Tumgik
#and Alan is such a touching poetic-looking man
bones-and-whatnot · 2 years
Text
Maybe The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is my new favorite film ever of all time ever ever.
6 notes · View notes
Text
At Tempo's Bakery
Tumblr media
When Kayce found out he was pregnant, he was excited that he could share this journey with the man he had always loved, his best friend and his soulmate. He had the day off but he decided to stop in and speak to his mentor, Alan, to help him with a little project. Since Kayce and Braylen confessed their love to each other and found out they were soulmates at Tempo's while sharing a cupcake, Kayce thought it would be sort of poetic to have him tell Braylen he was going to be a Daddy in the same place that held so many memories for them already. He texted Braylen to meet him there in the corner booth they usually sat at and helped Alan put the finishing touches on the cupcakes he was going to give Braylen. He settled with the box in front of him, beaming when the door chimed and his boyfriend walked in. "Hey baby!" He grins, standing to give him a kiss before letting him into the booth and sitting beside him. "I made you something, that's why I wanted to meet here. I hope you like them." He says, sliding over the box and waited for him to look and react.
Tumblr media
8 notes · View notes
utterlyinevitable · 4 years
Text
The Messy Route
Tumblr media
@mvalentine CATCH UP WITH LOVE LAO HERE
Ch. 19
Working on Caroline’s case was EXHILARATING. The unknown was what MC signed up for when applying to Edenbrook and ‘winning’ the spot on the diagnostics team. No matter where she works in the world there will always be rare cases popping up. This excitement was exactly what she needed from the eerie quiet of the hospital’s last day.
One last case in the job of her dreams with her medical hero and fav person. The prickly man that means more to her than she’d could ever imagine. Her friend.
A friend (lover) she unwittingly betrayed that sent his mommy issues through the roof
Their small conversation in the hall turned deep and for a brief moment as they stared into the empty diagnostics room talking about futures he forgot why he was even mad at her in the first place. She’s always had an affect on him and Ethan’s going to miss her. He’d never tell her though. What’s the point in sharing his feelings now?
Then his father broke the illusion.
Ethan was meant to drive his dad home and they’re meant to talk about what to do with Louise and Ethan needed some advice.
Alan’s invitation surprised everyone.
Mc was curious about where Ethan grew up... she doesn’t really know why she said yes to attaching herself to Ethan’s hip for the next three hours but she did. It sounded like a fun adventure at the time. She even inquired about the good friendlys multiple times during the ride. So much so that Ethan did in fact stop to buy his dad and colleague a Sundae.
Ethan doesn’t want her there. This. His dad. Now his childhood home. It was all much too personal. Too insightful for a colleague. He had to keep reminding himself SHES just his colleague. Besides the romps they’ve shared once in a blue moon they never talked about what they meant to one another. And that’s on Ethan. If he just TOLD MC how he felt last year things could have been wildly different......
He doesn’t know she would have turned him down in favor of her career back then.
And today he needed advice from his father about how to live when the only woman you’ve ever loved chooses someone else.
From meeting both his parents, these modest houses were almost exactly what she pictured. The layout is different but the humble beginning was screaming at her. Wow if you told med school mc that she’d get to walk through Ethan Ramsey’s origin story she would have choked on her frapp. 
Then again she’s not surprised by this neighbourhood. All superhero’s have some sort of tragic backstory. Some reason to strive for more at whatever cost.
She sees it. She identifies with it. She appreciates him all the more. It’s just another piece of the puzzle of the ever enigmatic and sexy Ethan Ramsey.
Alan’s stories. She could listen to them all day. Part of her wanted to send Ethan back to edenbrook so she can spend the day with Alan and coffee looking at photos and reminiscing.
And she wants this. Eventually she wants the domestic life. She wants to be a proud parent and tell anyone who will listen stories of youth.
Staring at little baby Ethan the words “Such a cute kid” slip out. Barely audible but the ramsey men are astute and heard as if she always meant to say it. She blushes and she’s grateful Ethan turned it into a joke. She didn’t want to revel in the fact she just realized she’s so fucking fond of this man. Like. More than colleagues and casual lovers fond.
Duck.
The car ride home was silent save for the aria playing through the speakers. They both had A LOT to think about.
Ethan never got a chance to ask his father’s advice. 
Of course she solved the bloom case. She’s got a big girl brain that Ethan will forever be in awe of. That one hell of a woman will be one hell of a doctor. 
As caroline and Leland leave the second time, MC unintentionally is thrown back to The Incident. Not being able to touch the person you care about most? Yeah. She knows the feeling.
But WHO does she care about most? If she had to pick just one person to spend forever with which would it be ?????
Even with everything and the uncertainty Ethan and Mc still stand close in the darkening atrium as the lights shut off one by one. Standing steps ahead of where they met and where they worked as a team for the very first time. It’s poetic. They realize that. Everything that’s gone on between them swirls around them like a tornado (actually more like the leafy wind scene in Pocahontas where she levitates but i guess u get the imagery).
They both feel immensely guilty in their own rights.
They reach for the other’s hand at the same time.
He walks her to the door but stops mid stride when he sees her friends just beyond the glass.
This is goodbye.
He lets go.
He stays behind to linger in all the memories.
She walks out the door with a solemn ‘thank you for everything’ called over her shoulder.
And for the first time Ethan doesn’t like being alone. 
And then she sees her friends.
Things with Bryce have been awkward to say the least. He wouldn’t let it show - his signature confidence and stride of personality were still ever present. Except now it was like she was watching him through glass. There was something reserved about the way he acted in her presence now.
Raf was a little off too. He said something really concerning but she was too in her feelings about the closure to dive into his issues. They also hadn’t had time together in over two weeks. Strangely, she didn’t really mind. Maybe cooling off one another is what’s needed in times of uncertainty like this???
She pushed all things aside to enjoy Boston Bucketlist Bonanza with the people that mean the most to her!
Her bucket list option was a TOTAL cop out. She couldn’t think of something her friends could do with her on such short notice so she improvised. She kissed the absolute goddess known to mere mortals as Ms. Kyra Santana.
(Really curious to see how pb will use the data from the kiss choice. My gut says they won’t. My heart says don’t get invested. The little sliver of hope I have says MAYBE they’ll be wise and add aurora and or Kyra as LIs)
At the end of the night everyone went back to their respective homes feeling lighter. Mc didn’t dwell on the shambles that’s her love life *bah dum tss* she’s got enough time to figure that out now she’s unemployed.
11 notes · View notes
9hiddenshallows · 5 years
Text
“If there has been love, which there was, and is, it, he, can never die.”
30.10.19
BEWARE! SPOILERS UNDER THE CUT!
I admit it. Reading the last four chapters of the book was a really bad idea of mine. But I wanted to finish the book before the audio was released. Mission accomplished… success unlocked. It cost me lots of Kleenex. We have been plunged into Chris’ different stages of live – his childhood, the beginning of his career, his struggles, his battles – and now we are back to the heart of the matter: Ronnie Eccleston and the beginning of his sad end. The dementia. The Ecclestons were told about the disease after a serious car accident Ronnie had in the 2000s. It was a bad unexpected news for the family who couldn’t understand where this might have come from at first. The realisation that it could be hereditary came later. Chris has done a lot of researches about the disease to be able to work around it and understand the current condition of his father and how it was gonna evolve in the next years. It was really heartbreaking for him. Even more to realise that the signs had been there for a while but no one had been able to interpret them at the moment. Of course this diagnosis was life-changing for everyone and Chris tells us how much it has used this experience, this anger toward the disease that was taking away his father in the movie Flesh and Blood (2002). This movie is all about a young man looking for his biological parents and finding out they are deeply disabled and so, it makes it impossible for them to create a real bond with a son they didn’t even know. This incredible man who shaped Christopher as we know him, who has taught him how to live, was now showing him how to die. This was a hard reality for Chris. And he remembered one particular day that has broken his heart to pieces. He was doing crosswords in a cottage in Cornwall that he had rented for the holidays season and Ronnie couldn’t believe he was his son. This led to a terrible state of confusion and anger for Ronnie, and great guilt for Chris. After that, he has had to pretend that he was just a friend of the family. Another scene of this sort happened on Christmas Day and Chris was forced to leave the house to avoid another fit from his father who was considering him as a kind of threat. Elsie was having the hardest part of them all. She was Ronnie’s wife but also his carer. For over a decade, she took care of him the best she could with the little means and knowledge she had on how to handle a person with dementia. No family is prepared when such a disease strikes. All you can do is spend lots of time with your loved one and create memories before it’s too late. Chapter 22 holds a touch of bitterness and cuteness that makes your heart melt. It’s very short and tells how the Ecclestons’ boys have convinced their mother that it would be for the best if their father was in a home. She had been taking of him on her own for over ten years and it was too much for her emotionally and physically. Putting her Ronnie in a home was the hardest day of her life though because they weren’t taking care of him like the dedicated wife she was had been taking care of him. Heart breaking. Despite the disease, despite Ronnie not remembering her, their love survived. My heart can’t handle such a deep and faithful love. Add to that tender gut-wrenching moment that Ronnie got to meet baby Albert before his end. Right in the feelings. Chapter 23. The end. No need to be a soothsayer to understand what this is all about. The last hopes of the Eccleston’s family and the downfall that followed. Ronnie Eccleston died of a pneumonia after going through surgery for a broken hip. Alan was the one who broke the news to Chris, and Chris told their mother. There is a reflection on religion in chapter. Chris has openly admitted that he was an atheist. He doesn’t believe in God and that was why he was so hesitant to go and see his father in the coffin. Ronnie was an atheist too but in his time, you just couldn’t openly admit something this big. There also another idea implying that Chris places his faith in nature, which is more concrete than the idea of an immaterial God. The anecdote about the black bird finally flying away being Ronnie was as sad as beautiful and poetic. And yet, if Ronnie was dead, if he wasn’t there physically anymore, the memories of him still were; the love he gave his family was still there, living through all of them. The title of the twenty-fourth and last chapter of I Love The Bones Of You is a quote from Macbeth when Macbeth tries to catch the dagger he sees before him and realises it is just a product from his imagination. The choice of this quote hasn’t been done randomly. I have thee not: ‘my father is dead, he’s not physically by my side anymore’; And yet I see thee still: ‘but he hasn’t abandoned our family or myself.’ Christopher Eccleston is Christopher Eccleston because Ronnie has shaped him into the man he has become. A part of Ronnie will live on with his kids. There is this quote from a TV show I’ve watched recently that says: children are their parents’ immortality. That’s a part of you that survives you and transmits your values, your principles, your habits so you won’t be forgotten. This chapter is a recap, a sort of introspection on everything that Chris has gone through and how he arrived where he is today. He might not be at his best but he has become more optimistic: he is better than he had been a couple years ago. He has come back from hell and back and his life is much better now. He is in a better place, more in peace with himself. Just one last thing: finishing the book on the eulogy he wrote for his father’s funeral was cruel for the reader but also the most beautiful and perfect way to end this homage to the wonderful person Ronald Eccleston was, to the legacy he has left to the world, to the lessons he has taught his sons who is now transmitting it to his own children. To conclude this long review, I would say that I Love The Bones Of You isn’t the book of the year. It probably won’t win a Pulitzer, won’t be considered as classical literature. It’s not beautifully written, it’s not perfect. And yet, it is worth reading. These memoirs are an amazing homage to a deceased man who has been a model and an example not to follow for a man trying to find his way in this world. I Love The Bones Of You is a honest, upsetting, moving record of Christopher Eccleston’s life, of his personal battles, of his past, present and future goals. I only have one thing to say to finish this review: kudos on you, sir, and thank you. You have all of my support today and for the many years to come.
1 note · View note
kevrocksicehouse · 4 years
Photo
Tumblr media
Peter O’Toole’s larger-than-life charisma started 88 years ago today. A few of his many great performances:
T.E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia. D: David Lean (1962). In a film more concerned with poetic spectacle than geopolitical or historic veracity, the fact that Peter O’Toole was almost nine inches taller than Lawrence was rendered moot by the actor’s star quality, and his touch of androgyny (he looked more like David Bowie than David Bowie ever did) that enabled the film to suggest things about the charismatic warrior and diplomat that an early ‘60s film couldn’t talk about. And it led him to face the Arabian desert (the other star of this great epic) as something closer to an equal.
Eli Cross in The Stunt Man D: Richard Rush (1980). A fugitive from justice (Steve Railsback, he played Manson once) hides out as a stuntman in a film directed by Cross. He starts to suspect that the director is trying to kill him to perk up the movie and Cross feeds his paranoia and films it, probably because he hasn’t really made up his mind about the whole murder thing. O’Toole’s imperatorial fecklessness is perfect for what might be the best portrait of a movie director that the movies have come up with. “If God could do the tricks we do,” Cross says “he’d be a happy man.”
Alan Swann in My Favorite Year. D: Richard Benjamin (1982). The year is 1954. O’Toole plays a washed-up, alcoholic movie star with enough fame to land a guest shot on a TV comedy sketch show. O’Toole plays him as a roaring, if charming drunk (“Nobody gets hurt,” he says before ill-advisedly using a drapery to  swing from one fifteenth-floor bedroom to another, It’s just...fun!”) who falls apart when he realizes he has to perform live (“I’m not an actor. I’m a movie star!”).  Saying he rises to the occasion spoils nothing. To paraphrase another of the film’s characters, we always got O’Toole as big as we needed him.
0 notes
roguenewsdao · 7 years
Text
Countering the Deep State/Mueller Soft Coup: LaRouchePAC Circulates Report on Capitol Hill Regarding the Independent Counsel's History of Gross Prosecutorial Misconduct and Criminal Cover-ups
This article originally appeared at LaRouchePub.com on October 18, 2017. -- JWS
Silverglate goes on to recount a meeting with Mueller at the Justice Department concerning the Jeffrey MacDonald case, which many consider to be a wrongful conviction of an innocent man. At a meeting called to explore possible law enforcement misconduct in the case, Mueller walked in and announced, "Gentlemen: Criticism of the Bureau is a Non Starter." Silverglate goes on to attack the General Counsel statute as a constitutional abomination, endorse Alan Dershowitz’s analysis that no crimes have been committed by the President based on what has been reported to date, but notes,
"Mueller’s demonstrated zeal and ample resources virtually assure that indictments will come, even in the absence of crimes rather than behavior which is simply politics as usual."
The impact of our mobilization and public disgust with the Russiagate charade are also demonstrated in the CNN Story, "GOP calls grow to end Russia investigations in Congress this year." The lead:
"A growing number of key Republicans are sending this message to leaders of the congressional committees investigating potential Trump collusion with Russians: Wrap It Up Soon."
Although it doesn’t have the poetic ring of "Suck It Up, Move On," we are, of course, dealing with Republicans. Senator James Risch of the Intelligence Committee said, "Nobody wants to move this so quickly that we miss something," but added, "The question is how many weak leads can you follow?" Rep. Adam [full of] Schiff (D-CA) countered that the Committees involved were trying to "rush" the now nine-month-old investigation. Schiff’s remarks were characterized as "nuts" by Committee Republicans, according to CNN, who accused Democrats of trying to extend the "fishing expedition" into the midterm elections. The report otherwise makes clear that sharp public demands for an end to this hoax are beginning to be felt. Last Friday’s call for investigation of Mueller was not some sort of "one off." We just have to increase that pressure.
The latest example of a grotesque "go fish" based on brazenly fake leads which can readily be demonstrated to be such, has been provided by former oligarch and British intelligence spawn Mikhail Kordokofsky. He claims that Jared Kushner was intimately tied to bankers who are "close to Putin." The reader might assume that Khodorkovsky is an unbiased private individual. But Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia movement and the Institute for Modern Russia [the latter of which previously paid Daily Beast/CNN pro-jihadist neocon 'journalist' Michael D. Weiss - JWS] are open intelligence fronts for British and NATO intelligence and the NED in the U.S. They have been critical to fomenting the anti-Putin hysteria in the U.S., with open support from both British and NATO intelligence.
Otherwise, Attorney General Jeff Sessions appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, with the Democrats still trying to pump the impeachment narrative, but to little effect. Sessions caught Senator Richard Blumenthal in an outright lie, to the effect that Sessions had been interviewed by Special Counsel Mueller when he had not. The Attorney General also engaged in a heated back-and-forth with Senator Franken about Sessions’s limited interactions with former Russian Ambassador [Sergey] Kislyak. Franken, demonstrating his best infantile rage-ball persona, basically accused the Attorney General of perjury, and Sessions defended himself.
In general, the Republicans countered the Democrats’ kabuki show by inviting Sessions to defend Comey’s firing, which he did well, focusing on Comey’s draft exoneration statement concerning Hillary Clinton before the FBI had even interviewed her, and on the suppressed FBI investigation of Russia’s purchase of U.S. uranium, and bribery and corruption allegations concerning the Clinton Foundation which accompanied that purchase.
All of this nonsense on the Judiciary Committee while the nation drowns in an opium epidemic, which is killing more and more people daily. While this did receive some attention from the Committee with jurisdiction to discuss and legislate about it, it was a sidelight to the continued insane braying at the moon by Committee Democrats.
Below RogueMoney is proud to reproduce the full pamphlet by LaRouchePAC's Barbara Boyd - [email protected] · View the PDF here, a leaflet advertising the dossier can be found here. The Russia Analyst has added a few details in brackets to expand certain background information related to bit players in the deep state scheme to destroy Trump. This document details Mueller's history as a deep state legal hit man and corrupt FBI director.
