Monday, February 19, 2018

Maxie Boots shimmy kicks his way into greater oblivion

As if supporting the Iraq War wasn't bad enough, Max Boot has now decided to further flaunt his ignorance.

At THE WASHINGTON POST, he writes:

That’s roughly where we stand after the second-worst foreign attack on America in the past two decades. The Russian subversion of the 2016 election did not, to be sure, kill nearly 3,000 people. But its longer-term impact may be even more corrosive by undermining faith in our democracy.


There's no Russian subversion of the 2016 election.

But Maxie Boots hooks on his tassles and steps into his go-go boots to shimmy kick his way into yet more lies.


Reality, these aren't crimes, what the great liar Robert Mueller has charged.  From OFF GUARDIAN:

They are barely crimes, if they are crimes at all. Moon of Alabama has done an excellent breakdown of this. The primary charges of “fraud” are, essentially, that these 13 Russians did internet PR through sock-puppet accounts. This is a marketing tool as old as the internet itself, and not illegal. The British army has an entire section devoted to it. As does Israel. In fact, the Guardian reported on a massive American operation to do the same thing back in 2011.
The secondary charges of “failing to register as a foreign agent” are more serious…but only as a precedent. The idea that foreign nationals have to register as agents before expressing opinions about domestic politics is absurd. George Soros wrote a column for the Guardian last week. Barack Obama begged Scotland to vote “No”, and campaigned against Brexit. Neither of them are British citizens, or (I’m guessing) registered with Her Majesty’s government as foreign agents.
American politics are often the subject of global discussion. We’re not all foreign agents. Should we have to? Isn’t that an incredibly autocratic and dangerous idea? Does that include Israeli and Saudi DNC donors?



As Tim Haines (REAL CLEAR POLITICS) pointed out, "Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein held a brief press conference Friday to explain details in the indictment of 13 Russians over alleged election interference. Rosenstein said that no Americans had any knowledge of the operation listed in this indictment and that the operation had no impact on the outcome of the election."

Get it?

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan, speaking on SPUTNIK NEWS' LOUD AND CLEAR over the weekend pointed out, "But it just seems like they're just obviously making up stories especially about the connection between Russia and the election to foment a Cold War.  It's not bad enough that they have fomented real wars that have killed millions of people but now they want this new Cold War because, I believe they're tools of the War Machine. And if people weren't convinced in 2003 and 2004 and 2005 about this, I don't know how it could be any more clear that the corporate media is just another propaganda arm for the Pentagon."

That's what they're doing.

But it's not just the con artists from the pool of neocons like Maxie Boots.

As Max Blumenthal's pointed out, liars also include TALKING POINTS MEMO:






And it's not just TPM.  As Cindy Sheehan pointed out, it's the corporate media.  Which part of the corporate media did the most to lie us into the Iraq War?

THE NEW YORK TIMES.

Andre Damon (WSWS) points out:

The New York Times led its report on the indictments with a breathless proclamation that it shows “a sophisticated network designed to subvert the 2016 election and to support the Trump campaign.” Agents of the Russian government, the indictment supposedly proves, “posed as political activists and used the flash points of immigration, religion and race to manipulate a campaign in which those issues were already particularly divisive.”
There is much in the indictment that is highly suspicious, including one alleged transcript of a supposedly highly-trained agent extensively confessing her activities to family members as an excuse for having to work late. However, even if everything in it were taken at face value, it amounts to very little.
The document alleges that a Russian organization called the Internet Research Agency, tasked with carrying out operations all over the world and in Russia itself, had a monthly budget of approximately one million dollars.
By one estimate previously reported by the New York Times and Washington Post, the Russian government supposedly spent about $100,000 in ads on Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 election campaign to promote various issues. This figure constitutes approximately one-one thousandth of one percent of the total $6.5 billion spent in the 2016 US election cycle.
The alleged foreign “meddling” is nothing but a rounding error compared to the massive election spending of billionaires and millionaires, who have been given almost unlimited influence by the 2010 Citizens United ruling and subsequent Supreme Court decisions.

Moreover, when it comes to meddling in the internal affairs of other countries, neither Russia, nor anyone else for that matter, can hold a candle to the United States.

They sell war, that's all the corporate media does.

Will America wake up to this reality?

Maybe, maybe not.  But Caitlin Johnstone (CONSORTIUM NEWS) implores everyone to stop the madness:



Well they will not hurt Trump, because there has never been any Trump-Russia collusion. If there had been it would have been picked up by America’s sprawling surveillance networks and leaked to the Washington Post before the end of 2016, and if Trump were a Putin puppet he wouldn’t be continually escalating toward direct conflict with Russia in ways his predecessor Obama never would have dreamed of doing. They aren’t hurting Trump with these loud cries for increased sanctions and hawkishness, they’re imperiling us all.
Democrats, it is time to stop letting them bait you into calling for even more escalations with a nuclear superpower and start calling for detente instead. Republicans, it is time for you to stop putting partisan politics ahead of the survival of our species and start pushing against these dangerous escalations that your president has been playing right along with. These escalations are extremely dangerous and getting ever more so, and in the name of all that is holy I implore you to stop before the unthinkable happens.

On my knees I beg you all to stop this madness, for the sake of my children and yours. You lunatics on both sides of the political divide are going to get us all killed. In God’s name, stop. Please.


xx
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