Ray interviewed by Wilmer Leon on “The Critical Hour,” November 20, 2018
https://sputniknews.com/radio_
Six minutes (from 1:55 to 8:45)
The “Resistance” Struggles To Justify Support For Trump’s Prosecution Of Assange
By Caitlin Johnstone, November 19, 2018
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/
Last Tuesday former National Intelligence Director James Clapper was asked why President Obama, two days before he left town, told a press conference that intelligence “conclusions” about “Russian hacking” were “inconclusive.” Clapper said he could not explain that.
Here’s are the words Obama chose to use, less than two weeks later, at his final news conference (January 18), answering a question from Jeff Mason of Reuters. Obama:
“ … the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.” (emphasis added)
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/
“If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie—a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days—but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows.
“And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”
By Ray McGovern, November 14, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/
A counter-intuitive Guardian report [[[[[ https://readersupportednews.
In a February 2018 article (see link below), Coleen Rowley and Nat Parry found it more than somewhat odd — “nuts,” actually — that “liberals” were going to such inordinate lengths to defend Mueller and his predicate-poor probe.
https://raymcgovern.com/2018/
Linked above is Gareth Porter’s follow-up to the excellent piece he published last month (See:
https://raymcgovern.com/2018/
Did President Putin bend the election toward Trump (as suggested not only by the NY Times but also by formerly sober investigative journalists like Jane Mayer!)? Readers of the Gray Lady and the New Yorker today are just as convinced that Putin helped Trump win as they were 16 years ago, when the same government-and-media prevaricators assured them that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
On “Russia-gate,” the reality that there was probably “no there there,” was clear enough to the late Robert Parry 20 months ago that he led off a piece with those words. And now we know that, two months after Bob wrote that, FBI sleuth Peter Strzok confided to Lisa Page that there was “no big there there.” See:
https://consortiumnews.com/
What NY Times readers do not know about Robert Mueller is that his has played fast and loose with the Constitution and the law; he is, demonstrably, a white-collar criminal. The stakes are extremely high for him, his best-friend-forever James Comey and other who indulged in criminal behavior in the full expectation, as Comey has explicitly admitted to Congress, that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in. Oops.
In my view, it is unlikely that Mueller will admit that his predicate-impoverished but politically-rich investigation for proof of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has come up with nothing — aside from non-related indictments, including Russian ham sandwiches, so to speak.
More likely, Mueller will come up with something — something manufactured by the same people he presumably feels an overriding need to protect. Overriding? Well, they, after all, have the book on Mueller, as well.
We should be prepared now for the same kind of manufactured “intelligence” adduced to “prove” the presence of WMD in Iraq. The only thing that might give Mueller pause is the possibility that there remain one or two lawyers at the Department of Justice who realize their responsibility as officers of the court and defenders of the Constitution and who have the courage to blow the whistle; that she, he, or they would expose the trickery; and that the NY Times would be unable to suppress the story. All those possibilities are highly subjunctive, of course. Still, they could deter Mueller from repeating the kind of crimes that many — NY Times readers excepted — already know about from his curriculum vitae.
As Consortium News readers are well aware, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), specifically “alumni” of NSA (including two former Technical Directors) have written extensively on the technical aspects of the charge that “Russia hacked” into the DNC. Relevant articles, interviews, speeches, etc. can also be easily found on raymcgovern.com by simply using the SEARCH widget.
Message:
The NSA captures and stores everything. Sometimes it is only meta data, sometimes entire content. FISA section 702 is the “legal” justification for this big brother practice.
There is one silver lining in this dark cloud. The NSA has in the servers in Bluffdale Utah, the evidence that can conclusively prove Russian or foreign involvement. If the claims of Crowdstrike, Guccifer 2.0 and the Jan 6, Intelligence Community Assessment are true, all of those transmissions are known to the NSA. Only if it were an inside job would the data not be known to the NSA.
Seldom in this world of spin can something so easily be proven beyond doubt.
A tweet from Trump asking the NSA to substantiate the foreign traffic without violating national security would suffice.
Pope Francis: “It’s hypocrisy to call yourself a Christian and chase away a refugee or someone seeking help.” Many bishops have also spoken out strongly against a mentality that sees refugees primarily as a threat or a problem.
Let’s remember that our theology is deeply rooted in Hebrew scripture, which insists time and time again that particular care is owed to those Biblical scholars call the “Deuteronomic triad”—the refugee, the orphan, and the widow. The prophets of Israel spoke passionately about how a truly God-fearing society ought to show concern and love for its most vulnerable. It is the same in Christian scripture — and Islam, as well.
We don’t need scholarly exegesis to understand the gospel words of Jesus. They are unambiguous — you might call them the “gospel truth,” hard as it often is to internalize it, shape our views, and let it guide our actions.
