IS
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP A WHITE KNIGHT TRYING TO SAVE AMERICA FROM THE “DEEP
STATE”?
I Have Read The Following Complete Articles And
Extracted From Them The Information I Felt Pertinent To Make My Point Which
Is To Help Everyone Understand There Is A “Deep State”.
***
A Warning From An
Outgoing President
Dwight D.
Eisenhower’s Farewell Address to the Nation on January 17, 1961
IV
A vital element in keeping the peace is our
military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,
so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
Our military organization today bears little
relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by
the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the
United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares
could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no
longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been
compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.
Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged
in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more
than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military
establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.
The total influence -- economic, political,
even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of
the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this
development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our
toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure
of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard
against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or
unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the
disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this
combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take
nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel
the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense
with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may
prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the
sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the
technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become
central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily
increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal
government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in
his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in
laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university,
historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has
experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the
huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute
for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds
of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's
scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money
is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and
discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and
opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a
scientific technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to
balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles
of our democratic system -- ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our
free society.
John F. Kennedy at
the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on April 27, 1961 before the American Newspaper
Publishers Association.
"The very word "secrecy" is
repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and
historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret
proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and
unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which
are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the
threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even
today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our
traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced
need for increased security will be seized upon those anxious to expand its
meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I
do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no
official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or
military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the
news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the
press and the public the facts they deserve to know."
"For we are opposed around the world by a
monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for
expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on
subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on
guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has
conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a
tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic,
intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not
headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is
questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed."
"No President should fear public scrutiny of his program. For
from that scrutiny comes understanding; and from that understanding comes
support or opposition. And both are necessary. I am not asking your
newspapers to support the Administration, but I am asking your help in the
tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people. For I have
complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever
they are fully informed.
I not only could not stifle controversy among your readers-- I welcome it.
This Administration intends to be candid about its errors; for as a wise
man once said: "An error does not become a mistake until you refuse to
correct it." We intend to accept full responsibility for our errors;
and we expect you to point them out when we miss them.
Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country
can succeed-- and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian
lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from
controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First
(emphasized) Amendment-- the only business in America specifically
protected by the Constitution-- not primarily to amuse and entertain, not
to emphasize the trivial and sentimental, not to simply "give the
public what it wants"--but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state
our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices,
to lead, mold educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news-- for it is
no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means
greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved
transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must
meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information
outside the narrowest limits of national security and we intend to do
it."
"And so it is to the printing press--to the recorder of mans
deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news-- that we look
for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what
he was born to be: free and independent." http://www.thepowerhour.com/news3/jfk_speech_transcript.htm
It was hard to miss JFK’s veiled
reference to the Skull and Bones society at Yale University, a branch of
the Bavarian Illuminati, the Bilderbergers, CFR and the other secret
societies that rule the world from behind the scenes, The Powers That Be
(TPTB).
G. William Domhoff, a Research
Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz first coined the
non-conspiracy acronym TPTB. He received his Ph.D. at the University of
Miami. He has been teaching at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
since 1965. Four of his books are among the top 50 best sellers in
sociology for the years 1950 to 1995: Who Rules America? (1967); The
Higher Circles (1970); Who Rules America Now? (1983); and the
non-"conspiracy" critique and theory of the U.S. power
structure, The Powers That Be (TPTB) in 1979.
[Excerpt from
"Bones" in the Money Pit]
Our consumer society didn’t
just happen; it was planned. Not in 1910, or 1954, but in the year 1832,
the year William Huntington Russell and fellow classmate Alphonso Taft founded
the Skull and Bones society at Yale University, a branch of the Bavarian
Illuminati.
Members, known as
“Bonesmen,” include Rockefeller, Kuhn, Loeb and Morgan all connected to
the House of Rothschild’s global financial empire. They are founders of the
Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, France, and Germany or, for that
matter, any central bank anywhere in the world. In theory, the Federal
Reserve Act of 1913, one of the most important domestic acts in the
nation’s history, took the power to create money from the people and gave
it to the Bonesmen for profit.
Russ Baker's new book,
“Family of Secrets: the Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in
the White House, And What Their Influence Means for America," is
about George H. W. Bush’s secret intelligence work with the CIA many
years before he became the Agency’s director. Bush Sr. had played a
powerful but hidden role in determining the direction of the U.S.
government.
