Around The Empire

Guest: Daniel Lazare. We discuss the origins of Russiagate, some key questions that we have about the Mueller Report and surprising things that the Mueller Report doesn't cover at all.

In Lazares's own words:

"Mueller's door-stopper of a report may be chockfull of facts, but it's also filled with the non sequiturs, loose threads and self-serving arguments that we've come to expect from official Washington. It's good on collusion, pointing out that reports of a Trump-Russia conspiracy remain unsubstantiated despite desperate Democratic efforts to spin it otherwise."

"But it's lousy on interference, regurgitating the standard intelligence-community line that Russia 'interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.' Simultaneously, it is remarkably incurious about how the scandal began, who propelled it along, and how it all snowballed into a mega-Watergate."

Timestamps:

• 02:00- historical recap (from 2014) of US-Russia relations and flawed US foreign policy: Maidan revolution, Crimea, Syria regime change war, Russian intervention and subsequent fury and panic of US War Party, Trump campaign's pro-Russia stance leading to War Party believing Trump was in league with Putin
• 8:30 Origins of Russiagate: US and foreign intelligence suspicions about Trump campaign's contacts with Russians, counterintelligence investigation. Informants, creating pretexts for investigations, Papadopoulous, Mifsud, Roger Stone, Felix Sater
• 18:00 Mueller and Weismann reputations, Manafort, collusion section of Mueller report
• 24:00 Other foreign policy and empire ambitions and problems that influenced Russiagate, e.g. Syria, Ukraine, refugee crisis in Europe, rise of right-wing parties
• 32:00 Watergate narrative, DNC alleged hack, neverending Russiagate, Assange
• 36:00 Key questions we have about the Mueller Report and questions the Mueller report does not answer, creeping conspiracy culture, the Steele dossier, IRA, GRU, new investigations and the political impact

Daniel Lazare is a journalist and author of three books: The Frozen Republic; The Velvet Coup, and America's Undeclared War.

FOLLOW Dan on Twitter @dhlazare. Find his work at Consortium News and find his writings and his books at daniellazare.com.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Website: aroundtheempire.com.

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Recorded on May 8, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Top Ten Questions About the Mueller Report, Daniel Lazare, Consortium News
2. The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report, Daniel Lazare, Consortium News
3. The Tale of a 'Deep State Target', Daniel Lazare, Consortium News
4. Bachelor Show 5/7/29 interview with Andrew McCarthy: "I think they're not finding Mifsud because they don't want to find him."

Guest: Joe Emersberger. We talk about the latest failed coup in Venezuela, the sanctions causing tens of thousands of deaths, and the level of political support or resistance to intervention in the US and Europe. We also discuss Canada's foreign policy and involvement in the American and British empires. Lastly we assess the risk of a larger war with Russia and China as they oppose American aggression and sanctions in various parts of the world.

Joe Emersberger is a Canadian engineer and UNIFOR member with Ecuadorian roots. He writes for FAIR, Venezuela Analysis, Counterpunch, The Canary, MintPress News, Telesur English, and Znet.

Timestamps:

• 00:00 Canada's foreign policy and involvement in US empire and British empire
• 10:00 LIMA Group
• 12:45 Venezuela Constituent Assembly, 2018 election
• 18:20 Sanctions causing tens of thousands of deaths in Venezuela
• 19:30 January 23 and April 30 coup attempts
• 36:00 Political support and resistance to intervention and sanctions in US and Europe
• 43:00 Maduro cabinet members' false defections
• 48:00 Warnings against military intervention
• 57:00 Anti-interventionist movement
• 1:00:00 Trump-Putin phone call on Venezuela, larger risk of war with Russia & China

FOLLOW Joe on Twitter @rosendo_joe and find his writing at FAIR, Venezuela Analysis, Counterpunch, The Canary, MintPress News, Telesur English, and Znet.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Website: aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon. SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, Google Play, Facebook or on your preferred podcast app.

