By Matthew Vadum ——Bio and Archives--February 16, 2017
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It was the kind of oratory that would have made John Foster Dulles or Barry Goldwater proud. Like so many other senators on the committee, Reed seemed eager for a new Cold War while accusing the foe of digital aggression. “In addition to stealing information from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign,” he said, “and cherry-picking what information it leaked to the media, the Russian government also created and spread fake news and conspiracies across the vast social media landscape.’’ The Russian government may have hacked the DNC and Clinton campaign emails, and it may have given those emails to WikiLeaks. But that’s hardly a slam dunk.
Over the weekend, after Friday’s release of a much-ballyhooed report from the office of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the report underwent a cogent critique by former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter Robert Parry. Stripping the 25-page DNI report down to its essence, Parry pointed out that it “contained no direct evidence that Russia delivered hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta to WikiLeaks.” Parry added: “The DNI report amounted to a compendium of reasons to suspect that Russia was the source of the information — built largely on the argument that Russia had a motive for doing so because of its disdain for Democratic nominee Clinton and the potential for friendlier relations with Republican nominee Trump. But the case, as presented, is one-sided and lacks any actual proof.”Solomon was right about this at the beginning of January and still is. The assaults by the Left on the then-approaching Trump presidency constituted a major strategic blunder by his side, he argues. After getting shellacked in the election “the most cohesive message from congressional Democrats is: blame Russia. The party leaders have doubled down on an approach that got nowhere during the presidential campaign — trying to tie the Kremlin around Donald Trump’s neck.”
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Solomon’s ideological mentor was the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), whose major contribution to Marxist thinking was the idea that radicals should seek “cultural hegemony” by capturing “the institutions that produced society’s governing ideas.” In that tradition, Solomon has devoted himself to radicalizing society by shaping and controlling the media through which people acquire ideas and information.Solomon is executive director of the far-left Institute for Public Accuracy which describes itself as “a national consortium of independent public-policy researchers, analysts and activists, … [that] widens media exposure for progressive perspectives on many issues including the environment, human rights, foreign policy, and economic justice.” He is also co-founder of the online activist group RootsAction, which claims to have 750,000 members. Since Inauguration Day, RootsAction has been calling for Trump to be impeached “for violating the U.S. Constitution.” It also supports Colin Kaepernick’s “brave stance for racial justice,” taxing carbon dioxide emissions, banning weaponized drones and cluster bombs, abolishing the Electoral College, freeing Bradley/Chelsea Manning and Leonard Peltier, and pardoning Edward Snowden. It urged President Obama “to formally exonerate Ethel Rosenberg” before leaving office. It wants the British to “impeach and prosecute” former British Prime Minister Tony Blair for being “a key accomplice in the launching of the 2003 invasion of Iraq.” The group describes itself as “an independent online force endorsed by Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, Cornel West, Daniel Ellsberg, Glenn Greenwald, Naomi Klein, Bill Fletcher Jr., Laura Flanders, former U.S. Senator James Abourezk, Coleen Rowley, Frances Fox Piven, Lila Garrett, Phil Donahue, Sonali Kolhatkar, and many others.” So at least we know where Solomon’s coming from.
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.