We Are All Russian Assets

[JackRiddler]

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(deviation)

I was forgetful and did thread-proliferation. This is a great discussion here so far, and I am for letting it proceed naturally, but let's not forget the big one on the same topic:


The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40434&p=680015#p680015

(okay)

[stickdog99]

I'm interested that moves like this one (by HRC) are still understood through a lens of moral outrage rather than a more complex analysis of what she's trying to accomplish here. I don't think that goal is as simple as actually convincing anyone that Tulsi is a Russky. So what is it? Does she tacitly (via less focus on the sub-clause) solidify that Jill Stein, OTOH, really *is* a Russian asset? Is it an attempt to push Tulsi and Bernie into a conflict if/when he fails to come to her defense? I have no idea but the Clintons like to play this field more than anyone else.

You will concede for all her skill and arts of subterfuge Clinton also has a long record of fucking up and not paying very much for it, so that it has become effectively congenital for her to keep fucking up, also to just engage in superfluous subterfuge as SOP (I think the overrated private e-mail servers are a great example of the latter). Do these people really not see the obvious in how they come across? Often, they do not. Grabbing attention is fun. That is a possible explanation.

Stein should absolutely sue, which TG might join, whereas TG should play this as she has been playing it, as the Clinton slayer, as the lone hero they shouldn't have screwed with, the step too far.

I think all of the above that you mention play into it. In a way Clinton's getting as much revival out of this as Gabbard is getting a boost. Tulsi's been chosen as the preferred attack object. Now that Tulsi hit back decisively, unless Clinton hides for a while (because she decides it was a fuck-up), sooner or later she'll be demanding that Sanders make a strong statement, one way or another. (His only right move would be to laugh and classify all this as ancient history and call them all friends, and I suspect TG understands that perfectly.)

I think the biggest thing it does is to serve general narrative purposes: "All Roads Lead to Russia," New Cold War, everyone who isn't on board with full humanitarian interventionism and glorifying the State Dept-CIA-Pentagon efforts of the last 20+ years before Trump is an Assadist-Trumpian-Putinist, we must save our closest long-term ally ever Courageous Ukraine from the Russian Invasion, etc. etc. etc. All of the above. And for the lulz.

In the short term, this was timed to drop during Sanders' huge AOC-endorsement rally. For some reason, I get the feeling that this bizarre gambit was cooked up at a Neera Tanden dinner party. Not only does it play to Anybody But Bernie in terms of the MSDNC crowds' newly programmed Two Minutes of Russia Hate addicts, but it also has the potential to drive some of Sanders' "Anybody But Hillary" hardcore leftist and Joe Rogan independent supporters to Gabbard, at least temporarily. At minimum, this will rob Sanders of some potential contributors' dollars.

IMHO, what the DNC most wants now is a brokered convention. In this situation, the more Gabbard delegates the better because they can be painted as "tainted" Russian delegates.

[stickdog99]

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The entire OP article can be underscored, but this bit in particular is appropriate here in this forum, a microcosm of the macro dynamics relayed by Taibbi and others:

Taibbi:

This witch-hunting insanity isn’t just dangerous, it’s a massive breach from reality. Trump’s campaign was a clown show. He had almost no institutional backing. His “ground game” was nonexistent: his “campaign” was a TV program based almost wholly around unscripted media appearances. Trump raised just over half the $1.2 billion Hillary pulled in (making him the first presidential candidate dating back to 1976 to win with a funds deficit). He didn’t prepare a victory speech, for the perfectly logical reason that he never expected to win.

Even if you posit the most elaborate theories of Russian interference (which I don’t, but of course I’m denialist scum), what happened in 2016 was still almost entirely a domestic story, with Trump benefiting from long-developing public rejection of the political establishment.

Rather than confront the devastating absurdity of defeat before an ad-libbing game show host who was seemingly trying to lose – a black comedy that is 100% in America’s rich stupidity tradition – Democrats have gone all-in on this theory of foreign infiltration. House speaker Nancy Pelosi even said as much in a White House meeting, pointing at Trump and proclaiming: “All roads lead to Putin.”

All? Seriously? Is this ever going to end?

I'd be interested in the perspective of anyone that's been softly (and/or overtly) advocating the pro-establishment Russia/Ukraine narratives here over the last several years. By all means, state your case, in your own words.



*edit to add underline.

In my experience, this class of observer will merely ignore Tiabbi's analysis and move right along to the next tantalizing RUSSIA-DID-IT breadcrumb.

[Joe Hillshoist]

One thing the Russians have been really fucken good at in the last 5 years, across the entire western world, is spreading division and discord.

At the very least enabling us to do it ourselves.

So in that sense Tabbibi is literally right.

