The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    Why is it in US interest to have Russian troops in Venezuela?
     
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  3. Capracus Valued Senior Member

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    It all depends on why they are there. If they're there to protect Russian personnel that's acceptable, if they're there to protect Maduro it's not.
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, sit back and accept it is what international law prescribes. As Venezuela, as Russia are sovereign states, and elections in sovereign states are nothing foreign powers should care about. The US has to care about the best interest of the US people, not about Russian and Venezuelan people. They decide for themselves.
    Regarding those with positions in Russia, they already care about this, and the people now in power are much more ethically responsible than those of Yeltsin time. Regarding US elections, it is not the Russian business to care about them. Even if these elections are rigged (as at least the primaries have been) this is an internal problem of the US.

    Don't forget, the claims that Russia did influence them remains to be a conspiracy theory, and even this conspiracy theory is not really about some election meddling (as would be, say, some hacking of the election system to manipulate the numbers), it is only about distribution of some correct information about manipulations of the primaries in the US by the Dem party leadership.

    I would guess the gold standard will return. This would certainly make sense. Of course, in some sense the gold standard is anarchy, it appeared globally without any world government enforcing it. But a return of the gold standard has nothing to do with a return to anarchy. Instead, it will be a return to classical international law, because it destroys one of the main ways the US terrorizes sovereign countries - sanctions for trade which the US does not like. The actual overuse of this by the US simply forces all other big players to create payment methods not under US control.
    The greatest probability of being imprisoned for downloading illicit material is in the US. With the US losing power, this probability will decrease worldwide. Dictatorships usually care only about content directed against themselves, thus, people without revolutionary or so intentions will not be targeted.

    Last but not least, I do not support a transition to anarchy by a simple destruction of the state, but the replacement of state structures by new structures compatible with anarchistic principles, like the reputational system I have proposed. Those new structures have to be created and established first. Then, once they function, and function better than the old state-based structures, those state-based structures can be destroyed without creating any harm or even risk of harm.

    Wrong. Maduro is the legitimately elected president of Venezuela so that Russia has any right to cooperate with him. Given that the US has very serious professional murderers in the CIA, a history of murdering politicians they did not like, so that it has to be expected that they will try to murder him, it makes sense to engage the best specialists of the world which are available for the job and trustable that they don't work for the CIA themselves to protect him.

    But from the US point of view, of course, those who try to protect people against murderers are the criminals, and the murderers the good guys.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    20 years into the future:
    I am sorry but you just violated the new code that retrospectively means you go to jail arbitrarily for what you posted to a forum 20 years ago. You wrote and I quote "downloading of illicit material" un quote. For that you get 10 years digging salt in a mine that no one will every find... arrest this man officer... bye.

    You really have no idea do you?
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    This is the scenario of the US-ruled world government. Neither the multipolar world nor anarchy will lead into this future. I'm quite aware of this future, and that's why I fight against this variant of my future.

    And about the Western world, it is already quite close to it. All that #metoo stuff is already close to it, with things accepted as normal 20 years ago evaluated as sexual assaults following today's rules of behavior. Politicians are already out of the game if one finds something they have said 20 years ago which is politically incorrect content now. If you yet possess today pictures which you have downloaded in a completely legal way 20 years ago, you can be imprisoned.
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    ahh but that is the nature of the world you are so eager to bring in... anarchy... fascism... totalitarianism, no human rights, and so on....
    The digital content o f20 year sago would make excellent resource for filling salt farms and other forced labor situations. This is what put my Grandfather into forced salt mining. He was considered an intellectual and had .... a library of illegal books. You know philosophy books, scientific journals, novels, history and so on. In what is now known as the Czech Republic. A mere accountant that was considered an enemy of the state for being smart enough to add 1+1 =2 and enjoyed letter writing in his youth.

    Sent off to do his duty in the Salt mines as recompense for being educated.

    That's the sort of world you wish for... well... not if I can help it...
     
