[Epoch Times] Sidney Powell, lawyer of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said the FBI excluded crucial information from a report on their interview of her client. The report, an FBI 302 form, was used to charge Flynn with lying to the FBI, but the original draft of the 302 stated that Flynn was honest with the FBI, according to a witness who saw the draft, Powell said.
Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to one count of lying to FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017, interview.
A 302 report summarizing the interview was supposed to be filed within five days. But the earliest draft Flynn’s lawyers were provided was from Feb. 10, 2017‐more than two weeks after the interview.
Powell, who took over Flynn’s defense in June 2019, has for months asserted that an earlier 302 must exist. Prosecutors have said they don’t have it, stopping short of saying it doesn’t exist.
In an Oct. 24, 2019, court filing (pdf), Powell rejected the suggestion that the 302 draft was "missing," saying neither the bureau nor its digital document system "loses the most important of its reports that is supposed to support the federal felony of the President’s National Security Adviser."
#2
For the record, I don't hate the 80-85% of Americans who are largely apolitical and who do not make a living off of gunning up 2 Minutes Hate, or the outrage du jour de la minute. I can live with VaxxerMoms HipsterDudes GothChicks JeriCurlers DieselDykes MushMouths SocialClimbers Quilters SonsOfTheSouth FudgePackers CookiePushers Charismatics BeanCounters CarpetMunchers TicketPunchers LiquidLunchers NumberCrunchers ... All good Americans, in their fashion.
We don't have a class war in this country. We have one class that is as corrupt as it is incompetent, a group of self-regarding fools that lives inside their own Twitter-Media bubble. That group of course is our ludicrous political & media class, the folks who bring you, hourly, The Shitshow.
Replace the absurd, gross antics and virtue-signaling of this class with a group of normal people who are not on the make, who use logic and evidence and speak clearly, in normal English, and half our problems would disappear.
We don't have to hate each other. But we do need to replace our current political class, one of the most corrupt and incompetent in modern US history.
#6
...it began when Rome inherited an empire at the end of the Punic Wars. It distorted the power and political arrangements of the city state government. We demobilized at the end of WW2. Ours began when we, our ruling class, decided at the point of the Berlin Blockade to become the world's policeman. The Constitution was never set up to operate a virtual empire with a large standing army.
They're all variations on the same AOC-MeghanNarkke-RachelMaddow-Hollywood Maroon theme: a combination of activist, entrepreneur and Shitshow Performer/Drama Queen.
The view from Iraqi Kurdistan, laying out the players for our perusal.
[Rudaw] Once again, regional and international powers are engaged in rivalries on the land of a country far from their own; Libya.
Libya, which has been plagued by a civil war since the death of Muammar al-Qadaffy in October 2011, has now become a battleground for clashing interests between North African and Mediterranean coastline countries.
The west of the country is dominated by Fayez al-Sarraj, the Prime Minister of the Government of National Accord (GNA) of Libya, supported by The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
Continued on Page 49
[CER.eu] Democracy and the rule of law are often, wrongly, treated as synonymous. There are increasing tensions in Europe between what governments think their voters want them to do, and what the courts and EU institutions allow them to do. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is right to say that threats to the rule of law challenge the functioning of the EU. Key EU policy areas such as the single market and law enforcement co-operation depend on respect for the rule of law throughout the Union. These laws were established without the input of the people. Duh.
Respect for the rule of law is declining in many EU member-states, not just those in Central Europe. One of the most comprehensive international indices, the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators, shows that from 2009-2018 the rule of law deteriorated in 17 EU member-states.
The EU has a number of tools for monitoring and responding to non-compliance with the rule of law, but they are inadequate. Monitoring is too narrowly focused on judicial independence and relies on data submitted by member-states. Responses to democratic backsliding are inconsistent. The so-called Article 7 procedure, which can lead to suspension of a member-state's voting rights, has proved unusable. Attempts to make the disbursement of some EU funds conditional on respect for the rule of law have met legal and political obstacles.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/21/2020 00:00 ||
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#1
The European governments (elites) feel the same as the 'living Constitutionalists' on our SCOTUS do. Law should be what I want it to be, not as written, and we don't have the time (or the votes) for Article V changes!
This only can work for that part of the world that is a big enough trading partner. Nb: Another essay at the site is titled “ How the US blackmails the EU ”. So apparently it goes both ways, even if we don’t hate them.
[EuroIntelligence] After the Trump administration threatened tariffs on German cars over Iran, it is now China that makes the same threat in respect of Huawei. The world has discovered that Germany, and by extension the EU, is vulnerable to mercantilist threats. This is what happens when trade surpluses are not merely occurring but they are an essential part of your overall economic strategy. It's about goddamned time. Germany has been ripping us off in trade for decades, and laughing all the way to the bank. It's about time we started to put the hurt on those ungrateful, America-hating squareheads.
