Jeff Carter

Your "debunking" of my "discrediting" consisted of an article by an MSNBC reporter which outlined three instances of "collusion" which were not in fact collusion or much of anything at all. Shortly after The Hill piece on Kilimnik's routine State dept contacts was published, Matt Taibbi noted that the story was barely picked up by any other media outlet, and no denials been issued by either the named individuals in routine contact with Kilimnik, FBI interviewers or the Mueller team. “It would be one thing if other outlets were rebutting his claims about Kilimnik, as people have with some of this other stories. But this report has attracted zero response from non-conservative media, despite the fact that Kilimnik has long been one of the most talked-about figures in the whole Russiagate drama. This story matters for a few reasons. If Kilimnik was that regular and important a U.S. government source, it would deal a blow to the credibility of Special Counsel Robert Mueller... This is one of a growing number of examples of people whose status as documented U.S. informants goes unmentioned in the Mueller report, where they are instead described under the general heading, ‘Russian government links to, and contact with, the Trump campaign.’” Taibbi notes that the long New York Times piece on Kilimnik seems to confirm him as a routine source: “To American diplomats in Washington and Kiev, [Kilimnik] has been a well-known character for nearly a decade, developing a reputation as a broker of valuable information…” Taibbi reflects on the mainstream media: “MSNBC burned up countless hours obsessing over the Manafort-Kilimnik relationship…with Kilimnik routinely described on air as a ‘Russian asset’ with “ties to Russian intelligence,” who even bragged that he learned his English from Russian spies. CNN has likewise done a gazillion reports on the guy… Some reports said Manafort’s conduct “hints” at collusion, while Chris Cilizza said his meetings with a “Russian-linked operative” were a ‘very big deal.’ I could go up and down the line with the Times, The Washington Post and other print outlets. Every major news organization that covered Russiagate has covered the hell out of this part of the story. But the instant there’s a suggestion there’s another angle: crickets.” https://taibbi.substack.com/p/expos-in-the-hill-challenges-mueller

Let's be clear here. "Collusion" is instructing the South Vietnamese government not to participate in peace talks as there will be a "better deal" after the election. Collusion is striking a deal with the Iranians to delay the release of the hostages in return for a large amount of military equipment. Collusion is not: - distribution of internal Republican Party polling data by its campaign manager to business associates - communications with a foreign ambassador during a presidential transition - non existent communications with Wikileaks

It starts from the simple observation that a known "GRU operative" does not work for the National Endowment for Democracy for ten years, just as a "Marxist Marine" doesn't serve as a radar operator at Atsugi. Despite their credentials, the reporters you cite are simply repeating spoon-fed information. The only reporter actually doing his job on this issue actually dug up the fact Kliminik was briefing the State Department for years, as the Mueller people well knew even as they deliberately fed a false portrayal to the stenographers. https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/447394-key-figure-that-mueller-report-linked-to-russia-was-a-state-department (you will gnash your teeth over the reporter, but the information has not been disavowed, just ignored)

You haven’t described it because no one has yet described an actual event that fits the description. Why are you sourcing Time Magazine? Have you become an Eisenhower Republican? Nothing they try to describe as “collusion” actually fits the description. Come on, Cliff. Up your game. You are more sophisticated than that, but your partisan bias is leading you astray. “Kostya, the guy from the GRU” does not work for the IRI. Which is the NED. Which is the CIA. That’s like Oswald the Marxist Marine who worked at Atsugi. No one buys that story, and rightfully so. The New York Times reporter - where that quote comes from - at least followed up on that absurdity to have the unnamed source lamely retort there wasn’t anything of importance happening in the years “Kostya” worked there - except those years coincided with the big push to assure a second Yeltsin term and the later rise of Putin, along with the eastward encroachment of NATO and the colour revolutions in both Georgia and Ukraine. "The guy from the GRU" appears to be a rumour which was encouraged as it added depth to the Ukrainian influence peddling operation..

