes (or, these days, -isms or -phobias), could have been “persuaded” to do the right thing.

And so, as Adams foresaw two centuries ago, step by step, America, having bound “an imperial diadem” to her forehead, has ceased to be “the ruler of her own spirit”. The Interagency – built up for the pursuit of monsters – very nearly ate the government. It failed only at the very last step.

AG Barr just signaled that things are about to get ugly for the Russia collusion team

By Kevin R. Brock, April 13, 2020
https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/492405-ag-barr-just-signaled-that-things-are-about-to-get-ugly-for-the-russia

“Travesty” is not a nice word. It usually is applied to gross perversions of justice, and that apparently is the context Attorney General William Barr desired when he dropped it into an interview answer the other day in the breezy courtyard of the Department of Justice (DOJ).
His composed, understated delivery almost disguised the weighty magnitude of that disturbing word and the loaded adjective that preceded it. “I think what happened to him,” he said, referring to the president and the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation into his campaign, “was one of the greatest travesties in American history.” 

Okay, it’s important to pause for a moment and absorb what the AG said. He just called an FBI investigation not just a travesty but one of the “greatest” travesties in the nation’s history. It was an unprecedented statement by an attorney general about his own department’s premier agency.  
The FBI has made plenty of mistakes, but never in its 112-year history has an FBI investigation been characterized as a travesty, let alone one that equates to other hall-of-fame travesties in American history.
Is the AG’s assessment fair? The answer is entwined in his next statement: “Without any basis [the FBI] started this investigation into [Donald Trump’s] campaign … .”
Oops, stop again right there. Mr. Barr is making a definitive statement about that which many of us have speculated all along, namely that the weirdly unprecedented investigative team put together by former FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe did not have adequate legal reasons to open a case into the Trump campaign in the first place. The attorney general just confirmed that.
But wait a minute, doesn’t that directly contradict DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s assertion that the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation was justified? 
Two things to keep in mind regarding that inconsistency.  
First, remember that IG Horowitz reached two primary and controversial conclusions: 1) that there was adequate justification for starting the investigation, and 2) that there was no “evidence” of political bias as a motivating factor for the investigation. He based his conclusions, according to his report, solely on his interviews of the FBI individuals who started and ran the case — from Mr. Comey on down. That’s our story, they all said, and we’re stickin’ to it.
This would be like an FBI agent interviewing four subjects suspected of robbing a bank and, after hearing their denials, concluding there was no evidence they committed the crime.
In fairness, the IG is not a criminal investigator and certainly not steeped in counterintelligence matters. The attorney general, on the other hand, owns the Attorney General Guidelines that dictate what it takes to initiate an FBI investigation, particularly of an American citizen. He is the ultimate arbiter.  
Which leads to the second point: The AG is logically being briefed on the progress and findings of U.S. Attorney John Durham’s investigation, which he commissioned to examine how the empty Russia collusion case got started in the first place and if it involved any wrongdoing on the part of the government. It is a safe bet that Mr. Durham is collecting evidence beyond the self-serving statements of the FBI principals involved. It also is now a safe bet that his findings will respectfully disagree with Mr. Horowitz’s.
Attorney General Barr communicates in a clear, understandable, calm-as-a-summer-evening manner uncommon in Washington. He undoubtedly did not get to his current position without being a skilled litigator, whose first rule is never make a statement to the court that you can’t back up. His newsworthy claim that there was zero basis for the FBI’s investigation stands, in all probability, on a mound of — in his words — “troubling” evidence now in his possession.
Many in the media immediately sputtered that the FBI was certainly justified because Trump campaign third-stringer George Papadopoulos told an Australian official, in a bar, that the Russians had email dirt on Hillary Clinton.  
The media may wish that Papadopoulos’s comment is sufficient justification to investigate a candidate for president, but it is not. An experienced Russia counterintelligence FBI agent would have recognized immediately that the Australian’s assertion, while moderately interesting for existing investigations of Russians, was not nearly enough to open an invasive investigation of American citizens.
The biased, overeager Comey and McCabe, however, opened an unprecedented full-blown investigation into a presidential campaign. Worse, Durham possibly will show that the Comey team started involving itself in questionable intelligence community activities that improperly ran confidential sources against Papadopoulos well before they officially opened a case — a potentially big no-no that, if proven, will not go well for all involved.
That is especially true in light of what the AG went on to say during his interview. He likened the Comey team’s inappropriate investigation and subsequent fallout to sabotage, or the effects of sabotage. “Sabotage” is another powerful word, technically a wartime crime, but a useful metaphor in its ramifications, since it implicates a range of supporting crimes such as conspiracy, fraud, perjury and false statements.
The AG then ominously stated that he is not interested in simply receiving a “report” from Durham. He expects him to focus on possible criminal violations: “And if people broke the law, and we can establish that with the evidence, they will be prosecuted.”  
These are incredibly hopeful words to many Americans who have come to believe — after the 2008 Wall Street-driven financial collapse, after the numerous Clinton family schemes and scandals, and after the wasteful Mueller “investigation” — that the powerful are never held accountable.
This is an attorney general projecting an air of confidence, not afraid to speak truth to slippery politicians even though the pushback will be fierce and personal. In light of that, it’s hard to imagine his confidence isn’t buttressed with mounting evidence of abusive government actions.  
This is what the Durham investigation could well conclude: A group of people aligned with or sympathetic to one political party conspired to illicitly use the authorities of the FBI to besmirch the opposing party’s presidential candidate — and that every effort should be made to indict those who can be charged as a result.
If true, such a thing has never happened before. It would represent a direct, unprecedented attack on our democracy, to fraudulently influence the voting public with lies ostensibly emanating as facts from a noble, traditionally trusted FBI. And that, indeed, would be a travesty of historical significance. One never to be repeated, we can hope, against any future president of either party.
Kevin R. Brock, former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI, was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). He is a founder and principal of NewStreet Global Solutions, which consults with private companies and public-safety agencies on strategic mission technologies.

New Young Life for Julian Assange and Fiancee

Uplifting Photos = An Easter-like Blessing
By The Daily Mail & Consortium News, April 12, 2020

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210957/amp/WikiLeaks-boss-Julian-Assange-fathered-two-children-inside-Ecuadorian-embassy-lawyer.html?__twitter_impression=true

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8210957/WikiLeaks-boss-Julian-Assange-fathered-two-children-inside-Ecuadorian-embassy-lawyer.html

+++++++++++++++++++

Assange Partner Speaks Out After Threat from Judge
April 12, 2020 
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/12/assange-partner-speaks-out-after-threat-from-judge/
NEW LIFE.
Indeed.

Assange Anniversary Interview

Ray was interviewed for 44 minutes on April 10 by Randy Credico on the latest about their mutual friend Julian Assange. Today, the 11th, is the first anniversary of the unceremonious seizure of Julian that put an abrupt end to the political asylum granted him earlier at the Ecuadoran embassy in London.  

Some of the 44-minute discussion focused on Ray’s most recent article about Julian and WikiLeaks. ( See:
https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/10/ray-mcgovern-what-if-ignored-covid-19-warnings-had-been-leaked-to-wikileaks/ .)
Randy Credico is a comedian as well as a radio host.  The result is a discursive, relaxed conversation — despite the dark subject.