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Commenter Jenner Ickham Errican speculates irresponsibly:
Russia-Israel-America, you say? Interesting waaay outside possibility:
Israel punked the DNC and Podesta, not the Russians.
Scenario:
Israeli state cyber intelligence ‘hacks’ the DNC and Podesta, leaving ‘fingerprints’ pointing to Russia’s FSB and GRU to throw off source detection. As the US election progresses, Netanyahu decides that Hillary is a big risk given her fundamentally dishonest, unreadable nature, and perceived past wavering on Israeli matters. And who bellowed his admiration of Israel and antipathy to Obama’s Iran deal? Who’s the opposite of anti-nationalist, resentful, passive-aggressive Barack Obama?
Donald Trump.
Boom goes the dynamite.
In recent weeks, the Obama administration secretly finds evidence that Israel stole the emails, the Dems realize they were had, and can’t yell “The Jews did it!” First, they already cried wolf about Putin (whom they still hate, anyway). And second, publicly blaming Israel for secretly influencing the United States presidential election, well… the SPLC and ADL would have to declare the Democratic Party to be a hate group.
Why did “borderless world” John Kerry rage-lecture Bibi? The Obama/Clinton-fronted globalist cabal found that the Israeli shot-callers (who know the value of inviolate borders) decided they wanted friendly, strong nationalist Trump as US president and thus dumped the damaging emails. The UN brouhaha was Obama’s pissed-off (and personal) retaliatory parting shot at Bibi and the Zionist hawks.
End scenario.
While both Israel and Russia have strong electronic eavesdropping capabilities, my guess would be that Putin would be more likely than Netanyahu for a couple of reasons:
1. The election was pretty much win-win for Bibi in that Hillary was much under the influence of big donors like Haim Saban.
2. The Israelis don’t have all that much of a tradition of publishing their secret findings the way the Russians do. The Israelis seem to play their knowledge close to the vest, while the Russians have a tradition of publishing other people’s secrets for the whole world to read that goes back to late 1917 when Lenin and Trotsky published the Czarist foreign ministry’s secret exchanges with France and Britain. Recent hacks that get published, like the Victoria Nuland bugging in Ukraine, seem more likely to have been Russian.
On the other other hand, there are lots of potential sources for any particular hack, and I don’t see much reason to try to guess.
One lesson from the intellectual civil war in France from roughly 1895 to 1905 over the Dreyfus Affair is that it’s stupid for pundits to commit themselves to any one assumption about this kind of spy-vs-spy stuff because it’s very, very easy to turn out to be wrong.
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If Israeli were into fining where is the best pizza joint in DC, I agree, they would not publish Podesta’s emails, but the whole point was to influence election, so Podesta’s emails were made available to Wikileaks. Anyway, you are wrong on point (2).
OT: The Eagles gig at the Trump inauguration apparently is off. Joe Walsh reportedly won’t play because he says Trump is a ruthless twitterer. His wife, Marjorie Bach–the 1970s sexpot from the film The Spy Who Loved Me or someone who looks a lot like her– reiterated Joe “WILL NOT BE PERFORMING” at the Jan. 20 festivities.
Walsh, who once considered a run for public office on the plank of making his song “Life’s been good” the new US national anthem, was unavailable for further comment as his wife hurried him away through the airport terminal.
One remaining question for iSteve readers is “what should the new National Anthem be“? Walsh said “Life’s Been Good” while others have suggested the theme from Hawaii five-0 by the Ventures as a good national anthem.
Both are reasonable suggestions. Imagine the Olympics of 2018 and an American has won the gold medal in plunge for distance and stands proudly upon the podium: What tune should play that best represents America? As a fan of Sailer I’d say Lyin’ Eyes by the Eagles or maybe something good by the Clash.
https://twitter.com/MickJagger/status/796282071580864512Replies: @pepperinmono
Barbara Bach has been married to Ringo Starr since 1981.
Marjorie married Joe Walsh in 2008.
Catherine Bach - the immortal Daisy Duke - is not currently married to a singer, although she was married for a while to Angela Lansbury's son.
