Free Thought Project – by Claire Bernish
Only a select few over the entire course of human history can legitimately say they’ve witnessed the implosion of an empire, but Americans now have a front row seat to the tabloidesque spectacle currently slashing heads and taking names, as it rips through Washington with the full force of a deadly — if highly propagandized — tornado.
And this storm leaves no one — corporate press, politician, nor the U.S. President, himself — unscathed.
What began as proof of election-rigging by the Democratic National Committee and key players, including failed candidate and ex-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has morphed into an as-yet unsolved murder, allegations of sedition by the White House, and an altogether murky soup of unconfirmed accusations and hurt feelings — a true mashup of events, legitimately putting House of Cards to shame.
A tragic dearth in actual facts betrays mainstream media’s disingenuous headlines plastering unfounded tales of Russian collusion, as if on automatic pilot to peg every crime of the 21st century on shady operatives of The Enemy State.
Worse, the life of promising DNC staffer, Seth Rich, appears to have mattered as little to power-hungry pols as figures compiled in the military’s estimations of ‘collateral damage’ — excess, ostensively accidental killings of civilians — were this operation taking place anywhere but these once-United States.
Worse still, the only collusion thus far evident from anything other than unnamed, anonymous sources crucifies those once-illustrious media institutions as willing and active participants in both the cover-up of a murder, and slavish devotion to the nefarious U.S. Intelligence Community.
It’s a wonder any independent journalists — let alone, the people inhabiting this planet — can keep track.
In all its macabre splendor, this is the weaponization of news The Free Thought Project — and Wikileaks founder and editor, Julian Assange, himself — warned of, months ago.
And on that note, several laughably audacious assertions and their profoundly telling roots must be dissected for a better understanding of what has, in actuality, become a farce deserving of a cinematic cable series — or, perhaps, reality TV.
Buckle up: this will be a decidedly bumpy ride — veritably guaranteed to nauseate upon descent into this rabbit warren, over which any soap opera producer would drool. Were it only fictional drama.
Welcome to the Spin Cycle.
First, the wholly ruthless and altogether inexplicable demise of Seth Rich must be examined, in its own right — but must be done so against the backdrop of the Internet rumor mill, superimposed on revelations from albeit unconfirmed information, revealed just one day ago.
Deemed a robbery gone awry by D.C. police, Rich met an early fate in a hail of gunfire last July, during the wee hours after leaving a bar and just feet from his Bloomingdale District home. Speaking to his girlfriend at the time, Rich blew off that strangers were approaching him on the sidewalk, due to the proximity of his residence — and ended what would become his last communication with anyone.
Police arrived in three minutes to the bloody scene, and though the young DNC staffer remained conscious, he later passed away after transport to a local hospital. No witnesses have surfaced. Rich’s cell phone, keys, wallet, watch, and $2,000 necklace were apparently disregarded by the feckless robbers.
None of the evidence amassed proves, well, anything — yet, D.C. police baselessly asserted the unfortunate murder a result of a botched robbery.
Nothing of value had been taken. Nothing about the murder scene even whispered of a strong-arm, violent robbery. Yet, that’s the narrative held by unusually tight-lipped police, politicians, and the ionosphere of corporate press.
Secondly, just this week, the ice fractured a bit, as private investigator and former D.C. homicide detective, Rod Wheeler — hired by Rich’s family for an independent probe — broke ranks, telling Washington affiliate FOX 5,
“My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks … The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming. They haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer, which I believe is either at the police department or either at the FBI. I have been told both.”
Thirdly, Wikileaks published tens of thousands of DNC documents — evincing massive corruption, collusion, and a plot to thwart the candidacy of Senator Bernie Sanders — which had been obtained from an unnamed source, and which then dominated headlines for a significant period in the run-up to the U.S. election.
Corporate-funded media titans declared, sans evidence, it must have been The Russians who hacked the DNC to hand off information — thus, Wikileaks, and any journalist with sufficient integrity to cover the damning content of the files also must be colluding with the U.S.’ familiar Cold War foe.
Independent journalists, right-leaning press, and the ever-suspicious Internet, however, raised worthwhile doubts about the evidence-free claim — instead pouncing on Rich’s murder as suggestive a disgruntled insider might have earned a belt-notch on the notorious but theoretical Clinton Body Count.
Wheeler’s claims appear to at least partially back those suspicions — despite the staffer’s family denigrating the admittedly unproven narrative.
In fact, positing Rich as the leaker would seem to prove his killing more than an already peculiar anomaly — particularly, as mainstream, left-loyal press dismissed Wheeler’s statements as a diversion from a laughable and equally unprovable report from none other than the Intelligence darling, Washington Post — which claims President Trump carelessly forked over intel on the Islamic State to Russian officials in a secretive tête-a-tête recently.
Fourthly, the timing should not be ignored. Incredulously timed to coincide with the FOX affiliate’s earth-shattering revelations, the Post published its article, “Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador,” as yet further supposed proof the president has been in bed with the evil Russians for time immemorial.
