IS RUSSIA AN EVIL EMPIRE YES OR NO

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?

He, I was going to write something like that exactly to attack Stein. Because, yeah, foreign policy is messy and ugly and involves getting your hands dirty. Which is why I don't condemn HRC for what happened in Haiti or Honduras, she was forced to act under difficult circumstances. But what on earth could be the potential positive change coming from Jill Stein participating in Russian propaganda? She's a nobody who's elected experience amounts to two terms as a town meeting elective in Lexington Massachusetts, with no foreign policy experience whatsoever. She has no power, no influence, nothing whatsoever.

I'm not sure anyone was forcing Clinton to back antidemocratic regimes in Haiti or Honduras when the majority of regional players were firmly behind the alternatives. She did it because she felt it was in the best interests of the US.

fwiw, the RT conference was primarily about 'alternative' news media and its relationship to power in contemporary politics and had speakers from Telesur, 24 hour news in India and the BBC. Stein was on a panel conversation with the former London mayor Ken Livingstone, the former CDU Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic and the former head of the OSCE (the group currently monitoring the Ukraine ceasefire). The whole thing's online if you have 45 minutes to tip down the drain.

Stein may be a moron and i have an inherent distrust of chiropractors to begin with but it doesn't require much speculation as to why she might be interested in news outlets outside of the mainstream.

Stein was on a panel conversation with the former London mayor Ken Livingstone

... bit of an own goal there.

Yes I edited out the preface 'increasingly odd' before his name. There were crankier cranks there too.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/neera-tanden-2016-election-227494

An HRC policy advisor says Russia are funding all the right wing parties in Europe and it's common knowledge. I do note this seems to be in the context of allowing people to infer Putin is behind Trump.

“If you're in Europe, the Russians are openly funding the far-right groups, from [Britain’s] UKIP to [French political leader] Marine Le Pen ... There is widespread knowledge among the center-left parties that that is a rising development,” Tanden added.

Russia is also accused of funding left-wing parties in Greece, Serbia, Spain, etc, without much evidence as well.

No UKIP ties to Russia have ever been uncovered - the sources of the majority of their funding (and the Leave.EU) funding are fairly well established.

Le Pen got a loan from a Russian bank when European banks refused to lend to the FN.

Russian news tends to be soft on both of them but there's no 'funding' or control established.

The alternatives in Honduras or Haiti were hardly perfectly democratic either. That was pretty much the dillema.

They were, however, elected.

Well, elections aren't everything. Clinton called for elections to end the Honduras coup, and I suspect you disagree with that.

We have discussed this before but realpolitik is neither an explanation nor an excuse for backing the Honduran coup opposed by the UN, EU and OAS.

No, it's definitely an explanation.

"backing the Honduran coup" = this is bullshit, SV, which you know and should be above

It has been discussed extensively in the past but she worked to legitimise the post-coup government - to the point at which she was more or less claiming that the coup never took place. This does not mean she was responsible for, or involved in the planning, of the coup itself.

She legitimized it insofar as she said that what's done is done and now new elections need to be held. Unless you are attached to the word "legitimize" (because it is suggestive?) I think a different term might be in order. Like, she didn't condemn the coup sufficiently, or back the removed gov sufficiently. But that is not equivalent to legitimizing it - or if it is, that's an interpretation of the meaning of State's actions, not an indisputable one.

Ppl say that she legitimized the coup bc that's a v easy paradigm thru which to condemn her + State. But if you state what actually happened - there was a coup w/out State participation and they decided the best course of action was shepherding the country towards new elections rather than fight about the coup - it's harder to condemn them.

And she didn't claim the coup never took place, she refused to use the word coup. Which is still shitty, but a different thing.

there was a good reason for not using the term that isn't v shitty. once something is a coup there are mechanics in place that suspend all foreign aid to that country. if the US wanted to continue to deliver aid, they couldn't officially call it a coup. see also: egypt.

Well, that is a sorta shitty reason. Not giving US aid to military dictatorships is, in theory, a pretty good idea. It is, however, another area where realpolitik explains why the US would react differently than the EU and the OAS.

Her exact words were that there was "a strong argument they had followed the law" iirc.

The call for new elections was never neutral. One of the reasons it was rejected by the EU, OAS, etc was that the coup government couldn't be trusted to run them fairly. As it turned out, this was correct - they were characterised by ballot stuffing and the extensive use of death squads. Clinton didn't just call for new elections, she lobbied OAS states to change their position on them.

It is arguably not in the top 50 worst things done by the US government in the last twenty years but an odd Hill for anyone to wish to die on.

Capitalisation entirely unintentional there.

Nobody is dying on any hill here, nobody thinks the coup was a good thing. But that's an odd thing to say when this discussion began with you defending freaking Jill Stein participating in Russian propaganda...

freaking Frederik

Yeah, that's my punk band.

here is actually what she said SV:

Well, let me again try to put this in context. The legislature, the national legislature in Honduras and the national judiciary actually followed the law in removing President Zelaya. Now I didn’t like the way it looked or the way they did it but they had a very strong argument that they had followed the constitution and the legal precedence. And as you know, they really undercut their argument by spiriting him out of the country in his pajamas, where they sent the military to take him out of his bed and get him out of the country. So this began as a very mixed and difficult situation.

If the United States government declares a coup, you immediately have to shut off all aid including humanitarian aid, the Agency for International Development aid, the support that we were providing at that time for a lot of very poor people, and that triggers a legal necessity. There’s no way to get around it. So our assessment was, we will just make the situation worse by punishing the Honduran people if we declare a coup and we immediately have to stop all aid for the people, but we should slow walk and try to stop anything that the government could take advantage of without calling it a coup.

so yes technically she suggested that they followed the law but as you can see that she places that in heavy context

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/07/kremlin-backed-broadcaster-rt-offers-nigel-farage-his-own-show/

i was thinking how the explanation that trump is a putin sucker is not really satisfactory bc really what we're seeing is an international right emerge much like the international left had years earlier. interestingly both spearheaded by respective russian govs but in the case of the international right w/ much more cache already in the west and so instead of mccarthyism we mostly just get throwaway insinuations that greenwald quickly denounces as democratic red-baiting.

which it is

xo

how is accusing trump of being an asset of a fascist "red-baiting" exactly? do you know what red-baiting means?

or do u think putin is a communist? i want to know what form ur dumbassery takes.

Putin *was* a Communist, fuckface

Dems know most Americans have no idea

lolololol u are so dumb i love it

some ppl on the left went from "free pussy riot" to "all hail emperor putin" so quietly it's like they thought no one would notice

kiss me then, asshole xp

i think it's kiss me i'm irish not kiss me i believe linking putin to trump has something to do w/ fearmongering about communism

The international right being 'spearheaded by Russia' is a ludicrous stretch. Russia's primary involvement is running a TV station that occasionally signal boosts people on the democratic fringes of the left and the right opposed to governments it has a beef with. The international right is spearheaded by racist voters and traditional domestic media.

i guess if you read something besides RT you might be aware of Russian involvement in right-wing movements in the world outside of simple propaganda.