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Thursday, May 6, 2021

Lee Smith On Russiagate As An Operational Model For The Left

Author and investigative reporter Lee Smith has a new article at The Epoch Times, in which he analyzes the never ending Russia Hoax as the "operational model" for the Left's continuing assault on our constitutional order. The article is behind a subscription (but non-pay) wall here:


Russiagate the Model


Smith begins by noting the disastrous consequences of the Barr/Durham failure to hold the Deep State to account for the Russia Hoax. Of course, we now know that that failure of responsibility ran even deeper, to include the failure to address Leftist street violence and the assault on our electoral system:


Because former Attorney General William Barr failed to hold anyone accountable for the Democratic Party and FBI’s dirty tricks campaign against Donald Trump, Russiagate lives on. Indeed, recent news reports show that it’s become the operational model that the party and its partners in the spy services and media will continue to use against their adversaries.

The consequences are certain to be catastrophic, for setting intelligence operatives loose on one half of America cannot help but further fracture the country’s domestic peace.


From that beginning Smith moves on to the Zhou regime's alarming plans to use private contractors to conduct domestic spying on US citizens and the continuing efforts to frame Trump associates like Rudy Giuliani and Ron Johnson. Smith connects the subcontracted domestic spying to the origins of the Russia Hoax, in which the Hillary campaign paid Fusion GPS to come up with the Russia Hoax narrative and then seed that narrative not only to the MSM but also to the US Intelligence Community. Alarmingly, that is now the plan, the "operational model", for what the Zhou regime is seeking to do to counter all domestic dissent--now reclassified, as Smith notes--as domestic "terrorists":


On May 3, reports surfaced that the Biden administration may use private firms to collect intelligence on its critics, recategorized by the White House as “domestic terrorists.” What makes them dangerous, according to Biden surrogates, is that they—like many of the participants in the Jan. 6 events who have been held for five months in Washington jails without bail—believe the 2020 election was compromised. 


The aim isn't so much to fool the American public into accepting the legitimacy of the Election 2020 hoax--polling shows that's a lost cause, with 30% of Dems even accepting that fraud influenced the outcome of the election. Rather, the aim is to hamstring all opposition, to tie it up in the black hole of our justice and federal enforcement system. But, in addition to targeting dissent with the justice and enforcement systems alone, the scheme is to offer a shield for those activities--to "launder" them, in Smith's term--by claiming that those official activities are responses to "narratives" identified by the private contractors:

 

Do aides for President Joe Biden believe that using outside contractors to circumvent laws against spying on Americans will shore up the president’s legitimacy? No, the aim is to prevent the America First movement from mobilizing. To kill it before it grows. According to reports, the private firms licensed by the government will “gather large amounts of information that could help [U.S. intelligence] identify key narratives as they emerge.” 

The basic premise of this Biden initiative should sound familiar—it’s Russiagate’s first plot point. In 2016, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS and former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele to gather information on her Republican rival, which was then relayed to the FBI. That’s the standard account, anyway. 

In reality, U.S. spy services used Fusion GPS and Steele to launder their illegal spying on Americans.


In other words, what we're seeing is the Russia Hoax writ large, on steroids.


12 comments:

  1. Where this is all leading is to the development of "weapons" by A resistance to disable the internet in whole or in part or information warfare "weapons" that would disrupt authoritarian control of the internet or a movement to replace the current internet with a block-chain like system that would preserve individual control over information. There is nothing in nature that says that each of us has to use a mobile computing device hooked up to centralalized services we have no control over to live in this world.
    Mark A

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  2. Although I still, stubbornly feel optimistic about John Durham's investigation, I am dismayed by the apparent continuing anti-Republican partisanship of DOJ/FBI.

    I thought that DOJ/FBI had learned some harsh lessons from its RussiaGate folly. I thought that most of that folly's bad actors in DOJ/FBI were gone.

    Instead, though, it seems that DOJ/FBI still is a partisan tool of the Democrat Party that it became during the Obama years. The previous bad actors are being replaced by new bad actors.

    The same development must be happening likewise at CIA and the other Intelligence agencies.

