IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

Yep, it's from his 'Muslims dancing in the streets of New Jersey on 9/11' file. It's also a stretch to say he cited it 'approvingly' - iirc the gist was that it shows how weak and ill-respected Obama is. It's arguably drawing more on the 'shoot Russian planes out of the sky if they buzz US ships' side of his portfolio than the 'let's hold hands and bomb ISIS together' one.

stein is quite clearly not a "kremlin stooge" but trump might be. why not? it's not like he cares about this country and the things he does care about -- his businesses -- are heavily leveraged by russian business interests. in any case it doesn't matter: there are a million other reasons not to vote for him. But putin's obvious preference for trump over hillary isn't based on nothing

This has been covered in the other thread but as Julia Ioffe points out, Trump's business dealings with Russia can be boiled down to trying and failing to build hotels and skyscrapers there - indicating that if he does have backing from any Russian capital, they don't have the juice or the money to sway the notoriously crooked former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, let alone the Kremlin. This was taking place at the same time as rival international chains like Sheraton and Carlson were being given the freedom to build wherever they wanted.

More broadly, there's absolutely nothing wrong in looking for evidence of links between Trump and Putin's inner circle - it's the kind of thing that journalists should be doing. Stringing together a chain of half-baked innuendo for columns, or even worse political attack ads, designed to imply that your opponent is a traitor should be left to 'authoritarian regimes', though. It's bad in a domestic political context, bad in an international context and makes the Clinton camp look far more desperate than they have any need to be.

This stuff doesn't just affect government-level politics - as with Iran, any business or personal relationships with Russia become 'suspect' and it bleeds into how people from across the region are viewed at home and abroad. There have been a few pieces picking out Russian-American eccentrics supporting Trump (or in some cases Stalin and Trump) with a not-particularly subtle suggestion that they're a fifth column. Even on the relatively trivial side, Melania Trump's speech prompted the Washington Post to run a poorly-argued quasi-academic piece about how plagiarism is second nature to Eastern Europeans. Ramping up the rhetoric feeds into a defensive victim mentality (justified or not) that makes it harder to engage constructively with people the US needs to win over abroad as well.

Go back to your defense of RT, that was hilarious

Useful idiots

all the kids are sayin' it!

https://twitter.com/LudWitt/status/762719244341669888

Go back to your defense of RT, that was hilarious

Yes, the "defense" when i described them as "unashamedly biased and self-serving", featuring a wide variety of "cranks", "hugely hypocritical" and implied they were a "propaganda outfit".

The Greenwald article does a fairly comprehensive job of rounding up pieces either hinting at or flat-out declaring Stein and Trump as Kremlin stooges

Greenwald has been a cherry picker par excellence for a long time, yes

I'm not sure he'd argue that he is cherry picking. He's covering a widespread theme not suggesting it's universal.

yeah he never sez ironclad truth like Stein voters prefer Trump over Democrats

(just like the entire DemocracyNow demographic)

I don't know why I'm wasting my time on this but let me try to structure an argument instead of just taking potshots:

- If the bar here is "it's understandable, not unreasonable" for minority viewpoints to seek out appearances on RT, then it is also understandable and not unreasonable for a political campaign to emphasize its opponents relationships with a threatening, authoritarian regime, which by the way also supports policies that the campaign's platform planks are specifically opposed to: violent homophobia, violence against the press, and encroachment into allied nations' territory.

- If none of the above is valid, fine, and if this is just rhetorical and has no substance behind it (which, whatever, the only GOP platform plank Trump's campaign cared about at all was a pro-Russian stance regarding Ukraine and the Crimea) who exactly are we trying to "engage constructively" with abroad, again, and what do they need to see from us? It seems much more likely that Russian-adjacent states and others in the sphere of Russian influence might be just as impressed with strong resistance to Russian attempts to influence our politics, especially since the alleged instrument of that influence is already making a name for himself by publicly complaining about NATO allies not paying up.

- "Useful idiots" is a perfectly cromulent term when people are displaying a bewildering degree of ignorance about Putin's politics and modus operandi in pursuit of tu quoque arguments against the liberal party of the US. I often wonder whether progressive/"green" attitudes about international realpolitik and statecraft are willfully ignorant or not, but I am always willing to give folks the benefit of the doubt because on domestic policies we agree 99% of the time.

