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By colliric
#14877072
4cal wrote:So you think Sarah Sanders read it? Really?


Yeah probably....

Certainly read the many excerpts that the Journalists who had read it published.

Plus the Whitehouse press secretary getting a "heads up" copy from a journalist mate that got a few prerelease copies isn't exactly unheard of.

Trump maybe even has a few bookseller and publishing mates from the fact he's a bestselling author.

If you really want something you can get it in today's world somehow.

The Sabbaticus wrote:Just an unending stream of carnival insanity.


7 more years to go.....

They're going to get worse over the next few years. Much worse.

When even Tony Blair is pointing out how Fake News a book is, you know the corporate leftists in the USA are totally blind seeing it as "the second coming of Russiagate". The whole book has been discredited on arrival.

Can't wait for the 2020 Democratic wipeout. The Republican Party looks set to dominate the turn of the decade.
User avatar
By 4cal
#14877096
If SSH had read it, she could go point by point and blow Wolf out of the water; meeting by meeting, quote by quote, insinuation by insinuation…..

The fat err Fact that she cannot means that the truth is likely closer to what is in the book than what is coming out of her pie hole.

Trump a best selling author? Now that is funny.
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877189
4cal wrote:If SSH had read it, she could go point by point and blow Wolf out of the water; meeting by meeting, quote by quote, insinuation by insinuation…..

The fat err Fact that she cannot means that the truth is likely closer to what is in the book than what is coming out of her pie hole.

Trump a best selling author? Now that is funny.

SSH is a bad and ongoing joke. In the same category as the 3 Stooges. She, however, is useful in that whatever she regurgitates, the opposite is true.
By skinster
#14877226
jimjam wrote:I agree that I am a dumb pundit and a racist Zionist but ....... I was nice to my mother.

I stand corrected. Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Israel et al are really very nice places where everyone lives together in a spirit of harmony, peace and love :eek: . My hope is that, someday, I will be able to go on a hike in the hills of Afghanistan and have a nice little picnic. :)


I didn't refer to you as a dumb pundit or racist zionist, but since you're okay with regurgitating the racist language they use, then ok you can take those labels.

As to the rest, way to display more ignorance. I guess the Russiagate thing matches your intellect, so, keep going with that. :D
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877230
skinster wrote:I didn't refer to you as a dumb pundit or racist zionist, but since you're okay with regurgitating the racist language they use, then ok you can take those labels.

As to the rest, way to display more ignorance. I guess the Russiagate thing matches your intellect, so, keep going with that. :D


Look Thin One, you have a tendency to miss the point while knee jerk injecting your own ideas into the blank space you have created with much fanfare and drama.

Russiagate? I am sorry you are bored with the topic. Boredom is certainly a difficult cross to bear. Have you given consideration to simply ignoring it? :eek:

Other than that I think you are a fine young lady with much potential :)
By skinster
#14877238
jimjam wrote:Look Thin One, you have a tendency to miss the point while knee jerk injecting your own ideas into the blank space you have created with much fanfare and drama.


You regurgitated a racist trope that you heard from TV or the radio and I called it out for what it is; saying Israelis are in "a tough neighbourhood" is a racist way of justify the oppression of Palestinians and displays a - and your - ignorance to the reality of Palestine/Israel, its very recent history, and present.

Anyway, back to Russiagate. This is all a real actual thing that's very important. :D
User avatar
By Hindsite
#14877321
The Sabbaticus wrote:Almost wish there was any 'collusion' to be found (just to wrap things up), but we all know that it's all about the clicks. It's just more self-destructive behaviour of the progressive left-liberal media-establishment. This has been going on since his election win, with entire 'news' shows dedicated to exclusively peddling the 'collusion' narrative, not to mention all the hit pieces about walking down chairs, icecream scoops, water bottles, dress shirts left on the floor, Koi fish assassinations, child abuse, small hands, etc.

Just an unending stream of carnival insanity.

