Red State
...sources familiar with the Durham investigation told Fox News that John Durham had reviewed the Flynn documents and was disturbed that no whistleblowers came forward early on. Considering that there were more than a few officials who had to be aware of what was going on, including support staff, Mr. Durham found it remarkable that no one spoke up "at the onset." One would think he might have learned by now that the only use members of the deep state have for whistleblowing is when it can be used as a weapon against the right. I posted on this story here.
The next day, I received an email from one of my readers who said he could easily answer Mr. Durham’s question. It’s because "No one in the FBI or the DOJ wanted to engage in a futile suicide mission that would put them and their families through years of hell, cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, and put their pensions at risk, all so that their information could be ignored."
William Henck knows, because he lived it.
Mr. Henck’s story is the polar opposite of alleged whistleblower Eric Ciaramella’s, whose bogus complaint to then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson last August triggered President Trump’s impeachment. Not only did my reader not receive the kid-glove treatment Ciaramella did, he was terminated from his position as an IRS attorney after 30 years of service.
In November 2017, Mr. Henck was forced out for being a whistleblower. During his career at the IRS, he reported the bullying of World War II veterans, evidence of a cover-up in the Lois Lerner (or Tea Party) case, and the improper giveaway of literally billions of dollars to taxpayers represented by sketchy Washington lobbyists.
Mr.Henck said he reported his concerns both internally and externally, to his supervisor, to upper management, to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), to the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), to Congress, to Trump political appointees in the Treasury Department, and to the media. And none of his detailed complaints of misconduct were ever investigated. Not a single one.
...Sadly, Mr. Henck’s story, as disturbing as it is, is what happens when government officials blow the whistle on corruption inside of the federal government. Whistleblowers face an amoral foe with unlimited resources and a willingness to lie.
[EnvironmentalProgress] On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years. Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem.
I may seem like a strange person to be saying all of this. I have been a climate activist for 20 years and an environmentalist for 30.
But as an energy expert asked by Congress to provide objective expert testimony, and invited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to serve as Expert Reviewer of its next Assessment Report, I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public.
Continued on Page 49
[Consortium News] One can read this most recent flurry of Russia, Russia, Russia paid the Taliban ...Arabic for students... to kill GIs as an attempt to pre-empt the findings into Russiagate’s origins. I barely paused over this story. It just felt like it came out of left field.
On Friday The New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... featured a report based on anonymous intelligence officials that the Russians were paying bounties to have U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan with President Donald Trump ...dictatorial for repealing some (but not all) of the diktats of his predecessor, misogynistic because he likes pretty girls, homophobic because he doesn't think gender bending should be mandatory, truly a man for all seasons...... refusing to do anything about it. The flurry of Establishment media reporting that ensued provides further proof, if such were needed, that the erstwhile "paper of record" has earned a new moniker ‐ Gray Lady of easy virtue. Either they've gone downhill or they've been dowhill and we never noticed because of the propaganda diet we were consuming.
Over the weekend, the Times' dubious allegations grabbed headlines across all media that are likely to remain indelible in the minds of credulous Americans ‐ which seems to have been the main objective. To keep the pot boiling this morning, The New York Times' David Leonhardt's daily web piece, "The Morning" calls prominent attention to a banal article by a Heather Cox Richardson, described as a historian at Boston College, adding specific charges to the general indictment of Trump by showing "how the Trump administration has continued to treat Russia favorably." The following is from Richardson's newsletter on Friday:
‐ "On April 1 a Russian plane brought ventilators and other medical supplies to the United States ... a propaganda coup for Russia; A combination propaganda coup and nice gesture.
‐ "On April 25 Trump raised eyebrows by issuing a joint statement with Russian President Vladimir Putin ...President-for-Life of Russia. He gets along well with other presidents for life. He is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law, which occasionally results in somebody dropping dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substance. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to him. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile or dead from poisoning by polonium or other interesting substances... commemorating the 75th anniversary of the historic meeting between American and Soviet troops on the bridge of the Elbe River in Germany that signaled the final defeat of the Nazis; The Russians spend more time and sincerity commemorating the "Great Patriotic War" than we do. That meeting on the Elbe 75 years ago confirmed the Nazi goose was cooked.
‐ "On May 3, Trump called Putin and talked for an hour and a half, a discussion Trump called ’very positive'; That's the sort of thing we'd want him to do, isn't it? We used to have people manning a hotline (which was actually a teletype at first) to ensure there weren't any misunderstandings. Now they can call head of state to head of state. A lot less likelihood of Minsk or Dayton going kaboom without warning.
