Though The Intercept continues its path of compromise and
decline there are still some shining moments which, more often than not are
connected to Glenn Greenwald. This article was no exception. In this piece from
December, Greenwald reveals the true scandal surrounding 2016 election, the one
that's getting almost no attention.
Being punished along the lines of and in keeping with the
greater campaign against Assange, Snowden and Manning, Greenwald faces charges
from the Bolsonaro government, a deeply corrupt administration he has laboured
to expose. He's being accused of cybercrimes, of collaborating in the hacked acquisition
of communications by government officials involved in Operation Carwash, a
supposedly ongoing (and certainly US-assisted) operation which was revealed to
be biased and corrupt.
Sergio Moro the federal judge in the case who in 2018 sent former
president and 2018 presidential candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to prison
fell under Greenwald's scrutiny. Moro who is now serving as Justice Minister in
Bolsonaro's cabinet was revealed to be working in concert with the Operation
Carwash prosecutor and given US intelligence connections to Carwash and Moro's
background contacts with Ivy League law schools and the US State Department,
there are a lot of questions being asked about Moro. Lula da Silva and his
successor Dilma Rousseff were hated by the Washington Establishment and
Operation Carwash took them both down... Rousseff was removed from office and
Lula the leading candidate in the election was sent to prison... opening the
door for Jair Bolsonaro, a GOP-Trump administration favourite.
Both the US Deep State and the Bolsonaro government are after
Greenwald and in addition to his reporting on Brazil, he's one of the lone
remaining voices within adversarial-alternative journalism that's speaking out
about the corruption surrounding the Anti-Trump campaign. His testimony is all
the more powerful when one understands that Greenwald is no advocate of
Right-wing political positions. Far from it. And yet he's watched the American
Democratic Party shift far to the Right and it has pushed not only the
mainstream media to the Right but it has even swept up large sections of
alternative media outlets.... The Intercept (with a few exceptions) included.
There is a veritable clash within the Establishment, a crisis
and conflict already underway during the Obama era but which has been
exacerbated by the ascendancy of Donald Trump.
Greenwald is among just a handful of figures that's playing
the role of spoiler. He's calling out the Left, and the many alternative media
outlets that have fallen in line with the DNC's Neo-McCarthyite campaign.
Additionally, there's the role of figures like Bernie Sanders who while
posturing as Hard Left are revealed
to be little more than shills for the DNC. The American political spectrum is
in chaos at the moment and though people on the Right would insist there is a
Left-wing takeover, the truth is that while on a social level the Left is
scoring some victories, when it comes to nationalism, the national security
state, the military and Wall Street, everything is moving to the Right. It is
only in light of the Right-ward tilt that figures like Sanders and Warren with
their weak protests and posturing appear to be Leftist figures. Their so-called
Socialism is revealed to be little more than capitalist patronage and at best represents
a light re-structuring of the tax and labour systems, programmes which are all
but dead on arrival were they to be submitted to congress. Such restructuring
represents no existential threat to the system, rather they serve as 'relief
valves' meant if anything to strengthen the system, grant it more vitality and
longevity.
While Sanders represents a threat in the form of potential
instability and fecklessness, the clear and present danger is represented by
Donald Trump.
In his lecture on The
Rise and Decline of US Global Power, Alfred McCoy explains just how much
Trump is a threat to Atlantic Establishment. His victory blindsided them and
they've struggled in the aftermath, pursuing campaigns focused on removal or in
other cases containment. Trump's policies while aggressive toward Moscow (in
many respects more so than Obama) are insufficient and he's completely dropped
the ball on China, a point many on both sides of the partisan aisle have come
to understand as an existential threat to the US dominated global order. From
Trump's dropping of the TPP, to his vacillations on the military aspects of the
Pivot to Asia policy, to the rabbit trails and sidetracks concerning North
Korea and even the trade war, Trump has failed (at a critical moment) to
contain China. He has alienated allies and as an enemy of international trade
agreements, he has virtually handed Eurasia to Beijing, and not just Beijing,
but a new China under Xi Jinping who has launched his nation into a new imperialist
phase and in pursuit of an agenda which clearly seeks to break US control of
what Mackinder called 'The World Island'.*
This will mark the end of US hegemony and end any hope of
American unipolarity... a dream which seemed so certain in 1991 but is already
quickly fading. This is why the Establishment would see Trump not only removed
but removed on the basis of national security. This explains the McCarthyite
campaign being waged against him by the Clinton faction and the CIA-State
Security wing of the Democrats. Though unwilling to publically break with their
party there are not a few within the GOP that would also (for these same
reasons) like to see Trump removed.
To be honest given the stakes I'm surprised he hasn't been
eliminated except for the fact that such a move risks massive civil unrest
which will spawn reciprocatory unrest and violence and risks plunging the
nation into civil war, a point that is being talked about more and more every
day. All possibilities contain threats and dangers which is why the Democrats
have laboured to paint Trump as a criminal and traitor in order to turn his
base against him. It's not working, and Trump is quick to respond to his base
and toss them bones and rally them. So far his strategy is working and it seems
clear to all the impeachment has failed.
There is every indication that the political classes as well
as Wall Street have a growing fear of civil unrest. This is why Trump's removal
on the basis of national security will not only provide the government with a
foreign policy mandate vis-à-vis Russia and China, it will provide a mandate to
censor speech (in particular dissident media) and unleash a new regime of
surveillance and data collection. The Establishment has long sought to control
the media and did so with great success for several decades but the Internet
age has presented unique and very threatening challenges. While some may be
familiar with Operation Mockingbird they would be mistaken to think the
operation is dead, something that belongs to yesteryear. It is very much alive
as the 2008 expose' of the PMA program or 'General's Plan' revealed. While that
operation was 'canceled' and whitewashed, you can be sure there are many more
such operations in the works.
