One
Two

To understand the risk that Julian Assange represented to U.S. Intelligence Branch interests, it is important to understand just how extensive the operations of the FBI/CIA were in 2016.

It is within the network of foreign and domestic intel operations where Intelligence Branch political tool, FBI Agent Peter Strzok, was working as a bridge between the CIA and FBI counterintelligence operations.

By now, people are familiar with the construct of CIA operations involving Joseph Mifsud, the Maltese professor generally identified as a western intelligence operative who was tasked by the FBI/CIA to run an operation against Trump campaign official George Papadopoulos in both Italy (Rome) and London.

I was genuinely interested to see if Trump was going to pardon either Assange or Snowden on his way out the door.

For such a purportedly loose cannon, Trump never did.

Do read the whole posts. Sundance does quite a bit of timelining of the source documents to point out subtleties.

The question he ends up leaving is: OK, if we stipulate that this "fourth branch" really is such a powerful thing, why is its behavior so shadowy? I understand why an insurrection lays low: asymmetric warfare is a well-studied topic. But all of these orchestral maneuvers in the dark, all of this fetishizing of the paperwork and the memos, seems more wasteful than anything.

I think I've had discussions w/enough Boomer-tier Trump supporters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent to extract a general theory about their perspective. It is also the perspective of most of the people at the Capitol on 1/6, and probably even Trump himself. 1/x

Most believe some or all of the theories involving midnight ballots, voting machines, etc, but what you find when you talk to them is that, while they'll defend those positions w/info they got from Hannity or Breitbart or whatever, they're not particularly attached to them. 2/x

Here are the facts - actual, confirmed facts - that shape their perspective: 1) The FBI/etc spied on the 2016 Trump campaign using evidence manufactured by the Clinton campaign. We now know that all involved knew it was fake from Day 1 (see: Brennan's July 2016 memo, etc). 3/x

These are Tea Party people. The types who give their kids a pocket Constitution for their birthday and have Founding Fathers memes in their bios. The intel community spying on a presidential campaign using fake evidence (incl forged documents) is a big deal to them. 4/x

Everyone involved lied about their involvement as long as they could. We only learned the DNC paid for the manufactured evidence because of a court order. Comey denied on TV knowing the DNC paid for it, when we have emails from a year earlier proving that he knew. 5/x

This was true with everyone, from CIA Dir Brennan & Adam Schiff - who were on TV saying they'd seen clear evidence of collusion w/Russia, while admitting under oath behind closed doors that they hadn't - all the way down the line. In the end we learned that it was ALL fake. 6/x

At first, many Trump ppl were worried there must be some collusion, because every media & intel agency wouldn't make it up out of nothing. When it was clear that they had made it up, people expected a reckoning, and shed many illusions about their gov't when it didn't happen. 7/x

We know as fact: a) The Steele dossier was the sole evidence used to justify spying on the Trump campaign, b) The FBI knew the Steele dossier was a DNC op, c) Steele's source told the FBI the info was unserious, d) they did not inform the court of any of this and kept spying. 8/x

Trump supporters know the collusion case front and back. They went from worrying the collusion must be real, to suspecting it might be fake, to realizing it was a scam, then watched as every institution - agencies, the press, Congress, academia - gaslit them for another year. 9/x

Worse, collusion was used to scare people away from working in the administration. They knew their entire lives would be investigated. Many quit because they were being bankrupted by legal fees. The DoJ, press, & gov't destroyed lives and actively subverted an elected admin. 10/x

This is where people whose political identity was largely defined by a naive belief in what they learned in Civics class began to see the outline of a Regime that crossed all institutional boundaries. Because it had stepped out of the shadows to unite against an interloper. 11/x

GOP propaganda still has many of them thinking in terms of partisan binaries, but A LOT of Trump supporters see that the Regime is not partisan. They all know that the same institutions would have taken opposite sides if it was a Tulsi Gabbard vs Jeb Bush election. 12/x

It's hard to describe to people on the left (who are used to thinking of gov't as a conspiracy... Watergate, COINTELPRO, WMD, etc) how shocking & disillusioning this was for people who encourage their sons to enlist in the Army, and hate ppl who don't stand for the Anthem. 13/x

