There have been quite too many close calls to feel comfortable about that.
The Trump Presidency | Biden Inaugurated
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) and Jamie (@Vault Dweller) are here to celebrate rare back-to-back victories for Manchester United! They analyse the late win in the Europa League vs. Rangers and then try and find things to analyse in a pretty dour game vs. Fulham. They also chat about the latest Marcus Rashford news, and look at the latest transfer news.
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Makes sense to be friends with the Russians in that case, at the end will be no wars and just 2 superpowers adding a few more toys and provoking china to a bigger spending in nuclear weapons and less in infrastructures. USSR version 2.0
Do you think that the world will be a better place with China or Russia as the most powerful nations? Do you think they will be more democratic, more tending to the needs of their citizens and (of course!) to the citizens of other nations?
Or perhaps you believe that it would be better when many countries have about the same strength? Unfortunately, history has proven otherwise. When there are many mini-powers, there are constant wars till one becomes much stronger than all the others, and then the wars stop because most countries do not want to self-destruct. There are many local and global historical examples, from Ancient Rome to modern USA. The planet was the most peaceful when there was a single superpower. Today, we live in an extremely peaceful era, compared to the past.
@nick2004
For the first paragraph, I think the more interesting question is how boldly expansionist China/Russia would be. Given that the overwhelming economic/technological dominance of Western Europe+US was always at the forefront of Soviet thinking, we can assume they would be much bolder, leading again to a unipolar world with a powerful state having imperial ambitions. Or if, for example, WW1 crippled Europe much worse, and the German empire wasn't able to kill all their own rebelling commies, then it gets into very alternative history scenarios based on the types of communists who would gain power there. Based on a quick browse through wiki, Rosa Luxemburg was very critical of the Soviet decisions to concentrate power, create a huge bureacracy, and suppress the workers' committees ('Soviets'), but at the same time didn't support their decision to give "self determination" (at least on paper) to different nationalities within the USSR.
For the 2nd, I think the relevant sections in the link @InfiniteBoredom sent are the intro, Iraq, and the massaging the numbers section.
For the first paragraph, I think the more interesting question is how boldly expansionist China/Russia would be. Given that the overwhelming economic/technological dominance of Western Europe+US was always at the forefront of Soviet thinking, we can assume they would be much bolder, leading again to a unipolar world with a powerful state having imperial ambitions. Or if, for example, WW1 crippled Europe much worse, and the German empire wasn't able to kill all their own rebelling commies, then it gets into very alternative history scenarios based on the types of communists who would gain power there. Based on a quick browse through wiki, Rosa Luxemburg was very critical of the Soviet decisions to concentrate power, create a huge bureacracy, and suppress the workers' committees ('Soviets'), but at the same time didn't support their decision to give "self determination" (at least on paper) to different nationalities within the USSR.
For the 2nd, I think the relevant sections in the link @InfiniteBoredom sent are the intro, Iraq, and the massaging the numbers section.
tl;dr
Is he Stalin or is he Hitler? Make up your minds.
The Soviets had a defector who was willing to tell them the exact location and time (accurate to within 5 minutes) of the invasion, but Stalin said that there had been too many false alarms and didn't believe him.
He's a poor mans Wilhelm II.
The Orange Berlusconi
He's got it ass backwards. The Russia story represents a failure of the media to adequately get to the bottom of it. There are angles that haven't been nearly investigated enough, especially Trump's connections with Russian banks, Flynn's connection with the Putin government, the role Carter Page played as an intermediary between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, Roger Stone's backchannel with Assange. Instead of being a flaming drama queen attempting to carve out his own alternative view, Greenwald like a good investigative journalist should be looking into all the aforementioned points.
Verbatim quote, apparently.
He's still banging on about "winning big" and knowing so because the Dems cancelled fireworks, blah blah blah. His self backslapping tweets are really tiresome now, however this latest one just shows how completely ignorant about the World he really is.
It seems like you agree with him about the low journalistic standards. Or is it that you want more nonsense published as long as it builds on the current narrative? Like a scientist who already decided the outcome of an experiment and tries until he gets the results he wants.
Should be interpreted as threat or disbelief that they have the capability? Hard to know with the nihilist troll.
It's this shit that really gets to me with him. How can the leader of a country of that size be so unintelligent?
Is there anything out there to suggest that he's actually quite smart, but just has a strange way of talking? It's ridiculous.
Someone fecking shoot me
So glad these are the watchmen as Trump comes to power.