Recorded on May 4, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Report finds that US sanctions have killed 40,000 people in Venezuela since 2017, Joe Emersberger, The Canary
2. The Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy, Yves Engler
3. Trump's May 3 tweet about phone call with Putin
4. Kremlin readout on Trump's phone call with Putin
5. Venezuela's Failed Uprising: How a Deal to Oust Maduro Unraveled, Bloomberg
6. Quotes from retired Adm. James Stavridis in Foreign Policy: Venezuela Is at a 'Tipping Point'

Journalist Zaid Jilani joins the show to talk about the ideological differences in the Democratic party which have been on display in a recent public feud between the Bernie Sanders campaign and Neera Tanden, the leader of the Democratic party think tank, Center for American Progress (CAP). Jilani draws on his experience working at CAP for several years to help analyze the deep divide. We talked about how flooding the field with a large number of primary candidates might be used as a strategy to undermine Bernie Sanders. Lastly we discussed Russiagate and the politics of impeachment.

Zaid Jilani is a journalist from from Atlanta, Georgia, currently a Writing Fellow for the University of California, Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center. He has previously worked as a reporter and blogger for ThinkProgress, and for other political organizations and media outlets. He is the co-host of the Extremely Offline podcast.

FOLLOW Zaid on Twitter @ZaidJilani and subscribe to his podcast: Extremely Offline

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Website: aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon. SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, Google Play, Facebook or on your preferred podcast app.

Recorded on April 20, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Bernie Sanders Is Right: Money Always Corrupts. Will The Liberal Establishment Listen?, Zaid Jilani, The Forward
2. Zaid Jilani Twitter THREAD April 14 thru April 18
3. The Rematch: Bernie Sanders vs. a Clinton Loyalist, NYT
4. Bernie Sanders' campaign escalates feud with top liberal think tank, CNN

As Russiagate winds down, its toxic legacy endures in more ways than one. Journalist Bryan MacDonald has witnessed this first hand in his dealings with ordinary Russians. They're losing their good will and admiration towards America largely because of Russiagate. Due to their broad exposure to western media and social media, Russian citizens are fully aware of the growing xenophobia and hatred expressed toward Russians by prominent Americans in government and media. Bryan tells us that "admiration and curiosity towards the US has been replaced with disappointment, hostility and often anger". And this is a drastic change from the positive attitudes he found to be common just a few years ago.

Bryan MacDonald is an Irish journalist living and working in Russia. He writes for RT and previously Before moving to Russia, Bryan worked in Ireland for the Evening Herald, Ireland On Sunday and the Irish Independent and has written for many other publications and was a regular guest on various networks.

FOLLOW Bryan on Twitter @27khv and find his work at RT.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Website: aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon.

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Recorded on March 31, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Bryan MacDonald: Mueller report: 'Russiagate' hoax helped turn ordinary Russians against the US
2. Ex-Intel head Clapper: Russians 'almost genetically driven to co-opt & penetrate'
3. Wes Clark - America's Foreign Policy "Coup"

Mark Sleboda joins us today from Moscow to talk about the state of affairs in Ukraine, the Ukraine elections and the larger geopolitical picture. Mark is an International Affairs & Security Analyst, a US Navy veteran, a university lecturer and a foreign policy realist.

We do a deep dive into the 2014 Maidan / Euromaidan uprising and intervention by the US, EU and NATO, and how Ukraine became the country that it is today. There is an ongoing separatist movement, civil war and an economic and ideological break from Russia. But there has been no significant improvement for its citizens, leaving the country with a crisis of confidence, poverty and corruption. We discuss the three frontrunner candidates in the elections: the current president Poroshenko, former prime minister Tymoshenko, and Zelensky, a dark horse, anti-corruption comedian who plays a president on TV on a media channel owned by an infamous exiled oligarch, Kolomoisky.

