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Lawless America: The new normal, wiretapping, fake news, election tampering, assassinations It has been a red letter day in America, is there any tidbit of Democracy still alive in the experiment called America?  We have spy agencies who operate in an extrajudicial manner answering to no one.  This has been occurring for a very long time in America but what is different now is the confluence of the two-parties with big media to destroy our freedoms.

The erosion of Democracy began on December 12, 2000 when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court overturned the results of the 2000 election and installed George W. Bush as president.  Three days later the U.S. Senate voted for The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 that deregulated over the counter derivatives trading.  The CFMA was signed into law December 15, 2000.  The first official action by President Bush was to seal the presidential papers of his father, George Herbert Walker Bush.  From Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press:


Presidential Records Remain Sealed By Bush

Attempting to place his gubernatorial records outside the reach of the Texas Public Information Act was not President George W. Bush's only effort to limit access to executive records.

On Nov. 1, 2001, Bush signed Executive Order 13233. Prior to the order, presidential records were sealed for 12 years, after which they were reviewed for release by the National Archives. Under the new order, both the former and incumbent president must review the records before they are released by the archives, and either could block disclosure indefinitely.

A number of Bush's current advisors were also members of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush's administrations, and their actions could be detailed in the documents. Reagan's 12-year limit was to expire in 2001…

A coalition of historians and open government advocates, including The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and Public Citizen, filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 28, 2001. In American Historical Association v. National Archives and Records Administration, the coalition contends that the executive order illegally circumvents the Presidential Records Act of 1968 and asks for an injunction preventing the order from being enforced.

With the judges appointed by George W. Bush presiding over the case who do you think won?  An interesting thing happened this week.  The FreeThought Project is reporting that George Herbert Walker Bush destroyed records when he headed up the CIA:


New Docs Expose Bush Sr. Illegally Destroying Evidence of US Crimes While Head of CIA

Documents recently dredged from the CIA’s massive database expose an effort by the former director to destroy documents evincing the agency’s illegal activities and operations.  That director — George H.W. Bush, who served in the role from January 1976 until January 1977 — went on to become the 41st President of the United States…

As Muck Rock reports, “In 1976, Congresswoman Bella Abzug wrote to CIA Director George H.W. Bush about the existing moratorium on the destruction of CIA files…  In a draft response to the congresswoman, the agency originally stated, “Destruction of Agency material will be in accordance with the recommendations of the President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, Presidential directives and as permitted by law.”

But edits scribbled on this draft indicate transparency in procedural record-keeping not only didn’t matter to the Central Intelligence Agency, it directly countered Director Bush’s and the agency’s interests…  “A decision as to the disposition of those files concerning activities which the President’s Commission considered illegal and improper has not been finalized and the moritorium [sic] on destruction is still in effect…

Remember the CIA’s abhorrently sadistic torture program? You might — but obtaining the original copy of the report on its nefarious practice won’t be possible. As The Free Thought Project reported on May 17, 2016,  “[T]he CIA inspector general’s office recently admitted to ‘mistakenly’ destroying their only copy of the classified report. Although CIA Director John Brennan possesses another copy of the torture report, he refuses to send a replacement to the internal watchdog’s office.

“Last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department were privately informed that CIA employees at the inspector general’s office had both destroyed the disk and deleted the file containing the full Senate Torture Report. Despite the fact that the Justice Department ordered all copies of the classified document to be preserved, acting CIA Inspector General Christopher Sharpley was unable to locate another copy and eventually informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that his officers has mistakenly ruined their only copies...”


Award-winning investigative journalist and current editor of Consortiumnews, Robert Parry, penned an article in 2000 concerning a 1976 car bombing in Washington, D.C.’s highbrow Embassy Row — about which the agency created a fake report to throw off the feds and further its own agenda.

“In early fall of 1976,” Parry wrote, “after a Chilean government assassin had killed a Chilean dissident and an American woman with a car bomb in Washington, D.C., George H.W. Bush’s CIA leaked a false report clearing Chile’s military dictatorship and pointing the FBI in the wrong direction…

“In a 21-page report to Congress on Sept. 18, 2000, the CIA officially acknowledged for the first time that the mastermind of the terrorist attack, Chilean intelligence chief Manuel Contreras, was a paid asset of the CIA...”

