This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/Trump-admits-War-Crime.doc(1) Trump tweet repudiating Mid-East wars blacked out by Jewish-owned MSM which pushed for those wars(2) MSM blacks out Trump tweet admitting criminality of Iraq war - wsws(3) The Hill verifies Trump's tweet condemning US entry into Iraq War(4) Staged melodrama, media hysteria, progressive demands(5) Hillary recommends shredding the Constitution(6) Democrats seek to abolish the Electoral College(1) Trump tweet repudiating Mid-East wars is blacked out by Jewish-owned MSM which pushed for those wars- by Peter Myers, October 10, 2019Thanks to the Trotskyist wsws website for drawing attention to the MSM blackout on Trump's tweet admitting the criminality of US entry into the Iraq War, and repudiating US entry into other Mid-East wars.Even though the (Jewish-owned) MSM blacked the story out, minor US news outlets including The Hill did report it - thus validating it, and making the MSM blackout speak volumes.Saddam was indicted for killing a small number of Iraqis; why then should not Bush Jnr, Cheney, John Bolton and other US leaders - including media bosses - be indicted for killing a million by invading Iraq on false pretenses? At the behest of the Jewish lobby, it should be added. Where is the "Jewish Internationalism" we hear so much about? Where is the "Jewish Intellectual Aristocracy"?Luckily Trump got rid of Bolton before he could incite any more wars.Given Trump's admission, all other candidates for the 2020 election should be judged on whether they, too, repudiate those wars that the Jewish lobby has dragged us into.Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders pass that test.To test which US media published Trump's tweet, search Google for (NB: include the quote marks; copy & paste the whole lot into your browser)"United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting"If you do it today, you need not specify a time-period. But if you do it a bit later, specify (e.g.) past week.The NYT and the Washington Post blacked the tweet out. But don't take my word - check for yourself.(2) MSM blacks out Trump tweet admitting criminality of Iraq war - wswshttps://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/10/10/iraq-o10.htmlTrump admits US killed millions in war based on liesBill Van Auken10 October 2019Amid the storm of denunciations—extending from right-wing Republicans to the Democratic Party, the New York Times and the pseudo-left Jacobin magazine—of his decision to pull US troops out of Syria, President Donald Trump issued an extraordinary tweet on Wednesday in defense of his policy:"The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side. GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE ... IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION."Trump’s Twitter account has dominated the US news cycle ever since he took office. Tweets have introduced fascistic new policies on immigration, announced the frequent firings of White House personnel and cabinet members and signaled shifts in US foreign policy.Last month, amid the mounting of an impeachment inquiry, which the Democratic leadership in Congress has focused exclusively on "national security" concerns stemming from Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the US president set a new personal record, tweeting 800 times.Yet the corporate media has chosen to ignore Trump’s tweet on the protracted US military intervention in the Middle East. From the standpoint of the bitter internecine struggle unfolding within the US capitalist state, the tweet expresses the sharp divisions over US global strategy. While those around Trump want to focus entirely on preparation for confrontation with China, layers within the political establishment and the military and intelligence apparatus see the continuation of the US intervention to assert its hegemony over the Middle East and countering Russia as critical for American imperialism’s drive to impose its dominance over the Eurasian landmass.But aside from these disputes over geo-strategic policy, the admission by a sitting US president that Washington launched a war under a "false" and "disproven" premise that ended up killing "millions" has direct political implications, whatever Trump’s intentions.It amounts to an official admission from the US government that successive US administrations are responsible for war crimes resulting in mass murder.Trump acknowledges that Washington launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq on the "false premise" of "weapons of mass destruction." In other words, the administration of George W. Bush lied to the people of the United States and the entire planet in order to facilitate a war of aggression.Under international law, this war was a criminal action and a patently unjustified violation of Iraq’s sovereignty. The Nuremberg Tribunal, convened in the aftermath of the Second World War, declared the planning and launching of a war of aggression the supreme crime of the Nazis, from which all of their horrific atrocities flowed, including the Holocaust. On the basis of this legal principle, Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top US officials, as well as their successors in the Obama and Trump administrations who continued