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  1. w.b.robertson says:

    who needs sophisticated Soviet computer hacking to manipulate votes in elections? The locals have been doing that for generations in some corners of good old glesca. one south side tenement close, one year, was able to muster a vote of more than a 100…including some aunties and uncles living far off in the sub-continent. the authorities had the evidence but deemed it politically correct to do a Nelson.

  2. picpac says:

    What authority or credibility does ‘summerbrennan’ have when she cites people like Frum and the Washington Post, for heaven’s sake, as if they were reliable sources of information!!?? The “Russia stole the election from Clinton” meme has no basis in fact. It serves two ends: exacerbating the disinformation campaign against Russia and Putin; and salving the Democrats’ wounds after ‘the people’ didn’t do what they were expected to do.
    That said, there is undoubted evidence of vote hacking from both parties. The Democrat primaries were hacked to make sure Sanders didn’t win (he actually beat Clinton, but then ruined his street cred by backing her instead of Jill Stein). Greg Palast has produced very convincing evidence that more than a million voters were erased from the registers by Trump’s team using the “Crosscheck” programme – voters who would have been expected to vote for Clinton.
    The absolutely certain conclusion – needing no ‘experts’ to confirm it – is that the US electoral system is irreparably broken. Nonetheless confirmed by a Harvard and Sydney University study which concluded that the US was at the bottom of the league table among ‘developed’ countries in terms of electoral integrity. No surprise there!

  3. kevin brown says:

    To be clear: David Frum (extensively quoted above) is a featherweight Neo Con, but a Neo Con none the less. He was a speechwriter for Shrub Bush; and his main claim to fame is coining the expression ‘Axis of Evil’. Remember that? Bush trotted it out just before his illegal invasion of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands and continues to do so.

    Why are we reading this on Bella Caledonia?

    1. Josef O Luain says:

      Why, indeed?

      1. Possibly because I don’t share your simplistic belief in Putin and Assad as some sort of benign force in the world?

    2. Mathew says:

      You’re not concerned to see a country’s democracy disintegrate before your eyes?
      Admittedly US democracy was shaky before this election but now it’s shot. The idea that Capitalism and Democracy would march hand in hand to a future of prosperity and freedom is also shot.
      We have three superpowers in the world -USA, China, Russia – all are capitalist but none are democracies.

    3. So what is going on in America Kevin?

      1. kevin brown says:

        Mike, I take up your challenge. Here is what’s going on in America, outside of the Neo Con/Neo Liberal echo chambers, snippets from which you have inexplicable begun to publish.

        During the Reagan Thatcher years the Neo Liberal project gathered steam. It’s evil genius was perhaps Thatcher, who figured out how to buy off the working classes by giving them ‘ownership’ of their council flats, the ‘ownership society’. Be that as it may, in a capitalist system in which the sole allegiance is to quarterly profits and dividends, the game became ‘globalisation’ since the 70s, in which industry was ‘off shored’ to low wage destinations. The short hand for this is no more ship building on the Clyde, ship building in South Korea instead. This project worked a treat. Vast fortunes were amassed through the process of arbitraging labour under the cover of trade deals, and other vast fortunes were vastly augmented.

        From the point of view of the US working class it didn’t work out quite so well. The last person to use the term ‘working class’ in public discourse, I believe, was The Donald. The US working class has even lost the language to understand its predicament. In the past 30 years US workers have lost their jobs, too often their children in the service of the US military (the only available career path for young workers now in the US is ‘military service’, other than McJobs); and often their homes have been foreclosed, post 2008, to keep the banks whole. Obama, that great progressive tribune, set up a fund to stop foreclosures, and not a single penny of it was ever spent.

        OK. Neo Conservatism got its start a bit later in the day, with the publication of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) — you can look it up online. According to this noble doctrine the USA can brook no POSSIBLE opposition to it’s hyper power status in the 21st century. Some of its authors: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Fred Kagan (the husband of ‘fuck the EU’ Victoria Nuland, who deposed the elected government of the Ukraine in 2014, so the looting could begin). The Neo Cons took control of US foreign policy with Bush 2, giving us Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria… I can’t even remember them all… Their anointed candidate in the last election was Clinton, who promised a no fly zone in Syria (war with Russia) and of course being firm with the ‘New Hitler’ (Putin). All of these insane fantasies originate in PNAC, in the idea that the US (with UK as poodle) can ‘brook no possible opposition’ etc.