This is the context for Greenwald's revelations regarding the illegal FBI investigation of the Trump campaign. It represented a panicked effort on
the part of the Deep State, attempting to work though elements within various
Federal agencies (like the FBI) to curtail, sabotage and/or derail his
election. Caught completely off-guard by a hubris-tainted mis-reading of the
electorate, the FBI continued (via Mueller) to cobble together charges and
weave a conspiracy narrative with regard to Moscow. All of this points to a
long known reality that the Establishment doesn't actually believe in genuine
democracy and in fact the system actually has the potential to create a real
crisis for those in power. The greater the power, the more threat is contained
in a democratic process. For years the various presidential elections have been
little more than grand spectacles, never actually meant to be serious
participatory events. These elections have successfully been manipulated and
indeed corrupted for decades. The candidates have either been both acceptable
options to the Establishment or any genuine outsider (and thus threat) has been
eliminated either at the ballot box or through other means.
With Trump and 2016, they were caught off guard and never saw
it coming.
There have been additional crises surrounding leaks,
processes and strategies. The boiled over anger combined with a spate of policy
failures and the sudden threat of a Trump White House proved too much. Enter
Greenwald and the further revelation of corruption with regard to the FBI and
the Establishment's treatment of Trump and the old guard is facing an
existential crisis of confidence to
borrow from an earlier president's lexicon.
The response has been to lash out and destroy the
whistleblowers, leakers and the journalists that have revealed these stories.
Painted as criminals and terrorists the case against them is part of the
Anti-Russia spin as they are painted as dupes and tools of the enemy which
seeks to sow discord.
The utmost expression of this process was the recent attempt
by Hilary Clinton to paint pro-war/pro-empire Democratic candidate Tulsi
Gabbard as a pawn of Moscow, a patently absurd claim but one deemed necessary
as Gabbard challenged several of the security state narratives and dared to
harness alternative media reporting in her attacks on rival candidates. Viewed
as a threat, the Establishment has taken determined steps to all but shut down
her campaign. Unlike Sanders and Warren her dissidence was not in service of
the DNC (and thus the Establishment). She was and remains a threat. Given that
she's young, attractive, a veteran and of minority background her campaign and
her boldness have obviously generated some fear and thus the internecine
conflict is instructive and bears watching.
The entire Russia-baiting campaign is (for the most part)
silly on many fronts and the crusade seeks to cover up the many (leaked)
Establishment crimes being reported and in general add to the climate of fear.
The country and culture are already polarised and divided but by demonising
Russia and using that narrative to present figures like Greenwald, Gabbard, Snowden,
Manning and Assange as traitors, they can argue that present divisions are part
of a sinister Moscow plan being implemented by enemies within. It's a rather
brilliant strategy but one far too complicated for the American public to
properly grasp.
In reality it is the FBI and the many leaders within the Establishment
that have betrayed the ideals of the United States, or at least what they mean
on paper. As has been repeatedly pointed out Trump is a criminal and has
repeatedly violated the law and they could charge him with dozens of crimes...
but such prosecutions are potentially dangerous to the status quo and fail to
achieve the larger set of goals, the reverses so desperately wanted, as every
day Trump continues to weaken the United States.
There is such irony in the fact that Trump supporters think
he's 'Making America Great Again', even while he daily weakens US standing around
the globe. Their failure to understand how the system works and how the empire
has functioned since 1945 has led them to misinterpret events and misdirect
their anger. Easily misled and distracted by propaganda, the Trump supporting public
has focused their ire on aid packages, the Chinese government and
misunderstandings of multi-lateralism and globalism... confusing the latter
with socialism rather than a phase of über- or large-scale capitalism. Betrayed
by their leaders they've put their faith in Trump the outsider. And while Trump
is indeed an outsider in terms of the Atlantic-Imperial order, as a great
friend to Wall Street, he's not a genuine enemy of the Establishment. Rather he
represents a faction within it. Or more correctly the people behind him
represent that faction. Trump himself is clearly an unprincipled buffoon and
fairly malleable. He represents nothing other than himself. His followers
believe he has been successful and has kept promises and the delusion may
return him to office in 2020. In
particular he holds the Christian community under a spell, which is both
disturbing and telling.
From my standpoint, approaching the question as a Christian,
I care little as to whether he wins or loses. I will hardly weep to see the
American Empire dismantled but I know such a process also presents real
dangers. My greatest angst regarding Trump is with regard to the Church but at
this point, nothing much surprises me anymore. The Evangelical support for
Trump is but another phase in that movement's worldly compromise and apostasy
and while it's painful (on a public level) to watch 'Christians' take shots at
one another and to see such fragmentation I can only hope that some good will
come out of it. If the apostates become more extreme in their apostasy and
basic rejection of New Testament doctrine, ethics and concepts, then so be it.
Maybe it will help others to see and reconsider many basic assumptions and
return once more to the New Testament. I'm not optimistic but I can continue to
hope.
* The Rise and Decline of US Global Power by Alfred McCoy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GygmGSwvcI)
An excellent lecture. While I cannot agree with McCoy's
rather friendly posturing toward US power, he nevertheless presents a
thoughtful and provocative summary of the current state of affairs. During the
Q&A session which is marred by a rude audience member, McCoy elaborates on
some of the issues and is candid concerning their morality. In the end he would
still favour a US-led Imperium versus the potentialities of chaos or a
non-liberal global order led by Beijing and Moscow. Again, I don't agree with
everything he says and I would certainly question the ethics of some of his
interpretations, but I would still highly recommend the talk.
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