Perhaps it should be asked, what else could George Herbert Walker Bush — and the CIA — be hiding?

It’s been my experience that when you make a mistake the benefits yourself you’re likely to make that mistake over again.  Under the direction of John Brennan those torture reports were “mistakenly” eliminated.  Odd isn’t it?  The transition from the Bush Administration to the Obama Administration was seamless.  Obama kept a lot of the same people in the intelligence agencies, State Department and Defense Department from the Bushes.

Both Administrations hated the Clintons as well as Donald Trump, so is it any wonder that both Hillary and Donald were surveilled by the Obama Administration?  Today it was revealed that the Trump transition team was under surveillance by the Obama Administration and information gleaned from that investigation was illegally disseminated across the intelligence apparatus.  From The Daily Mail:


I've been 'somewhat' vindicated says Trump as Republican intel committee chair says Obama administration WAS eavesdropping - and may even have picked up his personal calls

The U.S. Intelligence Community collected 'incidental' information about President Donald Trump' and his transition team during the three months following the 2016 election, House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes today revealed.

Nunes told reporters on Capitol Hill that the information collected was 'legally collected' pursuant to a warrant issued by a FISA judge in a federal court, and concerned 'foreign' surveillance - before he went to the White House to tell the president.

He said 'it's possible' that the now-president's personal communications were among those which were part of the 'incidental' collection - but did not say definitively if that was the case.  But that 'did not involve Russia or any discussions with Russians,' Nunes said, adding that he was 'alarmed' to learn what he did.

The surveillance would have occurred while Obama was still president. Nunes said he could not rule out the involvement of senior Obama administration officials.  Standing in front of the White House, the Republican lawmaker told reporters: 'This is information that was brought to me that I thought the president needed to know about incidental collection where the president himself and others in the Trump transition team were clearly put into intelligence reports that ended up at this White House and across a whole bunch of other agencies, and I thought it was important for the president to know…'

So disturbed was the House intel chairman by the reports he says he saw, he came to the White House straight away to brief the president - after first holding a news conference on Capitol Hill with reporters.  'What I have read bothers me, and I think it should bother the president himself and his team because I think some of it seems to be inappropriate,' Nunes said after his sit-down with Trump.

The statement was in response to a question about the nature of the surveillance. Nunes said it had 'nothing to do' with Russia or the FBI's Russian investigation, prompting an inquiry as to whether he thought it was politically motivated. He did not answer in the affirmative, yet he did not bat the suggestion down.

So the surveillance had “nothing to do with Russia or the FBI’s Russian investigation” then why were the names of individuals in the Trump transition team “unmasked” and disseminated across the intelligence apparatus?”  Why did James Comey deny any surveillance took place and who is James Comey anyway?  From Common Sense:


Comey Oversaw Drug Cartel Money Laundering Operations As a Top Executive At HSBC Bank

My best insider source states that FBI Director James Comey has absolutely no law enforcement background, and is not qualified to run the FBI. To add insult to injury, the FBI Director held an executive position at HSBC Bank, while extreme money laundering operations where being carried out by the Mexican Drug Cartel and their terrorist allies with the direct assistance of HSBC banking officials. I asked my source if Comey would have known, and he replied “he would have to have been drunk 24/7 to not know what was going on”.

Comey did not just work at HSBC bank as his resume indicates (see below). He was on the Executive Board at the very time the HSBC scandal was breaking. There is no way he did not know as he looked the other way. And when he was vetted for his job as FBI Director, they knew then, he was in a key position of an organization that was caught laundering Mexican drug cartel money for the Sinoloas, the Los Zetas and their terrorist allies.

