Plagiarizing Trump, Copy Cat Kamala Promises No Tax On Tips
At a Saturday rally in Las Vegas just three weeks into her campaign, Kamala Harris “stole” one of Donald Trump’s defining policy stances – promising to abolish federal income taxes on tips if elected. While right-wing social media reacted by vaulting #CopyCatKamala to the top of Twitter’s politics trending list, tax-savvy observers sighed, knowing the policy is riddled with drawbacks.
Harris didn’t just steal the idea, sheeven copied Trump’s choice of where to announce it, as the former president also unveiled the idea in Vegas on June 9th. That makes sense, given the hospitality-heavy city’s high proportion of voters working in tipped jobs.
From a pure retail-politics point of view, Trump’s proposal was brilliant, as it outflanked the Democrats in appealing directly to low-income, working class people. Rather than contest the position, Team Harris decided to simply neutralize its benefit to Trump by removing it as a voting-booth differentiator.
Yet, as tech entrepreneur and investor David Sacks noted on X: “The entire narrative of the Harris campaign is that she represents something fresh and new. She just shattered that by blatantly copying Trump’s “no tax on tips.”
The entire narrative of the Harris campaign is that she represents something fresh and new. She just shattered that by blatantly copying Trump’s “no tax on tips.”
And with no accomplishments from the Biden-Harris administration to ride on, Harris and her handlers have resorted to plagiarism. At the same time, corporate media is turning a blind eye to the fact that she hasn’t given a single unscripted interview since announcing her run.
Prior to Harris jumping on the bandwagon, Nevada’s two senators — both Democrats — voiced their own support for the concept. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a “No Tax On Tips Act” to make the idea a reality, and Florida GOP Rep. Byron Donalds offered a companion House bill, while Reps. Thomas Massie and Matt Gaetz offered a “Tax Free Tips Act of 2024” with different specifics.
While the concept has a great ring to it, its actual application could have an underwhelming effect on the working class and some unintended consequences for many others. As Tax Foundation senior policy analyst Alex Muresianu wrote in July:
“The policy would be poorly targeted at low- and middle-income earners, given the relatively small share of the population working in tipped occupations. Worse, the exemption itself, and any safeguards added, would add to the complexity of the tax code overall.”
Only 2.5% of American workers earn tips, and just 5% of the bottom quartile of earners, Muresianu noted, citing the work of the Yale Budget Lab. Then there’s the fact that many tip-income workers pay little or no federal income taxes as it is, thanks to the standard deduction and credits like the child tax credit and earned income tax credit (EITC).
For those who do make enough to pay federal income tax, the “no tax on tips” idea is another example of politicians picking winners and losers, with a waitress making $34,000 getting a huge break while a cashier with the same total earnings getting left out.
That brings us to an important question about policy specifics — just which taxes would tips be exempt from? Under the Cruz-Donalds “No Tax On Tips Act,” tips would be spared from federal income tax, but remain subject to the payroll tax that purportedly funds Social Security and Medicare. The Massie-Gaetz offering would exempt tips from both flavors of government theft.
On the knowingly false assumption that tax-free tips wouldn’t alter behavior of labor market participants, the cost of the proposal might be around $107 billion over 10 years. However, making a certain kind of income at least income-tax-free will offer a powerful incentive to shift compensation in that direction, including many occupations where tips are currently nonexistent.
Just last year the IRS under Biden-Harris made plans to crack down on tips.
“One could imagine a scenario in which, say, highly compensated lawyers or accountants begin to receive some of their income as voluntary tips,” cautioned Muresianu. Congress could try heading that off by imposing income limits and other restrictions on the exemption, but that would only further complicate an already Byzantine tax code. An increase to the standard deduction would offer a simpler and more even-handed avenue for easing tax pressure on the working class.
Kamala Harris, who now claims to be against taxing tips, was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which expanded the IRS so it could go after people not paying taxes on tips.
If all that isn’t enough to give you pause about “no taxes on tips,” consider how many more places — dentist offices, auto shops, florists, groceries — where you might have a cashier spinning one of those touch-screens around and asking you to choose how much you want to tip.
Prediction: when she announces her “policies” they’re going to be basically identical to Trump.
A few will stray, which will separate her, but she doesn’t have time for new policy. This is going to be a copy/paste job with 2 months to pitch what Trump’s been pitching for years.
A federal appeals court has issued an order blocking key parts of the federal government’s Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) student loan forgiveness plan, replacing an earlier temporary administrative stay with an injunction that lays out specific prohibitions that will remain in force until the court issues a final ruling on the matter or until the Supreme Court intervenes.
The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals on Aug. 9 ruled against the Department of Education’s (DOE) student loan forgiveness plan, largely granting an injunction requested by seven GOP-led states of a district court order that they say didn’t go far enough in blocking the program.
The SAVE plan, which aimed to lower monthly payments for millions of borrowers and speed up loan forgiveness for some, has been a point of contention since its introduction, drawing legal challenges from several states.
The latest order halts key aspects of the program while the legal battle continues.
The Eighth Circuit’s partial injunction prohibits the Biden administration from forgiving any principal or interest on loans under the SAVE plan, blocks provisions that would prevent interest from accruing on loans, and disallows borrowers from making very low or $0 monthly payments based on their income.
The federal government is “enjoined from any further forgiveness of principal or interest, from not charging borrowers accrued interest, and from further implementing SAVE’s payment-threshold provisions,” the judges wrote. The injunction will remain in effect until further order of the Eighth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court, the judges stated.
An initial ruling by a district court in Missouri partially blocked the SAVE plan but allowed other key parts to continue. The Eighth Circuit Court noted in its Aug. 9 order that the government adapted to the district court ruling by creating a hybrid plan that continued loan forgiveness in a different form, effectively undermining the district court’s injunction.
The hybrid plan meant that the lower court’s injunction only delayed loan forgiveness from 10 to 20 years and that borrowers could still get their loans fully forgiven after 20 years, even if they’ve made zero payments each month.