Exactly, nothing but left-wing cry baby lunatics.

skinster wrote:Anyway, back to Russiagate. This is all a real actual thing that's very important.

You mean a real made up thing that is very important to the left wing as an excuse for losing to Trump.
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877351
skinster wrote:You regurgitated a racist trope that you heard from TV or the radio and I called it out for what it is; saying Israelis are in "a tough neighbourhood" is a racist way of justify the oppression of Palestinians and displays a - and your - ignorance to the reality of Palestine/Israel, its very recent history, and present.

It is not my purpose to turn this into one more two bit pofo pissing contest but, because I respect you, I thought I'd give it one more go. "Tough neighborhood" was a term I used to describe what I see as ......... a tough neighborhood. It was regurgitated by my brain. I have not invested a lot of my time studying the Palestine/Israel conflict and was not aware that the term "tough neighborhood" is considered a racist way to justify the oppression of Palestinians. I simply see the Middle East as a tough neighborhood. The Palestine/Israel conflict aside, I believe that is an all too brief but somewhat accurate description of that piece of geography. For what it is worth my opinion of Israel's treatment of Palestine is that, to say the least, Israel is holding Palestine hostage at gunpoint in what amounts to a large concentration camp. I suspect that you were not aware of my opinion before you drew your conclusions.

Good evening, stay warm and don't slip on the ice.
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877357
Hindsite wrote: a real made up thing that is very important to the left wing as an excuse for losing to Trump.


:lol: We will see in due time my friend. Mueller is one tough son of a bitch and I suspect Donald is scared.

I am wondering about your world H.S. Is there such a thing as a "moderate"? For example, I think Donald is a piece of shit and I think both Clintons are pieces of shit. But, I suspect that you have labeled me as a dangerous left wing radical simply because I am not conned by Donald's endless lies and consider him to be just another piece of warmed over jet trash.
User avatar
By Hindsite
#14877375
jimjam wrote::lol: We will see in due time my friend. Mueller is one tough son of a bitch and I suspect Donald is scared.

I am wondering about your world H.S. Is there such a thing as a "moderate"? For example, I think Donald is a piece of shit and I think both Clintons are pieces of shit. But, I suspect that you have labeled me as a dangerous left wing radical simply because I am not conned by Donald's endless lies and consider him to be just another piece of warmed over jet trash.

I think Obama is a piece of shit. It is clear you are left-wing. However, I would not say I am sure you are a radical lunatic. But it is clear that you don't see Trump as a patriot or as the Trump of God as I do. I believe Trump is a good leader, just as Senator Hatch stated after the historic tax reform was passed. Now it is time to work on getting immigration reform passed and building that wall that Mexico will pay for somehow. HalleluYah
User avatar
By noemon
#14877376
jimjam wrote: I have not invested a lot of my time studying the Palestine/Israel conflict and was not aware that the term "tough neighborhood" is considered a racist way to justify the oppression of Palestinians. I simply see the Middle East as a tough neighborhood. The Palestine/Israel conflict aside, I believe that is an all too brief but somewhat accurate description of that piece of geography. For what it is worth my opinion of Israel's treatment of Palestine is that, to say the least, Israel is holding Palestine hostage at gunpoint in what amounts to a large concentration camp. I suspect that you were not aware of my opinion before you drew your conclusions.


Do you think it is a tougher neighborhood bordering the defanged former colonial states of France and Britain and totally unarmed Palestine? Or say Turkey? or Russia?
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877378
Hindsite wrote: I would not say I am sure you are a radical lunatic.

Coming from you that is nothing short of high praise :) .

Hindsite wrote:But it is clear that you don't see Trump as a patriot or as the Trump of God as I do.


Damn! You got that right. I see Donald as a mouthpiece for the Billionaire Club who has conned a few million peons into thinking he gives a shit for them. "Trump of God"? That's kind of insulting to God. Watch your step, you don't want to get on the wrong side of The Big Guy :eek: .
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877380
noemon wrote:Do you think it is a tougher neighborhood bordering the defanged former colonial states of France and Britain and totally unarmed Palestine? Or say Turkey? or Russia?