There's no prejudging of the outcome when the Intelligence community is in broad agreement of what happened and have released a technical report to explain their conclusions. Proper investigative journalists should be taking these findings and combining them with various other unresolved strands that may be relevant to the broader picture. Do Trump's taxes contain evidence he owes money to foreign banks (beyond Deutsche Bank). Are any of Trump's debts tied to Russian companies or the Russian government ? What is the actual relationship between members of the Trump campaign like Flynn, Page, Epshteyn, Manafort and the Russian government ? Was there any collusion between the campaign and Putin or intermediary groups representing Putin during the campaign ? There are endless questions that need to be explored by investigative journalists.
Greenwald, in his gleeful enthusiasm to portray himself as the purveyor of the alternative view, is in the process actually criticizing journos who are doing their jobs, simply because he rather bizarrely disagrees with the idea that Putin should be under the microscope for what he has done.
If they are investigated we will know only if and when they find something. Of course Putin and Russia should be scrutinized. Screaming 'Russia' every time a common malware used by actors all over the world is found doesn't help though like the power plant story.
I don't have an issue with stories linking Russian malware to the electric grid. The Russians are actively looking at various ways to engage in sabotage in the US.
Earlier this year a spy was caught attempting to find ways to destabilize the stock market by finding ways to create a litany of HFT flash crashes.
http://moneymorning.com/2016/08/23/how-russian-spies-nearly-hatched-a-u-s-stock-market-crash/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/russ...nnection-conspiracy-work-russian-intelligence
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ctually-a-russian-spy/?utm_term=.d184857f8d4c
This actually happened and would be far worse than Russian malware found on a laptop belong to electric grid operators, so Greenwald and his drama queenish attempts at taking the heat off the Russians can feck right off as far as I'm concerned. This shit is real and will only get worse, especially if the likes of Greenwald succeed in coaxing people to bury their heads in the sand.
The malware on the laptop and in the report has a Ukrainian website, is outdated, comes with an FAQ, is freely available and should be detected and blocked by a decent malware blocker. It is possible but why would the russian government use this to attack the american power grid? Whatever they have to connect certain attacks to Russia they are still holding on to.
Like in 2003?
Greenwald's website has put Trump under the microscope for a variety of things, including the funding of his cabinet picks, their past views, his own hypocrisy, etc. Investigative journalism, but not something that feeds into the conspiracy theory dominating everything right now.
Edit: he's criticising journalists for repeatedly failing at their jobs, as represented by the fact that key parts of these big anti-Russian scoops need to be changed post-publication (the photos in the tweet).
Not sure how this is remotely analogous or relevant.
I've seen Greenwald on tv within the past week criticizing the Russia coverage as if its a non story. This happened before the malware on a laptop story the other day. He is on some sort of crusade against anyone being critical of Russia regarding the DNC hacks, Trump/Putin, and the Assange connection. Instead of grandstanding for attention, he needs to put his brilliant journalism skills to work and follow crumbs left behind by Putin and Trump.
It's relevant because the intelligence community and their favoured journalists knew the "truth" in 2003, and very conscientiously dug for more too till they found something. On the basis that the intelligence services must be right.
A lot of journalists are doing that today too and are apparently not finding that much. Greenwald's "brilliant journalism" since ~2006 has mostly been looking at official documents and contradictions within them (like drone death tolls), and stuff about privacy especially leaks. During this election he was leaked one document about Russia, the one which ultimately was published by Slate and then harshly criticised by WaPo itself as baseless. The Intercept then wrote a long article about why they didn't publish the story.
This is from his latest article:
Since it is so often distorted, permit me once again to underscore my own view on the broader Russia issue: Of course it is possible that Russia is responsible for these hacks, as this is perfectly consistent with (and far more mild than) what both Russia and the U.S. have done repeatedly for decades.
But given the stakes involved, along with the incentives for error and/or deceit, no rational person should be willing to embrace these accusations as Truth unless and until convincing evidence has been publicly presented for review, which most certainly has not yet happened. As the above articles demonstrate, this week’s proffered “evidence” — the U.S. government’s evidence-free report — should raise rather than dilute suspicions. It’s hard to understand how this desire for convincing evidence before acceptance of official claims could even be controversial, particularly among journalists.
But given the stakes involved, along with the incentives for error and/or deceit, no rational person should be willing to embrace these accusations as Truth unless and until convincing evidence has been publicly presented for review, which most certainly has not yet happened. As the above articles demonstrate, this week’s proffered “evidence” — the U.S. government’s evidence-free report — should raise rather than dilute suspicions. It’s hard to understand how this desire for convincing evidence before acceptance of official claims could even be controversial, particularly among journalists.
