July 30, 2017, "PCR: "The New Russian Sanctions Bill Is Washington's Monument To Its Criminality," Zero Hedge, Paul Craig Roberts, author
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts
"The Congress of the United States by almost unanimous votes in both House and Senate has made
it clear that Congress would rather destroy the President of the United
States and to increase the risk of nuclear war than to avoid conflict
with Russia by normalizing relations.
The vote on the new sanctions makes it pointless for President Trump to veto the bill, because it passed both houses by far more than the two-thirds vote required to over-ride the president’s veto. The only thing Trump can achieve with a veto is to prove the false charge that he is in league with Vladimir Putin.
The new sanctions bill forecloses the possibility of reducing the rising tensions between the two major nuclear powers. It also shows that whatever interest Congress has, if any, in reducing the threat of war and in avoiding a break with Europe over the sanctions, Congress has a much greater interest in continuing to collect campaign contributions from the powerful and rich military/security complex and in playing to the growing hatred of Russia that is encouraged by the US media.
This reckless and irresponsible action by the US Congress makes completely clear that Washington has intentionally chosen conflict with Russia as the main element of US foreign policy. Perhaps now the Russian government will abandon its cherished illusion that an accommodition with Washington can be reached.
As I have written on many occasions, the only way Russia can achieve accommodation with Washington is to surrender and accept American hegemony. Any further resistance of the Russian government to this obvious fact would indicate dangerous delusion on the part of the Russian leadership.
The fig leaf Congress chose for its violation of diplomatic protocols and international law is the disproven allegation of Russian interference in behalf of Trump in the US presidential election. An organization of former US intelligence officers recently announced that forensic investigation has been made of the alleged Russian computer hacking, and the conclusion is that there was no hack; there was an internal leak [by "someone working in the EDT time zone"], and the leak was copied onto a device and Russian “fingerprints” were added. There is no forensic evidence whatsoever that shows any indication of Russian hacking.
It is all made up, and everyone alleging Russian hacking knows it.
.
There is no difference between the allegation of Russian hacking and Hitler’s allegation in 1939 that “last night Polish forces crossed our frontier,” Hitler’s fig leaf for his invasion of Poland.
That Congress uses a blatantly transparent lie to justify its violation of international law and intentionally worsens US relations with both Russia and the EU proves how determined Washington is to intensify conflict with Russia
.
Expect more false allegations, more demonization, more threats.
War is in the cards."
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Added: Evidence of a leak, no evidence of a 'hack':
7/24/17, "Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence," Consortium News
"In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year."
"The Key Event
July 5, 2016: In the early evening, Eastern Daylight Time, someone working in the EDT time zone with a computer directly connected to the DNC server or DNC Local Area Network, copied 1,976 MegaBytes of data in 87 seconds onto an external storage device. That speed is many times faster than what is physically possible with a hack.
It thus appears that the purported “hack” of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 (the self-proclaimed WikiLeaks source) was not a hack by Russia or anyone else, but was rather a copy of DNC data onto an external storage device. Moreover, the forensics performed on the metadata reveal there was a subsequent synthetic insertion – a cut-and-paste job using a Russian template, with the clear aim of attributing the data to a “Russian hack.” This was all performed in the East Coast time zone."...
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Added: So-called US sanctions against Russia are first aimed at erasing 2016 voters, reminding them that they're slaves, have no voice, and don't get to decide elections. Harming Russia, Europe, and America are secondary goals. Trump humiliated the entire Swamp in 2016; The Swamp believes it can't survive unless it stifles Trump's administration in its cradle-Spengler, David P. Goldman, 7/28/17
July 28, 2017, "Trump’s 'America First' vs. McCain’s 'America Last'," Spengler, David P. Goldman, PJ Media
"Not the supposed protectionist Donald Trump, but the “free trade” wing of the Republican Party has taken the United States into a trade war that it can only lose. New sanctions against Russia passed by the House and Senate last week force Europe into a de facto alliance with Russia against the United States, and by extension with China as well. It is the dumbest and most self-destructive act of economic self-harm since the United States de-linked the dollar from gold on August 15, 1971, and it will have devastating consequences.
The charade in the House and Senate may embarrass Trump, but it also poses a threat to European energy supplies as well as an extraterritorial intrusion into European governance. Berlin, Paris and Rome will conspire with Moscow to circumvent the sanctions while attacking the United States at the World Trade Organization and other international fora....
The sanctions will hurt Russia, but not nearly as much as they will hurt the United States over the long term. The White House envisioned sanctions as a bargaining chip, to be used to persuade Moscow to behave in the Ukraine and to limit the ambitions of its Iranian ally of convenience. In their present form, however, the president will have no authority to remove sanctions imposed by Congress. That turns a feint into a threat. Wars have been started over less....
Not Trump, but his detractors have given Moscow a degree of leverage over Western Europe to which it has not aspired since the height of the Cold War in 1983, when Soviet premier Yuri Andropov considered a pre-emptive Russian attack in response to Western plans to deploy medium-range missiles in Germany.
Supposedly it was Trump who ignored the exigencies of international relations in favor of domestic political theater. Yet it is the Establishment wing of the Republican Party and its Democratic allies who combined to embarrass the president, without a moment’s consideration of the consequences of their actions. Among Washington’s elite, Trump Derangement Syndrome has nothing to do with ideology. It is about jobs and patronage. This is not hypocrisy. It is chutzpah.
Trump humiliated the Democrats and the Establishment rump of the Republican Party last November. The losers now face the prospect of permanent exile from political life. Writing in the Times Literary Supplement July 25, historian Edward Luttwak predicted a Trump dynasty lasting sixteen years, in which Ivanka Trump Kushner would succeed her father. “No wonder that leading Democrats and non-Trumpers continue to act hysterically even eight months after the election. President Trump’s plan threatens to exclude them all from office until long past their retirement age,” Luttwak wrote.
The hopes of high office of the defeated Establishment can be realized only by stifling the Trump administration in its cradle.
That is the motivation behind the Black Legend of Russian collusion that continues to occupy the waking hours of the American media while putting most Americans to sleep. As Sen. McCain said after the Senate vote July 27, the sanctions “respond to Russia’s attack on American democracy….We will not tolerate attacks on our democracy. That’s what this bill is all about."...
Now, for narrow political reasons, Trump’s enemies propose to undo the whole structure of relationships that won the Cold War and drive Europe into the arms of the Russians and Chinese. I do not believe for a moment that McCain and Schumer have a clue about this—they are like the “sleepwalkers” in Christopher Clark’s brilliant history of the outbreak of the First World War—but if I were a Russian operative, I would try to invent someone like John McCain, if McCain did not already exist."
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