I can understand the e-mail hack. Russia could have done it, random hackers could have done it, and even the scenario described above isn’t impossible.
I can also understand the Comey letter. FBI is law enforcement, and law enforcement types tend to be pro-Trump.
What I can’t understand is why the media made such a big deal of the Comey letter. I’m glad it did. But it didn’t have to. They could have buried that story.
I’ve seen a couple of people describe the media focus on that letter, during the first two or three days after it was sent to Congress, as a coup, as the powers that be switching their support from Hillary to Trump. Now, Putin does not control NYT and CNN. If something went on there, it must have been an internal US-elite event.
The white voters in the Midwest were going to go Trump no matter what "because jobs".....
Trump said he'd bring the jobs back....Obummer and Hillary said those jobs weren't coming back.
Hillary didn't listen to her old adviser Carville "it's the economy, stupid".....
Hillary didn't even lie and try to get those votes. She just smugly thought it was in the bag for her.
Only politico nerds like us give two shits about foreign policy or emails or Libya or whatever. Those Midwest people who elected Obama stayed home or backed Trump because he at least lied and said he'd bring their factory jobs back. Trump lied like Obama.
Hillary was too lazy and arrogant to listen to her husband.
I keep reading that Podesta was “hacked.” He wasn’t hacked, he was the moronic victim of a Nigerian prince-tier phishing attack.
Then again, he also shouldn't have been part of a cheap private email server crime, but oh well.Replies: @anon
Also, I am not really sure how much play the DNC email contents got among the general population prior to the election - seemed to be the kind of thing political junkies pay attention to, but not the average voter. Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonymous, @Neoconned
The emails weren’t “hacked” they were LEAKED. There is a big difference.
Assange has a great track record. He denies any state actor.
Why not focus on the 28 year old dem staffer who was professionally murdered on the streets of DC?
The DNC emails were leaked, full stop. That's what Wikileaks is saying, and they're the most trustworthy source around. When the Dem's start claiming that they were hacked and the RNC were hacked, they're just plain lying. Not only has the RNC denied any hack occurred, the Dem's have produced no evidence to show that they or the RNC was hacked.
Seth Rich's execution looms large here. Between him and the Right Wing guy who sued Hillary this summer and then "committed suicide" a two days after serving her, there is much that a good honest reporter could go after. So basically Glenn Greenwald and no one else, sadly.
Podesta's emails are different though; to my knowledge, Wikileaks has not stated those were leaked. THAT is a likely hack, but just who did the hacking is up in the air.
The Dem's have been deliberately trying to mesh the Podesta emails with the DNC emails to confuse people, because otherwise Podesta's emails are just more evidence of both Hillary's criminal activity putting the nation at risk (i.e. getting hacked) and the stupidity those emails display.Replies: @Anonymous
In regards to Podesta's emails, evidence points to him being fooled by a simple password request email hack. Go see TheGatewaypundit site for this.
Prior to the Russian accusation, our intel services admitted that Hillary's email server was hacked by at least 5 nation states. It stands to reason that the DNC by putting it's email on gmail was just asking to be hacked. No one with a ounce of intelligence would ever trust sensitive emails to something that is unsecure as gmail or any cloud based services.
The fact that the DNC didn't hire top flight IT contractors to set up and manage their IT needs demonstrated how profoundly arrogant and out of touch their top people are - everything is political loyalty not competence with them. Hillary and Bill were quite stupid to think they didn't have big fat bullseye painted on them on a 7x24 basis by nation state hacker groups along with private groups all looking for the slightest chink in their IT defense.Replies: @Anonymous, @Eagle Eye
It is laughable that Obama is pretending to have a hissy fit about alleged Russian interference that might possibly have affected some US voters such a short time after he himself tried to pervert the democratic process when visiting Britain shortly before the Brexit referendum and effectively threatened trade sanctions if a majority of Brits voted for Out.
All you can really say is “whatever!”, because these games of three-dimensional-chess and one-upmanship between world leaders and their foreign policy teams are played by rules that the general public has no knowledge of.