Given the complicity of numerous officials still inside the Bureau and Justice Department with since fired director Jim Comey -- Mueller's friend -- coverup of various efforts to shield the Clintons and their money laundering machine the Clinton Foundation from prosecution, it isn't surprising that the deep state is fiercely attacking Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for challenging these institutions thus far successful stonewalling of their subpeonas. Both Nunes and Grassley have been trying in vain to get the FBI to admit to paying 'former' MI6 operative Christopher Steele for his fraudulent dossier on Trump which contains numerous bits of disinformation likely fed to him by Estonian [possibly with the complicity of now former president and Atlantic Council fellow Toomas Hendrik Ilves] or Ukrainian intelligence agencies, ultimately operating on behalf of their British handlers.
Former Wall Street Journal reporters who run the Fusion GPS firm that commissioned Steele to write the fake dossier have already pleaded the 5th Amendment against incriminating themselves, in response to questions about which clients paid for it and whether they did any actual due diligence on the now infamous, libel-suit spawning document. The DoJ doesn't want to admit that Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrants were issued using a falsified document to convince the secret court's judges. The FBI does not wish to admit that its January 2017 assessment rushed out in advance of Trump's inauguration is a colossal hoax. Nor can it face the truth: the only real foreign meddling in the 2016 election that had any impact [including the Ukrainian Embassy's efforts through the Ukrainian-American Democrat operative Chalupa sisters] were efforts by the British and their American deep state partners, enraged by Trump's calls for detente with Russia, to smear the future President as 'Putin's puppet'. -- JWS
See also: Wednesday was a very active day for our war to stop the Mueller coup LaRouchePAC.com October 19, 2017
Robert Swan Mueller III—the special prosecutor tasked to take down the President of the United States—is, as his name attests, a product of elite private schools and universities. He is uniformly and soberly praised in the national news media as incorruptible, fair-minded “honest Bob,” “strait-laced Bobby three sticks.” This image, we shall show, is a brazenly false, Washington, D.C. public relations pitch, created for the credulous.
In reality, Robert Swan Mueller III is about as corrupt as they come, bending and twisting the law every which way necessary to serve the goals of those who provide him assignments. The might of the prosecutorial function and the institutions he serves dictate right for him, rather than the unbiased pursuit of justice the law envisions for his vocation. In what he says was a defining moment, Mueller broke rank, after college, to serve in the Vietnam War as a Marine. After that he never wanted to do anything but prosecute. His appointment as special prosecutor caps a long career in which he has envisioned himself to be a stern and willing warrior, a dutiful Marine, acting on behalf of whatever evil scheme his superiors present to him, and using whatever means seems necessary to execute it.
In recent weeks, organizers for the LaRouche movement have been repeatedly told by citizens they meet: “It looks like President Trump is getting the ‘LaRouche treatment.’” The two men could not be more different in station, or cultural and intellectual achievement. LaRouche is a world-historical genius in the mold of Gottfried Leibniz. But, both men touched what has amounted to the third rail of American politics after Franklin Roosevelt’s death. They threatened the post-War Anglo-American British imperial system. LaRouche did so directly, continuously, and explicitly by name. Trump has done so implicitly, by rejecting perpetual war, seeking better relations with Russia, calling for imposition of Glass-Steagall banking separation, endorsing what he refers to as the American System of political economy, and promising massive infrastructure development and a modern manufacturing platform for productive jobs.
In both cases, as we shall see, the British explicitly demanded scalps, based on a perceived threat to them, most specifically located in the desire for a collaborative relationship with Russia and an end to the “unipolar” framework of relationships between nations. In both cases, a controlled media unleashed an incessant barrage of ugly, salacious, and defamatory coverage, day-in day-out, to create the popular conditions for a criminal prosecution. While there were and are many other players in these Kabuki dances—compromised and terrorized politicians and judges, and an intelligence community which functions as the gendarme of our Orwellian police state—the blunt instrument chosen for the hit was Robert Mueller. Along the way, between the two assignments, Robert Mueller played a hugely significant role in covering up the Saudi/British role in the murders of almost 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001, and the wholesale destruction of the United States Constitution which followed in its wake—a role which, if thoroughly examined, constitutes obstruction of justice, among other crimes.
This dossier will walk you through Mueller’s career based on what is readily and publicly available. It is a trail of prosecutorial misconduct, including what former Senator Bob Graham calls “aggressive deception” of the U.S. Congress and the public concerning the events of September 11, 2001, and includes a major role in the creation of the post-9/11 surveillance state which has eviscerated and destroyed the Fourth Amendment and the rest of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Those who work inside our modern Leviathan can surely point to other malfeasance, and we invite you pile on—please, expose it. You owe no less to your oath to the Constitution of the United States.
Help us defend the Presidency & circulate this dossier. Donate to LaRouchePAC
The LaRouche Case—An Attempted Murder and then a Legal One
On August 27, 1982, a Top Secret letter was sent from the British government to the FBI. That letter itself remains classified to this day, but it is clear from the FBI’s response to it, from its unclassified attachments, and from subsequent actions, what the British were demanding. On September 24, 1982, under the subject-heading “Re: Lyndon LaRouche and the Executive Intelligence Review,” FBI counterintelligence chief James Nolan responded to the British demands as follows:
“We would like to reiterate our conclusion that, while many of the harassment activities of the NCLC and the themes promoted by NCLC publications, such as EIR, are often propitious to Soviet disinformation and propaganda interests, there is no direct evidence that the Soviets are directing or funding LaRouche or his organization. It is entirely plausible, however, that the Soviets have developed or may be developing sources within the NCLC who are in a position to interject Soviet-inspired views into NCLC activities and publications. It is likely that the Soviets will attempt to capitalize on or exploit NCLC sentiments that are parallel to or promote Soviet foreign policy objectives. At the same time, the Soviets will probably have to balance the advantages of exploiting the NCLC with the dangers of being associated with a bizarre and often unpredictable organization. For your information, under the domestic security guidelines set forth by the Attorney General, the FBI does not have an active investigation of Lyndon LaRouche or the NCLC.”
As we shall see, this is the same British smear, in the same British speculative language, used to paint Donald Trump with the “Russian dupe” brush. That allegation, of activity on behalf of a foreign power, the Russians, unleashed a full spectrum of intelligence agency weapons from Constitutional constraints under the Reagan Administration’s Executive Order 12333 and subsequent renditions governing classified counterintelligence activities, particularly the subsequent versions of E.O. 12333 put into place after September 11, 2001.
We document below some of what LaRouche was doing to provoke the British call for his head in 1982. His activities included back-channel negotiations with the Russians concerning the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) on behalf of the CIA and National Security Council (NSC). He met with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Mexico’s President Jose Lopez Portillo seeking a completely new monetary system, not controlled by the City of London, Wall Street and allied institutions, which would finance high technology development, completely transforming North-South relations. President Lopez Portillo implemented LaRouche’s proposals during the Mexican debt crisis in 1982, sending the Anglo-Americans into rug-chewing fits.
This British demand to the FBI immediately followed a letter, on August 19, 1982, from Henry Kissinger to FBI Director William Webster, demanding that LaRouche be investigated for “harassing” Kissinger. This is the same Henry Kissinger who, in a speech at the Royal Institute for International Affairs on May 10,1982, had openly declared himself to be a British agent of influence. While endorsing Churchill’s “rigid” anti-Soviet policies and British colonialism over “naïve” American idealists, Kissinger remarked on his service to the British while in the U.S. government:
"The British were so matter of factly helpful that they became a participant in internal American deliberations, to a degree never before practiced between sovereign nations. In my period in office, the British played a seminal role in certain American bilateral negotiations with the Soviet Union. Indeed, they helped draft the key document. In my White House incarnation then [as National Security Adviser] I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department." 
What Kissinger called “harassment” by LaRouche, was wide-spread exposure of the British-agent aspect of his curriculum vitae, among other issues. These include Kissinger’s 1974 “NSSM 200" document calling for drastic population reduction in the Third World by any means necessary in order to conserve raw materials for colonialist looting, threats to Italy’s Prime Minister Aldo Moro shortly before his kidnapping and murder, similar contentions by the Bhutto family of Pakistan concerning the murder of former President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and numerous documented war crimes.1
On January 12, 1983, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, comprising David Abshire, Leo Cherne, and Edward Bennett Williams, demanded that an FBI investigation, under Executive Order 12333 be opened on LaRouche based on “harassment” of Henry Kissinger and possible foreign funding, under the guidelines or otherwise. The British demand was going to be implemented.
In April of 1983 and thereafter, New York investment banker John Train convened a series of salons attended by nominally private organizations, prominent journalists living off intelligence community leaks, and government intelligence operatives, to plan and implement a defamatory campaign against Lyndon LaRouche. The avowed aim of the meetings was to create the popular conditions for criminal prosecution.
In 1982, the Anglophilic CIA Director, William Casey, had tasked CIA psychological warfare and propaganda expert Walter Raymond to oversee a program of psychological warfare and “perception management” by the Reagan Administration, a program largely overseen by Vice-President George H.W. Bush. Under provisions of the new executive order governing intelligence and counterintelligence operations, EO 12333, Psy-Ops and propaganda operations, formerly conducted on foreign targets by the CIA, were to be farmed out to private entities under such rubrics as Project Democracy, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the League for Industrial Democracy, and similarly designated entities. Psy-Ops and “perception management” were also to be targeted domestically in counterintelligence operations. To start such counterintelligence operations, a credible allegation had to be presented that a domestic target was operating on behalf of a foreign power, like the Russians.
John Train’s investment company partner, Thomas J. Devine, a former CIA employee, had partnered with [former CIA director and future President] George H.W. Bush in the Zapata Oil company, during Bush’s time as an oil man in Texas. Many believe that Zapata was a CIA proprietary. Train himself was the former editor of the Congress of Cultural Freedom’s Paris Review, and was engaged, at the time of his LaRouche salons, in running black propaganda operations for the CIA against the Russians during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Train’s work in Afghanistan was coordinated with Walter Raymond.
Court testimony in the LaRouche cases and follow-up investigations revealed that the Train salons were attended by Roy Godson, a long-time British intelligence-connected operative deployed under the CIA’s Jay Lovestone and James Jesus Angleton, and, at that time, a consultant to PFIAB and the National Security Council; by John Rees, an FBI functionary; Mira Lansky Boland of the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’rith (ADL); representatives of Freedom House, long a CIA proprietary associated with PFIAB’s Leo Cherne; financier Richard Mellon Scaife; Pat Lynch of NBC; reporters for Reader’s Digest, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and The New Republic; “investigative reporter” Dennis King who was employed by the League for Industrial Democracy, Chip Berlet, neo-conservative colleagues of Train, and others described by participants as “gentlemen with government connections.” The representative from Freedom House provided the briefings on LaRouche to those assembled.
Train’s salons resulted in a barrage of articles portraying LaRouche as violent, a racist, megalomaniacal, an authoritarian anti-Semitic extremist—calculated and horrific, poisonous lies designed to nullify any positive response to LaRouche’s actual ideas. These ID-format lies are deliberately designed to create “cognitive dissonance.” as it is known in the Psy-Op trade. President Trump has been consistently portrayed with similar Psy-Op ID-format defamations.
Defamatory broadcasts and articles by Train meeting participants were concocted, and entirely fake versions of LaRouche’s ideas and work were spewed to the public. NBC News, for example, presented a completely fake picture of EIR’s groundbreaking expose of the drug trade, Dope Inc., which had become a bible for DEA agents in the War on Drugs. Dope Inc. proved that the British were actively promoting drug legalization for population pacification purposes, as they had done historically in the opium wars against China, and that British financial institutions, including banks and funds directly associated with the Royals, were dependent upon and subsisting on drug money-laundering proceeds. The book’s contentions have been ratified repeatedly over the years in such cases as that of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. NBC repeatedly broadcast, however, that LaRouche’s War on Drugs consisted of the claim that the Queen herself was out on the street corner peddling dime bags of heroin.
Even more astoundingly, NBC’s Patricia Lynch claimed in a prominent NBC news feature, that LaRouche had ordered the assassination of President Jimmy Carter by remote controlled bomb. She admitted that she relied for this preposterous claim on a notorious FBI informant and other “non- public” information provided to her by former CIA counterintelligence chief, James J. Angleton, other CIA sources, and sources in the FBI. In March of 1986, a collaboration between Irwin Suall from the ADL and the East German Stasi, produced the sensational and completely fabricated claim that LaRouche had played a role in the assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olaf Palme. Richard Mellon Scaife and the CIA’s Smith-Richardson Foundation funded a book-length defamatory dossier by Dennis King as a result of the Train meetings, which became the central resource for a relentless anti-LaRouche hate campaign.
Do such wild, salacious assertions remind you, in any way, of the deliberately gross and fake dossier on President Trump, prepared by the highest levels of British intelligence for circulation to the American public? You know, the so-called “Pee Dossier” by MI6 agent Christopher Steele, that claims that the President cavorted with Russian prostitutes on a bed slept in by the Obamas?
What Did LaRouche Do?
The attachments to the British demand letter to the FBI include a published statement by LaRouche demanding that the Monroe Doctrine be enforced in support of Argentina with respect to the British-instigated Malvinas War. In the document, LaRouche contrasts British imperial looting policies with the “American system” as defined by Lincoln’s economist Henry C. Carey. Addressing those in Congress siding with Britain against Argentina during the Malvinas crisis, LaRouche said:
“How shaken are these representatives at Britain’s plight, the same representatives who have sat by and let U.S. industrial power be destroyed by British system economics, watched millions of Third World children starve for lack of technology exports, and raved about the fascist oppressions of the only energy source, nuclear power, that could turn the situation around! . . . The imposition of the Monroe Doctrine and reassertion of the commitment to republican sovereignty can put the United States back on the road to fulfilling our national mission. Kicking the British Tories out of the Senate should be followed within minutes with kicking Tory Volcker out of the Fed, and restarting American industry once again.”
The second attachment to the British demand letter is a leaflet announcing an EIR forum focused on developing the economies of the Middle East, and exposing the role of British intelligence in creating and funding Muslim Brotherhood Islamic fundamentalism. The second topic for the EIR forum concerned an expose of the role of the British Secret Services in the then-ongoing Soviet succession struggle. Other attachments to the British demand letter to the FBI remain classified.
A review of LaRouche’s activities in 1982, the year the British called for his head, reveals that LaRouche’s policies were gaining ground on every front and that he had developed a substantial following in U.S. intelligence and military circles in support of those policies, including in President Reagan’s National Security Council. He also posed a direct challenge to British control of the world’s economy, through the City of London, Wall Street, and aligned government institutions, and the hegemonic British economic nostrums of free trade and speculative capitalism.
From December of 1981 through February 1983, LaRouche had been tasked first by the CIA and then by President Reagan’s National Security Council to conduct back channel discussions with Soviet representatives on what became President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Beginning as early as 1978, LaRouche had been calling for U.S.-Soviet collaboration in developing beam-weapon defenses to incoming thermonuclear missiles, replacing the insane Anglo-American doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) with one of Mutually Assured Survival. At the same time as he met secretly with Soviet representatives, LaRouche and his associates campaigned publicly for the concept. President Reagan announced adoption of the SDI in a surprise televised address on March 23, 1983.
In April of 1982, Lyndon and Helga LaRouche traveled to India where they met with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, along with scientists, parliamentarians, industrialists, and economists. In his presentations, LaRouche stressed that the developing sector must band together, creating credit for large scale infrastructure development along lines consistent with Hamilton’s system of political economy. In this endeavor, the British system of Malthusian zero population growth, primitive “sustainable development,” and debt slavery—the policies of the World Bank and the IMF—would be condemned as genocidal and abandoned. True human progress could be scientifically and reliably measured, LaRouche said, by the metric he had discovered, potential relative population density, ensuring continuous progressive economic development.
In May of 1982, LaRouche met with Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo, and immediately followed that meeting with a document entitled “Operation Juarez,” a battle plan for reorganizing the already-bankrupt world financial system based on physical economic development. LaRouche proposed that the nations of Ibero-America use their collective strategic leverage as debtor nations to unite in a common economic bloc and unilaterally declare a restructuring of their debts and the establishment of a new just monetary order. The formation of an International Development Bank among these nations would serve as a coordinating agency for planning investments and trade expansion among the member republics.“If a sufficient portion of the Ibero-American nations enter into such an agreement, the result is the assembly of one of the most powerful economies in the world from an array of individually weak powers . . . the Ibero-American continent would rapidly emerge as a leading economic power of the world, an economic super-power.”
In August, Lopez Portillo tried to bring Argentina and Brazil on as partners in “Operation Juarez.” Failing that, in September 1982, Lopez Portillo acted on LaRouche’s proposal, adopting credit controls on Mexico’s currency, nationalizing the Mexican banking system, and announcing a debt moratorium on Mexican debt. Wall Street, the City of London, and allied intelligence agencies, having scrambled to prevent implementation of LaRouche’s plan, now targeted LaRouche and Lopez Portillo. Nonetheless, in October of 1982, in a speech at the UN, Lopez Portillo called for a new financial system essentially along the lines LaRouche specified.
These proposals were all perfectly consistent with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s post-World War II vision of ending British colonialism, and developing the world based upon reciprocally beneficial trade relationships among nation states, the “idealism” Henry Kissinger attacked in his Chatham House address.
Such were a few of Lyndon LaRouche’s many activities in 1982.
