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The Trump-Russia Investigation Thread: Mueller Goes Terminator Edition

Reaction..

  • Huh?

    Votes: 2 6.3%
  • Seriously?

    Votes: 6 18.8%
  • ... are we in some crappy technothriller?

    Votes: 23 71.9%
  • WTF?

    Votes: 1 3.1%

  • Total voters
    32
No, I understand human nature far better now than I have previously, and that is give humans an inch, they'll drag you through at least five blood soaked miles. Locke is the best case scenario for about 99.99% of humanity. In order to ensure civilization, you must go with the moral calculus or die. To quote Wetapunga from a discussion on privacy that I did on SB:
Ah, yes, the same Wetapunga who pictures AIs as an equalizer because clearly they will make people more aware of the mass of information and the powerful people/corporations/governments will not have more effective AIs capable of lolnopping the efforts of the ones available to the common people.

Yeah, that's what happens when technological ignoramuses start replacing deities with technology in bad discourses and copy-paste the result while thinking themselves super smart.
 
And George W. Bush did not? This nationalism and xenophobia did not suddenly pop into existence out of literally nothing the moment Trump announced his candidacy. You do know that Trump has launched presidential campaigns before, and did not win, right? Something had to come before Trump, yes?
However, it didn't dominate as much. It was a good sized group within the GOP but never a primary faction.
So much wrong. Don't know where to begin. Guess I'll start with "lot of flak"?

Do you define a "lot of flak" as:



?
The thing about Iraq is that it is partially because of Daddy Issues, partially because of Chaney, among other factors.
How can you be so histrionic about certain other things while so horribly understating of others? Bush Jr. was one of the most populist, biggest right-wingers to ever set foot in the Oval Office ffs. Makes his father look like a saint by comparison.
He was never populist. Hell, he had went against his own party in numerous ways (the GOP always hated the Latinos but he went against them and tried to court them for one) but between his inability to tell his friends where to stuff it. This talk about Bush Jr. is also a derail...
 
However, it didn't dominate as much. It was a good sized group within the GOP but never a primary faction.

And this kind of thinking is the exact primary reason why it is now.

The thing about Iraq is that it is partially because of Daddy Issues, partially because of Chaney, among other factors.

Does this make the vast swathes of humanity opposing it in the wrong pray do tell?

He was never populist. Hell, he had went against his own party in numerous ways (the GOP always hated the Latinos but he went against them and tried to court them for one) but between his inability to tell his friends where to stuff it. This talk about Bush Jr. is also a derail...

Even if he wasn't a populist, you can't deny he didn't exploit and enable it to serve his own agenda, and I'll leave it at that...
 
One can hope that shitstorm will be internal, or aimed mostly at China rather than us, then. :)
The shitstorm will be also economic, and we're all dependent on the USD for everything we do. As things are now, US going down means we all are going down, and as I see it the US is going down no matter what, their political system cannot be reformed and the establishment cannot be controlled anymore, delusional beyond belief, living in its Washington bubble.
Also, US establishment may try and frame their problem in a way that will call for a coordinated NATO action - and what's been happening on the propaganda front for the last 10 years? Bad Russia! Bad China! Bad Assad! We need to kill people to spread democracy and human rights! Right now if Trump went completely bonkers and lauched 1000 TLAMs at Russia, half of US would cheer him and the other half would say that he did it only to divert attention from the Russia investigation. The sheep are ready for slaughter.
Finally, here in Europe we already have a problem. INF is dying. Germany said that it won't allow any nuclear missiles on its soil, but Poland and Romania already host Aegis Ashore, and all it needs to have nuclear-armed TLAMs in it is a good excuse (actually not even that, nobody but the US knows what is in the VLS tubes, Poland and Romania have no say). And what then? The US can force Europe into a conflict with Russia via Aegis Ashore even without Europe wanting it. And if the situation gets so hot that Russia preemptively bombs Aegis Ashore, will we give up Poland and Romania, or will we see it as an attack on NATO, and go all at Russia? It would be soooo easy for the US to make that happen.... Both of these options are very destructive for EU, and I don't hear anybody saying "Aegis Ashore out of Europe."
There are some voices saying that Europe needs to be more independent from the US, but they're very weak for me to hope that they'll be heard.
 
