Psst...Durham is a special prosecutor

U.S. Attorney John Durham has been appointed by Attorney General William Barr to the special task of investigating the use of the national security system to investigate Donald Trump, as a candidate and as president.

Durham has the same level of power as Robert Mueller had, and, like Mueller, is empowered to lodge criminal charges.

The mere fact that Barr avoided using the term "special counsel" or some such does not alter Durham's status. Durham's previous service as a special counsel was more low key, with few people hearing of him. He had been appointed to investigate the CIA's erasure of videotapes of "enhanced" interrogations in which captives were waterboarded.

The press's lack of interest in that inquiry demonstrates the CIA's influence in editorial decision-making.

Durham refrained from filing criminal charges in that matter, it has been reported.

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An ex-prosecutor analyzes Russiagate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z19SR8tDbE4

Ouch!

Trump says he doesn't want war with Iran, but that's exactly what he wants, because that's exactly what Saudi Arabia, Netanyahu, al-Qaeda, Bolton, Haley, and other NeoCons/NeoLibs want. That’s what he put first--not America. Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) · Twitter https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard .

The fact that Trump has a right to be president in the face of the Russiagate frame-up smear does not mean one must agree with all his policies or can't lend an ear to a critic.

Russiagate probe: Mueller skipped forensics, failed to quiz Assange

Craig Murray¹, a former United Kingdom diplomat and university rector, looks at bizarre lapses in former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller’s investigation of Russiagate.

Murray's analysis
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/05/the-real-muellergate-scandal/

A mirror page
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2019/05/11/craig-murray-muellergate-scandal/

Murray writes, "Mueller, as a matter of determined policy, omitted key steps which any honest investigator would undertake. He did not commission any forensic examination of the DNC servers. He did not interview Bill Binney². He did not interview Julian Assange. His failure to do any of those obvious things renders his report worthless.

"There has never been, by any U.S. law enforcement or security service body, a forensic examination of the DNC servers, despite the fact that the claim those servers were hacked is the very heart of the entire investigation. Instead, the security services simply accepted the 'evidence' provided by the DNC’s own IT security consultants, Crowdstrike, a company which is politically aligned to the Clintons."

Murray adds, "That is precisely the equivalent of the police receiving a phone call saying:

"'Hello? My husband has just been murdered. He had a knife in his back with the initials of the Russian man who lives next door engraved on it in Cyrillic script. I have employed a private detective who will send you photos of the body and the knife. No, you don’t need to see either of them'.”

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1. Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British Ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and Rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.

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2. Binney is a former National Security Agency technical security expert and whistleblower with a background as a mathematician.

Binney's website
https://www.whistleblower.org/bio-william-binney-and-j-kirk-wiebe/

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WikiLeaks record of achievement

How WikiLeaks changed the world
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/05/09/the-revelations-of-wikileaks-no-2-the-leak-that-exposed-the-true-afghan-war/

With the "Revelations of WikiLeaks: No. 2 —The Leak That ‘Exposed the True Afghan War," Elizabeth Vos reminds us of the sort of information that the United States was suppressing in the very long-running Afghan war -- the one that some generals concede lacks a military solution.

In a lead-in to the Vos piece, Consortium News recalls that WikiLeaks' "Afghan Diaries set off a firestorm when it revealed the suppression of civilian casualty figures, the existence of an elite U.S.-led death squad, and the covert role of Pakistan in the conflict."

Consortium News tells us,

This is the second article in a series that is looking back on the major works of the publication that has altered the world since its founding in 2006. The series is an effort to counter mainstream media coverage, which is ignoring WikiLeaks’ work, and is instead focusing on Julian Assange’s personality. It is WikiLeaks’ uncovering of governments’ crimes and corruption that set the U.S. after Assange and which ultimately led to his arrest on April 11.