It's common knowledge that
the Bushes sit at the intersection of America's business and intelligence
communities, but it not so common knowledge that the Bush Family, Bush
Sr., Jr. and grandfather Prescott Bush, were all Bonesmen. Prescott
Bush’s initiation in 1918 is said to have included robbing the grave of
the Native American warrior, Geronimo. Prescott Bush helped Henry Ford,
Averell Harriman and others finance Adolph Hitler.
Russ Baker suggests the
strong possibility that Bush Sr. was connected to the assassination of
President Kennedy (assassinated November 22, 1963) because “Lyndon
Johnson would be more obedient to Texas oil men.
A more plausible connection
is Abraham Lincoln (assassinated April 15, 1865) was killed for the Legal
Tender Act of 1862 and Kennedy for Executive Order 11110
Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire,
presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of
the Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have
played at least some part in the assassination. Marrs alleges that the
issuance of Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer
power from the Federal Reserve to the United States Department of the
Treasury by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with silver certificates.
Actor and author Richard Belzer named the responsible parties in this
theory as American "billionaires, power brokers, and bankers ...
working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the
government." - Wikipedia
Lincoln’s “greenbacks”
would have prevented the Federal Reserve from creating $500 trillion of
money out of thin air, money that Warren Buffett and Market watch say
financed our global consumer society.
And, JFK’s "United
States notes" backed by silver, which were withdrawn the day he was
shot, would have put the Federal Reserve out of business and returned to
the Treasury Department the Constitutional power to create and issue a
debt-free currency.
Anyone who spoke against
the “Creature from Jekyll Island” (Federal Reserve banking cartel exposed
by G. Edward Griffin) was silenced. Presidents Garfield (assassinated
July 2, 1881) and McKinley (assassinated September 1, 1901), outspoken
champions of “sound” money and a central bank, were silenced permanently.
John Sherman, a Rothschild
protégé in a letter sent to New York bankers on June 25, 1863 in support
of the then proposed National Banking Act, wrote:
“The few who understand the
system, will either be so interested in its profits, or so dependent on
its favors that there will be no opposition from that class, while on the
other hand, the great body of people, mentally incapable of comprehending
the tremendous advantages...will bear its burden without complaint, and
perhaps without suspecting that the system is inimical to their best
interests.”
Directly and indirectly,
the Bonesmen orchestrated the Industrial Revolution, the Great
Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s and the dot-com and the housing
market bubbles.
One of the more absurd
notions that has found its way into the history books and the writings of
economic experts is that somehow these men were made wealthier from the
Monopoly money they printed, the same money that enabled consumers to buy
houses, second houses, cars, RVs, TVs and DVDs, i.e., the cheap “stuff”
we use on a daily basis. Let’s not forget the fact that in 1910 these men
already controlled one-sixth of the world’s wealth. And that was real
wealth—gold, silver and raw materials—not the fiat currency we call
money. Don’t forget the world they owned and controlled in 1910 had a
mostly balanced ecology.
The Skull and Bones society
and the Federal Reserve were critical to the growth of our industrial and
consumer society, but responsible for much of the financial and
environmental damage done to the planet.
We perceive our Country as
a constitutional republic; a government representative of the people and
accountable to them; but it now seems that premise is nothing more than
an illusionary, sentimental belief.
[End of excerpt]
Consider Another Assassination
Conspiracy Theory
Few would deny JFK was talking
about TPTB when he used the words, “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy.”
What if, after the Bay of
Pigs fiasco, his investigation uncovered the “secret” that TPTB are in a
metaphysical struggle with Mother-Earth (Gaea) and the environmental
damage and pollution was the goal and not the unintended consequences of
the Industrial Revolution and our consumer society?
And it is conceivable when
in 1961 JFK spoke about a:
“System which has
conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a
tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military,
diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are
concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its
dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no
rumor is printed, and no secret is revealed."
He was referring to a
system that wasn’t about money. Instead he understood that the resources
of the planet were about to be consumed – as in “used up” because he
understood the metaphysical struggle.
Then when he realized we
were about to be “conned,” into shopping for stuff to trash the planet,
he signed Executive Order 11110 as a first step to put us on the road to
sustainability.