    We will be told even more absurd fiction about Putin's villains meddling in our elections with the collaboration of Trump's villains. Such nonsensical propaganda will continue to be spread by US Government reports and by our mass media for years and years.

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    Replies
    1. @Mike

      "Although I still, stubbornly feel optimistic about John Durham's investigation..."

      I cannot say I am optimistic, but I remain hopeful.

      One reason for being hopeful is that Durham has not closed up shop. I am increasingly doubtful that bombshell indictments will be filed after so much time has passed (prosecutors are notoriously impatient), but I am hopeful that Durham is using all these months to write a comprehensive report (as special counsels are required to, aren't they?)

      We'll see.

      Delete
    2. "I thought that DOJ/FBI had learned some harsh lessons from its RussiaGate folly."

      What would possibly lead you to such conclusion? After a few years of fairly explicit stonewalling and refusal to cooperate, the rank and file and behind scenes actors were rewarded with the installment of a corrupt regime who would endorse their actions and use their skills to further their collective goals.

      In other words, there was no consequence whatsoever other than a couple token fall guys. After Trump spent a few years showing us just how bad it had gotten, the people either elected to allow the deep corruption to continue, or the people declined to act when the country was taken from them by said corruptors.

      Either way, its back in business, baby.

      Delete
  3. There is a lot of politically incorrect popular issues that people are very concerned about, that are being ignored by our political class. Tucker Carlson is the only one bringing up done of these issues.

    There is no tea party 2.0 yet.

    Press and tech is continuing to lose credibility.

    Antifa and blm are being ignored.

    And Trump is starting to speak out:
    https://www.donaldjtrump.com/desk

    The no fly ban on Nick Fuentes is a test.

    Hot Button Topics:
    - blm
    - critical race training
    - crime in blue cities / defund the police
    - affirmative action
    - tech company censorship / spying
    - Covid over reach
    - economy
    - inflation
    - immigration / the wall / southern border
    - worry over cancel culture
    - election integrity
    - politicized sports and big business

    And most of these the GOP is no where to be seen on most of these issues.

    And instead we are getting a continued witch hunt / narrative using the threat of Russia and Domestic Terrorists.

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  4. Democrats have been resuscitating the Russiagate narrative all along. GG made the very compelling argument that one purpose of the bogus Russian Bounties narrative (which Biden repeated during the presidential debates) was to further promote the notion that Trump was colluding with Putin. (as if working with foreign leaders to bring peace to some area of the world is evil).

    Democrats' implementation of fascism---and there is no denying that this is what is occurring---got its start during Obama's first term, with his signing of the NDAA.

    "snugly ensconced in the NDAA came ratification by legal statute of the exposure of US citizens to arbitrary arrest without subsequent benefit of counsel, and to possible torture and imprisonment sine die. Goodbye, habeas corpus....

    ...Under the terms of the NDAA a suspect’s seizure by the military is a “requirement” if the suspect is deemed to have been “substantially supporting” Al Qaeda, the Taliban or “associated forces.”...

    ...Connoisseurs of subversion and anti-terror laws well know that “associated forces” can mean anything. See, for example, one of the definitions of “enemy combatants” minted after 2001: “associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” Like those “memory pillows” I saw on discount in Macy’s on New Year’s Day, the phrase “directly supported” will adjust itself to the whim of any ingenious prosecutor....

    https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/obama-and-indefinite-detention-us-citizens/

    Glenn Greenwald is also excellent on this issue.

    Because of what Democrats are doing--together with Big Tech and the MSM---predictions about a backlash in 2022 may be overly optimistic, at best.



    ReplyDelete
  5. "the Hillary Clinton campaign paid opposition research firm Fusion GPS and former UK intelligence officer Christopher Steele to gather information on her Republican rival"

    I take issue with "gather information" part. I think Glenn Simpson with help of Nellie Ohr (Russian specialist at CIA) wrote the script for the Steele Dossier, assigned Steele to fill in some "credible sources" and make it sound authentic.

    It was a generated document.

