Too narrow a focus perhaps? Question: Trump, the key foreign affairs executive, allegedly obstructed an inquiry into what exactly? Answer: Something that involves foreign affairs... So yes it is about his obstruction of an investigation into his relationship, vested interest etc. in foreign nations. In particular Russia. But also about possible collusion with foreign entities that may have played a part in corrupting the USA democratic process due to serious concerns that he may have a significant conflict of interest. The very foreign affairs you are so concerned about....
Obstruction of justice in the investigation of his dealings with Russia and other foreign countries - his betrayal of his country and oath of office for personal profit (and/or relief from blackmail) from foreigners, using his position in executive command of US foreign policy to advance the agenda of US enemies. Because you keep posting false claims about them. You are interested. And launders money for the Russian mob, and allows Russia to annex ports and seize influence over pipeline routes and other territory important for Putin's expansion of Russian military power and coercive influence. I am simply reminding you - over and over, so you can't say you don't know - of the fact that you are posting the Republican Party line as delivered by US propagandists working for authoritarian US corporate interests. Often verbatim, all errors of fact and self-contradictions and reversals of stance included. Yep. As I and others keep reminding you, your Republican Party media feed does a lot of such "questioning", using "if + bs" construction just as you do, and demanding that others prove otherwise to them of all people - as if they were fit to assess. That's how we can tell where you getting your posts from - you keep repeating obvious and ignorant idiocies that have no other source. Maybe the first couple times, if they have some visible excuse - maybe they are very young, using the thread for homework help or something. Depends on why they don't "accept" it, see. In your case the fact that you are an adult actively and willfully maintaining your ignorance, while posting not discussion but straight propaganda feeds from familiar sources, figures in. These things - the Mueller report's contents, the origins and motives of the Confederates who launched and fought the Civil War, etc - are not actually theses under question, see, and pretending they are when dealing with Republican propaganda feeds wastes time and confuses people.
He allegedly obstructed an inquiry. The inquiry itself has given nothing, so it is irrelevant that it was about something foreign relations related. (And that the inquiry into the foreign relation part has given nothing seems not questioned.) I know that you think so, everybody who has by accident read parts of our conversation over more than two posts knows that you think so, so why the repetitions? If not because of the Goebbels tactic that if one repeats often enough ...? But here iceaura gives some insight about Obviously, it is enough not to accept your claims and to ask for evidence for your claims. Instead of such evidence, one receives some bad words like "ignorant idiocies". And probably your sources consist only of some left-wing guys commenting only to Reps, maybe sometimes the Rep sources themselves, but nothing beyond. So, given your sources of information, any opposition to your claims has no other source than the Reps. Nothing has changed - I know this from childhood, where everything in opposition to communism was bourgeois ideology. No, rules of decency in general, and of a decent discussion in particular, have to be applied by decent people always, to everybody, without exceptions. Ok, the exception of some tit for tat if the other side violates these rules in a too obvious way and many times. Your one-sided summaries of past discussions are completely irrelevant for this. Moreover, the one you have given here violates these rules too. Decent people leave that evaluation to third parties. The idea to cry "I'm the winner of this discussion" seems to be typical American. Of course, this is the part of the US "culture" which distributes around the world, leading to a general decline in culture everywhere. Not a valid excuse. The rules of decency don't forbid you to tell that IYO these are facts. When you have to add only three letters, not even time savings can be an excuse. If the disagreement is discussed in the actual thread is irrelevant, once you know that I have doubts, and have answered my post.
