how would a cyber show of force make enemies of the russian people?

there aren't many examples of conflicts that directly threatened us, so i'm curious to learn in which ones we shouldn't have taken action. let russia put nuclear missiles in cuba?

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 2:49 PM. Reason : cuba?]

2/19/2018 2:48:19 PM

lmao

https://twitter.com/schwarz/status/964985192896221189

2/19/2018 3:40:44 PM

^^?

2/19/2018 3:46:25 PM

I mean...look at the US attitude toward Russia right now. A counter-attack would provoke the same reaction over there. A worse reaction than if we just focused on defense and self-reflection.

Don't really want to get into specific conflicts or make comparisons, it's just my opinion that the attitude of showing force and returning violence with violence is not the way to go about things in general. Remember when Dennis Kucinich proposed a Department of Peace and was essentially laughed out the door? Kinda sad.

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 3:55 PM. Reason : .]

2/19/2018 3:54:06 PM

You are right but will never get ANYWHERE with that kind of talk. Not in this culture. This is a culture ingrained in the idea of vengeance and punitive measures. Our prison systems are designed to punish our own people by stripping them of humanity and you think you can convince them to treat our adversaries any better?

The wars were literally just a temper tantrum over 9/11. It happened and somebody had to pay a harsh cost, even if it wasn't the actual offenders, subsequent attacks are therapeutic to our blood-thirsty society.

The impact of the wars on our country were each worse than 9/11 but I'm sure most of the population would do Afghanistan over again knowing what they know now.

https://youtu.be/9Iw6aDR2a6w?t=48s
the crowd cheers. sick people.

2/19/2018 4:14:08 PM

how and what would the russian public even know? it wouldn't be public unless russia made it public and what incentive would they have to do that?

of course if we don't even have the capability for cyber warfare it doesn't matter anyways

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 4:16 PM. Reason : haha, adultswim has accidentally gone full earl]

2/19/2018 4:16:03 PM

^^^^^ Aren't both of those individuals Donald Trump supporters?

2/19/2018 4:21:12 PM

^^
you like to compare me to earl as if it's an insult, but i'm pretty happy to share his views the vast majority of the time. and he's 100% right on this page. i can't convince a gun toting, bill kristol worshipping, socio-capitalist that aggression is often counterproductive.

^
did woolsley support trump? i'm not sure

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 4:25 PM. Reason : got my james's mixed up]

2/19/2018 4:21:58 PM

Let us not forget that Russian bots were also largely responsible for MLK and much of the civil rights movement as well.

2/19/2018 4:23:34 PM

^^do you have me confused with someone?

also, you haven't even tried to demonstrate that a show of force is counter productive you just keep saying it is. you also are conflating an offensive show of force with aggression which isn't accurate.

your only explanation so far is that you are okay with russian attacks because you hope that we can defend against them. one of the facts we know so far is that to date we can't.

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 4:28 PM. Reason : ac]

2/19/2018 4:23:35 PM

^^^ He served on Donald Trump's transition team before resigning over disagreements regarding the intelligence agencies.

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 4:32 PM. Reason : ]

2/19/2018 4:31:43 PM

ahh okay. either way, he was also director of the CIA under Clinton

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 4:34 PM. Reason : and of course laura ingraham is a total moron]

2/19/2018 4:34:27 PM

The US is too scared to even require IDs for voting. Yet now we're supposed to implement big time changes to make the process more secure? lol

2/19/2018 5:04:16 PM

Because Russians are going to impersonate real American voters at the polls. lol

2/19/2018 5:23:00 PM

voting machines that dont leave a paper trail so cant be verified should be banned no doubt

2/19/2018 5:37:13 PM

we are still using machines that were shown to be easily hacked 15 years ago. pretty weird huh

2/19/2018 5:41:10 PM

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/mueller-investigation-kushner-foreign-financing-efforts/index.html

Steele Dossier

Quote :

"-Suggestion from source close to TRUMP and MANAFORT that Republican campaign team happy to have Russia as media bogeyman to mask more extensive corrupt business ties to China and other emerging countries"

Quote :

"Commenting on the negative media publicity surrounding alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election campaign in support of Trump, Source E said he understood that the Republican candidate and his team were relatively relaxed about this because it deflected media and the Democrats’ attention away from Trump’s business dealings in China and other emerging markets. Unlike in Russia, these were substantial and involved the payment of large bribes and kickbacks which, were they to become public, would be potentially very damaging to their campaign."

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 5:45 PM. Reason : a]

2/19/2018 5:41:52 PM

^^ no offense, but your general lack of knowledge about Russia as a country (ignorance is probably a better word, but I'm trying to be kind) is somewhat glaring. Your complete and utter lack of knowledge about Russian culture and attitudes re: their own "government" (let alone how many of them view American culture/government) is on another level.

