Daily Check-In 09/11/2018

Daily Check-In

Tuesday, September 11, 2018

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Days before in-person jury ­selection is set to begin in his second trial, President Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort is in talks with the special counsel’s office about a possible plea deal, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions.

The people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to ­describe the conversations, cautioned that the negotiations may not result in a deal with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, who is prosecuting Manafort for alleged money laundering and lobbying violations.

But the discussions indicate a possible shift in strategy for Manafort, who earlier this year chose to go to trial in Virginia, only to be convicted last month in Alexandria federal court on eight counts of bank and tax fraud. He had derided his former business partner, Rick Gates, for striking a deal with prosecutors that provided him leniency in exchange for testimony against Manafort.

“I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence,” Manafort said in February.

This is the third or fourth report about Manafort negotiating a flip in as many days.  This leads me to think there’s something to this.  That, and he’s already a convicted felon looking at a long prison sentence.  At this point, the negotiations center around what he pleads guilty to, how long he servers, will he cooperate, or does he have anything to give?

WASHINGTON – Donald Trump Jr. said Tuesday he is not afraid of going to jail as the result of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“I’m not because I know what I did, and I’m not worried about any of that,” the president’s eldest son said during an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America. “That doesn’t mean they won’t try to create something, I mean, we’ve seen that happen with everything. But, again, I’m not.”

He said he would “deal with it as it comes.”

Trump Jr. is reportedly being investigated by Mueller because he agreed to take a meeting with a Kremlin-connected attorney in June 2016 at Trump Tower to get “dirt” on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. It is a violation of federal law for an American campaign to solicit or accept anything of value from a foreign national.

Donald Trump, Jr. is the dumbest person named Donald Trump.  This is the same brainiac that decided the best way to clear his name and eliminate speculation about him colluding with the Russians was to release the email chain showing him setting up a meeting with the Russians.

This latest round of stupidity might be because he believes he did nothing wrong, that consequences don’t apply to him, or that Daddy will keep him out of jail with a pardon.  Small problem with that theory, Donnie.  It’s called state charges.  New York is looking into the Trump Foundation for multiple crimes.  Plus there’s a half a dozen other states at least that have some level of jackfuckery they’d like to do to him.

 

WOODWARD AND THE ANONYMOUS OP-ED

 

9/11

Today

Retrospective Pieces

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET – THE 9/11 EDITION

There’s a little more down in the Rumor Mill section.

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

Sen. Jeff Merkley released a document Tuesday showing a transfer of nearly $10 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and accused President Donald Trump’s administration of diverting funds from hurricane relief just as hurricane season was starting.

However, the document from the Department of Homeland Security specifically mentions the money would come from the agency’s budgets for travel, training, public engagement and information technology work. The department denies that the money came from disaster relief funding.
Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, said on MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show” that the administration is taking money from “response and recovery” and “working hard to find funds for additional detention camps.”
“I would dispute the statement that this has no bearing on … addressing the challenges from hurricanes,” Merkley said.
CNN received a copy of the document from Merkley’s office. It details the effects the transfer would have on FEMA’s operations and from where in the budget the money would come.
“FEMA will curtail training, travel, public engagement sessions, IT security support and infrastructure maintenance, and IT investments in the legacy grants systems for transition to the Grants Management Modernization Program,” the document reads.
Merkley was one of the first lawmakers to bring the family separation crisis on the southern border of the United States into pubic view, when he tried to visit a detention facility in June and was turned away. He has continued to be a critical voice on the Trump administration’s immigration policy, which included separating families at the border when the administration decided to criminally detain individuals caught crossing the border illegally.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

  

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

 FIXING THE INTERNET

 

SCOTUS

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

POLLS

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY

 

HURRICANES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

9/11 Rumors

Today’s the anniversary of the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor.  Possibly worse, since this targeted civilians, using civilians as weapons.  It’s also the day where every man, woman, and child wearing a Tin-Foil Hat comes out and espouses their favorite conspiracy theories about what happened.  In 17 years, I’ve heard them all, and I’m ashamed to admit it, but I gave credence to a couple of them over the years.  This was also in my younger days when I did a fucktonne of drugs and hadn’t studied Logic or Critical Thinking yet.  I was also a Libertarian and listened to InfoWars and Coast to Coast, too.

That said, read those threads with a heavy dose of skepticism.  Fuck that whole “keep an open mind” bullshit.  I hate that phrase.  That phrase might as well say “my batshit insane quackery is so fucking batshit insane that if you analyzed even the smallest piece of it, you’d realize that I’m a fucking conman, but instead of acknowledging that I’m trying to rip you off or fool you, I’ll blame your ‘preconceptions and biases’ and guilt trip you into buying my health supplements after making you feel guilty by somehow making you feel like an ass for questioning my batshit insane quackery.”  There’s a world of difference between keeping an open mind to analyze new claims and facts, and keeping your mind so open that your brain falls out and is replaced with Alternative Medicine claims, brochures about the Moon Landing, and cherry-picked evidence about how jet fuel can’t melt steel beams.

