NYT Admits “no evidence” of Russian Collusion.
The headline says it all really – it’s not exaggeration or spin on our part. For months, years even, we’ve been told that Trump is “the Siberian candidate”, or “Putin’s puppet” and “Russia’s Weapon”. The evidence was never supplied, but those who questioned the claim were mocked, derided and ignored.
None of that matters now…because today, in the New York Times, these words were published:
…no public evidence has emerged showing that his campaign conspired with Russia in the election interference or accepted Russian money.”
For proof, and just in case they take it down, here’s the screen cap they took over at Moon of Alabama:
Right there in black-and-white. There are other words, of course, thousands of them, a quarter of a novel. All designed to blow smoke over this para and give the opposite impression without actually lying. But none of the others matter: these 20 words prove Russiagate is fake, and that the NYT knows it and just hopes its readers don’t catch on. That para is basically a full on admission that everything else in the article is filler and pulp and gossip and nonsense.
What we’ve been saying, all along, is finally an admitted fact in the mainstream media.
Moon of Alabama has done a good piece on this here.
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If Mueller’s “Russiagate investigation” papers are made public, the most embarrassed will likely be Theresa May.
Given that an important ‘prosecution’ item is the Steele dossier and that Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, had to resign within six hours of its publication, any document that reveals Skripal as the author, ‘minded’ by MI6, will point to the British as interfering in the American election, not the Russians.
No wonder May was so quick to blame the Russians for Skripal’s “poisoning”.
Of course, a public interview with Skripal (or his daughter or the policeman or the doctor, all of whom were at the scene) would clear the air . . .
And then there’s the Corporate Candidates.
Bought and $old at the drop of a $, or two.
What the MoA article says and this one does not is that the statement about “no public evidence” occurred in paragraph 183 of a 199 paragraph article, most of which was adamantly claiming that there was Russian collusion in the election of Trump. This is a standard tactic of NYT – and indeed the reason I stopped reading it regularly some years ago. It is a propaganda organ just like the Guardian.
grandstand, Thanks for that clarification. When I saw that headline my only question was, Why now? The answer is a clear: now, at last, a grudging admission that they were wrong all the time and cannot wriggle out of it. Like 50 years after France killing and torturing 1.5Million Algerians, M.Micron offers a micro apology.
Genocide against Moslems is a mere detail of history in France, but the Holy ‘Holocaust’ is a quasi-State religion. It tells you exactly who controls French politics, through the pay-strings.
Meanwhile on the other side of the Atlantic the Grauniad is still today bangin’ on about the Russian collusion that never was.
You know your in for a laugh when they wheel out Luke Harding . Aided and abetted this time by two other fearless journos we learn that those dastardly Russians have been planning to spring Julian Assange from his captivity and whisk him back to mother Russia.
Oddly enough Luke forgot to name any of his sauces but it’s worth reading on to paragraph 8 when he slips in ….
“Details of the Assange escape plan are sketchy.”
Good old Luke …. what a pro.
Should you wish to read the article …https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/21/julian-assange-russia-ecuador-embassy-london-secret-escape-plan
Harding is really rather hopeless as a reporter. He should stick to writing trashy novels about spies. Though he’s never even going to be Ian Flemming. It apparently took three hacks to cobble this crap together, help! Seriously, it’s a disgrace that the Guardian publishes this fake stuff, at the same time that they self-righteously brag about their role as a bastion against fake news. I often wonder if they are just really ignorant and stupid, or cynics in it for the money. I’m not sure which is worse.
Three of them and probably editors too and they still can’t get it right. The Swedes didn’t drop the case against Assange because of the statute of limitations in relation to all the possible charges that might be raised. Some of the allegations are still ‘live’ under Swedish law and will be for some time. Poor Luke and his miserable chums, can’t even get that crucially important fact right, so what is one supposed to make of the rest of it, the stuff they more or less just made up? Harding really isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, despite his love of revealing stuff.
The Swedes dropped the case because it was so transparently weak and the chances of a conviction were close to zero. Christ they didn’t even have enough of a case to even charge Assange with any offence after years of investigation, which surely has to tell one something about the strength of the Swedish case! But that means next to nothing for Harding, who is a fanatic and paranoid too, seeing the evil Russians and their dastardly plots everywhere. Really it’s a form of racism, the racism liberals and the soft-left are allowed and encouraged to indulge in, knowing there are no consequences. Try substituting ‘Jews’ and ‘Israel’ in relation to Harding’s absurd conspiracy theories. Imagine the outcry there would be. He’d be out on his ear in a flash.