The Biden administration appealed the district court injunction, while the coalition of Republican-led states cross-appealed, seeking an expanded injunction. In response, the Eighth Circuit issued a decision on July 18 that granted the states’ emergency motion for an administrative stay, temporarily halting the implementation of the entire SAVE plan.
The Eighth Circuit then ruled on Aug. 9 to replace the administrative stay with a superseding injunction, siding with the district court’s finding that the plaintiffs have a “fair chance” of winning their argument on the merits because the sheer magnitude of the Biden administration’s debt relief plan.
Estimated to forgive around $475 billion in student loans, the SAVE plan likely exceeds the scope of congressionally authorized income-driven repayment plans.
The partial injunction only blocks the more controversial parts of the SAVE plan, such as faster forgiveness and non-accrual of interest, while allowing the federal government to continue offering income-driven repayment options to borrowers, just under stricter terms. The judges recognized that some aspects of the SAVE Plan, which were challenged as overreach, may exceed the government’s authority. However, other elements are within the permissible scope of income-driven repayment programs authorized by Congress.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona issued a statement expressing opposition to the appellate court’s decision.
“I strongly disagree with the Eighth Circuit’s decision blocking our Administration’s SAVE plan,” he said in a post on X, adding that borrowers currently enrolled in the program will be placed in an interest-free forbearance, the details of which would be announced by the DOE in the coming days.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey voiced support for the decision to grant an injunction.
“This court order is a stark reminder to the Biden–Harris Administration that Congress did not grant them the authority to saddle working Americans with $500 billion in someone else’s Ivy League debt,“ he said in a statement. ”This is a huge win for every American who still believes in paying their own way.”
Despite the injunction, the federal government can still implement the broader structure of income-driven repayment under the SAVE plan, meaning that borrowers can still make payments that are calculated based on their income and family size.
Further, the injunction indicates that all borrowers currently impacted by the Eighth Circuit Court’s administrative stay are allowed to remain in administrative forbearance and are thus not required to pay principal or interest on their loans. Also, borrowers who have remained in PAYE and REPAYE plans are not impacted, and the coalition of states that challenged the SAVE plan “cannot turn back the clock on any loans that have already been forgiven.”
Another federal judge in Kansas had also blocked parts of the SAVE plan. However, a different federal appeals court, the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, put part of that decision on hold. A group of Republican-led states have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate that injunction.
In an earlier emailed statement to The Epoch Times, a DOE spokesperson said that Congress gave the department the authority to define the terms of income-driven repayment plans in 1993 and that the SAVE plan is the fourth time the agency has used that authority.
The spokesperson added that the Biden administration “won’t stop fighting to provide support and relief to borrowers across the country—no matter how many times Republican elected officials try to stop us.”
The Education Department said recently that it had already granted $5.5 billion to 414,000 borrowers through the SAVE plan.
The administration has estimated that the program would cost taxpayers around $156 billion over a decade, while Republican attorneys general argued that its true cost will amount to around $475 billion.
The Eighth Circuit wrote in its Aug. 9 decision that a budget model by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania estimated that the program would cost $475 billion, while siding with the Kansas district court’s finding that the Biden administration’s expansion of the income-driven repayment plans from a program costing roughly $15 billion to $475 billion “expands agency authority to such an extent that it alters it.”
Apart from receiving basics like soap, toilet paper, a tooth brush and tooth paste as well as clothes and three meals per day, prisoners in the U.S. largely have to pay for additional food, religious and hygiene items themselves.
And, as Statista’s Florian Zandt details below, while inflation has driven up prices across the board, prison commissaries often add a premium that goes far beyond regular price increases.
For example, a packet of instant ramen by the brand Maruchan currently costs $0.20 at Walmart, while commissaries in state prisons around the country charge as much as $0.65 for the same serving size. This is according to data aggregated by reporters Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg and Ethan Corey at The Appeal for the first-ever database on commissary prices in the U.S.
This premium is hard to bear for many prisoners due to average prison job wages topping out at a maximum of $0.52 per hour as evidenced by an ACLU report from 2022.
Statista calculations show prison laborers in regular jobs, which include maintenance or working the kitchen, need to work an average of 1.6 hours to afford one packet of the most commonly offered state-wide ramen variant. For a cup of mac & cheese, inmates have to work more than a half-day on average. In terms of personal hygiene, many items considered basic necessities to maintain personal health are even less affordable for prisoners. A tube of toothpaste or a deodorant stick, for example, take around one and a half days to earn based on the average hourly wage.
Looking at state-level averages, many items become even less affordable to regular inmates. For example, the average hourly wage for a prisoner in Louisiana is $0.06, while a packet of ramen costs $0.57. While states like Texas, which don’t pay their prison workers at all, argue that the labor of incarcerated people pays for their room and board, companies outside the prison walls also profit from the cheapest workforce in the country. An in-depth Associated Press investigation on forced labor in prison “tied hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of agricultural products to goods sold on the open market”, with companies like McDonald’s or Walmart profiting off this arrangement.
Much fanfare has been lavished on the concept of Artificial Intelligence in the past five years to the point that its primacy is treated in the media as a forgone conclusion. The idea that algorithms can “think” has become a pervading myth, a sci-fi fantasy come to life. The reality is much less impressive…
We continually hear from globalists at the World Economic Forum and other elitist institutions that AI is the catalyst for the “4th Industrial Revolution” – A technological singularity that will supposedly change every aspect of our society forever. I keep waiting for the moment that AI does something significant in terms of advancing human knowledge or making our lives better. The moment never comes. In fact, the globalists keep moving the goalposts for what AI really is.
I would note that WEF zealots like Yuval Harari talk about AI like it is the rise of an all powerful deity (I discuss the globalist worship of AI in my article ‘Artificial Intelligence: A Secular Look At The Digital Antichrist’). Yet, Harari has also recently downplayed AI as a sentient intelligence. He argues that it doesn’t need to achieve self awareness or consciousness in order to be considered a super being or living entity. He even suggests that the popular image of a Terminator-like AI with individual agency and desire is not a legitimate expectation.