And before youse all lose it - I agree with the article. Its hard to find fault with it.

But after decades of post reality politics we shouldn't be surprised about this. It was bound to happen (again) sooner or later.

[bks]

Wow, some vintage RI discussion on a worthy topic.

belligerent savant wrote:

One point of clarification: acknowledging that the 'Russia Meddling' narrative has been an outright smokescreen/disinfo campaign (or at least, that whatever meddling that may have been attempted by Russia was inconsequential to the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election) does NOT = alignment with Russia/Putin objectives.

Yes to this. Ridiculous it even has to be said.

Who knows exactly why Clinton decided to attack Gabbard now, but two things stand out to me: Gabbard's continuing focus on "regime change wars", and her voicing of opposition to them at a Democratic party primary debate. Debates are party turf, and she was crossing a line that rarely gets crossed in front of millions of viewers. We know that the duopoly officially conspires in the form of the Committee on Presidential Debates to keep third-partyish narratives off center stage during the part of the campaign season when everybody is actually paying some attention, but when we're still a long time out there is still a need for defensive actions like Clinton's when a sacred cow risks being slaughtered. Basically Clinton is saying, "who the fuck is this 'Assad lover' to say ANYTHING like that in my house? The DNC can't keep her entirely out the picture (yet), so Clinton (stupidly, vainly) attacked her for opposing a war Clinton officially backed in Syria. Gabbard fought back and made HRC look like the murderous, vain POS she is (though Gabbard is garbage too).

When we're talking #Russiagate we should remember: It's primarily about the assertion of the right over an informational domain, the right to propagandize a public with OUR propaganda and OUR fake news. This is the "crime" Russia is says to have committed: it's not primarily that they circulated false information. It's that they breached a domain that's off limits to them. Only authorized entities can propagandize the US public. This is one reason the groups that have been officially deputized to "protect" us from bad ol' Russian interference on Facebook and elsewhere can be openly NATO-aligned (Atlantic Council, Alliance for Securing Democracy, etc) and no one says much about it. It's NOT about tactics, either. The Democratic Party engaged in the Project Birmingham and Dry Alabama schemes IN THE LAST ELECTION CYCLE, during the screaming about fake news and Russian interference, but of course when they were caught the justification was that they were only doing what our intelligence agencies did during the Cold War: testing the effectiveness of the devilish things the Russkies were doing in earnest.

[liminalOyster]

One thing the Russians have been really fucken good at in the last 5 years, across the entire western world, is spreading division and discord.

At the very least enabling us to do it ourselves.

So in that sense Tabbibi is literally right.

And before youse all lose it - I agree with the article. Its hard to find fault with it.

But after decades of post reality politics we shouldn't be surprised about this. It was bound to happen (again) sooner or later.

There's a huge difference (one that defined geopolitical epochs, even, maybe) between promoting "division and discord" and promoting a worldwide hall of paranoid mirrors where lines of power are hermetically inaccessible for reveal and analysis in order to (relatively) more quietly focus on securing future energy/resource needs.

[Joe Hillshoist]

One thing the Russians have been really fucken good at in the last 5 years, across the entire western world, is spreading division and discord.

At the very least enabling us to do it ourselves.

So in that sense Tabbibi is literally right.

And before youse all lose it - I agree with the article. Its hard to find fault with it.

But after decades of post reality politics we shouldn't be surprised about this. It was bound to happen (again) sooner or later.

There's a huge difference (one that defined geopolitical epochs, even, maybe) between promoting "division and discord" and promoting a worldwide hall of paranoid mirrors where lines of power are hermetically inaccessible for reveal and analysis in order to (relatively) more quietly focus on securing future energy/resource needs.

There were people associated with Russia at successful anti CSG mining protests I was involved with. Well that's my opinion. It was weird tho. It seems to me Russia is a doing an excellent job of securing its position in the world in a way it hasn't done since the 1970s.

Its hardly the same scale as US meddling post cold war for example. But its not that different to the sort of interference fossil fuel interests have run on Global Warming.

The fact this is even questioned is a great example of how good a job they are doing.

The US for example does all sorts of nefarious shit. Why wouldn't any other super power?

[Belligerent Savant]

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I may not be fully tracking your point, but no one here is questioning whether or not Russia meddles; go back 1 page on this very thread for specific references of other nations meddling/attempting to interfere in foreign elections/sovereignty, including Russia (and the U.S., of course).

The core point here, is that "Russia" is not the cause for the results of 2016. We need only look within the confines of these great United States for that.


[Side-note: good to see bks chiming in again, by the way... and you too Joe, despite your foggy view of this board's dynamics of late... in short, egregious flood/spam activity by 2 handles here have surpassed the limits of tolerance. See Mac's last couple posts -- link below -- for a salty but fully accurate rendering.]