Zbigniew Brezinski,
National Security Advisor to President Carter,
CFR member and first
Director of the Trilateral Commission, writes of a society controlled by a
Power Elite in his 1970 book, Between Two Ages:
America's Role in
the Technetronic Era.You will find
much of today’s world in his writings of 46 years ago.
The technotronic era involves the
gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated
by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible
to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain
up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information
about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval
by the authorities.
Today we are again witnessing the
emergence of transnational elites...[whose] ties cut across national
boundaries... It is likely that before long the social elites of most of
the more advanced countries will be highly internationalist or globalist
in spirit and outlook....
Within a few years the rebels in
the more advanced countries who today have the most visibility will be
joined by a new generation making its claim to power in government and
business... accepting as routine managerial processes current innovations
such as planning-programming-budgeting systems (PPBS) ... A national
information grid that will integrate existing electronic data banks is
already being developed.... The projected world information grid, for
which Japan, Western Europe, and the United States are most suited, could
create the basis for a common educational program, for the adoption of
common academic standards....
The nation-state is gradually
yielding its sovereignty. ... In the economic-technological field, some
international cooperation has already been achieved, but further progress
will require greater American sacrifices. More intensive efforts to shape
a new world monetary structure will have to be undertaken, with some
consequent risk to the present relatively favorable American position.
MSNBC's 'Morning Joe' Co-host Mika
Brzezinski, daughter of Zbigniew Brezinski, National Security Advisor
to President Carter, commented Wednesday morning, 2/22/17, that she is
upset to see President Trump has moved in on the media's turf when it
comes to the area of mind control.
"He is trying to undermine the
media and trying to make up his own facts," she said about Trump.
"And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens,
he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually
control exactly what people think."
"And that, that is our
job," she noted, referring to the media.
space
space
The Deep State
Retired
congressional staffer Mike Lofgren illuminates the shadowy influencers
behind US politics in his incriminating new book, The Deep State. Explore
in detail the involvement of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the
military-industrial complex in the decisions that will shape the future of
the United States.
Essay: Anatomy of the Deep State
February 21, 2014
by Mike Lofgren
The Deep State is the big story of
our time. It is the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism, the
financialization and deindustrialization of the American economy, the
rise of a plutocratic social structure and political dysfunction.
Washington is the headquarters of the Deep State, and its time in the sun
as a rival to Rome, Constantinople or London may be term-limited by its
overweening sense of self-importance and its habit, as Winwood Reade said
of Rome, to “live upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face.”
“Living upon its principal,” in this case, means that the Deep State has
been extracting value from the American people in vampire-like fashion.
The Deep State does not consist of
the entire government. It is a hybrid of national security and law
enforcement agencies: the Department of Defense, the Department of State,
the Department of Homeland Security, the Central Intelligence Agency and
the Justice Department. I also include the Department of the Treasury
because of its jurisdiction over financial flows, its enforcement of
international sanctions and its organic symbiosis with Wall Street. All
these agencies are coordinated by the Executive Office of the President
via the National Security Council. Certain key areas of the judiciary
belong to the Deep State, such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Court, whose actions are mysterious even to most members of Congress.
Also included are a handful of vital federal trial courts, such as the
Eastern District of Virginia and the Southern District of Manhattan,
where sensitive proceedings in national security cases are conducted. The
final government component (and possibly last in precedence among the
formal branches of government established by the Constitution) is a kind
of rump Congress consisting of the congressional leadership and some (but
not all) of the members of the defense and intelligence committees. The
rest of Congress, normally so fractious and partisan, is mostly only
intermittently aware of the Deep State and when required usually submits
to a few well-chosen words from the State’s emissaries.
Lofgren agreed to
speak with retired Truthout editor Leslie Thatcher about his new book on
January 27, 2016.
The following
interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You describe the “deep state” as the iceberg beneath the visible
tip of the official US government “that is theoretically controllable via
elections.” How does it function and what are its main components?
It’s a hybrid association of elements of
government and parts of top-level finance and industry effectively able to
govern the US without reference to the consent of the governed. Its nodes
are the national security agencies of government, Treasury, the FISA
[Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court (whose dealings are so
mysterious not even most members of Congress know what the court is doing).