Put the hurt on them, and they’ll take their trade elsewhere. I’m not nearly as concerned about trade as I am about all of Europe having enough bullets for their guns and spare parts for their vehicles. It does no good to produce doughty special forces soldiers if they haven’t enough bullets to practice their target shooting, nor enough working vehicles to drive from the barracks to the practice field.
The New York Times quotes a member of the digital affairs committee of the Bundestag as saying that the Chinese have made it clear in private conversations with German officials that they will retaliate where it hurts - against the car industry. Earlier China's ambassador to Germany also warned that there would be consequences, but without spelling them out. The privately-issued threat seems to have become a prime tool in international diplomacy. The Washington Post reported this week that the US administration had threatened EU officials that Washington would impose car tariffs unless the EU agreed to trigger the arbitration procedure in the Iran nuclear deal. Good. Not that I approve of meddling with Iran, but that we're finally getting our way. Supposedly this ruinously expensive financial support of Germany and the rest of Europe bought us leverage - but I ain't seen shit. All they do is gainsay everything we do. Fuck 'em.
Angela Merkel is, as ever, leading from behind. The decision is ultimately up to the Bundestag. There is strong opposition to Huawei from the pro-Atlanticist lobby in the CDU, most notably from Norbert Rottgen, head of the foreign affairs committee. One of the US arguments against Huawei’s German bid is that car companies will in the future carry lots of personal data from drivers, and Germany would effectively make these data available to the Chinese communist party.
Continued on Page 49
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/21/2020 00:00 ||
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#2
Germany has the problem that they produce very high quality products that they don't have enough consumers for in house. Gotta sell those Mercs somewhere.
#3
Germany trusts Russia more than us. Get out while the getting's good, I say. Whoever thinks that things are fine is not getting a wide enough perspective.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/21/2020 9:14 Comments ||
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#4
Blue is the color of wisdom.
Posted by: European Conservative ||
01/21/2020 14:01 Comments ||
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#5
Not blue, and more optimistic than I am. Chermany wants badly to sell dual use to the iranians and wants them badly as a counterbalance to the US and Israel. I hope they lose badly on both counts.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/21/2020 16:21 Comments ||
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[UNZ Review] On the holiday set aside in 2020 to honor Martin Luther King, the premier advocate of nonviolent Gandhian civil disobedience, thousands of gun owners gathered in Richmond to petition peacefully for their rights.
King had preached that there was a higher law that justified breaking existing laws that mandated racial segregation.
When Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus in Montgomery, when Freedom Riders integrated bus terminals, when black students sat at segregated lunch counters in North Carolina, they challenged state law in the name of what they said was a higher law.
And Virginia gun owners believe their moral obligation to protect families, friends and themselves in a violent society justifies their right to keep and carry firearms, no matter what the Virginia legislature says.
Americans have a long history of breaching laws in the name of a higher law or God-given rights.
The patriots of Boston gathered an arsenal at Concord in defiance of the British. To protest a tea tax imposed by parliament, they dressed as American Indians and threw shiploads of imported tea into Boston Harbor.
Shays’ Rebellion in Massachusetts, to protest debt collections in 1786-87, and the 1794 Whiskey Rebellion in western Pennsylvania, to protest a tax, both had to be crushed with force.
Abolitionists supported the violation of fugitive slave laws, the enforcement of which Lincoln endorsed in his first inaugural as a national necessity to restore and preserve the Union.
A constitutional prohibition of the sale of beer, wine and liquor in the U.S., following the enactment of the 18th Amendment, led to massive civil disobedience in the Roaring ’20s, before it was repealed in 1933 by the 21st Amendment.
During Vietnam, burning draft cards was a regular feature of anti-war rallies.
Historians may describe the racial riots of the 1960s ‐ Harlem, Watts, Newark, Detroit, and 100 U.S. cities including Washington, D.C., after King’s assassination ‐ as popular uprisings, but many required National Guard and federal troops to stop the looting, shooting and arson.
By the late 1960s, LBJ, who had passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, could not visit a college campus without a violent demonstration.
This week, Washington hosts the 46th annual March for Life to commemorate the 60 million unborn killed in the abortion mills of America since Roe v. Wade in 1973.
In conservative states, restrictions imposed on abortion facilities have put some out of business. The legislators and governors who have done so believe the right to life trumps the Warren Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Perhaps the greatest manifestation of civil disobedience today is the illegal presence of between 12 million and 20 million immigrants who broke into our country or are breaking the law by being here after their visas expired.
#1
Pro tip. As the left breaks down various moderating influences like the family, gender roles and reasonable expectations of equal justice for all, they should not be surprised if chaos manifests itself in unexpected ways...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
01/21/2020 8:25 Comments ||
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#2
Another cause is weak rule of law. Everywhere we're now seeing a degradation of due process, of law and order, or democratic governance and our rights as citizens. The list is really astonishing:
"Sanctuary cities."
