Trump and Russia; Spasiba, Harasho!

[Scot Dutchy]

The NATO bases in Europe have a function. They supported Bush's middle east adventures including Iraq.

Which are not required anymore.

[Brian Peacock]

Scot, I think you're confusing Russia's international outlook and foreign policy objectives with NATO's reason for existing. Sure, the Cold Ear is over, but you should ask the people of Ukraine and Crimea if Russia is an honest agent in the region.

[pErvinalia]

There's some cold ear here this morning..

[Brian Peacock]

Damn these lumpen fingers of stone.

[JimC]

I'm waiting for Putin to make his last territorial demand in Europe...

Then for some European politician to use the phrase "peace in our time"...

[Scot Dutchy]

Scot, I think you're confusing Russia's international outlook and foreign policy objectives with NATO's reason for existing. Sure, the Cold Ear is over, but you should ask the people of Ukraine and Crimea if Russia is an honest agent in the region.

That problem has only been aggravated by NATO. Cranking up tension in the Baltic States playing war games. Trump and ejits like him just love it. There are plenty of alternatives to sabre rattling. Try talking? It is the 21st century after all.
NATO has no function which is also true of the UN. They are America's toys to cause tension and sell arms. Just look at the mess Africa is in. The UN 'peace' forces have only caused more problems with rape and pillage. A waste of money going straight into the war lords pockets as are the weapons.

[Seabass]

In a new book, Timothy Snyder explains how Russia revolutionized information warfare—and presages its consequences for democracies in Europe and the United States.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... gn/564032/

In a recent talk in Washington, the historian Timothy Snyder observed that Russia’s annual budget for cyberwarfare is less than the price of a single American F-35 jet. Snyder challenged his audience to consider: Which weapon has done more to shape world events?

But Russia’s most important weapon in its war on factuality was less old-fashioned official mendacity than the creation of an alternative reality (or more exactly, many contradictory alternatives, all of them Putin-serving). “Russia generated tropes targeted at what cyberwar professionals called ‘susceptibilities’: what people seem likely to believe given their utterances and behavior. It was possible to claim that Ukraine was a Jewish construction (for one audience) and also that Ukraine was a facist construction (for another audience),” Snyder writes.

In 2014, Facebook was not yet a decade old; Twitter younger even than that. As a state weak in conventional means of power, Russia early identified the potential to weaponize these new tools against stronger foes. “The Russian economy did not have to produce anything of material value, and did not. Russian politicians had to use technologies created by others to alter mental states, and did.”

Even greater success still awaited the Russian disinformation project: the Trump campaign of 2016. In Snyder’s telling, Trump is himself the ultimate expression of Putin’s anti-factuality. Trump in Snyder’s telling was not the successful businessman he performed in his TV non-reality series, The Apprentice, but an American loser who became a Russian tool. “Russian money had saved him from the fate that would normally await anyone with his record of failure.”

Snyder sees Trump as very much a junior partner in a larger Russian project, less a cause, more an effect. He worries, too, that slowly before Trump—and rapidly after Trump—America is becoming like Russia: a country on a path to economic oligarchy and distorted information. Trump’s attitude to truth again and again reminds Snyder of the Russian ruling elite: The Russian television network RT “wished to convey that all media lied, but that only RT was honest by not pretending to be truthful.”

[Scot Dutchy]

Cant disagree with the last paragraph that is for sure. "The junior partner" absolutely.

[Forty Two]

The NATO bases in Europe have a function. They supported Bush's middle east adventures including Iraq.

Which are not required anymore.

The budget proposal in 2017 called for more base closures, including in Europe -- https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/30/politics ... index.html and https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin ... -in-europe

Overall, there has been a huge drawdown of US troops in western Europe over the last 25 years, and closure of lots of bases. The biggest waste is in Germany right now, where the US has more troops than anywhere else in Europe, and more bases. Close them up. German has the money to take care of itself.

[Scot Dutchy]

Just close NATO and the UN.

[Forty Two]

Just close NATO and the UN.

You're sounding positively Trumpy these days! http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post ... gton-post/

Trump said NATO was obsolete - https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/20 ... -obsolete/ That got him excoriated regularly on CNN and other major media outlets. When Trump said NATO was obsolete, it was because Russia was influencing him.... lol... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... ium-russia It was oh-so-worrying to European allies.... https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38635181

As for UN, we withdrew from the bogus human rights council, and that drew a lot of criticism (since it was Trump doing the withdrawing).

[Brian Peacock]

Yeah, I'm no fan of those bogus human rights, coming over here, putting our homegrown human rights out of business.

In other news, Cohen seals his fate...

... speaking to George Stephanopoulos in the ABC interview, conducted on Saturday at a hotel in New York City, he said: “My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will. I put family and country first.”

In answer to the question of whether he expected Trump to turn on him, Cohen said: “I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy. I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.” ...

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... _clipboard

[Svartalf]

mmmh family And country? well, if I hear it the way he said it, country was but a late addition, after family...

[L'Emmerdeur]

The US Senate committee tasked with reviewing the January, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) has issued a report on its findings.

Some relevant points:

The ICA states that:

We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election. Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.
.
• The Committee found that the ICA provided a range of all-source reporting to support these assessments.

• The Committee concurs with intelligence and open-source assessments that this influence campaign was approved by President Putin.

...

The ICA states that:

Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including targets associated with both major U.S. political parties. We assess Russian intelligence services collected against the U.S . primary campaigns, think tanks, and lobbying groups they viewed as likely to shape future U.S. policies. In July 2015, Russian intelligence gained access to Democratic National Committee (DNC) networks and maintained that access until at least June 2016.

• The Committee found this judgment supported by intelligence and further supported by our own investigation. Separate from the ICA, the Committee has conducted interviews of key individuals who have provided additional insights into these incidents.

...

The FBI had a collection of reports a former foreign intelligence officer was hired to compile as opposition research for the U.S. election, referred to asthe "dossier," when the ICA was drafted. However, those reports remained separate from the conclusions of the ICA. All individuals the Committee interviewed verified that the dossier did not in any way inform the analysis in the ICA - including the key findings - because it was unverified information and had not been disseminated as serialized intelligence reporting.

...

Finally, the Committee notes that, as is the case with all intelligence questions, information continues to be gathered and analyzed. The Committee believes the conclusions of the ICA are sound, and notes that collection and analysis subsequent to the ICA's publication continue to reinforce its assessments.

[Brian Peacock]

So no collusion then?