Its actually not relevant to compare it to the WMD debacle, which is more or less the same lazy trope used by people with no idea how intelligence gathering and assessments work.
The convincing evidence nonsense is just a convenient move the goalposts device to avoid the reality of what has happened. In Greenwald's world convincing evidence would obviously involve disclosing sources and methods, which the Government is likely not willing to do for obvious reasons, which he knows. Therefore this is just another drama queenish way to grandstand himself into the spotlight as if he is some sort of moral arbiter of what construes good journalism.
On a more prosaic note, I see Trump is struggling to find big-name artists to perform at his inauguration. Obama had Beyonce and Aretha Franklin - Trump has managed to get the runner-up from 'America's Got Talent' and has also asked Rebecca Ferguson, who was the runner-up on British X-Factor 5 or 6 years ago.
All credit to Ferguson, she's said she'll do it if she can sing Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit". Good for her.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...erform-at-donald-trumps-inauguration-ceremony
All credit to Ferguson, she's said she'll do it if she can sing Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit". Good for her.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/artic...erform-at-donald-trumps-inauguration-ceremony
So he is going to stop North Korea from developing / testing a missile... this should be interesting because other than unconditional surrender to kim fatty the third I'm not sure there are many viable options?
WikiLeaks founder: Obama admin trying to ‘delegitimize' Trump.
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...nder-obama-admin-trying-to-delegitimize-trump
http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-brief...nder-obama-admin-trying-to-delegitimize-trump
Russian government hackers do not appear to have targeted Vermont utility, say people close to investigation.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...c25956-d12c-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/worl...c25956-d12c-11e6-945a-76f69a399dd5_story.html
Because, in their wisdom, the American public deemed celebrity and wealth to be sufficient merit for the role. The idiots.
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2017/01/election-hack-faq/
It's the mess of a report that shows no association to Russia at all that has caused confusion. But I guess they did have a disclaimer that there were no warranties about the technical details that has now caused embarrassment.
Difficulto to say he abolished slavery?
The comments on that article....
Assange's strategy is pathetically obvious - get Trump elected, suck up to the conservative press and establishment, and in the process get Trump to pardon him and/or not pursue any sort of charges for the Manning leaks so he can then go free.
My New Year's resolution will be to not read comments. I started to read them in articles about a year ago. They make you wonder about mankind.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...us_586b00e0e4b0d9a5945c34c6?vepm1jwijg7mpwrk9
I really feel we are watching the slow rise of a nazi lite here. Trump is the catalyst for the rule book being thrown out the window and after this, almost anything goes. The genocide will occur on all sides through needless war and profiteering all because the authoritarian figures want our unquestionable adoration and not the betterment of humanity.
Will we ever evolve as a community from this mentality of fear and greed. To fear a terrorist attack is rational but my whole family could be wiped out by someone checking a phone text on the highway. That fear is in all of us and I myself am highly aware of a threat when I enter the cinema but I won't vote for a Trump or Putin figure based on that fear. I will vote for someone who represents a sensible, ethical and equal plan for our future. Republicans have not represented any of that for the last twenty five years and use every dirty trick at their disposal to press that jackboot on our necks and will continue to do that until the fools amongst us see the light.
Maybe republicans will go off the reservation with their hatred for liberals and institute The Purge the day before Election Day, I would be well on for it, let's make those three million people count
I really feel we are watching the slow rise of a nazi lite here. Trump is the catalyst for the rule book being thrown out the window and after this, almost anything goes. The genocide will occur on all sides through needless war and profiteering all because the authoritarian figures want our unquestionable adoration and not the betterment of humanity.
Will we ever evolve as a community from this mentality of fear and greed. To fear a terrorist attack is rational but my whole family could be wiped out by someone checking a phone text on the highway. That fear is in all of us and I myself am highly aware of a threat when I enter the cinema but I won't vote for a Trump or Putin figure based on that fear. I will vote for someone who represents a sensible, ethical and equal plan for our future. Republicans have not represented any of that for the last twenty five years and use every dirty trick at their disposal to press that jackboot on our necks and will continue to do that until the fools amongst us see the light.
Maybe republicans will go off the reservation with their hatred for liberals and institute The Purge the day before Election Day, I would be well on for it, let's make those three million people count
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No but I guess he has no idea what Lincoln accomplished in the specified period
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