Mark Zaid, JFK and Trump

[Dennis Berube]

Have you 3-5 that believe in the US state department propaganda seen Oliver Stone's series of interviews with Putin (yes William, that modern Hitler you believe in)??

I'm willing to bet not.

 

The VERY FIRST THING SCHIFF SAID was to repeat the complete lie that Russia invaded Ukraine. If you believe that, then this thread should basically die a confusing death. Read Ray McGovern's recent article. The title is perfect for some of the things that have been committed to the internet in this thread.

https://consortiumnews.com/2019/11/14/ray-mcgovern-ukraine-for-dummies/

 

14 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

I take it you're not going to blame the Ukrainians for shooting down the plane are you? Would have heard that by now I suppose.

Bob for someone who "researches... espionage related subjects" you seem to agree with official western storytales quite often. The story of the investigation of MH-17 has been completely political. Even yesterday, the "investigators" released phone calls between Russia and Donetsk and they are claiming that is evidence that Russia aided in the shootdown, that is not evidence at all Bob, and you should know that having studied espionage.

[Bob Ness]

deleted

Edited November 15, 2019 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

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Edited November 15, 2019 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

35 minutes ago, Jeff Carter said:

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.

This doesn't make sense. I'll respond in due time.

[Cliff Varnell]

1 hour ago, Jeff Carter said:

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.

Crimea for Russia.

Donbass for Ukraine.

How many ethnic-Russian Ukrainians are descended from folks who relocated in the early 30's as lots of Russian soldiers seized the food supplies of Ukrainian peasants?

We  shouldn't ignore the long-time Russian identity in Crimea nor should we fail to recognize the ethnic cleansing (up to 10 million dead) in the early 30's that brought lots of Russians into Ukraine.

Russia out of Donbass!  To think Putin's adventure there is any kind of righteous "resolution" is gravely delusional.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

Trump is targeting our most vulnerable allies.  The Kurds, the Ukrainians...and now the South Koreans.

Trump hikes price tag for US forces in Korea almost 500% as Seoul questions alliance

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/14/politics/trump-south-korea-troops-price-hike/index.html

Trump is a sociopath sadist who loves to make life miserable for the most vulnerable.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Cliff Varnell

[Bob Ness]

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

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 right has always been used and/or motivated to curb Russian aggression whether deserved or not. The right has always been blamed by Russia for stoking tensions (they're Nazi's!!). This is a two way street. The narrative in this case isn't hard to see at all. Ukraine's motives for divesting itself of the influence of it's neighbor's "mafia-state" are pretty obvious. The motives for Russia resisting further decay of their access to their former satellites' resources and subservience is more obvious. All the rest is chaff thrown into the air to confuse these underlying themes.

2 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

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.

Are you kidding? The big win behind door number three is Ukraine gets to benefit from the benevolence of that economic super power Russia? Huh? As opposed to the EU and United States? I'm just guessing they've seen that movie before!  Give me all the examples of the miracle economic expansion that Russia has wrought on their former satellites. The USSR refused to let their satellites enter into the Marshall Plan when their populations were starving! How'd that work out?

How do you know "a minority faction" wanted inclusion in the EU? For ideological reasons? Why wouldn't they want to exit out from under the thumb of Russia and join the EU for economic reasons?

The EU and US were trying to invite the Ukraine into the western sphere and Russia, for a variety of reasons, wasn't going to have it. Many Ukrainians wanted just that. Not just the fanatics but also those people who preferred that to what they had already experienced through generations! The last thing Russia wants is that kind of example and all they have to do is create discord, by any means necessary.

As I said yesterday, Kent was exactly right on the stand during the impeachment hearings. Without a fair Justice system in place, the Ukraine will not have the capacity to encourage investment and civil unrest will be the norm, or authoritarian rule.

[W. Niederhut]

3 hours ago, Bob Ness said:

It's also indication that Trump is curiously pliant to the goals of the RF. Putin plays him like a cheap fiddle. Ukelele maybe?

Apropos of Jim DiEugenio's question about Putin and his billionaire Russian oligarchs-- Deripaska, Agalarov, et.al.-- I assume this is common knowledge.

Since 2000, the oligarchs in the Russian Federation work for Putin.

How Putin's Oligarchs Got Inside the Trump Team

https://time.com/5401645/putins-oligarchs/

September 20, 2018

 

Putin has, obviously, used them to put Trump in the White House, while maintaining a veneer of plausible deniability about Russian government meddling in our elections on behalf of Trump and the GOP Congress.

Mueller uncovered a great deal of evidence about this Trump/Russia nexus-- and never claimed that there was "no collusion" between Trump and Putin's minions.   In fact, what Mueller said was that he had insufficient evidence to establish-- in the investigation stonewalled by Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, et.al.-- that Trump's campaign had conspired with members of the Russian government to hack the 2016 election.

