http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-property/

Nothing about interference in the election sure, but non-stories like this are still being run constantly. "Trump claimed he never did business in Russia, but Russia did business with him!" Yet still, many of the people who read the headline will infer something sinister, despite wealthy Russians buying up property everywhere.

If Comey has something real, which he may, then that may be a story, but the kind of **** I just posted is what I'm speaking about specifically.

Yeah. That's not war mongering.

Chomsky's position is obviously the more moral one. At the heart of it, Chomsky's arguing that all human beings have equal worth, and so any justification for actions that bring about the death of innocents is completely reckless and morally bankrupt. His argument is something like this: all human life is of equal value. All lives have dignity. Therefore, it is a complete failure of justice when the powerful are not held accountable when they make negligent (or malevolent) decisions that result in the death of innocent civilians. The fact that they happen to be powerful does not somehow make them less culpable when they take the lives of innocent people. They are murderers, and it's an outrage that our society lets them get away with it.

That is a powerfully moral argument. It's founding premise is a liberal principle that is indisputably just and fair. And it's a strong justification for the view that state violence and is no different in kind from other forms of violence (such as Islamic terrorism).

Nonetheless, some of his responses to Harris are still quite weak. "Hitler thought he was doing good, too, so Clinton was just as evil as Hitler, and maybe Clinton's actually even worse" isn't terribly convincing. It doesn't respond to the argument about the intention very well. Then again, Harris also did a terrible job making a case for it.

But maybe they could've actually had a productive discussion, if Chomsky's first impulse had been to engage Harris seriously, rather than to berate him?

I think Chomsky's first impulse was to berate him because what he knew of him was probably obnoxious. Sam was just being his normal self (or at least public persona) there, where he refuses to let an argument proceed unless someone concedes that his a priori assumptions are correct and will form the basis for the discussion, which is not a discussion at all. You can see the same kind of thing in many of his interactions, like his semi-recent podcast with Jordan Peterson. https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/speaking-of-truth-with-jordan-b.-peterson

I agree that Chomsky was being dismissive of Harris, but I believe his intent in doing so was totally justified, because Harris gets stuck in these kinds of quandries (quandries? wtf that was ****ty word choice) often, which is the root of his making a terrible case. Now, he acknowledges this and incorporates it into his schtick, and he is correct in worrying that people will talk past eachother (always been a problem, but never more than now in recent memory) but the way he approaches things causes me to view him as some sort of weird Joseph Smith for atheists. Or perhaps Sidney Rigdon or Martin Harris (no relation?) since Joseph Smith was the Donald Trump of his day and I really should keep that comparison virginal because it's too amazing.

There is an evangelical quality to him. Whenever he goes on a tear about Islam, it definitely has a fire and brimstone quality to it.

I really don't know that much about Wahhabism, but the U.S. has definitely backed religious extremism because during those decades, Soviet influence was associated with secularism. The best ally against secular government is religious extremism.

The Mujahideen are a perfect example of dangerous and reckless foreign policy. Some people will say they were the Taliban, the reading I've done suggests that's not so much, the Taliban was more formed from the remnants of these groups, but yeah, what you said is a perfect example.


Russia's position is to fight ISIS and back up Assad, more or less. Without interference from U.S. allies, we could be wholly condemning of that position. When the U.S. arms "rebel groups", which have multiple times been found to go rogue and prey on Syrian civilians, and close U.S. allies are funding ISIS, it gives credence to the Russian position in Syria. I don't think it's untrue propaganda that the U.S. was not attempting to topple Assad and failed. It's propaganda, but probably true.


Permitting your friends to fund ISIS is not a small, whoopsy-daisy circumstance. It's not even typical realpoliticking, it's a big, serious issue. Not to mention the U.S. has funded and armed plenty of "rebel groups" in Syria, which, for as ambiguous as it sounds, is pretty much exactly what they did regarding the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.



If by "ally", you mean Putin was happy to allow the U.S. to invade a sovereign nation if they would be able to commit atrocities in Chechnya.