They could have managed the shock if it only involved the government. But the behavior of the corporate press is really what radicalized them. They hate journalists more than they hate any politician or gov't official, because they feel most betrayed by them. 14/x

The idea that the press is driven by ratings/sensationalism became untenable. If that were true, they'd be all over the Epstein story. The corporate press is the propaganda arm of the Regime they now see in outline. Nothing anyone says will ever make them unsee that, period. 15/x

This is profoundly disorienting. Many of them don't know for certain whether ballots were faked in November 2020, but they know for absolute certain that the press, the FBI, etc would lie to them if there was. They have every reason to believe that, and it's probably true. 16/x

They watched the press behave like animals for four years. Tens of millions of people will always see Kavanaugh as a gang rapist, based on nothing, because of CNN. And CNN seems proud of that. They led a lynch mob against a high school kid. They cheered on a summer of riots. 17/x

They always claimed the media had liberal bias, fine, whatever. They still thought the press would admit truth if they were cornered. Now they don't. It's a different thing to watch them invent stories whole cloth in order to destroy regular lives and spark mass violence. 18/x

Time Mag told us that during the 2020 riots, there were weekly conference calls involving, among others, leaders of the protests, the local officials who refused to stop them, and media people who framed them for political effect. In Ukraine we call that a color revolution. 19/x

Throughout the summer, Democrat governors took advantage of COVID to change voting procedures. It wasn't just the mail-ins (they lowered signature matching standards, etc). After the collusion scam, the fake impeachment, Trump ppl expected shenanigans by now. 20/x

Re: "fake impeachment", we now know that Trump's request for Ukraine to cooperate w/the DOJ regarding Biden's $ activities in Ukraine was in support of an active investigation being pursued by the FBI and Ukraine AG at the time, and so a completely legitimate request. 21/x

Then you get the Hunter laptop scandal. Big Tech ran a full-on censorship campaign against a major newspaper to protect a political candidate. Period. Everyone knows it, all of the Tech companies now admit it was a "mistake" - but, ya know, the election's over, so who cares? 22/x

Goes w/o saying, but: If the NY Times had Don Jr's laptop, full of pics of him smoking crack and engaging in group sex, lots of lurid family drama, emails describing direct corruption and backed up by the CEO of the company they were using, the NYT wouldn't have been banned. 23/x

Think back: Stories about Trump being pissed on by Russian prostitutes and blackmailed by Putin were promoted as fact, and the only evidence was a document paid for by his opposition and disavowed by its source. The NY Post was banned for reporting on true information. 24/x

The reaction of Trump ppl to all this was not, "no fair!" That's how they felt about Romney's "binders of women" in 2012. This is different. Now they see, correctly, that every institution is captured by ppl who will use any means to exclude them from the political process. 25/x

And yet they showed up in record numbers to vote. He got 13m more votes than in 2016, 10m more than Clinton got! As election night dragged on, they allowed themselves some hope. But when the four critical swing states (and only those states) went dark at midnight, they knew. 26/

x Over the ensuing weeks, they got shuffled around by grifters and media scam artists selling them conspiracy theories. They latched onto one, then another increasingly absurd theory as they tried to put a concrete name on something very real. 27/x

Media & Tech did everything to make things worse. Everything about the election was strange - the changes to procedure, unprecedented mail-in voting, the delays, etc - but rather than admit that and make everything transparent, they banned discussion of it (even in DMs!). 28/x

Everyone knows that, just as Don Jr's laptop would've been the story of the century, if everything about the election dispute was the same, except the parties were reversed, suspicions about the outcome would've been Taken Very Seriously. See 2016 for proof. 29/x

Even the courts' refusal of the case gets nowhere w/them, because of how the opposition embraced mass political violence. They'll say, w/good reason: What judge will stick his neck out for Trump knowing he'll be destroyed in the media as a violent mob burns down his house? 30/x

It's a fact, according to Time Magazine, that mass riots were planned in cities across the country if Trump won. Sure, they were "protests", but they were planned by the same people as during the summer, and everyone knows what it would have meant. Judges have families, too. 31/x

Forget the ballot conspiracies. It's a fact that governors used COVID to unconstitutionally alter election procedures (the Constitution states that only legislatures can do so) to help Biden to make up for a massive enthusiasm gap by gaming the mail-in ballot system. 32/x