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    You obviously mingle the Western propaganda against that world with what I propose. You may think that this would be the consequence - but this is your belief, not my belief. You may think that what I support is totalitarian, fascism, given what Western propaganda tells you about Russia, China, Iran and so on. But I have a different opinion about this. I see much more freedom of thought in Russian mass media, and even more in the runet, than Western people can actually dream about in their politically correct informational prison cells. And I have recently heard that in China essentially nobody cares about what you download with torrents and so on. This is not even about who is right here - even if I would be wrong about reality, you would be wrong claiming that it is my aim to support fascism or totalitarianism.
    So what? If the East German Stasi would have known what I have read, I could have had a lot of problems too. In memory of these times, I have even some private samizdat library, including a whole book copied with a typewriter. Face it: Today it is the West which is on the road toward censorship. It is the future of the West, and what I support is the distribution of the information which is censored in the West.

    The multipolar world is the best protection against censorship because for every information where will be poles or at least states which don't bother about that particular information.
     
  11. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    We are rapidly approaching fascism.
    A typical example:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  12. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Or we can back the various House committees and Federal law enforcement agencies in the performance of their lawful and mandated duties.
    It's been done before, after all. It's called governing.
    It's because of what you support in US politics. Americans can compare that with the real world.
    Not everyone gives you a pass the way I do just because you are ignorant, and have no real idea who or what the US Republican Party and its backers are. They instead assume you are presenting China and Russia and so forth from that same fact-free point of view.
    That is no protection against censorship - as a review of the past few decades of multipolar information would show you with little effort.
    That's probably not true. Putin has many reasons not to go to war on that flimsy provocation.
    No, you wouldn't. It's not the source, but the use, that most directly involved Russian meddling. And that is recorded, public, information.
    Yep.
    Russian meddling supported that - most US citizens did not, and a plurality who did were victimized by Russian meddling in US politics.
    You supported that, along with the rightwing and Republican and Russian-addled Americans here.
    If you don't like fascist government, oppose fascist political movements, would be the rule - of course, you would have to recognize them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  14. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    No, it is. The communist side tried hard, very hard, to censor every information coming from the West. They did not succeed, the only result was that almost all the population supported what Western propaganda told them as more reliable. On the Westen side, censorship was much less serious than it is now.
    Putin is, of course, no warmonger. But he is able and ready to play chicken games with the US. Simply because you have no choice - either you are ready to go to war, or you have lost against the US. Clinton thought Putin will run away if seriously pressed, so she would try this. Remember the US bombing Syria after the fake chemical attacks? Russia has allowed that, giving very serious descriptions of what the US is allowed to bomb and what not. With clear descriptions what happens if the US violates these red lines - namely, some ships would be destroyed by a counterattack.

    Now imagine Clinton there - who thinks Putin will run away instead of retaliating. She would have ignored the red lines, and there would have been some sunken US warships. What would have been the consequence of this?

    Explain, I simply don't understand your point here. There was a disagreement about the source of information - either an insider who died a short time after this, have forgotten the name, or a hack claimed to be made by the Russians. In this case, the Russian meddling theory relies on the claimed hack. The use was simply publication by Wikileaks. They possibly try to make now a deal with Assange, admit you got it from the Russians and we will release you or so, we will see. But the use itself would be the natural thing to do for an insider too - it is the aim of whistleblowers to make the knowledge public.
    Why should Russia (or I) oppose a fascist rule in the US, if the alternative is even more dangerous? I would, of course, prefer to support reasonable guys like Ron Paul, but there are none.
     
  15. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    I would say worse, since Hillary might have been honest about the need for foreign intervention and open resistance to Russian power.
     
  16. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If Clinton had been in charge and chosen to confront Putin, and he actually tried to sink some US warships as you insinuate here in retaliation for not liking something being struck in Syria, the most likely outcome would have been the destruction of Russian naval forces in the area before they can fire more than a couple of missiles, which would themselves fail to defeat US navy countermeasures. The real risk is that people like you would then be howling for blood and an even bigger escalation. Don't blame Hillary for your own personal inclination towards violent coercion.

    (Waiting to hear about how the Kuznetsov will be repaired overnight and how Russia's navy is the greatest and how America hasn't spent decades spying on everything Russia has and preparing precisely for it).
     