Bob - the counter-argument to the proposition that Russia has been distinctly aggressive in Ukraine is that the activity in question was essentially reactive and, it can be argued, prevented a wider crisis and a greater humanitarian disaster. Ukraine was destabilized by the Maidan putsch and the immediate legitimization of such by the three Anglo NATO countries - US, UK and Canada. Both the putsch and resulting recognition of an unconstitutional regime were a deliberate effort to prevent European mediation and a peaceful resolution. The sniper event which precipitated the putsch came from.a building under control of the right-wing militias. What were the Russians supposed to do? They had just witnessed a protest movement get egged on by senior American officials leading to the overthrow of the democratically elected government, all playing out in context of steady NATO encroachment across eastern Europe. Why were the US, UK and Canada stirring up trouble right on Russia’s border? Is it your preference that Crimea and the eastern region of Ukraine should have suffered a total war waged until one side or the other could claim victory? Or do you actually think the Russians should have done nothing? I personally believe the NATO anticipation was Russia reacting with an actual full-scale invasion, so that their Cold War 2.0 could be fully engaged with the images of Russian tanks in Kiev enraging the public and manufacturing consent. You misunderstand the passport issue. Ukraine had been refusing to renew expired passports of persons in the Donbas/Lugansk region, The Russian passports allow these people to travel. There is no intention to annex eastern Ukraine into the Russian Federation. If there was it would have happened some years ago. You don’t seem to understand fraternal ties, and choose to portray matters as sinister. Two million people were displaced by the fighting, and all of them went as refugees to Russia not Ukraine. That alone should demonstrate how off-base your surmises are.

Cliff - if you could describe the supposed “collusion” involving Veselnitskaya or Kilimnik you might then be doing more than blowing hot air. “Collusion” refers to “a secret or illegal cooperation in order to deceive others”, which Mueller specifies for his purpose as coordinating in “election-interference activities”. He then very clearly and unambiguously states “the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government.” Can’t be any clearer. The “key conclusion” which you instead refer is not in fact a conclusion - it is an observation, which itself is essentially meaningless in that the phrase “individuals with ties to the Russian government” is, in the Report, extremely elastic, such that it could describe basically every citizen of the Russian Federation. Alex Ovechkin has met Putin, so according to the formula he has “ties” to the Russian government. Ovechkin went to the White House after winning the Stanley Cup. Did something sinister happen then? It was a direct contact between Trump and an “agent of the Kremlin”, no? Maybe the quid pro quo was cemented then. “The red dog barks at dawn, comrade.” The platform change in July 2016 followed publicly articulated policy intentions, and changed an extreme position to something more in line with policy already existing under Obama.Was Obama operating under a quid pro quo too? That this surmise gained any traction is an expression of how loopy and straw-grasping the true believers really are.

This is pure sophistry, as confirmed by the actual details of the individuals and their extremely tenuous “ties”. The entire paragraph amounts to the wholly uncontroversial observation that the Trump campaign “expected it would benefit electorally” from the Wikileaks publication of Clinton emails. The rest is conjecture. There was no “collusion” discovered or catalogued.

Discredited by the Mueller Report's Introduction to Volume 1 p2: "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."

I see where you are going with this, but you have it all backwards. I’ve never claimed “ the ‘reality-based community’ has proven there was no Russian hack” - I’ve consistently said that such theory was in dispute and the actual evidence is lacking. The New York Times et al are the ones who have claimed that the issue is factually settled.

Ummm.... Iraqi WMD? You'd have to ask CNN. They are the ones who broke the story. It was an anonymous leak featuring anonymous agents doing unspecified things, and then two anonymous officials claim there is nothing at all to whatever it is which happened and that the IG Report says no FISA abuse occurred. It's called "getting out ahead of a story." Reading between the lines, it means FISA abuse did occur and will feature in the IG report.

TechDirt claims the necessary downloading speed is achieved with a 180 Mbps connection, while others disagree (there are long rebuttals to the article you linked). So it’s an ongoing dispute. Logically, even if something were possible it doesn’t mean it actually happened that way. Doubts of the alleged Russian hack are not limited to the download speeds, but include. 1) Crowdstrike’s inexplicable delays dealing with the original breaches. 2) Guccifer 2.0’s identity still in dispute. 3) Wikileaks says it ain’t so. 4) refusal of US officials to interview Wikileaks or associates. 5) Crowdstrike only source of allegation, and produced only draft reports 6) no credible evidence of hack in official US reports. Assange and associates have consistently said the official “hack” theory is bogus. The appropriate denunciation is to any charges whatsoever, and both administrations deserve contempt and admonishment for the recent day in court as described by Craig Murray. Pretty appalling by any measure, and it will continue to be appalling as it continues.