You're thinking simply in terms of states and leadership - the objective if the US wants reform in Russia and normalised relationships has to be win over the public and softly encourage a push for domestic change. Positioning Putin as a strategic mastermind pulling the strings of movements all over the world, rather than highlighting the fragility of the government, doesn't help that.

Making a point of blaming Russia for Trump also doesn't help win the trust of people with no great love for Putin but an ongoing distrust of US policymakers, particularly those called Clinton. Russia has been effective in turning pretty much every US action in the region into a conspiracy against it. Giving more ammunition with paper-thin, easily debunked allegations provides more evidence that the Democrats are out to get them.

I am not particularly defending Stein or her decision to go on RT but she has limited options. Clinton is in full control of how she chooses to attack Trump, there are a million and one options, and choosing to focus on a fairly spurious network of unproven allegations doesn't seem smart, especially if it is unnecessarily ramping up hostility between Russia and the US again.

This, from earlier today, is broadly correct '

https://t.co/UozcxQiaYx

I think "blaming Russia for Trump" is a gross exaggeration - I haven't seen anyone actually saying that, just that Trump is himself a useful idiot of the Putin regime.

I believe that highlighting the fragility and poor governance of Russia comes after the election. Right now it seems perfectly sensible to portray Putin as a clod-footed wannabe supervillain, since in this context, the narrative shoe fits quite nicely.

I don't think the principal allegations are paper-thin. The behavior of his campaign regarding the party platform is OTT. The DNC hack is pretty straightforward.
I also don't think Clinton is "choosing to focus" on these allegations - they are part of a wide range of attacks on Trump that the campaign is availing themselves of. Greenwald chose this topic for an essay because it was easy for him to write. Love the part where he pivots and says "you know who REALLY loves Russia - Hillary does!" because he doesn't even care about the issue, he just wants to take a swing at liberals.

By the way, isn't it funny how Greenwald always knows the intelligence community is full of lying liars who lie like dogs up until one of them says something that superficially supports his argument ("we have not found a link between the emails on wikileaks and the Russians")?

Just wants to point out, the intelligence guy didn't say they have no link between the emails and Russia, they're saying there's no evidence of the Russians giving the mails to wikileaks. There's evidence that the Russians got the mails, but who knows, perhaps a completely different and undetected hacking attack were the ones wikileaks used.

I think the way Greenwald puts it is quite misleading.

xps,

If the commentary was limited to "Trump is a sucker who Putin thinks he can manipulate" or "Trump is a liability who Putin thinks will run the US into the ground" you wouldn't have had half of the most prominent Russia-critics in the press lining up to trash it. The theme of a lot, but clearly not all, of the pieces is that Russia is propping up and giving orders to Trump - either directly or via Manafort / the mystery investors nobody actually knows are real or not. The comment i was responding to this morning specifically questioned whether Trump might actually be "Kremlin stooge".

The same Russia critics, who are more invested than anyone else in pushing the idea of a liberal Russian centre taking power, suggesting that this line is actively harmful to domestic Russian politics should give those pushing it pause. Greenwald's motivations are neither here nor there - listen to the people who have literally written the book on Why Putin Is Bad.

I'd be more comfortable if i thought that Clinton was able to redirect to a more nuanced policy when she takes power but, either way, competing to out-hawk the Republicans has the potential to do damage greater than whatever short term gains she believes she can get from it.

At the very least, getting someone to put a sock in Mike Morell would probably be a start:

https://twitter.com/newgreatgame/status/762827567472664576

Iranians need to "pay a price" for supporting Shia militias in Iraq during the war and the US should be killing Russians and Iranians in Syria and "making sure Moscow and Tehran know about it" - btw, vote Hilary! She's not responsible for him but he's not exactly helping.

From the article you called "broadly correct:"

Still, it is striking just how far the same conspiratorial thinking has permeated the West. Commentators see Mr. Putin behind everything from Brexit and the wave of euroskepticism in Western Europe to the rise of Donald J. Trump in America.

"Some people say..."

If the commentary was limited to "Trump is a sucker who Putin thinks he can manipulate" or "Trump is a liability who Putin thinks will run the US into the ground"

This is most of the reasonable commentary, and is also the angle of the campaign. The Manchurian Candidate crap is on the fringe and is not being embraced by the majority of supporters, much less the campaign itself. You and Greenwald are characterizing this as if all but Clinton herself have come out and called Trump a Kremlin plant, when in fact what most people are saying is "Trump is such a jackass, he might as well be acting on behalf of the current Russian government."

