[Hot Air] Real Clear Investigations has a story up today which sheds some light on Former CIA Director John Brennan and the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) which he helped produce. Specifically, it reveals that Brennan’s claims that the dossier was not used in the creation of the ICA appear to be false. Also, Brennan hand-selected the authors of the assessment including anti-Trump partisan Peter Strzok. In case you’ve forgotten some of the details, the January 2017 ICA reached this conclusion about the goals of Russian interference in the 2016 election:
There’s no way Brennan could have missed an appendix to the ICA, so why did he tell the House Intelligence Community the dossier was, "not in any way used as the basis for the intelligence community’s assessment?" The fact that he has become an outspoken anti-Trump presence on Twitter certainly doesn’t help his case that he was always acting as a non-partisan professional.
The story goes on to point out that when it came to the writing of the ICA, DNI James Clapper "limited input to a couple dozen chosen analysts from just three agencies ‐ the CIA, NSA and FBI." Why would he do that instead of letting all 17 intel agencies weigh in on it? Fred Fleitz a former CIA analyst who worked for the agency for 19 years believes Clapper wanted to skew the results:
[Red State] Yesterday, The Hill correspondent, John Solomon, posted an extensive story on the long-standing ties between special counsel Robert Mueller and a man who should be a target in his probe, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
Deripaska appears over and over in this saga. Deripaska was a business partner of Paul Manafort. Deripaska, or his organization, are suspected of being some of the sources for the Trump dossier compiled by Christopher Steele. Deripaska is the guy Democrat Senator Mark Warner tried to meet with in Russia. And, unlike Manafort, Deripaska was not indicted by Robert Mueller at the time when Manafort was indicted for all manner of fraudulent business practices. How, one might wonder, has Deripaska managed to be near the center of the entire Russia probe and not be touched, especially when Mueller seems more than willing to indict random Russian businesses and, I think, persons, for "meddling" in the 2016 election.
#2
This looks, smells and tastes as though Mueller required Deripaska to pay $25 million in order to get occasional visas to travel to the US in contravention of sanctions.
#3
If you give us Anna Chapman and her ten sleeper agents we'll give you Sergei Skripal and see what we can do about finding your.... "tobacco investigator" Mr. Robert Levinson.
Be advised, the Iranians are quite fond of US Dollars and the Swiss Franc.
The country was divided between the Ottoman and British empires in the early twentieth century. The Zaydi Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen was established after World War I in North Yemen before the creation of the Yemen Arab Republic in 1962. South Yemen remained a British protectorate known as the Aden Protectorate until 1967 when it became an independent state and later, a Marxist state. The two Yemeni states united to form the modern republic of Yemen in 1990.
Major media outlets on both sides of America’s political divide ran denunciations of Russian President Vladimir Putin last weekend. These include a lengthy extract in the Wall Street Journal from the memoirs of Sen. John McCain, calling Putin "an evil man ... intent on evil deeds" who "means to defeat the West." Meanwhile, Washington Post foreign policy pundit Jackson Diehl praised a delegation of Putin’s opponents, asserting that Russia "is a place where discontent is growing, the desire for civil rights is tangible and the prospect of democratic change is, in the longer term, real." The Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies linked Diehl’s column in its May 14 blast email. The Wall Street Journal devoted its weekend interview to Putin foe Bill Browder, who qualified the Putin government as a "criminal enterprise."
This sort of unanimity in the American Establishment is rare, and when it appears, it is invariably wrong.
...In this case there is one dissenting voice in the policy arena, and it belongs to President Donald J. Trump. He intervened to block additional sanctions on Russia, as American media reported. Inundated by charges of "collusion" with Moscow in the 2016 elections, the president has been at pains to show that "there's been nobody tougher on Russia than President Donald Trump," as he said April 18. Liberal CNN averred: "Trump's reversal once again raises questions about his affinity for Russia despite Moscow's meddling in the 2016 US election, its alleged use of chemical weapons on foreign soil to target a former spy and its backing for the Syrian regime as it conducts possible war crimes against its own people."
Underneath the cloud of dust thrown up by Washington’s gutter brawls, though, the president continues to pursue what I characterized as the "Trump Doctrine." This doctrine "reserves the use of American military power for vital American security interests, while seeking compromise with competing powers -- namely Russia and China -- where such compromise is possible." It is visible in America’s coordination with China over the North Korea problem. It is less visible in the case of the Middle East, where the Administration’s tough stance towards Iran requires some degree of acquiescence from Moscow.
...It is now generally acknowledged that Russia’s alliance with Iran was a matter of convenience in Syria, and that Moscow now finds Tehran’s imperial ambitions a burden; Raja Abdulrahim and Thomas Grove offer a fair sampling of Russian views on the subject in a survey for the May 14 Wall Street Journal. Former Russian diplomat Nikolay Kozhanov told the newspaper, "Russia would like to see Iran’s influence reduced in Syria, especially since they have radically different views on what post-conflict Syria should look like."