Those leaks/hacks had been retconned into a much bigger deal than they were at the time. I remember the election season, it wasn’t that long ago. No one paid any attention to this stuff except for Trump supporters. Certainly not the mainstream media or even the GOP establishment.
And even us Trumpeters had a nagging feeling that these revelations were not that earth shattering. We kept hoping for an October/November surprise when something really huge was going to drop. And… nothing ever came of it.
New national anthem? “The Hill Has Gone.”
Well, technically that would be a hack, it was just a very low-level one that a super-powerful politically connected person like Podesta shouldn’t have fallen for.
Then again, he also shouldn’t have been part of a cheap private email server crime, but oh well.
Isn't that enough?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22335Replies: @whorefinder, @Mr. Anon
Assange has a great track record. He denies any state actor.
Why not focus on the 28 year old dem staffer who was professionally murdered on the streets of DC?Replies: @whorefinder, @Rod1963
This x 10000.
The DNC emails were leaked, full stop. That’s what Wikileaks is saying, and they’re the most trustworthy source around. When the Dem’s start claiming that they were hacked and the RNC were hacked, they’re just plain lying. Not only has the RNC denied any hack occurred, the Dem’s have produced no evidence to show that they or the RNC was hacked.
Seth Rich’s execution looms large here. Between him and the Right Wing guy who sued Hillary this summer and then “committed suicide” a two days after serving her, there is much that a good honest reporter could go after. So basically Glenn Greenwald and no one else, sadly.
Podesta’s emails are different though; to my knowledge, Wikileaks has not stated those were leaked. THAT is a likely hack, but just who did the hacking is up in the air.
The Dem’s have been deliberately trying to mesh the Podesta emails with the DNC emails to confuse people, because otherwise Podesta’s emails are just more evidence of both Hillary’s criminal activity putting the nation at risk (i.e. getting hacked) and the stupidity those emails display.
Agreed – at my company we are always laughing at the weekly warnings from IT not to click on emails just like this, since we all assume only total morons would fall for it. Whoops.
Also, I am not really sure how much play the DNC email contents got among the general population prior to the election – seemed to be the kind of thing political junkies pay attention to, but not the average voter. Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.
Crooked Cankles reminds a lot of Black voters of the White female teachers they had in K-12 who they feel extreme hatreds toward, so they stayed home.
There is a scene in Dangerous Minds where Michelle Pfeiffer is called a White bread bitch by one of her vibrant students. That is how a lot of Black students talk to their White female teachers.Replies: @Detective Club
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/13/a-clinton-campaign-aides-typo-allowed-hackers-to-access-john-podestas-email-account/Replies: @Lot
Blacks up north stayed home and Hillary's factory state union guys stayed home or voted Trump or Stein.
Hillary wouldn't shut the fuck up about what Howard Dean called "God, gays and guns"......so that probably spooked even more Midwestern redneck types who falsely thought she'd go for their stupid rifle and pistol collection.
And instead of listening toCarville and her husband she doubled down on the BLM shit and amnesty while all she had to do is do what trump did and lie about bringing the factories back when they'll just move from China to Bangladesh or some cheaper sweatshop state and the ones that do come back will be automated.....those jobs aren't coming back.
Trump was smart enough to lie and say they were.....she was too lazy and stupid to "lower herself" to lie and grovel for votes.
She thought she could win babbling about racism and gays and taking away rifle collections from rednecks.
We know who definitely did not hack Crooked Cankles emails and that is China. Donald J. Trump is considered public enemy number 1 in China and the Mongoloid world in general. The Mongoloid world StandsWithHer#.
Brennan’s CIA is crap. Comey’s FBI is crap. Why believe these liars on any issue?
Both agencies have long histories of bullshit.
Also, I am not really sure how much play the DNC email contents got among the general population prior to the election - seemed to be the kind of thing political junkies pay attention to, but not the average voter. Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonymous, @Neoconned
“Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.”
