Dangerous Memes By Walrus.

The "Birther" meme attached to President Obama was a cleverly crafted and slimy attempt to derail his Presidential campaign. While it developed a life of its own after his inauguration it never was going to be a call to action by patriots. The Trump - Russia meme in my opinion is a much more serious information operation because it is designed to question the legitimacy of a President Trump defence and foreign policy actions.

To put that another way, this IO is not political point scoring, its attempting to influence U.S. foreign and defence policy in a very direct way - precluding a whole raft of policy options related to normalizing relations with Russia, winding back NATO expansion and other areas that I don't even know about. I don't know if this is against the law or not.

CNN  has just led with a story that the intelligence community presented Trump with a dossier alleging five years work by the Russian Government to both compromise Trump and promote his presidential prospects and allege collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian Government. 

"....(CNN)Classified documents presented last week to President Obama and President-elect Trump included allegations that Russian operatives claim to have compromising personal and financial information about Mr. Trump, multiple US officials with direct knowledge of the briefings tell CNN.

The allegations were presented in a two-page synopsis that was appended to a report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. The allegations came, in part, from memos compiled by a former British intelligence operative, whose past work US intelligence officials consider credible. The FBI is investigating the credibility and accuracy of these allegations, which are based primarily on information from Russian sources, but has not confirmed many essential details in the memos about Mr. Trump...."

 

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/10/politics/donald-trump-intelligence-report-russia/index.html

 

Buzzfeed obligingly then leaks all 35 pages of the alleged "Memos" on which the summary is allegedly based, that go into scatalogical detail about Trump in Russia.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/kenbensinger/these-reports-allege-trump-has-deep-ties-to-russia?utm_term=.pkOOrazq7#.oc4JGA7v2

 

Folks, to me, it doesn't seem to me that American politics can get more surreal. I don't think I've seen more flaky conglomerations passing as intelligence summaries, ever..... and CNN apparently bought it,..... and the liberal media follow suit. Trump wanted to defile the bed that President Obama slept in at a hotel in Moscow, so he arranged a sex party???

The Alt right are now digging and it seems that at least the plot for that particular memo ( the sex party one) was fed by a prankster to one DNC operative Wilson, who appears to have run with it. CNN,  Fake News all of the time. 

I'm half a world away in opposite time zones, please tell us what your morning brings... It seems to me that a "Trump the Traitor" meme is a very dangerous creation.

Comments

[Willybilly]

The west and its NATO mémé have gone bunkers, literally.... It's very very hard to stoop any lower than that.
Shooting themselves in the foot, is the least we can say, but IMO, they are about to go even lower ....
The chicken will come home to roost.

[Sam Peralta]

Walrus

There's a concerted attempt to de-legitimize the President-elect as he takes office. This seems clearly to prevent rapprochement between the US & Russia and other yet to be evident reasons. What is interesting is this is a continuation of the attacks during the campaign where the media and the political elite threw everything they had to take him down but he was able to get enough voters in Pennsylvania, Michigan & Wisconsin to bring him victory. Now, the intelligence agencies have also joined in the takedown. This seems like a building coup attempting to lead to impeachment or a coerced resignation. The right it seems are gonna fight back. Note this tweet by Drudge:

"Are corrupt US intel agencies blackmailing Trump with their own dirt cleverly tagged to 'Russian' operatives?"

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE/status/818983576935034881

The question is will the intensity of these attacks increase after Trump is sworn in? Will Trump push back? How will he deal with the government "insiders" who want his scalp?

This could get ugly real fast.

[Kassandra]

Very dangerous, indeed. This strategy assaults the heart of America's vitality: The right to dispute, to dissent, and to quest for a better way. It installs inquisition, the rights of nqked kings to impose their lies as god-given truths, and saves the asses of a feudal mob robbing American citizens and other human beings with impunity, killing opposers as they like. Good night and good luck, America.

[Balint Somkuti]

It's not just the US, but also the EU where the political left builds a world where there is no place for people who do not subjugate to even their wildest ideas.

In the very spirit of Marx, Lenin, Guevara and other communist icons the political right (or anybody who refuses to be subdued) is nothing but 'enemy of progress' and must undergo being labeled a terrorist, a nazi etc. And all that in the name of tolerance.

This wrongly called 'liberal' world view which excludes anybody on the other side of an opaquely drawn line (compare that to Göring's: I decide who is Jew!) is the direct successor of hard line communism.

And as the world is finally turning against them you all better heed the advice of Sándor Márai, exiled hungarian writer:

"It will be difficult to get rid of the communists, since noone is more dangerous than a beneficiary of a fallen ideology who does not fight for the idea anymore, but for its prey."