Some would say that writing trashy novels about spies is indeed all Luke does
Here’s William Blum
‘ anti empire report:
“…The Washington Post has a regular “fact checker”, Glenn Kessler, who checks the accuracy of statements made by politicians and other public figures. On September 3 he announced that President Trump’s first 592 days in office had produced 4,713 false or misleading claims; that’s about 8 per day.
“The article included a list of the types of claims, including the investigation into “Russian interference in the 2016 election” and whether people in the Trump campaign were in any way connected to it. Kessler believes they were. “All told, more than 200 times the president has made claims suggesting the Russia probe is made up, a hoax or a fraud.”
“The “fact checker” needs to be fact-checked. He takes it as gospel that Russia consciously and purposefully interfered in the election, but like all the many other commentators offers no evidence. It’s conceivable that evidence of such has actually been presented and I was in a coma that day. (Would I remember that I was in a coma? Probably only if someone told me. So far no one has told me that I was in a coma.)
“Keep in mind that a statement from the CIA that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
“Keep in mind that a statement from the FBI that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
“Keep in mind that a statement from the NSA that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
“Keep in mind that a statement from a dozen other US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the election does not count as evidence. It’s merely a statement.
“Here’s James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence: “To me it stretches credulity to think that the Russians didn’t have profound impact” on the outcome of the election. [2] Clearly if the man had any evidence to substantiate his statement he would have provided it at the time. He did not provide any. So all we get is another statement.
“There are not many government bureaucrats who would publicly contradict the CIA, the FBI and the NSA on an important intelligence matter. How impressed would you be if a dozen Russian intelligence agencies all declared that Russia did not interfere in any way in the US 2016 election?
“Moreover, keep in mind that numerous notices and advertisements posted to Facebook and other social media calling for the election of Trump and/or the defeat of Clinton do not count as evidence of Russian interference in the election even if some or most of the postings were seemingly made by Russians. Countless other notices and advertisements called for the election of Clinton and/or the defeat of Trump.
“Moreover, many of these social-media postings (which members of Congress and the media like to make so much of) were posted well before the candidates were chosen, or even after the election took place.
“So what do we make of all this? Well, it’s been pointed out that most of these postings were to so-called “click-bait” Internet sites that earn payments based on their volume of traffic. I have not come across any other explanation of the huge number of electoral postings during 2014-2017.
“And forget about Trump aides like Paul Manafort and his partner Rick Gates, who’ve been charged with various financial crimes such as money laundering, tax and bank fraud, failure to register as a lobbyist, and more; in part the charges involve Ukraine – But NOTHING to do with Russian interference in the 2016 US election, although their cases have undoubtedly fed that story.
“The idea of Russian interference in the US election has been repeated so many times in so many places that it’s now taken as unquestioned history. Guardian reporter Luke Harding has a book out called “Collusion: Secret meetings, dirty money, and how Russia helped Donald Trump win”, which reinforces this myth, and wouldn’t be worth mentioning except that Harding was interviewed by that rare breed, a skeptical journalist, Aaron Maté. Harding repeats one anti-Russian cliché after another, but Maté refuses to allow him to get away with any of it. It’s indeed refreshing. Have a look.
“Even if you assumed that all the charges made about “Russian interfering in the elections” were true, and put them all together, they still wouldn’t have a fraction of the impact on the 2016 elections as did Republicans in several states by disenfranchising likely Democratic voters (blacks, poor, students, people in largely Democratic districts), by purging state voting lists.
“Noam Chomsky has pointed out that Israeli intervention in US elections “vastly overwhelms” anything Russia has done. Israeli leader Netanyahu goes directly to speak to Congress without even consulting the president.
“The United States joined a grand alliance with the forces of the communist Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin in World War II, but Washington can’t even talk civilly now with capitalist Russia. When your goal is world domination any country that stands in the way of that is an enemy. American conservatives in particular have a most difficult time shaking this mind-set. Here’s the prominent conservative host of National Public Radio (NPR), Cokie Roberts, bemoaning Trump’s supposed desire to develop friendly relations with Russia, saying: “This country has had a consistent policy for 70 years towards the Soviet Union and Russia, and Trump is trying to undo that.” [3]
“If Trump were to establish good relations with Russia the lack of a European enemy would also leave NATO (= the US) even more obviously unnecessary.