Crooked Cankles reminds a lot of Black voters of the White female teachers they had in K-12 who they feel extreme hatreds toward, so they stayed home.
There is a scene in Dangerous Minds where Michelle Pfeiffer is called a White bread bitch by one of her vibrant students. That is how a lot of Black students talk to their White female teachers.
Black men really, really, really, really, really, really hated Hillary in 2016!
Did I say Black men really hated Hillary? One cannot over-emphasize this fact strenuously enough! One Black guy, whom I've known for over thirty-five years, said that "she's just a dried-up old White stink bitch with the shakes, dressed up in a piss pants suit, that only a blind Bowery bum would pay cash money for!"
Yeah, it seems that Black men really hated Hillary with a passion in 2016.Replies: @Pericles, @sabril, @Mr. Anon
https://youtu.be/tJXzKvb83hs?t=2
Walsh, who once considered a run for public office on the plank of making his song "Life's been good" the new US national anthem, was unavailable for further comment as his wife hurried him away through the airport terminal.
One remaining question for iSteve readers is "what should the new National Anthem be"? Walsh said "Life's Been Good" while others have suggested the theme from Hawaii five-0 by the Ventures as a good national anthem.
Both are reasonable suggestions. Imagine the Olympics of 2018 and an American has won the gold medal in plunge for distance and stands proudly upon the podium: What tune should play that best represents America? As a fan of Sailer I'd say Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles or maybe something good by the Clash.
https://youtu.be/Rcvo4U33_L4
https://youtu.be/i8p6FBYlhHc
https://youtu.be/jAYPN-1Yjt0Replies: @Desiderius, @pyrrhus, @Dave Pinsen, @anonymous
They’d have to break through the ice from underneath first. That would be a special challenge under the rules of plunge for distance.
There is exactly zero evidence that any state agent was involved. Both of the DNC episodes and Podesta’s emails were all trivial phishing attacks. Anyone with internet connection and determination could have easily done that. The proof of Russian involvement offered so far includes: 1) that some of the connections originated from Russian-run commercial VPN service, 2) that some of the subsequent tools used were compile by Russians/in Russia, 3) that hacking activity followed strictly 9-5 Moscow time work hours.
#1 is a joke because anyone with a credit card anywhere in the world can get the same account within 15 minutes.
#2 is a joke because a sizable proportion of hacking tools freely available on Internet was made in Russia. Lots of good programmers with plenty of spare time in Russia + some of the commercially-oriented hacking is a profitable business.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
FBI report that says to present technical details presented absolutely nothing.
The whole thing is a conspiracy that started as an attempt to undermine Trump campaign and evolved into the current attempts to de-legitimatize Trump presidency. That’s all there is. There is a non-zero chance that Putin was involved but the chance is pretty small – if FSB/GRU really wanted to hack these guys, they would have done it far more stealthily than ugly phishing.
That anybody takes this as proof of anything is amazing. Spying is a 24/7 job and the idea that spies regularly punch their time card and clock in is ridiculous. Any real spy would be more than willing to do the work during normal US business hours. It is more likely CIA disinformation designed to fool the idiot American.
Do hackers usually work 9-5 hours?
http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/27/yougov-poll-52-of-democrats-believe-russia-tampered-with-the-vote-totals-to-get-trump-elected-president/
Hillary would have been even better for Bibi/Israel. She would have fooled her supporters and fellow globalists into believing she was treating the Israelis and Palestinians equally, when in reality, she would have let Bibi keep on building settlements in the West Bank. Trump’s outright support for settlements might actually make things harder for Bibi.
Hillary would have made the perfect fine-de-siecle sort of inbred, crazy, dying-Hapsburg sort of President. All her "color" and all the inevitable drama over her health, sexual proclivities, embezzlement, etc. would have been a useful distraction to paper over the cracks in her coalition of the fringes. "OK, now that the alt-right's been put away for good, let's have a serious discussion about boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel." "Umm.... hey, is that Jay-Z over there!"
Denying Russian skulduggery? You do know what happened 100 years ago tomorrow?