[Kutte]

Walrus,

When the CIA tells Trump that the Russians have incriminating material on him, they are really telling him, that THEY have incriminating material. Hoover did the same with the Kennedys. He showed them all sorts of pictures, and then claimed to protect them. Very obvious blackmail.

[Jack]

"WikiLeaks = relentlessly attacked for publishing verified, authentic info
BuzzFeed = cheered for publishing what appears to be a total sham"

Check out @mtracey's Tweet: https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/819063759515881472?s=09

[VietnamVet]

Walrus,

I have never seen anything like this intentional delegitimizing of the President Elect prior to the Inauguration. It is more than Intelligence Agency managers being forced into retirement or a cover up of the Democratic Party’s incompetence. The Global Elite who own the corporate media have awakened to the fact that their lackeys can’t paper over the escalating looting of the Middle Class. Globalism and Democracy are incompatible. It is in the best interest of Western Citizens to be allied with Russians to contain the spread of the Daesh; but, not for war profiteers or disaster capitalists.

I firmly believe mankind’s survival depends on democratic governments seizing power for the people back from oligarchs who took it over the past 36 years.

[Stumpy]

I find it hard to gauge how much traction all this rubbish gets in the public mind. Now the Pakistanis and N. Koreans are firing missiles with increasing range, US tanks are rolling into Estonia, yet the media seem best exemplified by Meryl Streep castigating Trump for mocking a reporter -- just as Pence was lectured by the cast of Hamilton. The marriage of Hollywood and Washington is doing as well as ever. Pity the public may not be able to distinguish between them.

[eakens]

So much for our intelligence services.

[Ghostship]

If you could travel back to 2012 and looked around for the likely next president of the United States after Obama and drew up a list of potential candidates, how close to the top would Trump be? Would he even be on it?
BTW, British "intelligence" have a history of making stuff up such as the various dodgy dossiers about Iraq and the Political Warfare Executive that morphed into the Psychological Warfare Division within SHAEF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Warfare_Executive

[Peter Reichard]

Walrus; yes, this Trump/Russia hysteria goes far beyond the silly political partisan ranting of the
"he is illegitimate and not my President" line so prevalent with Obama since '08 and now with our soon to be new POTUS. Trump above all represents a threat to the deeply held bipartisan establishment crush Russia policy of the last three administrations. A true Russia reset can not be allowed, thus there is this unprecedented preemptive attempt to cut Trump off at the knees even before he takes the oath of office. I've never seen anything like it before. There is however a Kissinger led school of thought that supports Trump and seeks to ally with Russia against China just as we did the opposite in the '70's when the relative positions of those two powers was reversed. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[Clueless Joe]

Particularly dangerous since Buzzfeed, who leaked it, is well aware it's "vague allegations" with serious to doubt its veracity. Yet they still leaked it, and the mainstream media ran with the story like Trump had actually been caught on live TV doing these things...
https://twitter.com/BuzzFeedBen/status/818978955965464580
Dangerous both for the US democracy, with a worsening climate, having half the country mistrusting the future president and the other half mistrusting media as a whole. Dangerous for US media themselves, since their credibility is taking serious hits, and they'll have the future president and part of his government and administration with an axe to grind and possibly bent on retaliation - and far fewer people willing to defend "freedom of the press" if it ever is under attack.

[Lemur]

here's a screen shot of the poast from /pol/
https://southfront.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/2.png

The altright has been trolling Rick Wilson for a while, ever since he accused them of an overly amorous relationship to anime. You can read the whole sordid tale of what they uncovered here: https://mpcdot.com/forums/topic/8748-rick-wilsons-son-is-a-goddamn-piss-pimp/page__st__40#entry243563

[BillWade]

I am, literally, LMAO this morning.

[Martin Oline]

It seems that now that Buzzfeed published the "memos" the MSM outlets will be promoting the story for the next news cycle, however long that lasts. B goes into this stories background quite a bit for those who would like more information. The following is from Moon Of Alabama:
"The first "reports" were created as part of the opposition research by a Republican candidate running in the primaries against Trump. They were later produced for the Democratic Party campaign. They have been shopped around in Washington for several month. The NYT, the WSJ, CNN and the FBI investigated the assertions in them. Despite their considerable combined investigative capacities they could verify none of them."

[Seamus Padraig]

If the Trumpster can survive until his inauguration, there's going to be a massive purger over in Langley starting January 21st. After that, I'm sure this newfound liberal love affair with the CIA will come to an abrupt end.

[Barish]

The sad thing is, this tripe is being disseminated across national and language borders - here's a sample from ZDF, one of two major public channels here in Germany:

http://www.heute.de/kreml-dementiert-kompromittierende-trump-infos-zu-besitzen-46298004.html

A translation of key parts, including title:

"Kremlin: No controversial documents on Trump

[...]

