Starker on 15/4/2019 at 04:03
Diplomacy is not a bad thing. The US should absolutely be doing more of that instead of dismantling the State Department. But meeting the Russians in secret to damage your political opponents is a little bit more than just diplomacy, don't you agree? Lord Dampnut's team didn't just try to contact the Russians, they tried to set up a secret backchannel and they lied, lied, lied about everything in connection to Russia.
And the argument that the US should overlook Russian interference because Israel's lobbying is arguably more impactful is kind of a non-sequitur, isn't it?
froghawk on 15/4/2019 at 04:13
No, it's highly revealing. If you claim to care about intervention but don't say a word about the people actually doing the intervening while being relentlessly focused on another country posting fake stuff on social media, you probably don't actually care about intervention.
Even Obama stated that this sort of thing is commonplace at this point and there's nothing special about this situation. This is nothing more than a propaganda/distraction machine.
A friend put it all better than I ever could:
Quote:
separating hysteria from reality—>
Hysteria -Trump needs to stop appeasing Putin
Reality- “Trump didn't recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea, announce a troop pullout from Syria, promise to disband NATO, withdraw U.S. troops from Germany or stop the deployment of U.S. anti-missile defenses in Eastern Europe. He didn't give up his opposition to Russia's Nord Stream 2 pipeline into Germany or express regret about his decision to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine. In fact, he did nothing that could be construed as undermining U.S. interests as traditionally understood. His comments revealed no freebies to Putin or even any sign that the two leaders had attempted to negotiate compromises on the many substantive issues that divide their two countries.” (Citation)
Trump has actually done the following, essentially continuing Obama's policies on Russia and even expanding them : (1) shot down and killed Russian nationals in Syria, (2) greatly escalated nuclear tensions with Russia; (3) allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine (a move Obama refused for fear of angering Moscow), (4) established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change,(5) forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, (6) expanded NATO with the addition of Montenegro, (7) assigned Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, (8) shut down the idea of a Russian consulate in San Francisco and (9) thrown out Russian diplomats as part of continued back-and-forth hostile diplomatic exchanges.
Hysteria - Americans are outraged at the hijacking of our democracy
Reality -“But outside the self-enclosed vivarium that is the Twitter-cable-news-late-night-show axis, nobody actually cares about the Russia issue. In last month's Gallup poll, less than 0.5 percent of Americans mentioned “the situation with Russia” as the most important problem facing the country — coming in just behind “Children's behavior/Way they are raised” and far behind “Poverty/Hunger/Homelessness.”
Hysteria - Russian cyber activity amounts to Pearl Harbor 2
Reality - the former CIA head on Russia spoke on this issue. This is what he said : “The CIA's former chief of Russia operations, Steven L. Hall, said : “If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all.” Hall added that “the United States ‘absolutely' has carried out such election influence operations historically, and I hope we keep doing it.”
At the end of his reign, Obama rebuked candidate Trump sharply when the billionaire himself claimed that the presidential election could be hacked. “NO SERIOUS PERSON BELIEVES THIS” were Obama's exact words.
It should be pretty obvious that what are mainly talking about in reality is very low level, everyday espionage. As Glenn Greenwald has said looking into NSA practices, the US does much more intrusive and intensive level espionage and fishing to so many countries servers. It's absolutely ROUTINE.
Basically, to the extent Trump has “Russian” connections, it's due to his past business dealings of securing funding from the Russian mafia level kleptocrats. That's why in part he won't release his taxes. And of course the kleptocracy was largely created with covert and also explicit US sources, agencies , etc. FFS, hundreds of thousands of foreign NGOs flocked to Russia during the Yeltsin Chubais Chernomyrdin years, when the most egregious looting occurred.
Hysteria —I can't believe anyone would not believe “OUR intelligence community !