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Assange reported grilled by U.S. agents
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/05/karen-kwiatkowski/pray-and-weep/

Karen Kwiatkowski, on Lew Rockwell's website, does not identify her sources, who also tell her that he is being doped with the horror drug BZ, which renders victims into basket cases. Kwiatkowski sees CIA chief Gina Haspel's hand at work, dubbing her "Chemical Gina." Kwiatkowski's background includes Air Force lieutenant colonel with a PhD. I know little about her accuracy. I certainly hope Assange is not being drugged, but, by the United States designating the publisher as a terrorist, the anti-WikiLeaks May government may believe that it is permitted to use "special" methods against a terrorist captive.

If it is true that Assange is being questioned by U.S. agents -- presumably without his lawyer present, something I suppose that can be rationalized when confronting "terrorists" -- his U.S. defense team may be able to argue that Assange's right to remain silent before and during any U.S. trial was abridged by U.S. officials under shelter of British terrorism policy.

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WikiLeaks docs vanish from Google user
Several years ago I made a point of publishing a number of WikiLeaks documents verbatim on my blog. Not only was their news value of some importance, but I also wanted to make a point of resisting Big Government's attempts to intimidate Americans against publishing or even reading "stolen" official information (who owns a democracy's governmental information, anyway?).

I have been locked out of the Blogger account that published those documents for quite a while now. Yet, in a number of instances I have been able to recover old material lost in the cloud with careful Google searches. Not so the posts that included the WikiLeaks documents. All vanished.

You may wish to search with the terms "Paul Conant", "Znewz1", "Blogger" and "WikiLeaks." I get zip once I add "WikiLeaks" to the search string.

Ban FaceBook

Just say no to that privacy-thieving outfit. Drop FaceBook. Don't worry. You'll live. Find something more productive to do with your time. Why mess with Zuckerberg's spiritual pornography anyway?*

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*I don't mean to imply that Zuckerberg is anymore Satanic than average.

Banned fly to uncensored (so far) Telegram

Twitter has a rival, Telegram. As it is evidently a non-profit organization, it isn't feeling the pressure to censor certain people or face business reprisals. Yet, that doesn't mean the oligarchs can't find a way to suppress it -- possibly by refusing to permit it to conduct business electronically (oh, but now that there is cryptocurrency everywhere, that idea might flop).

Telegram message service
https://telegram.org/

Here are the Telegram accounts of some of the media personalities un-personed by Instagram last week:

Alex Jones – https://t.me/real_AlexJones
Milo Yiannopoulos – https://t.me/officialmilo
Laura Loomer – https://t.me/loomeredofficial
Paul Joseph Watson – https://t.me/pjwnews
Faith Goldy – https://t.me/faithgoldy

"Already leftists at The Daily Beast are freaking out conservatives are finding new mediums through which to express themselves," chortles InfoWars.

Again, I do not necessarily condone or endorse the views found at InfoWars or elsewhere. I object to their contributors being muzzled as "dangerous" persons. Speech is inherently dangerous, and yet in America it is free anyway.

The data collection practices of Big Tech are dangerous, as forms of mass surveillance. Yet, the "dangerous persons" who run these Silicon Valley firms don't expect that they should be muzzled. They doubtless think that you are able to make up your own mind about what they have to say and that, if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere. Of course, they have the conceit that their nice liberal reasoning makes them non-dangerous. Yet could not a case be made that they should be silenced so as not to defend their pro-mass surveillance business model?

What about Big Liberal's heroine, Hillary Clinton? Is she not a "dangerous person"? She's taken to the airwaves lately as the replacement of Michael "Say Anything" Avenatti. Who can forget when she laughed out loud on hearing that a man was murdered. She has promoted a crazed Russiagate conspiracy theory that has been picked up by a controlled media and rent the country in two. Why doesn't Big Tech muzzle her?

'Danger' from The Independent

Christian Broughton is a dangerous conspiracy theorist. His "newspaper" publishes anti-conservative tropes. Does anyone really think the "editor" is a genuine journalist?