the US intervention in the Middle East—expanding it into Syria and Libya, while threatening a new war against Iran—should all face prosecution as war criminals.The real basis for the war was the long-held predatory conception that by militarily conquering Iraq Washington could seize control of the vast energy resources of the Middle East—giving it a stranglehold over the oil lifeline to its principal rivals in Asia and Europe—and thereby offset the decline of US imperialism’s global hegemony.The World Socialist Web Site described the consequences of the US assault on Iraq and its people as "sociocide," the deliberate destruction of what had been among the most advanced societies, in terms of education, health care and infrastructure, in the Middle East (see: "The US war and occupation of Iraq—the murder of a society").The casualties inflicted by this war were staggering. According to a comprehensive 2006 study done by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet, the death toll resulting from the US invasion rose to over 655,000 in the first 40 months of the US war alone.The continued slaughter resulting from the US occupation and the bloody sectarian civil war provoked by Washington’s divide-and-rule tactics claimed many more direct victims, while the destruction of basic water, power, health care and sanitation infrastructure killed even more. The mass slaughter continued under the Obama administration with the launching in 2014 of what was billed as a US war against ISIS. This war, which saw the most intense bombing campaign since Vietnam and reduced Mosul, Ramadi, Fallujah and other Iraqi cities to rubble, claimed tens if not hundreds of thousands more lives.Recent estimates of the death toll resulting from 16 years of US military intervention in Iraq range as high as 2.4 million people.The Iraq war has had its own disastrous consequences for US society as well. In addition to claiming the lives of more than 4,500 US troops and nearly 4,000 US contractors, the war left tens of thousands of US troops wounded and hundreds of thousands suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries.What of all the families in the United States who lost children, siblings or parents in a war that Trump now admits was based upon lies? Together with the veterans suffering from the wounds of this war, they should have the right to sue the US government for the results of its criminal conduct.The cost of the US wars launched since 2001 has risen to nearly $6 trillion, the bulk of it stemming from Iraq, while interest cost on the money borrowed to pay for these wars will eventually amount to $8 trillion.These grievous costs to US society are compounded by the social and political impact of waging an illegal war, resulting in the shredding of democratic rights and the wholesale corruption of a political system that is ever more dominated by the military and intelligence apparatus.The media’s silence on Trump’s admission of war crimes carried out by US imperialism in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East is self-incriminating. It reflects the complicity of the corporate media in these crimes, with its selling of the lies used to promote the aggression against Iraq and its attempt to suppress antiwar sentiment.Nowhere was this war propaganda developed more deliberately than at the New York Times which inundated the American public with lying reports about "weapons of mass destruction" by Judith Miller and the noxious opinion pieces by chief foreign affairs commentator Thomas "I have no problem with a war for oil" Friedman.By all rights, the media editors and pundits responsible for promoting a criminal war of aggression deserve to sit in the dock alongside the war criminals who launched it.The corporate media has also ignored Trump’s indictment of the US wars in the Middle East because it speaks for those sections of the US ruling establishment that want them to continue.Trump’s cynical nationalist and populist rhetoric about ending US wars in the Middle East is aimed at currying support with a US population that is overwhelmingly hostile to these wars, even as his administration—backed by the Democrats—has secured a record $738 billion military budget in preparation for far more catastrophic wars, including against nuclear-armed China and Russia.If the fascistic occupant of the White House is able to adopt the farcical posture of an opponent of imperialist war, it is entirely thanks to the Democrats, whose opposition to Trump is bound up with the concerns of the US intelligence agencies and the Pentagon over his conduct of foreign policy.While there was mass opposition to the invasion of Iraq, the pseudo-left in the United States, together with the media, worked might and main to channel it behind the Democratic Party, which provided uninterrupted support and funding for the war. Today, it is the most pro-war party, aligned with the opposition to Trump by the likes of John Bolton, Lindsey Graham and Bush.Trump’s admission about the criminality of the Iraq war only confirms what the World Socialist Web Site stated from its very outset. The struggle that it has waged for the building of a mass antiwar movement based upon the working class and armed with a socialist and internationalist program to unite the workers of the United States, the Middle East and the entire planet against the capitalist system provides the only way forward in the struggle against war.