Most congress people just vote according to
what their party leadership tells them. Membership in the deep state in
Congress boils down to the leadership and a handful of Defense and
Intelligence Committee members. The private part of the deep state is the
military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about in 1961. There is also
Wall Street and its symbiotic relationship with the Treasury and its
regulatory agencies, like the SEC [Security and Exchange Commission].
People like Hank Paulson, who worked for [George W.] Bush, or Tim Geithner,
who worked for Obama, are essentially interchangeable: Their worldview is
much the same despite being of different political parties.
And then, of course, you have Silicon Valley
– necessary for the technology which totally enables the NSA [National
Security Agency] (which informants have told me couldn’t do its job without
that technology). Silicon Valley is also significant as an enormous center
of new wealth. You also see their self-glorifying statements about being
innovative disruptors. They certainly are disrupting the economy. There is
little evidence that technology will do anything in a macroeconomic sense
other than concentrating wealth even further so that we’re left with CEOs
on top and everyone else in the gig economy, like contractors for Uber.
How did you personally become aware of the deep state and
what is the explanatory power of its existence for understanding current
affairs?
I became aware that there were forces at
work in the period between 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq that were bigger
than the government and were operating on their own compass heading. We
have a supposedly free press, but when you saw people like Phil Donahue and
Ashley Banfield fired or demoted for being critical of invasion, you have
to wonder. I’m pretty sure nobody in the White House picked up the phone
and asked somebody at NBC to fire those folks, but the NBC executives were
sufficiently conditioned to perform a service to the government by firing
those folks and creating the propaganda for the war.
You trace the transformation of Washington, DC, and the
explosion of the deep state to the 1970s, the Powell Memo and the explosion
of tax-exempt foundations and its origins to the secret development of the
A-bomb. A recent National Review article uses the term, “Government of, by,
and for Special Interests,” and ascribes that to progressive politics and
the New Deal. Are these views reconcilable?
Well, their view is certainly not my view. Enough
people know that something is wrong, even if they can’t put their finger on
exactly what it is or how it works, so the editors at the National Review
have had to craft a counter narrative to muddy the waters; that’s all it
is. For crying out loud, William Buckley Jr. came out of the CIA; I
wouldn’t be surprised if he were part of Operation Mockingbird. Time-Life
and other media outlets were on the payroll of the CIA during the 1950s.
Their role was to reflect the CIA’s point of view. Buckley, after graduating
from Yale, a favorite recruitment center for CIA, went into the CIA, but
only for two years. Why? [CIA director Allen] Dulles would have gravitated
to him because he was a Yale man and because his father was rich. It seems
very possible that Dulles, or some other CIA executive, told Buckley he
could do more for the cause by creating a conservative front group to push
the CIA’s Cold War line and to denigrate the isolationist posture of
conservatives like Sen. Robert Taft.
Operation Mockingbird was allegedly
a large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) that, beginning in the early 1950s, attempted to manipulate news
media for propaganda purposes, and funded student and cultural
organizations and magazines as front organizations.
The claim that CIA ran an
"Operation Mockingbird" first appeared in Katharine the Great,
a 1979 biography of Washington Post owner Katharine Graham, written by
reporter Deborah Davis. According to Davis, Operation Mockingbird was
established by Frank Wisner, director of the Office of Policy
Coordination, a covert operations unit created by the U.S. National
Security Council. Davis writes that Mockingbird was a response to the
creation of a Communist front organization, the International
Organization of Journalists, which "received money from Moscow and
controlled reporters on every major newspaper in Europe, disseminating
stories that promoted the Communist cause."
Wisner recruited Philip Graham from
The Washington Post to run the project within the industry. According to
Davis, "By the early 1950s, Wisner 'owned' respected members of The
New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles."
Wikipedia
How does the deep state survive and even thrive in spite of
its obvious failures from the war on drugs to the “war on terror,” from
economic to political and social justice?
Well, although it doesn’t do much to help
the republic or the economy as a whole, it does help certain people. This
circumstance creates a kind of perverse Darwinism in the short and medium
term, so that harmful traits are the ones that are selected for. And most
people simply don’t look at the long-term results of their actions, but
mirror the typical corporate executive whose timeline is the next quarter’s
results and how they will impact the price of the stocks he owns.
What is the position of finance in the deep state? What does
it mean to “fight for an open economic system?”
A macro explanation of the trade deals of
the last 25 years – NAFTA, CAFTA etc. and now the TPP [Trans-Pacific
Partnership] – is to forget about tariff schedules and what textiles cost.