The New York Times story basically confirms what informed people have been saying all along: the Internet Research Agency’s activities more resemble a click-bait marketing scheme than a weaponized deliberate program to “sow division”. The American publisher described in the article wanted to drive traffic to his website and found the best way to do so was by “playing the edgy clickbait game” which depended on “hyper partisan” content: “Exploiting American cultural and political fissures to drive traffic to his websites has worked wonders.” He is using controversial pushbutton content to increase followers for his website. The article notes that these techniques are “mimicking” the IRA campaign from 2016, and near the end, admits that a network of Macedonian teenagers were running a campaign exactly like the IRA in the same time period (2016), featuring similar “divisive” pro-Trump etc material - - except no-one says that Macedonian teenagers “attacked American democracy” as it is generally understood as a campaign to exploit Google ads. The "mimicking" is of common proven techniques to generate money, which were in practice long before 2016. The real point of the article appears midway as the author laments: “The spreading of politically divisive content or even blatant disinformation and conspiracy theories by Americans is protected free speech.” Those protections make it harder, “security experts” say, to “track” disinformation, and is “normalizing things we would otherwise identify as inauthentic behavior.” Should security agents be “tracking” presumed disinformation, and should they be trusted or authorized to arbitrate “inauthentic behaviour”? It seems like they are intent on “normalizing” irrational fear over common practices.

This is the point of disagreement: Hill: “Russia was the foreign power that systematically attacked our democratic institutions in 2016. This is the public conclusion of our intelligence agencies, confirmed in bipartisan Congressional reports. It is beyond dispute…” The “public conclusion” of the intel agent ties was the January 2017 ICA which, it turned out, was the product only of several “hand-picked” analysts from merely three agencies. The report itself makes no claim to accuracy, and admits it might be totally wrong. The “bipartisan Congressional reports”, when not referring to the questionable ICA for confirmation, also lack evidentiary substance, as a close reading will confirm. It is “beyond dispute” in the same manner that the Warren Report was said to be beyond dispute. A year-old entry in a partisan flame-war doesn’t prove anything. Wikileaks, and associated go-betweens such as Craig Murray, have consistently and strenuously refuted the “Russian hack” theory, and they have a long track record of accuracy and integrity. An honest investigation would have sought to hear from them, but that hasn’t happened. Instead, Assange rots in a UK super-max, faced with a dubious legal process which is more properly associated with soviet “dissidents” in the dismal past. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/assange-in-court/

After 50+ years, the pattern of the mainstream media on the JFK assassination has long been predictable. That said, Alec Baldwin’s revelation that the NBC network had told him flat out they were institutionally committed to the official story was still an eyebrow raiser. Note that a “conspiracy theory” bashing article was published by NBC this past July, which took special effort to loop Baldwin into a feedback loop of narcissism, “angry outbursts”, and loopy conspiracy theories. This article, knowingly or not, reflects the 1967 CIA memo discussed by Joe in the episode shared above. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-alec-baldwin-conspiracy-theories-narcissism-celebrity-culture-go-hand-ncna1029941 Joe's episode on the Tippit crime scene, based on his book “Into The Nightmare”, is one of the most viewed individual episodes of the series.

Ambassador Yovanovitch made very clear US policy has been focussed on moving Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit - that is, remove it from, as Stephen Cohen describes, “a civilization shared for centuries by Russia and large parts of Ukraine” - and attach it to the EU economically, and militarily to NATO’s “security architecture” so to serve as a “force multiplier” (her words) against Russia. In other words, it was a deliberate conscious policy to, on the other side of the world, upend an ages-old status quo and replace it with tension and simmering conflict. That’s extremely bad policy and I don’t know how anyone can defend it. French President Macron has arranged, in the interests of the Minsk Accords, a meeting between Putin and Zelensky in a few weeks to discuss means to finally realize those agreements and move towards resolution. Ambassador Yovanovitch emphasized that US policy on Ukraine does not support this process. Hostility inside Ukraine to Zelensky’s initiative was identified with the defeated former president Poroshenko, as well as the right-wing militias whose interests are represented by the Interior Ministry. The Interior Minister, Avakov, was described by Yovanovitch as “a good partner to the United States.” Much of her testimony yesterday was scripted to appeal for political support in the US for a continued policy of tension and conflict in alliance with fascist militias who trace back to Nazi atrocities in the 1940s.