        The US is an oligarchy; and the interlocking corporate interests that rule there include: the extractive industries (big oil for example); the warfare industry; the Israeli lobby (AIPAC); big pharma, which received it’s own bailout with the execrable Obamacare. As Lenin wrote, ‘Cui bono?’ When you look at a holocaust as in Syria, who gains? Netanyahu recently made a move to annex Syria’s Golan Heights (rich with oil and water resources). That didn’t work, but a nation next door at it’s own throat does serve Israel well. The warfare state is a clear winner — so many lovely munitions to make and sell! There is an energy industry subtext to all of the human misery in Syria as well.

        I’m old enough to remember the construction of the ‘coalition of the shilling’ that supported the ongoing catastrophe in Iraq. Canada’s prime minister Jean Chretien (I still recall this) stood up in Parliament and said ‘we’re not going, that is an illegal war’. Such beautiful words! International law is a wondrous thing!

        Bush 2 dispensed with international law with these words: ‘You’re either with us or against us’. And then he unleashed the blood soaked rampage across Northern Africa, the middle east and southern Asia of the past decade plus. Law, shmaw… as for our own Mr. Blair, he gets a pass because he was personally in touch with God.

        I don’t support Assad. I don’t particularly care about him. I would point out that he is the elected president of Syria, and therefore in terms of international law, we have no right to intervene. Yes, international law… wish we could begin to honour that again. Syria would be a good start, but there are simply too many important agendas and too much money invested to allow that.

        So, what’s happening in America? US workers who’ve been completely screwed for 30 plus years just uttered a huge ‘fuck you’ (hat tip to Michael Moore) to those who’ve done it to them. They want jobs and dignity; they don’t want to sacrifice their children in the interest of ‘Assad must go’ or whatever. And they don’t buy that it is the business of the USA to attack Russia or anyone else who might ‘possibly’ challenge a unipolar world governed by the US oligarchy.

        This thing you posted is part of the wail of anguish by the oligarchs that someone has been elected that they can’t control. They spent so much excellent, beautiful money to elect Hillary… this outcome is just wrang, wrang, wrang…! Looks like they may try to overturn the result in the electoral college, so that they’ll get their money’s worth; and so that PNAC and the Neo Liberalism can carry on unimpeded, until the end times. Shouldn’t be long now — nuclear holocaust anyone? ‘The USA can brook no possible opposition…’

        None of the above is an endorsement of Trump.

        1. Thanks Kevin – I view this as a forum for debate to try and understand the world. I don’t always (in fact often) know what’s going on.

          I’m interested that some people seem to know with absolute certainty what’s going on, even when they don’t seem to have any greater access to information.

          Do you believe any of the allegations about hacking various parts of the US infrastructure are true, or do you reject all of them, and if so, on what basis?

          1. kevin brown says:

            Mike, I believe these allegations are false. Craig Murray posted something quite good about this a couple of days back. It was a leak by an insider apparently. We’ve been here before: HUAC (the house un American Activities Committed) during the McCarthy period. There will be an effort to keep Trump out because of ‘Russian interference’ — then they’ll be able to resume business as usual with everything that entails. And (so important!) they’ll have got their money’s worth.

            I think that now (maybe not for long) everything you need to know you can find out online. For things Scottish I go to Bella, of course. For US politics I would recommend Chris Hedges, in particular, on Truthdig; Robert Parry’s ‘Consortium News’; and if you like things televised, the Real News Network out of Baltimore. Parry is an investigative journalist who broke the Iran Contra story back in the day. There’s no place for truth tellers now in the corporate media (hasn’t been since Iraq) so he’s migrated online; he does really thorough, detailed analyses of the lies we’re being told — the downing of MH17 is a good example, likely the work of the Ukrainians. Chris Hedges quit the New York Times because he refused to tout for the Iraq War.

            Onwards now, to HUAC 2; the first two sites I mentioned made the Washington Post’s recent list of ‘Russian agents/useful idiots’. Because the corporate media look such utter fools after the election, there is a movement afoot now to control the flow of online information — in effect a bailout for corporate media through censorship. They just introduced a bill in Congress to effect that.

            Interesting times.

        2. Frank E Mortimer says:

          I don’t support Assad. I don’t particularly care about him. I would point out that he is the elected president of Syria……..

