On July 12, 2016 DNC staffer Seth Rich was murdered while reportedly walking home at 4am. Though robbery was initially suspected, Rich still had his wallet and watch when police arrived. The murder – one of five tied to the Clintons in the last six weeks – came in the midst of a massive email leak scandal involving Wikileaks, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee.
Within hours of the event alternative media reporters began to suspect something was amiss, as police had no witnesses, no suspects and no motive. This led to theories that Rich, who was in charge of voter expansion data at the DNC, may have been killed to cover something up. Subsequent reports even suggested Rich may have been on his way to speak with special agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding an “ongoing court case.”
Though the reports were initially dismissed as conspiracy theory, perhaps the one person who could confirm that Rich was in fact a whistle blower may have just done so. None other than Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in an interview with Nieuwsurr, said that his organization is investigating the death of Seth Rich and, somewhat cryptically, tied Rich to Wikileaks. And though Assange wouldn’t directly admit Rich was the source, perhaps because he himself didn’t know the true identify of his source until material stopped flowing or contact was lost, he implies that Seth Rich’s murder may have been a politically-motivated assassination:
Assange: Whistleblowers go to significant efforts to get us material and often significant risks. There was a 27-year old that works for the DNC who was shot in the back… murdered.. for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington.
Host: That was just a robbery wasn’t it?
Assange: No. There’s no finding.
Host: What are you suggesting?
Assange: I am suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.
Host: But was he one of your sources, then?
Assange: We don’t comment on who our sources are.
Host: But why make the suggestion?
Assange: Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States and that our sources face serious risks… that’s why they come to us so we can protect their anonymity.
Host: But it’s quite something to suggest a murder… that’s basically what you’re doing.
The presidential race has become an all-consuming affair on social media, as Americans debate which candidate will do less harm to the republic and our freedoms. I remain more concerned about state and municipal governments. Local regulations are far more likely to have an effect on your life than, say, an executive order from the president.
City officials are afflicted by the same regulatory disease as those at other levels of government, whose victims crave the power to tax and regulate. There are some exceptions, places inoculated from the regulatory disease. Sandy Springs, Georgia, has privatized most city services. Voters in Talkeetna, Alaska, have elected Stubbs the Cat mayor since 1997, although some say that funny story is just a fable.
A decade ago, Anaheim was gaining national headlines for its freedom-friendly approach to government. The idea—deregulating, loosening land-use restrictions and slashing fees—was championed by then-Mayor Curt Pringle. It was the idea of then-councilman and current Mayor Tom Tait. I called it an "enormous success" in a column in the Wall Street Journal, given how these freedom policies helped spark a renaissance.
Anaheim has done well over the years for various reasons, but it's sad the city has recently followed the same command, control and subsidize approach found elsewhere. The best (or worst?) example involves Anaheim's approach toward homesharing web platforms such as Airbnb and HomeAway, which match up vacationers with homeowners who rent out their homes for short periods of time.
The city had allowed a number of short-term rentals, but required property owners to receive a city permit and pay taxes. Following complaints from neighbors, the City Council in late June voted to ban new ones in residential neighborhoods and to force existing operations to close down in 18 months. The city also passed tough new rules on those that will stay in business over the next year and a half. Sadly, Mayor Tait led the charge for draconian restrictions. (The city plans to come up with rules to allow some room sharing.)
In recent weeks, Airbnb filed suit against the city, echoing many of the complaints the company made against San Francisco's new regulations. HomeAway also filed a lawsuit against Anaheim. The legal actions raise some of the "freedom" issues that now get short shrift from the City Council.
The main complaint centers on Anaheim's requirement that these web-based companies police their own sites, which the short-term rental (STR) companies say is a violation of the federal Communications Decency Act. That 1996 law created a foundation of internet freedom because it protects internet platforms from being responsible for content submitted by users. Imagine if, say, Facebook were liable for what your friends posted on your wall!
"The ordinance is invalid under the First and Fourteenth amendments because it purports to impose strict criminal and civil liability on websites for publishing speech," according to the HomeAway lawsuit. For its part, Airbnb claims the ordinance "also violates Airbnb's First Amendment rights because it is a content-based restriction on speech... To justify this content-based restriction on speech, the city bears the burden of showing that the ordinance is narrowly tailored to further a substantial government interest. The city cannot carry this burden because, instead of targeting speech, the city instead could simply enforce its short-term rental laws directly against hosts who violate them—as the city acknowledges it already does successfully."
There's also a possible "taking" involved in requiring property owners to stop operating these businesses. That's the kind of anti-property-rights action I would have expected Tait to have opposed in those freedom-friendly days. I also would have expected the city to understand how the free market is fixing a once-vexing problem. In those days, officials complained about blight in older neighborhoods. These days, STR critics complain they are driving up prices in neighborhoods.