Oh, come on. The theme of the attack ad was clearly an insinuation that there's far more going on than that. The New York Times, Slate, Washington Post, etc, etc articles are hardly on the lunatic fringe either.

Nobody disputes that Trump is such a jackass he might as well be acting on behalf of countries that want to disrupt the US' position in the world but that's not why this is drawing such a lot of criticism from Russia analysts.

None of the Russia analysts I know are wasting time criticizing the Clinton campaign.

What is disturbing with the “blame Putin” stance endorsed by serious Western politicians, analysts and news media outlets is that it makes the Russian leader appear omnipotent while making the rest of us seem impotent.

This is absurdly bad. No citations of the grossly exaggerated viewpoint he claims to have seen - but it's endorsed by serious Western politicians! Funny how I forgot all those links to "PUTIN DID THIS" articles on the Brexit thread.

So thinking about this more and trying to understand your perspective better, I get the feeling that *any* angle that portrays Putin as being especially competent or influential, beyond his clod-footed supervillain schtick, is something that Russia experts (especially expat experts) urgently want to push back on, because from that point of view Putin needs to be relentlessly portrayed as the bad joke that he is, not as somebody who can cleverly employ a range of dirty tricks to undermine the West. Am I getting warm?

From my perspective this has very little to do with the portrayal of Putin as a cunning mastermind - he's clearly not - and is instead all about portraying Trump as a readily manipulated jackass etc. as above.

And it's really got nothing at all to do with red-baiting, which is where Greenwald was heading, until he decided to throw his argument out halfway through and turn on Hillary as the REAL Russian stooge in this election.

It varies from expert to expert - some are more keen than others to hype up the international risk Putin poses, most would accept that he has strengths and areas of competence along with the structural weaknesses of the system.

I think there is a fairly broad agreement that, separate from the issue of sanctions, there's an element of truth in the idea that the more unpopular Putin is abroad, the better he does at home. There's a large constituency within Russia that views US policy post-communism as not just designed to 'contain' Russia within its borders but to actively weaken it domestically. It's accepted almost universally that the policy of immediate privatisation of state resources encouraged by the US, and the perceived collusion in handing most of the assets over to organised criminals, wasn't just done out of a belief in the value of capitalism to bring its own civil reforms, it was to weaken the structure of the state so it couldn't pose such a concerted threat again. It's also widely believed that the US had a hand in effectively rigging the 1996 election because they saw Yeltsin as the same kind of easily-manipulated buffoon Trump appears to be. This isn't just hurt pride - there's a perception that the US, IMF, etc contributed to a decline in living standards that took ten years off the average life expectancy. The theme that 'Russia will no longer live on its knees' is a precursor to Make America Great Again, with more justification.

Making out that Putin has brought Russia back to a level where it can pull the strings of everyone from Alex Tspiras to Marine Le Pen to Donald Trump and materially influence the direction of the EU and the US is what a lot of people who lived through those years want to hear.

At the same time, you have a lot of people, particularly in the bigger cities, who are incredibly well-educated, often well traveled, speak English, keep an eye on the international news, etc - the same constituency that a few of the better attempted-reformers in Ukraine come from - who look at the fevered headlines about Russia posing "more of a threat to Europe than ISIS", who see double standards over intervention in Syria, who (and we can disagree on the degree to which it is being done) see America's ugly racist baby, Trump, being pinned on the Kremlin and conclude that nothing has changed since 1991. These tend to be the kind of people i work with - not instinctive Putin supporters, the kind of people who genuinely love the UK, Italy, France, etc, - and who tell me they're ground down by the relentless hyperbole.

tldr, to maintain credibility and not play into Putin's hands the criticism of Russia needs to be credible and proportionate. I honestly don't know how anyone can look at the Clinton video, which was immediately picked up by Sputnik, KP, etc, and suggest that the intended takeaway is 'huh, that Trump guy's a jackass'.