  17. candy Valued Senior Member

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    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  18. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Perhaps then you could offer some solace to the People in education camps in China?
    You know... tell then that they are better off and that their indoctrination is a good thing... that sort of thing... might make them feel better.
    tell it also to the families that have no idea where their loved ones are and probably wont see them again.
    You are so naive, truly naive....
    No to mention the political prisoners in China and Russia....
     
  19. candy Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry left out the question.

    If Putin is no warmonger how do you explain the invasion of Ukraine.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know enough about them to tell them something. In particular, I have no reliable information that they don't deserve sitting in such camps for what they have done. Remember, the prison population in the US is greater than in China.

    There was none.

    There was a coup against the legal democratically elected president of Ukraine. After this, some regions declared their independence. One of them provided, after the separation, a referendum to join Russia or not, and the result was in favor of joining Russia. Russia accepted this. In the other two new founded republics, a similar full-scale referendum was prevented by putschist forces, which started a civil war.

    Legally, Russia had the right to use its military force to reestablish the legal order in Ukraine, because as the legal president of Ukraine, Yanukovich, as well as the regions which had declared their independence have asked Russia for military help. Given that the legal power in Kiev was destroyed by the coup, the governments of the regions where this highest surviving legal powers, thus, they had the right to do what they like, in particular, the right to declare their independence. Who in your opinion has the right to ask friendly foreign powers for military support against a coup? Nobody - whenever the putschists have taken the house of the government, they rule completely legal, and all other states have to accept this? No. The legitimate power has the right to ask for foreign support against a coup. This can either be done by the former government/president in emigration, but as well by the largest government units which remained in power on the territory of the state. In this case, both have done this.

    Russia has used this right to send forces for help in Crimea but restricted itself to some support (humanitarian, volunteers, unofficially also advisors, instructors, weapons and ammunition) in the case of the other two republics.

    In comparison with Syria, where the US supported child-head-cutting terrorist gangs, Russia supported the legal governments of the regions which tried to split, thus, the largest legitimate government organizations there.
     
  21. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Maybe he could send some more mercenaries to get their asses kicked to death.

    Seriously ... I mean, okay, even despite you, but ... seriously, all that macho fantasy is just ... ah ... well, "hilarious", isn't quite the word. Yeah, yeah, it's true, we're already aware Putin is driven by machismo and fancy; what does it mean, though, when machismo and fancy is the argument toward his merit? From what depths does one actually look up to such a low standard?

    That's not quite what George Dubya meant by the soft bigotry of low expectations, but, sure, whatever.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Only Western propaganda victims are "aware" of such standard propaganda memes.

    Maybe you have been confused a little bit because I have chosen the language of chicken games to explain the point. Therefore you may think that Putin does not run away because he is a macho and likes to win such chicken games. But the situation is quite different here, simply because Putin has no choice. Either he is ready to stand at certain points, or he will be unable to stop running until Russia is again ruled by US-supported mafia oligarchs.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2019
  23. CptBork Valued Senior Member

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    If a president such as Yanukovych or Maduro violates the powers and responsibilities "legally" granted to them, does that not in itself constitute a coup?

    Let's suppose the US has its own set of mafia oligarchs that it supports. How would that be any worse than the mafia oligarchs currently running the country under Putin? The only difference between now and 1990 is that oil prices are higher and Russia has access to global markets.

    Does it not concern you that Ukraine thinks you want to install a mafia to run them?

    On the rare occasions when I actually speak to a Putin apologist in person and listen to the fantasies they've convinced themselves to believe in, I have to wonder what they think of Russian people on the whole. If America is in the grasp of an unprecedented evil tyranny while Russia is currently managed by a great liberator, and the quality of life and level of social development is so badly lopsided in America's favour even with all the existing shortcomings in American society, what exactly do they expect would become of the Russian people if such leadership roles were reversed?

    But hey, if Putin taking his shirt off and talking tough makes some people feel better about not running the world and having the rest of humanity bow down to their greatness or give a crap about them in general, more power to 'em.
     

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