The federal court will decide the constitutional issues, of course. But the ordinance is an assault on the concept that people should be free to live their lives and run their businesses as they choose, provided they don't harm others. Neighbors have a right to complain—and expect the city to respond—when visitors violate noise and other ordinances. But they shouldn't have a right to pre-emptively stop certain activities just because other people don't like them.
Yes, we should all be worried about what the presidential election means in terms of our freedom. But our time might be better spent focusing on the myriad ways local officials are stifling innovative new businesses and ideas.
Every memory you have ever had is chock-full of errors. I would even go as far as saying that memory is largely an illusion.
This is because our perception of the world is deeply imperfect, our brains only bother to remember a tiny piece of what we actually experience, and every time we remember something we have the potential to change the memory we are accessing.
I often write about the ways in which our memory leads us astray, with a particular focus on “false memories.” False memories are recollections that feel real but are not based on actual experience.
For this particular article I invited a few top memory researchers to comment on what they wish everyone knew about their field.
First up, we have Elizabeth Loftus from the University of California, Irvine, who is one of the founders of the area of false memory research, and is considered one of the most “eminent psychologists of the 20th century.”
Elizabeth Loftus says you need independent evidence to corroborate your memories.
According to Loftus: “The one take home message that I have tried to convey in my writings, and classes, and in my TED talk is this: Just because someone tells you something with a lot of confidence and detail and emotion, it doesn’t mean it actually happened. You need independent corroboration to know whether you’re dealing with an authentic memory or something that is a product of some other process.”
Next up, we have memory scientist Annelies Vredeveldt from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, who has done fascinating work on how well we remember when we recall things with other people.
Annelies Vredeveldt says to be careful how you ask questions about a memory.
According to Vredeveldt: “What I’d like everyone to know is how (not) to probe for a memory of an event.
When you are trying to get a story out of someone, be it about a witnessed crime or a wild night out, it seems natural to ask them lots of questions about it. However, asking closed questions, such as “what was the color of his hair?” or worse, leading questions, such as “he was a redhead, wasn’t he?” often leads to incorrect answers.
It is much better to let the person tell the story of their own accord, without interrupting and without asking questions afterwards. At most, you might want to ask the person if they can tell you a bit more about something they mentioned, but limit yourself to an open and general prompt such as “can you tell me more about that?”
Research shows that stories told in response to free-recall prompts are much more accurate than stories told in response to a series of closed questions. So if you really want to get to the bottom of something, restrain yourself and don’t ask too many questions!”
Finally, we have Chris French from Goldsmiths, University of London, who has done decades of research on anomalous and paranormal memories, and believes that some of these may be the result of false memories.
Chris French wants you to stop believing common memory myths.
“My top 5 take-home messages on memory:
1. Memory does not work like a video camera, accurately recording all of the details of witnessed events. Instead, memory (like perception) is a constructive process. We typically remember the gist of an event rather than the exact details.
2. When we construct a memory, errors can occur. We will typically fill in gaps in our memories with what we think we must have experienced, not necessarily what we actually did experience. We may also include misinformation we encountered after the event. We will not even be consciously aware that this has happened.
3. We not only distort memories for events that we have witnessed, we may have completely false memories for events that never occurred at all. Such false memories are particularly likely to arise in certain contexts, such as (unintentionally) through the use of certain dubious psychotherapeutic techniques or (intentionally) in psychology experiments.
4. There is no convincing evidence to support the existence of the psychoanalytic concept of repression, despite it being a widely accepted concept.
5. There is currently no way to distinguish, in the absence of independent evidence, whether a particular memory is true or false. Even memories which are detailed and vivid and held with 100 percent conviction can be completely false.”
The take home message remains: Your memory is incredibly malleable. Because you often cannot spot a false memory once it has taken hold, the only way to prevent false memories is to know that they exist and to avoid things that facilitate them.
Want to learn more about the science of false memory? Learn about the work of Loftus, Vredeveldt, French and hundreds of other fascinating memory scientists in my new book “The Memory Illusion.“
Donald Trump made a startling accusation against President Barack Obama during a Florida rally Wednesday night, telling supporters that the commander in chief is the "founder of ISIS."
"ISIS is honoring president Obama," the Republican presidential nominee said during a rally at BB&T Center in Sunrise, Fla. "He is the founder of ISIS. He founded ISIS. And, I would say the co-founder would be crooked Hillary Clinton.
Trump's declaration was met with chants of "Lock her up!" from rally-goers.
In addressing Obama, Trump included the president's middle name, calling him Barack Hussein Obama -- a move that's typically been employed by those who claim Obama is secretly a Muslim.