In other words, AI as it stands today is nothing more than a mindless algorithm, and thus, it is not AI. But, if every aspect of our world is engineered around digital infrastructures and the populace is taught to put blind faith in the “infallibility” of algorithms then eventually become the robot gods the globalists so desperately desire. That is to say, AI dominance is only possible if everyone BELIEVES that AI is legitimate. Harari essentially admits to this agenda in the speech above.
The allure of AI for average people is the pie-in-the-sky promise of freedom from worry or responsibility. As with all narcissists, the global elite love to future-fake and buy popular conformity now on false promises of rewards that will never come.
Yes, algorithms are currently used to help laymen do things they could not do before, such as build websites, edit essays, cheat on college exams, create bad artwork and video content, etc. Useful applications are few and far between. For example, the claim that AI is “revolutionizing” medical diagnosis and treatment is far-fetched. The US, the nation that arguably has the most access to AI tools, is also suffering from declining life expectancy. We know it’s not covid because the virus has a 99.8% average survival rate. You would think that if AI is so powerful in its ability to identify and treat ailments the average American would be living longer.
There is no evidence of a single benefit to AI on a broader social scale. At most, it looks like it will be good at taking jobs away from web developers and McDonald’s drive-thru employees. The globalist notion that AI is going to create a robotic renaissance of art, music, literature and scientific discovery is utter nonsense. AI has proven to be nothing more than a tool of mediocre convenience, but that’s actually why it’s so dangerous.
I suspect the WEF has changed its ideas about what AI should be because it’s not living up to the delusional aspirations they originally had for it. They’ve been waiting for a piece of software to come to life and start giving them insights into the mechanics of the universe and they’re starting to realize that’s never going to happen. Instead, the elitists are shifting their focus increasingly into the melding of the human world and the digital world. They want to fabricate the necessity of AI because human dependency on the technology serves the purposes of centralization.
But what would this actually look like? Well, it requires that the population continues to get dumber while AI becomes more integral to society.
For example, it is widely accepted at this point that a college education is no indication of intelligence or skill. There are millions of graduates entering the workforce today that display an unsettling level of incompetence. This is partially because college educators are less capable, ideologically biased and the average curriculum has degraded. But, also, we need to start accounting for the number of kids coasting their way through school using ChatGPT and other cheat boxes.
They don’t need to learn anything, the algorithm and their cell phone camera does it all for them. This trend is disturbing because human beings have a tendency to take the easiest path in every aspect of survival. Most people stopped learning how to grow food because industrial farming does it for us. They stopped learning how to hunt because there are slaughterhouses and refrigerated trucks. Many Zennials today are incapable of cooking for themselves because they can get takeout to their door anytime they want. They barely talk on the phone or create physical communities anymore because texting and social media have become the intermediaries in human interaction.
Yes, everything is “easier”, but that does not mean anything is better.
My great fear – The future that I see coming down the road, is one in which human beings no longer bother to think. AI might be seen as the ultimate accumulation of human knowledge; a massive library or digital brain that does all the searching and thinking for you. Why learn anything when AI “knows everything.” Except, this is a lie..
AI doesn’t know everything; it only knows what its programmers want it to know. It only gives you the information its programmers want you to have. The globalists understand this and they can taste the power that they will have should AI become paramount as an educational platform. They see it as a way to trick people into abandoning personal development and individual thought.
Look at it this way: If everyone in the world starts turning to AI for answers to all their questions, then everyone in the world will be given the same exact answers and will come to the same exact conclusions. All AI has to do is actively censor any information that contradicts the official narrative.
We got a taste of this Orwellian condition during the covid pandemic when Big Tech companies like Google used algorithms to bury any and all data that proved covid was not the threat that government officials said it was. You could not go on YouTube for at least three years and look up alternative information on covid or the vaccines. The algorithm forced everyone to sift through a long list of establishment sources, many of them promoting blatant lies about masking, social distancing, the covid death rate and vaccine safety.
The powers-that-be don’t even need to directly censor or remove information they don’t like. All they have to do is let the algorithm dictate the search results and bury the truth on Page 10,000 where no one will look.
How would this affect the average person? Say AI is programmed to dictate scientific discourse. What if AI says that man-made climate change is an undeniable reality and the “science is settled” while never presenting the mountain of counter-evidence to the contrary? No one will look up the real data because AI will make it impossible to find. Everyone will assume AI is telling them all there is to know about the subject, but it gets worse than that…
Many readers might remember a few months back when Google AI system “Gemini” was programmed to force DEI onto its users. Whenever a person asked the AI to create a historical image the algorithm made everyone black or brown and often female. Depictions of white men were suspiciously rare despite historical accuracy. This meant endless images of black and brown Highlanders in Scotland, black Founding Fathers in America, female Catholic Popes, Asian knights in Medieval Europe, and hilariously, even black Nazis in WWII Germany.
AI developers often claim that once an AI is created they don’t really control what it does and how it grows. The Gemini incident proves this is a lie. AI can definitely be controlled, or at least molded by coding to promote whatever propaganda the programmers want it to promote. There is no such thing as an autonomous AI; there is always an agenda.
To summarize, globalists want the proliferation of AI because they know that people are lazy and will use the system as a stand-in for individual research. If this happens on a large scale then AI could be used to rewrite every aspect of history, corrupt the very roots of science and mathematics and turn the population into a drooling hive mind; a buzzing froth of braindead drones consuming every proclamation of the algorithm as if it is sacrosanct.
In this way, Yuval Harari is right. AI does not need to become sentient or wield an army of killer robots to do great harm to humanity. All it has to do is be convenient enough that we no longer care to think for ourselves. Like the “Great and Powerful” OZ hiding behind a digital curtain, you assume you’re gaining knowledge from a wizard when you’re really being manipulated by globalist snake oil salesmen.
* * *
If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch. Learn more about it HERE.
According to a new report, the British punk rock band may have been prophetic in 1979 in a way never foreseen in its apocalyptic lyrics. This week, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said that the police will not necessarily confine its arrests for speech crimes to London or even the United Kingdom. Rowley suggests that Americans and other citizens could be extradited and brought to London for online postings.