Congress spurns most important powerwhile chasing President's tax files

Funny how Congress demands its rights on peeking at the President's tax filings but, for the most part, gives the ho hum to its sole power to declare war, blowing that off as something that presidents do these days.

Does Pompeo know the Constitution?
Opinion by by Daniel DePetris, Washington Examiner
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/does-mike-pompeo-know-how-the-constitution-works

Does California's gov't still qualify as a republic?

Republicans have been forced to take countermeasures against California's new vote harvesting law that saw Democrats reverse numerous GOP election victories in last year's midterm races, while continuing to warn that the practice invites fraud.

In 2016, Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a change of the Election Code that allows any person to collect a mail-in ballot from voters and turn in that ballot to a polling place or the registrar’s office. Prior law restricted the practice to just relatives of or those living in the same household as the voter.

Ever since their drubbing in California’s congressional races, Republicans have raised questions about that new law, according to The Washington Post.

In a March 14 story, the Post reported that GOP leaders and operatives are quietly planning ways to improve their own ballot-harvest in California, where the party now holds a scant seven out of 53 congressional seats. The Post cited "people familiar with the efforts."

Yet, it seems likely that the harvesting scheme is much more likely to benefit Democrats than Republicans. The reason is that people who are indifferent to mailing in a ballot are not likely to follow politics, and such individuals tend to identify themselves as Democrats. In general, the more affluent who follow politics are often Republican and make sure that their ballots are cast before partisan workers offers to fetch their votes.

So the change in the law tends to make California a one-party state, and that party will be able to use its strength to see to it that Republicans remain marginalized.

The question becomes: Is California compliant with the U.S. Constitution's requirement that every state   have a republic form of government or has California now   become a degenerate democracy -- as in, one-party rule with no functioning checks and balances? Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution reads

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.

Some may wonder whether that guarantee actually applies to the federal government. Yet since the Constitution spells out exactly what form the federal government takes, the guarantee seems gratuitous -- unless the founders were perhaps using ambiguity to imply that not only must the federal government be a republic, but so must the state governments. Certainly, no state government has ever tried to set up a non-representative form of government,

A challenge to California's law needs to be fought in the federal courts. The U.S. Supreme Court could then rule on whether California's government, with its vote harvesting law, passes Constitutional muster as to whether it is any longer a true republic.

Assange detractor hid her State Dept. role

The author of a Washington Post opinion piece condemning Julian Assange as a Russian agent has been exposed by an alert reader for concealing her role as a State Department operative.

Allison Stanger, who penned the April 28 piece “Assange: Not a whistleblower, not a journalist,” was identified by The Washington Post as a "professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College and the author of 'Whistleblowers: Honesty in America from Washington to Trump'."

Lew Kingsbury wrote the Press Herald in Portland, Maine, that Stanger had neglected to mention to her readers her position as a State Department adviser under Secretary Hillary Clinton. As Stanger's Middlebury faculty page says, she has served as an adviser to "the Secretary’s Policy Planning Staff, US Department of State and was on the writing team that produced the State Department’s December 2010 Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review."

Kingsbury of Nobleboro, Maine, declared, "This overlooked tidbit obscures Stanger’s position at the State Department under Barack Obama’s Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s Mike Pompeo. To expect anything but a regurgitation of State Department sloganeering and rhetoric is unconscionable."

In addition, one may observe that Stanger is not a professional journalist, though she nevertheless has the First Amendment right to try to abridge the First Amendment right of others.

Stanger tries to make the case that Assange is really a Russian agent, but her method of insinuation is no better than the method used by Clinton and her allies to claim that Donald Trump is a Russian agent.

Also, Stanger's professionalism must be questioned because she never revealed to her readers that Assange has been charged with terrorism -- a ridiculous idea -- in order for prosecutors to evade the statute of limitations. The media in general have avoided mention of the charge, evidently because most Americans would see it as a trick to "get" a political target.