(3) The Hill verifies Trump's tweet condemning US entry into Iraq Warhttps://thehill.com/homenews/administration/464967-trump-says-50-us-troops-removed-from-northern-syriaTrump says 50 US troops removed from northern SyriaBY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/09/19 08:10 AM EDTTrump says 50 US troops removed from northern Syria BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 10/09/19 08:10 AM EDTPresident Trump said Wednesday that 50 U.S. soldiers had been removed ahead of an anticipated Turkish offensive in northern Syria. ..."The United States has spent EIGHT TRILLION DOLLARS fighting and policing in the Middle East. Thousands of our Great Soldiers have died or been badly wounded. Millions of people have died on the other side," he said in a subsequent post."GOING INTO THE MIDDLE EAST IS THE WORST DECISION EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY! We went to war under a false & now disproven premise, WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. There were NONE! Now we are slowly & carefully bringing our great soldiers & military home. Our focus is on the BIG PICTURE! THE USA IS GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!" he added. ...(4) Staged melodrama, media hysteria, progressive demandshttps://www.nationalreview.com/2019/10/trump-impeachment-inquiry-anti-trump-psychodrama/Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0?By VICTOR DAVIS HANSONOctober 8, 2019 6:30 AM‘Groundbreaking’ disclosures fall apart, hoaxes are exposed, the media are discredited, over and over and over again.What do the Kavanaugh hearings, Jussie Smollett, the Covington kids, the Mueller investigation, and now the Trump phone call all have in common?Staged melodrama, media collusion hysteria, progressive demands that justice be served immediately, promises of walls-are-closing-in blockbuster revelations from new witnesses, supposed surprise revelatory documents, fusions between Democratic politicians and Washington bureaucrats — and then bust, nada, and teeth-gnashing as the truth catches up to various rumor-mongers.The disgraced purveyors of lies — a Christine Blasey Ford, Michael Avenatti, Nathan Phillips, Jussie Smollet, Adam Schiff — for a time go mute, content with progressives’ praise that they lied for a moral cause and almost pulled it off.The particular narrative is not all that important, at least compared with a general overriding theme: We are in a virtual civil war, and the Left believes that it can win over the hearts and minds of 20 to 30 percent of the swing voters in the United States with therapeutic tales of racism, sexism, unearned white privilege, and right-wing greed and selfishness, and also by destroying the elected president. Particular events in the news are warped and twisted, to the degree that they can be, to serve that narrative — on the principle that the superior moral end of ensuring a radical equality of result more than justifies the often tawdry and dishonest means to achieve it.Christine Blasey Ford’s recovered-memory accusations that a teenaged Brett Kavanaugh, nearly 40 years ago, had assaulted her were not corroborated by any firsthand witnesses, and Ford provided no reliable information on the place or date of the alleged assault. The investigation did turn up plenty of contradictory evidence, including denials from her closest friends and from people she herself named as witnesses to the alleged attack.Just this September, Kavanaugh 2.0 played out, when two New York Times reporters wished to revise the psychodrama on its first anniversary by publishing new lurid assault charges that someone had "pushed" Kavanaugh’s dangling phallus into the hands of an innocent woman. That macabre tale imploded within hours after we learned that the supposed victim had no memory of the assault and that the single secondhand hearsay source was a left-wing politico who chose to remain quiet about his former charges.About ten months ago, we witnessed another progressive morality farce, between stereotypical evil white Christian kids wearing MAGA hats and a saintly Native American, Vietnam veteran Nathan Phillips, who was threatened by the punk kids and yet spoke truth to power when he resisted their slurs by beating a drum.Phillips, we were told, had served in battle on behalf of spoiled white kids who repaid with insults and racism befitting their privileged airs. When it was revealed that the activist Nathan Phillips had never been to Vietnam, that he was a chronic liar, that he was the one who had first walked over to the teenagers and initiated the stand-off by banging a drum in their faces, and that the kids were being mocked by a group of African-American cult activists, the Left shrugged, went quiet for a bit, and then assumed that facts were not very important because a greater truth had been revealed in yet another pushback against the white male Christian hierarchy.Shortly after the Covington caper, an apparent opportunist has-been actor Jussie Smollett, of half African-American ancestry, gave America his own concocted fable about being attacked by two white supremacists