Crossposting from Spacebattles: eagle109 1/6/2019
Once again, Hillary was right about Trumpie being a puppet. For those that prefer reading, here's the transcript of that Rachel episode.

The aforementioned articles Rachel referenced:

Trump Defends Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan for Some Reason - New York Magazine, January 2, 2019, 6:02 PM EST
The part about the fight being tough, and resulting in the collapse of the Soviet Union is true. The strange bits in Trump's explanation are his claim that the Soviets were "right" to invade and that it's a "problem" that the fight was tough. Americans don't agree about the U.S. response to the invasion — a grain embargo by the Carter administration, and then arming anti-Soviet guerrillas, many of whom had radical Islamist views. But there has been little disagreement that the Soviets did something bad by invading. Until now.

Meanwhile, the Russian government is moving an official resolution defending the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. (The approval is scheduled to take place next month.) Russians have previously called the invasion a tragic error, but Vladimir Putin's regime — which regards the collapse of the Soviet Union as a world-historical tragedy — is systematically rehabilitating various Soviet crimes.

Trump is almost certainly not carrying out some kind of favor for Putin by weirdly defending the invasion of Afghanistan and lamenting its harmful consequences for the Soviet empire. (Putin doesn't gain much from Trump launching a weirdly Russophilic historical riff.) Still, it raises the question of just where Trump is hearing this stuff. He's not getting pro-Soviet revisionist history from Fox & Friends. He's also probably not reading alternative histories of central Asia. So who planted this idea in Trump's head, anyway?

Why Is Trump Spouting Russian Propaganda? - The Atlantic, January 3, 2019, 10:28 AM EST
The crazy part came during the president's monologue defending his decision to withdraw all 2,000 U.S. troops from Syria and 7,000 from Afghanistan, about half the force in that country.

"Russia used to be the Soviet Union," he said.

Afghanistan made it Russia, because they went bankrupt fighting in Afghanistan. Russia … the reason Russia was in Afghanistan was because terrorists were going into Russia. They were right to be there. The problem is, it was a tough fight. And literally they went bankrupt; they went into being called Russia again, as opposed to the Soviet Union. You know, a lot of these places you're reading about now are no longer part of Russia, because of Afghanistan.

...

As of mid-morning on January 3, the day after the president's repetition of Soviet-Putinist propaganda in the Cabinet room, there has been no attempt by the White House to tidy things up: no presidential tweet, no corrective statement. The president's usual defenders—Sean Hannity, Fox & Friends, the anti-anti-Trump Twitter chorus—have likewise ignored the whole matter. They're back to denouncing the Steele dossier, fulminating against Mueller, and reprising the Clinton-email drama. There's apparently nothing they can think of to say in exoneration or excuse.

Putin-style glorification of the Soviet regime is entering the mind of the president, inspiring his words and—who knows—perhaps shaping his actions. How that propaganda is reaching him—by which channels, via which persons—seems an important if not urgent question. But maybe what happened yesterday does not raise questions. Maybe it inadvertently reveals answers.

Opinion: Defying history, Moscow moves to defend Soviet war in Afghanistan - Washington Post, January 4, 2019, 5:04 PM EST
Last month, Russian lawmakers took another big step in the same direction by approving a draft resolution that seeks to justify the Soviet Union's war in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. The formal vote on the measure — proposed jointly by lawmakers from the United Russia and Communist parties — will be held before the 30th anniversary of the withdrawal of Soviet troops on Feb. 15. Hailing the decision, Communist lawmaker Nikolai Kharitonov called it a victory for "historical truth."

The real historical truth — without quotation marks — was made public with the partial declassification of Soviet archives after 1991. The decision to invade Afghanistan was taken by the Politburo in December 1979; the measure was euphemistically titled "On the situation in 'A.' " The first contingent of the USSR's 40th Army crossed the Amu Darya River into Afghanistan on Dec. 25. Two days later, the Afghan dictator Hafizullah Amin – whose request for assistance served as the pretext for the invasion — was murdered by Soviet special forces in Tajbeg Palace.