But that is the issue. The inquiry results are being withheld by the very person the inquiry is about. The unredacted results are being obstructed from being viewed by those qualified and fully entitled to view them... Why is that do you think? Come on... you are into conspiracy theorizing... Why would a sitting president frustrate any calls to have the unredacted results available to congress? Congress do not know the results of the inquiry... Congress only knows the propaganda version redacted to serve a propaganda purpose. ( from what I understand, reading our national news services , ABC and SBS)
Because this is a political battle. The Dems will use every epsilon to cry "impeachment", in the public battle legal details do not matter, so they can cry "impeachment" even if there is no base at all, and it will nonetheless have some effect. The Reps don't want to give them even these epsilons. Which will not give much, because if they succeed in hiding large parts, various quantum quacks will present this as evidence for the conspiracy that there are horrible crimes hidden. Sorry, but these are uninteresting, boring political games for me, no interest. Remember, my general position is that foreign policy is managed by the deep state, and the elected representatives have to abide. And they do. Initially, it looked like Trump could be different, but, no, foreign policy is again made by the deep staters Pompeo and Bolton. Nonetheless, it took almost two years or so to reach this, and these two years have been a good time of a declining US power not starting a new war.
Case closed again! Mueller says it would be unconstitutional to press charges against the president. CNN argues that it does not understand english. Could vs would. Insufficient vs nonexistent. Puts words in other peoples mouths. Then says its congress's problem now.
Nope. He didn't say that. He said that HE could not press charges. However, others can. In fact, he specifically pointed out that the case was not closed. "If we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime, we would have said so." In other words, there is a good likelihood that he DID commit a crime. Meanwhile a former Trump insider said this today: "It isn’t a witch hunt—even for the hard-core, this is where he turns into just a crooked business guy." When an author noted that "Trump was vulnerable because for 40 years he had run what increasingly seemed to resemble a semi-criminal enterprise" the insider was quick to correct him - “I think we can drop the ‘semi’ part.” I can't wait until the next time you claim "Case closed!" With all the claims about the case being closed, made hundreds of times since the investigation began, we can't help but think that Trump supporters realize that it isn't closed at all.
I never pretended that CptBork was my real name, nor have I intentionally misrepresented anything with the intent to cause harm to anyone, so there's no reason why one would or should need to deal with me in the same way as they would with a deliberate fraud who's trying to cause damage. I will attempt to further address your confusion between the freedom to express and the freedom to defraud in another post. They also make sure that everyone on social media sees the latest propaganda coming from Russian state news, and that the number of people on said media who actually agree with it is misrepresented. It wasn't a grammatical error on my part, you implied that the Chechens had collectively abandoned and denounced Wahabism in sufficient numbers so as to deny them the right of self-determination that you claim everyone's supposed to have. Firstly, there were high level former Russian officials and insiders such as Boris Berezovsky (once the wealthiest man in Russia, for those who don't know), who claimed that the invasion of Dagestan was staged by a faction of Chechen rebels in coordination with Putin in order to trigger a Russian invasion and the removal of their elected rivals under President Aslan Maskhadov. Nonetheless, even if the invasion wasn't plotted with any Russian officials; given that Maskhadov had condemned the invasion of Dagestan and offered to fight the responsible militants himself, and his offer was summarily rejected in favour of an all-out Russian invasion, you provide a very flimsy excuse for why Grozny had to be bombed flat, hundreds of thousands of Chechen civilians had to die, and the territory remains under occupation by Russian soldiers to this day. Your "libertarian" ideals don't provide justification for the situation Russia perpetuates there today, but Russian imperial ideals certainly do. When Russian peasants starved, it was for the intended benefit of Russian industry and society. When Ukrainian peasants starved, it was also for the benefit of Russian industry and society. According to the Wikipedia article on Novorussia, ethnic Russians historically constituted a minority of the total population, outnumbered in the region by Ruthenians (Ukrainians) and others. Yes it is a substantial minority not too far shy of 50%, but they were not the majority and can't act like the territory is now their exclusive domain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novorossiya More importantly, there are and have long been tons of ethnicities scattered around the territories of the defunct Russian empire, including Russia itself. Borders were drawn, national identities collectivized, everyone gained and lost in the process. Now you want to go back and revisit old agreements and reignite old disputes that everyone had long ago already put aside, and you feel it's fair that the one single party demanding a resettlement should have thousands of nukes and overwhelming territorial, population and conventional military advantages, while the party seeking to