This interview was recorded on the day before the first part of the elections on March 30. We now know that Poroshenko and Zelensky will now advance to the runoff elections on April 21.

FOLLOW him on Twitter @MarkSleboda1 and on Facebook, find his appearances on RT and other international channels.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

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Recorded on March 30, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Journalist and author Matt Taibbi joins the show to talk about his latest book chapter, titled: "It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD: The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it" and we discuss some corporate media reaction to the piece. We think back on the changes to American policy and American life brought about by the WMD lies, the Iraq War and the War on Terror and the likelihood of serious, real world consequences of the Russiagate conspiracy. This is one of the reasons why it's so important to re-examinine the origins and details of the Russiagate story now that it has collapsed.

But even as the Russiagate conspiracy collapses, the curiously bipartisan consensus on the matter of Russia being a threat to our democracy lives on -- or at least the establishment and national security state are working hard to make sure it survives even if all or most other aspects of the narrative die.

Matt Taibbi is an author, journalist and contributing editor for Rolling Stone. He won the 2008 National Magazine Award for columns and commentary. His most recent book is 'I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street,' about the infamous killing of Eric Garner by the New York City police. He's also the author of the New York Times bestsellers 'Insane Clown President,' 'The Divide,' 'Griftopia,' and 'The Great Derangement.'

FOLLOW Matt on Twitter @mtaibbi. Find his articles at Rolling Stone and find his book writing subscription at taibbi.substack.com.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon. SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, Google Play, Facebook or on your preferred podcast app.

Recorded on March 27, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. It's official: Russiagate is this generation's WMD: The Iraq war faceplant damaged the reputation of the press. Russiagate just destroyed it, Matt Taibbi, Hate, Inc.
2. Serious journalists should be proud of — not bullied over — their Russia reporting, Margaret Sullivan, Washington Post
3. Taibbi: As the Mueller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin, Rolling Stone
4. FT Edward Luce: Robert Mueller is the God that failed Democrats
5. Edward Luce on Morning Joe, MSNBC, March 25, 2019
6. Video: Christopher Steele's Former Boss Dismisses Trump Dossier Claims, Calls Them 'Overrated'
7. Podcast: John Batchelor Show with Stephen Cohen, Feb. 14/15, 2017

Editor and journalist Kevin Gosztola joins the show to talk about the jailing of former US Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning for her resistance to a grand jury investigating Wikileaks. Kevin has been reporting on Manning's case from the start in 2010 and has been a tireless advocate. Secret grand juries, and investigations have been used against dissidents and activists for more than a century as a political tactic of repression, isolation, intimidation and harassment. But there is also a long tradition of resistance. As Kevin wrote: "Chelsea Manning is carrying on this tradition through her bold defiance." In Manning's own words:

"I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to, particularly one that has been historically used to entrap and persecute activists for protected political speech."

We discuss what little information we have about the secret grand jury and speculate about other factors that might be affecting the timing of the Manning subpoena. We also talk about the wild political flip flops of the Left and the Right on the subject, about Julian Assange and Wikileaks publications before and after the 2016 election. We toss around some ideas on how the Trump-Russia investigation (aka Russiagate) might factor in. Finally we discuss how Manning's well being and her health related needs, especially given the history, are the most important priorities and foremost in our minds.

Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof. He also produces and co-hosts the excellent weekly podcast with Rania Khalek, "Unauthorized Disclosure."

FOLLOW Kevin @kgosztola, find his work at shadowproof.com, and subscribe to his podcast Unauthorized Disclosure.

Chelsea Manning's legal defense fund can be found at xychelsea.is. Her friends and volunteers are managing her Twitter account @xychelsea and her support committee Twitter account @ResistsChelsea while she is in jail. They published an address where she can receive letters (They note that the jail does not accept books or cards):

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning

A0181426

William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center

2001 Mill Road Alexandria, VA 22314

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon. SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, Google Play, Facebook or on your preferred podcast app.