in MAGA hats, who were apparently (while carrying bleach and rope) randomly prowling the liberal streets of Chicago — in the early-morning hours in subfreezing weather — hoping just maybe to lynch any young, gay African-American actor like Smollett on his way to buy a sandwich at 2 a.m.In his retelling of the epic battle with the two racist monsters, the doused and noosed Smollett managed to beat them back, hold on to his cellphone and sandwich, and make his wounded way home, with the rope still around his neck. Smollett was crushed that his attackers not only used the N-word and gay slurs but also went so far as deride his television show Empire — an African-American cable-television series that was apparently a big hit with the white-supremacist community.The Left, of course, went ballistic. Politicians and stars virtue-signaled their outrage at yet further proof of Trump’s racist America. When it was revealed that two black Nigerians admitted that Smollett had hired them to stage the mock assault, and had them dress up with the suitable masks and red-hat props, the story fell apart. Nonetheless, the felony charges against Smollett (for disorderly conduct and filing a false report) were quickly dropped, and embarrassed leftists have rarely mentioned the caper, despite the cost and harm it did to the nation.In May 2017, Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate Trump’s alleged "collusion" with the Russians and "obstruction" in seeking to impede Mueller’s "all-stars" and "dream team" of mostly progressive lawyers, some who had a history of close association with Clinton interests and many who had been donors to the Clinton campaign. For the next 22 months of the $32 million investigation, the media weekly leaked supposedly sensational disclosures leaked by "unnamed sources" and "high-ranking officials who prefer to remain anonymous." Adam Schiff was periodically wheeled out to grimace and say he was disturbed at the shocking crimes of Donald Trump that he had seen in secret.When a befuddled Mueller was finished, he had found no collusion and no grounds to indict Trump for impeding his investigation of the crime that he had just concluded did not exist. When Mueller rambled before Congress, he was unable to remember basic facts of his own inquiry and for the most part appear muddled and confused.The only salient fact about the collusion investigation was Mueller’s own embarrassing lack of knowledge of Christopher Steele’s fabricated dossier, gleaned largely from Russian plants and sources. The fake-news document had been paid for by candidate Hillary Clinton to undermine the Trump campaign, and it later became a source for lurid stories about Trump that were peddled by Obama-era officials in the FBI, DOJ, and CIA to undermine the Trump transition and presidency.Not only were there no apologies; there also was no embarrassment that zealots for 22 months and $32 million of wasted money had lied about Trump’s imminent indictment and disgrace. If anyone could have found an iota of wrongdoing on Trump’s part, it was the dream team that hated Trump’s guts, though in the end, they found no collusion at all.Now on schedule we are on to yet another progressive psychodrama. This time we were told that a blockbuster transcript of Trump’s phone call with the Ukrainian president would prove Trump’s collusion with a foreign power to hurt his presidential rival Joe Biden.Then the transcript was released, and it showed no quid pro quo. As with the projection of the Mueller case, Trump’s domestic foes in the Ukraine imbroglio were accusing Trump of what they themselves had done. The only explicit threats to cut off Ukrainian aid were made not by Trump but by Joe Biden himself, who boasted, on camera at a public event, that he had forced the firing of a prosecutor — a prosecutor who was looking into his own son’s profiteering in Ukraine — by threatening to cut $1 billion in Obama-administration aid to Ukraine.Over the next few days, in the manner of these earlier concocted tales, a number of contradictory facts arose that destroyed the narrative. Three Democratic U.S. senators had earlier written the Ukrainian government and, in far more explicit language than Trump used, warned them to investigate in a fashion that the senators preferred.The Ukrainian government did not, as alleged, substantiate the charges against Trump but in fact asserted that Trump had not pressured them for dirt on Biden in exchange for aid — the sort of gambit that Biden himself had earlier bragged about employing.Almost daily, pieces of the Ukrainian hoax fell apart. Senator Chris Murphy — who had charged out to issue a statement that Ukrainians on an earlier visit had complained directly to him about Trump interference — now recalibrated his tale, perhaps fearing that Ukraine would release contradictory evidence.The complaint file itself hardly seemed the work of a whistleblower. Instead, in the style of the Steele dossier and the Mueller investigation, it footnoted liberal media sources as verification, cited past legal rulings and cases, and seemed the work of progressive attorneys. Oddly, whistleblower forms had been mysteriously changed retroactively to legitimize the complainant’s charges on the basis of hearsay without the need for a