London has been hit with days of violent protests over immigration policies, including attacks and arson directed at immigration centers. This violence has been fueled by false reports spread online about the person responsible for an attack at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event that left three girls dead and others wounded. Despite false claims about his being an asylum seeker, the culprit was an 18-year-old British citizen born to Rwandan parents.
News outlets and pundits have condemned the false reports and the violent protests. However, the police are moving to arrest those who are repeating false claims or engaging in inflammatory speech. Rowley is warning that they will not stop at the city limit or even the country’s borders.
He warned “We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.”
Rowley was asked by a reporter about the criticism by Elon Musk and others over the response of the government. Musk noted a video of someone allegedly arrested for offensive online comments with a question, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”
Pundits and politicians in the United Kingdom have called for an investigation or the arrest of Musk for merely speaking publicly on the controversy.
The reporter said that high profile figures have been “whipping up the hatred,” and that “the likes of Elon Musk” are involved in the online speech. She then asked what the London police are prepared to do “when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind the keyboard who may be in a different country?”
“Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law. You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material. All of those offenses are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are taking — who are causing the problems for communities.”
The message is chilling because free speech has been in a free fall in the United Kingdom as well as other Western countries. I discuss this trend in my new book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.
We also discussed the arrest of a woman who was praying to herself near an abortion clinic. English courts have seen criminalized “toxic ideologies” as part of this crack down on free speech.
The London police are now deputized to stop or arrest those engaged in speech deemed inciteful or inflammatory. Last year, the police stopped a man from walking in the street because there were pro-Palestinian protesters and his presence would be inciteful because he was “quite openly Jewish.”
The United Kingdom has a myriad of laws criminalizing speech with vague terms allowing for arbitrary enforcement. For example, Public Order Act 1986 prohibits any expressions of racial hatred, defined as hatred against a group of persons by reason of the group’s color, race, nationality (including citizenship) or ethnic or national origins.
Section 18 of the Act specifically includes any speech that is “threatening, abusive, or insulting.” An arrest does not have to be based on a showing of intent to “stir up racial hatred,” but can merely be based on a charge that “having regard to all the circumstances racial hatred is likely to be stirred up thereby.”
The country has also targeted social media companies to force them to censor users for speech deemed threatening, abusive or insulting by the government.
These ambiguous laws are written on the same “trust us, we’re the government” rationale. The police insist that they will use their discretion wisely in what speech will result in arrest.
Ordinarily, one would expect the U.S. government to push back on the suggestion that these laws could be used to arrest and extradite its citizens for the use of free speech. However, the Biden-Harris Administration has been a proponent of censorship and blacklisting for years. At the same time, leading Democrats have called for European-type laws to be adopted or enforced against U.S. citizens for their views on social media.
We previously discussed how Democratic leaders like Hillary Clinton called on foreign countries to use or pass censorship laws to prevent Elon Musk from restoring free speech protections on Twitter.
The effort of these politicians would allow free speech to be reduced to the lowest common denominator as countries export their anti-free speech laws. When Clinton called upon Europeans to censor Americans, this is precisely what such actions would look like. These foreign countries could force Americans to curtail their speech under the threat of ruinous financial penalties or even arrest.
As some of us predicted, these laws have expanded as the desire to silence others becomes an insatiable appetite. Advocacy groups have pushed the police to crackdown on their critics. Now, the threat to “throw the full force of the law at people” may be extended to the people of other nations.
“She’s Literally Running Against Herself”: VP Kamala Harris Admits Families Hit By ‘Cost Of Living’ Crisis
Vice President Kamala Harris has been the biggest ‘Bidenomics’ cheerleader over the last 3.5 years.
“That is called Bidenomics! Ha ha ha! That is called Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics!” VP Harris said one year ago.
Kamala Harris 367 days ago: “That is called Bidenomics! Ha ha ha! That is called Bidenomics and we are very proud of Bidenomics!” pic.twitter.com/gOxPZvxTCk
You can hear the nervous chuckle when she claims over and over again, “Bidenomics is working.” But in reality, America’s working poor and middle class have been financially devastated by elevated inflation and high interest rates. If you talk with any blue-collar American and bring up supermarket prices, they instantly become enraged. The same goes for auto prices, shelter costs, power bills, insurance rates, pump prices, and on and on and on.
The Federal Reserve’s latest monthly consumer credit report shows precisely why Americans are furious about Bidenomics—tens of millions of them have depleted savings and maxed out credit cards and are just a couple of steps away from financial ruin.
Crushing credit card interest rates.
Is the music about to stop for the consumer?
So, back to VP Harris. The chuckle in her voice when she mentions Bidenomics possibly signifies that she, too, understands that out-of-control government spending on ‘green’ policies has been one of the main drivers of inflation.
And on Friday evening, she addressed a campaign rally in Arizona by saying, “We believe in a future where we lower the cost of living for America’s families … so that they have a chance not just to get by but to get ahead.”
But hold up, wait a second. The whole point of Bidenomics, stated by the White House (read: here), was to “rebuild our economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down—and that strategy is working.”
VP Harris is quite literally running against herself by pointing out the ongoing cost of living crisis. In other words, she’s admitting Bidenmoics has failed the working poor and middle class.
What’s even more troubling, as Michael Shellenberger explained, is that VP Harris’ team has yet to unveil a policy-based agenda on the campaign’s website.
The media says Kamala Harris is a serious person. But she’s not. She’s adopted vapid branding, won’t hold a press conference, and hasn’t put a policy agenda on her website. The reason her campaign is soulless is because the Democrats are out of ideas and the media doesn’t care. pic.twitter.com/1AT4bS9mth
Shellenberger explained why: “The reason her campaign is soulless is because the Democrats are out of ideas and the media doesn’t care.”
Let’s be blunt. The same leftist MSM corporate media that fueled misinformation and disinformation campaigns about Covid origins (remember the narrative: seafood market), Hunter Biden’s laptop, Russia-Trump collusion, and President Biden’s mental actuality are the same group of people in their ivory towers (colluding with big tech) who have spent the last several weeks waging an all-out info war against the American public, pushing them to support a candidate (VP Harris) who doesn’t even have a policy agenda listed on her campaign website.