I am not sure what your question is. There is no shortage of one or another state screwing over and/or sucking dry another state(s). I think this behavior is genetically engineered into humans and will continue to some degree or other until we blunder our way into extinction.

I'll respond tomorrow if you like. Right now I must retire to the lanai to smoke a cigar, drink a beer and watch the Southern star move from left to right :) .
By skinster
#14877782
Social Media Madness: the Russia Canard
For several months we’ve been hearing a crescendo of outcries that Russia used social media to sway the 2016 presidential election. The claim has now been debunked by an unlikely source — one of the most Russiagate-frenzied big media outlets in the United States, the Washington Post.

Far away from the media echo chamber, the Post news story is headlined: “There’s Still Little Evidence That Russia’s 2016 Social Media Efforts Did Much of Anything.”

The article focuses on “what we actually know about the Russian activity on Facebook and Twitter: It was often modest, heavily dissociated from the campaign itself and minute in the context of election social media efforts.”

In fact, the ballyhooed Facebook ads were notably not targeted to be seen in swing states, the piece by Post journalist Philip Bump reports. As for the much-hyped tweets, they were smaller than miniscule in quantity compared to overall election-related tweets.

But don’t expect the fervent canard about Russian manipulation of social media to fade away anytime soon. At this point, the Russiagate atmosphere has become so toxic — with incessant propaganda, credulity, fear-laced conformity and partisan opportunism — that basic logic often disintegrates.

One of the weirdest aspects of claims that Russia undermined the election with social media has involved explaining away the fact that few of the ads and posts in question actually referred to Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump or the election. Instead, we’re told, the wily Russians tried to help Trump by inflaming social divisions such as racial tensions. It’s a rampant storyline (rendered here by NBC News political director Chuck Todd) that’s reminiscent of the common claim during the civil rights movement that “outside agitators,” such as Russian-directed reds, were inflaming and exploiting racial tensions in the South.

From there, it’s just a hop skip and jump to smearing Americans who dissent from U.S. orthodoxies as useful idiots who serve the interests of plotters in the Kremlin.

Of course history is not exactly repeating itself, but it’s rhyming an awful lot. There are real parallels between the McCarthy Era and today’s anti-Russia fervor in the United States.

Despite all the information and analysis that have strengthened progressive understanding in this country during the last few decades, fixating on Russia as culpable for the election of Trump has been widely irresistible. Perhaps that fixation is less upsetting than deeper realization of just how rotten the U.S. corporate system of injustice has become — and how the forces that brought us the horrors of the Trump presidency are distinctly homegrown.

Narratives scapegoating Russia now have an extremely powerful grip on the USA. The consequences include heightened U.S.-Russia tensions that absolutely mean heightened risks of nuclear war — and worsening threats to democratic discourse at home.

The conditioned reflex to label as somehow “pro-Putin” any opinion that overlaps with a Kremlin outlook is becoming part of the muscle memory of much of the American body politic. Countless journalists, pundits, activists and politicians have fallen under the Russiagate spell. They include the liberal primetime lineup on MSNBC, where — as the media watchdog group FAIR pointed out last month — Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes routinely bypass stories of great importance in order “to lead with minutiae from the ongoing Russia investigation that has consumed MSNBC‘s coverage like no other news event since the beginning of the Trump presidency.”

Across most of the media landscape, the meme that Russians attacked American democracy with social-media posts has been treated as self-evident.

In a typical exercise of the conformity that afflicts the national press corps, the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, David Corn, wrote this fall that the House intelligence committee needed more staff to investigate, in his words, “how” — not whether — “a foreign adversary attacked American democracy.” His piece breathlessly declared that “the Trump-Russia scandal” was “expanding — it now includes new revelations regarding Moscow’s use of social media in the United States to influence the 2016 campaign.”