They knew it was unconstitutional, it's right there in plain English. But they knew the cases wouldn't see court until after the election. And what judge will toss millions of ballots because a governor broke the rules? The threat of mass riots wasn't implied, it was direct. 33/x

a) The entrenched bureaucracy & security state subverted Trump from Day 1, b) The press is part of the operation, c) Election rules were changed, d) Big Tech censors opposition, e) Political violence is legitimized & encouraged, f) Trump is banned from social media. 34/x

They were led down some rabbit holes, but they are absolutely right that their gov't is monopolized by a Regime that believes they are beneath representation, and will observe no limits to keep them getting it. Trump fans should be happy he lost; it might've kept him alive. /end

Previously.

The point of today's post is to speculate that the SSCI is staffed by Senators upon whom there is some amount of kompromat.

Every member of the [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)] is compromised in some controlling manner. Those Senators who disliked the control over them; specifically disliked because the risk of sunlight was tenuous and, well, possible; have either left completely or stepped down from the committee. None of the SSCI members past or present would ever contemplate saying openly what their tenure involved.

[Note: You might remember when Vice-chairman Mark Warnerâ(TM)s text messages surfaced there was a controlled Republican SSCI member who came to his defense in February of 2018. It was not accidental that exact senator later became the chair of the SSCI himself. That republican senator is Marco Rubio, now vice-chair since the Senate re-flipped back to the optics of Democrat control in 2021.]

The evidence offered is purely circumstantial. It should be noted that the author, Sundance, especially hates Mitch McConnell.

But the point, and I think it's cogent, is that were one to have leverage on a bipartisan group of Senators (a possibility) that are on the SSCI, that would be a powerful lever indeed.

The Last Refuge

In the next few days I am going to explain how the Intelligence Branch works:
(1) to control every other branch of government;
(2) how it functions as an entirely independent branch of government with no oversight;
(3) how and why it was created to be independent from oversight;
(4) what is the current mission of the IC Branch, and most importantly
(5) who operates it.

When we understand how the Fourth Branch works, questions about our dysfunctional U.S. modern government are answered. Additionally, the motives and intentions of people inside the institutions start to reconcile.

Installments:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/07/05/day-one-the-fourth-branch-of-government-the-intelligence-branch/


Anticipated reactions:
fustakrakitch: Same as it ever was. There can be no change, although I will complain endlessly about it, because #Reasons
damn_registrars*squawk*Your team did it and then the parties switched and motorized the goalposts and I've repeatedly asked your for a simple answer and all you do is change the subject and*squawk*

BREAKING: Tax Charges Expected for Trump Organization and CFO. Here's What We Know.

"In my more than 50 years of practice, never before have I seen the District Attorney's Office target a company over employee compensation or fringe benefits," Fischetti said. "The IRS would not, and has not, brought a case like this. Even the financial institutions responsible for causing the 2008 financial crises, the worst financial crisis since the great depression, were not prosecuted."

They have been over Trump's backside with a fine-tooth comb and a magnet for years. Maybe they finally packed a pistol with enough dry ice to look like a smoking gun. Who knows? Thus far, every lawfare move tried against Trump has made him look a martyr. BUT THIS TIME IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE DIFFERENT. PINKY SWEAR!

In particular, I find his racialist slant tedious. But this post is spot-on:

In reality, America is a one party system. It has been since Gettysburg. The differences between the two parties are miniscule. This is why public policy never changes when the party in charge changes. The mild reforms of the Reagan years were followed by a consensus that remains in place to this day. There is some tinkering around the edges to keep up appearances, but otherwise the results of each election have no impact on public policy or the priorities of government.

As for those two ideologies, they are just two faces of a single ruling class ideology that is something like a religion now. There is left-liberalism and there is right-liberalism held together by a common moral framework. Like the old Bolsheviks, the left side of the American ideology is maximalist and radical. It wants to usher in the promises of the revolution right now. The right side is more cautious, preferring an evolutionary approach to ushering in the promised utopia.

#PresidentPottedPlant,
He of the neurons scant,
Waited for his earpiece-given tips.
We know that his election,
Was a ballot insurrection,
Of corpses in a zombie apocalypse.