So much has happened since spring 2023’s Pentagon leaks that few even remember that they happened, but they’re more relevant than ever amidst Ukraine’s ongoing invasion of Russia’s Kursk Region since they proved that Zelensky had been plotting this since January 2023. The Washington Post reported on this aspect of those leaks in May 2023, writing that the US was already aware by then that Zelensky thought that this move would “give Kyiv leverage in talks with Moscow.”
This wasn’t lost on the Russians either since RT promptly published an article about it, which was analyzed here at the time, thus raising questions about why there weren’t better border defenses in place just in case. These reports circulated right before Ukraine’s ultimately failed counteroffensive, so it’s possible that the border was fortified as a precaution ahead of that happening, but then Russia grew complacent with its on-the-ground gains in Donbass over the past year and let its guard down.
About that, this analysis here from last week pointed out that Ukraine’s invasion of Kursk Region should incentivize Russia to finally eliminate groupthink. It’s difficult to believe that there were no reports whatsoever about a build-up along the border ahead of time, thus meaning that higher-ups might have dismissed whatever they were speculatively told by their underlings as “irrational”. Therein lies the problem since Ukraine always ends up surprising Russia but relevant lessons have yet to be learned.
Whether it’s long-range drone strikes against its strategic airfields, early warning systems, and even the Kremlin or naval drone attacks against its Black Sea fleet, all of which are aided by the Anglo-American Axis, Russia should have expected by now that every one of its soft spots is a likely target. Nevertheless, it’s regularly caught with its pants down, though folks also shouldn’t forget that it still intercepts a lot of drones and foils many impending plots too.
With that being said, more could have been done to protect the border from the invasion that Zelensky had been plotting for a year and a half. Prior to the latest events, he employed terrorist proxies for cross-borderraids into Belgorod Region, which might have deceived Russia into thinking that Ukraine abandoned its plans for a conventional invasion. That could explain why the only forces that it deployed along the border were counter-sabotage units who were unprepared to fend off a real invasion.
Such a decision still represents a lapse in judgement, however, when recalling that Ukrainian military-intelligence chief Budanov drew attention to Kursk Region in mid-May shortly after the start of Russia’s push into his country’s Kharkov Region. He said at the time that “they are holding a small group of forces in the border area, in the town of Sudzha. From our side, it is the Sumy direction, but the situation has not yet allowed them to take active action and start, let’s say, implementing their plan.”
As it turns out, Russia never reinforced its “small group of forces in the border area”, thus explaining why Ukraine was able to breach the border and is now fighting for control for Sudzha. Russia might have dismissed the forces that Ukraine assembled in preparation of this as an overreaction to Budanov’s aforementioned fear of a push into Sumy Region. If anything, some Russian policymakers might have even been pleased to see them, thinking that it’s better for them to be deployed there than to Donbass.
Simply put, Ukraine not only “psyched-out” Russia, but it masterfully manipulated its perceptions after realizing long ago (or being told by the Anglo-American Axis) how strongly it’s affected by groupthink. Time and again, a little creative thinking on Russia’s part would have made all the difference in thwarting Ukraine’s myriad plots, yet outdated mindsets continue to prevail in spite of all that’s happened. That needs to change, and urgently, in order for the specialoperation to succeed in its goals.
EU’s Borrell Says ‘No Justification For These Massacres’ After Israeli Strike Kills Nearly 100 Gazans
The Washington Post and several international outlets are reporting another mass casualty event in Gaza – this time a reported Israeli airstrike on a school in Gaza City sheltering refugees. Gaza’s Civil Defense Force says the attack killed at least 93 people, including women and children.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it targeted a Hamas command center and has accused Gaza sources of inflating the death toll. However, gruesome images show many mangled and charred civilian bodies strewn all over the ground in the strike aftermath.
Gaza officials say the al-Taba’een school in Gaza City was housing about 6,000 internally displaced Palestinians before it was struck. Hamas-run emergency services have called it a “horrific massacre” and European officials have responded with condemnation.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell expressed shock and horror, saying on X: “Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, with reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims. At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres.”
“The recovery operations are indescribable … The schoolyard was filled with bodies,” one local emergency response officials has said. The IDF has reacted to the widespread reports by saying the information in the media does “not align” with its own intelligence and information.
The IDF claimed that terrorists have been “operating within a Hamas command and control center embedded in the Al-Taba’een school” and charged that Hamas has again used civilian population as “human shields”.
This is the only image I can bear to share from the massacre at Tabeen school in Gaza City.
The scattered bodies and burned corpses are covered, but this glimpse barely scratches the surface of the true horror that unfolded. pic.twitter.com/RRWqMgMxyr
Bassal said three-story school had consisted of a ground floor that was a prayer room for men, a first floor that was a shelter for women and children, and a third floor that was sheltering the rest of the displaced. The building was hit by three missiles, including one from the right of the building and one from the left, that “killed everyone inside this prayer hall,” he said, adding that “we did not find a single intact body” and many of the bodies were impossible to identify.
Turkey blasted what it called a “new crime against humanity” while UK Foreign Minister David Lammy said that Britain was “appalled” at the attack and urged “an immediate ceasefire.”
“Appalled by the Israeli Military strike on al-Tabeen school and the tragic loss of life,” Lammy wrote on X, adding: “We need an immediate ceasefire to protect civilians, free all hostages, and end restrictions on aid.”
Horrified by images from a sheltering school in Gaza hit by an Israeli strike, w/ reportedly dozens of Palestinian victims.
At least 10 schools were targeted in the last weeks. There’s no justification for these massacres
We are dismayed by the terrible overall death toll. 1/2
Regional Director for Save the Children, Tamer Kirolos, said in a statement: “This is the deadliest attack on a school since last October and it is devastating to see the toll this has taken including so many children and people at the school for dawn prayers.” He stressed that “All parties must respect the protected status of schools and not use schools as battlegrounds.”