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=41883&start=30#p680125

[overcoming hope]

Joy Behar says Russia is using Tulsi Gabbard because she's a 'useful idiot'

Yahoo TV Todd Garrin October 21, 2019

Joy Behar didn’t hold back during a conversation about Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Monday’s episode of “The View,” calling the presidential candidate a “useful idiot.”

Her comment came after Hillary Clinton revealed that she believes there’s a democratic candidate who is a “favorite of the Russians.” Though Clinton didn’t specifically name Gabbard, many have pointed at the congresswoman as the target of her accusations.

“I don’t say that Tulsi is an agent. I just think that she could be a useful idiot the way Trump is a useful idiot to the Russians,” said Behar. “They see something and they say, ‘Oh look, a useful idiot! Let’s play this!’” she added.

[overcoming hope]

David Frum: "Trump last night defended Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard against charges of Russian influence. He wasn't supposed to do that, he was supposed to pretend they were not all on the same team."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

David Jeffrey Frum Canadian-American political commentator.

A speechwriter for President George W. Bush, Frum later authored the first book about Bush's presidency written by a former member of the administration. He is credited with inspiring the phrase "axis of evil" in Bush's 2002 State of the Union address.

He is a senior editor at The Atlantic as well as an MSNBC contributor.

[overcoming hope]

Tulsi Gabbard invokes Trump's 'fake news' rhetoric to push back on report of Russia-linked support

By Devan Cole, CNN

Washington (CNN)Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard on Sunday characterized a recent critical report about her campaign as "fake news," invoking a defense oft-used by President Donald Trump to attack the credibility of negative press coverage.

Appearing on ABC's "This Week," Gabbard was asked about her record on Russia by host George Stephanopoulos, who cited an article published last week by The Daily Beast titled "Tulsi Gabbard's Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists."

The piece said her campaign was being "underwritten by some of the nation's leading Russophiles," citing donations from three supporters of the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The piece noted that Gabbard, who represents Hawaii, "is one of her party's more Russia-friendly voices in an era of deep Democratic suspicion of the country over its efforts to tip the 2016 election in favor" of Trump.

"You know, it's unfortunate that you're citing that article, George, because it's a whole lot of fake news," Gabbard said. "What I am focused on is what is in the best interest of the American people. What is in the best interest of our national security. Keeping the American people safe."

The congresswoman did not specify what in the article was "fake." Her campaign did not respond to CNN's request for comment on Monday.
Gabbard's use of the term "fake news" to dismiss the article echoed Trump's repeated use of the term to attack the credibility of negative coverage both he and his administration have received from various outlets.

Democrats and other opponents of Trump have denounced his use of the term, arguing that by calling legitimate news fake, the President is chipping away at the credibility of the American press.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/politics ... index.html

[Joe Hillshoist]

.

I may not be fully tracking your point, but no one here is questioning whether or not Russia meddles; go back 1 page on this very thread for specific references of other nations meddling/attempting to interfere in foreign elections/sovereignty, including Russia (and the U.S., of course).

The core point here, is that "Russia" is not the cause for the results of 2016. We need only look within the confines of these great United States for that.


[Side-note: good to see bks chiming in again, by the way... and you too Joe, despite your foggy view of this board's dynamics of late... in short, egregious flood/spam activity by 2 handles here have surpassed the limits of tolerance. See Mac's last couple posts -- link below -- for a salty but fully accurate rendering.]

http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/ ... 30#p680125

Yes I've responded to that. Its probably best if you read that to get a handle on my position.

I agree with the bolded.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Just out of interest what exactly are

"The limits of tolerence".

[stickdog99]

Tulsi Gabbard invokes Trump's 'fake news' rhetoric to push back on report of Russia-linked support

Democrats and other opponents of Trump have denounced his use of the term, arguing that by calling legitimate news fake, the President is chipping away at the credibility of the American press.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/20/politics ... index.html

LOL. And Sanders is why Clinton lost, and tax breaks to billionaires lift all boats.

[JackRiddler]

Wow.

Given how much they've helped him, the DNC-NYT should ask Trump to take the effort just once and read the dictionary out loud.

Then every word one could conceivably use in saying things undesirable to the establishment Democrats and corporate media would have been said by Trump at some time, and therefore off-bounds.

I've literally run into the same thing at school, with my intent to use PD Scott's terminology of the deep state. Fellow scholars were very curious what that was, and understood that it's a very useful conceptual tool. Then this bozo went, shot off his mouth in typically sloppy fashion, and Trumpified it. Now it's automatically associated with him and his usage of it.

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