‐ "On May 21, the U.S. sent a humanitarian aid package worth $5.6 million to Moscow to help fight coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague) ...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men... there. The shipment included 50 ventilators, with another 150 promised for the next week; ... That was repaying the Russian gesture when their own outbreak hit.
‐ "On June 15, news broke that Trump has ordered the removal of 9,500 troops from Germany, where they support NATO ...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and structure.... against Russian aggression. ..." That's connected with Germany's laggardliness about paying for the defense we've been providing. Rather than going to Fort Riley, I believe the troops will be going to Poland, where they'll be more appreciated. As an honest Bavarian told me once, for every American driving a tank that was one less German who had to.
Historian Richardson added:
"All of these friendly overtures to Russia were alarming enough when all we knew was that Russia attacked the 2016 U.S. election and is doing so again in 2020. But it is far worse that those overtures took place when the administration knew that Russia had actively targeted American soldiers. ... this bad news apparently prompted worried intelligence officials to give up their hope that the administration would respond to the crisis, and instead to leak the story to two major newspapers." Except the story sounded like bullspit.
Hear the siren? Children, get under your desks!
THE TALL TALE ABOUT RUSSIA PAYING FOR DEAD U.S. TROOPS
Times print edition readers had to wait until this morning to learn of Trump's statement last night that he was not briefed on the cockamamie tale about bounties for killing, since it was, well, cockamamie.
Late last night the president tweeted: "Intel just reported to me that they did not find this info credible, and therefore did not report it to me or the VP. ...".... Well, ever since the Flynn case crashed and burned....
#3
/\ They've been talking about moving US troops from Germany to Polska for years, BP...guess the Poles want too much in return, I don't know. And here I thought they needed to be defended against an Iranian missile attack. HA!
#7
The 'story felt like it came out of left field'. Funny, I thought it felt like the creation of some soy-boy-stelter-pus who never heard a shot fired in anger to enrage all those doody Jesus people.
[JPost] - The battle between the US and Iran — over whether the decade-old conventional arms embargo on the Islamic Republic remains past its scheduled expiration in October — is about two much bigger issues.
The first is nuclear weapons; the second is how much power the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can project in the region — and not just arms sales in the abstract.
As such, the positions of the various UN Security Council members at Tuesday’s debate, where US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushed to extend the arms embargo past October, reflected their positions on the multidimensional issues in the US-Iran standoff.
If Israel was rooting for the US initiative and hoped that some recent anti-Iran moves by neutral UN agencies might help, Tuesday’s UNSC hearing made the strategy look like a lost cause.
China and Russia did not merely oppose Pompeo’s initiative.
They also audaciously rejected the conclusion of officials from the UN Secretary General’s Office: that drones and cruise missiles which were used to attack Saudi Arabia in September 2019 — and seized off the coast of Yemen in February — were Iranian in origin.
...China and Russia feel compelled to contradict any findings against Iran’s nuclear program or non-conventional arms, even when the conclusions come from neutral UN agencies.
In their eyes — willfully ignoring the Islamic Republic’s violence in the region from 2015-2018 — all the current tension is the fault of the US for pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. I understand Russia - trouble in ME raise their oil's price. But WTF Chinese interest except annoying USA?
Posted by: g(r)omgoru ||
07/01/2020 06:23 ||
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#1
China showing that they don't adhere to anything they don't want to is more like it.
Posted by: Chris ||
07/01/2020 14:02 Comments ||
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[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] In an unprecedented move, a Lebanese judge banned local and foreign media based in Leb ...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers... from reporting on comments or statements made by the US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea. The ban itself can’t stop the ambassador from making statements, but if it had received the approval and support of the Lebanese government, mainly the Ministry of Information, it could’ve been used as a serious tool to target media and what is left of freedom of expression in Lebanon.The judge who issued the ban — Mohammad Mazeh — is based in the southern Lebanese city of Tyre — and is known for his connection to Hezbollah and Amal. His decision came against the backdrop of an interview the ambassador gave to Al Arabiya’s TV channel, al-Hadath, saying that Hezbollah is threatening Lebanon’s stability and preventing economic solutions. Mazeh reportedly issued the ban after receiving a complaint from a citizen who was concerned the ambassador’s comments were "insulting to the Lebanese people."
In a defiant step against this ruling, many Lebanese media outlets and TV channels continued to broadcast interviews with Shea, and the Minister of Information Manal Abdel-Samad did not approve the ruling, saying that she understands "judicial concern over foreign diplomats interfering in internal affairs, but that disputes with media must be resolved through proper legal channels."
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Fred ||
07/01/2020 00:00 ||
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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.
Russia, Russia, Russia paid the 
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
...an Iranian colony situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozeen flavors of Christians. It is the home of Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