1982-1983 were years of enormous battles within the Reagan Administration. On one side was National Security Adviser William Clark and his assistant Richard Morris, who continued to task LaRouche and his colleagues at EIR on national security issues. On the other were the Anglophiles controlled by Vice-President Bush, who found LaRouche to be “the most dangerous man in America.” Richard Morris testified in the LaRouche cases that Kenneth DeGraffenreid, Walter Raymond, and Roy Godson were the three most vocal opponents of LaRouche inside the Reagan Administration. Raymond, along with Bush, DeGraffenreid, and then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, were the primary authors of Project Democracy, ceding perception-control and regime-change operations to private organizations and NGOs operating under CIA and MI6 direction.
Enter Mueller
In 1982, Robert Mueller joined the staff of U.S. Attorney William Weld in Boston, Massachusetts. He had previously been in private practice in San Francisco while waiting to be accepted into the U.S. attorney’s office there. His life’s dream was to prosecute. Mueller and Weld concentrated on public corruption cases, targeting and taking down the administration of popular Boston Mayor Kevin White in an investigation widely criticized for “gestapo tactics” and prosecutorial misconduct.
Following LaRouche’s 1984 Presidential campaign and a public claim by Kissinger that LaRouche would be “dealt with” after the election, William Weld opened a criminal investigation of LaRouche’s Presidential campaign committees, claiming that the campaign had engaged in credit card fraud. While there was a barrage of initial publicity, and companies associated with LaRouche suffered huge contempt fines because they refused to turn over information about their contributors to Weld’s office, the investigation languished over the course of two years and two grand juries.
While the criminal investigation stalled, numerous classified counterintelligence investigations were launched, under Executive Order 12333, justifying surveillance prohibited by the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, infiltration, and classified counterintelligence “neutralization” tactics [see the related story recently published by Robert Parry's Consortium News on "The Legacy of Reagan's 'Civilian Psyops'"]. These covert operations were used to create an otherwise non-existent criminal case. FOIA documents released over the years revealed a number of such classified operations based on fabricated assertions by government agents. Many of these operations remain classified to this day. In 1992 and 1993, investigators for LaRouche confirmed that the Leesburg, Virginia offices of EIR and other LaRouche-associated entities were subject to intense warrantless surveillance conducted through NSA hubs in northern Virginia’s AT&T offices, and that numerous black-bag burglaries had been conducted through the local Sheriff’s office and Deputy Donald Moore.
In March of 1986, two LaRouche Democrats, Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, won the Illinois Democratic Primary for Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of State. They were part of a slate of over 1,000 LaRouche Democrats who ran for office that year. A huge, daily, national media defamation campaign followed, using the John Train playbook and many of the Train salon participants. The Boston investigation was revamped. Mueller, who succeeded William Weld as acting U.S. Attorney in 1986, after Weld decamped to Washington to head the Bush Justice Department’s Criminal Division, brought in John J.E. Markham II to take the lead in the LaRouche investigation. Markham had been a member of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, a Satanic cult tied to Charles Manson, during his early legal career. Plans for a search of offices associated with LaRouche in Leesburg and Boston were set into motion.
There were two plans for the Leesburg raid, one buried in official FBI documents, and the other hidden in secret communications. One of the raid’s principals, Donald Moore, told an FBI informant in 1992 that a plan was in circulation weeks before the assault, to provoke LaRouche’s security guards into a shooting incident by staging a massive siege and provocation at Ibykus Farm where LaRouche stayed. According to Moore, he had provided detailed plans for the eventuality of entering the farm and killing LaRouche. FBI case agent Richard Egan corroborated Moore’s account, stating in court testimony that his activity under the warrant consisted of a frantic search for evidence justifying a second search warrant for Ibykus Farm and an arrest warrant for LaRouche.
Utilizing what he has come to call “shock and awe” tactics, Mueller employed a force of some 400 law enforcement agents and privately owned armored personnel carriers to raid two office buildings in Leesburg, Virginia where EIR and other companies associated with LaRouche were located—this, for what former Attorney General Ramsey Clark accurately describes as “book people.” Ibykus farm was surrounded by SWAT teams in black ninja gear, and helicopters flew overhead.
At 10 p.m, Fox News reported that authorities were about to enter Ibykus Farm to search for a “weapons cache.” No such weapons cache existed, and the FBI and BATF knew it. The plan to kill LaRouche was only aborted when his associates sent a telegram to President Reagan seeking his intervention.
Based on a classified mechanism with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, documents seized in the raid were taken to a military facility, Henderson Hall, where they were undoubtedly reviewed by intelligence officials for purposes of their continued classified operations. William Weld, now heading the Department of Justice Criminal Division, claimed that this extraordinary procedure was necessary to prevent the LaRouche people from breaking into a normal government facility and stealing back their documents!
On the day of the raid, Mueller and Markham targeted and arrested key personnel involved in LaRouche’s intelligence functions and security, charging them with obstruction of justice. To break them, the prosecutors sought lengthy periods of detention, which the Alexandria federal court granted based on the wave of poisonous publicity surrounding the raid, and numerous inflammatory and false statements to the court by John Markham. When those statements were later proved to be false, the defendants, now released, were without a real remedy except to call the Boston trial court’s attention to Markham’s lies.
At the same time, key prosecution witnesses underwent “deprogramming” by so-called cult experts to prepare for testimony, and were granted numerous benefits never disclosed to the defense. Markham and Mueller employed the ADL for witness interviews, thus evading the requirements for disclosure required of government agents, used Dennis King as a consultant, and used inflammatory allegations which they knew to be false in television broadcasts aimed at poisoning the jury pool. Donald Moore, who had illegally burglarized EIR’s offices and mapped LaRouche’s assassination, was invited by Markham and Mueller to come to Boston to serve as their assistant on the criminal case.
The Boston case, in which LaRouche was indicted for obstruction of justice, fell apart when FOIA documents revealed small aspects of the secret covert operations being run parallel to the criminal prosecution–notably a document from Ollie North’s safe indicating extreme White House interest in players in the LaRouche case. As a result, Federal Judge Robert Keeton, following the classified trail which he viewed in documents which he ordered be presented to him in camera, ordered a search of Vice-President Bush’s office for exculpatory evidence. During prosecutorial misconduct hearings conducted before Judge Keeton, it was also discovered that a national security informant had been infiltrated into the LaRouche security operation, and that John Markham had instructed him to advise the defendants to obstruct justice, in words dictated by Markham, knowing that the defendants would write the informant’s words down in their notebooks. The fabricated and planted notebook quotes were then used by Markham in his opening statement to the jury, as proof that the defendants had conspired to obstruct justice.
The lengthy government misconduct hearings Judge Keeton conducted resulted in a mistrial due to juror hardship. More troublesome for Mueller and Markham, jurors told the Boston Herald that they would have voted not guilty if the case had ended at that point, following testimony on the credit card fraud counts of the indictment. Judge Keeton found that the government had engaged in “systemic and institutional prosecutorial misconduct” in the case. In a separate opinion, he opened the door to further discovery of classified operations in a retrial, in order to allow the defendants to show that they did not have the “corrupt motive” necessary for an obstruction of justice conviction.
The Justice Department quickly opened a new massive LaRouche case before Judge Albert V. Bryan Jr. in Alexandria, Virginia, this time based on a conspiracy to commit loan fraud and a conspiracy to prevent the IRS from assessing taxes. LaRouche was the sole defendant charged in both of the two counts, and all defendants were convicted. Bryan raced the case from indictment to trial, preventing adequate defense preparation; invited the government to conceal evidence by denying all motions for exculpatory evidence; and prevented the defense from introducing the fact that the government had bankrupted the companies issuing political loans, preventing them from repaying the political loans, in a case in which the government claimed loan fraud based on non-repayment of the same political loans. Judge Bryan himself had signed the order initiating the unprecedented government-instigated bankruptcy. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Martin Bostetter later ruled that the bankruptcy was a “constructive fraud” on the court. Praising his railroad, Judge Bryan mocked Judge Keeton openly, saying Keeton “owed him a cigar” for “disposing” of the LaRouche matter.
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who represented LaRouche on appeal, said that the LaRouche case represented“a broader range of deliberate cunning and systemic misconduct over a longer period of time using the power of the federal government than any other prosecution by the U.S. government in my time or to my knowledge.”After reviewing the federal cases during hearings held in his Court, widely respected New York Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Crane found that the“actions of federal prosecutors raised an inference of a conspiracy to lay low these defendants at any cost.”
Needless to say, Robert Mueller does not feature the LaRouche case as a career highlight.
The Narcos Era: Mueller Ascends the Bush [Crime] Family Ladder
In 1989, George H.W. Bush brought Robert Mueller to Main Justice to dispose of another nemesis, Panamanian President Manuel Noriega. Aside from supporting LaRouche’s “Operation Juarez,” Noriega had refused to go along with the cocaine financing of George H.W. Bush’s Contra insurgency operations directed at El Salvador and Nicaragua. Based on his work for the CIA, Noriega just knew way too much about George H.W. Bush and cocaine. Following multiple unsuccessful coup attempts against Noriega, on December 20,1989, more than 28,000 U.S. troops invaded Panama, killing hundreds of Panamanians, deposing Noriega’s government and armed forces, and extracting Noriega for trial in the United States. The operation was dubbed “Operation Just Cause,” an antonym if there ever was one.
Manual Noriega was known in the CIA and DEA as a steadfast drug fighter, and DEA and CIA agents testified to that fact at his trial. To overcome this problem, Mueller dealt and bribed Latin America’s most notorious drug gangs with “get out of jail” free cards, if they would say that Noriega dealt drugs. According to reporter Glenn Garvin, Mueller plea bargained down a potential 1,435 years in prison for the lying narcotrafficker criminals testifying for him, to 81 years. These deals and bribes included a $1.25 million bribe to members of the Cali Cartel (whose leaders Noriega had jailed) and a deal with self-avowed Hitler worshiper Carlos Lehder Rivas, leader of the Medellin Cartel. Once again, charges of prosecutorial misconduct flowed daily from Noriega’s defense and appellate legal teams, but the media operations accompanying the prosecutions had turned Noriega into a devil whose claims did not deserve to be heard.
Having done the assignment on Noriega, Mueller ascended to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. Here he successfully covered up the drug, weapons, and terrorism activities of two banks, BCCI and BNL. BCCI was the Anglo-American intelligence community’s chosen vehicle to fund terrorism, launder drug money, and fund dark intelligence activities in Afghanistan, Central America, and throughout the Middle East. The highest levels of the British and European oligarchies were directly implicated in BCCI’s activities. Both banks escaped with plea bargains and fines, protecting dirty state secrets on several continents from public disclosure. Mueller left the Justice Department in 1993 for private practice, a stint in Washington D.C.’s Homicide Division, and one as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California in San Francisco.
Based on family services rendered, President George W. Bush returned Mueller to Main Justice as acting Deputy Attorney General in the early days of his Administration, before appointing him, in July of 2001, to head the FBI. He assumed that office on September 4, 2001, only days before September 11th. As we shall see, he played a commanding role of covering up for the perpetrators of the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on that date, while overseeing the creation of the police state measures which followed that attack.
Aggressive Deception of the American People Concerning 9/11
There is a picture formerly available from the Bush Presidential Library which shows George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, and Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia’s U.S. Ambassador, on the White House balcony two days after September 11, 2001. The men are smoking cigars. Reporters inquiring about the photo more recently have been told it is no longer available from the Bush Library. Maybe the picture in this case says more than a thousand words ever could. Again, two days after almost 3,000 Americans were murdered by 19 hijackers, 15 of whom were Saudis, the Saudi Ambassador yucks it up with the President, Dick Cheney, and the National Security Adviser on the White House balcony.
Immediately after September 11,2001, Bandar arranged for a mass exodus of Saudi royals, intelligence personnel, and other Saudi nationals from the United States, including members of the bin Laden family, with the full cooperation of the United States government. He placed them beyond the reach of any future inquiry.
It is obvious that the 9/11 terrorists did not emerge out of bat caves in Afghanistan. They lived here in the United States, training for a suicide mission which required massive logistical support. The immediate conclusion of anyone thinking through the plot, is that this had to be state-sponsored terrorism. The Bush Administration, however, immediately focused the nation on Iraq and took the nation to a disastrous war there, when even the most basic common sense told investigators to focus initially on the Saudis, following the evidence from there.
Congress convened a Joint Congressional Inquiry into the events of 9/11 in 2002, chaired by then U.S. Senator Bob Graham. Senator Graham says that he has stopped using the term “cover-up” in relation to 9/11. He instead uses the term “aggressive deception,” and places Mueller, operating on behalf of the Bush family, at the center of obstructing his investigation and others. It was Mueller who angrily intervened to prevent Congressional investigators from visiting FBI offices in San Diego. They went anyway, and discovered troves of FBI documents concerning the Saudi hijackers’ San Diego cell, and its support by Saudi royals and government officials, which Mueller’s FBI never made available to the Congressional Committee, despite their specific requests.
Former Senator and Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, Bob Graham, charged the FBI with engaging in what he terms "aggressive deception" regarding the truth surrounding 9/11 during a press conference at the National Press Club August 31, 2016.
Prince Bandar, so close to the Bush family that he was called “Bandar Bush,” is at the center of the support network for the San Diego hijackers. There were multiple documents in the San Diego FBI files referencing well-known sympathies for Al-Qaeda by employees of the Saudi embassy in D.C., including Osama Bin Laden’s half-brother. There were records of checks paid to Saudis supporting the two San Diego hijackers from Bandar’s wife. There was also a CIA memorandum carefully tracking Saudi government support for Al-Qaeda and other Saudi terrorist organizations.
Congressional investigators also discovered the identity of an FBI informant who was close to both San Diego hijackers and rented rooms to them, living in the same house. Rather than allowing investigators to interview the informant, Mueller placed him in an
FBI safehouse for “his protection.” The results of the Joint Congressional Inquiry’s review of Saudi government support of the 9/11 hijackers, 28 pages of the Joint Congressional Committee’s report, were classified in the final report. They remained classified, despite the demands of the 9/11 families and an all-out national campaign for their release, until July 15, 2016. According to all concerned, the man who classified these 28 pages in 2003—and adamantly fought to ensure that they would never see the light of day—was FBI Director Robert Mueller. The 28 pages solely concern what Congressional investigators found in the San Diego FBI office, the discovery of which Robert Mueller actively sought to prevent.
In the summer of 2015, another document formerly classified, Document 17, was quietly declassified. It was authored by the same Congressional investigators who wrote the 28 pages, and revealed that two Saudi students, funded by the Saudi government, did a dry run of the September 11, 2001 attack on an American West flight from Phoenix to Washington in 1999, an incident well-known to the FBI. After releasing the two Saudis from custody, the FBI subsequently learned, in 2000, that one of the students had been trained in Afghanistan’s Al Qaeda camps to conduct Khobar Towers type assaults, and the other was tied to terrorist elements as well.
Senator Graham has remarked that Mueller stone-walled his investigation at every turn. Undoubtedly, large volumes of documents concerning the Saudi role in 9/11 reside in still classified and undisclosed CIA, FBI, and other files. This is not the place for a full review of the joint British and American responsibility for Salafist terrorism. From the U.S. side, Zbigniew Brzezinski deliberately created and supported an entire generation of such terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden, in his geopolitical war game with the Soviet Union. He deliberately created a terrorist insurgency in Afghanistan in order to draw the Russians into a war there, and gloated about it until his recent death. Saudi Arabia has never been anything other than a satrap of the British, and the second incubation point for the terrorist phenomena manifesting themselves in 9/11 lies in the mosques of “Londonistan.” The CIA knew this. MI6 knew this. They had been using these terrorist networks for years for their own geopolitical purposes.
The FBI did not pay attention to the Saudis before 2001 because “they were an ally,” according to testimony provided in the wake of the attacks. In August of 2001, President Bush was handed a CIA briefing which explicitly warned that Al Qaeda was about to launch a major attack on the United States using airplanes. The President did nothing. Earlier, Robert Mueller, serving as Deputy Attorney General in the days prior to 9/11, had blocked a major funding increase for the FBI’s counter-terrorism division led by John O’Neill. O’Neill had moved his entire operation to New York because official Washington would not listen to his warnings about Al Qaeda. The job to “aggressively deceive” the American people about this sordid history fell to Robert Swan Mueller III, and he obstructed a Congressional investigation to do precisely that.
Due to an act of Congress, JASTA, the 9/11 families are now proceeding with their lawsuit against the Saudis. But why should they have to endure years more of litigation? Why doesn’t President Trump open the actual door on this process, assigning seasoned investigators, like Michael Jacobsen, who unearthed the San Diego FBI trove, to a full review and disclosure of the Saudi role in 9/11, the U.S. and British government role in creating and fostering Islamic terrorism, and the “aggressive deception” and obstruction of justice by Robert Mueller and others which resulted in this illegal coverup?
While engaged in “aggressive deception” about the criminal conspiracy resulting in almost 3,000 American murders, Robert Mueller continued to railroad innocents. He personally directed the PENTBOM investigation which falsely accused Dr. Steven Hatfill of mailing the deadly Anthrax letters which killed five people in 2001. For years, Mueller harassed the innocent Dr. Hatfill, ordering the FBI to search his apartment multiple times, searching the apartment of his girlfriend, ensuring that Hatfill lost his job, and leaking continuously about Hatfill’s alleged perfidies to the national news media. Once, when an FBI agent ran over Hatfill’s foot with his car, it was arranged that Hatfill would get a ticket for impeding traffic. The Justice Department finally paid Hatfill $5.8 million dollars to settle his Privacy Act lawsuit aimed at government leaks—a settlement, along with an exoneration, which only came when a federal judge insisted that reporters reveal their Justice Department and FBI sources for stories about Hatfill.