Oh, goodness I guess the main qualification to head up the FBI is a tawdry background that insures that your employer HSBC gets away with just a fine for blatant criminality including money laundering and terrorist financing.  From Rolling Stone:

Don’t forget it was Comey who ensured a Hillary Clinton defeat by announcing he had reopened his investigation into her ten days before the election.  Hillary Clinton had planned to restructure the Federal Reserve Bank, something the banking cartels didn’t want.   But there’s more news.  Former Trump campaign manager, Paul Manafort has been accused of working for Vladimir Putin.  This is not a new allegation, I wrote about it in my blog last August.


Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign chief who worked with the ELECTED Ukrainian president prior to the CIA coup, is viciously attacked by media.

Veep Joe Biden campaigning for Hillary Clinton proclaimed “Donald Trump cannot be given the nuclear codes!”  PNAC member Biden a self-proclaimed Zionist, was up to his ears in the coup in Ukraine.  Biden’s son Hunter and John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz are collecting million dollar salaries at the CIA’s Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.

In 2013 after a failed CIA coup against elected President Viktor Yanukovych, the CIA set up a tent city in Maidan Square equipped with first-aid stations and canteens.  Enraged by Yanukovych’s snub of the EU trade deal in favor Vladimir Putin’s, the demonstrators demanded Yanukovych’s ouster.   The CIA backed “color revolution” was part of PNAC’s "eastern neighborhood policy" introduced in 2005 by W. Bush…

The CIA controlled American media is touting “handwritten” ledgers showing $12.7 million in so-called undisclosed cash payments Manafort received from Yanukovych from 2007 to 2012.  The documents were provided by the “newly formed National Anti-Corruption Bureau” in Poroshenko’s Ukraine.

While the “handwritten” ledgers are not official government documents, they are being used to accuse Manafort of being a Russian backed evil doer, proof the Trump campaign is backed by Russia.  Charge up the batteries on your “bullshit” detectors America because you are going to need them.

The allegations are coming from an official from Ukraine’s illegitimate government that was installed by Washington after a CIA backed coup removed their democratically elected President Yanukovych.  Ten years ago, Paul Manafort worked for the Ukrainian government.

Yes these bogus charges are nothing new, the only thing new is that candidate Trump is now President Trump.  But the neoliberal Tom Friedman and the Democrats are now calling for a “Palace Coup” against Donald Trump.  From World Socialist Website:


Democratic Party floats proposal for a palace coup

On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman addressed an open letter to a group of generals, deep state operatives and a corporate executive in President Trump’s cabinet, effectively calling on them to organize a palace coup.

The recipients of Friedman’s letter, code-named “Calling On a Few Good Men,” are three generals—Secretary of Defense James Mattis, National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly—along with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the former oil tycoon and current Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Using the language of a political toady, Friedman’s column begins: “Dear Sirs, I am writing you today as the five adults with the most integrity in the Trump administration. Mattis, McMaster and Kelly, you all served our nation as generals in battle. Pompeo, you graduated first in your class at West Point and served as a cavalry officer.”

He continues, “I am writing you directly because I believe you are the last ‘few good men’ who can stand up” to Trump. Referring to the impeachment of Richard Nixon, Friedman declares, “The last time our country faced such a cancer on the presidency, the Republican Party’s leadership stood up and put country before party to get to the truth.” But today’s Republican Party has “declared moral bankruptcy” and “abdicated its responsibility.”

Combining flattery with self-abasement, he continues, “I ask those of you who honored our country as military officers how you would have reacted if your commanding officer had charged his predecessor with a high crime that violated his constitutional oath…

Friedman gives voice to tendencies in and around the Democratic Party that are prepared, in pursuit of their McCarthyite-style demonization of Russia, to welcome a palace coup that would impose a military/intelligence/corporate junta on the American people. The wealthy and corrupt social layers for whom the millionaire columnist speaks are motivated by two primary concerns.

First, that Trump is threatening US imperialist interests around the world by backing away from the Obama administration’s war-mongering policies toward Russia, and at the same time undermining the image of the US internationally with his overt lying and bullying of Washington’s allies…

He cites US imperialist strategist Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, who warns that without an urgent course correction, the US could find itself “not with America first, but with America alone.”