“Then we have the Skripal poisoning case allegedly carried out by Russia in the UK: There are just two things missing to support this allegation: 1) any verifiable evidence, AT ALL, and 2) any plausible motive for the Russian government to have carried out such a crime. But stay tuned, the Brits may yet find Vladimir Putin’s passport at the scene of the crime.”
Our Luke Harding is making is name for himself in the States. Whether he is as famous as Chris Steele is doubtful but then he’s lacks Steeles’s seniority in the service.
I should have added:
“Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to williamblum.org is provided.”
Interesting how Operation Paperclip was so honourable, but Russia hosting Assange would be so treasonous.
Mass murderers helped to escape justice, but Whistleblower must be hung.
Good to have clarified Western Values.
That villainous bulldust reaches new lows of filthy treachery towards Assange and complicity in his persecution, even for the Fraudian vermin. What evil swine they truly are.
Russiagate is ending?
That unsettles me.
It means change, and these days that seems to mean that things are going to get worse.
Change can also be for the better.
If the NYT were to fold and the editors were put in prison, that kind of change would make me more optomistic.
It’s not ending any time soon. The NYT might admit there’s no evidence, but the rest of its lengthy article still presents the groundless speculation as fact. The inertia will keep this train going for a while even if the brakes start to be applied
I and most other objective people could have saved the authorities 10s of millions of dollars and divisive disruption of the nation and the presidency, because the instant the Democrats came out with this nonsense it was immediately apparent that the object of the exercise was to push the release of the Democrats’ devastating true emails and attendant myriad scandals by the Democrats to the back of the paper. The official agencies, cued up at the same time, began their investigations using the well-worn Stalinist technique: bring allegations or charges bearing no relevance to the investigation at hand against underlings of the target you wish to bring down, intimidate them or torture them into confessing, promise relatively lenient punishment, and have them testify in a kangaroo court to bring down your higher target. Though direct physical torture may not be used today, implicit methods such as public shaming by wild accusations bringing the hapless victim to the point of financial ruin or ideally to the edge of a nervous breakdown (just to the edge: they do have to testify!), or perhaps throwing people in solitary confinement for purported misdemeanors rather than allowing the normal bailing provisions prove to be just as effective.
The communists also used to be good at this sort of thing (and the ones that are left still are …): if someone comes out with an accusation which happens to be obviously true, immediately accuse the accuser of the same thing, but louder, and throw in some other nonsense as well. The more outrageous, the better, because ‘journalists’ are addicted to headline material as opposed to tedious articles about ordinary things that happen. Amusingly, the leftist conspiracy theorists come out with the most blatant conspiracy theories while accusing the side that tells the truth they are conspiracy theorists – there we go again; accuse others of what you do, but louder. Ironically, (but maybe not), the Democrats have been demonstrated to be the actual ‘colluders’ , bearers of false witness, and financial criminality of which they accuse others. Have a spy on your staff for 20 years? No problem. Have an unsecured email account that sends top secret emails in real time to the intelligence services of another nation? No problem. Release unredacted classified documents that demonstrate active collusion to undermine a presidency even before the nominee wins the election, and then later takes office? Big Problem.
An instructive historical example is the travesty of the Watergate hearings. Just in time for the evening news, another shocking revelation would be issued – only to be retracted on page 43 the next day. No worries: another one would be given, and most often retracted. Witnesses were harassed, mistreated, and humiliated on live TV unless they testified according to the partly line.
Stalinism, and its devotees, live on.
So the Communists are to blame for this Russophobic plague. And the Democrats are the ‘left’ and Watergate was a conspiracy against the saintly anti-communist Dick Nixon.
The names sound familiar but the planet you are talking about must be in a different galaxy far away. Or maybe under a rock in America where John ‘blloodstained’ Birch made Stalin look like an amateur.
Stalinist ‘methods’. Read up.
Surely you were describing McCarthyism there Roberto?
That’s an interesting point. The contemporary reaction to McCarthyism was much like the current Deep State and the media reaction to the current nonsense. The result then was that the name of McCarthy became an epithet for the whole anti-communist attempted purge, but his committee was just the trailing edge of a process that had been going on for the previous 15 years. The government and the highest offices of the Administration had been so permeated with Soviet operatives, right up to the President’s office, that foreign policy was affected.