That kind of stenography for powerful spin may snag cable TV appearances and lucrative book contracts, but it’s a notable disservice to journalism and democracy.

Meanwhile, most Democrats on Capitol Hill are eager to engage in such rhetoric. So, it was just another routine appearance when Senator Richard Blumenthal went on CNN a week before Christmas and declared “there is increasing evidence that the Russians are continuing their attack on our democracy.” He said: “The Russian attack on our elections in 2016 was endlessly ingenious and inventive, using all kinds of social media, all kinds of intermediaries, sources of information for them.”

To put it mildly, that sort of bombast gains vastly more airtime than discussing the urgent need for détente between the world’s two nuclear superpowers.

On MSNBC, Rachel Maddow has climbed with her ratings to great mass-media acclaim, while advancing herself from the outset of the Trump presidency as one of the most prominent and irresponsible Russia baiters in U.S. media. At this rate, when Maddow retires — if she and the rest of us are lucky enough to avoid a nuclear holocaust — she can look back on a career that deteriorated into an obsessive crusade against Russia that increased the chances of World War III.

In the poisonous media environment that keeps boosting her fame and fortune, it’s grotesquely fitting that Maddow — time after time after time — has devoted so much of her program to the illusory Russian assault on democracy via social media.

That’s the way it goes in the propaganda-polluted land of Russiagate.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/01/04 ... ia-canard/
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877822
I wonder if all the people who have concluded that since, to date, Donald has not yet been linked to Russian interference in his election either in the media or, more importantly on POFO, have somehow had a look inside of Robert Mueller's operation and, accordingly, have deduced that Donald is pure as the fresh driven snow. Personally I doubt that Donald will be conclusively linked. But he has been operating in a fetid swamp of lies and deception most of his life and it sure will be interesting to see what kind of do-do Mueller comes up with on either him or his partners in crime.

The latest:
Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has raised the likelihood with President Trump’s legal team that his office will seek an interview with the president, triggering a discussion among his attorneys about how to avoid a sit-down encounter or set limits on such a session, according to two people familiar with the talks.
However, the president’s attorneys are reluctant to allow him to sit down for open-ended, face-to-face questioning without clear parameters, according to two people familiar with the discussions. I would love to be a fly on the wall for this one. The world's most accomplished con artist matched against the world's most least likely con victim.

jimjam's best guess is that Donald's lawyers will attempt to limit discussions to discussions about either the weather or the Boston Red Sox :lol: .
User avatar
By jimjam
#14877907
noemon wrote:Do you think it is a tougher neighborhood bordering the defanged former colonial states of France and Britain and totally unarmed Palestine? Or say Turkey? or Russia?

I'm sorry noemon but I read your post a few times and do not understand your question. Planet Earth has no shortage of "tough neighborhoods" but I have considered the Middle East to be the one I would least want to live in. Take seemingly unlimited hatred of dozens of varieties add seemingly unlimited amounts of guns and .... there you have it .... the Middle East. There will never be peace in this region.
#14877956
jimjam wrote:I wonder if all the people who have concluded that since, to date, Donald has not yet been linked to Russian interference in his election either in the media or, more importantly on POFO, have somehow had a look inside of Robert Mueller's operation and, accordingly, have deduced that Donald is pure as the fresh driven snow.

Concluding that Trump didn't collude with the Russians is a considerably different conclusion than assuming he's the font of innocence in all matters. It's reasonable to conclude that everybody can be convicted of some crime.