"Radical Islamicterrorism," Trump said. "And people don’t like saying that. Our president refuses to use the term. Every time another event happens, I keep saying, I wonder if he’s gonna say it this time. And he doesn’t say it."
He also took aim at Clinton, for her refusal to use the term. "And Hillary won’t say it either," he said. "She doesn’t wanna say it, cause she doesn’t wanna offend the president, because then bad things could happen to her if she offends the president. Bad things could happen to her. So she’s afraid to say it. Hillary’s afraid to say it. She did say that she would say it because of me, but she’s afraid to say it. But, we have a real problem with radical Islamic terror. It's’ what it is. It’s terror."
(ZHE) In the latest installment over Hillary Clinton’s email scandal, conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch released 296 pages of new emails from Hillary’s personal server, most of which were not handed over as part of the 30,000 emails originally provided to the FBI. The emails were provided to Judicial Watch pursuant to a FOIA request. These new emails, among other things, demonstrate how the Clinton Foundation and it’s top donors sought favors from the State Department within 3 months of Hillary taking the Secretary of State position.
“That the Clinton Foundation was calling in favors barely 3 months into Hillary Clinton’s tenure at the State Department is deeply troubling, and it is yet another reminder of the conflicts of interest and unethical wheeling and dealing she’d bring to the White House,” said Michael Short, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee, in a statement Tuesday.
The first request for a “favor” came in April 2009, just 3 months after Hillary was confirmed as Secretary of State on January 21, 2009. The request came from Doug Band, a long-time adviser to Bill Clinton who helped him setup the Clinton Foundation after his Presidency. Per the email exchange, Mr. Band reached out the State Department to ask a “favor” on behalf of a person who the Clinton Foundation had recently setup with a trip to Haiti which he found “eye-opening” (the name of the person seeking the favor was redacted from the email exchange). Yes, well trading taxpayer dollars intended for earthquake relief in exchange for lucrative gold mining contracts from the Haitian government can be quite “eye-opening” indeed (see our post “Clinton Cash: “Devastating” Documentary Reveals How Clintons Went From “Dead Broke” To Mega Wealthy“).
In an exchange from April 2009, a longtime aide to Mr. Clinton told three of Mrs. Clinton’s top advisers that it was “important to take care of” a particular person, whose name has been redacted from the document. That person had written the aide, Doug Band, under the subject line “A favor…” to thank him for the “opportunity to go on the Haiti trip,” which the person called “eye-opening.” Mr. Band was a chief adviser in helping Mr. Clinton launch the Clinton Foundation after leaving the White House.
Another request came from Gilbert Chagoury, a long-time associate of the Clintons with a checkered past. Chagoury is known for his ties to Nigeria’s military dictator, Sani Abacha, who was instrumental in helping him secure some lucrative construction contracts in the mid-90s. In 2003, Chagoury helped organize a trip to the Caribbean where former President Bill Clinton was “paid” $100,000 for a speech. Chagoury has also made bribes contributions to the Clinton Foundation of between $1-$5 million. Per the Wall Street Journal:
“We need Gilbert Chagoury to speak to the substance person re Lebanon,” Mr. Band wrote in April 2009. “As you know, he’s key guy there and to us and is loved in Lebanon. Very imp.”
Mr. Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire, has donated between $1 million and $5 million to the foundation, according to its disclosures.
Ms. Abedin responded with the name of the State Department official, Jeff Feltman, who had served as a U.S. ambassador to Lebanon before becoming U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. “I’m sure he knows him,” she wrote. “I’ll talk to Jeff.”
Fifteen minutes later, Mr. Band shot back: “Better if you call him. Now preferable. This is very important.”
In yet another email, Clinton chief of staff Cheryl Mills wrote to Hillary to inform her that the NSA was working on a modified blackberry that could be used for personal emails while working in restricted State Department offices. Even though Clinton thought this was “good news” she continued to just use her personal server anyway. Per the AP:
In another email, Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, informed her that National Security Agency and State Department officials discussed an attempt to develop a modified blackberry for Clinton that might be used when she worked in a restricted State Department office that did not allow private phones.
So why were these emails not included in the original disclosure to the FBI? Could it be possible that Hillary believes that using her position as Secretary of State to setup meetings between former U.S. Ambassadors and shady international businessmen is somehow “personal” in nature? Makes you wonder what else was excluded from the FBI disclosures that was purely “personal.” Guess we’ll just have to elect her to find out if we can trust her.
The emails obtained by Judicial Watch can be reviewed in their entirety below:
Emails revealed during a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch show a corrupt relationship between the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton-led US State Department.
