So President Donald Trump
reckoned on Monday that the United States Intelligence Community (IC)
just might be wrong in its assessment that Russia had sought to
interfere in the 2016 U.S. election but then decided on Tuesday that he
misspoke and had the greatest confidence in the IC and now agrees that
they were correct in their judgment. But Donald Trump, interestingly,
added something about there being “others” that also had been involved
in the election in an attempt to subvert it, though he was not specific
and the national media has chosen not to pursue the admittedly cryptic
comment. He was almost certainly referring to China both due to possible
motive and the possession of the necessary resources to carry out such
an operation. Indeed, there are reports that China hacked the 30,000 Hillary Clinton emails that are apparently still missing.
Just how one
interferes in an election in a large country with diverse sources of
information and numerous polling stations located in different states
using different systems is, of course, problematical. The United States
has interfered in elections everywhere, including in Russia under Boris Yeltsin.
It engaged in regime change in Iran, Chile, and Guatemala by supporting
conservative elements in the military which obligingly staged coups. In
Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. forces invaded and overthrew the governments
while in Libya the change in regime was largely brought about by
encouraging rebels while bombing government forces. The same model has
been applied in Syria, though without much success because Damascus
actually was bold enough to resist.
So how do the
Chinese “others” bring about “change” short of a full-scale invasion by
the People’s Liberation Army? I do not know anything about actual
Chinese plans to interfere in future American elections and gain
influence over the resulting newly elected government but would like to
speculate on just how they might go about that onerous task.
Image on the right: Source is The Daily Beast
First, I would
build up an infrastructure in the United States that would have access
to the media and be able to lobby and corrupt the political class. That
would be kind of tricky as it would require getting around the Foreign
Agent Registration Act of 1938 (FARA), which requires representatives of
foreign governments operating in the United States to register and have
their finances subject to review by the Department of the Treasury.
Most recently, several Russian news agencies that are funded by the
Putin government have been required to do so, including RT International
and Sputnik radio and television.
The way to avoid
the FARA registration requirement is to have all funding come through
Chinese-American sources that are not directly connected with the
government in Beijing. Further, the foundations and other organizations
should be set up as having an educational purpose rather than a
political agenda. You might want to call your principal lobbying group
something like the American Chinese Political Action Committee or ACPAC
as an acronym when one is referring to it shorthand.
Once established,
ACPAC will hire and send hundreds of Chinese-American lobbyists to
Capitol Hill when Congress is in session. They will be carefully
selected to come from as many states and congressional districts as
possible to maximize access to legislative offices. They will have with
them position papers prepared by the ACPAC central office that explain
why a close and uncritical relationship with Beijing is not only the
right thing to do, it is also a good thing for the United States.
As part of the
process, new Congressmen will benefit from free trips to China paid for
by an educational foundation set up for that purpose. They will be able
to walk on the Great Wall and speak to genuine representative Chinese
who will tell them how wonderful everything is in the People’s Republic.
Congressmen who
nevertheless appear to be resistant to the lobbying and the emoluments
will be confronted with a whole battery of alternative reasons why they
should be filo-Chinese, including the thinly veiled threat that to
behave otherwise could be construed as politically damaging
anti-Orientalist racism. For those who persist in their obduracy, the
ultimate weapon will be citation of the horrors of the Second World War
Rape of Nanking. No one wants to be accused of being a Rape of Nanking
denier.
The second phase
of converting Congress is to set up a bunch of Political Action
Committees (PACs). They will have innocuous names like Rocky Mountain
Sheep Herders Association, but they will all really be about China. When
the money begins to flow into the campaign coffers of legislators any
concerns about what China is doing in the world will cease. The same
PACs can be use to fund billboards and voter outreach in some districts,
allowing China to have a say in the elections without actually having
to surface or be explicit about whom it supports. Other PACs can work
hard at inserting material into social websites, similar to what the
Russians have been accused of doing.
And then there
is the mass media. Using the same Chinese-American conduit, you would
simply buy up controlling interests in newspapers and other media
outlets. And you would begin staffing those outlets with earnest young
Chinese-Americans who will be highly protective of Chinese interests and
never write a story critical of the government in Beijing or the
Chinese people. That way the American public will eventually become so
heavily propagandized by the prevailing narrative that they will never
question anything that China does, ideally beginning to refer to it as
the “only democracy in Asia” and “America’s best friend in the whole
wide world.” Once the indoctrination process is completed, the Chinese
leadership might even crush demonstrators with tanks in Tiananmen Square
or line up snipers to pick off protest leaders and no congressman or
newspaper would dare say nay.