On the "Russiagate" conspiracy theory, the evidence points to it being generated by neoconservative actors with ties to the DNC, Hillary Clinton, et. al. SonofNewo has been pretty good on this:

George Papadopoulos and Dossier Questions that FBI Can't Answer (part 2)

See, if the FBI thought Papadopolous was compromised by Russia before the election in July of 2016, why didn't they warn the Trump campaign about him? If Papadopolous was the basis for starting their investigation in July of 2016, why didn't they bother to interview Papadopolous before late January 2017? Frankly, the story is falling apart. People want to argue that Trump Jr.'s meeting with Veselnitskaya says something about Trump Jr. However, Trump Jr. didn't propose the meeting. It was pitched to him on what we can reasonably say was false pretences. Veselnitskaya was only in the US, because Veselnitskaya got a rarely granted immigration parole from high up in the Justice Department (Loretta Lynch or one of her delegates) after her visa application was denied. Veselnitskaya met with FusionGPS before and after the meeting with Trump Jr. Ohr's wife was working for FusionGPS at the time and was part of the effort to generate the phony dossier and Ohr was on Mueller's team and trash talking Trump, and has since been demoted twice. FusionGPS has fought tooth and nail to prevent Congress from getting their banking records, which among other things will show that three members of the press have been paid by Fusion GPS--further illustrating collusion between the DNC and the press. Trump did fire Carter Page when the FBI indicated to Congress that Page had given speeches in Moscow. Yet, Trump was the nominee, so if they were briefing Trump on other national security matters, why not on this? They certainly briefed Congress. So on the surface, it seems that the Russiagate story is a massive DNC/deep state dirty trick.

Disliking a politician is one thing. Hoping a politician is investigated and charged based on dirty tricks and manufactured evidence suggests that your motives aren't exactly clean.

jimjam wrote:The world's most accomplished con artist matched against the world's most least likely con victim.

Mueller was "conned" into having Strzok and Ohr on his investigation, which is making Mueller look like a political hack. His staff includes people who donated to Hillary Clinton and represented the Clinton Foundation. Doesn't that sound like a conflict of interest to you?
User avatar
By jimjam
#14878035
blackjack21 wrote:Mueller was "conned" into having Strzok and Ohr on his investigation, which is making Mueller look like a political hack. His staff includes people who donated to Hillary Clinton and represented the Clinton Foundation. Doesn't that sound like a conflict of interest to you?


Conflicts of interest are de rigueur in D.C. I doubt that there are any "public servants" in D.C. who are clean in this respect.

Overall, your points are well taken.
By skinster
#14878125
How 'Russiagate' Helped Secure a Dangerous Arms Deal
Dec. 18 was a day like any other in the Donbas region, the flashpoint of a grinding civil war between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists. That afternoon, a girl was badly wounded by a shell fired by Ukrainians into the separatist-held Golmovsky. A few hours later, a hail of Grad rockets fired by pro-Russian forces poured down on the Ukrainian-controlled town of Novoluhanske, killing eight civilians in the middle of a community celebration and damaging over 100 buildings. The shelling continued into the night, killing three in the pro-Russian town of Stakhanov, including a 94-year-old woman.

Artillery exchanges like this have become a tragic routine in Donbas. Though the killing has slowed since the heaviest fighting, which occurred in 2015, over 10,000 have fallen in the conflict, and at least 1.4 million have been turned into refugees. With the war entering its fourth year, a decision by the Trump administration virtually ensured that the news from Donbas will grow dramatically worse. Last month, the State Department approved the transfer of $50 million worth of lethal weapons to the Ukrainian military. Along with a shipment of M107A1 Barrett sniper rifles, the United States will be delivering 35 FGM Javelin anti-tank launching systems and 210 missiles.

Though the Javelin has scarcely been tested against the latest models of Russian tanks, advocates of the arms transfer have insisted that the missiles will save lives by deterring the Russians. After a meeting last June with House Majority Leader Paul Ryan and Sen. John McCain, Andriy Parubiy, who is the speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament (and a veteran Nazi activist), presented the Javelins as a game changer. “If we’d burned several hundred Russian tanks [in 2015], it would have been an important step toward restoring peace in our country’s east,” Parubiy declared.

But others who have witnessed the grueling war of attrition from the front lines dread the prospect of new arms on the battlefield. Brian Milakovsky, a Fulbright scholar who is working with an aid organization on the Ukrainian side of Donbas, told me the Javelins would provoke Russia to escalate its military involvement and dramatically deepen suffering on both sides.