...

If the Kremlin is serious about "nullifying" the basic facts of 20th-century history, it has great scope for legislative action. The other decisions it may want to revisit include the condemnation of Stalinism at the 1956 Communist Party congress; the condemnation of the World War II-era Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact by the same Congress of People's Deputies in 1989; the recognition of the 1940 Soviet takeover of the Baltic States as an annexation, made in the 1991 Russia-Lithuania treaty signed by President Boris Yeltsin and ratified by the Russian parliament; Yeltsin's condemnation of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia; and many others.

The author of that WP piece is Vladimir Kara-Murza, an outspoken Putin-critic and who had been poisoned twice in the past, so he'd definitely know. You can also follow him on Twitter.

Don't want to imagine what Russian-propaganda against Team Mueller and the other investigatory House committees (House Intel, House Judiciary, House Oversight, House Finance, heck, maybe House Foreign Affairs) will be spread and then stovepiped into Trump and then repeated by Trump, but it's gonna happen because of this goddamn timeline. (Seriously, who the fuck is stovepiping that shit into him?)
 
It's funny Aaron that you expect any "historical truth" from Kara-Murza, a parasite making money on US russophobia. In fact, the US has started arming jihadists in Afghanistan before USSR invasion, hoping that it will provoke USSR invasion into Afghanistan - just as it did. Brzezinski just couldn't hold his mouth shut and bragged about it in 1998 to some French paper:
Brzezinski : « Oui, la CIA est entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes … », par Zbigniew Brzeziński
You can ask Rufus for complete translation, but the important part is that pres.Carter signed an order to arm opposition ot the pro-Soviet Kabul government on July 3rd, 1979. Brzezinski said: We didn't push the Soviets to invade, but we knowingly increased the probability they would.
 
It's funny Aaron that you expect any "historical truth" from Kara-Murza, a parasite making money on US russophobia. In fact, the US has started arming jihadists in Afghanistan before USSR invasion, hoping that it will provoke USSR invasion into Afghanistan - just as it did. Brzezinski just couldn't hold his mouth shut and bragged about it in 1998 to some French paper:
Brzezinski : « Oui, la CIA est entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes … », par Zbigniew Brzeziński
You can ask Rufus for complete translation, but the important part is that pres.Carter signed an order to arm opposition ot the pro-Soviet Kabul government on July 3rd, 1979. Brzezinski said: We didn't push the Soviets to invade, but we knowingly increased the probability they would.
You linked a conspiracy theorist website that sells 911 truther books.
 
I don't know the site, what I linked is a copy of an old article in French. Use your brain.
Yes, you linked an identitarian website that spouts blatant lies.
Here, have a translation from a different source: https://dgibbs.faculty.arizona.edu/brzezinski_interview
Website that uses the same identitarian website as a source.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltaire_Network
Several senior members of the Réseau have complained about a lack of control of the administration council over actions of the president and general secretary. They alleged that the president fostered an environment that suppressed criticism and failed to focus impartially on the board's general goals. Furthermore, they also cited what they believed to be an excessive critique of American foreign policy that was not balanced by reporting on the lack of political freedoms in the Middle East, where most network members tended to operate. The group also suggested that politically illiberal organizations or political figures believed to sponsor anti-Semitic views were treated uncritically. One example was Entretien avec le Hezbollah (Meeting with the Hezbollah) which presented the group, which is closely allied to Iran, as a "social group of Muslim inspiration, comparable to the Liberation theology in South America". Chairman Messyan was said to have visited Tehran to discuss his alternative theories positing that the United States conducted the 9/11 attacks as a false flag operation to justify intervention in Muslim affairs.
 
Yes, you linked an identitarian website that spouts blatant lies.
What I quote is Brzezinski interview from 1998. So, are you saying that the interview didn't happen, or are you so bored that you'd spam a valid argument with completely irrelevant nonsense?
 