Buzzfeed: Justified doubts about accusations
According to a two-page summary, which was presented to Trump, Moscow is in possession of information about the private life and finances of Trump, the New York Times reported. While CNN did not provide any particulars on this alleged information which was circulated in Washington for months, the media portal Buzzfeed published 35 pages which mention sex videos with prostitutes in a Moscow luxury hotel in 2013, among other things. Further, he [Trump] was offered lucrative business deals to gain influence on him. Editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed Ben Smith, however, said that there are "serious reasons* to doubt the allegations". Yet, for sake of transparency the decision for publishing [the article] was made.

Initially, other media outlets did not report on the concrete accusations as they were not solid."

Given the last sentence, why in the world was it picked up, then? For whom it may be of concern, here's a link to the 35-page "document" that is mentioned there, with the worst howlers marked in yellow:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

I hope this is just a matter of an intern filling the gaps while the core personnel are still off for New Year's holidays...then again, who am I kidding given the never-ending barrage of hysteria coming out of western MSM across the board ever since they were deprived of their God-Empress's coronation in November?

[raven]

Yea, at least Republicans had the class to wait until after the inauguration.

[English Outsider]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38579126

"The BBC has not verified the claims. The US intelligence community has not said anything."

"It allegedly refers to documents said to have been compiled for Mr Trump's political enemies by a former British intelligence agent, CNN and the New York Times say.
Past work by this operative was considered by US intelligence to be credible, the reports add."

So a thousand lawyers working for a thousand news outlets in the US and here have decided it's OK to circulate transparent fiction about the President-elect of the United States. Provided an "alleged" is thrown in here and there.

The "former British intelligence agent" should be identified. The means by which this fiction was originated and publicised should be investigated. The politicians and government employees who assisted in circulating the fiction should be held to account.

Until that's done the politicisation of intelligence work will be an ever-present danger. The intelligence services are supposed to look to the defence of their country. Why employ them for that if they decide instead to get involved in smear politics?

Presumably the lawyers checked that the news outlets publicising this fiction could do so safely. That doesn't alter the fact that those news outlets have now lost any remaining shred of credibility.

[The Porkchop Express]

Don't read or visit 4chan ever. They have a reputation for being pranksters, bordering on behaving like total assholes. But they take credit for things they do and don't take credit for things they don't do--but that's their general rep, from what I understand from my more internet literate/millennial friends.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-10/4chan-claims-have-fabricated-anti-trump-report-hoax

[Allen Thomson]

Well, this is an interesting twist if true.

=========================

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts

John McCain passes FBI dossier alleging secret Trump-Russia contacts

Senator John McCain passed documents to the FBI director, James Comey, last month alleging secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Moscow and that Russian intelligence had personally compromising material on the president-elect himself.

The material, which has been seen by the Guardian, is a series of reports on Trump’s relationship with Moscow. They were drawn up by a former western counter-intelligence official, now working as a private consultant. BuzzFeed on Tuesday published the documents, which it said were “unverified and potentially unverifiable”.

[snip]

[Peter in Toronto]

This can't get any better... John McCain, CNN and the main strike forces of the Borg cabal have all picked this up without verification without realizing it's a hoax originating on 4chan - a piece of fan-fiction. You just go to love those mischievous folks over there.

This will thoroughly discredit any remaining attempts at these types of stunts, and hopefully put Buzzfeed and several individuals under litigation.

[Bobo]

Well, What's Next cause this garbage is only cutting it at Clapper & Brennan's desks. There are too many holes in this ex MI6 supposed agents crap to be believable and a few honest liberals are saying that this morning. Just nine more days till the inauguration, what will they pull next.

[Tyler]

It turns out the CIA got this info from Rick Wilson, who got it from 4Chan who pretended to be a "highly placed source in the Trump Campaign". Wilson sent this BS to the CIA and the CIA published it.

In other words, the CIA, the supposedly premier intelligence service, got trolled by 4Chan. That is the state of our media and our intelligence services right now.

[Stu Wood]

It's getting interesting. The Financial Times (in several articles) and noted human rights lawyer Scott Horton claim that Trump was bailed out of his 7th bankruptcy after 2008, when banks would no longer extend credit lines to him, by Russian oligarchs etc. who work hand in hand with the Kremlin. According to the article they own him more or less lock stock and barrel. His son has stated that the Trump business has a lot of money invested from Russia. I'm sure the average Russian was jumping to invest with Trump. Trump has never released his taxes or other financial information so we don't know how much of his businesses he owns vs. foreigners. As for the alleged sexual compromising information; yea, I can believe it. Anyone as narcissistic as the Trumpster wouldn't think twice if presented with an attractive Natasha. As for the meme that the CIA etc. is trying to delegitimize him, maybe yes; but maybe they see smoke and want to make sure there is no fire. Come the 20th of Jan. they don't want to see a Manchurian candidate take the oath.