As part of the same PENTBOM 9/11 investigation which destroyed Hatfill’s life, Mueller, with Attorney General John Ashcroft, rounded up 762 Muslims who had overstayed their visas, and were identified via tips to the FBI “tip line” from a hysterical public reacting to the events of 9/11. Remember, Prince Bandar had already moved the key Saudis involved with the hijackers out of the United States. These individuals were detained, without charges, in a special unit of New York’s Metropolitan Detention Center. Their jail conditions were supervised by Mueller and a small group of other Washington officials, and amounted to torture. They were deprived of sleep and food, repeatedly strip searched, physically and verbally abused by guards, and denied basic hygiene items like soap, toilet paper, and towels, or any access to the outside world. Both the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York and the Second Circuit kept Mueller as a defendant in the subsequent civil rights suit brought by the detainees. This means, under the high standard of proof required of civil rights plaintiffs, that the judges were literally appalled by the allegations against Robert Mueller in the complaint. In a 4-2 decision on June 18, 2017, however, the Supreme Court let the newly-appointed Special Prosecutor out of the lawsuit. Here is what Justice Stephen Breyer said in his dissent:
The majority opinion well summarizes the particular claims that the plaintiffs make in this suit. All concern the conditions of their confinement, which began soon after the September 11, 2001 attacks and lasted for days and weeks, then stretching into months. At some point, all the defendants knew that they had nothing to do with the September 11 attacks but continued to detain them anyway under harsh conditions. Official government policy, both before and after the defendants became aware of the plaintiffs’ innocence led to the plaintiffs being held in “tiny cells for over 23 hours a day, with lights continuously left on, shackled when moved, often strip searched, and denied access to most forms of communication with the outside world.” The defendants detained the plaintiffs in these conditions on the basis of their race or religion and without justification.
Mueller is often touted by the Washington establishment for reorganizing the FBI to become an effective counterintelligence and counterterrorism organization in the wake of 9/11. This also is Washington D.C. public relations claptrap. The FBI under Mueller excelled at entrapping the otherwise innocent, and constructing a surveillance state strongly resembling that portrayed by George Orwell in the novel, 1984. In the Newburgh Four case, for example, the presiding judge said the FBI, “came up with the crime, provided the means, and removed all relevant obstacles, making a terrorist out of a man whose buffoonery is positively Shakespearean in scope.”
Studies have found that almost every domestic terrorist plot during Mueller’s tenure, from 2001 to 2010, was in some way cooked up, assisted, and eventually busted by Mueller’s FBI. The book, The Terror Factory—Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism by Trevor Aaronson documents this in chilling detail. J. Edgar Hoover’s domestic security depravities seem pale in comparison.
The FBI now manages some 15,000 designated informants through a Linked-In type data base called Delta. It allows FBI agents to dial up informants to use in stings anywhere in the country. Informants then travel to their assignments and can earn up to $100,000 for entrapping and testifying against the unwary petty criminals, losers, and mentally-challenged individuals who inhabit the Bureau’s terrorist case docket. Philip Mudd was brought over from the CIA by Mueller to lead this effort in the FBI’s new National Security Division. Mudd, using a data-mining system called Domain Management, flooded immigrant communities, particularly Muslim communities, with informants to monitor and entrap those who expressed ideas favorable to radical Islam, whether or not those expressing the ideas had any real possibility of ever engaging in a terrorist plot. FBI agents referred to the Mudd-Mueller surveillance and entrapment tools as “battlefield management.” In other words, entire communities in the United States have been targeted and treated to the methods of the East German Stasi. On August 10, 2017, Mudd, now a CNN “analyst” who has raved repeatedly against President Donald Trump, told CNN analyst Jake Tapper, that the U.S. government “is going to kill this guy,” meaning the President.
Then, there is the surveillance state.
William Binney was the senior-most technical analyst at the NSA. He designed a system, “ThinThread,” which would accurately track terrorist plots while preserving the civil liberties of American citizens. In the film, “The Good American,” Binney tells the story of how he did this, and how General Michael Hayden, then the Director of the NSA, ditched Binney’s program and spent millions of dollars with an outside contractor, SAIC, on an alternative system, Trail Blazer, which mass-collected data on every American, in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Drowning in data under SAIC’s alternative surveillance program, the NSA was unable to pinpoint actual terrorist plots. Binney and his collaborators demonstrated that under his program, ThinThread, all of the information necessary to stop the 9/11 hijackers was recorded by the NSA and readily available to investigators. For that, Robert Mueller sent the FBI to raid and harass Binney and his collaborators, bringing criminal charges against one of them, Thomas Drake, which were later dropped.
And then, of course, there is Enron, another notch in Mueller’s prosecutorial belt. Stretching the law on obstruction of justice, Mueller and his task force went after Arthur Anderson and Company, then one of the world’s largest accounting firms, for the perfidies of Enron, charging the accountants with obstruction of justice. The U.S. Supreme Court found that Mueller and friends had stretched the obstruction statute beyond recognition to prevail in the case, a reversal which came too late for the company and the people who worked there. Arthur Anderson went out of business as a result of Mueller’s prosecution.
The True Origins of the Coup Against the President
The coup against Donald Trump, in which Robert Mueller has been assigned to conduct the concluding acts, actually began in 2013-2014. The popular explanation for the perfidies and crimes against the President is that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama employed their networks, including stay-behind loyalists in the government and in the intelligence community, to change the result of the U.S. election, to stage the ongoing coup. This explanation, focused primarily on events in 2016, while true in an immediate domestic sense, misses the larger picture. As we shall show, the British starting calling for Donald Trump’s head, by their own account, in 2015 and meddled and meddled in the U.S. election and the coup to reverse its result every day thereafter. A recent book by Dick Morris and Ellen McGann, Rogue Spooks, the Intelligence War on Trump, puts appropriate emphasis on the British origin of the war against the President, but assigns the wrong motive for the crimes committed.
Why, for example, did the FBI obtain a FISA warrant for Paul Manafort in 2014 based on his political consulting work in Ukraine?
Why, according to accounts in the Guardian, did the British start demanding Trump’s head in 2015, and warn that the DNC computers had been hacked in July of 2015, a full year before the DNC revealed it had been hacked?
Why did the British keep pushing and pushing for Trump’s removal by any means necessary? Why was Hillary Clinton’s campaign working not only with British intelligence’s Christopher Steele and Sir Andrew Wood to develop dirt on Trump, but also with Ukrainian intelligence?
Why was NATO intelligence, an appendage of the British, raving about Russian bots and Russian “hybrid warfare,” leaking repeatedly to the London press in 2014 and 2015 about the purported evil emanating from the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency and thousands of paid internet trolls [the current topic of Democrat/Deep State fueled media hysteria now that 'collusion' allegations have fizzled for lack of evidence -- JWS]?
The Real Story: Issues of War, Peace, and the Future
Beginning with an announcement of President Xi Jinping, at a conference in Kazakhstan in July of 2013, China has set into motion an entirely new dynamic in the world, a new paradigm of cooperation between nation states, to build vital modern infrastructure allowing nations in the former “developing sector” to reach their full economic potentials. Xi Jinping’s vision of the New Silk Road or “One Belt, One Road” project has been endorsed by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Russia and China are joining in projects which will fully develop the Eurasian landmass, creating a “new financial architecture” in the Asia-Pacific region.
On July 16, 2014, the BRICS group of nations meeting in Fortaleza, Brazil, joined by the Latin American heads of state, agreed with Xi Jinping’s proposal on the creation of an entirely new economic and financial system, representing a fundamental alternative to the casino economy of the present system of globalization. The Anglo-American globalist system is based on maximized profit of the few, and the impoverishment of billions of people. In the new paradigm, financing for joint great projects is to come from development banks, such as the newly created Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, ending dependence on such globalist institutions as the IMF or World Bank. Globalization as administered by the IMF and World Bank is effectively a system of imperial debt slavery, keeping the nations dependent on their loans in primitive economic conditions, while their raw materials are looted.
As Prime Minister Narenda Modi from India remarked,“The BRICS is unique as an international institution. In this first instance, it unifies a group of nations, not on the basis of their existing prosperity or common identities, but rather their future potentials. The idea of the BRICS itself is thus aligned with the future.”It is not incidental to this remark that Russia, China, and India have set future goals for space exploration, including most specifically exploration of the Moon and possible exploitation of Helium 3 on the Moon, which has the potential of finally realizing nuclear fusion power as a primary energy source powering the world.
China has made clear that no small part of this initiative is inspired by the work of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche. Many of the envisioned projects reflect long-standing proposals by Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute. The methods employed echo the ideas of political economy first developed by Alexander Hamilton, and deployed by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt—ideas uniquely developed and expanded by Lyndon LaRouche. Xi Jinping has asked the United States to join this great venture, which could produce thousands of productive jobs and jump-start infrastructure projects in this country. Obama adamantly refused Xi’s offer, and did everything in his power to block and defeat the Chinese initiative. President Trump has indicated an openness to the proposition.
These 2013-2014 events were and are a direct challenge to the British imperial system. They directly challenge the monetary system which is the source of Anglo-American domination of the world. They directly challenge fundamental British strategic policy extant since the days of Halford Mackinder. Under the “One Belt, One Road” initiative, joined with Russia’s Eurasian Union, Mackinder’s “world island” of Eurasia and Africa will be developed, crisscrossed with new high-speed rail links, new cities, and vital modern infrastructure, based on the mutual benefit of all of the nation states existing there. Under the British geopolitical model, this area of the world has been subjected to endless instability, war, and raw materials looting. Xi Jinping has also attacked the geopolitical axioms by which the United States and the British have operated. He proposes instead a model of “win-win” cooperation in which nation states collaborate for development based on the common aims of mankind.
The Anglo-American response to this development can be seen in the events in Ukraine, where Obama, the British, and the National Endowment for Democracy staged a coup in February 2014, overthrowing the government of the duly elected President, Victor Yanukovych, because he refused to turn his country into a western satrapy to be wielded against Putin’s Russia. Victoria Nuland, who helped oversee the coup from her perch at Hillary Clinton’s State Department, was famously caught on tape dictating the Ukraine succession, after bands of murderous neo-Nazis did the scut-work for the coup. According to Nuland, the price for this handiwork was some $5 billion.
The actual “swamp” of the British and their accomplices in the U.S. intelligence community and aligned trans-Atlantic institutions, like NATO, have viewed themselves as being in a state of war against Russia and China since the 2013-2014 events. Think about former DNI Clapper’s unhinged speech in Australia of June 7, 2017. Clapper ranted that it was in Putin’s and Russia’s “genes” to attack the United States. Since Trump pursues better relations and shared intelligence with Russia on terrorism, Clapper ranted, Watergate (where Richard Nixon committed proven crimes) paled in comparison to Russiagate (where both Clapper and Comey have testified that to date the President has committed no crimes). Clapper told the Aussies also to target China, accusing the Chinese, without any offer of proof, of meddling in Australia’s elections. Former FBI Director James Comey backed Clapper in his testimony on June 8, 2017, attempting to wax eloquent in response to Senator Joe Manchin, about how Putin exists with one purpose in mind—to shred and dismember the United States.
But China and Russia have completely outflanked these cretins, and the new paradigm is rapidly coming to life with “shovels in the ground” everywhere. In response, the Anglo-American elites have absolutely nothing to offer the world except the same dying, decadent globalist “order.” This explains why many in official Washington let loose their inner alien monster every time the President mentions a desire for better relations with Russia, or evinces his friendship with President Xi Jinping of China. This is why Hillary Clinton has literally gone insane, raving like Lady Macbeth, and obsessing about Putin’s “man-spreading.” That is why, also, they would risk World War III rather than see the “Belt and Road,” the New Silk Road, go forward with its “community of principle” idea of relations among nations.
What Did Trump Do?
Like LaRouche, Trump represents an existential challenge to the post-War British-dictated monetarist and imperial order. In his campaign platform he called for the reinstitution of Glass-Steagall banking separation. This would end the casino economy which is about to blow up again—the real economy never having recovered from the collapse of 2008. He wants to build huge modern infrastructure and revitalize the manufacturing sector of the economy with modern manufacturing techniques. He wants to return the United States to space exploration and the funding of fundamental science, recognizing the optimistic national morale which will result from that.
In his public speeches, Trump has repeatedly invoked what he understands as “The American System” of political economy, a concept developed and elaborated in recent history by only one man, Lyndon LaRouche. This centers economic systems in nation states, rather than global institutions, and calls for harnessing the resources of the nation state to develop the economy to higher and higher levels of physical productivity and human culture. While Trump has features in his version of the American System which LaRouche would not endorse as historically accurate or politically wise, even the use of the term, invoking Alexander Hamilton and Lincoln’s economist Henry Carey, is a direct challenge to the free trade, small-government nostrums foisted on the United States by a parade of British agents during the Twentieth Century.
The British, up to this point, have been largely successful in burying the actual ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Franklin Roosevelt, and burying the fundamental advances in these ideas resulting from original discoveries by LaRouche. Through deliberate miseducation of Americans, the British have made their economic theories and systems, against which Americans explicitly fought in our Revolution, appear to be universal laws of human behavior.
As his recent speech to the United Nations emphasized, Trump envisions a system of sovereign nations, each striving to develop and enrich their populations, engaged in cooperative trade relationships, reciprocal in nature and targeted for the benefit of each party. His U.N. speech echoed the foreign policy of John Quincy Adams, a policy which forbade our nation from “going abroad, seeking monsters to destroy.” This is the very opposite of the imperial-gendarme, perpetual-war policy long favored by the British for the United States. Trump’s positive vision, under present circumstances, requires active collaboration with Russia and China.
To stop the coup, the President’s team and his supporters must stop reacting defensively. He must act on the aspects of his program—Glass-Steagall, large scale infrastructure development funded by national banking mechanism devoted to that purpose, space exploration, fusion power development, and joining the “One Belt, One Road” program with China, which can actually save the economy and produce high paying jobs. At the same time, they should look at the actual crimes involved in the coup which are already on the public record, investigate them—including in the Congress—and prosecute them. With respect to Mueller, they should investigate his obstruction of the investigation into the crimes committed on 9/11, together with a full public unveiling of the Saudi and British role in international terrorism. In aid of such an effort we present seven crimes implicated in the events in the coup against the President to date.
Seven Actual Crimes
The crimes outlined below make clear that a Special Counsel, not Robert Mueller, should be investigating the U.S.-British response to China's Belt and Road Initiative, beginning with the illegal coup in Ukraine which has resulted in the targeting of Paul Manafort.
In the British account of the American election, largely published in pieces in the Guardian, they began warning their American counterparts about the dangers of Donald Trump’s accommodating views toward Putin and Russia in 2015. These warnings were followed by the specific claim that the Democratic National Committee’s servers had been hacked by the Russians as of July of 2015. According to the British account, their American counterparts were slow to respond, although the FBI says it notified the DNC, which did nothing about the alleged Russian hack until June of 2016.
The obvious should be stated here. If the British were developing dossiers on Trump and his associates as early as 2015, Trump and his associates were under surveillance as of that date or sooner by British GCHQ and/or the NSA. We know that Paul Manafort was considered practically an enemy combatant in Anglo-American swamp circles by 2014, because of his Ukraine work with Yanukovych and the Party of the Regions. He apparently chose the wrong side by fighting against a Nazi coup. The same was true even of Democratic consultants such as Tony Podesta, who worked with Manafort on Ukraine and were subject to the same reported 2014 FISA surveillance warrant [though media leaking regarding FISA warrants targeting the brother of John Podesta has been remarkably restrained, compared to the feeding frenzy around former Trump campaign chairman Manafort].
What was the FBI affidavit which justified the 2014 Manafort, Podesta FISA court surveillance warrant, and what was the British role in obtaining it? What role did the British play, including GCHQ and MI6, in the Manafort counterintelligence investigation? What were the British “concerns” about Trump communicated to U.S. intelligence as early as 2015? What was the specific British warning about hacks of the DNC computer in July 2015?
By December of 2015, according to James Clapper’s dodgy January 2017 report on alleged Russian meddling in the election, hundreds of paid Russian trolls associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency had begun to advocate for Trump’s election. At the same time, former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) director Michael Flynn attended a dinner at RT in Russia, sitting across the table from Putin. Flynn had already driven Obama crazy by proposing a determined U.S.-Russian collaboration in the war on terror, and going after the Administration’s policy aimed at dismembering Syria. Obama had fired him. Is this the date when surveillance on Flynn actually began, or did it begin sooner? What was the British [especially GCHQ] role in this surveillance?
Carter Page has also been a subject in Mueller’s Russiagate hysteria. He apparently walked in to volunteer for the Trump campaign without any prior association with the President, and was disavowed by the campaign soon after. He went to school in London, had a variety of business dealings in Russia, and had volunteered for the Trump campaign as a foreign policy advisor by simply walking in the door. Page had already functioned as an FBI informant in a major 2013 New York City FBI case against Russian organized crime figures, and stated on CNN that he briefed both the CIA and FBI regularly on these business dealings in Russia. Was he used as a front to get a FISA warrant directed at the Trump campaign? Was he a spy sent by the FBI both to Russia and into the Trump campaign?
The targeting of the alleged activities of the St. Petersburg Internet Research Agency (IRA) in DNI Clapper’s January report, again points to the heavy British hand in the coup against the President. According to French journalist Thierry Meyssan, in September 2014, the British government created the 77th Brigade, a unit tasked with countering foreign propaganda, which worked with the U.S. military in Europe to interfere with websites considered to be distributing Russian propaganda. This project ultimately morphed into NATO’s Strategic Communications Service, tasked with suppressing any news or person favorable to the Russian position concerning strategic topics, but particularly Ukraine.