How do you suggest we go about condemning Russian interference in our Democratic process? Ask them politely not to do it again? LOL

2/19/2018 6:36:47 PM

There's a really good book called The Russians by Hendrick Smith that is a great start point for anyone interested in learning about them.

2/19/2018 6:39:58 PM

^^
If you read my posts in the last couple pages you’d understand my view. But like tulsigabbard said, can’t really come to an agreement with exceptionalists on this one.

^
That book was written over 40 years ago.

2/19/2018 6:53:17 PM

This book is worth mentioning too (not that I've read it, myself).

Pretty sure it's been brought up before in this thread, but it's due for another mention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

2/19/2018 6:54:30 PM

Quote :

"That book was written over 40 years ago."

Your point?

2/19/2018 7:03:21 PM

It's based on interviews with Russians in the 70s. Are we the same as our parents & grandparents?

2/19/2018 7:16:35 PM

Quote :

"If you read my posts in the last couple pages you’d understand my view. But like tulsigabbard said, can’t really come to an agreement with exceptionalists on this one."

Your views aren't difficult to understand- they're just not really based on direct/firsthand experience with Russians.

American exceptionalism is certainly problematic, but it has fuck all to do with the fact that our elections were tampered with. So far, you're worried about how Russian civilians will feel if we retaliate, and that's totally missing the point.

2/19/2018 7:19:03 PM

^^First of all, I said it was a good place to start.

Second of all, culture spans generations. Am I saying you can read that book and know what every Russian citizen's favorite band is? Of course not. But you can certainly read it and start getting an understanding of how the history of Russia contributes to modern Russia's behavior and beliefs.

Come on man. Did the educational system fail you so badly that you don't see how a book like that would contribute to a better understanding?

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 7:19 PM. Reason : a]

2/19/2018 7:19:38 PM

Quote :

"American exceptionalism is certainly problematic, but it has fuck all to do with the fact that our elections were tampered with."

It has everything to do with it. What does retaliation mean when we do the same things?

2/19/2018 7:21:58 PM

Militarism and imperialism, again problematic, are not the same thing as what Russia did to our electoral process.

2/19/2018 7:28:54 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html

2/19/2018 7:31:03 PM

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2018/02/19/politics/mueller-investigation-kushner-foreign-financing-efforts/index.html#click=https://t.co/R2YStBSn4r

Hard to see trump doesn’t go down if Kushner goes down, especially since we know Kushner was trump’s most trusted confidant— he was the one who advised trump to fire coney

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenbertoni/2016/11/22/exclusive-interview-how-jared-kushner-won-trump-the-white-house/

2/19/2018 9:03:41 PM

To be an exceptionalist one has to believe it's a problem when anyone does it... except for the U.S.

No one here thinks that you complete muppet

Also, no part of sophistically pasting the same link explains why its okay to allow Russia to continue to attack a pillar of our democracy

Also this was a direct attack and not normal realpolitik, we need to stop this and dial it back to normal levels

[Edited on February 19, 2018 at 9:58 PM. Reason : .]

2/19/2018 9:57:01 PM

who gets to set the boundaries on "normal realpolitik" and how much of it is ok?

2/19/2018 10:18:50 PM

Who the fuck is Alex Van Der Zwaan?

Looks like Mueller just caught him lying about his communications with Rick Gates and "person A"


Hmm

Quote :

"Prosecutors on the case want to question members of the Skadden team who came to Ukraine to work on the report, including former Obama Administration officials Gregory Craig and Clifford Sloan, as well as the London-based associate Alex Van der Zwaan, the Russian-speaking son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, who prosecutors say acted as an intermediary for the team on much of the trip."

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/justice-ministry-investigation-nets-unexpected-567000-windfall-state-budget.html



[Edited on February 20, 2018 at 9:46 AM. Reason : Link]

2/20/2018 9:41:53 AM

Gotta be Manafort, right? Putting pressure on the last guy who hasn’t flipped?

2/20/2018 9:48:42 AM

Yea it looks like it's related to when Manafort was working for that Putin Puppet in Ukraine. They were using stolen and laundered money to pay for this law firm? Ain't nobody got time to dig into that shit show (except Mueller apparently).

2/20/2018 10:06:51 AM

Quote :

"who gets to set the boundaries on "normal realpolitik" and how much of it is ok?"

The "boundaries" are mutually set by establishing a credible deterrent. A credible deterrent is established by retaliating via a measured and appropriate response.

It's inaction, or not retaliating, that widens the boundaries which is why it is so utterly ridiculous to sit here talking about anything other than a response.

It's why international law doesn't mean shit if you don't back up your words with action and it's how nations like Russia take advantage of our liberal-oriented foreign policy.

It's one of the biggest ways Obama fucked up with his inaction on Ukraine and especially with his inaction in Syria after declaring that nonsensical "red line."