maintain the peaceful status quo has next to nothing and should not receive any foreign assistance. Then why do you keep whining about Nikita Khrushchev giving Ukraine to Ukrainians and seeking war in order to reverse it? Russia still possesses territory stolen from Germany, Finland and other European and Asian countries under the USSR, and this doesn't seem to bother you in your claimed German homeland. But when it comes to a territory being assigned to a certain collection of Soviet citizens by that same authority in Ukraine, followed by a peaceful separation with mutual territorial and political recognition which originally left Ukraine intact, you suddenly want to pull your own hair out. You claim that President Yeltsin's commitments were not legally binding when he recognized Ukraine's sovereignty and convinced them to relinquish their nuclear arsenal, and yet some criminal running sham elections and jailing political opponents in Ukraine has the right to walk off the job, invent new constitutional powers that didn't exist the day before, and invite a Russian military invasion? Sounds a lot like libertarian Russian imperialism to me. I was talking about elections in places like Ukraine, Venezuela and Syria, although the same principle should apply in Russia too. Why can there not be a basic electoral process in which all major interested parties can openly verify that there's no cheating? Lots of elections are managed that way around the world. American monitors could make sure Russia's preferred candidates aren't cheating, Russia could make sure the Americans aren't cheating. China, Europe, the UN, Iran and all other middle eastern countries can make sure their interests aren't being compromised by undemocratic means. Why would you support and recognize an electoral process in which the result can't be openly verified through basic accounting? Your definition of what's legal and not legal doesn't have any coherent basis, unless seen through the lens of a Russian imperialist. The fact is that, over the last 10 years, all of those countries you listed except Venezuela have been responsible for a greater number of human deaths through direct acts of military and police violence. If those deaths were not created in an openly declared war, that makes them even more unjustified, not less. When a country or regime claims to be defending its own civilians from terrorists, but it ends up killing an order of magnitude more of those same civilians than the alleged terrorists themselves kill, the claim to be defending their own civilians is nullified, along with the accompanying justification for the employed violence which kills them.
Yes - treason. "The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”
I don't watch fox. But I like your assumptions. They make me smile. How did they fit a whole foreign government inside the Trump tower? Meetings without lawyers! What a crime. Call the FBI the President didn't attend a meeting! The president is not his advisors You got a better chance of me calling the FBI to erase my hard drive and destroy evidence. Your best source is a guy who couldn't have an opinion over the intentions of the meeting because they weren't there to even presume the intentions of the meeting. So the only thing they were there for (I can only presume) is to spy on the campaign. Dig up dirt. * Run a smear campaign.* Twist perceptions* The only thing you can say to change my mind is that foreign government rigged voting machines in Trumps favor for cash. We know this didn't happen. You know this didn't happen. That's why this particular scenario is not being said. It did not happen! Every ounce of evidence that has been collected clearly points to the opposition attempting to run this exact scenario and failing. Case closed.
For the record: from fox news another from the Guardian... "...the President can not be charged with a federal crime..."
Transcript of speech C/O NPR Good morning everyone, and thank you for being here. Two years ago, the acting attorney general asked me to serve as special counsel, and he created the Special Counsel's Office. The appointment order directed the office to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. This included investigating any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the Trump campaign. Now I have not spoken publicly during our investigation. I am speaking out today because our investigation is complete. The attorney general has made the report on our investigation largely public. We are formally closing the Special Counsel's Office, and as well, I'm resigning from the Department of Justice to return to private life. I'll make a few remarks about the results of our work, but beyond these few remarks, it is important that the office's written work speak for itself. Let me begin where the appointment order begins, and that is interference in the 2016 presidential election. As alleged by the grand jury in an indictment, Russian intelligence officers who were part of the Russian military launched a concerted attack on our political system. The indictment alleges that they used sophisticated cyber techniques to hack into computers and networks used by the Clinton campaign. They stole private information and then released that information through fake online identities, and through the organization WikiLeaks. The releases were designed and timed to interfere with our election and to damage a presidential candidate. And at the same time, as the grand jury alleged in a separate indictment, a private Russian entity engaged in a social media operation where Russian citizens posed as Americans in order to influence an election. These indictments contain allegations, and we are not commenting on the guilt or the innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The