The 44 emails disclosed by the lawsuit were not among the 55,000 pages of emails former Secretary Clinton had turned over to the State Department from her private email server.
Donors to the Clinton Foundation received special favors from the State Department, and in some cases, the emails even used the word “favor” to describe the conduct. The go-between was often Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin, who relayed messages and instructions between former Secretary Clinton and executives at the Clinton Foundation.
In April 2009, Douglas J. Band, who led the foundation’s Clinton Global Initiative, emailed Ms. Abedin and Cheryl D. Mills, another top adviser to Mrs. Clinton, for help with a donor.
Mr. Band wrote that he needed to connect Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire who was one of the foundation’s top donors, with someone at the State Department to talk about his interests in Lebanon.
“It’s jeff feltman,” Ms. Abedin answered, referring to Jeffrey Feltman, who was the American ambassador to Lebanon at the time. “I’m sure he knows him. I’ll talk to jeff.” Mr. Band asked her to call Mr. Chagoury immediately if possible. “This is very important,” he wrote.
Band also lobbied for a Clinton Foundation associate (whose name was redacted in the documents) to get a job at the State Department, noting that it was “important to take care of.” Abedin emailed back, “We all have him on our radar. Personnel has been sending him options.”
So much for meritocracy. If anything, the guiding principle at the Clinton State Department seems to be pay-to-play.
During his congressional testimony about Hillary Clinton’s other email improprieties, FBI Director James Comey dodged questions about whether there was an open investigation into the Clinton Foundation. The FBI is, in all likelihood, currently investigating the Clinton Foundation, but is not expected to complete the investigation until well after the presidential election.
The conduct described in the emails fits a historical pattern, in which Hillary Clinton and her staff peddling influence in exchange for money. If Clinton is elected president, expect more of the same.
You’re an adult still living with your parents because you can’t afford to move out.
You’re not able to find a job that pays a livable amount of money.
You want to get married, but you can’t afford it.
Prices keep going up, but your income doesn’t follow.
You’ve got health insurance but can’t afford medical care due to the high deductibles.
You joined some movement like Operation Wall Street or the Tea Party, or followed a revolutionary politician like Ron Paul or Bernie Sanders, and didn’t see anything change.
You feel that something’s not right, even though the government and the media keep telling you how great everything is.
"When I was younger, maybe 10 or 11, I remember playing a game of Monopoly with a friend. I was doing well, but I was still losing – and that’s when I realized that my friend, who was acting as the bank, was cheating by secretly moving money from the bank over to his own pile. Once I figured this out, I quit the game. Why play a game when it’s impossible to win?
In a nutshell, that’s what’s happening to you in today’s America. Throughout your entire childhood, you were told about the American Dream, and how if you worked hard and did the right things, you could build a good life for yourself. If you’re reading this, then you’ve figured out that something went wrong: Either someone’s cheating, or they changed the rules without telling you.
I’m here to tell you that this is exactly what happened.
The generations before you actually did have a real shot at achieving their dreams, but over time, so many people cheated, looking for shortcuts to achieving their own dreams, that they ended up changing the game. They rigged the game, and now that it’s your turn to play, they’ve made it almost impossible for you to win.
...
In reality, I’m a typical middle-aged guy. I’ve achieved my own American Dream, with a wife, two kids, two dogs and a house with a white picket fence in the suburbs (seriously).
I’ve pretty much got it made – but over time, as I learned about how the game is rigged, how the odds are stacked against the next generation, I’ve come to realize that my kids are going to face huge hurdles in achieving their dreams – hurdles I didn’t have to face. And it’s not just my kids: I realized that a lot of people in my generation, and the majority of people younger than me, are in the same boat.
Not only are most of them destined for a life of frustration and unfilled dreams, but the system that’s holding them down is the same system that’s choking the life out of this country. And it’s all because some of the people who came before us decided to rewrite the rules of the game, benefiting them and hurting the rest of us."
After years of observing the many corrupted systems that affect our lives, I compiled my thoughts into this book – “How You Got Screwed.” If you’d like a copy, just download the book in PDF form by clicking here .
There is no cost for the book, and you’re free to use it and share it as you see fit. I wrote it to help people understand what’s truly happening in this country, and the more people you share it with, and the more ways you think to use it, the happier I’ll be.
“I have been fighting this bank for over five years now. I am finally losing everything to their fraud.”
“We feel captive in our own home.”
This is a sampling of what I have awakened to practically every day for the past few months, since my book“Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud” came out. Hundreds of people have emailed me, sent me letters, attended my public events, to relate their personal horror stories of foreclosure and dispossession. They come from across America, from different social and economic backgrounds. Some lost everything, and some haven’t given up.