Is sardonic humor not your style? I'm well aware that the situation in Syria was triggered by the Arab spring (thanks, Wikileaks) but the conflict has been seen as a source of potential advantage by the U.S. That doesn't make Assad nice, but pumping weapons and money into the situation has made it far worse; which provokes a Russian response, which makes things worse. Iraq and Libya were worse off and suffered more from ISIS due to U.S. destabilizing the regions, because it's actually often better to live under a slightly fearful dictator who can control his army than under local warlords.

So you're saying that Islamic religious figures and Hezbollah invented some terrorist methods and justifications. Sure, but that doesn't discuss the motivations for terrorism. Plenty of people in the west say really stupid things like this, but they don't get taken seriously; under what circumstances are extremists taken seriously?

When I made that comment I was making a jab at Hillary, suggesting that her record of hawkish foreign policy is a reason she had less support from young people in the early parts of the election. I'm not accusing U.S. media of trying to push a war agenda.



Which Russian interference? The election news is over, that story is now a plethora of articles attempting to build a case that Trump is Russian (/s). Or maybe it's just me, but I haven't read a single article about the wiretapping thing, because it's such lowbrow political ****flinging that it takes up the space of real stories, like how bad the Republican healthcare plan is. (I know that IS being discussed, but it's far more substantial at this point than whatever stupid **** Trump says, Trump is illiterate and confused, I don't see the point in listening to his rantings)

Like, people accuse Wikileaks of distracting from Trump, I think Trump is doing a much better job at distracting from news.

Ha: "it gives credence to the Russian position in Syria"? You probably should probably stop thinking of this war as a proxy war, where the primary contestants are the US and Russia, who are competing with each other over who occupies the moral high ground.

The US initially demanded that Assad step down, because Obama's policy during the Arab Spring was to side with the peoples of the countries who were protesting against their dictators, rather than the dictators because he was hopeful that democracy would emerge, and America wants to be on the side of democracies. It's still US policy to demand that Assad steps down eventually (even if after an interim period, sometime after the civil war is resolved through a peace treaty), but there's growing consensus that that won't happen, because Assad will likely win. Meanwhile, Russian involvement in the war is costly to Russia, because by aligning with Alawite/Shi'ite Syrian regime and Shi'ite Iran, it's incensed Sunnis within Russia's own borders and around it. But Syria was historically a Soviet ally, so the US doesn't really have a particularly strong relationship with Syria. It doesn't have any specific interests that it needs achieve by involving itself in the war, except it has an interest in regional stability, and resolving the refugee crisis, which is negatively affecting Europe. Alternatively, Russia has various military assets that it didn't want to lose, which would happen if Assad is defeated.

Arming rebel groups isn't some sort of massive hypocrisy that it was critical for America to avoid, again, as if US foreign policy is organized around avoiding bad PR. It's a strategic blunder, for sure. But if you live in Syria, you probably care if you're personally affected by it negatively, and you probably don't if you aren't.



lol. The US may be a superpower, but it doesn't dictate foreign policy to its allies. It obviously annoyed Obama endlessly that they couldn't stop Israel from building settlements. But at the end of the day, countries have only little amounts of leverage they can use to nudge their allies. And it can be costly for the alliance if its pushed it too far. (Although Hillary's 10-month settlement freeze in 2010 was actually an impressive accomplishment, especially given that no other president/sec of state had been able to accomplish it. And she did while Netanyahu was prime minister, no less). The Saudis didn't need the Americans' "permission" to fund ISIS.

It's also not as much of a "big, serious issue" as you suggest. ISIS may seem to you (and to many) like a modern day Nazi regime -- the very embodiment of evil. But countries don't bring such moralistic terms into their calculations when making strategic decisions. Why is ISIS a problem? Because of security concerns (both the homeland and the security of allies) and regional balance of power issues.

Even from the standpoint of concerns about anti-Americanism, the spread of ISIS isn't an unambiguous problem. To many Sunnis in western Iraq (Sunnis being the majority in the parts of Iraq where ISIS took most of its territory), ISIS was greeted as liberators. The Sunnis there detested the overbearing influence of the Iraqi federal government, which is dominated by the Shiite majority in the east. The Sunnis are also generally the most embittered towards America as a whole, because they were the big losers from Saddam being ousted.



