07 October 2016

October Surprises: The DNC, Putin and Assange

It has been well known for some time that Wikileaks' Julian Assange was planning an 'October Surprise' for Hillary Clinton and at last it has come in the form of leaked speech transcripts. At last we have some information regarding Hillary Clinton's rather highly paid and controversial speeches to Goldman Sachs.


The analysis is hardly complete but already they reveal an 'unveiled' Hillary Clinton and more or less confirm what many already thought. She's an Establishment figure and has no qualms about taking public positions that can be contrasted with her real 'private' feelings and the policies she will pursue. Like most politicians, she's a phony.

The DNC and the US Establishment are beating the war drums and Vladimir Putin's Russia is their target. For some time they've been trying to paint Assange as a pro-Putin collaborator. This only demonstrates they do not understand him or the alternative media. It's not that Assange or other Clinton critics such as John Pilger are pro-Putin. That's just not the case at all. They are simply anti-Clinton.

In the absurd thought dynamic that dominates American politics anti-Clinton means pro-Trump and yet this is pure fallacy. There are many who believe (and rightly so) that there's no viable candidate, both parties represent the same values but that said... some (and only some) will argue Trump is perhaps a variable while Hillary Clinton is not. Hillary is pro-Wall Street and pro-War and thus they oppose her. With Trump who they do not support, there is at least the possibility of the US war machine being neutralised by the chaos he generates. That said, they would all admit he is a repulsive and evil figure but only slightly worse than Hillary Clinton. In fact Trump's values are really not that different than those held by the American Establishment. His problem is he's uneducated, boorish, vulgar and unpolished. He says things that aren't supposed to be vocalised even if many in the Establishment and certainly among the masses feel (more or less) the same way. Is he a lecher? You bet he is and he's by no means the first running for high office that's been guilty of being a moral wretch. This is the nature of power.

I am consistently amazed that so many think our leaders are people with morals and integrity. They obviously have never read a book, a journalistic article or watched anything beyond what is approved by the mainstream.

A prime example would be the recent PBS Frontline piece, 'The Choice 2016'. While certainly interesting and somewhat informative it was in the end a whitewash... certainly of the Clintons.

Many figures in the alternative media advocate voting for third parties or even, not at all.

Assange is not pro-Putin. If it were revealed that he was somehow collaborating with Moscow his credibility and the Wikileaks project would be forever destroyed. His critics will point to his short-lived programme that appeared on Russia Today (RT) which is known to have Kremlin connections. Yet if anyone bothers to watch RT they'll find figures as diverse as Ron Paul, Julian Assange, Chalmers Johnson, Nigel Farage and many others (both Left and Right) representing a wide range of views. The station more or less functions as a Radio Free America, a channel granting American dissenters a voice. This is why it has some popularity among consumers of alternate media.

A few months ago the DNC suggested that Russia was behind the hacked emails that led to its chairman's resignation and a scandal regarding the committee's blatantly corrupt internal politics. And yet the public was never given any proof and as Edward Snowden assured us, it would be easy to see and the NSA or some other agency would have been able to release something, some form of even a redacted document that demonstrated Russian guilt.  


We never saw it.

NSA whistleblower William Binney thinks it was done by someone inside the DNC or US intelligence. There's other evidence that suggests this.

And now we're supposed to believe the Obama administration's expanded charge that Putin is 'meddling' with US elections?

Where's the proof?

In fact the timing is rather revealing. The Administration knew the Assange/Wikileaks release was pending. They waited until the moment it went public and then formally and publically charged Russia with election tampering. I don't doubt they've been sitting on the press release for some time.

This is little more than an attempt to discredit Assange and his organisation and to step up the propaganda campaign against Russia. The charge against Russia is supposed to indicate that Assange is obviously their tool.

Will the leaks benefit Trump? Maybe, but so what? Not everyone is going along with the Bernie Sanders fraud of channeling the Left into supporting the pro-Establishment, pro-Capitalist, pro-militarist ever Right-ward trending Democratic Party. Bernie Sander's political revolution turned out to be little more than... you have to support the Hillary Clinton Right-wing vs. the Nativist/Fascist Trump bloc. In other words it's a false choice and a counterfeit movement.  Frontline suggests we have a choice? What choice?

The fact that the Trump misogynist/predator video was also released today may not be a coincidence. It may be a counter-October Surprise meant to deflect from everything else and destroy any capital he might have gained from the Clinton transcripts. It would be interesting to know how long someone has been sitting on that video.

An additional point...if Russia was involved in US meddling, which at this point I am not at all convinced... I wouldn't put it past Putin... but I don't trust the US government or its media either. We may never know the whole story.

If Russia was seeking to influence the US election, can you blame them? Considering the agenda that Washington has pursued since 1991 one can hardly blame them for trying. Considering the obvious direction US policy is headed vis-à-vis Moscow, they would almost be fools not to do whatever they could. A Trump presidency is a gamble, while a Clinton administration is a guarantee of crisis and brinksmanship.

Even today while these stories were breaking, Western media focused on Russian jets violating Finnish airspace. Finland has been collaborating with Israel on arms sales, allowing US jets into their country for joint exercises and upgrading their American F-18s which are the mainstay of their air force. And there's little doubt that Russia is suspicious of Pentagon officials meeting with officials in Helsinki, today's new security pact dispelling any doubts they may have had. The US has been quietly working on a trilateral side arrangement with non-NATO members Sweden and Finland. While not officially part of the NATO command structure their militaries are being slowly and quietly brought into the larger strategic equation.



Finally, the US can make all the noise it wants to, but any protestations are purely hypocritical. The US has manipulated the elections and politics in literally dozens of nations over the past century or so, many of them its own allies. No nation in the world has consistently demonstrated a more anti-democratic foreign policy than the United States. This is indisputable.

We pray that calmer heads will prevail and that some of the Washington strategists will heed the advice of Brzezinski (a strange thing to say) and embrace diplomacy and coexistence rather than the march to destructive and perhaps catastrophic conflict.

The American public is being swindled. It's starting to feel a lot like 2002.

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