single firsthand example of direct knowledge of wrongdoing.Adam Schiff, to heighten the drama of the caper, opened a congressional hearing by reading from the transcript of the Trump call to the Ukrainian president. Only he didn’t. Instead he ad-libbed and recited a fantasy version that contradicted the actual transcript in several places — much as the whistleblower complaint also erred in key ways. When caught, he pled that he was offering a "parody" for effect. Schiff’s staff, it may well turn out, hand-in-glove coached the "whistleblower" well before he went public.We have learned nothing and forgotten nothing in all these instances. There is an eerie sameness about all of them. The media go berserk with rumors of a "groundbreaking" disclosure. Talking points are issued, which liberal news readers regurgitate ad nauseam. Democratic would-be presidential candidates rush to social media with the grimmest predications and loudest condemnations. Sober and judicious — and terrified — Republican politicians and pundits virtue-signal their own wide distance from the MAGA operatives and Trump himself. No one waits for all the evidence. Instead, they endlessly replay the Ox-Bow Incident over the electronic airwaves.When it is all over, there are no apologies and no contriteness, just a shrug. After all, if it wasn’t true, it could have been, or it reflected a higher moral truth, and lying for noble ends justifies the means. In fact, those who call out the rumor-mongers, sanctimonious scolds, and political hacks are usually themselves damned as racists, homophobes, Stalinists, Trump robots, conspiracy theorists, or any such slur deemed useful in projectionist fashion to deflect their own culpability.So here we are, on the eve of impeaching a president on the basis of disgruntled White House staffers, whose rumors in secondhand and thirdhand fashion were passed on to a "whistleblower" who worked hand in hand with partisan lawyers and Adam Schiff to circumvent the normal whistleblower protocols and smear a president.And we will all shrug and grow quiet — at least until the next Blasey Ford, Michael Avenatti, Jussie Smollett, Nathan Philipps, dream-team, all-star star chamber, James Comey, or "anonymous" crusading "whistleblower" comes forth to seek notoriety and do his yeoman’s work to rid the country of Trump and all his odious henchmen.Meanwhile, they have no idea of the wreckage they have inflicted on the intelligence agencies, the media, the Democratic party, themselves, and the country — or much less why a growing number of Americans are sick of them all.Editor’s Note: This piece originally misidentified Christine Blasey Ford. It has been corr(5) Hillary recommends shredding the ConstitutionThe Dem-CIA Impeachment. Remove Trump from the Oval OfficeNothing Burger with HRC in the WingsBy Renee ParsonsGlobal Research, October 07, 2019It has been more than fascinating if not totally absorbing to watch the chain of events unfold over recent days with the Democrats in open cahoots with the CIA.  Their joint goal is to remove the implacable Donald Trump from the Oval Office as two-time former Dem presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has suddenly emerged from the Swamp for a few media appearances.While the problematic candidacy of former veep Joe Biden plods on despite evidence of facilitating a family corruption scandal (also known as influence peddling) and a dementia that confirms he is unable to fulfill the duties of the presidency.Image on the right: Joe and Hunter Biden (Source: Wikimedia Commons)The Democrats latest frenzied attempt to oust Trump was the result of an assertion by a CIA operative embedded in the White House that the President ‘pressured’ Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky in a July 25th phone call to investigate allegations of misconduct by former veep Joe Biden and his son Hunter and their association with Burisma, Ukraine’s largest energy provider.  The alleged whistleblower alleged that Trump’s ‘pressure’ was ‘to solicit interference from a foreign country’ for political gain which would constitute abuse of his office thereby justifying an impeachment inquiry.Before the Dems whipped themselves into a froth of anticipation, they might have checked out the ‘Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Agreement" signed by President Bill Clinton with the Ukraine government in 1999.  Spelling out a ‘broad range of cooperation in criminal matters," the Agreement is internationally binding, still in force and indicates that Trump was acting within his Constitutional authority in his conversation with Zelensky.  You would think that would be the end of the matter, right?Trump’s response to the Dem-initiated furor was to release the White House transcript of the phone call which the CIA operative claimed was on ‘lock down’ by the White House to prevent its distribution.  Here is the only portion of that conversation that discussed the Biden Ukraine connection which is clearly asking the Ukraine President to conduct their own investigation.  Read the transcript and decide for yourself if there is political pressure, a quid pro quo or a violation worthy of impeachment – or is it all a Big Fat Nothing Burger?"The other thing, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that so whatever you can do with the Attorney General would be great.  Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution so if you can look in it…"Contents of that phone call then became the subject of an extensive nine-page whistleblower Complaint filed on August 12th, the filing of which came at about the same time as Intel Inspector General Michael Atkinson changed the standard to allow for second hand tattling.What is stunning is that the alleged whistleblower admits in his lengthy Complaint, that none of the information provided is first hand or personally obtained knowledge but rather informal via second and possibly third hand sources.  The speculative, hypothetical nature of the Complaint "not as a direct witness" therefore makes the entire document legally indefensible in addition to its factual errors. Surely, IG Atkinson understood that when he allowed such a flawed, legally insubstantial document to be filed, a document based on hearsay, gossip, rumor, innuendo and/or word of mouth, that such a document would be inadmissible in any court proceeding.  End of Story, right?And then, voila!, a second whistleblower with first hand knowledge has just stepped forward and is being interviewed by the same IG who accepted the first legally flawed document.The impeachment efforts were further undermined by the inept manipulations of Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif), Israeli proxy extraordinaire who appears to have lied about his level of knowledge and/or involvement, created his own version of Trump statements as well as what amounts to a Brady violation of withholding of evidence from Republicans on the Intel Committee in violation of Committee rules.It is all almost too good a story with a too perfect cast of characters to be anything less than a great political theatre as a coup generated by the US intel community throws all legitimacy to the wind in its last ditch effort to impeach a sitting President for …well, we’re not quite sure exactly what the "misdemeanor and high crime" (Section 4, Article 2 of the Constitution) charges might be since the Dems are not following the Constitutional impeachment procedures.So far, the Democrats have failed to adhere to basic due process rights with no debate or vote on the Floor of the House of Representatives regarding potential Articles of  Impeachment.  After which, the House Judiciary Committee would prepare formalized charges for Committee consideration and hold a public hearing.Instead there is a lot of hot air and grandstanding with the Intelligence Committee holding behind-closed-door-interviews as if there is some dire national security threat at stake which the American public should not be privy to.  In addition, the Intelligence Committee has no legislative role to bring impeachment charges but, alas, all of the above would require the Dems to provide facts of an impeachable offense.In other words, it is time for the Democrats to put up or shut up and get on with the business of running the country – if they have the ability to do so remains in question.Enter HRC, not widely regarded as a friend of the rule of law, who sought to relieve the House of their Constitutional prerogative by suggesting"If the impeachment provision in the US Constitution will not reach the offenses charged here then perhaps that 18th Century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th Century paper shredder."It should be shocking that Clinton finds nothing sacrosanct about ‘abandoning’ the Constitution to a paper shredder. It should make every American fearful of what a Clinton Administration might look like as she suggests that if the crime doesn’t fit the law, then change the law to fit the crime.While the American public earnestly awaits the next chapter of Ukraine-gate, Biden warned Trump "you’re not going to destroy my family" although the former VP and son are doing a pretty good job of that without help from the often hapless Trump.In 2012, the 42 year old Hunter Biden, with no prior military experience, was one of six recruits selected to serve as a Reserve Officer in the Navy’s Direct Commission Officer Program.  He sought two waivers; one because of his age and a second because of a previous drug charge years earlier.  In May, 2013, Biden was commissioned as an Ensign in the Navy’s Public Affairs Division in Norfolk, Virginia.  By June, he tested positive for cocaine and was dishonorably discharged in February, 2014.By May, 2014, Hunter Biden was appointed to a seat on the Board of Directors for Burisma Holdings Ltd., Ukraine’s largest gas company and as a graduate of Yale Law School, he was in charge of its legal department for a cool $50,000 a month.  Biden joined Devon Archer another American new to the Burisma Board who also serves with Biden at Rosemont Seneca, a private equity firm.Meanwhile, Burisma’s owner oligarch was under examination by Ukraine investigators after which, at Joe’s urging, the lead prosecutor was fired and the case dropped.  