* * *
Meanwhile…
Just hours after the Biden administration Friday announced approval of $3.5 billion in military funds for Israel and shipments for new weaponry, an Israeli bombing of a school-turned-shelter in Gaza has killed 100 people or more, including scores of civilian men, women, and children in what was described as a “bloody massacre” that struck during morning prayers, leaving body parts scattered “in pieces” and healthcare workers overwhelmed with the dead and wounded. —Common Dreams
Kamala Harris responds to Gaza protesters chanting during a rally in Michigan: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” pic.twitter.com/06mhCSBAhM
Name one advantage that mass immigration from third-world countries has brought to any Western nation, anywhere, at any time. I’ll wait…
The riots that engulfed Britain this past week have again shone a spotlight on the issue that the authorities keep insisting is “beneath discussion.” And the issue isn’t racism, xenophobia, white supremacy, or any other scare word. The issue is Western ruling classes importing, against the expressed will of their citizenries, enormous numbers of immigrants who have absolutely no desire to assimilate into Western society or to respect Western values.
Following their operating manuals, the political classes and their media eunuchs refer to the British riots, along with any opposition in the Western world to mass immigration, as “far-right.” But for the past 25 years, mass immigration has been THE top concern for a plurality of American voters. Half of Americans currently view mass immigration as a “critical threat.” Half of Americans, including 42% of Democrats, favor mass deportations of illegals. It does beg the question: If half the country is “far-right,” then what does “moderate right” look like? The Green Party? The Trotskyists? Raul Castro?
And when I ask what advantages mass numbers of third-world immigrants bring, I’m talking about tangible benefits, not theoretical paeans to “diversity.” Diversity in and of itself is not a benefit. When I speak of benefits, I’m talking about a raised GDP. Safer neighborhoods and lower crime rates. Higher test scores. Stable labor markets. Respected liberties. Independence from the state welfare apparatus. Successful assimilation.
If mass immigration negatively affects all of these advantages, then sensible people will oppose it, irrespective of the argument that these migrants are simply “doing the jobs that Americans won’t do.” If the cost of maintaining these advantages — necessities, really, for a free people — means that we suck it up and endure the tediousness of maintaining our own yards or paying more money for actual Americans to perform low-skilled labor, then so be it.
Diversity is our strength? Whose strength? It doesn’t seem to be strengthening anybody, including the shortsighted “migrants” who, had they not been so immersed in their own chauvinistic, xenophobic, bigoted, and meritless pride, might experience a shred of humility and concede that maybe, just maybe, their unfortunate lot in life is the result of their own society’s cultural shortcomings rather than some ever omnipresent but never detectable “white supremacy.”
Though much of illegal immigration to the United States originates from Central and South America, we still experience the same detrimental rot of immigration from more sinister quarters. The British rioters, in particular, have been accused of targeting “Asian-owned businesses.” Asian, huh? Asia is a big place; care to narrow that down for us? You must mean Korea, right? No? The Philippines? Mongolia? Nepal? India? Are they from the same part of “Asia” as 18 of the 19 terrorists who carried out the September 11 attacks?
And if you’re banking on your “men” to save you, don’t forget what happened at the École Polytechnique in Montreal. An Algerian-Canadian, Gamil Gharbi, walked into a classroom with a rifle and ordered the fifty men to leave and the nine women to stay. All fifty “men” sheepishly complied, after which Gharbi gunned down the women, killing six of them. Gharbi then calmly left the classroom and walked past all fifty “men,” none of whom did anything other than avoid eye contact. Gharbi spent nearly twenty minutes shooting more women, killing fourteen in total before killing himself.
For the record, Gharbi had previously changed his legal name to Marc Lépine. Which name do you think the media used?
That was in 1989. White suburban liberal women have spent the last 35 years completely emasculating the concept of masculinity. So should any of Gharbi’s misogynist brethren open fire in a classroom at, let’s say, Columbia or Berkeley, we should expect no less cowardice from our latte-sipping, intentionally lisping “men,” other than to maybe offer the shooter a solidarity keffiyeh. Men like the Islamist shooter and the passive Western effeminates are both a far more “toxic” threat to your very existence than all the loud-mufflered, backward-hatted, white incels ever could be.
For Western cultists worshipping the golden calf of diversity, no crime is too ghastly to rattle their faith. Three British girls stabbed to death in Southport by a “Welsh” youth? Simply a tragedy, as unpredictable as a shark attack or a lightning strike. Muslim grooming gangs in Rotherham raping young British girls en masse, with the connivance of the authorities? Hey, let’s not be hasty, no need to pay any attention to those local sharia courts which, whatever else one can say about them, are at least enforcing Islamic law more effectively than the British system enforces British law.
Roving bands of “youths” sexually assaulting 1,200 German women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve? German papers refused to publish anything about the attackers’ ethnicity for nearly a week to avoid driving the public “into the hands of the extreme right.”
European cities like Molenbeek, Utrecht, Mälmo, and significant swathes of Brussels, Paris, and London have devolved into “no-go zones” for police and certainly for the native citizenry because they’ve effectively become self-contained outposts of radical Islam. Like their American counterparts’ singlehanded zeal for abortion, Europeans’ love affair with their precious welfare state is blinding them to the bigger threat at hand.
As of 2022, nearly 15% of the UK population was foreign-born. In Germany, the number is 18.4%. Here in America, the number is 13.8%. These numbers are simply unsustainable for any Western democracy wishing to retain the designation. The Islamization of Europe and the Balkanization of America may serve our elites’ interests at present, but even they will wake up one day to find the barbarians at their gates. And their gates’ security guards will have joined them.
This isn’t about skin color. This is about culture. And the crystal clear reality is that some cultures are superior to others. The generous bequeathment of Western culture to the world has been largely reciprocated not with gratitude, but with resentment, jealousy, and overt hostility. Immigrant groups proving themselves unwilling or unable to assimilate into Western culture or to respect Western values need to be deported immediately. Because this is a zero-sum game, and two diametrically opposed cultures will never peacefully co-exist.
We in the West have rights too. And for some of us, these rights are still worth fighting for. We have the right to our own institutions, our own history, our own security, our own prosperity, and our own futures. We have the right to exist as sovereign, independent nations, free from the overwhelming influx of savage, bigoted minds perpetually stuck in the early medieval period. Those who can’t understand that or refuse to respect that do not belong here.