indictments allege, and the other activities in our report describe, efforts to interfere in our political system. They needed to be investigated and understood, and that is among the reasons why the Department of Justice established our office. That is also a reason we investigated efforts to obstruct the investigation. The matters we investigated were of paramount importance. It was critical for us to obtain full and accurate information from every person we questioned. When a subject of an investigation obstructs that investigation or lies to investigators, it strikes at the core of the government's effort to find the truth and hold wrongdoers accountable. Let me say a word about the report. The report has two parts addressing the two main issues we were asked to investigate. The first volume of the report details numerous efforts emanating from Russia to influence the election. This volume includes a discussion of the Trump campaign's response to this activity, as well as our conclusion that there was insufficient evidence to charge a broader conspiracy. And in the second volume, the report describes the results and analysis of our obstruction of justice investigation involving the president. The order appointing me special counsel authorized us to investigate actions that could obstruct the investigation. We conducted that investigation, and we kept the office of the acting attorney general apprised of the progress of our work. And as set forth in the report, after that investigation if we had had confidence that the president clearly did not commit a crime we would have said so. We did not, however, make a determination as to whether the president did commit a crime. The introduction to the Volume II of our report explains that decision. It explains that under long-standing department policy, a president can not be charged with a federal crime while he is in office. That is unconstitutional. Even if the charge is kept under seal and hidden from public view, that too is prohibited. The Special Counsel's Office is part of the Department of Justice, and by regulation it was bound by that department policy. Charging the president with a crime was, therefore, not an option we could consider. The department's written opinion explaining the policy makes several important points that further informed our handling of the obstruction investigation. Those points are summarized in our report, and I will describe two of them for you. First, the opinion explicitly explicitly permits the investigation of a sitting president because it is important to preserve evidence while memories are fresh and documents available. Among other things, that evidence could be used if there were co-conspirators who could be charged now. And second, the opinion says that the Constitution requires a process other than the criminal justice system to formally accuse a sitting president of wrongdoing. And beyond department policy, we were guided by principles of fairness. It would be unfair to potentially — it would be unfair to potentially accuse somebody of a crime when there can be no court resolution of the actual charge. So that was Justice Department policy. Those were the principles under which we operated, and from them, we concluded that we would — would not reach a determination one way or the other about whether the president committed a crime. That is the office's — that is the office's final position, and we will not comment on any other conclusions or hypotheticals about the president. We conducted an independent criminal investigation and reported the results to the attorney general as required by department regulations. The attorney general then concluded that it was appropriate to provide our report to Congress and to the American people. At one point in time, I requested that certain portions of the report be released. The attorney general preferred to make that — preferred to make the entire report public all at once, and we appreciate that the attorney general made the report largely public, and I certainly did not question the attorney general's good faith in that decision. Now, I hope and expect this to be the only time that I will speak to you in this manner. I am making that decision myself. No one has told me whether I can or should testify or speak further about this matter. There has been discussion about an appearance before Congress. Any testimony from this office would not go beyond our report. It contains our findings and analysis, and the reasons for the decisions we made. We chose those words carefully, and the work speaks for itself. And the report is my testimony. I would not provide information beyond that which is already public in any appearance before Congress. In addition, access to our underlying underlying work product is being decided in a process that does not involve our office. So, beyond what I've said here today and what is contained in our written work, I do not believe it is appropriate for me to speak further about the investigation or to comment on the actions of the Justice Department or Congress. And it's for that reason, I will not be taking questions today, as well. Now before I step away, I want to thank the attorneys, the FBI agents, the analysts, the professional staff who helped us conduct this investigation in a fair and independent manner. These individuals who spent nearly two years with the Special Counsel's Office were of the highest integrity. And I will close by reiterating the central allegation of our indictments: That there were multiple, systematic efforts to interfere in our election, and that allegation deserves the attention of every American. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. No doubt, this speech will be the subject of much analysis and speculation etc..