Stanger's hit job
https://www.usposts.net/2019/04/assange-not-a-whistleblower-not-a-journalist/

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Assange rights backed on Press Freedom Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGWhRCXg9Fw

Starr slams Mueller for 'great disservice'

Former Special Prosecutor Kenneth W. Starr today blasted Robert Mueller for doing a "great disservice" to the Justice Department and to Attorney General William P. Barr.

Starr said that he was using "strong words" to chastise Mueller, who has just stepped down as special counsel, for whom Starr said he has had much respect.

Starr told Neil Cavuto of Fox News that Mueller's March 27 letter criticizing Barr's initial summary of the outcome of the Russiagate probe was "unreasonable" and had given Democrats ammunition for a war against "the truth."

Starr said the Democrat attacks on Barr seem to be motivated by Barr's decision to investigate the origins of the Russiagate probe. "It's hard to explain it otherwise."

Kimberly Strassel, a Wall Street Journal columnist, was of the same opinion.

The Democratic attacks are not about Mueller, his report or "even the surreal debate over Mr. Barr’s first letter describing the report," she noted. "The attorney general delivered the transparency Democrats demanded: He quickly released a lightly redacted report, which portrayed the president in a negative light."

So what is it that is bothering Democrats? Fear is the most probable cause, the columnist wrote, observing that Barr "made real news" in a Senate hearing in which he endured hours of Democrat insults and "while the press didn’t notice, Democrats did."

Strassel added,

The attorney general said he’d already assigned people at the Justice Department to assist his investigation of the origins of the Trump-Russia probe. He said his review would be far-reaching – that he was obtaining details from congressional investigations, from the ongoing probe by the department’s inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and even from Mr. Mueller’s work. Mr. Barr said the investigation wouldn’t focus only on the fall 2016 justifications for secret surveillance warrants against Trump team members but would go back months earlier.

He also said he’d focus on the infamous "dossier" concocted by opposition-research firm Fusion GPS and British former spy Christopher Steele, on which the FBI relied so heavily in its probe. Mr. Barr acknowledged his concern that the dossier itself could be Russian disinformation, a possibility he described as not "entirely speculative." He also revealed that the department has "multiple criminal leak investigations under way" into the disclosure of classified details about the Trump-Russia investigation.

Two Democrat lawmakers, Sen. Mazie Hirono and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have accused Barr of having lied in his summary. Barr said that after receiving Mueller's publicly released letter, he had called Mueller and asked him to specify inaccuracies. None were forthcoming, Barr said.

Mueller's claim that Barr somehow misrepresented the special counsel report seems strange because Barr had already agreed to release to Congress and the public most of the report -- even to the extent of overriding privacy regulations. So what sense would there be in making a bad-faith statement when Barr knew that whatever he said in the summary could soon be compared with the report?

Hirono and Pelosi need to return to college for a refresher course in logic 101, and learn to tone down their emotional natures. Likewise for Mueller.

As special prosecutor, Starr in 1998 filed an impeachment case against President Bill Clinton in which Starr focused on a charge of perjury by Clinton in relation to his young girlfriend, Monica Lewinsky. Starr's book Contempt: A Memoir of the Clinton Investigation (Penguin Random House) was released last year. Strassel told an Aspen, Colo. audience, that, for writing about "FBI abuses" in Russiagate, "I have been called a russian spy, a traitor, a communist..."

She warned her audience that Democrats no longer favor the First Amendment, but, if they disagree with you, they will try to ostracize you from society, to "make you a pariah -- and we cannot allow that to happen." The columnist said she moved to Wasilla, Alaska, to enjoy the "freedom" evident there.

Strassel defends free speech, rips Russiagate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6den-SEYXb0

New York Times ex-editor indicted as terrorist

Ridiculous thought, isn't it? Yet did not the editor, Jill Abramson, publish top secret data from the NSA that had been purloined by Edward Snowden?

So how does that situation differ, in truth, from the editor of WikiLeaks publishing (not highly) classified information purloined by Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning?

Perhaps the current editor of the Times, Dean Baquet, should face terrorism charges for publishing classified information leaked by James Comey when he was FBI director.