From its inception, the NATO Strategic Communications Service incorporated a service of the Atlantic Council, the Digital Forensics Service. Crowdstrike’s Dimitri Alperovitch—the person with sole access to the DNC’s allegedly “hacked” computers, whose forensic analysis was adopted wholesale by James Comey’s FBI and the U.S. intelligence community—is a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Service. News about Russian trolls operating out of the Internet Research Agency and poisoning the Western mind filled the British press in 2015. In line with this NATO project is the Information Warfare Initiative in the U.S., centered at the Washington Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and founded by Washington Post neocon Anne Applebaum [who as Moscow based Australian journalist John Helmer has doggedly reported, is married to former Polish Defense Minister Radek Sikorski. Mr. Sikorski used to work at the neocon think tank the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) during the Iraq invasion which included a symbolic Polish aka 'New Europe' contingent. Sikorski was basically kicked out of Poland's politics after a tape emerged of him privately mockingPoland's dependency on Washington at a restaurant: “You know that the Polish-U.S. alliance isn’t worth anything. It is downright harmful because it creates a false sense of security…[it's] complete bullshit. We’ll get in conflict with the Germans, Russians, and we’ll think that everything is super because we gave the Americans a blow job. Losers. Complete losers [murzynskosc – literally, dark-skinned slaves]”]. It is a pseudo pod of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. intelligence community, and has concentrated its attacks on the Russian broadcasters RT and Sputnik.2
What exactly was the relationship of The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and the other black propagandists operating against the President, together with their reporters, with the NED, the Information Warfare Initiative, NATO’s Strategic Communications Service, and The [since absorbed by the taxpayer funded Broadcasting Board of Directors RFE/RL] Institute for Modern Russia in New York City, or other British or U.S. intelligence agencies during the Obama Administration and subsequently? Like the Train meetings targeting LaRouche, the media attacks on the President are not organic. They are organized, and on a much larger scale than anything ever experienced in this country.
What is the relationship of various Washington D.C. lobby shops, such as Orion Strategies, long associated with John McCain, to the organized media campaign against Donald Trump? Have our intelligence agencies, actually instigated an Active Measures counterintelligence program illegally and against a sitting President? What is the overlap of offices, personnel, and entities assigned by Obama to Russian, Chinese, and Eurasian intelligence functions, including the coup activities in Ukraine, with the illegal leaks of classified information to the news media?
The Cardinal Events of June-July 2016
(1). The Conspiracy Against the President Takes Off
Sometime in June, 2016, Hillary Clinton’s campaign took over an opposition research project on Donald Trump which had previously been funded by Trump’s Republican opponents. The contract was with a D.C. firm called Fusion GPS, who, in turn, employed a British firm, Orbis, and Orbis’ founder Christopher Steele. Steele ran the Russia desk for MI6 until 2009 [Steele had been kicked out of Russia years earlier as a spy who got caught by Russia's FSB]; Sir Andrew Wood, an “associate” at Steele’s company, was the British Ambassador to Moscow between 1995 and 2000, a “Russia” adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, and is an associate fellow of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at Chatham House [the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and Washington being Chatham House's subservient American sister organizations]. Christopher Burrows, Steele’s partner in Orbis, lists himself as a long-time high-ranking British foreign service officer, although news accounts also place him in British intelligence.
Christopher Steele has also acknowledged a longstanding relationship to the FBI, centered in the FBI’s Eurasian Organized Crime Strike Force in New York City, which media reports date to 2010, the same time the relationship to Fusion GPS went into effect. Andrew McCabe, the ethically challenged FBI Assistant Director now being investigated for Hatch Act and other violations concerning the Clinton sponsorship of his wife’s campaign against Virginia Senator Richard Black [who happens to be a deep state loathed outspoken critic of the Washington/Langley proxy war against Syria], led the Eurasian task force early in his career, and has maintained contacts ever since. Many believe that McCabe was Steele’s FBI handler and contact.
In court filings in a London libel suit against them, Steele and Orbis state that they briefed reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Yahoo News, and CNN about Christopher Steele’s reports on Trump and Russia in September 2016, and participated in further briefings with the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo News in October 2016. In late October, Steele briefed a reporter from Mother Jones via Skype. Senator John McCain and David Kramer, who was McCain’s agent, were briefed on the pre-election Steele memoranda in December of 2016. Sixteen memoranda smearing Trump, based on paid and anonymous Russian sources, were produced prior to the election. It is clear that the FBI was also a recipient of all of these memoranda dating back to June of 2016, if not earlier.
Steele and Orbis claim that the 17th memo, produced in December 2016, which referenced the salacious and disgusting claim that Trump engaged in perverse sexual activities at a Russian hotel, was solely produced to one David Kramer as a representative of Senator John McCain (R-AZ), and a representative of the British security services. The December memo was the product of a collaboration between Steele, Sir Andrew Wood, Kramer, and a representative of the British security services, which began on November 18, 2016, that is, almost immediately following Trump’s election as President. It has been widely reported that James Comey’s FBI was also offering Steele and Orbis $50,000 or more at this point to corroborate aspects of the dodgy dossier smearing the President-elect. [Though the FBI's post Comey director Christopher Wray to date is risking being found in contempt of Congress by stonewalling subpoenas from GOP led committees demanding details on the amounts paid to Steele].
David Kramer is the former President of the CIA and NED quango, Freedom House, was a fellow of the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century, held State Department positions dedicated to Project Democracy and soft power coups in Russia and the former East Bloc, and presently serves as Senior Director for Human Rights and Human Freedoms at Senator McCain’s Institute for International Leadership in Arizona.
Hillary Clinton used the Steele Dossier to paint Trump as a Russian dupe throughout her general election campaign against him. James Comey used it to justify his FBI counterintelligence probe of the Trump campaign which began in July of 2016, and has continued.
Thus, we have the British government and, in all probability, NATO, intervening in an election in the United States to sway the result. Most certainly this raises questions about the applicability of election laws which bar foreign funding for exactly the reason that United States elections should be decided by United States citizens. Most certainly, once this sequence of events is fully investigated, it will become clear that all government participants intended to sway the election unlawfully, using the powers of a state to vanquish the will of the voters.
(2). The Russian Hack That Wasn’t—False Reporting of a Crime
On June 12, 2016, WikiLeaks announced that it was in possession of emails damaging to Hillary Clinton, and would soon be publishing them. June, 14, 2016 marks the announcement by the Democratic National Committee that its computers had been hacked by the Russians, the subject apparently of the initial Christopher Steele memorandum prepared for the Clinton campaign. The purloined DNC emails showed, definitively, that the DNC, which should have been neutral in the primaries, was trying to destroy the rising campaign of Bernie Sanders. The emails were published by WikiLeaks on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. The claim that the WikiLeaks emails were the result of a Russian hack of DNC servers was authored by Dmitri Alperovitch of the security firm, Crowd Strike. Alperovitch, a Russian-American who demonizes Putin, is, as previously referenced, a fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Project, deeply involved in NATO’s Strategic Communications Service.
The FBI’s James Comey accepted Alperowitz’s forensic analysis without ever accessing the DNC computers in question. It is probable that Comey was already operating on the basis of the British Christopher Steele Memoranda asserting that the Russians were responsible for the DNC hack.
On July 24, 2017, the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) released a Memo to the President demonstrating that there was no Russian hack of the DNC. Rather, the WikiLeaks document trove was produced by a leak from inside the DNC, not a hack. According to this memorandum, the leaked treasure trove from the DNC was altered in a “cut and paste” job to make it look like it was the product of a very crude Russian hack. The VIPS are veterans of U.S. intelligence agencies, and include William Binney, the former technical director of the NSA. Their group first formed to oppose the fabricated reasons for the Iraq War.
Watch LaRouchePAC's full interview of former CIA Officer Ray McGovern and the VIPS report.
William Binney has insisted from the first reference to Russian hacking as the source of the WikiLeaks Podesta/DNC documents, that if such an event had occurred, the NSA would have traced it and could say so with certainty. In their report, the VIPS point out that the CIA’s “Marble Framework” program allows for obfuscation of cyberattacks and false flag attribution to other state actors.
WikiLeaks has consistently claimed that the source of its dossier was an inside leak from the DNC, implying that Seth Rich, a DNC data management staffer who supported Bernie Sanders, was one of its sources. Rich was murdered in July of 2016 in Washington, D.C., in a crime which remains unsolved at this date. Congressman Dana Rohrbacher (R-CA) recently met with Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, and states that he has evidence confirming that the WikiLeaks DNC/John Podesta email trove was the result of a leak, not a Russian hack.
(3). The Trump Tower Meeting—Entrapping a Presidential Campaign
On June 9, 2016, a meeting took place in Trump Tower involving Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, at the time the campaign manager for the Trump Presidential campaign, Jared Kushner, the President’s son-in-law, and five other people. As opposed to media accounts, only one of the participants in the Trump Tower meeting was a Russian, the lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. By all accounts provided by participants, the meeting was very short, and involved the Magnitsky Act sanctions imposed by the U.S. Congress on certain Russians. Many consider these 2012 sanctions to be the opening shot of the New Cold War. This meeting has attracted extensive attention from Special Counsel Mueller, as the media has painted it as a “smoking gun.” of alleged collusion between Trump's advisers and Russians.
The emails setting up the meeting do not reflect what actually happened at the meeting. Instead, they bear all the marks of an intelligence-agency entrapment attempt against Donald Trump, Jr., designed to fix the “Manchurian candidate” label on Trump early in the general election campaign. The emails setting up the meeting specifically offered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton to be provided by the Russian government.
On July 15, 2016, at the same time as the FBI was opening an investigation of the Russians for interfering in the U.S. election and of the Trump campaign for colluding with them, another British intelligence operative, Bill Browder [grandson of Communist Party USA director and avowed Stalinist Earl Browder], was filing a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning four participants in the Trump Tower meeting and others for failure to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Browder’s complaint claimed that these people were engaged in unregistered Russian lobbying activities, namely, attempting to overturn the Magnitsky Act. Browder renounced his American citizenship in 1989 to become a British subject and has operated at the highest levels of British finance and intelligence.
Undoubtedly, by the time of the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting, the British government’s Trump file already included a full history of Donald Trump’s sponsorship of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and its players, Trump’s real estate dealings with Russians anywhere in the world, all of candidate Trump’s conciliatory statements toward Russia, and complaints that campaign advisor Michael Flynn was soft on Russia, and a rebel against the U.S. intelligence establishment [which had been busily arming Al Qaeda and ISIS under the guise of supplying 'moderate rebels' to topple Assad in Syria]. The file also included surveillance of Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who was considered an outright enemy of Anglo-American interests given his political work for the former President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovych and his Party of the Regions, and Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater, a Russian-American and high level FBI informant.3
So, even before the Trump Tower meeting, we find following intelligence services in motion and attempting to concoct illicit dirt about Trump and Putin: British intelligence, Ukrainian intelligence [the SBU], the DNI and the CIA in the United States, the FBI, and NATO’s Strategic Communications Service and its U.S. offshoots. But wait, as they say in infomercial sales, that’s not even close to all involved.
According to Foreign Policy magazine and others, on July 11, 2017, a hacker going by the name of “Johnnie Walker” published a trove of emails from the private account of Lieutenant Robert J. Otto, who is tasked to a secretive unit in the U.S. State Department focused on Russia. Newsweek magazine states that Otto is the nation’s “foremost” intelligence guy concerning Russia. The emails have not been authenticated. However, they contain an email purported to be on the day of the Trump Tower meeting between Otto and Kyle Parker, of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, featuring a picture of Russian attorney Natalia Velselnitskaya’s house in Russia. Parker credits himself as the actual author of the Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia, and a close friend of Bill Browder. Velselnitskaya claims that her children have been threatened as a result of her participation in a legal case questioning the bona fides of Bill Browder and the factual foundations of the Magnitsky Act. The picture of her house in this context suggests another level of intense surveillance directed at Trump Tower on the day of the meeting, and the possibility that threats to her family were actually governing Veselnitskaya’s behavior.
The Set-Up
On June 3rd, Trump Jr. was emailed by publicist Ron Goldstone, a British national who operates out of the U.S., whose first career was as a British tabloid journalist. Goldstone’s Facebook account appears to indicate that he is presently on a break from his businesses and on a world tour of gay bathhouses in which the proudly obese Goldstone takes pictures of himself wearing various strange hats and shirts in the company of young men. Who is financing this tour apparently outside the reach of Grand Jury subpoenas? Goldstone has also been photographed with Kathy Griffin, who famously posted a picture of herself with President Trump’s severed head.
Goldstone emailed Donald Trump, Jr. that Aras Agalarov wanted Goldstone to set up a meeting with Trump, Jr. in which sensitive Russian government files about Hillary Clinton’s dealings with Russia would be provided to the Trump campaign as a gesture of official Russian government support of the campaign. Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting.
Goldstone is the publicist for Emin Agalarov, an Azerbarjani pop star. Aras Agalarov and his son Emin partnered with Trump for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. The base of operations for the Agalarov family is the Moscow regional government, not Putin’s Kremlin.
The actual twenty-minute meeting involved Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, who did most of the speaking by all accounts; Rinat Akhmetshin, a well-known Washington D.C.-based lobbyist and American citizen; Ike Kaveladze, a U.S. citizen and vice-president at one of the Agalarov’s companies; Ron Goldstone; and the translator for Natalia Veselnitskaya, Anatoli Samochornov. Samochornov is also an American citizen who worked with Veselnitskaya frequently, since she does not speak English. He has also worked extensively for the FBI and the U.S. State Department. Although Akhmetshin has been linked to Russian counterintelligence repeatedly in the news media, that all appears to be based on his bragging about his two-year stint in the Russian military as a young man. The topic addressed by Veselnitskaya was the Magnitsky Act sanctions against Russia, which resulted from a campaign conducted by violently anti-Putin British operative William Browder, allied with Senator John McCain and the D.C. public relations firm Ashcroft and Glover.
Any sound investigation about this meeting would focus on who, out of the small army of intelligence operatives watching this meeting, designed and implemented the clear entrapment attempt against Donald Trump, Jr. for later use. Since it was surveilled and recorded by multiple intelligence agencies tripping all over one another at the time, (you get the image of Keystone cops), why was it only surfaced as the “smoking gun” recently? Natalia Veselnitskaya had been paroled into the United States to serve as the Russian lawyer in a legal case in the Southern District of New York based solely on money-laundering allegations made by Bill Browder against her Russian clients. At the time of the Trump Tower meeting, however, Veselnitskaya was traveling on a business visa issued by the U.S. Department of State after having been previously denied such a visa, and after efforts by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York to prevent any free travel by her in the U.S. at all. Immigration attorneys I have spoken to describe this situation as extremely strange.
(4). Obama’s Final Days In Office— Insurrection Against the President-Elect, Felonious Leaks
In an apparent effort to influence the Electoral College vote following the election, the Obama Administration leaked a preliminary intelligence community “assessment” that the Russians had hacked the Democrats’ computers and otherwise intervened to swing the election to Donald Trump. According to the New York Times of March 1, 2017, Obama and his national security colleagues additionally spent the months after the election and prior to President Trump’s inauguration dropping a trail of “leads” in official documents and leaking information, in the effort to delegitimize Trump and to continue their policies against Russia and China.
Certainly, there is a document trail on this process which appears to be confined to a period of a little over two months. Evelyn Farkas, formerly of the Defense Department’s Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia Desk and the Atlantic Council, virtually admitted to MSNBC in March that she had participated in this process. This is where the illegal unmasking of names in FISA and E.O. 12333 surveillance occurred, when these crimes were committed. Samantha Power, the U.N. Ambassador, was reportedly involved in 260 unmasking requests bearing little relationship to her function. Other targets of the House Intelligence Committee concerning illegal unmasking and leaks include Susan Rice, John Brennan, and Ben Rhodes.
On December 15, 2016, DNI James Clapper signed new procedures allowing the NSA to distribute raw intercept data throughout the entire intelligence community. These procedures became official on January 3, 2017 when Attorney General Loretta Lynch signed off on them.
At issue is modification of secret procedures under E.O. 12333, deemed by Edward Snowden and others as the most significant authority for our present, completely unconstitutional surveillance state. Previously, the NSA was required to filter and redact information regarding U.S. citizens monitored in foreign counterintelligence activities. DNI Clapper had also implemented a cloud intelligence data platform accessible by all intelligence agencies, and obliterating many paper and digital access trails and safeguards. Were these new procedures implemented in any way based on a desire to facilitate leaks and obscure their origin to future investigators?
(5). The January Blackmail/Extortion Attempt
On January 6, 2017, according to James Comey’s June 8th Congressional testimony, the intelligence chiefs went to Trump Tower to present the Obama Administration’s report on Russian hacking, hoping to convince the skeptical President-elect to abandon his campaign promise for better relations with Putin and Russia. Following that briefing, in a pre-arranged move with the rest of Obama’s intelligence directors, Comey cleared the room of everyone but himself and Trump. He presented Trump with the Steele dossier’s most salacious allegations, namely that Trump had engaged in sexually perverse acts with Russian prostitutes while visiting Moscow, and Putin had taped it. This is exactly what the infamous J. Edgar Hoover did—blackmail Washington politicians with FBI dossiers, assuring them that he could protect them so long as they did as Hoover wished. In fact, Comey described this as a “J. Edgar Hoover moment” in answers to questions by Senator Susan Collins on June 8th. [Former Clinton White House adviser] Dick Morris describes the entire affair as “just about as close as you can get to a political assassination without holding a gun to the President’s head.”