We are past the “discussion.” It’s time to act. President Trump’s biggest mistake while in office was not initiating mass deportations as a necessary twin pillar to the wall construction. He’s already voiced a willingness to rectify this, but he has to win reelection first. If we lose this November, the United States of America as we understand it, as a beacon of hope for freedom-loving people, is over.
* * *
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ZeroHedge.
Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.
The latest effort at rehabilitating it is an interview by Adam Rawnsley in the current issue of Rolling Stone magazine of one Michael van Landingham, an intelligence analyst who is proud of having written the first draft of the cornerstone “analysis” of Russiagate, the so-called Intelligence Community Assessment.
The ICA blamed the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016. It was released two weeks before Trump assumed office. The thoroughly politicized assessment was an embarrassment to the profession of intelligence.
Worse, it was consequential in emasculating Trump to prevent him from working for a more decent relationship with Russia.
In July 2018, Ambassador Jack Matlock (the last U.S. envoy to the Soviet Union), was moved to write his own stinging assessment of the “Assessment” under the title: “Former US Envoy to Moscow Calls Intelligence Report on Alleged Russian Interference ‘Politically Motivated.’”
In January 2019, I wrote the following about the ICA:
“A glance at the title of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which was not endorsed by the whole community) — ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections’ — would suffice to show that the widely respected and independently-minded State Department intelligence bureau should have been included. State intelligence had demurred on several points made in the Oct. 2002 Estimate on Iraq, and even insisted on including a footnote of dissent.
James Clapper, then director of national intelligence who put together the ICA, knew that all too well. So he evidently thought it would be better not to involve troublesome dissenters, or even inform them what was afoot.
Similarly, the Defense Intelligence Agency should have been included, particularly since it has considerable expertise on the G.R.U., the Russian military intelligence agency, which has been blamed for Russian hacking of the DNC emails.
But DIA, too, has an independent streak and, in fact, is capable of reaching judgments Clapper would reject as anathema. …
With help from the Times and other mainstream media, Clapper, mostly by his silence, was able to foster the charade that the ICA was actually a bonafide product of the entire intelligence community for as long as he could get away with it. After four months it came time to fess up that the ICA had not been prepared, as Secretary Clinton and the media kept claiming, by ‘all 17 intelligence agencies.’
In fact, Clapper went one better, proudly asserting — with striking naiveté — that the ICA writers were ‘handpicked analysts’ from only the F.B.I., C.I.A., and NSA. He may have thought that this would enhance the ICA’s credibility. It is a no-brainer, however, that when you want handpicked answers, you better handpick the analysts. And so he did.”
Buried in Annex B of the ICA is this curious disclaimer:
“Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary, as well as logic, argumentation, and precedents. … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.”
Small wonder, then, that a New York Times report on the day the ICA was released noted:
“What is missing from the public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. That is a significant omission…”
Burying Obama’s Role
Mainstream journalism has successfully buried parts of the Russiagate story, including the role played by former President Barack Obama.
Was Obama aware of the “Russian hack” chicanery? There’s ample evidence he was “all in.” More than a month before the 2016 election, while the F.B.I. was still waiting for the findings of cyber-firm CrowdStrike, which the Democratic Party had hired in place of the F.B.I. to find out who had breached their servers, Obama told Clapper and Dept. of Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson not to wait.
So with the election looming, the two dutifully published a Joint Statement on Oct. 7, 2016:
“The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. … “
Clapper and the C.I.A., F.B.I., and NSA directors briefed Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017. That was the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump, telling him it showed the Russians helped him win, and that it had just been made public.
On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama used lawyerly language in an awkward attempt to cover his derriere:
“The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”
So we ended up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point… and, for good measure, use of both words — “hacking” and “leaked.”
The tale that Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in 2016 was then disproved on Dec. 5, 2017 by the head of CrowdStrike’s sworn testimony to Congress. Shawn Henry told the House Intelligence committee behind closed doors that CrowdStrike found no evidence that anyone had successfully hacked the DNC servers.
But it is still widely believed because The New York Times and other Democrat-allied corporate media never reported on that testimony when it was finally made public on May 7, 2020.
Enter Michael van Landingham
Rolling Stone’s article on July 28 about van Landingham says he is still proud of his role as one of the “hand-picked analysts” in drafting the discredited ICA.
The piece is entitled: “He Confirmed Russia Meddled in 2016 to Help Trump. Now, He’s Speaking Out.”It says: “Trump viewed the 2017 intel report as his ‘Achilles heel.’ The analyst who wrote it opens up about Trump, Russia and what really happened in 2016.”
Without ever mentioning that the conclusions of the ICA were proven false, by Henry’s testimony and the conclusions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation that found no evidence of Trump-Russia “collusion,” RollingStone says:
“The 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), dubbed ‘Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections,’ was one of the most consequential documents in modern American history. It helped trigger investigations by the House and Senate intelligence committees and a special counsel investigation, and it fueled an eight-year-long grudge that Trump has nursed against the intelligence community.”
Rawnsley writes in Rolling Stone the following as gospel truth, without providing any evidence to back it up.
“When WikiLeaks published a tranche of [John] Podesta’s emails in late October, the link between the Russian hackers and the releases became undeniable. The dump contained the original spear phishing message that Russian hackers had used to trick Podesta into coughing up his password. News outlets quickly seized on the email, crediting it for what it was: proof that the Russians were behind the campaign.”
Because Rawnsley didn’t tell us, it’s not clear how this “spear phishing message” provides “undeniable” proof that Russia was behind it. Consortium News has contacted Rawnsley to provide more detail to back up his assertion.
Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and close friend of Julian Assange, suggested to Scott Horton on Horton’s radio show in 2016 that the DNC leak and the Podesta leak came from two different sources, neither of them the Russian government.
“The Podesta emails and the DNC emails are, of course, two separate things and we shouldn’t conclude that they both have the same source,” Murray said. “In both cases we’re talking of a leak, not a hack, in that the person who was responsible for getting that information out had legal access to that information.”