Russia hits our election in a larger manner than ever before. We respond and it stops. We don't respond and next time they may actually change physical votes. They already proved with this operation they can infiltrate our systems.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/19/politics/us-russia-black-sea-show-of-force/index.html

Also, this: https://www.gq.com/story/how-muellers-latest-indictment-relates-to-the-steele-dossier

[Edited on February 20, 2018 at 5:10 PM. Reason : a]

2/20/2018 5:00:52 PM

Nah. We will look like total hypocrites if we do anything about it. Besides, what about all those innocent Russians who didn't do anything to deserve our retaliation???

2/21/2018 10:29:29 AM

^^
What should we have done in Syria and Ukraine?

2/21/2018 10:46:12 AM

https://twitter.com/vprnet/status/966364337781837824

Only posting this because we talked about Sanders in this thread. Surely there is some context missing here. Bad job by whoever runs this twitter account...

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 1:31 PM. Reason : Also, if this is out of context, this is the downside of social media — he will get crushed]

2/21/2018 1:26:03 PM

i guess there is no audio to playback if you didn't hear it live? i'm curious to hear what he said



[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 1:37 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2018 1:35:08 PM

the audio is up. russia stuff starts at 11:30

http://digital.vpr.net/post/sen-bernie-sanders-gun-control-russian-meddling-and-congressional-dysfunction

Someone from his campaign went to the Clinton campaign saying there were a lot of recent suspicious accounts posting anti-Clinton comments on his FB page (September 2016). VPR asked why he didn't take it public (in an accusatory tone). Sanders said why didn't Clinton take it public?

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 3:10 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2018 3:05:05 PM

That doesn’t sound as bad as the out of context tweet though of course if the Clinton camp did do that they would have been slaughtered up and down.

2/21/2018 3:14:26 PM

The Clinton campaign could have asked him to report it. Or maybe there wasn't enough evidence at that point. It's just another smear attempt.

Y'all I'm serious. They're going to nail him to the cross for this Russia stuff, along with the far left.

https://twitter.com/yamiche/status/966403172968300545
https://twitter.com/isaacdovere/status/966380611677179905
https://twitter.com/joanwalsh/status/966381363946557441
https://twitter.com/bobcesca_go/status/966390212052963328

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 3:40 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2018 3:17:17 PM

fuck bernie tho. we should remember how he betrayed the left before we come swooping to his defense

2/21/2018 3:43:16 PM

nah

2/21/2018 3:46:53 PM

He’s trolling. Every once in a while he says something worthwhile and a lot of us agree about but it’s the same guy who has trolled multiple sections of this site with multiple names for years. Why? I don’t know.

I don’t care. He can do whatever he want but you can literally see it’s the same person based on the session list IPs.

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 3:50 PM. Reason : But muh privacy ]

2/21/2018 3:49:55 PM

how NPR made it seem:

"I did not know Russian bots were promoting my campaign, the real question to be asked is why the Clinton campaign didn't do something"

The actual transcript:
at 11:20 it starts with the end of sanders talking about a building revolution of the american people beginning to get involved abotu wealth inequality

woman (don't know who she is yet because i started at 11:20): and yet what we also see are people, foreign governments, and other organizations who are working to undermine that idea of "one person, one vote" by working on that one person, one vote, by getting people to believe something other than what they might otherwise believe. we've seen it in the mueller indictments,-

sanders: absolutely

woman: -we've seen the Russian government, according to these indictments, working to undermine Hillary Clinton-

sanders: absolutely!

woman: -in many ways including by supporting your campaign.

sanders: well... they were supporting my campaign? no, they were attacking hillary clinton's campaign using my supporters against hillary clinton

woman: but they said they were doing it in support of...

sanders: well they didn't. i mean essentially what they did is- here's the story on that - is at the end of the campaign, uh what they were saying is, what the russians were saying, playing a really disgusting role, because they don't believe in anything and all they want to do is sow division in this country and bring people against each other. so what they were saying is, well, in so many words, 'bernie sanders is not gonna win so if you're a bernie sanders supporter, let me tell you, hillary clinton is a criminla, a murderer, a terrible da da da da...' crazy, all of these disgusting things while i was out by the way running around the country campaigning for hillary clinton. and it runs out a guy who was on my staff, who i don't know personally, is name was john mattis (sp?), out in san diego, turns out that what he was noticing, no w're into september, late into the campaign, he was noticing that hundreds of folks he had never heard of, names were suddenly coming into bernie sanders facebook. and they were attacking hillary clinton in all kinds of ways. he checked it out, and he went to the clinton campaign and he said, "you know what, i think these guys are russians." Alright, so we had known that, and what Mueller reported had more specificity than we'd seen before, but not exactly new as you're right they're trying to bring americans against each other. Now, what is totally weird, totally weird, and almost unprecedented in modern american history, how do you have a situation where the intelligence agency say "Russians got involved in the 2016 campaign, likely to be involved in 2018". members of trump's administration are saying that, the mueller report is saying that, and you have a president of the united states who is not saying that. what is going on? and there is speculation- do the russians really own him? or do they have something on him?