...The American foreign policy Establishment has seven years of investment in the efforts of Sunni rebels to overthrow the Assad regime, and its reflex reaction is to denounce Russia as the source of all evil in Syria. Last month’s reported poison gas attack on Syrian civilians prompted the Trump Administration to impose new sanctions on Russia. Since then no additional proof has emerged that the Assad government (which has already killed half a million of its citizens with such devices as barrel bombs) was responsible for the attack, and the issue has vanished from the news cycle. This reinforces my initial skepticism about the first reports.
More broadly, the utopian narcissism of Mainline Protestant missionaries still informs Establishment thinking about Russia. Like Mr. Diehl of the Washington Post, the Establishment believes that Russia’s democratic evolution is predestined, and that Putin’s authoritarian regime represents a temporary aberration in the inevitable course of Progress. Most of the allegations concerning Putin’s brutal repression of political dissidents as well as commercial competitors probably are true in whole or in part, but that is beside the point. Regime change in Russia is a delusion within any possible horizon of strategic calculation, and the Putin regime is simply a fact of life.
...American and Russian interests do not converge in the Middle East, to be sure, but they overlap in some respects. Russia will not help the United States bring down the Iranian theocracy, but it may not stand in the way of American efforts to do so, either. There is room for negotiation. Russia’s position well may make the difference between success and disaster for the Trump Administration’s initiative against Iran. That is why a Russian-American rapprochement is possible, despite the dudgeon of the foreign policy Establishment. For the past ten years I have argued that the most important trade-off would be American legitimization of Russia's takeover of Crimea in return for Russian help with America's policy objective in the Middle East.
[TheCollegeFix] Students at the embattled Evergreen State College, which made national headlines last year after it hosted an event that asked white people not to come on campus for a “Day of Absence,” have organized a new iteration of the controversial event despite administrators’ efforts to shift gears.
Students at the Olympia, Washington-based public school have organized a three-day “Day of Absence” observance that includes a mix of events on and off campus. Some gatherings are advertised as open to all skin colors and others ask that only POC, or People of Color, attend.
A poster hung at the school obtained by The College Fix declares that the no-whites-allowed self-segregation events will be held off campus. It asks people to RSVP at a website that spells out “No Nazis Allowed” in its URL.
The events launch today and run through Friday, according to organizers, who are not interested in media coverage of their event, according to a Facebook screenshot obtained by The College Fix.
A spokesman for Evergreen State College did not respond to a phone call and email from The College Fix on Tuesday seeking comment.
The theme of this year’s observance is “Deinstitutionalize/Decolonize.”
“The mission of this event is to bring POC together in order to create a reclamation of space and move forward into the future. In reaction to institution’s consistent disregard for our safety, we are operating independently of the college. This is a day for us, by us,” the RSVP page states.
“In addition to POC centered events there will be antiracist workshops for white folks and people who do not identify as POC. Please bring a dish or your own packed lunch and dishes! Potluck-style. No one who’s
[sic] The possessive form is whose, dudes; who’s is a contraction of who is/has. There — now you’ll have got your money’s worth for your college education...
intentions are to cause harm are allowed.”
The college’s annual “Day of Absence/Day of Presence” program has been observed for years, during which minority students would voluntarily stay off campus for a day and meet for specialized workshops. But for the first time last spring, the “Day of Absence” event reversed the usual pattern by asking whites to stay off campus for a day while racial minorities stayed on.
Following objections by a white biology professor, Bret Weinstein, students confronted him and campus police told Weinstein they couldn’t protect him on campus. After that, his class met at a nearby park. The situation prompted national headlines and criticism.
Earlier this year, officials announced they would revamp the controversial “Day of Absence” observance, instead offering an “equity symposium.”
For his part, Weinstein has weighed in on this year’s Day of Absence: “This is fascinating on many levels. The college canceled Day of Absence, so the students are going to do it.”
Last week, The Olympian reported that Evergreen State “will look to cut more than 10 percent from its operating budget for 2018-19 and raise student fees because of declining enrollment.”
#5
Powerline:
"Item 2 comes from our pals at crazy Evergreen State College in Washington:
Evergreen State College has announced that it is planning to cut $5.9 million from its budget in an effort to offset a rapidly declining enrollment rate.
The cuts were outlined by President George Bridges in a May 8 memo to the Board of Trustees, and are accompanied by plans to raise various student fees by hundreds of dollars, The Olympian reported last week. . .
According to a report released by an “Independent External Review Panel” in April, the college is expecting a decline in applications for the Fall 2018 semester of up to 20 percent, compounding the 4.5 percent decrease in Fall 2017, compared to Fall 2016.
“Further declines in applications (possibly by as much as 20%) and enrollments are expected for the Fall of 2018 based on current year-to-year data,” the report noted. “This condition, and the revenue shortfall it will create, will present Evergreen with significant financial challenges that will not be short-lived.”
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of idiots."
Posted by: Frank G ||
05/16/2018 20:45 Comments ||
Top||
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Red State] Yesterday, The Hill correspondent, John Solomon, posted an extensive story on the long-standing ties between special counsel Robert Mueller and a man who should be a target in his probe, Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.
