Christopher Steele’s Replacement Theory

Nothing says disinformation like the arrival of the UK’s ex-Bond-like spy Christopher Steele into the limelight to share his latest propagandistic pontifications.

Recently, Steele said of Russian president Vladimir Putin that he was gravely ill and that his possible illness may have played a part in the decision to mobilize and attack Ukraine.

In a Sky News report a few days ago, Steele was quoted:

Certainly, from what we’re hearing from sources in Russia and elsewhere, is that Putin is, in fact, quite seriously ill. It’s not clear exactly what this illness is – whether it’s incurable or terminal, or whatever. But certainly, I think it’s part of the equation.

No evidence is proffered, beyond the speculation. Why anyone would give an Eden fig what the slitherin Steele thinks about anything at this stage is anyone’s guess.

In the same Sky piece, Kyrylo Budanov, a Ukrainian general says that Vlad’s “illness” required him to be surrounded  by medical personnel at all times and that “the Russian leader is seriously ill with cancer and that a coup to remove him is under way in Russia.”

In a Yahoo piece, Budanov went further, stating that Putin is in a “very bad psychological and physical condition and he is very sick.”  And  “Budanov went on to suggest that the purported illness had incited plans within Russia for a coup.”

New Lines magazine, a middle east-oriented publication, ran a tale of a Russian oligarch on tape who claimed that “very ill with blood cancer.” But the smoking tape has yet to materialize. But at least the headline was frank in its assessment of the story: “Is Putin Sick – Or Are We Meant to Think He Is?” Duh.

Vlad is “mental.”  Vlad is “gay” as Shakespeare.  Vlad, like Catherine, has a thing about riding horses topless. He must go!

A Replacement theory is born.

Well, there’s certainly enough bad blood to go around.  But nothing says Russian backwardness than reference to blood cancer, conjuring up the days of consumption, the bloody napkins of Dostoyevky’s long novels. The coughs. The failing souls. Only a village idiot would fail to see that Vlad has to go. Or maybe the combined media reports want to insinuate that Vlad’s gettin’ some comeuppance on the poison front after his attempted assassinations of politcal opponents not long ago. Remember Alexei Navalny’s coma in a gulag archipelago hospital?  (No man is an island — my ass!) What a hoot! So, with the help of some CIA “assets,” maybe Putin has come to understand that they can “do stuff too.” Or maybe it’s all retarded speculation. Like Charly in the story, “Flowers for Algernon,” bringing back to the Low IQ district, one Miltonian aphorism he coined in his time as genius: “They also serve who only sweep and buff.” So, that he didn’t forget it, he put the nitwitticism on a t-shirt. Rubbernecks, with Che tees, gawked.

Christopher Steele. Name conjures up Superman somehow. Christopher Reeves (RIP, and no relation to George Reeves, the TV Superman who lost a race with a speeding bullet). But a more nancified version.  Something closer to Reilly: Ace of Spies. Well, we know how that ended. Great soundtrack in that series though. Who can forget the Gadfly themefrom Shostokovich, a totally appropriate musical reference for the mood created by all these sordid sagas. So, Steele the gadfly, but no Socrates (who was also known in ancient Athens as a gadfly), although like the great suicided philosopher, Steele isn’t keen on democracy (or suicide) either.

Steele’s got some broad strokes, but he’s not an active member of MI6 or the government — that we know of,  and hasn’t been back to the USSR since the 90s when there weren’t any more SSRs. He lives off seeming to be well-informed, an insider getting daily briefs, like he’s got the Home Secretary’s ear. But he’s just goss on steroids. Bluster gas for taxpayer cash.

Steele is the kind of contractor that we should worry about. Edward Snowden describes the type in detail in the “Homo Contractus” chapter of his embattled and purse-seized memoir, Permanent Record.  Contractors are a scourge. They are off-the-books, unaccountable to the public, dangerously full of shit about their worth.

Steele is the kind of guy you would hire to find dirt on UN security members to have a dossier ready for later extortion of said members, such as the vote in the UN before the US invaded Iraq in 2003. Remember all the gay lies: Colin Powell, Cony Rice, GW Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Smoking Guns, WMD, Mushroom Clouds?  The US, through the NSA, sought the UK’s help, through GCHQ, to find dirt on UN members to strong arm them into voting for an invasion of Iraq.  A whistleblower passed the attempt on to the Press and the dirt was never had. The UN voted No; the US, once again showing contempt for the global body established to prevent future wars  invaded Iraq anyway. This was the subject of the film, Official Secrets.

When last seen Steele was slinking back into the shadows after causing a major disruption of the 2016 American presidential election by trying to foist his so-called dossier on the American public through — of all venues — the longtime beloved lefty magazine, Mother Jones. What an asshole! The dished up dirt turned out to be low grade compost you couldn’t grow weeds in. The left, out to get Trump at any cost (and can you blame them?), took the bait, and MoJo took a hit on its journo credo, and lots of hippies took a hit off bongs they’d closeted years before. This was gonna be a long resistance.

The Horowitz Report showed that Steele’s dossier on Trump was poop. And that it was initiated into the MSM stream, surreptitiously of course, by the Clinton campaign, and led to the FBI’s illegal wiretapping and gathering of pointless information of minor figures in the 2016 Trump campaign. As the Rolling Stone put it: “‘Corroboration Zero’: An Inspector General’s Report Reveals the Steele Dossier Was Always a Joke.” The trick was to make Trump and his campaign were under scrutiny by the FBI — coincidently at the same time that FBI James Comey was putting pressure on the Clinton campaign for legitimate reasons.

It’s unfortch for us prurient folks, but the dossier really didn’t have any giddy up photos of multiple Miss Universes peeing on the bed that the Obamas slept in when they visited Moscow sometime long ago in the past. Had there been such photos they would have ended up on Page 3 of Rupert Murdoch’s UK publication, The Sun.  Obama can do stuff, too, like link the Trump presidency to collusion with the enemy, Russia, and call into question the birther-conspiracist’s legitimacy from the get go. Hell, some of us thought that there would be a Lefty Jan 6 back in 2017.  But, alas, the left has no Yippies any longer who could descend and levitate the gravity of the situation. No Sun photos. We had to fantasize from MoJo’s worked up dossier. So many lefties fooled into imagining racist golden showers.

And where in the world is Cofer Black, director on the board of Burisma? He’s been known to do stuff, too.

Just remember that as we enter the maws of the Singularity merge, each one of us is replaceable. Dismissed.

John Kendall Hawkins is an American ex-pat freelancer based in Australia.  He is a former reporter for The New Bedford Standard-Times.