Trump appears to have demanded that the entirely fake dossier be investigated, and refused to back down in efforts to achieve better relations with Russia. In fact, Trump denounced the intelligence community publicly as acting like Nazis. He also denounced the McCarthyite hysteria they were generating. While Comey recorded the President-elect’s responses on a classified computer moments after leaving him, Buzzfeed, which had frequently published raw Clinton/Obama “oppo” stories, published the December 2016 British/Clinton dodgy dossier in full. The U.S. intelligence community, particularly Obama’s ghoulish grand inquisitor, [terrorists in Syria arming and alleged Saudi asset] CIA head John Brennan, proceeded to give it credibility by leaking that both President-elect Trump and President Obama had been briefed on its contents.
Publication of the Trump Russian sex allegations accompanied James Clapper’s factless “official intelligence community assessment” that the Russians hacked the DNC and Podesta, and that they did so to influence the election in favor of Donald Trump. Put together by analysts “hand-picked” by the CIA’s John Brennan, that assessment was backed by no actual evidence. It has now been thoroughly debunked as “the hack that wasn’t” by the analysis presented by the Veteran’s Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. John Brennan subsequently explained to Congress and the public that he does not “do evidence.”
The Democrats, the news media, and their Republican allies led by John McCain and Lindsay Graham, went berserk over the factless Obama Administration “assessment,” demanding special prosecutors and Congressional investigations, and sneering that “other shoes” were about to drop. The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, having clearly lost it, claimed that Russia had committed an “act of war,” presumably seeking to invoke Article V of the NATO treaty [with all the attendant risks of thermonuclear war].
(6). The President Calls Out Comey, Brennan et al. for Wiretapping Him, They Lie About It To Congress
On March 4, 2017, after General Flynn was fired, and after a deluge of leaks of classified surveillance of members of Trump’s transition and national defense teams, President Trump interrupted the entire fake media narrative by tweeting what had become obvious: that Obama had him “wiretapped” in Trump Tower prior to the election, and that what was happening to him reeked of McCarthyism. The media, which had been publishing allegations about FISA warrants and intercepts of Trump or his associates for months, erupted in what has to be one the most shameless demonstrations of the Big Lie ever known. They declared that Trump was offering wild claims with no evidence, essentially circling back on their very own reporting [regarding the prior existence of said wiretaps of Trump at Trump Tower or at least his closest campaign associates] and labeling it, “fake news.”
Now it has been revealed that FISA warrants existed on Paul Manafort from 2014 through some period in 2016, and from some period in 2016 through this year, conveniently omitting the period when he was Trump’s campaign manager. Manafort lives in Trump Tower, and was originally investigated regarding compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) for his Ukraine activities. It is fairly obvious that the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was the subject of massive surveillance. It is also abundantly clear from the leaks which occurred concerning contacts with the Russians by Trump’s campaign officials and supporters, that the Trump Tower offices of his transition were subject to massive surveillance, either as the result of extant FISA warrants or under E.O. 12333.
James Comey and James Clapper were both asked directly in their appearances before Congressional Committees whether there was any evidence at all to substantiate the President’s wiretapping claims. Both of them gave emphatic answers that there was not, and went out of their respective ways to paint the President as a paranoid wacko.
So now, Robert Mueller is investigating the President of the United States for obstruction of justice, because he fired an FBI Director who lied to Congress. Really?
(7). The Comey Firing-Attempted Entrapment of the President
On March 20, 2017, former FBI Director Comey breathed new life into what was, by then, an insurrection which had run out of steam. People were simply tired of Democrats, like Rep. Adam Schiff,4 trying on McCarthyite tinfoil hats before TV cameras and pontificating about the outrage du jour. Comey, in testimony before the House Select Committee on Intelligence, made it officially public, for the first time, that the FBI had been investigating collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian interference in the election since July of 2016. He opined that the FBI counterintelligence investigation (which had been leaking like a sieve since its instigation in July, without producing any verifiable facts about either Russian interference or Trump campaign collusion) could continue for many more months, if not years. He refused to say whether the President himself was under investigation, despite the fact that he had told the President that he was not, and had told Congress the same thing behind closed doors.
Despite the daily press instructions about events which the public must view as scandalous (why scandalous was never explained), and highly publicized Congressional hearings concerning “Russia! Russia! Russia!” all of President Obama’s men, at this late date, had only managed to arrange the human sacrifice of Michael Flynn for lying to the Vice-President about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in December.5 They had also generated ethics, foreign intelligence registration, and tax questions about their other Trump campaign targets—typical of what happens when an entire life is put under a microscope, in a dedicated search for something, anything, that could be construed feasibly as wrongdoing.
Ask yourself, what have any of these people allegedly done? Spoken with the Russians? Talked about lifting sanctions imposed because Putin reacted to a coup Obama ran against the duly elected government of Ukraine? Lobbied on behalf of foreign governments? Really?
The actual testimony of Obama’s intelligence officials before Congressional Committees, shorn of the media hype surrounding it, was that there was absolutely no evidence of any Trump campaign collusion with alleged Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. elections. In fact, on March 15, 2017, Comey himself had told Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Diane Feinstein (D-CA) behind closed doors, that the President was not a target of his investigations, despite planted press stories to the contrary. Comey had otherwise continually stone-walled Grassley concerning the Senator’s persistent questions about the FBI’s relationship to British operative Christopher Steele.
While unable to produce any saleable legal goods, the illicit investigations had significantly bogged down the President’s political agenda, while fostering an increasingly toxic and divisive national political environment. The strategy of official Washington, the Republicans who opposed the President’s election, the Obama/Clinton Democratic establishment, and the intelligence agencies operating on behalf of British strategic policies and axioms is clear—use complicit Republicans to trap the President in failed and obnoxious policies, such as the healthcare bill; hope that the President’s silent majority remains exactly that—silent; hope that some of the smelly stuff they are throwing up against the wall actually sticks; distract, distract, distract the President, and prevent him from working with Russia and China to develop the world, end wars, and implement the massive infrastructure and space exploration projects which will actually save our economy.
On May 3, 2017, Comey followed his March drama-queen performance before the House, with even more theatrical speechifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee. He bloviated that despite the fact that his unprecedented disclosures and handling of the Clinton email investigation may have impacted the election, and it made him nauseous, he, Mr. Eagle Scout and True Crime Detective rolled into one, would do the same thing all over again. He exaggerated the significance of the Anthony Weiner computer discovery by stating that it contained thousands of new Clinton emails, not previously produced, some of which were classified—a statement the FBI had to subsequently correct. As Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein rightly argued, Comey violated numerous Justice Department regulations and ethical norms in his outrageous actions in the Clinton email investigation. It is the Attorney General’s job to prosecute cases —to open and close them—not that of the FBI Director.
At the same Senate Judiciary hearing, Comey refused to state publicly that President Trump was not under investigation, despite repeatedly assuring the President of that fact privately. He knew this allowed the media and Democratic party “color revolution” to continue. He refused to confirm that there was any investigation into the torrent of illegal classified leaks at the center of the media campaign.
On May 9th, President Trump fired Comey for this gross misconduct, setting the stage for Robert Mueller’s appointment as Special Prosecutor. At the center of Mueller’s inquiry will be a conspiracy to obstruct justice charge against the President for firing James Comey, along with any so-called process crimes he can find during his investigation—registration offenses under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, tax offenses, or false statements to FBI agents or Congress. As he builds his case, Mueller will follow his standard playbook, putting unrelenting psychological pressure on those Trump loyalists he can implicate in the process crimes. He will continue to target and investigate the President’s family for similar offenses in order to destabilize the President himself. He will continue the relentless demonization of the President, in order to ensure that neutral officials in Washington who witnessed key events will testify not according to the truth, but according to what they see as future career prospects.
Following his firing, Comey and friends leaked to the press notes which he had allegedly taken following most of his encounters with the President. With each encounter, Comey’s leaked account says, he returned to discuss what was said and its implications with a close circle of his FBI comrades. He prepared for each encounter with the President based on “murder boards” conducted by his FBI colleagues. In the course of their meetings, Comey says, the President asked for his loyalty, which Comey portrayed like the request of some Mafia don in a bad Hollywood movie. If it happened, such a request, in the context of what appeared to be an open insurrection against the President by the intelligence community, is hardly surprising. The President denies that it happened.
On the day after the President fired Flynn, according to Comey, the President cleared the room and went one on one with him, expressing the “hope” that Comey could let the matter of Michael Flynn go. Comey whines that he took the President’s “hope” as an “order,” giving rise to concerns about possible obstruction of justice. This line of reasoning was thoroughly eviscerated by Senator James Risch (R-ID) in the Senate Judicary Committee hearing on June 8, 2017. Senator Risch forced Comey to admit that Trump never ordered him to let the Flynn matter go, but only expressed a “hope” that he would do so, and no prosecution that Comey knew of ever went forward, based on someone expressing “hope” for something. While the President denies he ever asked Comey to let the Flynn matter go, Harvard Law Professor Emeritus and famed trial lawyer Alan Dershowitz writes that the President would be fully within his legal and constitutional prerogatives to order Comey to back off Lt. Gen. Flynn. He could have simply told Comey, "I am going to pardon Flynn."
So, it is clear by James Comey’s own account that he was trying to set the President up, to entrap him—an escapade which was “crudely” interrupted when the President fired him. Again, confirming this, Comey told Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) in his testimony, that the reason why he did not stop the President from improper interactions, if he thought they were such, the reason he concealed the alleged improper and possibly illegal conduct from his superiors at the Justice Department, and the reason he did not resign, was because his encounters with the President were of “investigative interest” to the FBI. Otherwise, Comey’s leaks reveal a man so leery of even shaking the President’s hand (or being photographed doing it) that once in January he tried to hide himself in the White House drapes in the hopes that Trump would not see him.
The problem for Robert Mueller’s obstruction case, among others, is that both Comey and his Assistant Andrew McCabe have previously testified, under oath, to Congress that there was no pressure to end the FBI’s investigations from anyone in the Trump Administration. And, Comey confirmed in his testimony that prior to his firing, Trump was not under investigation for collusion with Russia, obstruction, or any other offense. Furthermore, Comey has proved that he is willing to violate professional norms and Justice Department regulations, if not laws, by leaking government documents.
The question is, what else was leaked by Comey and his FBI circle? Finally, we now know that Comey lied to or misled Congress about the “wiretaps” on Trump Tower—the Manafort FISA warrants prove Comey's dishonesty. Senator Grassley has asked the FBI: Why, if you were wiretapping a close associate of the President, wouldn’t you warn the President about him as is customarily done? The true answer is that the President himself was and is the target of an unprecedented and illegal coup-attempt conducted by those sworn to uphold the Constitution and the nation’s laws.
Those familiar with the relationship between Comey and Robert Mueller describe them as “joined at the hip,” “cut from the same cloth” (can’t help thinking of the Union Jack), close personal friends, and mentor (Mueller) to mentee (Comey). The problem with this relationship is that Department of Justice conflict guidelines specifically bar prosecutors (Mueller) from investigating issues where close friends (Comey) have a significant role, such as material witnesses. Official Washington knows all of this and yet touts this investigation as somehow “independent,” “apolitical,” and “unconflicted.”
Will You Help Us End This Coup?
So, now you know. Since the election and before, we have been stuck in a very elaborate and dangerous British hoax, gambling the future of our nation in a cold coup against an elected president. Actual crimes have been committed—not by the President—but against the President and the Constitution. What has happened is that political differences, ideas, have been criminalized, the very danger most provisions of our Constitution and its Bill of Rights were explicitly designed to guard against.
We have shown you the prosecutorial robot named Robert Mueller, whom others have always pointed to shoot, and why he has been deployed to take out the President of the United States. We have told you the real reasons why the President has been attacked by a foreign power, the British and their allies in our country. We have shown you that many of the same people and methods were deployed on a smaller scale to deprive the world of the beautiful ideas of Lyndon LaRouche. Now, at a point where this President, freed of Mueller and adequately advised, could join with China’s Belt and Road and usher in a new renaissance for mankind, shouldn’t we really, finally, win our future, this time?
1 note · View note
xthelastofus · 7 years
Text
Chapter Fifteen - We’re Gonna Make This Place Our Home
Balo’s head was so groggy when she opens her eyes, Anthony is stroking her hair, and she’s wearing a blue paper gown. “Anthony?” She questions, moving her hand to touch his cheek as she tried to process everything that had happened. “What happened?”
“We found the Fireflies.” Ivan answers, and Balo smiles.
“So they’re working on a cure? Wish Gracie had said goodbye.” She whispers, stroking Anthony’s cheek. “Guess she would have tried to make me stay if she had though, and then we would have to be rude and turn down the offer to stay, because the man I love more than anything else in the world deserves to be with his cousin and happy.” She smiles, “you’re so great, Anthony, you know that, right? I love you so so so so much.” It takes her a few minutes to realize she just told Anthony she loved him for the first time, but she takes no move to take it back. Why would she?
Anthony is smiling back at her, and he had put his hand over hers.
“I love you too, B.” He promises and she grins wider.
“You love me? Ches, did you just hear that? Anthony Wilson loves me!” She had never been happier to hear any words in her life, and he chuckles as Ches turns her head to glance at them.
“I did, congrats, B. You two both deserve to be happy.” Ches winks at Anthony as she says the words and Balo nods.
“Yes! We’re going to Alan’s right? So Anthony can be happy? And you two can get married, and we can be neighbors! I’d say housemates but I’m totally not going to be sneaking around with Anthony anymore if he loves me.” She smiles.
“That was you sneaking around?” Ches asks, clearly amused.
“Yes! We were so sneaky! Right, Anthony?” She flutters her eyelashes at Anthony as she smiles.
“No, you weren’t.” Ivan tells them. She frowns at the words, sitting up slowly.
“I thought we were.” She whines.
“I think we were pretty sneaky too.” Anthony says, and Ches laughs.
“Anthony, you’re sneaky in everything other than sneaking to Balo’s room. Pretty sure you two broke her bed the one night when we were still in Silverlake and that's why you started sneaking her into your room.” Ches tells them, Balo can feel the blood rush to her face and she lets out a little squeak.
“You know about that?” She burrows her face in Anthony’s shoulder quickly.
“I feel like we should end this conversation before I shoot Anthony in the foot.” Ivan tells them, clearly not pleased to hear about her late night escapades with Anthony.
“Sorry handsome.” Ches says, leaning back in her seat. Balo lets out a small little yawn.
“You can lay back down if you’re tired.” Anthony whispers, and Balo nods, smiling.
“Love you Anthony, you’re so good to me.” She yawns, laying back down and resting her head on his lap. She falls asleeps quickly, Anthony going back to stroking her hair gently, almost as if saying “I’m here.”
Maybe he was.
--
It actually wasn’t a long drive to Jackson from Salt Lake City, they only stop a couple of times, to get supplies and to get Balo dressed in some actual clothes. But they’re there relatively soon, the car breaking down not too far away from the town, and Balo looks around the forest.
“It’s so pretty here.” She whispers to Anthony, “Do you think Alan will be happy to see us?” She asks, and he smiles.
“I think he will be.” He agrees, taking her hand. She squeezes it.
Ches was looking over a ledge, at the river. “It really is nice.” She agrees, looking over to Ivan and walking away from the ledge. “Shall we?” She asks Ivan.
Ivan smiles. “We shall.” He agrees, and the four start to follow the sign to Jackson, leaving the car behind and heading for the settlement. They walk through the forest for a bit, eventually coming to an overlook where they could see Alan’s settlement. It was lit up, Alan clearly wasn’t lying about the electricity.
“Guys, before we go there, can I talk to you about something?” Balo asks, and the other three members of the group stop, turning to look at her.
“What’s up?” Ivan questions.
“I wasn’t alone, when I was bitten. I was with my best friend, Izzy.” She admits, “She was so poetic, let’s lose our minds together.” She frowns, “She was the first to die, and then there was Veles, and Effie and Jonah…”
“It’s not your fault.” Ches says quickly, walking over and squeezing the hand Anthony wasn’t holding.
“How do you do it, Ches? So much bad stuff has happened and yet you keep fighting…” She questions, Ches hesitates a moment before she answers.
“I find something to survive for. You have all became a sort of family to me, and I’m not leaving you.” She admits, “it was hard, after Jonah and Effie died - I didn’t really have much to hold on to, other than trying to help you get to the Fireflies, and then I started to care for all of you - and I found a reason to be here.” She squeezes Balo’s hand again. “Good things are coming, B, I can feel it.”
Balo nods, and the girl lets go of her hand, walking over to Ivan and kissing his cheek.
“Okay, that was it, let’s go home?” Balo suggests, and Ches grins.
“I’ll race you!” Ches tells them, darting off, and as they make their way down to the town, Balo has a feeling that Ches is right about the good things coming.
How couldn’t they? After all, they were all alive, sure bad things had occurred, but she knew what they said. It was always darkest before the dawn.
And from what she could see, it was sunshine from here.
2 notes · View notes
Text
The Range in Spades.
By Peter Craven. 
As with everyone, My Fair Lady is an ancient memory for Charles Edwards, who seems to oscillate from the Rex Harrison repertoire to Shakespeare – Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit with Angela Lansbury in the West End and America, but also Oberon to Judi Dench’s Titania, directed by Peter Hall. 
“I was fascinated by it as a child,” he says. “The LP of the original with Rex and Julie [Andrews] I found – I can’t remember how old I would have been, but quite little – but I remember being really fascinated by the wit, even at that stage. I knew it was very clever and very sharp and very English, particularly the way Rex did it.” 