When the
political classes and media are sufficiently under control, it would
then be time to move to the final objective: the dismantling of the
United States Constitution. In particularly, there is that pesky Bill of
Rights and the First Amendment guaranteeing Free Speech. That would
definitely have to go, so you round up your tame Congress critters and
you elect a president who is also in your pocket, putting everything in
place for the “slam-dunk.” You pass a battery of laws making any
criticism of China both racist and felonious, with punitive fines and
prison sentences attached. After that success, you can begin to
dismantle the rest of the Bill of Rights and no one will be able to say a
word against what you are doing because the First Amendment will by
then be a dead duck. When the Constitution is in shreds and Chinese
lobbyists are firmly in control of corrupted legislators, Beijing will
have won a bloodless victory against the United States and it all began
with just a little interference in America’s politics alluded to by
Donald Trump.
Image below: Youtube via The American Conservative
Of course, dear
reader, all of the above might be true but for the fact that I am not
talking about China at all and am only using that country as a metaphor.
Beijing may have spied on the U.S. elections but it otherwise has
evidenced little interest in manipulating elections or controlling any
aspect of the U.S. government. And even though I am sure that Donald
Trump was not referring to Israel when he made his offhand comment about
“others,” the shoe perfectly fits that country’s subjugation of many of
the foreign and national security policy mechanisms in the United
States over the past fifty years. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently boasted about how he controls Trump and convinced him to pull out of the Iran nuclear agreement.
The real
mystery, if there is one, is why no American politician has either the
guts or the integrity or perhaps the necessary intelligence to
substitute Tel Aviv for Moscow and to call Israel out like we are
currently calling out Russia for actions that pale in comparison to what
Netanyahu has been up to.
To be specific, there is no evidence that Russia ever asked for favors from Trump’s campaign staff and transition team but Israel did so over a vote on its illegal settlements at the United Nations. Is Special Counsel Robert Mueller or Congress interested? No. Is the media interested? No.
Israel, relying
on Jewish power and money to do the heavy lifting, has completely
corrupted many aspects of American government and, in particular, its
foreign policy by aggressive lobbying and buying politicians. All new
members of Congress and spouses are taken to Israel on generously funded
“fact finding” tours after being elected to make sure they get their
bearings straight right from the git-go. Israel’s nearly total control
over the message on the Middle East coming out of the U.S. mainstream is
aided and abetted by the numerous Jewish editors and journalists who
are prepared to pump the party line. The money to do all this comes from
Jewish billionaires like Haim Saban and Sheldon Adelson,
who have their hooks deep into both political parties. Meanwhile, the
ability of America’s most powerful foreign policy lobby AIPAC to avoid
registration as a foreign agent is completely due to the exercise of
Jewish power in the United States which means in practice that Israel
and its advocates will never be sanctioned in any way.
Israel is eager
to have the United States fight Iran on its behalf, even though
Washington has no real interest in doing so, and all indications are
that it will be successful. Though it is a rich country, it receives a
multi-billion-dollar handout from the U.S. Treasury every year. When its
war criminal prime minister comes to town he receives 26 standing ovations from a completely sycophantic congress and now the United States has even stationed soldiers in Israel who are “prepared to die”
for Israel even though there is no treaty of any kind between the two
countries and the potential victims have likely never been consulted
regarding dying for a foreign country. All of this takes place without
the public ever voting on or even discussing the relationship, a tribute
to the fact that both major parties and the media have been completely
co-opted.
And now there is the assault on the First Amendment, with legislation currently in Congress making it a crime
either to criticize Israel or support a boycott of it in support of
Palestinian rights. When those bills become law, which they will, we are
finished as a country where fundamental rights are respected.
And what has
Russia done in comparison to all this? Hardly anything even if all the
claims about its alleged interference are true. So when will Mueller and
all the Republican and Democratic baying dogs say a single word about
Israel’s interference in our elections and political processes? If past
behavior is anything to go by, it will never happen.
*
This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi,
Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Dr. Giraldi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from the author.
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Philip Giraldi, Global Research, 2018