“In the time I’ve been in the Donbas there have been escalation events that, when the dust settled, seemed attributable to the separatists trying to improve their positions. There have also been escalations related to the Ukrainians trying to improve theirs,” Milakovsky said. “No one can ever be certain who starts shooting, but you can triangulate a lot of sources and get a sense for it. What I worry about with U.S. arms is how they could inspire more such attempts, which often blow up into artillery duels that damage front-line communities on both sides. Giving just enough arms to make that possible, but not enough to actually change the balance in the war, doesn’t seem responsible to me.”

According to Milakovsky, Russia’s massive military presence gives it an automatic advantage that renders any infusion of outside arms futile. “I think Russia will always be able to pour more arms into the region considering how much of their standing army is positioned just across the border,” he explained. “Both sides are so dug in for a big fight that every escalation is like throwing matches around in dry grass. No one seems to actually want a big war, but no one can accept major moves in the front line either, and they will respond accordingly.”

Milakovsky is hardly alone in this view. “On both sides, we repeatedly heard calls to resume this war. And we thought: If the war returns, no one of those with whom we spoke will survive,” correspondents from the Russian opposition paper Novaya Gazeta wrote in a dispatch from the front lines of Donbas in 2016. Even mainstream American analysts like Council on Foreign Relations fellow Charles Kupchan have warned that “sending lethal weapons to Ukraine is a recipe for military escalation and transatlantic discord.”

Back in 2015, when Kupchan served in Barack Obama’s National Security Council, the then-president made a rare departure from conventional Beltway foreign policy wisdom and rejected pressure to ship lethal arms to Ukraine. The plan to up-arm Ukraine had been developed by the Brookings Institution and the NATO-funded Atlantic Council and was advanced by Congress in the form of a provision by Sen. McCain that would have required the U.S. to budget 20 percent of all aid to Ukraine for offensive weapons.

Obama’s refusal to authorize the arms shipment kept alive the Minsk II peace process, along with the prospect of U.N. peacekeepers deploying to Donbas, a proposal endorsed by Russia. It also infuriated U.S. neoconservatives and more than a few anti-Russian liberals. But once the 2016 presidential campaign got underway, the bipartisan war party was confident its demands would be met.

Once the Democratic and Republican conventions rolled around, both parties’ draft platforms contained nearly identical language promising arms to Ukraine. The arms transfer had been a personal priority of Hillary Clinton, a top recipient of weapons industry cash, since early 2015. Only hours after the Republican National Convention rang its opening bell, however, a Donald Trump foreign policy adviser named J.D. Gordon ordered the RNC to alter its pledge for “lethal weapons” to a call for “appropriate assistance” to the Ukrainian military. Though Trump said later that he was unaware of the change, Gordon claimed the candidate had demanded it to conform to his stated support for detente with Russia.

Despite the softened language on lethal arms, the RNC plank hardly was part of a George McGovern-style peace platform. Gordon inserted language demanding “increasing sanctions, together with our allies, against Russia unless and until Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are fully restored.” What’s more, the platform slammed Russia for “occupying parts of Ukraine and threatening neighbors from the Baltic to the Caucasus.” But the minor tweak was enough to inspire The Huffington Post to proclaim in a headline, “The Real Winner At The GOP Convention Is Vladimir Putin.”

A vicious backlash was brewing against Trump’s moves toward detente, and when Clinton’s campaign went down in flames, “Russiagate” erupted. Desperate for evidence of Trump-Russia collusion, Democrats latched on to the dossier produced by Christopher Steele, a former agent of Britain’s MI5 who was funded by a law firm closely tied to Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. According to the error-laden dossier, “the TRUMP team had agreed to sideline Russian intervention in Ukraine as a campaign issue” in exchange for a Russian promise to sabotage Clinton’s campaign.