Zero's Pen and Paper + the creeping Administrative State doing end runs around the people.
Re above, Zero's Kollege Kangaroo Kourts for nailing college boys with anonymous and false rape accusations.
The epidemic of slander and libel by our idiot media and their swarms of Twitter-locusts.
The Deep State and its blatant attempt to nullify an election and frame a sitting president-- aka a coup d'etat.
Pro-criminal Soros DAs in city after city.
The spectacular corruption of our political class.
#4
The old military expression "Never give an order that won't be followed" applies to laws as well with the same consequences for the order/law- giver.
It's less about weakness and more about unequal application and enforcement of said law.
Normies are finally figuring out that the left has captured just about every institution, and as such, they can longer trust or rely upon those institutions.
Dem Left? - Call the Department of Redundancy Department
[Aspen Beat - Glenn Beaton] Specifically, what about the particular serviceman or woman in the western U.S. who remotely piloted the Reaper drone that fired the Hellfire missiles to kill the Iranian terrorist?
Is that drone pilot a "war criminal"? If you accept AOC’s premises and reasoning, the answer has to be yes. The fact that the pilot was merely following orders is not a defense, as Eichmann learned.
So here’s the next logical step in the Dem left’s TDS. They will illegally, treasonously and murderously dox military drone pilots. On the bogus grounds that the pilots are war criminals, they will publicly reveal the pilots’ identities for the purpose of ruining and perhaps ending their lives.
#1
Yikes... I don't think it was wise for Mr Beaton to risk planting such ideas in these maniacs' heads. I hope this article doesn't get legs. Maybe he should take it down?
[Daily Caller] What is the greatest killer of females in the United States?
When they found out the answer, some activists at the Women’s March in Washington, D.C., said the hundreds of thousands of unborn females who are aborted every year "don’t count."
[Sarah Hoyt] - I think it was fifteen years ago now that Classical Values coined the term "Cold Civil war."
At the time I read it, it immediately clicked in my brain as "oh. Precisely. This is what it is."
I could see immediately the same patterns as we saw it in Europe in the seventies and eighties, as the Soviets ‐ through puppets ‐ had taken over the schools, publishing, and all instruments of culture, and all those of us who opposed communism had as options was keeping our heads down, shutting up, and seething internally.
...And so, by fifteen years ago, I felt much like I was living in Europe in the seventies. Which is why the term fit.
Since then ... since then things have gone more so, but at the same something happened that didn’t happen in the international cold war: They lost control of the information stream.
The USSR never lost control of that, arguably even as it collapsed internally and officially stopped existing. Or as we say around here, the snake is dead but the tail twitches.
But the tail has lot access to the levers of power, to overstretch the metaphor. It’s twitching madly trying to regain them, but they can’t.
Thing is though that one of the things they thoroughly infested is our democracy, from our bureaucracy to our voting mechanisms, to the point that they have power over us.
And they’re terrified. They’re so terrified that I’m wondering how deep the sewer is, and how dirty everyone involved in this is. I know in a couple of places they can’t reform. They’ll die first, because the alternative is they’re dead anyway, or worse, they have to part with everything they’ve been and everything they believe.
Which means they’re trying to regain control by all means possible and being increasingly aggressive and stupid about their aggression. Which, in retrospect, is another parallel with the USSR before the fall.
As a parenthetical comment, the reason they’re collapsing is partly the reason the USSR collapsed. Turns out when what you’re choosing for is compliance and ideological conformity, you don’t choose people who can keep the lights on in civilization. When you value fake science that confirms your prejudices over real science, you end up not being able to run a technological civilization.
But it is the snake flopping around and looking for levers and trying for a desperate win after it’s defanged....
There are several reasons I wish actual violence would wait until we had time to do more work on the "back panel" of the culture. We have ‐ despite everything ‐ been turning the culture around. Which is part of the reason they are desperate.
...Maybe we’ll get lucky. It looked impossible the cold war would end without major blood, particularly as the USSR lost the plot and flailed around.
But I would lie if I said I’m not nervous about Virginia. Tap dancing on a powder barrel is dangerous, particularly when the powder barrel has connections all over the world ‐ everyone, everywhere is fed up with the left.
...They’re not engaging in provocations because they’re winning. They’re not screaming and trying to cancel you because they’re strong. They’re not letting the masks drop because they’re confident of victory.
[American Thinker] - I read here (Spanish Minister) that a Spanish government official is worried that Spain needs eight or nine million immigrants to keep the country from diving into a demographic tailspin. The nub of the problem seems to be that Spain has a desperate shortage of more people to tax so they can keep paying for bureaucrats ‐ uh, I mean essential government services. The conventional wisdom is to bring in African and Middle Eastern migrants by the shipload. Of course, there is opposition from hateful, ignorant Spanish citizens who whine about the inevitable disappearance of European culture from large swaths of the country. Rubes! Nativists! France and Germany seem to be dealing well enough with it. Just ask the French and German bureaucrats.