The former US ambassador to Ukraine Yovanovitch made a point in her testimony yesterday to praise Ukraine’s Interior Minister Avakov - a principal sponsor of the country’s fascist militias including the neo-nazi Azov Battalion. Express support by US officials for goose-stepping torchlight-parading Holocaust-revering fascist militias should be the story here, not semantic “gotcha” rhetorics.

Putin's "admission" still leaves the what, where and when undetermined, and what he described does not amount to an "invasion" which by definition refers to an "armed force" consisting of a "large number of people or things."

It's fairly well established that the ads exist and existed at the accepted times they were posted. The entity responsible says they are part of a commercial marketing scheme, while the Senate Subcommittee says they represent a GRU hybrid war effort to sow chaos and division in America. There is no evidence for the latter assertion and some evidence for the former.

Just a source that isn't someone's opinion. If the evidence consists of "there are no other parties that could do so or were in a position to do so" then it isn't evidence.

Bob - it is not exactly an “established fact” if you cannot account for what, when, or where. There was 85% support for full independence in Crimea from 1991 through 1995. Polling done by the UN from 2008 through 2011 showed 64-70% in favour of joining the Russian Federation. Ahead of the referendum, both Ukrainian and German sponsored polls found over 70% support for joining the Russian Federation. Polls conducted since, up to this year, have found over 80% support for the referendum’s result.

I don't believe anyone has claimed Putin to be a "benevolent world leader" in these threads, or claimed that Russia is "focussed on improving the plight of humanity". That is your projection. A false narrative over Ukraine has been challenged. Where has Russia "stolen other people's stuff" or exhibited hegemonic design? Most of that talk is also projection, most often by Russophobic right wing fanatics in the region.

Robert Lifton didn’t exactly discuss “the alternate ‘reality’ fantasy world of the Trump Cult.” He discussed recognized techniques of narrative shaping as practiced by authoritarian political circles and religious cults. He points out that excessive polarization produces extreme partisanship, and in such situations the heightened partisan identity dulls critical thinking capability. He also points out: “Trump didn’t create the polarization, though he greatly intensified it and that polarization includes a de-legitimation of opposition. If you have something called a loyal opposition, you have a country that is functioning according to its rules of law and the rule of law in general, but if you have a party or a group that de-legitimates the other side or the opposition of any kind, considers it not to have the right to contest their own realities, then you are creating the seeds and the context for what I call malignant normality.” Just my observation, but the embrace of a now discredited narrative of “Russian collusion”, led by factions of the intelligence agencies and pushed hard by Congressional Democrats, is largely responsible for the current insanity. The Trump years were completely survivable in a “loyal opposition” framework, and instead your country is on the edge of melt-down over issues that don’t begin to address or resemble actual current challenges. Several of us on these topics have tried very hard to keep discussion in the realm of a “reality-based community”, which includes sorting out what is an “established fact” and what isn’t, and our efforts have faced exactly the sort of extreme hyper-partisanship which Lifton correctly points out leads to poor analysis and hopeless polarization. This faulty logic is often expressed by labels of “fascist” or Trump cultist”, or whatever, directed at whoever challenges the current partisan group-think.

Ukraine was a region of Russia for far far longer than it has ever been a separate identity. The history is more complicated and fluid than simplistic “ethnic cleansing” narratives. Current NATO policy is based entirely on ignoring Russian identity in Crimea. Internal Ukraine politics in 2014 were akin to red state/blue state divide. The blue states overthrew the elected red state government and demanded the red states fall in line, and one red state region held a referendum and left, and two red state regions took up arms and declared federated autonomous powers but are not seeking separation. There’s nothing in the public record that supports the concept that Ukraine specifically decided to divest from the influence of a “mafia-state” or that Russia in turn sought “subservience”. You’ve made that up. Ukraine needed a bail out package and was inclined to accept an offer from EU/IMF except the late arriving fine print revealed they were being offered a very very bad deal. That is in the public record. The Russians then put together a better deal. Public record. The EU offer demanded exclusivity, which in practice meant the curtailment of sizeable economic activity with the Russian Federation with no immediate countervailing activity from the EU. That was in the fine print. It would have been a Great Depression level event, as was noted at the time. Plus the Ukraine would be required by the IMF to institute an austerity program on its population, targeting specifically home heating subsidies, and they would have to open their agricultural lands to international investors while rescinding bans against GMO farming. That’s all in the public record. An ideological minority faction can be identified because they were very vocal about their intentions during the months of the Maidan protests. This includes the diaspora Ukrainians who were settled after WW2 in the same countries which would later recognize the coup - US, UK, Canada. Some of those people are now part of “Ukraine-gate”, and Canada’s current Foreign Minister was a partisan player in Kiev at the time. This faction espoused “common values” and downplayed the austerity program. They are not the same as the nazis from western Ukraine, but accepted and appreciated the nazis for adding “muscle” to the Maidan. This tendency can be described as a "minority" because its political representatives were such, and statistical analysis of protests across Ukraine in the months corresponding to the Maidan do not support a groundswell movement. That is the fairy-tale version. The onerous terms of the EU Association were the active ingredient, not any Russian meddling.