In March, when the House Intelligence Committee opened its investigation into allegations of Russian meddling in the U.S. election, ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff zeroed in on the conspiracy theory. “Now is it possible that the removal of the Ukraine provision from the GOP platform is a coincidence?” Schiff wondered aloud. “It is possible. But it is also possible, maybe more than possible, that they are not coincidental, not disconnected and not unrelated and that the Russians use the same techniques to corrupt U.S. persons that they employed in Europe and elsewhere.”

Schiff’s diatribe before a congressional gallery packed with camera crews made him an overnight star of the Russiagate drama. He had once been “a milquetoast moderate,” as journalist Ryan Lizza put it, but through his grandstanding, the once obscure centrist suddenly “emerged as an unlikely face of Democratic resistance to the new President”—a “liberal hero,” according to Lizza. There was more to Schiff’s burgeoning obsession with Russian meddling than his own sense of vanity, however.

Since entering Congress in 2002, Schiff hasn’t met a war he didn’t like. He has backed the invasion of Iraq, cheered on NATO’s regime change operation in Libya, heartily endorsed the U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, clamored for direct U.S. intervention in Syria and lent his signature to virtually every AIPAC-crafted resolution that has landed on his desk.

And the arms industry has rewarded Schiff handsomely, pumping over $70,000 into his campaign coffers in 2016. Schiff’s largest donor this past campaign cycle, at $12,700 [individuals plus PACs], was Northrop Grumman, the defense giant. Raytheon—the manufacturer of the Javelin anti-tank missile system—was close behind it, with $10,000 in contributions [PACs]. In all, arms giants accounted for over one-sixth of Schiff’s total donations.

Back in 2013, Schiff was treated to a $2,500-per-head campaign fundraiser by a Ukrainian-born, California-based arms merchant named Igor Pasternak. The war in Donbas has been a boon for Pasternak, earning him a lucrative contract to supply the Ukrainian State Border Guard with integrated surveillance systems, and a subsequent deal to help replace the Ukrainian military’s AK-47 rifles with a version of the M-16.

Given Schiff’s history, it was little surprise when he thrust himself headlong into the paranoid theater of Russiagate. By casting suspicion on every attempt at diplomacy and driving the resurgence of Cold War hostility between Washington and Moscow, he was poised to deliver another cash cow to his benefactors in the arms industry.

This year’s budget-busting National Defense Authorization Act reflected the Russia panic that gripped Washington. The legislation was filled with provisions for expensive new programs aimed at countering Russian influence and even ferrying Ukrainian soldiers to American hospitals. Though the shipment of Javelins had been left out, the pressure on the White House was about to rise again.

In November 2017, Schiff summoned J.D. Gordon, the former Trump campaign aide, to be interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee. Citing House staffers, Politico reported that Schiff was investigating “whether Trump campaign officials made the Republican Party platform more friendly to Russia as part of some broader effort to collude with the Kremlin.” Robert Mueller, the leader of the federal investigation into Russian meddling, was also expected to probe Gordon for answers about the platform change.

At the time, Trump was under pressure from his envoy to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, to send the Javelins to Kiev. A veteran neoconservative activist, Volker was still listed as the executive director of the McCain Institute for International Affairs when he was installed in Trump’s State Department. Among the McCain Institute’s financial backers was the BGR group, whose designated lobbyist, Ed Rogers, was a lobbyist for Raytheon—the company that would reap a windfall profit from the Javelin sale.

Cornered, Trump risked inviting more allegations of collusion by refusing to arm Ukraine. As Andrew Weiss, a Russia analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told reporter John Hudson, “Overall, I see this discussion [on Trump-Russia collusion] as fitting within a broader effort by people within the national security bureaucracy to box Trump in on Ukraine.”

In November, just weeks before caving in to the pressure to send the Javelins to Kiev, Trump was widely ridiculed when he warned that “people will die” because of Russiagate. But in Donbas, where a war-weary population lives on the brink of another bloodbath, the president could prove his critics wrong in a way they never imagined.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/russi ... arms-deal/
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