Democracy Worldwide, Examining Trump Jr's Collusion.

On Saturday, July 9, 2017, the first hard evidence of collusion between Donald Trump's campaign and the Russians became a matter of public record. The New York Times reported Sunday that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s oldest son, was offered “damaging information about Hillary Clinton before agreeing to meet with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign”. http://www.thedailybeast.com/s-donald-trump-jrs-meeting-the-first-hard-evidence-of-collusion-with-russia On Saturday, Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort confirmed that they met with lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016— a mere two days after Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination. It's clear they acted fast. Donald Trump has proven himself to be a very dangerous man, and behind him stands Putin, the most dangerous man on Earth. In their goal to realign the global order behind a more reactionary and brutal hierarchy, they have managed to entangle the human race in the biggest mess it has seen since World War Two. They have succeeded in making the truth murky and hard to find, and in deluging it with an unending stream of nonsense. They then turn around and accuse us of being the ones to do it instead. These are shameless times. http://www.thedailybeast.com/the-state-of-play-when-donald-trump-jr-jared-kushner-and-paul-manafort-met-natalia-veselnitskaya Fake news has now become a real problem. The President insists that any word printed that is uncomplimentary towards him is fake, and of course any word that is complimentary towards him is by default untrue. These are the same dark arts practised by Hitler and Goebbels when they made Jud Suss and The Eternal Jew. And they are being used in today's world to create a dizzying cyclone of nonsense, meant to stultify and confuse us, and make us want to throw our hands up in despair. However, instead of that, we're going to take a close look at the techniques employed by the opposition, pick them apart, and adapt to them. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/movies/02suss.html?mcubz=0 1. Disinformation. The Soviet Union used to call the concept dezinformatsiya, or disinformation. The word disinformation did not appear in English dictionaries until the late 1980's, around the time it was discovered that Reagan had been using it against Gaddafi's government in Libya. The Soviets, however, were old hands at it. They'd had an office devoted to it since 1923, and assigned it under the command of General Ivan Ivanovich Agayants. https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/5idol3/fake_news_disinformation_a_psyop_developed_by_the/?st=j4xn2mam&sh=e081d240 The chosen weapons employed by this office included a thorough knowledge of the art of intelligence, and its application, as well as the ability to reorient oneself at a moment’s notice in any circumstances. From there, they would analyze, compartmentalize, and then subtly alter its components to suit a narrative they could employ. These techniques have been part of the Russian playbook now for 95 years. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-politics/russian-dezinformatsiya-descends-on-us-political-realm/article33579734/ On July 17, 1983, a small, pro-Soviet Indian newspaper called the Patriot, published a front-page article titled “AIDS may invade India: Mystery disease caused by US experiments.” The story cited as its authority a letter from an anonymous but “well-known American scientist and anthropologist”, who was suggesting that AIDS, then still a fearsomely deadly new disease, had actually been created by the Pentagon, in a bid to develop new biological weapons. The story caught on. It spread. And now, 34 years later, you will still find many people lending varying levels of credence to this idea- even though it is completely, categorically untrue. Why? Disinformation. www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/11/26/before-fake-news-there-was-soviet-disinformation/?utm_term=.63efc1c4798d 2. Kompromat. The most likely reason for Donald Trump's continued compliance with Vladimir Putin's directives is referred to by this word, meaning "compromising material", that someone else holds over you. One famous example is the allegation made against J. Edgar Hoover that he never went after the Mafia because high ranking boss Frank Costello had copies of pictures of Hoover dressed up like a woman having homosexual affairs. Their release would have "compromised" Hoover, and made it impossible in the climate of the times to continue on as FBI director. Information that the enemy holds to embarrass or hurt you, is known to the Russians as Kompromat. http://articles.latimes.com/1993-02-06/news/mn-1078_1_j-edgar-hoover Recently a claim went around that the Russians have Kompromat over Jason Chaffetz, a GOP representative from Utah. The claim was made by the Palmer Report, based on a tweet from Louise Mensch, an ex- member of the United Kingdom's Parliament. From the report "The intel source comes by way of political pundit Louise Mensch, whose inside sources have a history of being correct about FISA warrants and other matters. Here’s how she phrases it: “Sources say there is kompromat on Jason Chaffetz that this is why he turned and that FBI know it”. https://twitter.com/LouiseMensch/status/852570318778585088 These kinds of claims are problematic to those who would get at the truth. No matter how tempting it might be to chuckle at the discomfiture of one's political adversaries, this kind of thing is the problem, and not the solution. The point is to get the facts out there, because they favor the side that's for fair play and decency anyway. We don't need to throw around unproven smears- which is exactly what Snopes considered this claim to be, given that there was no evidence other than the original tweet to support it. http://www.snopes.com/russia-kompromat-jason-chaffetz/ On the other hand, there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the claims made by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele in the dossier he first started compiling on behalf of Trump's Republican opposition toward the beginning of the 2016 electoral cycle, are only too true. Among the many allegations of outright collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, there are also many salacious and disgusting acts described, such as Trump having hired Russian prostitutes to micturate and defecate all over a bed slept in by the Obamas. During former FBI director James Comey's testimony before the Senate, Comey stated "He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia." The question begs asking- who drops a non sequitur about a lack of ongoings with Russian hookers, except a man who has had many an ongoing with Russian hookers? http://www.businessinsider.com/comey-trump-russian-hookers-dossier-2017-6 In these confusing times, where even such time-honored words like "Truth", "Facts", and "Progress" have been dragged through the mud to such a ridiculous and hard to watch extent, it is becoming harder and harder to discern anything, through the muck and murk of disinformation. It falls to those who would preserve democracy worldwide to work all the harder. In the words of Martin Luther King Jr., "No lie can live forever".