What a thorny problem. Where can Spain get its hands on millions of migrants? Those bureaucrats must be saved. Where, oh, where?
Gasp! I know a place which has millions of unappreciated illegal immigrants. The U.S. is flooded with uncounted numbers of people who aren't officially here. They live in the shadows and have had to go through a lot of trouble to get there. Why can't we just send them to Spain? It's win-win.
But wait, this idea gets even better. They already speak Spanish in Spain. How's that for a happy coincidence? The immigrants don't even need to learn English. In fact, it's a win-win-win!
#1
LOL, the they already speak spanish in Spain would have my wife laughing her ass off. The immigrants we are dealing with do not speak Spanish, they speak street Mexican. Believe me, there is a difference. They'd be able to communicate, but they are most definitely not the same.
#2
Give each illegal a Spanish bank account, to be activated with $10,000 after 6 months' residence in Spain and give him a free one-way ticket to Madrid. No return.
The above would actually cost us LESS over the next five years than what they'll cost us if we can't get rid of them otherwise. Deal of the century, actually.
#7
#1 its like the French and the Quebecese. Or for that matter deep New England and deep Southern let alone in the Hood, variations of American English.
#8
Spain should have done this with North Africa back when they controlled half the known world. Would have solved a lot of problems and they might even have made the area prosperous like it was during the Roman era.
[American Thinker (By George Zimmerman)] - I love just about all Clint Eastwood movies, but Richard Jewell is in a class by itself. This one was personal. This one Clint Eastwood made for me. Only a handful of people in America know what it’s like to be Richard Jewell and unfortunately, I’m one of them. Mr. Eastwood got it right. Two thumbs up!
I rarely ever go to the movies. Nearly seven years after my acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, I still have to be very cautious about where I go. A few years ago, a man took a shot at me and missed my head by inches. He will be in prison for another dozen years or so, but every time I see my name trend on Twitter, I am reminded there are people out there who would like to pick up where the assassin left off.
My gut reaction in watching Richard Jewell was sadness. The film reminded me just how much heartache an accusation this heinous puts a parent through. For those who don’t know the story, Richard found a suspicious backpack in Centennial Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics. He alerted authorities to the backpack and helped clear the area.
Two people were killed when the bomb inside the backpack went off, but many more would have been killed if Richard had not acted on his suspicions. For a brief period, people called him a hero, but then the media and the FBI turned on him and accused him without evidence of being an attention-seeking security guard. They call it "trial by media," and it is beyond horrible.
...The people who just read the headlines still think I stalked and murdered a little boy because he was black. They have no idea that Trayvon was a skilled street fighter, a half a foot taller than me, who attacked me out of nowhere as I was walking to my car.
I am grateful for the vindication that Joel Gilbert’s brilliant new film, The Trayvon Hoax, provides me. Joel may not be Clint Eastwood, but he is a truth teller of the first order. I am thankful too to all those people who stood by me when the world told them not to.
At the end of the day, Richard Jewell and I had something else in common -- we knew who our real friends were.
#2
Zimmerman is not likely to get $100 million from the Martin family or the attorney. Maybe he should go after the media like Nick Sandmann (Covington) did.
[Strategic Culture Foundation] Once again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by.
The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this one person. The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen
...some of them, anyway...
and undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia,
combatting ISIS while fomenting Shiite terrorism — the man was capable of splitting his attention among many projects....
was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation.
...absolutely. The only possible reason President Trump could have ordered the hit was to enflame the hearts of peace lovers everywhere...
And therefore, that is exactly what we should not do.
True. Though your resulting antics do amuse those of us in the evil warmonger party.
In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation unfortunately causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of ’official government statements’.
Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must first have an understanding as to what caused the United States to enter into an endless campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.
#1
Over the years, and through thousands of searches and publications, I somehow managed to miss the existence of the Strategic Culture Foundation. I suppose it is because I was uninterested in following the careers (or writings) of unrelenting Marxists and Yankeephobes.
#2
SCF is a Russian-funded outfit, but worth reading as they've got some very unique views that never get aired elsewhere. The usual 95% drek 5% gold of an internet site.
Posted by: Herb McCoy ||
01/21/2020 11:40 Comments ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Epoch Times] Sidney Powell, lawyer of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, said the FBI excluded crucial information from a report on their interview of her client. The report, an FBI 302 form, was used to charge Flynn with lying to the FBI, but the original draft of the 302 stated that Flynn was honest with the FBI, according to a witness who saw the draft, Powell said.