What I quote is Brzezinski interview from 1998. So, are you saying that the interview didn't happen, or are you so bored that you'd spam a valid argument with completely irrelevant nonsense?
The only source you provided for the existence of that interview is a website from 911 truthers.
 
The only source you provided for the existence of that interview is a website from 911 truthers.
No I didn't. The Arizona Uni article has a link to voltairenet, but it also explicitely attributes the source to Le Nouvel Observateur. The voltairenet source is useful because it contains a scan of the original printed article, but it's not the only cited source.
 
No I didn't. The Arizona Uni article has a link to voltairenet, but it also explicitely attributes the source to Le Nouvel Observateur. The voltairenet source is useful because it contains a scan of the original printed article, but it's not the only cited source.
Using only the voltairenet website as the sole reference for this claim. AKA good old bad sourcing. Unless you actually provide a source that doesn't refer only to a truther website, we're done.
 
Using only the voltairenet website as the sole reference for this claim. AKA good old bad sourcing. Unless you actually provide a source that doesn't refer only to a truther website, we're done.
What, fleeing from the fight? The source which does not cite voltairenet is the Arizona Uni article, plus maybe 10 more articles easily found via google. You're claiming to be a scientist, so you should notice the citation "Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: 'Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...'" Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76." If you claim that David Gibbs, PhD. cited a nonexistent article in his "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," in International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, maybe you should write him an e-mail...
 
What, fleeing from the fight? The source which does not cite voltairenet is the Arizona Uni article, plus maybe 10 more articles easily found via google. You're claiming to be a scientist, so you should notice the citation "Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: 'Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...'" Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76." If you claim that David Gibbs, PhD. cited a nonexistent article in his "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," in International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, maybe you should write him an e-mail...
So you don't have any source that doesn't involve this 911 truther website. Understood and acknowledged.
 
So you don't have any source that doesn't involve this 911 truther website. Understood and acknowledged.
I do, it's right there and I've cited it - by Gibbs, 2000. He took the French article and translated it and published it. It's the first link at the Arizona Uni page I've cited, right there at the beginning of the text. What I understand and acknowledge is that you do what you always do, that is instead of actually participating in a debate you take something unimportant - like the scan sitting at voltairenet, which doesn't actually matter because it's not an opinion of voltairenet and there are other sources supporting the article's axistence and content - and try to show how very smart you are by pointing it out. And when it doesn't work, you run away. That's what got you at SV - making fun of people and running away. And it was the same at SB, when you argued that Russia must have interfered in French election becaue Macroleon said so, even though I cited French chief of cyber-security as saying that it didn't. When I asked you why, then, if he was wrong, and even willingly opposed his boss, Macroleon didn't fire him, you just stopped responding.
If you wanted to oppose my actual argument that the CIA started supporting the Afghani jihadis before the USSR invasion (as opposed to what Kara-Murza claims), you would try to find a source which disclaims Brzezinski, and not ignore the source right there, the actual article by an actual scientist who cites (and actually provides a complete EN translation of) the French interview. But no, that would be some actual work... it's soooo easy to claim that others are crazy, it's not that easy to do the work, find a source and engage in actual debate.
 
I do, it's right there and I've cited it - by Gibbs, 2000. He took the French article and translated it and published it. It's the first link at the Arizona Uni page I've cited, right there at the beginning of the text. What I understand and acknowledge is that you do what you always do, that is instead of actually participating in a debate you take something unimportant - like the scan sitting at voltairenet, which doesn't actually matter because it's not an opinion of voltairenet and there are other sources supporting the article's axistence and content - and try to show how very smart you are by pointing it out. And when it doesn't work, you run away. That's what got you at SV - making fun of people and running away. And it was the same at SB, when you argued that Russia must have interfered in French election becaue Macroleon said so, even though I cited French chief of cyber-security as saying that it didn't. When I asked you why, then, if he was wrong, and even willingly opposed his boss, Macroleon didn't fire him, you just stopped responding.
He pretty obviously took the website and translated it, AKA using a pretty bad source which in itself spoils his translation. Now, I'm just asking for something that should be so easy for you to find, a source that doesn't involve a 911 truther website. But if you wanna go straight to ad hominem attacks, that just reinforces my position.
 