Edwards is the new Henry Higgins in Julie Andrews’ production of My Fair Lady. It’s the Hamlet of high-comedy roles and arguably the greatest of all musicals. So what does he do with Higgins’ sprechgesang? Does he follow the notes or does he do what Rex Harrison did on Broadway in 1956, opposite Andrews’ Eliza Doolittle, hitting a note every so often but speaking his way through? 
“I follow that,” Edwards says, of the latter. “I personally find if you follow the notes in Higgins’ songs, what is revealed to you is that they’re not nearly as much fun. They actually become rather leaden. And what you need with those songs is great lightness and dexterity. 
“I’d been playing around with doing it slightly off the beat, trying to maybe be a little bit clever with it. But Guy Simpson, our brilliant musical director, says it’s much better if you can speak as much as you like but just stick to the beat. It’s more real, there’s more of the character. Higgins knows what he’s saying, he doesn’t have to dither either side of the beat.” Frederick Loewe, after all, wrote it for Harrison, knowing he couldn’t sing. “I think that’s perhaps why if you try to sing more than one should it’s less interesting because it is written for the man who was going to do it like that.” 
Michael Redgrave famously refused the role of Higgins because it meant committing to a long run. How does Edwards feel about a longish stretch of phonetics and feminist musical comedy? “Oh, I could do it for a while,” he says. “I arrived, performed it in Brisbane, and now I’m rehearsing it in a way… for my own satisfaction. Something which would happen in four or six weeks of rehearsal is now happening to me, internally, just myself, finding my way. I feel like I’m still starting out even though the performance is there. I could do it for a bit longer because there is a lot more to explore.” 
I tell him I’ve just watched the recording of him playing Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing – the one role Harrison recorded for Caedmon, which is largely in prose and the Bard’s most Shavian play. “It was really fun,” Edwards says of his stint opposite Eve Best at the Globe in the role with a family resemblance to Higgins. “Julie [Andrews] likes comparing Shaw as the natural successor to Shakespeare in terms of that kind of comedy. I’m very drawn to both of these roles. That was a joy to do.” He adds that he learnt something from the Globe, because it’s rougher, more extroverted theatre. “If it’s done with wit,” he says, “it can be a great crowd-pleaser, without being naff. And I think it has informed my work to such an extent that often since I’ve been told, ‘Just calm down, Charles.’ ” 
When I tell him he was very good as the Tory whip in This House, the parliamentary play by James Graham, done by the National Theatre, he says of the author, “I don’t know how old he is, he’s something annoying like… he’s probably hit 30. I hope he has.” But he adds that at 47 himself he’s probably a bit younger than the received image of Higgins from the film of My Fair Lady, even though Shaw describes him as a pleasant-looking man of 40. It must be odd to inhabit a role with such a powerful acting ghost in the background. 
I once saw Harrison – very, very old – at an airport sweeping past in what looked exactly like the hat and coat he – and Edwards – wears in the opening scene of My Fair Lady in Covent Garden. “There’s a lot, I’m sure, in the production we’ve inherited that he insisted on,” Edwards says. “I’m sure that will be true of the hat … And here we are now, probably wearing the very weave he ordered from a particular tailor.” 
Of course, everyone likes the cut of Higgins’ cloth and would like to make it their own. George Clooney, of all people, is said to have had an eye on the role when Emma Thompson wanted to make a new film of it with Carey Mulligan as Eliza. And with the old George Cukor film, Alan Jay Lerner, treacherously, wanted Peter O’Toole, still in his 30s, rather than Harrison. Like O’Toole, Edwards does both ends of the acting spectrum: the light-as-air prose comedy of Shaw and the poetic majesties of Shakespeare. He worked with Peter Hall, the founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. 
“I’ve done quite a lot with him,” he says. “I think I auditioned one year when he used to run the season at Bath and he took a shine and kept wanting me back to do this and that.” His work with Hall included another Much Ado, where he played Don Pedro. “He got it into his head,” Edwards says, “that Don Pedro at the end was like Malvolio or Antonio, the man who gets left alone.” So Edwards’ Don was a bit in love with Claudio and something of “a real devil”. 
His Oberon to Dench’s Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream came from another of Hall’s bright ideas. “Peter put it to me, ‘Look, I’ve got this idea, it’s like Elizabeth and Essex…’ They did a prelude to the evening where the players were assembling to put on a play for Elizabeth I and then Elizabeth/Judi arrives and selects me.” He says that Dench, like Andrews, is great to be with and “just as nervous and scared as the rest of us all are. They’re very great company people; their fun is being in the company.” This was the second time he’d worked with Dench because he’d been her fancy man, Sandy, when she played Judith Bliss in Coward’s classic comedy Hay Fever. He loves the lightness of My Fair Lady and the way it can modulate into the gravity of “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face”, with its utterly moody interplay between hilarities of exasperation, and something else, something at the edge of heartbreak. 
Of course, acting careers have their light and dark. Harrison, high comedian though he was, did Preston Sturges’s Unfaithfully Yours, that demon study of jealousy. Marcello Mastroianni, in many ways his European equivalent, made some of the more serious masterpieces, everything from 8 ½ to La Notte. And Edwards went straight from acting with Olivia Williams in Harley Granville Barker’s Waste to doing a chocolate-box soap TV drama, The Halcyon, with her. He says Granville Barker stands up very well when you prune him back and you know he thinks this of Shaw, too – the way “The Rain in Spain” crystallises something Shaw takes for granted and talks around – and does so operatically. “I find it very touching, that bit,” Edwards says. “It’s wonderful to do.” 
And he’s at pains to defend Higgins, the man who – at Harrison’s insistence – was given another Act II number, “A Hymn to Him”. “He’s not a snob,” Edwards says. “He’s trying to remove the social gaps. He’s trying to erase them, in a rather perverse way by wanting everyone to speak the same and dismiss regional accents – but he’s not a snob. He’s an egalitarian.” 
It’s always a fascinating thing to listen to an actor let his mind roam about the ins and outs, the winding staircase of his career. Charles Edwards went to a preparatory school named Amesbury in Surrey, which he says was “pure Decline and Fall, full of eccentrics, some of them quite dangerous eccentrics”. His salvation was Hamlet. “I was invited by – you know, we all have these teachers who encourage us – his name is Simon Elliot and he’ll still come and see me in shows now. ‘I’d like to talk to you about Hamlet,’ he said. ‘Oh yeah?’ ”
From there, a career. Here he is on Angela Lansbury: “She is in every way fit. In Blithe Spirit she did this extraordinary dance with these jerky movements as she was preparing for a séance. I don’t know what it was but I know every night she loved doing it and changing it.” And on Maria Aitken, brilliant as the wife of John Cleese’s Archie in A Fish Called Wanda, who directed Edwards in The 39 Steps: “With comedy she immediately knows, ‘That’s what I want for this show.’ And that it has to be taken very seriously. She’s the person you need at the centre, taking it absolutely seriously.” She insisted that Edwards – who was the production’s original Hannay in The 39 Steps – had to play the role when it transferred to Broadway. “She was lovely. She fought for me and she said, ‘You need the Englishman. You need the backbone.’ And they brought me over even though the rest of the cast was two Americans and one Canadian. It was great, I was thrilled. But it’s the kind of humour that can tip. It’s got to be tasteful, it’s got to have taste. Taste is the key with humour that involves an audience.” 
All of which brings us round to the ending of My Fair Lady where Eliza comes back to Higgins. She has sung that she can do “Without You”. “Absolutely,” he says, “and this is heightened by the ending, the fact that some people would ask why does she come back to him. But there has to be a meeting of minds, a meeting of souls, and that’s what he realises right at the end. She comes back to show him that she has to be there, but she is in charge. And he sees that and accepts that. And all of that we try to do in three seconds of the show.” 
Edwards laughs. 
So what is it like to work with Julie Andrews as she re-creates the original production of My Fair Lady by the legendary Moss Hart? “It was a real treat, it’s an extraordinary thing and very touching to see her remembering it,” Edwards says. 
Obviously the production is a blueprint, which he had to fit himself to, but the man who is best known here for his stint in Downton Abbey adds, “But you have to imbue it with a new texture.”.
Taken from The Saturday Paper, published Jul 15, 2017.
8 notes · View notes
toyfrog · 8 years
Text
Spader' Portguese Interview: Planting a Massive Oak Tree and Breaking Away!
Oh, yes he is.
Without a Doubt: Spader isn’t happy. And it seems his own fanbase are out of touch with his true feelings on the subject of fame, and why he just wants a simple work schedule like he had in Season 1?
Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. And because he’s been forced to work all the time, it’s taking him away from his private life.
HES NOT HAPPY.
But those who follow me *know* this already.
James Spader stars in “The Blacklist” since 2013. It’s more of a dark character in his career, the ones he’s drawn to.
[I’VE MENTIONED THIS: WHENEVER A LEAD ACTOR BECOMES FRUSTRATED WITH STORY, OR IN SPADER’S CASE, ADD THE SHOOTING SCHEDULE, THEYRE GOING TO VENT. NOT IN THE STATES BECAUSE THEY ARE PROTESTING IN THEIR OWN WAY THEIR DISTRESS OVER THE CURRENT STORY DIRECTION. ILL EVEN ADD ON THAT THE INTERVIEWEES ARE HAND PICKED BY THE SAME SOFTBALL CREW WHO WILL WRITE JUST ABOUT ANYTHING TO HYPE A BAD SHOW OR INTERVIEW THE SAME ACTOR OVER AND OVER THE ACTOR WHO LOVES TO HEAR HIMSELF TALK, LIVES THE SPOTLIGHT, NILS IS A TERRIBLE DISEASE FOR ROOKIE ACTORS. THEY START BELIEVING THEIR OWN PRESS UNTILL THOSE RATINGS CRASH THEIR Q SCORE]
[SO WHILE AMIR ARISON, AND RE TWEET THEIR ‘LOYALTY’ BECAUSE THEY ARE GETTING THE MOTHERLODE OF AIRTIME AND STORY, OTHER ACTORS REMAIN SILENT AND FOR GOOD REASON. THE SHOW IS ALARMINGLY IMBALANCED.]
James Spader’s debut in the art of representation took place in the cinema in the early 1980s, but in the nearly four decades of his career, the actor stood out as a TV character in “gray” or completely dark. That was the unethical Alan Shore of Fair Cause and Boston Legal or the puzzling Robert California of The Office. But also from Raymond “Red” Reddington from The Blacklist, NBC series issued in Portugal by SIC. Dressing the skin to these villains is not an imposition, but Spader admits in an interview that DN had access that feels “a certain attraction” by them.
“I’ve always found anti-heroes very attractive and of course playing a villain who mixes his evil with humor and irreverence can be a lot of fun,” he explains. [HERES THE DISCONNECT: RED IS A VILLAIN-HIS FANS REFUSE TO SEE THAT. INSTEAD THEY FEEL RED IS THE LONG SUFFERING HERO HOPELESSLY IN LOVE WITH LIZ. YEA. THATS *NOT* WHATS GOING ON HERE AT ALL. IN THE END, “HE MUST PAY.” READ THE FARMER PARABLE AND YOU’LL KNOW THE ENDING. It DOES NOT MATTER WHAT GOOD RED DOES IN THE FIVE YEARS….IN THE END, “HE KNOWS IN HIS HEART THAT HE MUST PAY.”]
In fiction, he believes, tyranny represents “in many respects the extremes of society” and is a “kind of morbid curiosity” in knowing these extremes that impels it.
[DO WE SEE HOW SPADER AND KLATTENHOFF APPROACH THEIR INTERVIEWS? ALL ABOUT THE CRAFT NOT THE STORYLINE. NEVER ABOUT THE STORYLINE BECAUSE PROFESSIONALS LEAVE IT TO THE WRITERS. BUT IF RATINGS SINK BECAUSE OF THOSE CHOICES, THE ACTORS THROW SHADE IN A PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE WAY AND SPADER BROUGHT HIS OAK TREE]
The success of his “Red”, the man most wanted by the FBI - who gave himself on the condition of being released and in turn helping to catch criminals on a blacklist - is also due to “luck” On television had come “at a time when anti-heroes were not plentiful.” “Now there’s probably more, though I do not have time to watch TV. I’m too busy doing it,” stresses the interpreter. [HE DOESNT WATCH TV HE DOESNT WATCH BLACKLIST ITS WHY HES NOT ON TWITTER HE GOES SHOOTS HIS SCENES AND GOES HOME. HE DOES NOT HANG OUT WITH ACTORS OR STAFF HE IS LIKE MANY ACTORS WHO PREFER TO AVOID THE SPOTLIGHT EXCEPT WHEN THE DIRECTOR SHOUTS, “ACTION”]
In his house, he says, “there is not a single television yet.” “I’ll move in soon, who knows if there will not be?” Jokes Spader, 57. “I do not know if this is not a paradox … I spend so much time, so many hours, [NOTICE HE KEEPS BRINGING UP HIS SHOOTING SCHEDULE? TRY MEMORIZING HIS DIALOGUE THE WINTER FINALE SHOWCASED SPADER FOR 21 MINUTES. THATS EXCESSIVE. He’d prefer ten maybe 8. 21 MINUTES LEAVES NO ROOM FOR ANYONE ELSE. FANS MAY BE FINE WITH THAT BUT SPADER ISNT. THATS OVERTIME] so many days, weeks and months to live within the television fiction and within the television drama … [SPADER IS TIRED. SPADER WANTS WHAT HE WAS PROMISED IN SEASON 1.I dedicate so much of my life to television as when I do not I’m working, I do not want to waste time with her, "he explains. [Her AS IN HIS GF? I would assume?]
Incidentally, probably not watching the fiction on the small screen is that James Spader does not have a formed and "objective” opinion on the evolution of the industry. “I do not know if I understand the business, I know it’s changing, it’s getting more involved and growing, it’s expanding in a dizzying way, [AND HERE COMES THE OAK TREE TO PROVIDE ENOUGH SHADE TO REACH LOS ANGELES] but it’s very complicated to be aware of what happens if we spend a lot of time working, [WORKING SHOOTING, NO TIME WITH HIS GF OR FAMILY NO TVS IN THE HOUSE DOESNT WATCH THE SHOW NOT ABSORBED IN RED ITS NOT HIM AND HES TIRED OF THE CHAOS-MY BELIEF, THE BAD WRITING. USING HIM TO FIX THE WRITING. USING HIS CHARACTER TO CARRY THE SHOW AND THE IMBALANCE TO THE SHOW] Which is my case, "he explains.
Compared to other NBC hit series such as This Is Us, Chicago Fire, Chicago Justice, or Timeless, [ALL THESE SHOWS HAVE BETTER RATINGS THAN THE BLACKLIST. THATS HOW BAD THE SHOW IS. WHEN ACTOR DOESNT USE THE EXCUSES OH, THERES MORE SHOWS ON TV, WE HAVE A BAD TIME SLOT, THE LIve 7 PPL WATCH-YEAH NO HE MAKES ZERO EXCUSES BECAUSE HE KNOWS.
ITS THE STORY TIER. HE WANTS IT TO GO BACK TO THE WAY IT WAS WHERE HE HAD LESS OF A SHOOTING SCHEDULE. SO FOR THOSE THAT SCREAM MORE RED AND LIZ AH THATS NOT WHAT SPADER WANTS. HE WANTS LESS.] The Blacklist ranks 13th among the 18 issued by the North American station. But it was once one of the biggest audiences. [BUT IT WAS ONCE ONE OF THE BIGGEST AUDIENCES. RECALL SALKE SAYING THE BLACKLIST IS POPULAR OVERSEAS? RECALL ME SAYING WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BAD WRITING SHOWS UP? When PRESS DO INTERVIEWS THEY GET TO VIEW THE SEASON EPISODES. THATS WHY THIS INTERVIEW HAS BLACKLIST ON ITS DEATHBED] The fourth season, currently on display in the US, debuted in September last year with 6397 million viewers. The most recent episodes were below five million. [A BLOW INDEED ALL BECAUSE OF TOM PIMPING, ARAM PIMPING, ELISE PIMPING ALEXANDER KIRK PIMPING, SARAM PIMPING KEEN2 PIMPING AND FINALLY PLOT DRIVEN STORY WITHOUT PIMPING THE THREE MAIN LEADS AS THE SMASH CREDITS INDICATE FOR A REASON: RED/LIZ/RESSLER. NO INTERACTION WITH THE MAIN LEADS REFLECTS THE RATINGS-THE WRITERS KNOW WHAT THEY DID THATS WHY THEY ARE SILENT AND SO DO THE ACTORS. CURRENT STORY DIRECTION SINCE 3B KILLED THE SHOW] A blow that has left the doubt in the air: will NBC cancel or renew the story? [TWO MILLION VIEWERS LOST AND COUNTING. EUROPE SENDING THE SIGNAL TO NBC AND THE SHOW:FIX IT]
Spader remains optimistic, and believes that what has so far kept this story on air "is a strange mix of things,” [HERE COMES THAT MASSIVE OAK TREE AGAIN JUST PLANT IT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WRITERS ROOM OR ON TOP OF EISENDRATH'S DESK] including the fact that screenwriters are in Los Angeles [OMG WRITERS YOU ARE OUT OF TOUCH WITH THE MECHANICS OF NEW YORK AND OF COURSE BY THE TIME NY GETS THE SCRIPTS EDITS HAPPEN ADJUSTMENTS HAPPEN REGULARLY] and recordings take place in New York. “We do not even live our lives at the same time … [HE HATES HIS SHOOTING SCHEDULE DID I MENTION THAT? IF LA IS WRITING AT FOUR PM SPADER AND GANG ARE FILMING AT 7 PM OR 9 pm, OR TEN PM OR SIX AM OR 8 AM TO ACCOMODATE LOS ANGELES AND TO ACCOMODATE A SPIN OFF] The series is strange, sometimes surprising [SOMETIMES SURPRISING IOW HELL GET A GOOD SCRIPT LIKE CAPE MAY OR IN S3 IN MARVIN GERARD BUT MOST OF THE TIME ITS STAGNANT, PREDICTABLE AND PLOT DRIVEN] and intense, sometimes irreverent, [OAK TREE] sometimes passive [PASSIVE AGGRESSIVE] and still volatile.” [IOW IF THEY DO A 180 STORY FLIP BACK TO ITS As DIEGO SAID REGARDING S3 A MAGICAL FORMULA, NOT PLOT DRIVEN BS THE SHOW CAN LAST. BUT HE DOESNT WAX POETIC NOR DOES HE SUGARCOAT THE HYPE AND HE BRINGS UP IRREVERENT SOMETIMES? Yeah look it up. HES NOT HAPPY. ]
On the direction he would like to see the plot follow, [MAN I LOVE THIS YES JAMES WHAT PLOTLINE DO YOU WISH FOR BOKENKAMP AND EISENDRATH TO FOLLOW IM GOING TO GUESS ITS NOT KEEN 2 ITS NOT THE BABY, ITS NOT THIS ISOLATION OF THE LEADS AND HE NEVER MENTIONS RED AND LIZ NOTICE THAT?] the actor only says that “the most satisfying is when there is an abrupt change.” [ABRUPT CHANGE OR AS WE SAY IN THE INDUSTRY A 180 STORY FLIP. End KEEN2, SHAKE THINGS UP GO BACK TO RED/LIZ/RESSLER ENOUGH OF ARAM HES HAD THREE STORYLINES IN ONE YEAR AND TOM HAS HAD THE MOST EXPOSURE THAN ANY ACTOR COMBINED AND WHAT DID THEY GET? LOSS OF ADVERTISING 0.7! KEEP IN MIND IF TBL DEBUTS AT 0.8 ITS TOAST. It needs 1.0 TO STAY IN CONTENTION] “I think we’ve already been successful in that aspect and it was precisely these heights I most liked The Blacklist.”
