a quick poll about Russia and Donald Trump

And please don't be concern trolling on the part of 'half of Europe', Shari.

Lol @ calling me "silly" on this topic when your standing position is "Russia is deserving of trust, because that is in the short-term interests of gigantic corporations, and Putin is not really that scary, so maybe Trump's administration isn't wrong on this issue"

the continued downplaying of just how insane it is that RUSSIA interfered in our election has the makings of a major historic irony, on par with the father of the #1 donors to the GOP (mr. and mr. koch) inheriting a fortune their father began by building stalin's oil pipelines and hitler's oil refineries. how many decades did Republicans red-scare up the wazoo only to pooh pooh concern that RUSSIA interfered in the 2016 election? it's nuts!

the nature of the interference is still kind of abstract though. the hacked and leaked emails were only damaging because they played into larger narratives that were being disseminated on the right about hillary being a criminal, covering things up, etc. "russia" played a role, it seems, in further disseminating this narrative via fake news and twitter bots and things but it didn't start with them.

with or without russia, trump would have run a similar campaign, i think. breitbart and infowars reached more people than sputnik, RT, or the pop up fake news sites, most of which seem to have been profit driven.

russia also hacked the voter roles, it seems, but from what i have read they didn't do anything with that information. i'm fairly certain the NSA regularly penetrates foreign governments' data as well.

i'm not saying i'm not disturbed by the russian interference, but i think some people might be making a mistake in focusing so much on this issue, as if "russian ties" was the essential source of trump's illegitimacy.

increased sanctions and election interference aside, the pipeline is problematic: the deal was concluded post-Crimean annexation, funds Putin's regime, and has a host of environmental issues. it is not supported by half of Europe en bloc.

Do you think Russia interfered with the US election, SV?

Yep. The extent of that interference is up for debate but there was definitely an online propaganda effort, probably a behind-the-scenes attempt to influence the thinking of Trump allies and highly likely to have been government participation in the release of sensitive information, etc.

Lol @ calling me "silly" on this topic when your standing position is "Russia is deserving of trust, because that is in the short-term interests of gigantic corporations, and Putin is not really that scary, so maybe Trump's administration isn't wrong on this issue"

What's silly is viewing government reservations about a major foreign policy move that binds the hands of the executive and has triggered an immediate threat of reprisals from some of the US' closest allies as nothing more than a data point in a collusion narrative. You can think the sanctions are a good thing and it's worth any complications but pretending it's remotely straightforward is daft, as you well know.

Do you think Russia hacked and leaked? Released the oppo research on Trump, leaked info from DNC, and from Podesta?

Hacked the DNC, yes. Leaked - probably. The evidence presented on both is thinner than I would like but on the balance of probabilities, yes. I would assume there is more that hasn't been released by the US. Podesta seemed less clear from what I recall but I am not sure I looked at it in much detail.

Lol. It's kinda remarkable what you look into in detail, considering your interests in these sanctions.

And again, stop concern trolling on behalf of 'some of the US' closest allies'. We get that you're much more pro-Russia than most of us, and fine with that, but don't pretend it's because you're concerned about continental European interests. Which are fairly divided on Nordstream, and much more united on fear of Putin and distrust of Trump.

Yep.

thanks, SV. i respect your perspective and insights, especially on this topic, even if i don't always agree with your posts.

And again, stop concern trolling on behalf of 'some of the US' closest allies'. We get that you're much more pro-Russia than most of us, and fine with that, but don't pretend it's because you're concerned about continental European interests. Which are fairly divided on Nordstream, and much more united on fear of Putin and distrust of Trump.

The EU has released a joint statement saying that all sanctions should be agreed collectively, not imposed unilaterally, otherwise it risks damaging the united front.

The joint German/ Austrian statement called them a "completely new, very negative dimension into European-American relations.

I happen to agree with the joint Ukraine sanctions. I disagree with the US unilaterally imposing sanctions in the vast majority of cases, whether its Russia, Cuba or Iran - particularly when it seems to be done primarily for domestic point scoring.

However, none of that really matters to the issue of whether it's worth contextualising the executive response or just reducing big foreign policy issues down to a simple Trump-Russia narrative. You are welcome to do the latter but it makes for dull conversation.

It's fine if you disagree with with unilateral US sanctions, just don't pretend you're a spokesperson for continental Europeans, okay?