Since the late eighteenth century, Russia’s only warm water naval facility has been based in Crimea, which was fully part of Russia/USSR until 1991, when it became part of Ukraine due to Kruschev’s “gifting” the peninsula in the 1950s. The Crimean naval facilities have long been recognized as vital to Russia’s national self defence. Beginning in the late 1990s, when NATO reneged on its agreements not to expand eastward from Germany, the status of the Russian Federation’s “leasing” of these facilities from Ukraine has been discussed in security circles. For example, in 2004 NATO sponsored an analysis of what might occur if such leases were discontinued. It was determined that Russia would seize the facilities, and it would take a shooting war to reverse that. Ukraine’s coup government almost immediately let it be known that they would be seeking to annul the leases and they would apply for NATO membership. On national security grounds, there is zero possibility that Russia’s military would remove themselves from their naval facilities, let alone turn it over to NATO. What happened in 2014 was a swift bloodless resolution to this sticking issue. If the Russians did not do it as they did, then Crimea would inevitably have become at the very least a huge international crisis, on the level of Berlin 1961. Tellingly, NATO’s leadership pretended to be shocked when in fact they knew exactly what would occur, and NATO members had stoked the whole event in the first place. Seeking international conflict and stoking international crises is bad policy and another instance of intellectual and moral bankruptcy. Yet somehow a significant amount of people, including on this board, think the ones who resolved a crisis are the ones to blame.

The concept that Russia is an aggressive revanchist state has been developed and promoted by xenophobic right wing fanatics in some of the former USSR satellites. Their viewpoints have been supported by the US and the EU/NATO because it served their interests to do so. The primary example of alleged Russian aggression has occurred in Ukraine, and the US/NATO description of what occurred has been devoid of all context and subject to key omissions. Most troubling, this flawed narrative has been used deliberately to stoke international tensions, with the terrible result of NATO/Russian arsenals in close proximity and a return to the Cold War possibility of a devastating nuclear conflict through accident or misunderstanding. I don’t understand how anyone could see this as positive or desirable. A decade ago, Ukraine required an influx of money and investment and it was negotiating potential loans with the EU and with Russia. The negotiations led to the EU’s proposed Association agreement, which, once the details were released in September 2013, mandated separation from long-standing economic ties to Russia, which would have devastated Ukraine’s economy ($25 billion or so of activity would be halted with nothing immediate in its place). The attendant austerity program tied to the IMF loans would only have further impoverished the population with the attendant deep cuts in public spending, including energy subsidies (i.e. home heating). Russia, in turn, offered loans with no similar attached strings. Rather than acting as “Putin’s puppet”, the decision to accept the Russian deal rather than the EU’s, made sense from a variety of perspectives. A minority faction in Ukraine desired an EU Association agreement for ideological reasons. They tacked their grievance onto the nascent Maidan protests, and promoted the false idea there was a binding legal requirement to accept the EU’s terms. Officials from the US and EU started to make appearances at the Maidan protests, encouraging support for the EU Association based on vague generalities such as “shared values”, which found some resonance in support particularly because the nasty details were rarely discussed. The Maidan protests were ramped up with this foreign meddling, a murky false flag event occurred, and the resulting hysteria quickly led to a putsch by the ideological faction which was promptly recognized as “legitimate” by the US, UK and Canada - a decision which had no basis in international law or the Ukraine Constitution. It was a morally and intellectually bankrupt decision, which still apparently finds favour inside the US State Dept. The alleged Putin/Russian aggression at the time of the coup amounted to proposing a better loan agreement.