[OY SPADER IS NOT HAPPY. FANS ARE NOT HAPPY ADVERTISERS AND NETWORK ARE NOT HAPPY AND NOW WRITERS ARE SILENT. FOR SPADER, ITS JUST A PAYCHECK NOW. BETTING ON RE WAS STUPID. GO BACK TO ORIGINAL STORY DIRECTION LIKE I SAID-A 180 STORY FLIP…SEEMS THATS EXACTLY WHAT SPADER WANTS: ABRUPT CHANGE AND IF THEY DONT DO IT AND LEAVE IT LIKE IT IS I DONT THINK HE WILL RENEW HIS CONTRACT BUT CONTINUE TO PLANT THAT MASSIVE OAK TREE .]
10 notes · View notes
jgtruthseeker-blog · 5 years
Text
Truth
It is difficult to stay on the path of truth. Often you don't even know what the truth is. Many times what you think is true, turns out to be false, or just improvable. How do I stay on this path? Or is truth just a linguistic confusion with no meaning behind it?
I want to be able to answer those questions. But sometimes I'm under the influence of my emotions which deceive me as to what the truth is. Does that mean I can only know the truth without emotion? Is there even such a state then? A state of no emotion? Let's say there isn't. Then, how much emotion can there be when we're approaching truth? But let's say there is, then all we have to do is reach that state.
That brings me to the question of the state of no emotion. I would say that it exists. I think this state might be so important as to be the catalyst for other dimensions of life. And it is so often overlooked. I will now pose a very brave thesis, and I don't often do that. Whenever I can, I try to be skeptical and not settle for dogmas. But this time, it is not even a dogma. I can say with full certainty that I have experienced this state. And I believe I'm talking about something similar to what is called nirvana or mukti, or just enlightenment.
And what exactly is it? It is very elusive, that's for sure. I have reached it a few times by, funnily enough, breathing in a certain way. I did it through a breathing method proposed by a man named Wim Hof, who has a large following on social media. He's a funny old man, but this stuff really works, especially if you're very alert of what's happening in your body (for me, the alertness came from either smoking marijuana, very deep meditation, hours of sitting in silence or just by chance).
But that breathing method was just one way of reaching this state. Other times I got there by sitting in silence for long periods of time (up to 4.5 hours). What happens then is that the bond you feel to your body and mind fades away. You feel light and eventually immaterial. In my case, I felt like I'm becoming an idea, that each and every part of my body works to produce the most elemental ideas based on some binary system until I reach the final binary idea, the final dichotomy.
What is that dichotomy? I don't know. It's too vague to talk about and yet too elemental. I can poetically call it black and white, being and non-being, yin and yang. This problem is final. I know there is nothing else when I go further; I can't go further. It is either everything or nothing. When I first reached this problem, I didn't know what to do. I thought I was dying, I thought I would stay in this paranoia forever, like a prison; I felt like I knew what it was to be crazy, literally insane.
And this state of existential crisis lasted a couple of days. I had a massive headache and couldn't pick myself up. But eventually it faded away. During this crisis, along with all the pain and fear, I was hoping that this might actually be a gateway to something bigger. And I think it was. I decided to try it again and again (I was meditating with the help of marijuana). And after a few encounters with this final dichotomy that I had feared so much, one time when I got there, something happened.
That something was an uncontrollable move of my body and what I think was a momentary loss of consciousness. And that was certainly a state of no emotion. It was a state of undeniable bliss, which made me want to follow a path of a different kind of truth. Before that I had always ignored such experiences, I didn't think they were real. But there I was, sitting in my room feeling something I have never even dreamt of feeling before.
Since then I've always wanted to return to that state, and I've done it countless times, every time being amazed. Let me just say that I have done it sober as well. Eventually I realised that I can't just ignore such a highly spiritual experience right under my nose. This has seriously made me reconsider all my previous beliefs about truth. That's because I realised that all worldly problems, if looked at through the lens of truth can be essentially narrowed down to the simplest dichotomy of two ideal opposites.
If that is the case, all problems are just tiny specs within the one, gigantic (or rather size-less), final problem. And I couldn't solve that problem, it only caused me pain, suffering and paranoia. I don't know if anyone can, but what I realised from this, is that you can't focus on a mundane problem without actually touching (even unconsciously) the final problem in some way. You just aren't aware of that. Most of us are only aware of the problem at hand, but if we looked closer every time, we would always see that we're just dealing with the same game of black and white (as Alan Watts said).
So that's how far the truth can get us. It leads us from focusing on the small problem at hand to the final problem. What can we do then? Which is the right one? Should we choose one? I don't think you should choose one here, because this is where dogma comes from, and we know that dogma makes us arrogant, which may make us unpleasant to others or ignorant of crucial questions posed against our dogma. Well, what do I do then?
And that question I am happy to leave to You, the reader. Because at this point, I'm in no place to preach what is right and what is wrong. For my part, I just realised that you can't solve every problem with logic. This final problem is too vague and too emotionless for me to choose one. I think at this point I should accept the existence of both, and instead of a problem, look at them as coexistence. And when I look at it like that, through the lens of love (or just inclusion, if you find the other word cliché), I do find a new dimension that I talked of in my previous post. It is the first step (or whatever number) on the path of some serious duude moments.
0 notes
how2to18 · 7 years
Link
TO MANY, Vivian Maier is known as the mysterious Chicago nanny who took photographs secretly — thousands and thousands of photographs, often left as undeveloped rolls of negatives, which she then boxed up and stored in lockers. She was perceived by the locals in her Rogers Park neighborhood as a cantankerous old bag lady who ate food out of cans. Nobody knew about her art. But in the months before she died on April 21, 2009, aged 83, her storage lockers went into arrears. The padlocks came off, and all her photos and old cameras, her stacks of newspapers, magazines, and other items, went up for blind auction. One buyer bought the whole lot, and put it up for sale again in four or five subsequent auctions, thus setting in motion the scattering of Maier’s work. Some buyers, curious about the photos they found, began posting them on the internet.
The discovery of Vivian Maier caused a sensation in the art world, and her story has captivated many. It is, after all, a tale of mystery and intrigue: a woman who works as a nanny, never marries, says almost nothing about her life and childhood, dies in obscurity, dwarfed by the belongings she hoarded, only to be unveiled as one of the boldest and most poetic street photographers of the 20th century. It is difficult not to be fascinated by the woman, who can be glimpsed in the various self-portraits she took throughout her life, casting her distinctive shadow on a pavement or a wall — the tall, austere figure with an angular face and a beguiling stare, always smartly dressed in 1950s-style skirt suits or overcoats regardless of what decade it actually was.
This is exactly the story Pamela Bannos, in the first full biography of Maier, sets out to discredit. Vivian Maier: A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife is intended as “a counterpoint, a counternarrative, and a corrective” to the narrative spun primarily by the buyers of Maier’s boxes at the auctions of August 2007, and in particular, former real estate agent John Maloof, who has done more than anyone else to make Maier visible. As one blogger put it in 2014, Maloof could be described as a man who “just found an old photo in storage, attached [his] name to it, claimed all rights and sold limited editions of that photo for thousands of dollars.” It is difficult to avoid Maloof when seeking out Maier’s photography. He has published three books of her photos and made a documentary, Finding Vivian Maier, released in 2014. When the productions are not in his name he has shown less enthusiasm however: he refused to collaborate when the BBC arrived in Chicago to make their own documentary on Maier for Alan Yentob’s Imagine series; when Bannos began working on this biography, Maloof set such high demands she found it impossible to work with him, thus denying her access to his collection.
Maloof is, undoubtedly, the archvillain in A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife, cultivating the image of the “mystery nanny photographer” and even admitting this was what kept him going. “If I knew all about her, I don’t think I’d be as interested,” he says. But he is also the figurehead of a deeper problem dogging all Maier scholarship: given that she was so secretive, and that her oeuvre has subsequently been so dispersed, can we ever build a true picture of the artist? To this, Bannos simply follows the photographs, tracing where Maier went and looking at what subjects drew her eye. Her approach is refreshing — a clear-eyed, empirical account that counters the willfully obscure, ego-driven yarns spun by the buyers. In this light, A Photographer’s Life and Afterlife is a work of real integrity in a field lacking such a genuine spirit of inquiry.
The biography proceeds by dual narratives, shifting between recounting and retracing Maier’s life, and the story of how her oeuvre was subsequently “discovered” following the auctions — Maier’s life, in other words, and the afterlife of her work, told in parallel. This jumping across time has its drawbacks for the flow of the biography. With the constant shifting from one epoch to another, we become less immersed in Maier’s life, and, perhaps as a by-product of this, Maier’s childhood in New York and France, her work as a nanny, the heyday of her photography in New York and Chicago throughout the ’50s and ’60s, and then her slow decline from the ’70s onward lack intensity. It is clear the nature of Maier’s photography evolved as the world around her changed, just as the cultural, social, and political atmosphere in the previous decades infused her work and likely influenced her behavior. But when Bannos describes this context, and offers some color and detail on the developments in art and photography, the shifts and controversies in society and politics, the prose can be clunky and dutiful — paragraphs are often tacked onto sections, as though to do the job of contextualization in a few lines, but evoked without much passion. A deftness of touch in knitting together biographical material with the historical situation is lacking.
One forgives Bannos, however, because she directs her energies on getting the counternarrative right, and this she manages admirably.
Maier’s choices to not share her history or her photography also seem vital to seeing her as a woman who did her best to control the way she was seen, as well as how she viewed and recorded her surroundings. Maier found men to be “uncouth” yet her legacy has been almost entirely in the hands of men — something we cannot ignore when considering how her life and work have been depicted.
The facts about Maier’s life unearthed by Bannos take us to New York first, where Maier was born, on February 1, 1926. Her mother, a Frenchwoman named Marie Jaussaud, had left the Champsaur Valley in the Alps in 1914, following in the footsteps of her own mother Eugénie, who had sailed to New York in 1901. Both worked as domestic servants. In New York, Marie met Charles Maier and had two children with him, Karl and Vivian. Their union was brief. In 1932, as the Depression hit its lowest point in the United States and work was scarce, Marie took her daughter back to France, where they stayed six years before returning to New York. There, Maier would begin to work as a nanny, earning enough to travel — first to her family’s home in France in 1950 and 1951, where her first known photographs were taken, and then in 1959, for a trip around the world, alone. Maier’s last employment was in 1996 in Chicago. Thirteen years later she died, in a city hospital. One of the children she had looked after as a nanny identified her body and organized her funeral. Maier herself never married, never had children, and was not known to have had any romantic relationships.
We cannot know for sure what influence Maier’s upbringing had on her photography, and Bannos resists speculating. It seems Maier both followed the path open to her, working as she did as a nanny, and at the same time made a conscious effort to break with her family and origins. She never spoke about her private life and she changed details on her birth certificate and other identification papers, suggesting she was doing her best to live a free life, as much as this was possible to her. “Her separation from her own family,” Bannos writes, “as she assumed an outsider’s role [as a nanny] among others stands out as a poignant reminder of her independence and self-determination.” None of this indicates a pathway to photography however, making her decision to devote her life and most of her money to the pursuit remarkable.
Maier’s oeuvre is thrilling to explore, but it remains disturbing to think how her privacy in life has been so compromised after her death. This also raises broader questions about orphaned art works and what drives artists to create in the first place. Asked by one acquaintance who glimpsed a few of her photos why she would not show her work to anyone, Maier apparently replied that if she had not kept her images secret, people would have stolen or misused them. Given the exposure of her work today, its proliferation online, in books, and in galleries, one wonders whether she would have been horrified by all the attention. She chose to remain unknown. We cannot even say if she self-identified as a photographer. Every house she lived in as a nanny she asked for a padlock on her bedroom door; whenever she went out alone to take her photographs she refused to say where she was going and got angry if asked; in her bookcases, she turned the spines of her books against the wall so the titles remained hidden. All these details suggest Maier wanted her anonymity to remain intact, and perhaps she never imagined she had anything other people might care to see.
But she is dead, she left no will and made no apparent attempt to determine the fate of her photographs. Should we honor what we think the artist might have wanted? Maier’s oeuvre joins the other art collections, discovered by strangers, in an age of freewheeling circulation of images on the internet. In many ways, Maier and the various ways she has been understood, from the “mystery nanny” to the “street photographer,” is a construction and reflection of our time and much less of her own. This is what makes Bannos’s biography so welcome. For the most part she lets Maier emerge simply from what she did — her travels, her photos, her actions. Only in her closing remarks does Bannos give us the swiftest brush strokes of a portrait, which is worth remembering for it is one of the most lucid and accurate summations of Maier’s work to date.
Vivian Maier was a fiercely independent woman who lived the life of a photographer while also working as a nanny. She had a difficult personality, she was a hoarder, and she sought anonymity. These qualities may ultimately have little to do with her photography, but together they form a picture of a woman who chose to remain unknown.
There are two mysteries around Maier that are neither disrespectful nor irrelevant to pursue. The first is practical. Why did Maier stop taking photographs so abruptly in the ’80s? She would live another three decades. Did she stop? We cannot be sure. All we know is that almost all her known prints were packed up by the end of the ’60s, also around the time she stopped developing her black-and-white film — “a choice that today contributes to multiple readings of her intentions,” Bannos writes. For the next 40 years, Maier carried all her material with her in boxes, alarming new employers, some of whom would give over their garages and attics to store her belongings. Maier’s downward spiral began in the mid-’70s, by which point the subjects of her photographs had changed — the vivid, moving portraits of people started to disappear and were replaced by trash on the street, countless newspapers, fresh piles off the press or single copies torn and discarded. This was an evolution, but was it announcing an imminent end? Or have we simply not discovered all the work from later decades?
The second mystery is more essential, and unknowable. Why did Maier take photos and live the life of a photographer if she did not want to show her work or ever have it seen? It is moving to imagine her working so privately, without any apparent desire for recognition or visibility. What drives an artist to create, detached from any thought about reception or market, or apparently any desire to communicate through the art? If Maier was not interested in any of this, it is admirable — and also odd. The attempt to communicate an idea, an experience, or an emotion drives much artistic creativity, even if that artist has little interest in her potential audience. With Maier however, we must consider the possibility that she was not interested in communicating anything to anyone.
Another possibility is Maier feared the reception she would get because of the nature of her photographic process, which often involved prowling and stalking strangers. But if she simply lacked faith in the interests and motivations of others, should they get their hands on her photographs, this leaves us to wonder: If Maier had such little faith in other people, and no intent to have her work seen, why did she not do more to safeguard her oeuvre? By boxing it up in storage lockers, and then not paying the rent, she was leaving it to the wolves. She could have avoided all this by destroying it, and ensured absolute privacy and obscurity to the end. Given what we now know about Maier, this final abandon she showed with her oeuvre is baffling. Perhaps the idea of destroying it was, understandably, unbearable, or perhaps some part of her did want the world to see it eventually. And perhaps, ultimately, she was just too tired, in the end, to deal with all that.
¤
Emilie Bickerton is the author of A Short History of Cahiers du Cinema (Verso) and the screenwriter of the film Amnesia, which was released in 2015.
The post A Light on Vivian Maier appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.
from Los Angeles Review of Books http://ift.tt/2A2GmO0 via IFTTT
0 notes