Primers on the Durham Report

 

 

  Antidotes to Silence and Bias of Mainstream Media

By John V. Walsh

The coverage in the mainstream media of the Durham Report puts another nail in the coffin of the Russiagate Hoax, if another were needed after the total collapse of the Mueller investigation. The response to Durham’s report in much of the mainstream media varied from silence to attempts to discredit the report.

As a result, many are confused about the Report which reaffirms the fraudulence of the conspiracy theories on Trump-Russia Collusion in the 2016 election concocted by the Clinton campaign. And the Durham Report needs to be clearly understood by the general public for reasons above and beyond the outcome of that election.

The narrative concocted to support the Russiagate Hoax has poisoned our domestic political life, undermined our civil liberties, provided support for the Joe Biden’s cruel proxy war in Ukraine and destroyed US ability to craft a détente with Russia. Biden’s proxy war now threatens to escalate into a nuclear conflict. The Hoax itself involved possible FBI criminal activities which can be turned against any of us.

Here are some quick primers on the Durham Report and its meaning. Two of these are videos which feature the noted journalist Aaron Maté, winner of an Izzy Award for “taking a factual, meticulous approach" to the Russia election-collusion hoax and for challenging press coverage of Robert Mueller’s Special Counsel investigation.

The first of these primers is a 30-minute episode from The Jimmy Dore Show on YouTube titled "Russiagate Was a Hoax! Says Justice Dept’s Durham Report." It begins with the basics on the Durham Report followed by Maté’s commentary. Dore is a smart, incisive comic who likes to play the fool and would probably love it if this episode was called "Durham for Dummies."

A second primer is a 25-minute segment from the GrayZone with Max Blumenthal and Maté discussing the Durham Report. Here we find that the Durham Report provides more evidence that the hoax was hatched by the Clinton campaign and involved the FBI. But Durham did not interview or subpoena those responsible for the misdeeds, including Clinton herself, and there are apparently no plans to hold them accountable. So Durham actually failed to pursue the responsible parties and falls short in that respect. This failure demands to be remedied in the future, because accountability is necessary to prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Blumenthal and Maté also explore the role of the mainstream media in peddling the Russiagate Hoax relentlessly for years.
 

A third primer is a superb, detailed article by noted author and journalist Jim Bovard of The Libertarian Institute titled "The FBI Vetoed the 2016 Presidential Election." Bovard provides more detail on the Russiagate Hoax. And he puts the FBI’s role in historical perspective from the days of J. Edgar Hoover’s interference in the 1948 Presidential election right up to the 2020 election and the suppression of news of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal on Twitter and other social media. The same Russophobia generated by the Russiagate Hoax was again marshaled against Trump in the 2020 election.

To conclude, in my view it is not only the domestic consequences of the Russiagate Hoax that are frightening. To muster public support for a war, the targeted country and its leader must be presented as evil and dangerous. The Russiagate Hoax played a major role in the upsurge of Russophobia that under-girds support for the proxy war in Ukraine. And that war in turn is leading to an all-out war with Russia which puts the entire world on the precipice of nuclear Armageddon. An understanding of the Durham Report may help to pull us back from that precipice.

~ John V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at a Medical School in Massachusetts, has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, Consortium News, CounterPunch and others.