The bots did not try to deliberately harm too. At least I have not seen any evidence for this. What follows from the evidence - their scheme of making money was to repeat what is anyway already popular in those communities to gain followers. People with an intention to harm would not simply repeat claims which are anyway already popular. You misrepresent a lot of things. If intentional or not is not clear - it is last but not least only a repetition of US propaganda. Given that I would defend your right to do what you do even if you would intentionally do such misrepresentations, it does not matter. If this is the evil thing they do, shutting them down is simply censorship. They were never predominantly Wahabi to be able to abandon it. The Chechen tradition is Sufi. Wahabism came (as everywhere) only with Saudi-Arabian money. Even if true, I have never claimed that Russia was libertarian and that what Putin is doing can be justified by libertarian principles. Then, it is not plausible at all. The guys who invaded Dagestan were Basayev and the Saudi-Arabian Al Khattab. Both were already on the top of the Chechen Wahabi faction and after this lead the war from the Wahabi side so that this was certainly not an irrelevant faction which could be controlled by the FSB or so, and they would never cooperate with Putin. No, it was in both cases for the benefit of the Soviet industry. A lot of this Soviet industry was build in Ukraine. The people speak Russian language there, not that Galician village jargon named today "Ukrainian". Been there the year before the coup, played soccer with local guys, never heard one speaking what one hears today as "Ukrainian". No, I do not want to revive old disputes - it is the US who tries to do such things to weaken Russia. And, yes, it is fair that there is one non-US state with strong enough weapons to resist the US. This power is not demanding any resettlement at all. Those who thought about resettlements are the Bandera fascists. Just to clarify: Khrushchev (the Ukrainian leader long time, until he became the Soviet leader) gave Crimea (with only a small Ukrainian minority) to Ukraine. Then, nobody sought war from the Russian side in order to reverse it. The separation from Ukraine was a reaction against the US-supported coup, which was not supported by the people of Crimea. I support what the people of Crimea preferred, and history is irrelevant for this. (But I correct, of course, historical errors made in the discussion too.) Nonsense. I support, as a libertarian, separatism. The population of the stolen territories does not want to separate from Russia, so that I would not see any base to support foreign pretenses based on history. It was the US who insistet first that that memorandum is not legally binding - for the US, of course. All other parties followed this. So, it did not became legally binding. Such a proposal would be fine. The only problem is that the West does not accept them. In particular in Syria they insist that in whatever democratic elections the most popular candidate, Assad, should not be allowed to participate. Of course, I support territorial sovereignty, and this includes everything, inclusive elections. So, in general, there is no place for foreign control of elections. But as a temporary measure, for the first elections after a civil war or so, such foreign control may be indeed helpful. Unjustified police killings have been reported even in Germany, and are regular news in the US. Whatever the numbers (I have no sources I would trust for such numbers), these are internal matters and do not count as aggression in international law. This is not what international law prescribes about this. Even a civil war is an internal matter. The UN allows exceptions from this only if the UNSC decides.
You refused to "see" it. Not seeing what you have refused to see means nothing. Read the Mueller report, if you missed all the news articles and so forth. They were paid to spread falsehoods and deceive people for the benefit of Trump's campaign. Read the Mueller report. Fraud and criminal deception are not protected speech. You supported the Russian annexation of Crimea by military force. That was of course a violation of international law, as well as the libertarian principles you have claimed here. So is laundering money for Russian oligarchs. So is accepting help from foreign powers in getting elected President - especially when doing real estate deals with them. - - - - - He did not close his case. He recommended it to the appropriate Congressional oversight committees. Why did you pick that one crime? There are lots of crimes the Trump campaign did not commit - they didn't steal cars, they didn't kidnap people for ransom, etc. And that is how US Republican Party voters - many of them adult men - reason and evaluate. They have to be the most gullible adult men on this planet.