I mean by ally that he supplied the US with extensive intelligence resources about Islamic militants in Afghanistan that were collected by the Soviets during the Russia in the 80s, and gave permission to the US to build military bases in former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

Clinton and Bush were both publicly critical of the Russians over Chechnya. They both frequently angered Yeltsin/Putin by referring to the Chechnyan militants as separatists, which legitimized their efforts at independence (although they sometimes used the Russian terminology, and called them terrorists. But it was only occasional, and politically motivated).

But, yea, I love how in your mind it's still the fault of the US when Russia commits atrocities because we "let" them do it.



No, it's not a rule that the more the US get involved, the worse things get. ISIS has lost 25% of its territory because of the role US military advisors have played in organizing coalitions of fighters on the ground. As I said before, Russia has its own interests in Syria that have nothing to do with the US. Russia didn't get involved because the humanitarian situation got worse. It got involved because Assad was losing.



Oh, I thought you changed your mind about US interventionism! /s

The fact that Obama made his distaste for Israel public, though, is not insignificant. The U.S. has been covering for, lying about Saudi support.


The problem with the Saudis isn't limited to ISIS. It's common knowledge that they are one of, if not the, single largest funder of terrorism in the region. The government has claimed multiple times that it's a few, rogue princes in Saudi Arabia, but the email we've been discussing shows it was common knowledge that the government funds very bad people. Meaning we were directly lied to.

Maybe it doesn't matter to you that one of the biggest problems in the entire region is politically protected by the United States. I don't know.


"ISIS isn't really that bad", okay. Yes they are not literal Nazis.


Putin had no stake in Afghanistan, but helping the U.S. enabled him to enact "counter-terrorist" policies of his own.


Not even limiting us to Chechnya, the U.S. has been largely overlooking Chinese "counter-terrorism" as well. The early 2000's the U.S. led a cavalry charge of a sort of neo-imperialism guised as "counter-terrorism".


You're right in that, for any given specific action it may help or hurt, but as a general rule, stronger U.S. presence = more suffering.

I mean, Russia interfered in our presidential election. And there are numerous indications that suggest the president might be involved, even if there isn't definitive proof? Of course there are going to be articles! It would be a massively big ****ing deal. It's not an unhealthy obsession. It's not tying up the hands of reporters who would rather be working on other things.

Who needs to hear Saudi Arabia repent for funding ISIS? Who will it help? I think the decapitated Shia would rather have their heads back than an apology.




Oh, so now you're promoting regime change? /s



Ok, so what's your explanation for why it's such a "big, serious issue" that the Saudis funded ISIS?




Putin's interest was a thaw in US-Russian relations, because he wanted foreign capital investment from the west to jump start his economy. Then the price of oil soared, and it beacme much less important.




Oh my god. This really made me see the futility in debating with you.



Yeah, cool opinion man.

Yes, so if something tangible comes out, report on that, not post suggestive nonstories.

Well thanks for sharing your cool opinions too Eversor, I had a great time discussing things with you.

I'm going to guess that with the Reuters article you posted, investigative journals looked into the properties to see if there was anything unsavory. The paper wasn't going to publish nothing after dedicating resources to it. Investigative journalism is expensive.

Hacking also isn't the only way that Russia could interfere in the election, or the only way that Trump could be implicated in a scandal with a foreign country/foreign citizens. There is also concern that Trump could have violated the emoluments clause by being paid off by wealthy investors outside the country, who are buying his properties in exchange for political favors. It's not exactly a "nonstory". Very far from it, in fact.

Foreign citizens are buying his properties. Does it mean that there's an exchange of money for favors? Not necessarily. But it's still in the public interest to know that there might be a conflict of interest.

For starters, religious brainwashing works really, really well, under the right circumstances. Turning it violent is easily within the means of even the smallest power--it requires only the will to do so, to paraphrase Dr. Strangelove (actually, according to Adam Curtis's film Hypernormalization, the then new invention of suicide bombing was initially characterized by many as a "poor man's nuclear bomb", with its ability to strike terror into the enemy on a dime).