These agreements are a bargain between the United States and other
countries whereby the US gives privileged access to US markets in exchange
for submission on foreign and economic policy. The powers that be are
perfectly happy to destroy the economic seed corn in the USA in exchange
for temporary dominance abroad. They’re willing to sacrifice Detroit for
the UAE [United Arab Emirates].
As a congressional staffer, I presume you interacted
regularly with people you would now consider operatives of the deep state.
What can you tell us about them as people? What motivates them? What
immunizes them so thoroughly from democratic concerns?
I think it’s hard to improve on Upton
Sinclair’s dictum, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something,
when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” I think they’re all
about the logic that if it pays for their kids’ cornflakes and their
scholarship fund, they will do it without their conscience bothering them
too much.
So you don’t see them as malevolent?
Oh no, it’s much more banal than that.
Like Hannah Arendt on Eichmann?
Exactly, the banality of evil. ["He did
his duty...; he not only obeyed orders, he also obeyed
the law."]
You mention the outsourcing of congressional staffing to
ALEC [American Legislative ExchangeCouncil] post-Gingrich in the book. Let’s take one concrete instance
of US legislation – the 342-page USA Patriot Act of 2001, initially
introduced by the Bush administration less than a week after September 11.
Can you explain a little how the deep state would have been involved in its
drafting and enactment and how it continues to serve the deep state’s –
rather than Americans’ – interests? Also, what were your own thoughts at
that time?
We can assume that
all those provisions that didn’t quite get into all the crime and
intelligence bills introduced earlier just sat on a shelf somewhere in the
Justice Department and were dusted off. The Patriot Act was drafted by the
government in an executive agency. Now what we have 15 years later ispretty much ALEC-template bills in
statehouses – and even on Capitol Hill, legislative drafts originate with
the tech industry or K Street so congressional staffers don’t have to worry
their pretty little heads about drafting legislation.
You have elsewhere described the inequality of the US
criminal legal system and the flat-out “corruption” of the Roberts court.
Would your proposals to abolish corporate personhood and get money out of
politics be adequate to remedy these abuses?
No single nostrum will be a miraculous
panacea. But getting money out of politics is the precondition for anything
else, including abolishing corporate personhood, enforcing anti-trust law
and reforming health care. You have to align politicians’ incentives with
the public interest rather than the interests of political donors.
With the deep state in control, have our elected government
organs become purely ceremonial or do elections still make a difference?
There is a symbiotic relationship between
the deep state and surface democracy. And the type of person who holds
office does matter on the margins. Individual decisions do make a
difference. The incentive structures for all concerned tend to be shared in
a certain fashion because of careerist best interests. I’m not pointing to
some massive conspiracy. All of this is going on in the light of day.
Everyone knows who the Koch brothers are, General Dynamics etc. It’s just
that most people do not see how it all works as a system and how we’ve been
conditioned to look at it.
You’ve been very careful to distinguish the deep state from an
active, conscious conspiracy, but is it possible or likely in your view
that some of its operatives have been involved in, for lack of a better
word, plots to dismantle democracy?
They wouldn’t put it that way. They think
they’re legitimately working on political issues. But how it impacts the
public is another matter. What the governor of Michigan did was a
conspiracy against democracy. He needed to appoint emergency managers with
autocratic powers because he needed to undo municipal government and carry
out his pro-corporate agenda. His emergency manager plan was rejected in a
public referendum, so the Republican-controlled legislature attached the
proposal as a rider to an appropriations bill. Therefore it was no longer
subject to referendum. Rick Snyder and his cronies are hamstringing the
ability of local governments to respond to democratic concerns and
consciously doing so in order to pay for the tax cuts they gave to
corporations. It was a conscious effort to undo democracy in Michigan, and
it ended up poisoning children. What happened was nothing more than
racketeering, in my judgment.
As a general rule, it’s probably unwise to
pick a fight with spies, a point Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer
made in early January. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence
community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” he said.
“So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being
really dumb to do this.”
Yet Schumer’s warning, even if realistic, is
chilling: Not only does it raise the possibility of unelected, faceless
bureaucrats using classified information to retaliate against a duly
elected president, but that comes in the wake of the intelligence scandals
of the Obama years. Edward Snowden’s revelations showed the vast powers
that the NSA had accrued and could use, even on American citizens, with
little or no oversight.