He pretty obviously took the website and translated it, AKA using a pretty bad source which in itself spoils his translation. Now, I'm just asking for something that should be so easy for you to find, a source that doesn't involve a 911 truther website. But if you wanna go straight to ad hominem attacks, that just reinforces my position.
No ad hominem, just pointing out what you do, and how counter-productive it is for people who want to debate things and provide arguments. And how can you claim that Dr. Gibbs, professor of history at Arizona Uni with a PhD from MIT, used voltairenet? You're just pulling stuff from your a**, since he himself gives a different source in his article on page 241 - a translation by William Blum which he checked against the original article. You didn't even read the provided source before you dismissed it - how very constructive of you.
 
No ad hominem, just pointing out what you do, and how counter-productive it is for people who want to debate things and provide arguments. And how can you claim that Dr. Gibbs, professor of history at Arizona Uni with a PhD from MIT, used voltairenet? You're just pulling stuff from your a**, since he himself gives a different source in his article on page 241 - a translation by William Blum which he checked against the original article. You didn't even read the provided source before you dismissed it - how very constructive of you.
You're a pretty sad loser, so I'll do your homework for you if you are so unable to actually do a single Google research...

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-ab&q=Oui,+la+CIA+est+entrée+en+Afghanistan+avant+les+Russes+…
Hell, there is even a nice site called "Let Me Google That For You": http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Oui,+la+CIA+est+entrée+en+Afghanistan+avant+les+Russes…

See? That's how you actually debate rather than going straight to the ad hominem when you post links that involve truther websites and get rightfully called for it. I hope that's the last time I have to hold your hand in argumentation.

EDIT: BTW, if you actually read my posts in this truther-led derail, you'll notice that I don't give a crap about that claimed interview, I just refused to back a source involving truthers, and each of your links came back to the truthers rather than other things.
 
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EDIT: BTW, if you actually read my posts in this truther-led derail, you'll notice that I don't give a crap about that claimed interview, I just refused to back a source involving truthers, and each of your links came back to the truthers rather than other things.
No it didn't, Gibbs used a different source. I didn't use Les Crises because it would be another source I don't know, with the EN version from the same source as Gibbs, so Gibbs is better because of his credentials. But since I don't care about this derail either and now we agree about the article and the fact that CIA went into Afghanistan first, I can go to bed. Good night to you.
 
But since I don't care about this derail either and now we agree about the article and the fact that CIA went into Afghanistan first, I can go to bed.
Your own article raises some doubts on the validity of the guy's claims, though:
The Brzezinski interview must be approached with a measure of caution. At some
poi n t s , Br zezinski comes close to su gge s ting that he pers on a lly was re s pon s i ble for
policies that led to the co llapse of com mu n i s m , not a terri bly modest po s i ti on to
adopt. One must consider an element of self-aggrandizement in evaluating Brzezinski's
remarks. Some aspects of this account are confirmed in other sources (specifically
Gates' memoirs), but for other parts we have only Brzezinski's word.
 
Your own article raises some doubts on the validity of the guy's claims, though:
Brzezinski's involvement in the collapse of communism is doubted. Actually, several things are doubted, including whether CIA involvement led to USSR invasion or not, and even whether it all started on July 3 or already in 1978. What is not doubted is that the help to mujahideen started before the invasion, and that was my point.
People are right not to trust Brzezinski when he claims that he was the mastermind behind the fall of communism. The whole story about USSR bankrupting itself and Afghanistan breaking it and that leading to the end of communism is complete nonsense. What mattered was Gorbachev's Glasnost and unwillingness to use force to keep the Eastern Block together, and he adopted these positions not because of lack of money or because of Afghanistan, but because he believed in them.
 
Bumped into this today. It's a bit off-topic from the OP but irony amuses me and I must share.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

Thu 17 Mar 2011 09.19 EDT

How quaint to have one guy control ten sock-puppet accounts lol

He said none of the interventions would be in English, as it would be unlawful to "address US audiences" with such technology, and any English-language use of social media by Centcom was always clearly attributed.

Imagine actually believing this
 
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