Clearly, though, this kind of nightmare doesn't emerge in functioning societies that don't face continuing threats to their existence and autonomy (although ISIS is trying to extend it even to the West, with their online propaganda, so you can probably gauge how bad things have to get before it takes with your average young devout economically depressed man).

N.b. Since I probably just hit a record of nefarious keywords in this post, let me make it clear to the NSA employee reading this post that I am wholey against ISIS and all forms of terrorism. :-p

Let me make it clear to the NSA's minimally skilled civilian contractor sifting through mountains of purestrain internet bull****: Congrats on your high paid government job building a database that can only possibly be used to suppress political opposition to your appointed bosses. I hope you remember your professional pride when you and your entire family is dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and purged to conceal the sins of the coming undemocratic coup you personally enabled.

have you seen southland tales

So... ugh... when did everyone become Trump supporters?

who are you talking about

Trump's popularity among Republican voters is typical for Republican presidents.

Trump is unusually unpopular among the general public.

So, if everyone around you seems like they support Trump,...

This is insane. I didn't realize Nunes was a transition team member!

Seems like a big deal: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/22/15030702/fbi-trump-russia-investigation

Trump, asked at a meeting in the Oval whether he felt vindicated, said, “I somewhat do. I must tell you I somewhat do. I very much appreciated the fact that they found what they found, I somewhat do.”

lol

"somewhat" vindicated.

Because while Obama didn't order him wiretapped, he was being wiretapped anyway.

Because everybody in the world is wiretapped by the US government.

And US government employees used the information they collected for their personal political agendas, just like everybody was worried they would.

lol.

This is starting to smell like impeachment. If the FBI's evidence turns out to be conclusive and Trump was involved, surely there's no other option.

The goal posts keep getting pushed back. Two weeks ago, Republicans widely condemned Trump's tweets about wiretapping, or at least they distanced themselves from it. Now, they're taking fully seriously the idea that leaks and the impropriety of the intelligence community under Obama are the big problems (at the expense of what the leaks, or the investigations into Trump and his associates, reveal about Trump's collusion with the Russians). Impeachment may come eventually, but the Republicans will have no reason to face the music anytime soon. Trump will just produce more preposterous allegations and demand that the Republican congressmen take them seriously and investigate them. All the while, the country will continue to get ripped apart, as we have two completely different discussions about what the issue even is, and, subsequently, the congress increasingly loses the public's trust that it can resolve it.

Really difficult to imagine what our country even looks like after all this.

Maybe you'll get lucky and both of them will get destroyed.

Everyone should be afraid of the political situation in America right now. The evidence of direct collusion with the Trump campaign and Breitbart with Russia demands response to Russia. I don't believe anything should be done militarily but now is the time to increase sanctions, expelling Russia from any UN committees it remains on.

Also, I'll comment that Comey's statement claimed Russia leaked the stuff to Wikileaks through an intermediary. So it seems US intelligence believes Wikileaks was unwitting, given that Russia hacked both the DNC and Podesta's emails.

Don't forget about Alex Jones / Infowars, who does nothing but sell pills to hillbillies and talk about conspiracy theories, but was somehow still more trustworthy than Breitbart.

I mean, it's terrible, but I'm still kinda laughing about it? Because here's the thing:

Everybody has suspected for a really long time that the CIA, NSA, and FBI were using their dragnet global surveillance stuff to basically blackmail politicians. Now it's not even a ****in suspicion, it's fact. They had a sit-down with a transition team member, gave their probably-usual "look what we found on our servers :smug:" spiel. Except Trump's team is a bunch of morons, so dude flips his **** and it's all public.

So now, no matter who wins, the US loses. Trump wins, you have Russian agents controlling the White House. CIA wins, the next president is going to be straight-up owned by them.

I'm glad you agree that even if Terrible Trump is taken down by the CIA, the problem isn't resolved. History shows that when military (in this case military-esque) factions take down civil leaders, things get BAD.