Reading between the lines of the interview, one could interpret Murray’s comments as suggesting that the DNC leak came from a Democratic source and that the Podesta leak came from someone inside the U.S. intelligence community, which may have been monitoring John Podesta’s emails because the Podesta Group, which he founded with his brother Tony, served as a registered “foreign agent” for Saudi Arabia.
“John Podesta was a paid lobbyist for the Saudi government,” Murray noted. “If the American security services were not watching the communications of the Saudi government’s paid lobbyist in Washington, then the American security services would not be doing their job. … His communications are going to be of interest to a great number of other security services as well.”
Leak by Americans
Horton then asked, “Is it fair to say that you’re saying that the Podesta leak came from inside the intelligence services, NSA [the electronic spying National Security Agency] or another agency?”
“I think what I said was certainly compatible with that kind of interpretation, yeah,” Murray responded. “In both cases they are leaks by Americans.”
William Binney, a former U.S. National Security Agency technical director, told Consortium Newsthis regarding Rolling Stone‘s assertion about the Podesta emails:
“Saying something does not make it so. There is no evidence the phishers or hackers were Russian. In today’s networks, you really have to have the underlying internet protocol (IP nr) or device medium access control (MAC nr) to show the routing to/from [sending and receiving] devices to show exfiltration plus trace route evidence to show if that data went any further.
[In other words, you would need the unique computer addresses of the hacked and the hacker and anyone they may have relayed it to, if it were a hack.]
[Rawnsley] gives none of this type of data. So, until he provides this type of data, I view his statements as an opinion and not worth much at all.
The whole world-wide network has to have these numbers to get data from point A to point B in the world. No one (NSA included) has shown this data going to Wikileaks for publication. The 5EYES have Wikileaks under cast iron cover/analysis and would know this and report it.”
“There is one more aspect that’s important to take into account,” Binney added. “It’s the network log. This contains a record of every instruction sent on the network along with addresses for the sender and receiver. It’s held for a period of time according to storage allocated to it.”
Binney said:
“So, if there’s a hack, then the instruction to achieve the hack is in the log. Remember, Crowd Strike did the analysis of the DNC server all through this time and never talked about the network log. Now, Podesta’s computer does not have a network log, but the DNC and worldwide network providers do.”
Binney told CNthat he proposed automated analysis of the worldwide log for the NSA in 1992, “but they refused it as it would expose all the money and program corruption in NSA contracts.”
Binney said he was putting that function into the ThinThread program in 1999/2000 that he was developing for the NSA, but the agency “removed it in 2001 after 9/11.”
A report by the private cybersecurity firm SecureWorks in June 2016 assessed with “moderate confidence” that a group identified as APT28, nicknamed “Fancy Bear” among other names “operating from the Russian Federation … gathering intelligence on behalf of the Russian government” was behind the Podesta phishing, though as Binney points out, the NSA found no such evidence, when it would have had to, had Russia done it.
The name “Fancy Bear” of the alleged hackers from GRU, the Russian defense intelligence agency, incidentally, was coined by Dmitri Alperovich, the anti-Putin Russian co-founder of CrowdStrike.
“This whole Russiagate affair was a concoction of the DNC, the Clintons, the F.B.I. etc. and none of them have produced any specific basic evidence to support their assertions,” Binney said. “The idea that the word ‘Bear’ implies Russia is about the level of technical intellect we are dealing with here.”
Binney said these are the key technical questions that still need to be answered:
1. What are the IP and/or MAC numbers involved? And, what are the allocations of these numbers by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (network number allocation authority)?
2. What are the trace routes of the hacked packets going across the worldwide network?
3. What instructions are in the network log indicating data exfiltration of data?
4. Are there any other specific technical aspects that are relevant to a potential hack? No opinions or guesses, that’s not factual evidence of anything beyond the writers biases.”
Binney said in email:
“Even if you assume the Russians did the hack and have the DNC/Podesta emails, you still have to show the transfer of these emails to Wikileaks to know who really did the deed. So far, no one has evidence the emails were sent to Wikileaks.
Most importantly, Julian Assange publicly said it was not the Russians. Kimdotcom said he helped others (not the Russians) to get data to Wikileaks. Craig Murray talked about physical transfer of data. These statements by people involved in WikiLeaks is clearly consistent with the technical evidence I and others have assembled.”
Binny said that “until such time as those others produce specific technical evidence for peer review and validation (like we have), they are just pushing sludge up an inclined plane with a narrow squeegee hoping they can get it over the top and accepted by all.”
Binney noted that the ancient Greek school of sophism called this the fallacy of repetition. “That’s where they keep repeating a falsehood over and over again till it is believed (it helps when they say the same thing from many different directions especially by people in positions of authority),” Binney said.
So the head of CrowdStrike testifies that there’s no evidence anyone hacked the DNC and according to Binney and Murray, there is no definitive proof that Russia was behind the Podesta phishing expedition either. WikiLeaks maintains that a state actor was not the source of either.
And yet the Russiagate myth persists. It is useful in so many ways for those in the U.S. who still want to ratchet up even more tension with Russia (as though Ukraine isn’t enough) and for a political party to perhaps again explain away an election loss if it happens in November.
Thanks to Bill Binney and two other VIPS very senior NSA “alumni”, and the detailed charts and other data revealed by Edward Snowden, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) was able to publish a memorandum on Dec. 12, 2016 that, based on technical evidence, labeled the Russian hacking allegations “baseless.” The following July we issued a similar VIPS memo, with the title asking the neuralgic question, “Was the ‘Russian Hack’ an Inside Job?” The question lingers.
Shameless or Just Dumb? Michael van Landingham brags to Rolling Stone that he wrote the first draft of the meretricious cornerstone of Russiagate, the “Intelligence Community” Assessment falsely blaming the Russians for helping Trump defeat Hillary in 2016https://t.co/1yWupvqvcg
I have now posted an item on X to call attention to this latest Russiagate indignity.
I cannot escape the conclusion that journalism is not like war: In war the victors get to write the history; in today’s journalism, the losers — who get it wrong — get to write it.