Twitter guffaws aside, there is a hint of where the counter-attack is headed over at The Last Refuge:

I have recently been made aware that federal law enforcement agencies have been informed about some of the results from geo-location of cell phone data surrounding "drop boxes" used to collect voter ballots. Essentially a mapping of specific cell phones which identifies their group association and outlines their activity in multiple states. The data is the data and cannot be refuted.

Oh, it's all ones and zeros, so all that's required is to demand the data pedigree and show chain of custody and repeatable analytics. All that can be done is to make it computationally hard to fudge data. As a last resort, as Hunter's laptop shows, the Demsheviks and their media organs will ignore the data. And the SCOTUS has shown its willingness to blow the case right off, too. Why they never gave Trump a day in court to let him self-immolate is unclear.

Soon these types of very specific data-maps will be cross referenced in key precincts and added to any resulting audit outcomes. The cell phone travel of these organized groups creates a map of their activity. Keep in mind many of ballot collection sites have CCTV systems; some CCTV operations were actually mandated by legislation that authorized the collection drop-off locations. It is not coincidental that public records requests for those CCTV recordings are being met with hostile denials and efforts to stall production.

So were to infer a cadre of ninjas running around stuffing ballot boxes? Not impossible, but let's see that stand up in court.

The bottom line is this. . . AG Merrick Garland knows a powder keg is very likely to explode as soon as the majority of American people discover just how manipulated the election of 2020 was. His announcement to double the staff of the DOJ Civil Rights Division voter unit is not to protect election integrity, but rather to position his resources for a war against a looming storm of election review outcomes. . . and the White House is so far exposed, they are positioning to use the military to protect their position.

Read the whole thing to see how Sundance set up the last sentence.

I really can't offer a prediction on how this goes. But, if:

• The audits continue to gain steam (GA and PA have produced rumblings after AZ's)
• Trump actually launches a full-fledged social media platform
• Trump starts conducting large rallies

. . .then I figure there will be some major economic bombs on the stock market and/or some saber rattling in the Far East. The first thing a cardboard standee regime like Biden's does when faced with pressure is foment a crisis to manage the news cycle.

When the official report cleared Barack/Hillary for Benghazi, that was Gospel, and all of these "Wide Soup Rim Assist", "Not-See" conservative scum can shut up and accept the truth that the Kumquat Pol Pot gassed innocent victims because #ShutUp.

There's a good reason Joe Scarborough is the anchor of the liberal-left's favorite cable outlet. Shown a *mountain of conclusive, documentary proof* that the Park Police's use of tear gas had nothing to do with Trump--was planned well before--he still insists it happened:

IG Report => https://www.doioig.gov/reports/review-us-park-police-actions-lafayette-park

I stand accused of being some GOP bootlicker, keeping "my team's" footwear fully titivated.

Would I had a "team".

GOP Rep. Buddy Carterâ(TM)s Bill Would Bar Federal Funds From States That Give Assistance To Illegal Immigrants

Repeat after me: There. Are. No. FEDERAL. Funds.

Our currency is U.S. Dollars.

Carter's accepts the bogus premise that the Federal cart pulls the economic horse.

The right wing of the Deep State turkey badly needs a dose of reality regarding the cart/horse dichotomy, rather than buying into the Cosmic Credit Card premise of the Treasury appearing money from a nether region and beaming it to States.

I say this knowing that I am a voice in the wilderness, and that the Cosmic Credit Card is really how things will continue to run, until Cloward and Piven have their way and the whole rotten edifice collapses and people are all: "Wut?"



Aside: title is a vague Helmet reference--https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWdCX9FXx5Y

Via https://www.stephenhicks.org/2021/05/24/jordan-b-peterson-discussion-open-college-transcript/ (emphasis mine)

Peterson: But if words serve power then it seems to me that what the postmodernists have done is taken biological motivation, let's call it the motivation for power, and sneaked it through the back door and reconnected the world of linguistic abstraction to the world of reality. But they say that the only connection is one of power, and then they leave out why people want power. The idea that people want power is a complicated idea because you have to define power and you have to define what, and those aren't trivial issues by any stretch of the imagination. So you sneak it in the back door as self-evident, and then that seems to undermine the general postmodernist claim. If the words are only embedded in a network of meaning thatâ(TM)s related to other words, then it isn't a fair move ontologically or epistemologically to reinsert power-striving like a Nietzschean or Adlerian power-striving, as the fundamental and sui generis motivation that characterizes human beings. I don't understand how they get away with that, except that it seems to be a mask for the continuation of a Marxist move under a new guise.