Any remedial removal of operatives simply entailed reassigning them to different government departments.
Imagine sending a trusted advisor to the president to negotiate with Stalin on the future of Poland when the advisor is actually working for Stalin? It happened. Meanwhile the US and UK achieved virtually no penetration of the Soviet government. No wonder Uncle Joe had no reaction and no specific comment when Truman told him the big secret that suggested an atomic bomb (but not identified as such) was just about ready; Uncle Joe knew more about the bomb than he did, and knew it from the initiation of the project, receiving regular and timely updates on its progress from all the scientists who worked on it through his network of agents in the States – and the UK.
The only one destroyed by McCarthyism was McCarthy. Fortunately for those who are interested in actual facts, pretty well everything McCarthy claimed was true and everything his critics claimed was false, as the Venona papers later confirmed – and the studies of the archives of the Soviet Union also confirmed. He may have said 205 and the correct number was 203, but that doesn’t make it much less true.
The second level of history, based on documentation, as opposed to the sound bites and phrases that attempt to capture whole periods of history to be consumed in school textbooks, media summaries, and other propaganda vehicles are without fail, inaccurate and insufficient, but well serve ideologues of a certain persuasion who were memorialised in the words of someone who referred to them as ‘Useful Idiots’, of which there seems to be an ongoing infinite supply – and who were first on the list to be liquidated if the opportunity presented itself.
Well they were supposed to be ALLIES AGAINST the nazis, weren’t they?
Unless you accept that Hitler and his state were the Isil proxy army of that day setup to conquest Russia ob behalf of the US bankers and barons?
So why shouldn’t the scientists, antifascists and civil servants NOT have made sure they were in lickstep with their fellow allies?
“The only one destroyed by McCarthyism was McCarthy. .”
This is very obviously untrue.
Many careers and lives were destroyed by McCarthyism,. You point out correctly that, for example, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee was long established by the time that McCarthy arrived on the scene. But there is no doubt that McCarthy was a powerful publicist for the witch hunting movement which was an important part of an era in which Taft Hartley crippled the Labour movement, which has never recovered from its blows and the campaigns against socialists and communists which drove Americans into exile, many of them in London.
“Fortunately for those who are interested in actual facts, pretty well everything McCarthy claimed was true and everything his critics claimed was false, as the Venona papers later confirmed – and the studies of the archives of the Soviet Union also confirmed. He may have said 205 and the correct number was 203, but that doesn’t make it much less true.”
This too is untrue. It is remarkable how many comments there are on the internet from nascent fascists whose uncritical acceptance of the crudest kind of anti Communist propaganda foes hand in hand with the revival of views on the origins of the Cold War which haven’t been seen or heard since the sixties. If i didn’t come across it so often I would not believe that McCarthy not only still has defenders but that the thoroughly discredited charges that he made are taken seriously. They weren’t then.
The Venona papers was nothing more than a list of the names of Americans that US Intelligence thought were mentioned in encrypted intercepted Soviet signals.
Anyone wondering whether such nonsense as “Clinton lost thanks to Putin” comes from could do worse than to look at the rubbish that McCarthy had public opinion, and Mrs Clinton’s family, swallowing.
McCarthy was responsible for much evil, those who defend him are wallowing in the blood of millions of victims of his followers: neither Korea nor Vietnam is understandable without knowing about the McCarthy phenomenon.
Fabricating ‘Soviet Archives’ was quite a cottage industry under the uber-Quisling Yeltsin.
Love the “no public evidence”. Can’t let it go can they? Trump is still an idiot though.
Just some of the time. But not being in ‘The Club’ is the biggest problem he has. He’s too ‘street’. Too direct. Diplomats, career politicians, and especially bureaucrats, are horrified when someone says what they mean and mean what they say.
Ironically, that’s why he was elected.
Disclosure: I don’t agree with many policies he has, or is attempting to implement.
But it’s sold a lot of papers
And used to justify all manner of anti-democratic behaviour
…..which in turn has led to the bombing of Syria, more sanctions against Russia and probably the closest i can remember to an actual hot war between the West and Russia, but don’t blink folks because the show ain’t over yet!