          I knew that Herr Hitler was the elected Chancellor of Germany, but I had always understood that Assad was just the bloody dictator son of his bloody dictator father.

          Could you prove me wrong, I wonder.

    4. Mathew says:

      Kevin – you believe the allegations are false because the former UK ambassador to Uzbekhistan says so?!!

      1. kevin brown says:

        Mathew, I have great respect for Craig Murray, and the arguments he makes respecting this are sound. If don’t believe him, maybe you’ll believe these guys.

        https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/12/us-intel-vets-dispute-russia-hacking-claims/

        1. Mathew says:

          Perhaps we can agree Kevin that the doubt and confusion surrounding this election is corrosive for Democracy.
          Perhaps we can agree that the USAs status as a democracy is dubious at best, and that the real damage done wasn’t false news, leaks or hacks it was abuse of corporate over at least the last two decades.
          Also that the two candidates in this election were equally godawful, and that the election was the saddest political spectacle of our lives.

          1. Mathew says:

            sorry- abuse of corporate power

  4. tartanfever says:

    Hilarious stuff.

    Remember the BBC ran a news story recently how the British public were under threat from ‘smart appliances’ that connect to networks – really dangerous stuff like kettles that might, oh I don’t know, suddenly turn on in the middle of the night and boil water. It was all a dastardly plot by the ‘enemies of the state’ – thats Russia in common parlance.

    Of course, as in true BBC fashion, they didn’t bother with the practical solution of how to overcome such issues (turn the thing off at the plug) and instead left the viewer in mortal fear of the potentially dangerous weapon lurking inside your kitchen.

    That was all happening immediately prior to the snoopers charter being passed by our saviour Theresa May.

    This seems to have about the same amount of validity.

    1. Russia Good – America Bad. Got it.

      Russia speak truth – BBC evil. Got it.

      1. tartanfever says:

        That’s it Mike, you’ve got it.

        Kettle on, kettle off. In between times, fill it with water. It really is that simple. Oh wait, now Bella tells me I’m a nasty Russian apologist for taking the piss out of a stupid BBC story.

        Even more hilarious.

  5. Patrick says:

    You really want to know what it will be, simple America will have two floors, and in the first turn each American will have a
    ROLLS-ROYCE CARS and beggar a Mini Copper. What I don’t know is how will be the rest of the world.

  6. pardeep singh says:

    Good old Bella, peddling CIA propaganda, but yes it was those evil Russians wot won it for Trump. Joe McCarthy lives

    1. Bella = Joe McCarthy for publishing something you disagree with LOL

  7. john young says:

    Anything about America/Americans stinks,they individually /collectively are a basket case,yet we follow them blindly,every action they have been involved in has caused calamity/mayhem not to them I hasten to add but to the unfortunates that have received their “aid”,latest being Syria.

  8. Graeme Purves says:

    Whatever is going on, we can be pretty sure we aren’t going to learn anything useful or authoritative from Summer Brennan.

  9. Crubag says:

    Fake news does seem to be a downside of the Internet. Not that it didn’t exist with the MSM but now there is just such ease in creating something moderately convincing and getting it ou in volume.

    One of my favourite Trump quotes turned out to be fake…the one about “I’d run as a Republican. They’re the fumbest group of voters in the country.”

  10. Richard MacKinnon says:

    I think what is going on in the US as Trump takes over is that the powerful establishment organisations such as the CIA and armed forces and the influential lobby groups such as the arms industry are nervous that their old reliable lines of communications to the Whitehouse look as if they may not be as reliable as they have been under past administrations.
    Other than that it is foolish to try and forsee how far Trump is going to change the direction of US foreign policy but appears by his dismissiveness of the CIA’s daily security briefings it suggests he is not going to be as compliant as Obama and Bush were to the old lines of communication. We shall see.

  11. J Galt says:

    Seriously Mike are you even supporting for a minute the view that Russia has managed to out Fox the most fantastically financed military security apparatus the world has ever seen?

    1. I’m not sure if that’s a serious question?

      1. J Galt says:

        No it’s whimsical – we live in whimsical times!

  12. Patrick says:

    Fellow, what we need in Bella , is have the code to post video, photos and link to see external publication. Then it will be easy to update Scottish what around the world, and affect us and what benefit us. Thanks for the atention, and enjoy the music.
    El cuartito
    https://youtu.be/B4oWqsX_iFw

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