idk if Greenwald is making a case that leftist ideology has a major part to play in the perceived demonisation of Russia. Leftists who do are typically off the mark. Where i think there is a legitimate case for a certain amount of political scepticism (not neglecting the very real domestic and international problems the Russian government poses) is in the use of Russia as a justification for lavish spending on conventional / nuclear weapons (there was a Telegraph article this morning fretting that Britain is "outgunned", for example) and the ongoing willingness to turn a blind eye to some of the appalling people vying to take Russia and neighbouring countries out of the current government's control / sphere of influence. Lauding murderous oligarchs as freedom fighters, downplaying the influence of the far right, etc, is even more counterproductive and deserves as much of a push back as anything else.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/08/12/the_latest_evidence_that_russia_was_behind_the_dnc_hack.html

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/weakness-not-strength

Really good points imo

First is to make what I believe is the straightforward point that anyone who says that Russia poses a huge threat to the United States or that Russia is 'on the march' or outflanking the US or whatever else is simply wrong.

I think his point that Russia is weak is well-taken, but I think there's also an argument to be made that the weakest actors (ISIS, NK) can be the most dangerous. I don't think Russia's weakness necessitates that they are no longer dangerous - and in fact they may be more so than if they felt strong + secure.

Imo another important point often missing comes when people talk about the west being too 'confrontational' towards Russia. But Russia repressed, invaded and cleansed a whole lot of it's neighborhood, and naturally a lot of their neighbors have 'confrontational' impulses towards them. The NATO expansion hasn't been forced through over the head of the eastern european nations.

It's also a bit annoying when articles are written about expansion of NATO and the discussion becomes 'well is it really in the US interest?' There are other countries in NATO...

Presumably, a stable and safe Europe is in the US interest and was always the point of NATO. Any NATO expansion that strengthens the alliance should be sought and any expansion that weakens it should be avoided. Those which are essentially neutral in terms of NATO's strength or weakness as a military alliance may legitimately be viewed through the more parochial lens of national interest.

It's just that there are just other nations in NATO than the US, with other interests.

Sure, but since the USA is the dominant partner in NATO, I would think that, for example, a Danish political writer whose sympathies were with Danish national interests might wish to analyze whether those interests align with US interests, or if on the contrary the US interest was likely to oppose that of Denmark - purely on practical political grounds.

There are relatively few ex-Eastern-Bloc countries where the idea of joining NATO doesn't have some public support, Serbia is probably the main example, but it's usually a fairly divisive domestic issue. The Russian-speaking minorities in Latvia and Estonia, who make up a fairly large chunk of the populations of both countries, have tended to be mostly opposed to membership. It's not such a huge issue in the Baltics as they don't let the Russian-speakers vote the wider benefits of being part of the European bloc have compensated but it has always been extremely controversial in Ukraine. Kuchma and Yushchenko gave clear indications that they wanted to take the country into NATO, and would have done so against the wishes of about half the country. Yanukovich was officially 'non-aligned'. Following the coup/revolution, the idea that the country was going to be bounced into membership contributed to the hostility to the new government in the South and East. There are similar situations in Moldova, Georgia and Armenia. Aside from wider geopolitical considerations, actively courting new membership has the potential to destabilise the countries you're trying to bring in.

the way the ethnic Russian minorities get treated in Finland, Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania is actually kind of astounding.
Fun fact: Finland was briefly part of the Axis in WW2. If that gives you an inkling of how they feel about Russians.

nothing to see here folks move along
https://twitter.com/evanasmith/status/765021374960185344

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/439060/vladimir-putin-1999-russian-apartment-house-bombings-was-putin-responsible

Shortly after the commission began its work, however, an incident occurred that reminded Russians of just how mysterious the apartment bombings were. In March, the newspaper Noviye Izvestiya announced the result of its investigation into the fact that Gennady Seleznev, the speaker of the Duma and a close associate of Putin, had announced the bombing in Volgodonsk on September 13 — three days before it occurred. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the head of the Liberal Democratic party, told journalists that same day what Seleznev had said, but they could not confirm it, so it was not reported. On September 16, however, the building in Volgodonsk really was blown up, and on September 17 Zhirinovsky demanded an explanation of how Seleznev had known about the bombing in advance.

“Do you see what is happening in this country?” he said, shouting and gesticulating from the podium in the Duma. “You say an apartment building was blown up on Monday and it explodes on Thursday. This can be evaluated as a provocation.” Seleznev avoided responding, and Zhirinovsky had his microphone turned off when he persisted in demanding an explanation.