 

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Putin has, obviously, used them to put Trump in the White House, while maintaining a veneer of plausible deniability about Russian government meddling in our elections on behalf of Trump and the GOP Congress.

I'm not ready to go that far but agree that the goal of the Russian active measures was to help Trump, if for no other reason than to get back at Clinton. I'm sure the US has engaged in this sort of nonsense all over (Russia, Arab Spring etc) as well.

1 hour ago, W. Niederhut said:

Mueller uncovered a great deal of evidence about this Trump/Russia nexus-- and never claimed that there was "no collusion" between Trump and Putin's minions.   In fact, what Mueller said was that he had insufficient evidence to establish-- in the investigation stonewalled by Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, et.al.-- that Trump's campaign had conspired with members of the Russian government to hack the 2016 election.

 

Mueller's investigation would not conclude anything about collusion but only prosecutions and declinations. He and his minions did collude (which isn't technically a crime) actually but Mueller declined to prosecute "conspiracy" which he apparently felt he didn't have enough evidence for a conviction. Much of the conspiracy elements of Mueller's case was obstructed by dangling pardons and agreements through Trump's 37 mutual defense agreements with other subjects/targets of the probe. These agreements, allowed under law, were never anticipated to be used by a President who the DOJ claims is unindictable while in office and capable of undoing any court action taken against him or his co-defendants through pardons.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Bob Ness

[Kirk Gallaway]

23 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Nice work if you can get it.  Hunter Biden was not getting 50 K per month.

http://www.stationgossip.com/2019/11/ukrainian-officials-release-records-of.html

 

 

Yikes Hunter Biden now, Jim?

 Jim Di and Republican firebrand Jim Jordan  are quite a tandem and share a lot of buzzwords. Hillary Clinton, Deep State, and Steele Dossier. Now Jim's adopting Jordan's "Hunter Biden" and Lindsey Grahams, WHO IS THIS GOD FORSAKEN WHISTLE BLOWER???!

Edited November 15, 2019 by Kirk Gallaway

[James DiEugenio]

Uh, geez Kirk.  Somebody lies about how much they made doing nothing and you say give them a pass.

Fine, just like Jim McCord I guess.

 

[Paul Brancato]

Jim has gone over to the dark side. And he is one stubborn cookie. 

If Hunter was making big paydays by parlaying his father’s clout, that’s the usual stinking graft. We see it all the time. Nothing new.  You can’t weigh him on a scale against real criminals, sick power hungry billionaires. He’d barely move the needle. 

Edited November 15, 2019 by Paul Brancato

[Kirk Gallaway]

On 11/9/2019 at 8:20 AM, Kirk Gallaway said:

So you're 100$% sure that Mc Cord deliberately brought down Nixon?

And you're 100% sure that Trump is not compromised by Russian oligarchs despite Trump's financial history, his family's past statements to that effect, as well as his lies to that effect?

Don't evade Jim, Since you brought Mc Cord up, What you're talking about  is this. (Above) You seem to making your case on Mc Cord. but you're not saying 100%..

But the real question is...........

And you're 100% sure that Trump is not compromised by Russian oligarchs despite Trump's financial history, his family's past statements to that effect, as well as his lies to that effect?

[Bob Ness]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Uh, geez Kirk.  Somebody lies about how much they made doing nothing and you say give them a pass.

Fine, just like Jim McCord I guess.

 

Did Biden say he made 50k a month? Or was that just reported?

Who said he didn't do anything though Jim? He essentially licensed his name to a private company like thousands of people do who are in a position to do so. I don't think it looks good but still the company can run around legitimizing itself by presenting a board with prominent names attached. Theoretically corporate board members help to direct the vision of a company and help elect officers and so on but really most businesses use these people for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's just to have a name attached that's recognizable like a golf pro advising on a club board or something.

Biden may know nothing about Gas contracts but he could call someone at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and because of his name recognition get a lunch meeting for the President of the company with FERC. In fact that's the sort of thing board members do mostly.

Edited November 15, 2019 by Bob Ness

[Bob Ness]

23 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Jim has gone over to the dark side. And he is one stubborn cookie. 

If Hunter was making big paydays by parlaying his father’s clout, that’s the usual stinking graft. We see it all the time. Nothing new.  You can’t weigh him on a scale against real criminals, sick power hungry billionaires. He’d barely move the needle. 

I don't think it is graft. It's standard procedure Paul. In entertainment circles it's done all the time. Companies and non-profits everywhere collect board members who help establish their cred in a variety of ways. Sometime they're retired execs from the company, names who could help with an image problem, well connected business people with a good rolodex etc. Biden's name in Ukraine would be helpful in a number of ways and it's not inherently suspicious or anything. It may not be prudent for a Vice President to be seen as having a conflict but corruption doesn't necessarily follow. The better part of valor probably would be to avoid it but it's hardly an earth-shaking indictment.