Recorded on March 11, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Defying Wikileaks Grand Jury, Chelsea Manning Carries on Tradition of Resistance and Goes to Jail, Kevin Gosztola
2. Interview: Chelsea Manning Jailed for Refusing to Cooperate with Wikileaks Grand Jury, Kevin Gosztola on The Real News Network
3. Book: TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES: The U.S. vs. Private Manning, Kevin Gosztola, Greg Mitchell

Dr. Alan McLeod has done extensive analysis of the past two decades of media coverage on Venezuela ,since the election of Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution. He joins us today from Scotland to share some of that analysis and one particularly interesting observation. Corporate media has used Venezuela, "consistently demonized and misrepresented in the US press," to pressure left-leaning political movements conform with and even promote aggressive American foreign policy.

We look at the current case of Bernie Sanders and his positions on regime change in Venezuela to illustrate this process of policing narratives and manufacturing consent for meddling and aggression. We also talk about how regime change operations against countries with strong socialist policies are driven not just by the desire for domination and the pursuit of resources. They're also used to manipulate politics at home: to suppress anti-imperialist dissent and to subvert the rise of left-oriented populist movements.

MacLeod, an expert in sociology, media theory and analysis, is a writer, and a member of the Glasgow University Media Group. His research interests include social media, Latin American politics and propaganda. He is the author of 2018 book titled: Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty years of fake news and misreporting and he is currently working on a project to update and refine the Propaganda Model of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky.

FOLLOW him on Twitter at @AlanRMacLeod

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon.

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Recorded on March 7, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. Venezuela-Baiting: How Media Keep Anti-Imperialist Dissent in Check, FAIR, Alan MacLeod
2. Book: Bad News from Venezuela: Twenty years of fake news and misreporting (2018) (Routledge Focus on Communication and Society)
3. Twitter 2/3/19 THREAD on Venezuela media coverage, Alan MacLeod
4. Manufacturing Consent for the 2018 Elections in Venezuela and Colombia (2018), Alan MacLeod, Media Theory Journal
5. Chavista 'thugs' vs. opposition 'civil society': western media on Venezuela (2019), Alan MacLeod, SAGE Journals
6. Was Hugo Chávez to Blame? Media Depictions of Polarisation in Venezuela, 1998–2013, Alan MacLeod, Bulletin of Latin American Research. Society for Latin American Studies
7. A Force for Democracy? Representations of the US Government in American Coverage of Venezuela (2019), Alan MacLeod, frontiers in Communication
8. Manufacturing Consent in Venezuela: Media Misreporting of a Country, 1998–2014,
9. Noam Chomsky on Venezuela, audio clip from Ralph Nader Radio Hour, March 2, 2019

Today former Army intelligence analyst and whistleblower Chelsea Manning was jailed for contempt of court. She is resisting testifying in front of a grand jury convened in the Eastern District of Virginia to deal with sealed charges against Wikileaks' Julian Assange. Manning said the matter was related to her 2010 disclosures. She has already spent 7 years in prison, before and after being convicted by a military tribunal on her leaking of material related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Her sentence was commuted by President Obama before leaving office in 2017. Journalist and filmmaker Ford Fischer was at the courthouse today and is here to tell us about it.

Ford Fischer is an independent videographer and editor, a computer scientist and web designer. He's the editor-in-chief and co-founder of News2share.com where citizen journalists and independent videographers contribute content to the evolving news cycle. His work has been featured on CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ABC and more. He also does freelance work as a videographer/journalist.

In protestation, Wikileaks made statements and published other people's statements on Twitter. They said: "This is America, 2019: A secret trial against a source for refusing to testify against a journalist." Their lawyer, Jen Robinson said: "No journalist or their source should ever be subjected to this."

Wikileaks cited Glenn Greenwald's response: "This is disgusting, and all due to the efforts of the DOJ to criminalize the publication of classified information in order to prosecute WikiLeaks and Assange: something all press freedom groups, major newspapers & even the Obama DOJ said would be a major threat to press freedom."

Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg issued a statement calling for Chelsea Manning to be released. He called it a travesty and said that "an investigation into Wikileaks for publishing is a grave threat to all journalists' rights." He said that she has suffered enough and should be released immediately.

Chelsea Manning's legal defense fund can be found at the website xychelsea.is.

FOLLOW Ford on Twitter at @FordFischer. Follow his news site at @N2Sreports on Twitter and at news2share.com on the web. Support his work at patreon.com/FordFischer.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in if you can at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon.

SUBSCRIBE/FOLLOW on iTunes, iHeart, Spotify, Google Play, Facebook or on your preferred podcast app.

Recorded on March 8, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Audio clips from outside the courthouse included with Ford Fischer's permission.

Reference Links:

1. Chelsea Manning Held in Contempt, Taken Into Custody (includes video), Ford Fischer, News2Share
2. Ford Fischer's Facebook livestream outside the courthouse
3. Chelsea Manning jailed for refusing to testify before grand jury in Virginia, NBC News
4. Refusing to "Snitch," Whistleblower Chelsea Manning Becomes Two-Time Political Prisoner, Alexander Rubinstein, MintPress News
5. With Ecuador's Cooperation Bought by IMF Loans, Washington Waxes Optimistic on Assange Extradition, Whitney Webb, MintPress News
6. Chelsea Manning Legal Defense Fund

Sharmine Narwani joins us today to talk about how western regime change wars are born and raised. She offers some of her research and analysis on Middle East wars, particularly the war in Syria as a comparison to what we are seeing in Venezuela today and with a special focus on how it all starts with a carefully crafted narrative.

Sharmine is a commentator and analyst of Mideast geopolitics based in Beirut. She is a former senior associate at St. Antony's College, Oxford University and has been published by a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Guardian, Asia Times Online, al Akhbar English, Al Jazeera and RT. And you can always find her writing at her website, MidEastShuffle.com.

The methods used in much of the regime change and destabilization that we have seen so frequently in recent years is laid out in the 2010 Unconventional Warfare (UW) Manual of the US Military's Special Forces, which was leaked in 2010. Sharmine has written about it and shares some of those insights today. This manual begins with the following paragraph:

"The intent of U.S. [Unconventional Warfare] UW efforts is to exploit a hostile power's political, military, economic, and psychological vulnerabilities by developing and sustaining resistance forces to accomplish U.S. strategic objectives…For the foreseeable future, U.S. forces will predominantly engage in irregular warfare (IW) operations."

But, as we note in our conversation, the world is changing and the success rate of these methods, used for decades by the American empire and its allies, is declining. The political environment in America and even more consequential, the balance of power in the world is also in a state of flux, dynamic and uncertain. There are many signs that the American people want to adopt a new approach toward the world and foreign policy. But it remains to be seen whether the elected government, the plutocrats and the dominant national security state will be able to accept a new global reality and the loss of their sole superpower empire.

FOLLOW Sharmine @snarwani and find her work at her website mideastshuffle.com.

Around the Empire is listener supported, independent media. Pitch in at Patreon: patreon.com/aroundtheempire or paypal.me/aroundtheempirepod. Find all links at aroundtheempire.com.

SUBSCRIBE on YouTube. FOLLOW @aroundtheempire and @joanneleon.

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Recorded on March 1, 2019. Music by Fluorescent Grey.

Reference Links:

1. How narratives killed the Syrian people, Sharmine Narwani (2016)
2. Going Rogue: America's Unconventional Warfare in the Middle East, Sharmine Narwani (2012)
3. Elizabeth Warren tweet
4. Americans Want a Less Aggressive Foreign Policy. It's Time Lawmakers Listened to Them, Ian Bremmer, TIME
5. Vox Populi, Vox Peanut Gallery?, Eurasia Group Foundation
6. Bush rejects Chávez aid, The Guardian