They contact me, a non-lawyer who has only written about and not participated in their struggle, because they have been abandoned, by a government that chose sides against them after the crash of 2008. They seek answers that I mostly don’t have and support I mostly cannot provide. Outside of referring them to legal aid, I cannot solve their foreclosure problems. I cannot convince a judge disinclined to rule in their favor, or a bank disinclined to see them as anything but a financial asset to be plucked, to change their minds. I can only note in sorrow that the massive netting of fraud laid by the mortgage industry over a decade ago continues to capture people like them.
But despite my lack of assistance, they typically express to me their gratitude, for one simple reason: just by giving voice to similar nightmares, I have instilled in them hope that they aren’t utterly alone in their misery, that they haven’t been singled out by a vengeful nation, that somewhere out there they have an ally and a confidant.
I wrote my book for them, for everyone who suffered as a result of the largest consumer fraud in American history and the greatest economic collapse in nearly a century. They shouldn’t be forgotten. In fact, somebody should apologize to them for having to bear the weight of the financial collapse on their shoulders, even while that suffering was exacted through outright fraud. It might as well be me.
In “Chain of Title”, I detailed how three foreclosure victims uncovered an unparalleled pattern of deceit: mortgage companies systematically using false evidence in courtrooms and county offices to take people’s homes away. This routine document fabrication covered up the unspeakable crime of breaking the chain of title on millions of home mortgages, confusing the underlying ownership and damaging 350 years of functioning property records law.
It was a work of history, depicting events mainly in 2009 and 2010. But that history lives on in my email inbox, to this very day.
Julian Soncco of Phoenix, Arizona, told me how his bank, GMAC Mortgage, broke into his home and changed the locks while he was supposed to be under bankruptcy protection. He received a favorable judgment on two occasions but has still never recovered his home. “In this country,” Soncco wrote, “no such person, no matter how much power they hold, should have the right to take or rob a family from their home without any just reason.”
Michael Powell of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said he survived two foreclosure cases over the past five years, with a third attempt possible. “People would look at me like I was crazy when I’d talk of bogus documents and robo-signing,” he wrote. Diane Bauman of Baldwin, New York, described a foreclosure case against her by JPMorgan Chase going on six years, where affidavits suddenly turned up in the last month, purporting to fix defective documents.
Kim Bolin of St. Louis, Missouri, was told to stop making payments while she negotiated a modification, and then was put into foreclosure simultaneously. The lender submitted as proof of ownership an assignment dated 2013 from the original lender Intervale Mortgage, which went out of business in 2008. Kim, her husband and her three kids expect to be out on the street in the next two weeks. “The feeling of failing your kids is unbelievable,” Bolin wrote. “I now have a heart condition that is causing rapid breathing and a rapid heart rate – the only reason they can find is the huge amount of stress I’m living with every day.”
It’s impossible to expend the time and resources necessary to verify these and the hundreds of other stories I get daily. I can’t even get through all the names of these victims. But I can paint a picture of the type of people who write them, which is nothing like the one the industry frames, a tale of deadbeats and losers who miss mortgage payments and try to scam banks into acquiring a free house.
These people are meticulous. They’ve kept every scrap of paper related to their cases, probably to preserve their own sanity. They know how the law works. Their perseverance, even while recognizing the odds against them, is remarkable.
Andy Williams drovefour hoursfrom Chicago to St. Louis to see me speak last month. His foreclosure case began eleven years ago, and he’s compiled a half-dozen law firms to help borrowers in foreclosure in the Chicago area. His lonely battle for consumer rights occurred in parallel with the subjects of my book, thousands of miles away in Florida. There was no wide-ranging community to bring all these voices together, nobody to tell them they weren’t alone.
Which I guess made me the conduit. So I hear all these stories, knowing that years after the foreclosure crisis began, judges and lawyers and prosecutors and politicians don’t want to hear them anymore. Any drive to protect the public, if it was ever there, has withered. Having exhausted other options, foreclosure victims have to approach a writer as a last line of defense. It powerfully illustrates the dislocation people feel, of being stuck in a Kafka-esque trauma without resolution.
Political analysts still manage to wonder why people are angry in a time of economic recovery, without ever even hinting recognition of the scarring impact of the foreclosure disaster. More than9.3 million American familiesgave up their home between 2006 and 2014, either in a foreclosure or a short sale or some other transaction. That translates to about 14 million people, all of whom have family and friends and colleagues who at least know of the pain caused by the foreclosure crisis. There have been more since then.
It didn’t have to turn out that way. All of the losses didn’t have to be placed upon homeowners. Somebody could have been held responsible. We could have enforced the simple rule that you can’t take a person’s home with false evidence. This bare minimum would have engendered some faith that the system works, that justice still burns somewhere in America.