And I don't reduce foreign policy to Trump-Russia narrative, strawmen don't make for much better conversation.

but they do make for ILE conversation

how dull, russia interfering in the US election on behalf of donald trump, who owes them $100,000,000s

The discussion is about governments. The EU statement makes their position clear.

xps

just set off the warheads, we all fooked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0IGc1gxXJs

every tweet is a comeback, every dollar's a little bit ruble

Shari, where is the EU 'joint statement' you're talking about?

Referenced here:

https://www.rferl.org/a/germany-austria-object-provision-us-senate-russian-sanctions-bill-nord-stream-2-natural-gas-pipeline/28557924.html

A spokeswoman for the European Commission told the Reuters news agency on June 16 that it was "important for possible new measures to be coordinated between international partners to ensure their impact internationally and to maintain unity among partners on the sanctions."

It's a statement on behalf of the European Commission rather than a formal joint statement.

It's really just a spokeswoman answering a question, no?

A spokeswoman representing the European Commission answering a question on whether the position of the European Commission is that new sanctions should be coordinated. It isn't phrased as strongly as the German / Austrian statement but I don't see any particular reason to question it.

However united the EU is, Congress aiming to bypass the executive and pass / maintain sanctions that have an impact on third-party countries is a pretty big deal for how the US and Europe get on.

do we know yet why jared kushner was secretly meeting with the russian ambassador after the election?

The story is here, btw: http://in.reuters.com/article/usa-russia-sanctions-eu-idINB5N1E000B It's a reaction to the German/Austrian response. It's not a 'joint statement', it's hardly a statement at all. And I think the impact of Donald Trump is a bigger deal than this sanction package. The unreliability of the US is annoying, but the only ones who think this sanction package is worse than Trump's behaviour on his last trip are... the Russians, I'd guess? A couple Austro-German CEO's as well, probably. But the governments of the two countries? I doubt it.

do we know yet why jared kushner was secretly meeting with the russian ambassador after the election?

tbqh, if I was investigating, the Kushner meetings with Kislyak and Vnesheconombank would be where I would start. If he was there on private business looking for investment, there would be a dead certain conflict of interest with his policy advisory role.

Getting into whether a spokesperson for the European Commission can truly be said to speak for the European Commission is a philosophical discussion I am not going to start at midnight but the question of whether Trump is worse than sanctions isn't the issue. They are going to end up with both and it runs the risk of opening up an even greater rift.

Lol. You invented a joint statement that didn't exist. That's not a 'philosophical question', that's a fuckup.

Agents of the Russian government were given orders to do everything in their power not only to reduce confidence in the US election result, but to influence it in favor of a candidate who is, based on his behavior, his statements, and policy directions (however ineffectual in the long term) in readily blackmail-able and/or in hock to same agents and/or their employer - which is, to bring us back to the start of my parenthetically augmented run-on, the Russian government.

They tried to hack state election systems to influence vote counts - the only reason this didn't work is because we use thousands of weird systems to count votes which makes the attack surface too convoluted to effectively manipulate the tally.
They did hack the DNC, the DCCC, the RNC, and who knows what else. They leaked what they wanted to, when they wanted to, to get Trump elected. Then he got elected and almost immediately began giving Russia special favors that make the US intel and defense community all but violently nauseous.
They did everything in their capacity to fuck with the democratic process in the US in order to help elect the most venal, stupid and easily manipulated lying sack of shit in our nation's history.

So pardon me if I don't give enough shits about the German economy lately.

And I don't think anyone here thinks congress conducting foreign policy is a particularly good idea, but the executive branch is clearly incapable of doing so... It's just not a simple issue, and hitting the Nordstream line is not something that Europe is unilaterally against.

Lol. You invented a joint statement that didn't exist.

It is the European Commission statement on the matter.

"It's not a simple issue" basically sums up my position and I am not specifically accusing you of treating it like one.