We would have an organization that can take down elected leaders, can hack into Senate investigations with no repercussions, has dragnet surveillance of citizens, has permission to propagandize against American citizens and has very likely assassinated civilians. All we need is actual fake elections*, slightly more supression of journalists and internet censorship and we are basically China.

* Elections in the U.S. are largely democratic, and still function, even poorly, how they're supposed to. However end results of American elections are hugely undemocratic: the actions of politicians correspond almost entirely to business interests and go in direct opposition to their electorate. Blaming the citizenry for electing the wrong leaders is a bad answer, people have no reasonable defense against the massive propaganda efforts in the United States and have no power against the role of cash in elections. It's important to make a distinction between the insitutional structure of elections and the influence of people's opinions on policy, the latter is the better mark of an actually democratic society.

Don't forget about the CIA and NSA's contractors and public-private partnerships, like In-Q-Tel, which lets intelligence agencies financially profit from the work they do in addition to politically profiting from it.

Trump's making millions from selling access to himself in Florida? Well, the CIA is making billions selling access to US secrets. BUT WHO CARES ABOUT THAT.

stick to the manufactured dilemmas like the rest of us you dips hit

I have seen (some time ago) some stories that Infowars has done on things such as smart meters that are interesting and I tried to listen to some Alex Jones material but I find him repulsive. To any degree that that man might actually present anything truthful his manner of presenting it undermines it absolutely. Breitbart is somewhat similar except they don't really have a repulsive spokesman. I would have liked to see how different Breitbart's direction would be if actual Breitbart were still alive.

Earlier today I had planned to post some more here but it's refreshing to see a little more sanity in this thread. It was (and probably soon again will be) monopolized with some bizarre content. One thing that annoyed me and inspired me to do some research was this notion that Mark Levin "incepted" Breitbart and Trump's silly accusation about Obama (I haven't read anything from Breitbart and to be fair I think Trump said Obama administration). What Levin did was present several mainstream reports from credible news agencies about leaks, FISA warrant applications, and executive policy changes that facilitate this assault on Trump which, as I've seen some suggest here, seems geared towards discrediting the administration if not impeachment. Really what we're seeing is the obvious use of the national intelligence structure to accomplish a domestic political attack which of course should not be surprising.

Rather than going to our respective political corners and fighting (not us the members but us the people) we should rally behind the notion that this is wrong.

Also, Jon, since I'm going through a protracted "disinterested phase", is there a credible link to the current belief of what we think Russia did that you can provide?

Did that seem irreverent?

I don't know where to find the best summary, and I don't know if you'd find it credible if I did find one. Pretty much all we know for sure is that Putin really ****in' hates Hillary Clinton; that US politicians and intelligence agencies have consistently stated that Putin personally ordered regime change-style cyberwarfare and disinformation campaigns during the US election, with the goal of discrediting Hillary Clinton; that several of Trump's closest advisors and alt-right media figures have done business with the Russian government, ranging from paid consulting services to paid appearances on RT; and that a large number of US-connected Russian officials have recently suffered fatal "accidents".

I dunno what else is going on, I don't think anybody outside of the US government does yet. You're really free to interpret this stuff however you want. Like, you might choose to believe there are infinite-dimensional Hilbert space chessmasters inventing all of these allegations to distract the public while they depose the lawfully elected President of the United States. Or you might just believe that Putin is the kind of person who would pay 14 year olds to call Hillary Clinton a **** on Twitter. Whatever goes, they're both equally valid positions.

The bigger story might (should?) be is the fact that, after 8 years of teeth-gnashing contrarianism, the Republican party can no longer be whipped. So, well, enjoy that, I guess.

Don't worry too much about that--at least on account of me.

When this whole Donald Trump reality star fascism sideshow blows over and he is either impeached, beaten down by the establishment, or starts a war, in every scenario the moneyed interests are still going to be marching along their merry way as they happily extinct our species, and there is literally nothing we can do to stop them so long as Rush Limbaugh is on the air and the red states continue to suffer economically.