The second major concern is that Trump is stoking popular discontent at home that could spiral out of control and threaten the entire economic and political system… the Democratic Party is fixated on avoiding at all costs the emergence of a movement of the working masses. That is why it appeals to the military/intelligence apparatus and the corporate aristocracy in its struggle with the faction of the ruling class represented by Trump.

Yes, that’s the new Democratic Party brought to you by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and the late Teddy Kennedy.  A party of neo-Fascist millionaires hell bent on avoiding at all costs the “emergence of a movement of working masses”, you know the people who voted for Donald Trump.  This is the confluence of the GOP/DNC/big media at its worst, for they serve only the Deep State.  From Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report:


The U.S. Deep State Rules – On Behalf of the Ruling Class

“The U.S. Deep State is unlike any other, in that there is no other global superpower bent on world domination.”

The Deep State is busy denying that it exists, even as it savages a sitting president and brutally bitch-slaps its host society, demanding the nation embrace its role as global psycho thug and kick some Russian ass. The New York Times, always available to divert attention from the essential facts of who rules America, points to Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan as the natural habitats of Deep States. Apparently, Deep State-infected countries tend to be nations with majority Muslim populations, whose military-intelligence apparatus hovers over society and periodically seizes control of the civil government.

The Times quoted high-ranking operatives of the Deep State to prove that such structures are alien to the U.S. Michael V. Hayden, who ran the CIA under Democratic President Obama and Republican George Bush, recoiled at the term. He “would never use” the words Deep State in connection with his own country. “That’s a phrase we’ve used for Turkey and other countries like that, but not the American republic…”

Loren DeJonge Schulman, a former Obama National Security Council official, claimed to be repelled by the very idea of an American Deep State. “A deep state, when you’re talking about Turkey or Egypt or other countries, that’s part of government or people outside of government that are literally controlling the direction of the country no matter who’s actually in charge, and probably engaging in murder and other corrupt practices,” she said…

Apparently, Ms. Schulman did not consider it murder when Obama and his top national security advisors met every Tuesday at the White House to decide who would be assassinated by drone or other means. But she is “shocked” to hear “that kind of [Deep State-phobic] thinking from” President Trump “or the people closest to him.”

In reality, the U.S. Deep State is by far the world’s biggest and most dangerous version of the phenomenon; a monstrous and not-so subterranean “web of common and nefarious purpose” that is, by definition, truly global, since its goal is to rule the planet…

The best way to describe the imperial Deep State is: those individuals and institutions that are tasked with establishing the global supremacy of the corporate ruling class. Such activities must be masked, since they clash with the ideological position of the ruling class, which is that the bourgeois electoral system of the United States is the world’s freest and fairest…

The truth is that an oligarchy rules, and makes war on whomever it chooses -- internationally and domestically -- for the benefit of corporate capital…  The Deep State is where corporate power achieves its class aims outside the public processes of government. It’s where the most vicious class warfare takes place, whether on a foreign killing field, or in the corporate newsroom that erases or misrepresents what happened on that battlefield.

The ruling class and its War Party, now consolidated within the Democratic Party and regrouping among Republicans, have effectively neutralized a sitting president whose party controls both Houses of Congress, less than two months into his term.

Only a Deep State could pull that off.

Yes indeed, it has been a red letter day in America, the Deep State rules this country.  The GOP is now rewriting Obama Care to clear a path from the American Treasury directly into the coffers of the Medical Industrial Complex and Big Pharma.  But the main goal of the Deep State is to remove Donald Trump from the Presidency.

While Big Media ridicules Donald Trump for continuing to take his case to the American worker, Donald Trump is outsmarting the Deep State.  Trump has continued to win, win, win and thus the Deep State is calling on the Generals to oust our elected President and lock down the state to ensure there is no emergence of a movement of the working masses.  Hopefully they are too late.

By Patricia Baeten

Posted by Alice in Blunderland at 10:21 AM Labels: #CIA, #Coup, #Deep State, #Donald Trump, #Paul Manafort

 Alice in Blunderland
Trust but verify for real