Reality -No critically minded person should EVER believe a single word coming out the mouths of “OUR” intelligence community when they try to essentially spew propaganda . Not one single word. The National Intelligence Estimate, initially claimed to be based on input from 17 intelligence agencies, later reduced to selected representatives from three of the agencies (NSA, CIA and FBI), provides no proof for claims of Russian meddling and states quite openly that it is conjecture. Amongst these agencies, one (NSA) is known for illegally spying on Americans and lying about it to congress, the second (CIA) provided fraudulent ‘evidence' to drag the U.S. into a calamitous war against Iraq where it ran illegal torture camps and the third (FBI) has such a checkered history that is was called ‘Gestapo' by former U.S. president Harry Truman. Please google COINTELPRO, especially FBI attempts to disrupt and discredit the Civil Rights movement. At the time that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was accusing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist, the term approximated being an agent of Russia. James Clapper, the former Director of National Intelligence, lied to congress about NSA spying; Trevor Timm in the Columbia (University) Journalism Review explained the many ways former head of the NSA and CIA Michael Hayden has lied to congress and the American people.
(I already linked said citations on the previous page)
Starker on 15/4/2019 at 04:46
Maybe it's because Israel is an ally while Russia is an adversary and what Israel does is not aimed at destabilising the US? If they were found to be hacking into Republican servers and try to create chaos and sow division between Americans to influence US elections, that would be just as bad.
As for Leonid Bershidsky's take on this that you quoted, Lord Dampnut absolutely did announce a troop pullout from Syria and he has called Nato obsolete and he has said that Crimea belongs to Russia, because they speak Russian there. And there are some things he couldn't do even if he tried. On the other hand, he has loudly complained about Russian sanctions, dragged his feet in enacting them, tried to undo them with some success, he reportedly raged when he learned that the US would be expelling more diplomats than any other country after the UK nerve gas attacks, and the list goes on and on.
And here's a bit about Montenegro: (
http://time.com/5341790/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-montenegro-nato/)
And there are other things that your friend is highly mistaken about as well. I could go over the whole list that way, but that would take more effort than I really care right now.
froghawk on 15/4/2019 at 04:53
Granted, that post is a couple years out of date now and the situation has evolved since then - not all of those points are still true. The general point still holds true, however.
You're right that Israel may not be aiming to destabilize the US, but that's because the US funds them and their extensive human rights abuses, which we should not be standing for. My general point here is that the US needs to fix their own egregious behavior before we start calling everyone else out or we have no ground to stand on whatsoever.
Starker on 15/4/2019 at 05:06
The general point does not hold true, though. Just because the media has the tendency to sensationalise some things doesn't mean that those things should therefore be of no significance whatsoever. And yes, what Russia did was business as usual, they are merely continuing what they have been doing for decades, but that doesn't make it okay or not worth paying attention to.
Israel is certainly not innocent either, but that's neither here or there. The US may not have the moral high ground, but they absolutely are the lesser evil, as far as I'm concerned. I would vastly prefer a world led by the US than by Russia or China.
froghawk on 15/4/2019 at 05:10
What, and you think there's a real threat that the world is going to be run by Russia because they posted some fake things on the internet?
Starker on 15/4/2019 at 05:13
Don't be ridiculous. And they did more than post some fake things on the internet. And that's just what we know.
Also, hacking and espionage may be commonplace, but what's not commonplace is weaponising the results.
No, the world is not going to be "run by Russia". But Russia (and China) certainly have geopolitical ambitions that rival the US.
froghawk on 15/4/2019 at 05:23
So then why does it even matter which world you prefer? Why is that even a part of this debate? Why does it matter which country is 'the lesser evil'? The one you live in (I assume) has great power already and is causing massive global harm, whereas the other is completely outside of your control. You should be concerned with what little is under your control before you start fixating on everyone else, otherwise you're nothing more than a thinly veiled imperialist hawk.
And excuse me - weaponizing the results isn't commonplace? Tell that to all the south american countries where we've installed dictators. Hell, tell that to Russia.
Starker on 15/4/2019 at 05:38
To put it more broadly, the US is a country established on a set of ideals. We hold these truths to be self-evident, democracy over totalitarianism, etc. The US has certainly not lived up to them and has at times actively worked against them, toppling democracies and setting up dictatorships friendly to the US, but I would argue that these ideals serve as a moral compass that has improved the US quite a bit. These are the ideals that civil rights activists have relied on to argue their cause and use as leverage. And these ideals can be used to hold those in power accountable.
On the other side of the coin, things are much much worse. In Russia or China, the idea that the government is spying on you would not even rise an eyebrow, let alone rise questions of legality. Restricting the internet is a common everyday thing. The police and government officials don't just take bribes, they expect them. Human rights, free press, what are those? Are they tasty?