Surely it wouldn't be difficult to comb the federal code for some trivial violation and slap a "terror" label on it so as to evade the statute of limitations, as was done in the Assange case.

Manning is being held in federal prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury concerning Assange. But can you blame him? Anything he says could be distorted and cause him to face a bogus terrorism charge. The fact that s/he served a commuted prison term for his/her theft of government data provides her partial immunity with respect to some aspects of that case. The problem is that if prosecutors sniff out some illegal activity based on his testimony, they can charge her with a crime if they can plausibly claim they obtained the information by another route. Prosecutors are expected to be honorable. But not all are.

Rod poised to wreck Deep State?

Interesting theory: Rosenstein was Trump's guy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqZT8PQfQKw

Now he is poised to testify against Deep State plotters, it is believed.

May gov't in row with UN panel over Assange penalty

Prime Minister Teresa May's government is in a tussle with the United Nations over the "disproportionate" 50-week sentence of Julian Assange for a "minor violation."

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, a UN panel of legal experts, also challenged May's Conservative government for holding Assange in a high-security prison "as if he were convicted of a serious criminal offense." The panel reiterated its recommendation that the British government free Assange.

May's isolationist-leaning government is rejecting the UN panel's findings as she works to remove Britain from international influence, whether it be that of the UN or the European Union. May's government is antagonistic to the panel -- even though the UN experts pointed out that in 2017 a Swedish prosecutor interviewed Assange at the embassy, and then declined to press charges.

In 2015 the Working Group accused Britain and Sweden of forcing Assange to be "arbitrarily detained" in the Ecuador embassy in London.

Meanwhile, most members of the public who wished to witness Assange's extradition hearing were barred. Only a few members of the press were able to squeeze into the courtroom. Authorities chose a small room no doubt to prevent Assange's supporters from getting in.

Assange was also barred from the courtroom and was given a terrorist-style video hearing from Belmarsh prison, sometimes known as the "British Guantanamo." The United States has slapped the publisher with a terrorism indictment, which the media are not mentioning, as a means of evading the statute of limitations on illegal cyber intrusion -- though that case appears very tenuous, lawyers say.

The Working Group said in a statement:

The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention is deeply concerned about this course of action including the disproportionate sentence imposed on Mr. Assange. The Working Group is of the view that violating bail is a minor violation that, in the United Kingdom, carries a maximum sentence of 12 months in prison, even though the bond related to the bail has been lost in favor of the British Government, and that Mr. Assange was still detained after violating the bail which, in any case should not stand after the Opinion was issued. The Working Group regrets that the Government has not complied with its Opinion and has now furthered the arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Mr. Assange.

It is worth recalling that the detention and the subsequent bail of Mr. Assange in the UK were connected to preliminary investigations initiated in 2010 by a prosecutor in Sweden. It is equally worth noting that that prosecutor did not press any charges against Mr. Assange and that in 2017, after interviewing him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, she discontinued investigations and brought an end to the case.

The Working Group is further concerned that Mr. Assange has been detained since 11 April 2019 in Belmarsh prison, a high-security prison, as if he were convicted for a serious criminal offence. This treatment appears to contravene the principles of necessity and proportionality envisaged by the human rights standards.

The WGAD reiterates its recommendation to the Government of the United Kingdom, as expressed in its Opinion 54/2015, and its 21 December 2018 statement, that the right of Mr Assange to personal liberty should be restored.

Assange punished for ducking unjust prosecution

Why did Assange skip bail seven years ago? To avoid being extradited to Sweden, supposedly to be questioned by police but really to be extradited to the United States, which intended to punish him harshly. But the U.S. kept its actions pretty much under wraps, although a U.S. diplomat did speak up to interfere in the sex case against Assange, making clear the U.S. wanted Swedish prosecutors to pursue sex charges. (It turns out that the more serious sex charge is unprovable -- no semen, no DNA, which should have been on the condom he was reputed to have deliberately split.)