Hicks: Well, I have no problem with seeing power as a positive. Coming back to all of the suspicions that you're announcing about inappropriate understandings of the relationship of power, I think we should be able to say our cognitive capacities are a power that we have, and they are a tool and the whole point of using that tool is to increase our power in the world to achieve our goals. What the postmodernists are doing is undercutting the two things that make that understanding of power legitimate. One is to say that when I am making a cognitive claim, I am successfully saying something about the world, so we can use the words knowledge and truth. If you are skeptical about any sort of a knowledge claim or truth claim, then you're just going to say, "No, your claims merely are subjective beliefs that are peculiar to you or peculiar to your group, and they don't have any special cognitive status whatsoever. And, if you want to act on or use those beliefs to empower yourself, then you are in an out of reality connection now."

The other thing, though, is we want to say that power should be a tool that we use for good--for advancing genuine values in the world. But another part of the postmodern skepticism is to say that we cannot ground any values objectively. Instead, values are merely subjective preferences either individually or group-oriented. So if you have your value framework, then we're into the problem of relativism: I have my value framework, you have yours, and neither of us is able to adduce any facts that give an objective grounding to those values or to argue that those values should be universally embraced. Then we're just left with: you have a certain amount of power to advance your interest, I have a certain amount of power to advance my interests, and it's a naked power struggle in the suspicious way that you're worried about. To come back to this issue of how Marxist or not the postmodernists are, you're right that at least the great-grandfather move was made by the Marxists in one generation and the Nietzscheans the next generation to strip power down to that amoral, ontological status that you are worried about.

Peterson: But what's the motivation for it?

Hicks: I think there are two kinds of motivations. One thing we know is that there are people who just like power; they want to control other people, and they have their agendas. Now, we can talk about the sociological and the psychological foundations of that, but that is an ongoing fact. Some people just want power, and they will then rationalize their use of power over other people by a variety of means.

Neither of these heads would agree with me (Peterson might be closer to buying my shtick) but if we're body, mind, and soul, and one elides the soul as the Marxists do, then one is as a ship without a rudder. Whatever moral compass one purports to have is a decoration.

These are some.

David Marshall holds an undergraduate degree in the Russian and Chinese languages and Marxism, a masters degree in Chinese religions, and a doctoral degree in Christian thought and Chinese tradition.

Marshall may know something of the current Chinese threat.

Marxist in Spirit

But I see classical communists and CRT ideologues as both Marxist in spirit. The bearded radical's paternity of both can be seen in six traits that they share:

1. Hunger for power.

2. A moral fig leaf to hide that hunger. Marxist morality borrows a pretense of concern for those on the margins from Christ. Paradoxically, Marx and Engels also claimed to "abolish all morality." In practice, Marxists created three moral systems, by which they (a) criticized "oppressors;" (b) nagged peasants into working hard, not spitting, wearing their masks, or whatever the cause of the day happened to be; and (c) settled their own consciences, usually by "the end justifies the means." But a fig leaf of threadbare morality is all Marx issued his followers, in place of the rich heritage of moral truth found, say, in Moses, Confucius, or Aristotle, let alone Jesus of Nazareth.

3. All three moralities [CRT,Marxist, and communist] are collective, not individual. ...

4. Marxists are social dualists. ...

5. Marxists claim to believe that because society was created by their enemies, violence is justified (and maybe necessary) to make changes. ...

6. Scapegoating is an important theme. ...

Before getting into the subject of this JE, I had to declare D_R the victor of three other threads we had going. His prowess at attrition warfare overcame my interest.

Anyway:

Roger Kimball makes an excellent point:

It's not that benevolence is a bad thing per se. It's just that, like charity, it works best the more local are its aims. Enlarged, it becomes like that "telescopic philanthropy" Dickens attributes to Mrs. Jellyby in Bleak House. Her philanthropy is more ardent the more abstract and distant its objects. When it comes to her own family, she is hopeless.