Xp

Whether you care about the German economy is neither here nor there. If you think it's worth the risk of fragmenting the united US / EU front on Russia, you might be right. It makes sense to at least acknowledge the context in which this plays out though.

trump is also the poster child for every russian allegation that americans are pigs. (and i agree with them! gogol, dostoyevsky, chekhov, and tolstoy could write like motherfuckers.) it's not hard to imagine -- given the overwhelming evidence of russian interference on behalf of two scoops -- that they're laughing their asses off at us. doesn't mean it's their fault trump is president or anything

Mr. Vari, I see your points and appreciate your input pretty much all the time.
I think the real issue might be the way you come across, as in, "I'm fairly sure nobody else has thought about this, but did you know Russia isn't always a monolith of evil?"
It feels like if I don't yell at you then your points might well go unexpanded upon. We all bring our priors to arguments, but maybe you can drop the one where we're all kneejerk anti-pinko twits.

it's not hard to imagine -- given the overwhelming evidence of russian interference on behalf of two scoops -- that they're laughing their asses off at us. doesn't mean it's their fault trump is president or anything

Ding ding ding.

SV is known here, to me at least, for bringing a more geopolitical, at times maybe more abstract view to the table. I value that. It doesn't come across as some 'holier-than-thou' schtick or saying all Muricans are 'anti-pinko's' to me (but then I'm not Murican). I value your input as well, always, Tombot. But I think we're getting nowhere if we're going down the Fred B. route, calling SV out in a childish manner and trying to box him into the 'pro Russia rube' corner either. Maybe I mean we shouldn't judge the other as much on her or his 'priors' but instead of what is said.

(Ps. Both Russia and America are well established 'monoliths of evil' tbh)

(Pps. I don't know a country that isn't a monolith of evil, come to think of it. Canada? Luxembourg?)

monolith of evil is GI Joe speak. let's be real here. characterizing other countries as evil based on your media impressions is beyond fucked. it is hard to imagine that there are not people in every country trying to influence elections in every other country. there have been leaks proving that the NSA is spying on multiple countries, and we have seen first-hand accounts of our intelligence agency doing exactly this for decades. influencing elections across the globe. including, in a huge irony, Russia itself, in the Clinton-era 90s. it was partly the overt and anti-democratic US interference that helped create the toxic oligarchy of 90s post-Soviet Russia. from my understanding Putin's career has been made fighting this western fueled corruption and hyper capitalism. he is adamantly against such meddling, and has based his career on fighting that, he claims. then there is the question of what is cyberwarfare and does it mean We Are At War With Russia if a roomful of guys spend a couple months making fake websites? or leaking real emails of what our democratically elected representatives are doing with our money? what is it we are fighting here?

what is it we are fighting here?

well, some people out there are actively trying to destroy the American Way, they're roughing up Truth on the daily, and a knife or five has been brandished in the face of Justice and her family. So we're fighting against those people, so that means what we're fighting for is the things they threaten.

SV brings different things to the table, not because he is 'abstract' or 'geopolitical' but because he makes up fake stuff and pushes that. I'm sorry, but he hasn't said a surprising thing for, like, a year and a half. Except when he claims something that turns out to be untrue.

Mordy wrote to SV that he got what SV was doing, because he himself was doing kinda the same thing with Israel, and I really respect Mordy for writing that - though I read what he says about Israel with a bit of skepticism, lol - and I'm just getting kinda tired of SV's shtick.

oh are we judging posters on whether they say things that are surprising now

LOL

"I'm sorry, but he hasn't said a surprising thing for, like, a year and a half."

https://i.imgur.com/j114jEX.gif

SV is a well known spoofer, for instance I don't believe for a second that he has ever been to Offaly.

Shari Vari is a valuable poster with a unique perspective based on knowledge pulled from sources outside of left twitter. You just don't like him, Fred, because he writes like a person and not like an ideolgical automoton in the creepy little game of internet toy soldiers that has now somehow become the world.

Whether one agrees with his posts in this thread or not is irrelevant. You're general point about him is wrong.

anyways, why doesn't the american president give a shit that the russian government interfered with the american election? it's the middle of june. not a peep out of donnie in all his loudmouth tweeting that we got punked. i'm not saying we should go to war or anything but this entire blase pall over the white house regarding the biggest ratfucking in american history is monumentally bizarre

iirc, he appreciates Putin's battle against western fueled corruption and hyper capitalism.

Trump doesn't want to acknowledge any facts that appear to undermine the legitimacy of his victory. He barely acknowledges that he lost the popular vote and makes excuses for it every time it's brought up. He's a stupid, insecure loser.

if I were an American interested in the long-term destruction of the republican party I'd be rooting for Trump to stay in office as long as possible tbh, I'm in disbelief at how much energy is spent breathlessly following every Russia development on the main Trump thread