At a January Council on Foreign Relations meeting, Biden related threatening the government of Ukraine with the loss of a $1 billion loan guarantee in March, 2016:"I got the commitment from Poroshenko and Yatsenyk that they would take action against the state prosecutor and they didn’t. We’re not going to give you the billion dollars. I’m going to be leaving here in six hours and if the prosecutor’s not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch, he got fired and they put in place someone who was solid."In addition, "Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Benefits Family and Friends" revealed that the younger Biden traveled to China during an official state visit aboard Air Force Two in December, 2013 with his father, VP Joe Biden.  That trip occurred several months after Hunter Biden failed the Navy’s drug test but before he was discharged.  The younger Biden was accompanied by Devon Archer and James Bulger, nephew of gangster Whitey Bulger when he met with Chinese State Bank officials.  A week later, Biden secured a $1.5 billion investment for Rosemont Seneca Partners, a hedge fund the younger Biden partnered with John Kerry’s stepson and Archer. It is not known if Archer and Bulger traveled aboard Air Force Two as part of the US delegation.In 2014, after Hunter Biden joined the Burisma Board, Chris Heinz who had been a partner at Rosemont Seneca, left the equity firm and ended his business relationshipwith the younger Biden.   In early 2019, Hunter Biden left the Burisma Board.Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.The original source of this article is Global ResearchCopyright © Renee Parsons, Global Research, 2019(6) Democrats seek to abolish the Electoral Collegehttps://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/can-we-keep-our-republic-bruce-thornton/Can We Keep Our Republic?If the Dems win, Obama’s "fundamental transformation" of America will be complete.Thu Oct 10, 2019Bruce ThorntonWhen asked the type of government the Constitutional Convention had created, Benjamin Franklin famously replied, "A Republic, if you can keep it." Franklin and the Founders understood that given a flawed human nature and its passion for power, no form of political order can survive if it is not continually maintained and defended against attempts to dismantle it in order to empower one faction at the expense of others, thus diminishing their freedom.Since the election of Donald Trump, we have been watching one of the most serious assaults on the Constitutional Republic in our history. With the current efforts of the Democrat-controlled House to engineer public support for impeachment, this three-year attack is intensifying. [...]Most important, the means by which this assault on Trump has been executed represent the most sustained abuse of government power at least since World War II. The administration of the previous president––including very likely the president himself––and the powerful federal agencies overseeing police, justice, and intelligence, like classic tyrants turned these lethal government powers against a political rival, blatantly violating the oaths they had sworn to uphold the Constitution. Abetted by a corrupt media that no longer hide their political passions, they used state power to engineer the "Russia collusion" hoax that was so flimsy even two years of investigation by hostile deep-state operatives and Democrat donors could not find any evidence to support it.And along the way, they violated the protocols and legal guard-rails of formal investigations to achieve their ends: First, to discredit the Trump campaign, and then to hamstringing his presidency. The examples of this professional and civic malfeasance are legion and amply documented by Andy McCarthy, Gregg Jarret, and many others. But there are two that are particularly egregious.First was James Comey’s phony investigation of Hillary’s felonious abuse of rules for handling sensitive government information. Even worse was the press conference in which he laid out the obvious predicates of an indictment, then found a nonexistent "intention" proviso in the penumbras and emanations of the relevant statute, and then usurped the Attorney General’s authority as to whether or not to indict by making the decision himself during the press conference.The second violation has not been as commented on as it should be––the handling of the "hacked" DNC servers scandal. We know the narrative, since it is regularly repeated even by conservative commentators: Several of our intelligence agencies discovered that a Russian operative named Guccifer 2.0 hacked the DNC servers, and then via Wikileaks publicized the contents to embarrass Hillary and weaken the Democrats, the goal being to help Donald Trump in the 2016 election. This has become a foundational dogma of the whole Russia collusion, foreign interference, Trump corruption tale that provides the flimsy rationale for the Trump-haters’ invective and calls for impeachment.But as George Parry summarizes in an important analysis, this claim is unsubstantiated by any forensic evidence. On the contrary, an investigation by the "Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), an organization of former CIA, FBI, National Security Agency, and military intelligence officers, technical experts, and analysts," discovered something quite different. The whole report is worth reading, but here is the salient conclusion that the files were not hacked, but downloaded directly from the DNC server:How was this determined? The time