Some commentators have dubbed what’s going
on the revenge of the American Deep State, in reference to the
existence—real, imagined, or a little bit in between—of a bureaucratic
shadow government that constrains the legitimate government in places like
Turkey. In Turkey, generals devoted to the secularist ideology of national
founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk have repeatedly toppled governments that they
worried were threatening that ideology. In January, when a dossier of
explosive and unverified claims about Trump was published, Glenn Greenwald,
the leftist journalist who helped break the Snowden story, warned that
liberals who cheered the dossier were in effect cheering for an intelligence
coup. Greenwald specifically labeled these actions the work of a Deep
State, writing, “But cheering for the CIA and its shadowy allies to
unilaterally subvert the U.S. election and impose its own policy dictates
on the elected president is both warped and self-destructive. Empowering
the very entities that have produced the most shameful atrocities and
systemic deceit over the last six decades is desperation of the worst
kind.”
The idea of a “Deep State” constraining
Trump was not new. Back in February, when the idea of a President Trump
still seemed wildly implausible, Megan McArdle wrote that he wouldn’t be
able to do that much damage even if he won, thanks to bureaucrats who could
slow-walk or even block his priorities. “This is the reality: Most of what
you want to do to Washington won’t get done—and neither will much of what
you want to get done outside of it, if you insist on taking Washington on,”
she wrote. After the inauguration, some liberals took new heart in that
idea.
But the Deep State motif has really gained
in popularity over the last few days, as the pace of leaks undermining
Trump has accelerated. “The fact the nation’s now-departed senior guardian
of national security was unmoored by a scandal linked to a conversation
picked up on a wire offers a rare insight into how exactly America’s
vaunted Deep State works,” Marc Ambinder writes at Foreign Policy. “It is a
story not about rogue intelligence agencies running amok outside the law,
but rather about the vast domestic power they have managed to acquire
within it.”
It’s not just the leaks. At Slate, Phillip
Carter argued that pushback from career officials had helped prevent Trump
from instituting a plan to reinstate torture, labeling this the work of a
deep state.
THE DEEP STATE FLEXES ITS MUSCLES
The Deep State Bumps
Off General Flynn. Who’s the Next Target?
by VIRGIL15 Feb 2017
I. The Main Stream Media’s Victory
Lap
The Deep State has done its dirty work, getting
rid of Michael Flynn, the now-former national security adviser to President
Trump. And so the Main Stream Media (MSM), having taken
direction—even dictation—from the Deep State, is moving in for the
kill. The ultimate target, of course, is Trump himself.
The Washington Post, which has long
hated Republicans, and Trump in particular, is leading the charge. On
February 15, seven of the eight top stories on its online home page were
anti-Flynn, anti-Trump—and, of course, pro-MSM.
Meanwhile, others in the MSM are piling on
as well. Politico has whipped up such hot headlines as “Flynn’s
ouster leads to more chaos in Trump world: The former national security
adviser is only one of the White House’s many problems.” And then,
striving to give the storyline legs by taking it beyond Flynn, the news
site added: “Who Told Flynn to Call Russia? Let’s stop focusing on the
resignation, and start focusing on the real issue here: The mystery of
Trump’s Russia ties.”
The MSM narrative is two-fold: First, the
crazy kook Flynn was finally removed; second, the Trump White House is
headed for a shipwreck, and Captain Trump himself can’t manage the
wheel.
And yet there’s a third narrative, lurking,
flitting in and out of focus.
This third narrative is the demonstrable
power of the Deep State. That is, the permanent government, the
people who were here in DC when Trump arrived, and who look forward to
seeing him leave—as soon as possible.
So who, exactly, are these Deep State people?
What are their names? Their precise identities seemed to be
perpetually veiled, cloaked in journalistic omerta.
And yes, that hiddenness opens up the
possibility that reporters are exaggerating, or compositing, their
sources—or even making them up altogether. And yet if the stories
about Flynn had been completely made up, the retired three-star would still
be on the job. So the Deep State has proven that it can provide the
fire, as well as the smoke.
Still, some clues as to Deep State identities
have emerged. On Tuesday night, the 14th, Fox News’ Bret Baier put it
plainly: The anti-Flynn material “came from someone in the Obama
administration.”