None of the officials leveling blame in this matter have been named or otherwise identified. To us, they’re simply, officials — a designation the Post seems to think should garner unhindered respect.
On the left hand, American media collectively excoriated Trump’s putative Russian ties, while the right hand repeated Wheeler’s accusation as further proof the political establishment would stop at nothing — not even murder — to deflect from the impotent and ultimately failed campaign of Hillary Clinton.
Remember, despite substantial circumstantial evidence backing the latter, neither the left nor right has provided unassailable proof their allegations can tread water, much less swim under duress.
That the Washington Post concluded The Russians Did It — It, of course, being Everything — should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with owner Jeff Bezos’ oh-so timely $600 million business deal with the CIA the same year the billionaire Amazon owner purchased the once-upstanding media colossus.
Fifthly, the key article posing a possible explanation as to why all this is happening was scrubbed from the web this week. The go-to article from The Nation, detailing the freakish timing of Bezos’ Post purchase and CIA contract — since used as a reference for scholars and journalists, alike — suddenly vanished from the Internet within hours of the media’s mudslinging competition about Rich and The Russians.
https://twitter.com/polNewsForever/status/864497942450888705
It had been part of The Nation’s website since 2013. No more. Although cached versions of its piece, “Amazon, ‘The Washington Post’ and That $600 Million CIA Contract,” are retrievable — at least, on a temporary basis.
While the CIA deal ostensibly came to Bezos under a premise wholly unrelated to the Post, his outlet’s devotion to the neoliberal establishment continued with the unabashed hiring of disgraced former Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta — himself, the starring role in injurious documents obtained and published by Wikileaks, prior to the election.
Podesta joined the Washington Post as a contributor in February, this year — and, in short order, held Trump responsible for every ill on the planet, in an op-ed boastfully proclaiming, “Trump is on a rampage to endanger the planet. Now it’s up to us to save it.”
Given Bezos’ suspect CIA deal and Podesta’s unwavering fidelity to the Clintons, if no one or nothing else — in conjunction with the permanency of his megaphone at the Post — that the organization conveniently peppered the pot with further anti-Russian tripe at virtually the same time Wheeler’s claims about Rich began circulating, to consider WaPo a disinterested party would be to willingly wool one’s eyes.
Of course, all of this has yet to address Trump’s audacious termination of James Comey as head of the FBI — Comey, having been responsible for a thus-far publicly inconclusive probe into the president’s rather elusive ties to the Russian Federation.
No FBI chief, no investigation, many have pointed out — whatever bickering between the two parties might have occurred behind the closed doors of the Oval Office.
Even that managed to garner political disputation, as the timing of Comey’s termination, amid all of the aforementioned, effectively halted the months-long investigation to discern whether or not Trump involved The Russians to steal the White House from its apparent, rightful heir, Hillary Clinton.
It would seem someone set off an incendiary propaganda device in Washington, D.C. this week — and nary a soul on the planet has the tools available to quash the politicized flames.
When all else fails, a Hail Mary offers light where only mud existed, thus, CNN muscled a long shot Wednesday, boldly pronouncing all of right-leaning media washouts, in an article titled, “Story on DNC staffer’s murder dominated conservative media — hours later it fell apart” — intone here your best, over-the-top Canadian “sore-y aboot that” at your own peril.
Murdered staffers, Russian hackers, and media hacks, aside, what this chronicle of chaos enunciates more explicitly than any text offered by the duopoly’s media bullhorns is that, clearly, the Emperor Wears No Clothes — the empire’s naked vanity is on full display in a mirror reflecting years upon years of collective hope ‘this time will be different.’
This time, the serfs have spoken — they’ve elected a leader impugn to corruption, manipulation, and smear tactics infamously inextricable from American politics.
Or so they’d thought.
The reality of our demise instead reeks of the mundanity pictured in a supermarket tabloid — everyone gawks, no one admits they do, and the gruesomeness of someone else’s misery tantalizingly tempts us to pretend we don’t share in its fomentation, when we all know we do.
Have Americans learned nothing? Have we seriously entered an era where murders with hundred-thousand-dollar-plus rewards go unsolved, lest tipsters also suffer similar fates? Has this country succumbed to narcissism this profound, that blame in black-and-white text be sufficient to finger heads of state responsible for crimes not even committed — while legitimate but less flashy infractions go unanswered?
Voting matters, how?!
With all of these brazen details — and a copious volume unaddressed in this article for, well, brevity’s sake — is anyone still convincing themselves politicians have the peasants’ best interests at heart?
Seth Rich is dead. Hillary Clinton lost. Donald Trump tweets policy matters and temper tantrums, vicariously depending on the day.
America’s imperialist nightmare obviously wishes its capacious ills would just go away — but they won’t. They can’t. These stakes are too high.
It’s been lamented the unlikely swamp-drainer will be the last President of the United States; but — judging from this flaming pile of manure masquerading as tenable — perhaps that’s the best, possible outcome for the planet.
Read more at http://thefreethoughtproject.com/seth-rich-russian-media-coverup/#H36MPsM4GD172iom.99
WAPO is CIA. Paid quite well I hear.