stamps contained in the released computer files’ metadata establish that, at 6:45 p.m. July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes (not megabits) of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. This took 87 seconds, which means the transfer rate was 22.7 megabytes per second, a speed, according to VIPS, that "is much faster than what is physically possible with a hack." Such a speed could be accomplished only by direct connection of a portable storage device to the server. Accordingly, VIPS concluded that the DNC data theft was an inside job by someone with physical access to the server.VIPS also found that, if there had been a hack, the NSA would have a record of it that could quickly be retrieved and produced. But no such evidence has been forthcoming. Can this be because no hack occurred?Even more remarkable, the experts determined that the files released by Guccifer 2.0 have been "run, via ordinary cut and paste, through a template that effectively immersed them in what could plausibly be cast as Russian fingerprints." In other words, the files were deliberately altered to give the false impression that they were hacked by Russian agents.Some have challenged VIPS’s analysis, but one fact casts a huge cloud of suspicion on the intelligence agencies’ publicized assertion that Russians engineered the hack: None of them have analyzed the server themselves, despite having the resources to do so. The DNC refused to hand over the server, instead passing along a forensic analysis by a firm it hired called CrowdStrike, according to VIPS "a cybersecurity firm of checkered reputation and multiple conflicts of interest, including very close ties to a number of key anti-Russian organizations."Again, the FBI and other security agencies came to their conclusion about the Russian hack based on the word of a dodgy outfit paid by the DNC. Remind you of a famous fake "dossier" also paid for by Democrats, and used by government officials to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on American citizens?Apart from that hard evidence casting doubt on the narrative, we can challenge the assumption that Russia would prefer Trump over Hillary. Hillary had a public record of supporting Obama’s "reset" with Russia, which featured his infamous hot-mic promise of "flexibility" on granting Putin’s wish for the US to stop missile-defense installations in Eastern Europe after Obama’s reelection––an example of actual collusion with a foreign power in order to affect the outcome of the imminent 2012 presidential election. And Hillary herself, through Russian donations to her foundation and her help in transferring 20% of our uranium stocks to a subsidiary of a Russian company, had raked in millions of dollars. Why wouldn’t Putin prefer this known appeaser and grifter over the volatile and unknown Donald Trump, who has in fact been much tougher with Putin than Obama and Clinton ever were?So the most powerful investigative agencies in the world have relied on the investigation of foreign hired guns to determine that Russia hacked the DNC to help Donald Trump. Nor did the FBI or the Mueller investigation seem interested in getting to the bottom of this blatant act of foreign interference in an American election, the ostensible reason for the Special Counsel’s investigation in the first place. A better explanation is that yet once again, government security and police agencies were colluding in fabricating the narrative to misdirect the people from Hillary’s various shady actions, and to tar her rival with a Russian bogeyman redolent of the McCarthy era "Red scare."The Mueller investigation having come a cropper, now we have the even more transparently contrived and dishonest "Ukraine" scandal to provide the media fuel for impeachment. The media are in a frenzy, and their Republican NeverTrump allies are contributing to the effort. Mitt Romney and other Republican preemptive cringers are piling on. The Dems think that even if the Senate doesn’t vote to convict, they’ll have thrown enough mud on the president that a critical mass of voters will turn against him. And if the economy slows down enough, that could turn out to be a smart strategy.Nor should we take comfort in the buffoonish slate of Dem primary candidates to save us, for the stakes are too high. The corruption of the Constitution and federal agencies of the past three years is exactly what follows when power is concentrated and citizen autonomy is surrendered to unaccountable, unelected technocrats. In the end the primary job of our national government is to defend us from foreign enemies and protect our freedoms from internal ones, not intrude into elections for their own political and careerist aggrandizementß.If the Dems win, and they succeed in abolishing the Electoral College, making the Senate proportionately representative, eviscerating the First and Second Amendments, and transforming the United States from the exceptional Republic and indispensable champion of unalienable rights and freedom it is, to just another client of a supranational, technocratic empire like the EU––then Obama’s aim of "fundamentally transforming" America will have been achieved.And that will be the moment, after more than two centuries, we failed to keep our Republic.