In the meantime, though, we can see that
some un-elected Beltway Republicans—the right wing of the Deep State, one
might say—are cheerleading the anti-Trump effort. One such is the
neoconservative pundit Bill Kristol, who in a February 14 tweet,
basically endorsed the idea of a soft coup: “Obviously strongly prefer
normal democratic and constitutional politics. But if it comes to it,
prefer the deep state to the Trump state.”
The rest of us might say that it’s a
whacked-out world when un-elected government officials can commit
crimes—leaking classified material is always a crime—and then, with the
megaphone of the MSM, shift the blame onto a high government official
chosen by a newly elected president, and then get that official
removed. Welcome to Washington.
So we might ask: What’s the motivation of
the Deep State? Is it just hostility to Trump? Or to
Republicans? Or is there something more?
“Let’s not kid ourselves” said Virgil of
Brietbart:“These anti-Trump
constituencies might have lost the 2016 presidential election at the ballot
box, but they don’t intend to lose their power. And to that end, they
have real clout, and they are using it.”
Eli Lake of Bloomberg News, bluntly entitled
a piece, “The Political Assassination of Michael Flynn.” Lake observed that
what we’re seeing now is what we see in police states, where the government
security apparatus is a sword against its own people, not a shield against
foreign enemies.
As for how all this might end if the Deep
State domination continues, Lake approvingly quoted Rep. Nunes: “First it’s
Flynn, next it will be Kellyanne Conway, then it will be Steve Bannon, then
it will be Reince Priebus.” To which Lake added, “Flynn is only the
appetizer. Trump is the entree.”
February 23, 2017
PROJECT VERITAS released 119 hours
of raw audio in a WikiLeaks style dump, with over 100 more hours still yet
to be released. The audio was secretly recorded in 2009 by an anonymous
source inside CNN's Atlanta headquarters who we are identifying asMiss X. The tapes contain sound bites from current
and previous CNN employeesJoe Sterling,Arthur
Brice, and Nicky Robertson, as well as numerous
others.
Miss
X:
"I read a CNN poll that was taken on June 26 and 28th, and
I know that the hearing for the case, the fire fighters case was on the 29th,
so the poll was done right before it, and those are still the poll results
we're reporting, so I asked someone in DC who does the poll results about
why we hadn't updated it, and said there were a few newer polls from last
week and the week before and there's CBS news polls and a Rasmussen poll,
and he said we don't use Rasmussen, and I said does CNN plan to do another
poll if we're only using that. He said we're not going to be doing another
poll, those are the results we'll be using. So I don't see how that's
reporting all sides because that poll said hold for release until Friday
the 10th."
Arthur
Brice:
"Who did you talk with?"
Miss
X:
"Paul [CNN's Deputy Political Director Paul Steinhauser]."
Arthur
Brice:"Yeah, he's your
director. Yeah, he's pretty high up in the food chain. I agree. I think
it's dishonest to use outdated information if new information shows
something that is in variance with what you're reporting. It's just,
it's dishonest."
The
same apathy towards reporting accurate poll numbers was seen in the way CNN
released inaccurate poll numbers about Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor.
Miss
X:"This wasn't released
until two weeks after. So can we say a newly released poll?"
Joe
Sterling:
"No, you can't say that. You can't say that at all. This isn't a newly
released."
Miss X: "But it says newly
released on Friday."
Joe
Sterling:
"I know, how did we write about this? Did we write a wire about this?
"I don't think we stand to change how people think of her [Sotomayor].
Geez, I mean if someone picked this up it's not going to change - it's
not going to change anybody's opinion."
The Council on Foreign Relations is an
independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher
dedicated to being a resource for its members, government officials,
business executives, journalists, educators and students, civic and
religious leaders, and other interested citizens in order to help them
better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the
United States and other countries.
Founded in 1921, the Council takes no
institutional positions on matters of policy.
The Council on Foreign Relations' David
Rockefeller Studies Program — CFR's "think
tank" — is composed of about fifty adjunct and full-time scholars and
practitioners (called "fellows")
The program focuses on the most
significant foreign policy issues facing the United States and the
international community today, including conflict in the Middle East,
rising powers in Asia, and globalization. The fellows' work covers all
major geographical regions of the world — Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin
America, the Middle East, and the Polar regions — as well as the following
program areas: energy security and climate change, global health,
international institutions and global governance, national security
and defense, science and technology, and U.S. foreign policy. In
addition, the Studies Program hosts two research centers: The Maurice R.