What did happen on December 31, 1916? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916 says:
December 31: The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the United States at the time, burns to the ground.
What's so significant about that?Replies: @Elsewhere
I think it was the same people who do most of the hacking of US Citizens: Eastern European and/or Russian hacking gangs.
They steal a few billion by extorting US individuals, send us money or your PC will be wiped. Most don’t pay, but many pay big.
They operate with semi-impunity in the more backward parts of Eastern Europe: Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia, Bulgaria. The way they stop from getting tossed in jail or extradited is a combination of bribes, only targeting foreigners, and aligning themselves with the current government and harassing its enemies.
The largest number of political hacks the past five years were between the two sides in Ukraine, since this type of cybergang exists on both sides of the conflict.
So it wasn’t Putin, but there is a very high chance it was done with the belief he’d approve, probably correct.
Both of Steve points about Israel is correct. Bibi obviously hates Obama, but Clinton would be a return to prior policy. Sure he favored Trump, but not that much. The other thing is once you release hacked data, your target may raise its security and know it has been compromised. Both Israel and the Russian government itself would prefer to keep their successful hacks secret so they can continue.
There’s also a risk/reward problem for Israel. The Dem Establishment is entirely anti-Russia, so Russia had little to lose by condoning a hack by its private citizens. Israel is popular with both parties, and Bibi has been very careful to keep his anti-Obama/Kerry rhetoric limited to them. If Israel were hacking the DNC and and release the contents, it would be a disaster for them.
All this said, if it was an Israeli, it was again probably a private Israeli cybercriminal, not the Mossad. Israeli computer nerds and Israeli far-right settler types who hate Obama are probably not much of an overlapping set however.
beg to differ. The centroids of the various settlement blocks, are about a 20-minute drive to Outer Metro TelAviv. Well, depending on traffic.
Quite a few of the hilltop settlements can see the TeAviv beaches with a simple sniper scope.
These aren't going to be handed over to any foreign army. Take that to the bank.
The DNC emails were leaked, full stop. That's what Wikileaks is saying, and they're the most trustworthy source around. When the Dem's start claiming that they were hacked and the RNC were hacked, they're just plain lying. Not only has the RNC denied any hack occurred, the Dem's have produced no evidence to show that they or the RNC was hacked.
Seth Rich's execution looms large here. Between him and the Right Wing guy who sued Hillary this summer and then "committed suicide" a two days after serving her, there is much that a good honest reporter could go after. So basically Glenn Greenwald and no one else, sadly.
Podesta's emails are different though; to my knowledge, Wikileaks has not stated those were leaked. THAT is a likely hack, but just who did the hacking is up in the air.
The Dem's have been deliberately trying to mesh the Podesta emails with the DNC emails to confuse people, because otherwise Podesta's emails are just more evidence of both Hillary's criminal activity putting the nation at risk (i.e. getting hacked) and the stupidity those emails display.Replies: @Anonymous
Does Craig Murray speak for Wikileaks?
You need to work in Guccifer 2.0 here somewhere.
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hacker-guccifer-2-0-releases-more-dnc-docs-including-tim-n647921
What Wikileaks has officially said:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer
The big DNC hack is by someone who calls himself Guccifer 2.0, and appears to be Russian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0
While some claim the Russian gov is behind him, the whole operation was kind of amateurish. Guccifer2 claimed to be Romanian, then used an awful machine-translation Romanian to try to prove it, but used Russian language VPNs. I just don't see the KGB being that bad, I am sure they have actual Romanian speakers on staff, and know how to properly anonymize their country of origin.
An associate for Wikileaks (and former UK ambassador) has stated that the DNC emails were leaks, not hacks. Assange has not denied this, he's just saying he won't say who it came from. Assange stepped out and denied the Russian angle because Assange is anti-war and doesn't want to be seen as a Russian agent.
Whether Israel or Russia, in a way, we should be happier that the aims of “war” are being achieved by properly arranged sequence of 0’s and 1’s rather than uranium and plutonium. Cyber is also a great equalizer if a small nation like Israel can influence and alter the political trajectory of a nation that spends more than the rest of the world on “Defense”. Is it too much to hope swords shall be beaten into keyboards and spears into mice?