Why? Is there some new evidence against the 13 bots which was not in the indictment which I have read? I have always clearly subdivided between the criminal deception (stealing identities of real people and opening bank accounts) and what was done beyond this. Beyond this was free speech, simply repeating claims popular in the particular bubbles where they tried to get followers. That it was not protected speech is the consequence of the indictment - de facto there is no longer any protection of speech in the US. Or at least not for those subhuman Russians. I supported something which in my opinion (supported by various evidence and argumentation) was not an annexation, not in violation of international law, and not in violation of the libertarian principles I proposed here. So, yet another example where you mingle what you consider to be facts with what I consider to be facts. The contradiction would exist only if I would accept your ideas. And these things have nothing to do at all with my libertarian principles. To create a connection, you already have to distort what I think at least twice. Say, Russian oligarchs, laundering money via Ukraine, Manafort and so on. That's what they like to do. Putin does not like this, but cannot prevent it (more accurately, thinks that preventing it would have too much negative side effects). I would probably have to accept, first, the conspiracy theory that Putin is behind this, and, second, I would have to support Putin 100%, which I don't (he is an etatist, not a libertarian). Why "accepting help from foreign powers" or "doing real estate deals with them" is a violation of international law or of libertarian principles? It may be only a violation of some national law. (Looks like you think US law is international law.)
Of course. You have to "subdivide" the deceptions and frauds you are willing to acknowledge from those you wish to deny. They were presented to you as examples of violation of international law. You claim to oppose violation of international law. They aren't, necessarily. What Trump did, of course, is. Your opinions are worthless, because you base them on propaganda you have rendered via theory rather than on information or evidence. Example: you accepted Barr's disinformation as a source of evidence for the contents of the Mueller report. And like this: You don't understand the indictment. Maybe if you read the Mueller report, you would. You refuse to read the Mueller report. So we ask - do you want to understand the indictment? It looks like you don't. And that is a striking feature of the Republican Party line voter in the US, the people who - like you - dwell in the bubble of Republican Party lines: They do not want to know what is going on. They do not want information, about anything. The twists and evasions, the conspiracy theories and nonsensical projections, the bothsides and they did it too and what about Clinton and yadda yadda yadda in this reaction to the Mueller report is essentially the same reaction we see to the climate change reports, the economic inequality reports, the war reports, the health insurance and costs reports, the gerrymandering reports, the electoral fraud reports, the reports about the behavior of Trump's appointed agency heads and cabinet members, and so forth: - they do not want to know what's going on, in physical reality. And there is an obvious reason for that: it's largely their fault. They made bad political decisions for bad reasons, the bubble world is falling down around them and blowing up in their faces, and they don't want to face the facts. And there's a recent precedent: They voted for W&Cheney - - - - twice. Now, it's like that never happened. They want to make Trump a never happened. A report nobody read. Somebody else's fault. They are not adult men.
I have no wishes here. Except for understanding what is considered to be a crime in the US. For this purpose, my subdivision is useful. The split is easy. Imagine the same has been done by these bots, but not with stolen identities of real people, but simply with pseudonyms. And they would not have sold the advertisements using a faked bank account with that false identity, but a legitimate bank account. Would this be a crime yet? Judging from the indictment, it would. But I was unable to identify anything that could be forbidden without endangering essentially any political discussion and essentially destroying freedom of speech completely. Remember, they were essentially only repeating claims popular in those communities. If this is a crime, then that the originals have said would be a crime too. (Except if the law gives some freedom of speech for US citizens but not to subhuman Russians.) So whole Twitter communities would be criminalized. So, explain to me what makes the difference between what the 13 bots did (according to the indictment) and what is legitimate participation in a political discussion, and do this without relying on their use of stolen identities and faked bank accounts. And I have rejected that presentation. Your strange understanding of "international law" covers a lot of things which have nothing to do with international law, but are national laws. (There may be, say, some agreements between states that they all implement some national laws forbidding money laundry. But after this, money laundry would be nonetheless only a violation of national law. A violation of international law would be only the refusal of some state to implement such national laws, despite having signed such a convention.) Given no evidence for some difference is presented, it follows that the only criterion used to decide if it is a crime is "Trump did it". Again starting with lies? I did not. You have presented no evidence for this defamation, so it is worthless. Anyway, tell me about something interesting to me. Given that the report is about a lot of very different things, I would guess that it will at best summarize the indictment, instead of giving yet additional information about what those 13 bots have done. Correct me if I'm wrong. So, the indictment remains the key source if we talk about the 13 bots. Observing your refusal to present any evidence, I doubt that you have read the indictment.