These threads, two from sources I’ve seen floating around from time to time and one from a trusted source, take three different paths, analyzing three different sets of information, and each coming to the same conclusion:

The Russians, specifically Russian Mafia like Semion Mogilivech and the Russian Government, had at least an indirect role, if not a direct role, in the terrorist attack on New York City in 2001, as well as a major role in the events that followed, such as the dissemination of disinformation and propaganda regarding the attack in the years that followed.

I think I might have a new record for the craziest thing I’ve ever typed.  And I’ve typed some crazy shit on this blog.

This is in no way to say that Osama Bin Ladn wasn’t the mastermind of the attack, or that it wasn’t carried out by Al Qaeda.  That shit happened, and I’m disputing any of that.  I’m going back to before that, and following these threads to the days and years before the attack.

What do we know?  After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia went to hell in a handbasket pretty quickly.  The government was in shambles, their economy was a joke, and basic services were up in the air.  There was one group that came out of this smelling like roses: the Russian Mafia.  Without anyone else to provide basic services, and the military officers looking to make a buck, the mob bought tons of weapons for pennies on the dollar, then sold them around the world.  Who was buying?  Warlords and Terrorists.  Most of the Soviet Bloc countries had enough weapons to last a lifetime, and an AK-47 is great for a lot of things, but eating one is frowned upon.  Global terrorism was still a few years down the road, but the earliest groups like Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Hezbollah in the Palestine region were looking for weapons.  The Russian Mafia sold guns to whomever was willing to buy.

We also know that this blood money was dirty AF, and needed a laundromat.  Where could one launder millions of dollars at once with little oversight?   Who would be the perfect combination of desperate, egotistical, and evil enough to serve as a willing participant in this scheme for a chunk of the profits?

Enter Donald Trump.

Trump was already laundering money for La Cosa Nostra by this point, and had developed strong ties with the Russian Mafia in the late 90’s following yet another one of his bankruptcies.

At some point, OBL comes up with this attack plan.  I’m not completely sold that Russian Intelligence was behind the details and planning, but I’m not ruling it out.  Since I’m not convinced and there isn’t ample evidence, I’m leaving the known facts in place.  So, OBL plans this attack with or without RU’s help, but Russia hears about it and let some of their top level people know about it.  Trump, being the egotistical, NPD-laden prick that he is, can’t help but go on television and make crazy claims.  At some point, Felix Sater talks to the FBI and brags about stopping a terrorist attack.

Time passes, and Russia sees an opportunity to sow discord in the United States.  Using some of their favorite dezya outlets like InfoWars, they push the fringes into conspiracy theories like Bush, the Saudis, and the Jews were behind the attack, or that the U.S. Government used Special Forces to plant explosives in the buildings, or they planted thermite on the supporting columns to bring the tower down with no one noticing, or the military shot down Flight 93, or time-traveling space ninjas from the planet Xaxxon 7 saw this as the bifurcation point to change the timeline to relegate humanity to the interstellar backwaters for millennia to come.  And people eat this shit up.  These theories get posted to every crazy forum on the internet until social media comes around.  Eventually, the U.S. catches and kills OBL, and things are happy for about 20 minutes.  Then the next problem comes around, ISIS.

The Russians are behind a lot of shit, but I’ve never connected them to 9/11 before, not even tangentially.  Sure, they supply every terrorist group in the world with their gear, and it’s an amazing coincidence that most of the terrorist websites are hosted out of the RU, and that there’s never an Islamic Terrorist attack in Russia, yet all of the groups use AK-47’s made in Russia.  Or, how the same disinformation campaign being used against Americans and Europe today matches the same moves, point for point, that were unfurled twenty years ago.  Funny how that is.

I’m still hesitant to say that the Russians were involved in 9/11 because it still sounds completely off-the-wall bonkers, but at this point I wouldn’t be surprised.  Putin killed his own citizens in St. Petersburg to help rise to power, hearing he tried the same stuff in New York wouldn’t be that far of a leap.

 

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  That last section rocked me.  I spent a lot of time thinking about that last night, and trying to wargame out the following question:

What if the Cold War never ended?  What if the Russians kept fighting it?  Would things look different than they do today if the attack was stopped?  Who benefited from the War on Terror?

I think I’m going to go into more detail on these questions in a future post, but the short version is the actions of the Putin regime are the same ones used by the Soviet Union back in the day.  Spycraft, disinformation, propaganda, proxy wars, it’s all the same.

As far as who benefited from the War on Terror, think about this.  Before 9/11, the FBI’s primary mission was fighting crime, with intelligence gathering and counterterrorism as a distant second and third priority.  Following the attack, crime fighting took a back seat.  Meanwhile, corruption has run rampant and the white collar criminals get away with countless crimes.  Does Donald Trump get away with laundering Mogilevich’s money if the FBI cracked down on international crime as hard as they cracked down on terrorism?

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Published by noneofthisisnormal

Published

2 thoughts on “Daily Check-In 09/11/2018”

  1. Pingback: Daily Check-In 09/12/2018 – None of this is Normal
  2. Pingback: Daily Check-In 11/19/2018 – None of this is Normal

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