The sad truth is that theoretical benevolence is compatible with any amount of practical indifference or even cruelty. You feel kindly towards others. That is what matters: your feelings. The actual effects of your benevolent feelings in the real world are secondary, or rather totally irrelevant. Rousseau was a philosopher of benevolence. So was Karl Marx. Yet everywhere that Marx's ideas have been put into practice, the result has been universal immiseration. But his intention was the benevolent one of forging a more equitable society by abolishing private property and, to adopt a famous phrase from Barack Obama, by spreading the wealth around.

An absolute commitment to benevolence, like the road that is paved with good intentions, typically leads to an unprofitable destination.

This benevolence, I'd ad, tries to go after the agape of the New Testament, which is the self-sacrificial love, of, say, a soldier diving on a grenade to save the squad, or a mother laying it down for the children.

It doesn't scale up to a political system, and it certainly cannot be codified into a law.

But that doesn't stop, to drop recent examples, the Fauci-ites or climatistas from getting all preachy about the sacrifices they think others should cheerfully undertake.

(emphasis mine)

As Sowell's interests took him from economics to education to family structure to race, immigration, late-speaking children, and why civilizations flourish or fail--all of which subjects he discussed in detail in his many books--he fired off one diamond-tipped one-liner after another. "The first lesson of economics is scarcity," he once wrote. "The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics." He observed, "Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly." He said, "The vision of the Left--and I think many conservatives underestimate this--is really a more attractive vision. The only reason for not believing in it is that it doesn't work." Aaron Hunsaker, the Overstock.com executive who has sleeve tattoos on both arms and more tattoos on his hands and knuckles, marvels that it's "punk rock to base things off of individual freedoms and thought." Rubin recalls asking Sowell why he stopped being a Marxist: "Uh, facts," was Sowell's reply.

via https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/review-thomas-sowell-common-sense-in-a-senseless-world/

Yet Solzhenitsyn went still further. He said that not only Stalinism, not only Leninism, not only Communism--but socialism itself led to the concentration camps; and not only socialism, but Marxism; and not only Marxism but any ideology that sought to reorganize morality on an a priori basis. Sadder still, it was impossible to say that Soviet socialism was not "real socialism." On the contrary--it was socialism done by experts!

Intellectuals in Europe and America were willing to forgive Solzhenitsyn a great deal. After all, he had been born and raised in the Soviet Union as a Marxist, he had fought in combat for his country, he was a great novelist, he had been in the camps for eight years, he had sufÂfered. But for his insistence that the isms themselves led to the death camps--for this he was not likely to be forgiven soon. And in fact the campaign of antisepsis began soon after he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. ("He suffered too much--he's crazy." "He's a Christian zealot with a Christ complex." "He's an agrarian reactionÂary." "He's an egotist and a publicity junkie.")

Kibbutz is bottomââup socialism on the scale of a small community. It thereby avoids the worst problems of state socialism: a planned economy and totalitarianism. The kibbutz, as a unit, is part of a market economy, and membership is voluntary: you can leave at any time. This is âoesocialism with a human faceâ â" as good as it gets.

Being a member of a kibbutz taught me two important facts about socialism. The first is that material equality does not bring happiness. The differences in our material circumstances were indeed minimal. Apartments, for example, if not identical, were very similar. Nonetheless, a member assigned to an apartment that was a little smaller or a little older than someone elseâ(TM)s would be highly resentful. Partly, this was because a personâ(TM)s ability to discern differences grows as the differences become smaller. But largely it was because what we received was assigned rather than earned. It turns out that how you get stuff matters no less than what you get.

Ahhh. . .the totalitarianism. Look I really, really don't care who the media are dishonestly calling Nazis this week: concentrated power breeds totalitarianism. Wokery, National Socialism, it don't matter: individual liberty is on a course for destruction under President Potted Plant.

I'll be standing by to support anything recognizably American, and that has the highest likelihood to drive reform. And by reform I mean redistributing power, not wealth. This formulation is blasphemy to my interlocutors who more or less explicitly worship power, and is derided from the Dr. Johnny Fever Burnout Chorus. . .wherever they are on the spectrum.

But there it is. There is the JE.