In March 2002, however, Noviye Izvestiya succeeded in obtaining the transcript of what Seleznev had said on September 13, 1999. His precise words were: “Here is a communication which they transmit. According to a report from Rostov-on-Don today, this past night, an apartment house was blown up in the city of Volgodonsk.” The newspaper asked him who had informed him about the bombing in Volgodonsk three days before it happened. He answered, “Believe me, not [exiled oligarch Boris] Berezovsky,” who had accused Putin of orchestrating the bombing. In this way, he indicated that he was well aware of who, in reality, had given him the information.

Seleznev then told the newspaper that, on September 13, he had been referring to an explosion on September 15 that was part of a war between criminal gangs and had not claimed any victims. Seleznev’s explanation, however, raised more questions than it answered. It was hard to understand why such an insignificant incident needed to be reported to the speaker of the Duma at a time when apartment buildings were being blown up, with hundreds of deaths. And even if Seleznev had been referring to a minor criminal conflict in Volgodonsk, how was it possible that he had been informed about it two days in advance?

the way the ethnic Russian minorities get treated in Finland, Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania is actually kind of astounding.
Fun fact: Finland was briefly part of the Axis in WW2. If that gives you an inkling of how they feel about Russians.

― El Tomboto, Sunday, August 14, 2016 2:04 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh, that's an interesting way of putting it. they were invaded by the Soviet Union and so went to war with them, as the Allies were, well allied with the Soviet Union, they were pretty much out of options for who to be allied to. Britain actually declared war with Finland at this time - maybe the U.S. too - making it one of the few (only?) times two democracies have been at war with each other - though there was no actual fighting between the two countries.

The Manchurian Candidate crap is on the fringe and is not being embraced by the majority of supporters, much less the campaign itself. You and Greenwald are characterizing this as if all but Clinton herself have come out and called Trump a Kremlin plant, when in fact what most people are saying is "Trump is such a jackass, he might as well be acting on behalf of the current Russian government."

Robby Mook, yesterday:

“There’s a web of financial interests that have not been disclosed,” he said. “And there are real questions being raised about whether Donald Trump himself is just a puppet for the Kremlin in this race.”

Still banging on about this after Manafort has gone.

I think there's a not unreasonable question regarding how much and who has invested in Trump's businesses (esp if they are $650m in debt) and whether that would impact his policy decisions. Making that out like it's a conspiracy theory is even too Russia apologetic for you. If donations to a charitable foundation are fair game than actual investments in his personal assets are certainly fair game. It doesn't mean he's a puppet but it may mean that he doesn't think it's wise to piss off his business partners.

Yes, those are reasonable questions and Trump's investments (none of which are currently linked to Russians, let alone the Kremlin) are fair game. Presidential candidates should be forced to disclose their business investors - as they're not, he should disclose them himself or journalists should work to uncover them.

The gap between that and Clinton's spokesperson making the same Manchurian Candidates allegations specifically referred to as "crap on the fringe" in this thread is rather large, though.

lol I totally knew why this thread came back up. I have to concede / agree that what Mr. Mook said on the teevee was kind of ludicrous

apparently it's pronounced "muhk" instead of "moooook"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vw8t4O9JQM

Trump's investments (none of which are currently linked to Russians, let alone the Kremlin)

“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

backtracking to the jill stein on RT conversation - i finally watched it and she literally says that “human rights really resonate here." idk how someone can claim she was just using RT as a platform and it had nothing to do w/ sympathy to russia, unless i guess you think that comment was entirely disingenuous and she was just being polite.

I think she was just being a moron, as usual

I took it as if she meant human rights really resonated at the conference, not in Russia in general. But she was at an RT sponsored propaganda event, she was taking part in a conference organized by the propaganda outlet of an autocratic regime that regularly murders it's enemies.

whereas HRC is just personal friends with such people

Stein is NOT PERFECT (TM)

I don't know Stein, and RT is obviously staffed by scumbags, but I'm not sure appearing on RT (or even being paid to write a column for their website) is the same as endorsing it, just as it is with Fox News or whatever media company.

How about traveling to Russia to participate in an RT organized conference attended by Vladimir Putin?

I don't know. I suppose if you think the possibility of positive change is worth the potential damage to your reputation, then maybe?

See also https://ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=7990150&boardid=40&threadid=100650

I represented Belarus in the Model United Nations summit in Hershey, Pennsylvania, 2005. AMA.

(xp) Oh right, somehow failed to notice that thread.