Now we find he is facing extradition on a bogus terrorism charge, with the high probability of draconian Espionage Act charges added once he arrives in the U.S.

What does this show? It shows that he acted in a responsible way when he protected himself from harsh U.S. vengeance by skipping bail and taking refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy. There is a phrase lawyers sometimes use when a client does something illegal when there is seemingly no choice: "The only game in town." What else could he have done?

Hence, in light of these mitigating circumstances, 50 weeks in jail is outrageously unfair. Assange, when he fled authorities, was a publisher facing terrible retribution for publishing official secrets, something that the British government forbids but that the American government may not meddle in despite its determination to do so.

Assange's personality is irrelevant. Whether or not he is a narcissist has nothing to do with anything. Of course the system wants to demonize him ad hominem. That's because its case is so weak. The strategy is to undermine him so severely that it can get away with behaving unjustly toward one of the tribunes of the people.

FaceBook robs youas BuzzFeed poisons you

FaceBook Thought Police at work molding your mind
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanhatesthis/facebook-instagram-ban-jones-loomer-farrakhan-infowars-milo

The company is being forced by federal regulators to place "privacy minded" executives in top positions in order to counter rampant rip-off of personal data.

Note how FaceBook doesn't want you to have access to certain information, while at the same time the company is scouring every nook and cranny of your private life as part of its business model.

The best way to cope with this Empire of Evil is to get off FaceBook now! And, considering that BuzzFeed applauds FaceBook's censorship policy, it's also a good idea to cut that wicked organization out of your electronic life. It's amazing that BuzzFeed, the maestro of sleazy clickbait, wants "politically uncool" material off the internet.

Curious that BuzzFeed News cast all those who were put under an embargo in an uncomplimentary light, while making no effort to get their side of the story. Not an ounce of objectivity at BuzzFeed.

Also BuzzFeed unreflectively lumps Louis Farrakhan, who makes no bones about being anti-Semitic, with Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson, who are accused, with no evidence cited, of anti-Semitism. I've never heard either of those men attack Jews or Jewishness. Sometimes some "defenders of Jews" become confused about whether it is permissible to criticize the policies of the State of Israel. They seem to think that anyone who does so is obviously anti-Semitic.

TOP LAWMAN HINTS MUELLER MISSED KEY RUSSIA EVIDENCE

Steele dossier's Russia ties probed

Special counsel skipped Dem side of Russiagate
https://www.justice.gov/storage/report.pdf

Attorney General William Barr says the Justice Department is now following a thread of Russiagate ignored by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Barr indicated that Mueller had overlooked evidence tying the Steele dossier to a Russian disinformation effort.
In a Senate hearing, Sen. John Cormyn asked him, "Can you state with confidence that the Steele dossier was not part of a Russian disinformation campaign?"

"No I can't state that with confidence, and that is one of the areas we are reviewing," Barr [pictured] replied, adding that he was "concerned about" the possibility, "and I don't think it's entirely speculative."

Do a "control f" and search for "Steele" or "dossier" and you will find absolutely ZERO mention of ex-Russia spy Christopher Steele and the dossier he filled with sordid, unverifiable allegations against Trump and members of his team. Steele's dossier was financed, after the money was laundered, by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which was under the control of Clinton.

Mueller evidently made no effort to check into the origins of the Russian counterintelligence investigation that he had been mandated to continue, or to determine that investigation's legitimacy. Mueller seems to have made no effort to investigate the collusion between the Clinton campaign and Russian agents hired by the Clintonites to meddle in the 2016 presidential election.

Assange sex charges followed Pentagon manhunt

Feds sought publisher well before 'rape' claims halted him
https://blackagendareport.com/pentagon-manhunt-julian-assange-preceded-swedish-rape-allegations

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Story by Ann Garrison of Black Agenda Report, May 1, 2019

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Chomsky rips 'scandalous' anti-Assange conspiracy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYdDp4mHDRY

'We have to silence this voice' of the 'political prisoner' Assange.

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