So to those who have reached out to me, and those who haven’t, to everyone still feeling the pain of foreclosure, I have just one thing to say. Your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And when in your desperation you turned to me, I failed you. Because I wish I had something better to express than an apology.
POSTSCRIPT: This is my last column for Salon as a contributing writer. I am tremendously thankful to everyone I worked with here for their encouragement and support, and I exit with the best wishes that this incredible operation will thrive in the future. Thanks.
A frequent weapon for Democrats in the 2016 election is to publicly malign those they regard as critics and adversaries as Russia sympathizers, Putin stooges, or outright agents of the Kremlin. To put it mildly, this is not a new tactic in U.S. political discourse, and it’s worth placing it in historical context. That’s particularly true given how many people have now been targeted with this attack.
Strongly insinuating that the GOP nominee, Donald Trump, has nefarious, possibly treasonous allegiances to Moscow has migrated from Clinton-loyal pundits into the principal theme of the Clinton campaign itself. “The depth of Trump’s relationship with the Kremlin is revealing itself by the day,” her website announced yesterday, and vital “questions” must be answered “about Trump’s cozy relationship with Russia.” The Clinton campaign this weekend released a 1-minute video that, over and over, insinuates Trump’s disloyalty in the form of “questions” – complete with menacing pictures of Red Square. Democrats cheered wildly, and really have not stopped cheering, ever since the ex-Acting CIA Director (who, undisclosed by the NYT, now works for a Clinton operative) went to The New York Timesto claim “that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.”
But this smear tactic extends far beyond Trump. It is now used to vilify anyone perceived to be an impediment to Clinton’s victory. When WikiLeaks published thousands of DNC emails shortly before the Democratic Convention, which ultimately forced the resignation of four top officials, it was instantly asserted that it was The Russians who gave them those emails (even though The Washington Post cited an intelligence official as saying that “the intelligence community . . . has not reached a conclusion about who passed the emails to WikiLeaks” and “We have not drawn any evidentiary connection to any Russian intelligence service and WikiLeaks — none”). Democrats not only treated this evidence-free conspiracy theory as Truth, but – following the Clinton campaign – proceeded to smear WikiLeaks as a Kremlin operation:
Tomorrow on #AMJoy we'll explore the unprecedented affinity between an American presidential candidate – Trump – Russia and Wilileaks.
When Bernie Sanders looked earlier this year to be the one who was standing in Clinton’s way, slimy suggestions began emerging of his dark connections to Russia. In January, Clinton’s Senate ally Claire McCaskill went to The New York Timesto warn of ads “with a hammer and sickle” if Democrats nominate Sanders (smearing opponents by pretending to be concerned about how they’ll be attacked by the GOP is a Clinton speciality: it’s how her 2008 campaign justified inflaming the Obama-is-a-Muslim falsehood by being the first to circulate the now-infamous picture of Obama in Muslim garb while in Indonesia).
McCaskill WIELDS A KNIFE: GOP is nice to Bernie because "they can’t wait to run an ad with a hammer and sickle"https://t.co/0TAOcmTnyX
Bloomberg‘s Leonid Bershidsky noted that “Sanders’s long-ago ‘honeymoon’ in the Soviet Union is held up by his opponents as evidence of dubious judgment, and even Communist sympathies or anti-American tendencies.” During a CNN debate, Anderson Cooper began a question to him this way: “You honeymooned in the Soviet Union.”
On Saturday, it was Jill Stein’s turn in the Kremlin seat. As the Green Party candidate rises in the polls, it was only a matter of time before Democrats turned their Russia-smearing eyes toward her. One of the most widely-shared tweets of the weekend was this one from Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment: a total fabrication that was nonetheless heralded by dozens of Clinton-support journalists because it did the job of smearing a Hillary dissenter as a Russian tool:
This tweet is, to state it plainly, a lie. Stein simply did not “gush over Russian support for human rights.” To the contrary, in this very video, she criticized Russia for diverting scarce resources into military spending while its people suffered, and merely praised her fellow participants from around the world who attended an RT-sponsored conference. But no matter: Democratic operatives and journalists widely hailed it as proof that she, too, is some sort of Russia dupe or worse.
One Clinton-supporting blog – while also lying by claiming that “she only criticized the US” – attacked Stein for criticizing the U.S. while standing on dirty foreign soil (“with Red Square as her backdrop”), a long-standing trope used by the Far Right to attack liberals and Democrats for being unpatriotic by virtue of criticizing the U.S. while outside its borders. Commenting on that post, numerous Clinton supporters predictably denounced Stein as a traitor, saying “I don’t think it goes too far to suggest these are acts of sedition and possibly treason,” while the blogger himself dismissed objections over his “red-baiting” by saying “Putin is former KGB!” Journalists from major media outlets used all this to announce that Putin now has not one but (at least) two presidential candidates he controls:
So just like that, literally overnight, Clinton-supporting journalists and Democratic operatives converted Jill Stein into an agent of the Kremlin – all because she went to Russia and attended an event where Putin spoke.