woman: do you believe they do?

sanders: i don't know. i think it's- but, something very weird. how does it happen? you know, if in my staff, if all my staff is saying something then i don't have anything to say on what is an enormously important issue? The bottom line is if trump can not, for whatever reason, do the right thing, congress has got to act. this is what should do- three things, first of all you make it loud and clear through legislation that meddling in american democracy is a very very very serious crime and there will be severe severe consequences. Number 2, you provide resources to states all over this country to protect their voting mechanisms, and that is to make sure that when people in california or vermont cast their vote, that vote is adequately counted. i think there has gotta be a paper trail, uh to tell you the truth i'm conservative enough to tell you i think we should do what canada does for national elections and go to paper ballots because we can make sure then that there are not cyber attacks against our voting systems. Thirdly, we have got to get the facebook, and to twitter, and all of these platforms and say sorry, you have not done a good job, you're gonna have to change what you're doing. A lot of work that has to be done, that for whatever reason the president will not be involved in, congress hopefully we're seeing some bipartisan effort that has got to be involved.

woman: so you believe your republican colleagues will get on board with that number 1...

sanders: some of them will

woman: enough of them to pass legislation to move that forward?

sanders: i hope so

woman: un the russia investigation we got a note from mika that says senator sanders said this sunday on tv that he and his campaign were aware that russian bots were promoting his campaign verses mrs. clinton, he's also said that he was aware that wikileaks was publishing emails that were stolen from the dnc by russians. why did he not once warn his supporters about this? before the election in november 2016, his supporters obsessed about wikileaks, and many decided not to vote for clinton because of it or to stay home. if he was aware that russians were trying to promote him, and divide democrats against mrs. clinton, why did he not communicate this to his supporters?

sanders: well as i've just indicated, this was not supporting me, any more than they were supporting groups like black lives matter that are fighting for social justice, trust me that's not what they were doing. they were trying to cause division as i've just indicated, uh in september, actually a guy from our campaign did go uh, to the clinton campaign

woman: but mika wants to know why you didn't take that to your supporters, take that public

sanders: well we knew what we did know. i didn't, in september somebody- look, in the midst of all of this i was out campaigning very hard for hillary clinton. so, i don't - let me leave it at that

woman: why leave it at that, it was a specific question about why didn't you go to your supporters, so i'm curious why you say

sanders: cause we did not know early on

woman: in september why not?

sanders: she said her point was-

woman: so if you knew russian bots were promoting your campaign versus hillary-

sanders: i did not know that russian bots were promoting my campaign, russian bots were not promoting my campaign

woman: let's leave that-

sanders: what we found out was that in april and may it appeared that there were lot's of strange things happening on hacking hillary clinton

woman: so let's take support out of it cause i think support is a, um charged word, but if you and your campaign knew that there as russian meddling and that it was trying to sow division, why not take that directly to your supporters, many of whom really hung on your every word

sanders: well i would say that the real question that should be asked is what was the clinton campaign, they had more information about this than we did, and at this point we were working with them. so i think the proper question

woman: so did the clinton campaign say don't talk about this

sanders: no of course not. i mean but who do you think would be raising that issue?

woman: well i could see a world were clinton says "it's the russians" and sanders supporters say "well that's balogna" but if sanders says it they say "ok"

sanders: we knew what we knew, when we knew. and thats about all that i can say


then on to guns

not a great answer, but wow what a terrible summary in that tweet

at the point they learned anything it was clinton's campaign. her campaign controlled the messaging, it wasn't his job to act independently at that point.

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 4:10 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2018 4:09:32 PM

NPR ain't fans of Bernie

2/21/2018 4:19:54 PM

Dumbass, lazy reporters should be banging down Mitch Mcconnell, Paul Ryan, and congressional intelligence Cmte members' doors to ask this question (why didn't you go public??) instead of Sanders.

2/21/2018 4:20:05 PM

^^ actually the transcript and interviewer seem fine. Just the dumb tweet was misleading and of course people are typically too lazy to check beyond that. This happens all the time with tweets and with news headlines. Click bait nonsense.

2/21/2018 4:39:41 PM

Nahh I listened throughout the primaries and afterwards. Cokie Roberts in particular can barely contain it. One headline might seem innocuous but there's a clear trend.

Russiagate Targets the Left

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2018/02/russiagate-bernie-sanders-jill-stein-msnbc

Perfect timing for this article.

[Edited on February 21, 2018 at 4:54 PM. Reason : .]

2/21/2018 4:44:31 PM