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    Replies
    1. In fairness to Smith he adds immediately: "at least that's the standard account"--suggesting that the real account is different.

      My position has always been that the Steele stuff was, except for some open source stuff, made up.

      Delete
  6. Here's another way into the Lee Smith article:

    https://archive.is/tZcZt

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Cassander for the link! It helped me understand Lee Smith's point.

      My take is the Biden Administration is afraid of a Tea Party 2.0, the so called America First, forming against their actions. It has not formed yet, so their actions are preventative because they remember how devastating the Tea Party 1.0 was to the Obama Midterms. Once the Tea Party did arise as a force, both the GOP and Democrats did everything they could using every lever of Government and non Government Power to destroy it. From the IRS Audits, calling the Tea Party White Supremacists, radicals, etc.

      What's interesting in the article is they don't see Trump as much as a threat, and with his excommunication by the Internet Giants and the eGOP turning their backs on him, he is pretty safely neutered. They are more worried about an American First movement. Trump was just a symptom of the anger against the uniparty incompetence / corruption, not the cause, and rode the wave of this to Presidency. What is being done to Giuliani as more of payback for his daring to speak against the Biden Corruption, and perhaps insurance against a Trump comeback.

      Delete
    2. @Ray

      "My take is the Biden Administration is afraid of a Tea Party 2.0, the so called America First, forming against their actions."

      Ray, I'm repeating myself a little, but I am increasingly of the view that what Biden/Uniparty/Deep State/Elite is really afraid of is nationalism. And they are desperately afraid of it...to the point of engaging in hypocrisy, lies and their own criminal behavior.

      As devil's advocate, I might say their fear is with some good reason. Nationalistic movements in the past have also led to extreme and criminal excesses, the two best 'modern' examples being Hitler and Stalin. But there are plenty of others.

      Despite conservatives' protestations to the contrary and the absence of evidence, the Elite is afraid that a nationalist movement in the United States will ultimately unleash elements of white supremacy, anti-black racism, anti-Semitism, anti-LGBT bigotry and, ultimately, wide-spread violence. Therefore, it must be stopped at all costs. How else to explain the Russia Hoax, the Flynn entrapment, and the two Faux Impeachments?

      They are also afraid that in the big picture nationalism will overwhelm globalism and put an end to not only their socialistic One World dreams, but also the gravy train that Globalism represents for the financial interests of the Elite (at the expense of the Deplorables).

      This is how I explain (to myself, at least) the Elites fear of Putin. While you or I might conclude that Putin is merely protecting Russia's own security and parochial interests, the Elite see Putin as an immoral, criminally inclined totalitarian bent on global hegemony and the destruction of the United States. This is a lie, of course, but the kernel of truth is that Putin (like Trump) is a nationalist, and if the nationalists prevail (and there are many more around the world in addition to Trump and Putin) it will be the end of globalism, at least in its present incarnation. This will be sad for the idealists, but it will be disastrous for the globalists who must prevail to retain their power and wealth. At the end of the day it's about money and power, as it always is.

      So there you have it. A witch's brew of power, wealth and fear which is motivating the Elite's iron-clad opposition to anything like Tea Party 2.0 or Trump 2024 or MAGA, regardless of the logic for elements of opposition to globalism or the plight of 'normals'. Its the logic that allows them, for example, to demonize a black conservative like Tim Scott or argue that the demonstrations were ok because they were 'mostly peaceful'. Or tear up the Constitution and ignore the rule of law.

      While I think I am coming to see more clearly what is going on, I have to admit I do not yet see clearly how this story is going to end.

      Delete
  7. Scott Adams had an unusual take recently on covid.

    He claimed that the virus hit more bald men than non-bald men (not sure where he got that statistic, maybe Axios?).

    Bald men are over-represented among whites. Apparently around 50% of whites have male-pattern baldness, compared to non-whites, around 15%. Something about sensitivity to male hormones, probably testosterone.

    He speculated that if one were to create a bio-weapon which only worked against one's enemy, and left one's own men alone, more or less, that weapon might look like this virus. All speculation of course.

    Frank

    ReplyDelete