So that’s the Democratic Party’s approach to the 2016 election. Those who question, criticize or are perceived to impede Hillary Clinton’s smooth, entitled path to the White House are vilified as stooges, sympathizers and/or agents of Russia: Trump, WikiLeaks, Sanders, The Intercept, Jill Stein. Other than loyal Clinton supporters, is there anyone left who is not covertly controlled by or in service to The Ruskies?
There are so many levels of irony to the Democrats’ reliance on this ugly tactic. To begin with, one presidential candidate who actually has significant, questionable ties to Russia is named . . . Hillary Clinton.
As The New York Timesdetailed in 2015, Hillary and her husband Bill were at the center of a deal that “gave the Russians control of one-fifth of all uranium production capacity in the United States.” Those responsible for engineering that deal gave millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation, which “were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.” Hillary herself approved the deal as Secretary of State, while Bill personally “received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.”
Those are ties far more substantial than either Sanders or Stein have ever been shown to have to Russia. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that The Washington Post recently reported that at least some Moscow factions may prefer Clinton to Trump.
Photo: Mikhail Metzel/AP
Then there’s the policy basis for insinuating that people like Stein and Trump have misplaced allegiances to Russia rather than the United States of America. Both have been vilified for advocating ways to reduce US/Russian tensions. Trump in particular has been attacked by Democrats for his opposition to arming Ukraine in order to deter Russian aggression, his desire to cooperate with Putin in Syria, and his questioning of the ongoing financial and security value of NATO. All this, we’re told, would benefit Putin, making anyone who advocates it in “alignment” with the Russians deliberately or otherwise.
But there’s another politicians who advocates many of these exact same policies. His name is . . . Barack Obama. Last year, even as bipartisan demands mounted for him to arm anti-Russian elements in Ukraine, Obama adamantly refused, “fearing that it would only escalate the bloodshed.” One of Obama’s key arguments, as he expressed to The Atlantic earlier this year: “Ukraine is a core Russian interest but not an American one, so Russia will always be able to maintain escalatory dominance there.”
Obama’s views on Syria are similar: he wants to work in cooperation with, not in opposition to, Russia, and has proposed a partnership to achieve that. And, of course, Obama famously mocked Mitt Romney in their 2012 debate when the GOP nominee pronounced Russia as the “biggest geopolitical threat” facing the U.S.; said the President: “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”
In sum, Obama has continually downplayed the threat posed by Russia, and has repeatedly advocated and implemented policies that are in accord with Russia’s interests, with the goal of avoiding conflict with them rather than seeking it.
Because of all this, Obama has repeatedly been attacked by the militaristic Right for being “soft on Russia” and an “enabler of Putin.” For Democrats to now adopt this warped template, and try to equate efforts to reduce tensions with Russia with some sort of disloyalty, is nothing short of mad. As my colleague Lee Fang pointed out, Obama’s refusal to capitulate to anti-Russia hysteria and seek conflict with Moscow – something Democrats are now depicting as servitude to Putin – is one of his most important accomplishments:
After forging peace with Iran, Obama's second & far less recognized foreign policy accomplishment was refusing to turn Ukraine into Syria
This Democratic campaign theme not only stigmatizes any efforts to reduce tensions with Russia as wrong-headed – just observe how Stein’s pro-peace message was converted into subversive Kremlin propaganda – but explicitly equates such efforts with evidence of disloyalty and love for Putin. Given Obama’s own record, that tactic is as self-destructive as it is stupid, manipulative and dangerous.
But by far the greatest irony in all of this is that Democrats have now explicitly adopted the exact smears that were used by the Far Right for decades to demonize liberals and the left as disloyal Kremlin stooges. For the entire second half of the 20th Century, any Americans who opposed U.S. proxy wars with Russia, or advocated arms control deals with them, or generally desired less conflict, were branded as Useful Idiots of the Kremlin, loyal to Moscow, controlled by Russian leaders. Democrats have taken this script – one of the most shameful and destructive in American history – and have made it the centerpiece of their 2016 presidential campaign.