Greenberg Center for Geoeconomics and the Center
for Preventive Action.
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is
first and foremost a membership organization. With more than 4,300 members,
CFR's ranks include top government officials,
renowned scholars, business leaders, acclaimed journalists, prominent
attorneys, and a host of distinguished nonprofit professionals.
The Trilateral Commission was formed in
1973 by private citizens of Japan, Europe (European Union countries), and
North America (United States and Canada) to foster closer cooperation among
these core industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership
responsibilities in the wider international system. Originally established
for three years, our work has been renewed for successive triennia
(three-year periods), most recently for a triennium to be completed in 2012
The “growing interdependence” that so
impressed the founders of the Trilateral Commission in the early 1970s has
deepened into “globalization.”
Our membership has widened to reflect broader
changes in the world. Thus, the Japan Group has become a Pacific Asian
Group, including in 2009 both Chinese and Indian members. Mexican members
have been added to the North American Group. The European Group continues
to widen in line with the enlargement of the EU. We are also continuing in
this triennium our practice of inviting a number of participants from other
key areas.
Bilderberg takes its name
from the hotel in Holland, where the first meeting took place in May 1954.
That pioneering meeting grew out of the concern expressed by leading
citizens on both sides of the Atlantic that Western Europe and North
America were not working together as closely as they should on common
problems of critical importance. It was felt that regular, off-the-record
discussions would help create a better understanding of the complex forces
and major trends affecting Western nations in the difficult post-war
period.
In short, Bilderberg
is a small, flexible, informal and off-the-record international forum in
which different viewpoints can be expressed and mutual understanding
enhanced. Bilderberg's only activity is its
annual Conference. At the meetings, no resolutions are proposed, no votes
taken, and no policy statements issued. Since 1954, fifty-seven conferences
have been held. For each meeting, the names of the participants as well as
the agenda are made Public and available to the press.
There usually are about 120 participants
of whom about two-thirds come from Europe and the balance from North
America. About one-third is from government and politics, and two-thirds
from finance, industry, labour, education and communications. Participants attend Bilderberg in a private and not an official capacity.
The Club of Rome is an independent,
not-for-profit organization with an international membership. It draws on
the insights and expertise of its members from all regions of the world,
from different cultures and histories, from different fields of science and
public policy and from academia, civil society and the corporate sector.
Since its founding forty years ago, it has been promoting interdisciplinary
analysis, dialogue and action on the fundamental, systemic challenges which
are determining the future of humanity.
The work of the active, international
members is complemented by around 50 honorary members and 40 Associate
Members and by the activities of 33 National Associations throughout the
world.
It is launching a major international
cooperative programme on the broad theme: “A New
Path for World Development.” This will engage thinkers, practitioners and
activists in key regions and countries to undertake interdisciplinary and
multicultural thinking on crucial global issues. Experts, universities and
organizations from major emerging economies, such as Brazil, China, India,
Nigeria and Russia will be engaged in the programme,
as will leading personalities from Europe, Japan
and the United States, and from Africa, East Asia, Latin America and the
Middle East.
1.Environment and Resources: This cluster
relates climate change, peak oil, ecosystems and water. Radical and
rapid social and economic transformations will be needed to avert run away
climate change and ecological breakdown;
2. Globalization: This cluster
relates interdependence, distribution of wealth and income,
demographic change, employment, trade and finance. Rising inequalities and
imbalances associated with the present path of globalization risk
the breakdown of the world economic and financial systems;
3. World Development: This cluster
relates sustainable development, demographic growth, poverty,
environmental stress, food production, health and employment. The scandal
of abiding poverty, deprivation, inequity and exclusion in a wealthy world
must be corrected;
4. Social Transformation: This cluster
relates social change, gender equity, values and ethics, religion and
spirituality, culture, identity and behavior. The values and behavior on
which the present path of world development is based must change if peace
and progress are to be preserved within the tightening human and
environmental limits;
5. Peace and Security: This cluster
relates justice, democracy, governance, solidarity, security and peace.
The present path of world development risks alienation, polarization,
violence and conflict; the preservation of peace is vital in itself but is also a precondition for progress and for
the resolution of the issues which threaten the future.
