One word to describe this weeks news concerning the New Cold War is ‘harrowing’. The House Intelligence Committee hearings have begun and they are already afflicting the Trump administration on the diplomatic field – with Russia, of course. We note that Sec. State, Tillerson has postponed a meeting with NATO heads (a meeting at home with China’s head of state is the stated reason), and he is also going to Moscow in early April. Europeans are in an uproar over his alleged shirking of NATO responsibilities. But the major news about the first public statements of the House Intelligence Committee, aka the ‘Russia Gate” hearings dominates the podcast discussion. We should be appraised of the mandate of these hearings and understand that the mandate is biased toward an outcome. Note from the House Committee web site:
Cohen is understandably upset with many of the public statements coming from the heads of the FBI, NSA, and Senator Schiff that Batchelor describes as sounding like the ‘first chapter of a Frederick Forsythe novel’. Cohen’s comments are also worthy, for example, in describing ‘FBI Director, Comey morphing into J. Edgar Hoover.’ Cohen concludes that full ‘McCarthyism is upon us.’ He notes that even Americans visiting Russia are now under suspicion – we now see guilt through association. Cohen maintains that the new McCarthyism is unfolding a lot faster than the previous one – and now Americans are fearful of transgressing the narrative and almost everyone in government is a parrot in voice if not in mind.
The second half of the discussion opens with the item of the ‘Trump bribe’, i.e. funded support by Russia for Trump’s election campaign (also allegedly to change the Republican policy outlook about Ukraine). Cohen uses this and other ‘tawdry’ items to show how low Schiff intends to take this investigation. Trump’s foreign policies, on re-arming Ukraine also came under attack (as supporting Putin) even as Obama was following the same policies. The hypocrisy is astounding and yet these people are confident because guilt of being seen or labelled Putin apologist will be dangerous. But Cohen maintains that the national security risks for the United States are seen in how the ‘hack’ of the DNC is being touted as an act of war by Russia. That this is central to the hysteria means that the lie is also central to the Deep State’s war aims with Russia in the future.
Early on in the discussion Prof. Cohen mentioned that at the height of Joe McCarthy’s fear campaign even then president Truman was wary of intervening against McCarthyism. The motives of this deplorable man were to create a power base for himself – as director of a new watchdog ministry within government. We should recall that President Eisenhower finally said enough is enough to this madness. But this time we have a potentially much more dangerous situation in that the goal of a the group known as the ‘Deep State’ is to destroy a president in order to pursue a bellicose foreign policy with Russia. If lies are acceptable as evidence and can be acted upon with impunity for people like Senator Schiff, then any madness of foreign policy is possible for that government. We might speculate that if the conclusions “found” for Russian involvement in the election hold up, then we are watching a process whereby a president can be impeached in the same way. These are the stakes! The Deep State, in other words, will have become mainstream in control. To the greater extent this group is halfway to the surface already in that the MSM is an important component – and there may be no going back to a less rabid norm from here. Every self-inflicted demolition committed against government institutions and citizens by these people will determine or at least influence how much tolerance Washington will treat the rest of the world.
This post was published at Audioboom
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