The examples are too numerous to cite, but let’s start with the most ironic one. When Bill Clinton ran for President in 1992 against the Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush, one of the primary attacks on him was that he harbored sympathy for Russia or even disloyalty to the U.S. as evidenced by, among other things, his anti-war activism regarding Vietnam and his “unexplained” trip to Moscow as a college student. An October 9, 1992 Guardian article referred to how “the strange case of Mr Clinton’s trip to Moscow” to explain that “the Republicans are scratching away at those doubts about Mr Clinton ‘s character.” The Christian Science Monitor on October 15 of that year described “the Bush camp’s new effort to turn Bill Clinton’s bit part in the anti-war movement that swept the country 25 years ago, plus a student trip to Moscow, into something akin to treason.”
President Bush himself invoked these smears to bolster dark insinuations about Clinton’s loyalty to the Kremlin:
Mr Clinton should “level with the American people on the draft, on whether he went to Moscow, how many demonstrations he led against his own country from foreign soil,” Mr Bush declared on the Larry King television show.
“I don’t have the facts, but to go to Moscow one year after Russia crushed Czechoslovakia, and not remember who you saw – I think the answer is, level with the American people,” Mr Bush repeated.
The prospect of disloyalty became a systematic theme against Bill. As the Los Angeles Times reported on October 9, 1992, “some Republican defenders of Bush suggested that the Clinton trip was, indeed, unusual and deserved close scrutiny. Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), who was secretary of the Navy at the time of the trip, said Thursday: ‘As far as I know, travel to Moscow in those days was primarily official business.'” That Clinton harbored KGB and Kremlin connections became a staple of far-right attacks on him for years.
Claims that the Russians were trying to interfere in U.S. elections to help the Democratic candidate beat the Republican was a constant theme of the Far Right for as long as one can remember:
Even Ronald Reagan – who declared the Soviets to be an “Evil Empire” – was not immune from this smear. When Reagan sought to finalize an arms control treaty with the Russians in the 1980s, Howard Phillips, head of the Conservative Caucus, denounced him as Russia’s “Useful Idiot” – now a favorite Democratic Party slur – while another key right-wing activist, Richard Viguerie, declared: “He has quit the fight and left the field of battle.”
This slur – “Useful Idiot” – is now a favorite Democratic insult. If you’re a Hillary critic, or someone who advocates a reduction of tension with Russia, you will literally be called it every day. What’s so amazing about that is that this was the favorite right-wing insult for years, aimed at liberals, Democrats, the left – anyone who opposed U.S. militarism or advocated peace treaties. As The New York Times‘ William Safire wrote in a 1987 column about “useful idiots,” the term “is being used by anti-Communists against the ideological grandchildren of those liberals, or against anybody insufficiently anti-Communist in the view of the phrase’s user.” Indeed:
National Review has published far too many articles to count accusing Democrats of being the Kremlin’s “Useful Idiots,” while right-wing columnist Mona Charen wrote a 2004 book with that title, arguing: “Meet the ‘Useful Idiots’ Al Gore, Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, Madeleine Albright, Katie Couric, Jane Fonda, Martin Sheen, and all the other liberals who were — and are — always willing to blame America first and defend its enemies as simply ‘misunderstood.'”
A 2010 book by right-wing historian Paul Kengor was called “Dupes: How America’s Adversaries Have Manipulated Progressives for a Century.” It argues that “from the Bolshevik Revolution through the Cold War and right up to the present, many progressives have unwittingly aided some of America’s most dangerous opponents.” Specifically:
And then, of course, there’s the great pioneer of all of this himself: Senator Joseph McCarthy, who rose to fame, and then infamy, by running around accusing all sorts of domestic adversaries of being secretly loyal to, if not controlled by, their masters in Moscow. My favorite image of the Wisconsin Senator is from this YouTube clip, where he voices an accusation that one literally sees from Democrats on a daily basis:
This – at times verbatim – is the ugly, disgraceful, destructive far-right-wing script which Democrats have now fully and enthusiastically adopted in 2016 to smear their adversaries and critics. Notwithstanding the fall of Communism, it works because of the decades of training Americans have received to regard Russians as Evil Enemies, the fact that Putin himself was a former KGB official, that Americans always want and need a Super-Villain Enemy, and the massive benefits received by all sorts of influential factions from maintaining US/Russian tensions as high as possible.
But whatever else is true, there is no doubt that the methods, rhetoric, and tactics Democrats are now using are identical to the ones used by America’s Right for decades to smear liberals and the left. As The Los Angeles Timesrecently put it, “for decades, Republicans were the fiercest of Cold Warriors . . . winning elections by painting Democrats as the party of the frail and feckless. . . But in one of the most startling turnabouts in a campaign filled with role reversals, it is now the Democrats brandishing fear of Moscow as a club.” Some of them seem quite proud of this role reversal, notwithstanding the fact that they are mimicking and echoing many of the most shameful people and tactics of the 20th Century.