Also, I am not really sure how much play the DNC email contents got among the general population prior to the election - seemed to be the kind of thing political junkies pay attention to, but not the average voter. Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonymous, @Neoconned
But Podesta did have some skepticism — he asked IT and they told him it was a “legitimate” e-mail.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/13/a-clinton-campaign-aides-typo-allowed-hackers-to-access-john-podestas-email-account/
Personally, I’ll take Assange at his word that he got the information from a Democratic party staffer who was a Bernie supporter. He owns Wikileaks, so he ought to know.
Someone on another board put his finger on what seems to be the crux of all this paranoia-mongering about the Russians. It’s the donors. Two days after the election, there was a newspaper article about the uproar among the Democratic party donors. They were furious about the loss and demanding answers. A few of the donors even said they wouldn’t give to the party again. I think it’s this last point that has terrified the Democrats. Neither Hillary nor the party’s officials want to say to a donor who gave them a million bucks, “Uh, sorry, we screwed up big time and we did it with your money.”
No tech billionaire wants to hear that. They’ll yell and fire employees who try to hand them that line. They’re used to getting results with their cash, and if they think they’re throwing it away on a bunch of idiots who don’t know how to win, they’ll quit donating for good. At first, the Dems tried to blame everyone except themselves, but after deciding they needed to coordinate and get behind a single narrative, they’ve decided to make the Russians their fall guy. Since Putin’s already humiliated Obama, Obama’s going along with this nonsense to placate his smarting ego. Aleppo more than anything explains why Obama is going after the Russians now.
Democrats have been losing seats ever since 2010, and in 2018 they have 23 Senate seats up for relection while the Republicans have only 8. Of the Dem’s 23, 5 are in swing states with Republican governors. In sum, if the donors cease their support, the Democrats are looking another potential wipeout 2 years from now, and maybe in 2020 if they can’t raise enough cash to support their own candidates in their own strongholds. New York and California have a lot of low information voters among minorities, and they tend to vote for the guy they’ve heard of vs. the guy they haven’t, and to be heard about, you need campaign money for ads and for your street teams to knock on doors, and your ‘walking around money’ for the black reverends to turn out the black vote. Democratic campaigns are a bit like a social welfare program tacked onto a normal political campaign, and without the ‘social welfare’ bit to grease the necessary palms, their supporters disappear. It’s an old Dem party trait that goes way back to Boss Tweed and the original Irish machine. You paid your supporters to vote, by God. You had to bribe the necessary people to make them show up.
Even worse from the Democratic perspective, if Trump delivers jobs to working class blacks and gives upper-middles a booming stock market that makes them significantly richer, they may choose personal gain over the Democrats and vote Trump in 2020. The Dems are frightened they may suffer virtual party death in 2020 akin to what the Liberal party suffered in England, disappearing permanently as an important party from the scene. Hillary, Obama, and the party officials are all hardcore political animals who know they have a weak future bench, and they can tally the seats they’ve lost. They know they’re headed for disaster.
One last point: If Hillary or Obama want a nice, well-funded retirement of speech making, etc., or if any other future Democratic pol wants to create a financially successful ‘foundation,’ they cannot have their donors walking out on them.
Of course, he might be just the guy to accommodate it with construction, etc. spending.
For such people, the choice between donating to Republicans and donating to Democrats is like the choice between buying a Honda and buying a Toyota. They may prefer one to the other but they are not so loyal that they wouldn't consider switching after a bad experience.
So yeah, I would not be surprised if this whole "blame the Russians" thing is a story to placate these fat cat donors. But if that's case, it's pretty crazy for Obama to get on board to the point of actually sanctioning the Russians.
I really would like to believe that there is solid evidence of Russian misconduct both in terms of hacking e-mails and releasing them. But the timing is pretty suspicious, it seems that the authorities did not take this issue seriously until after the election.
Do the reports state WHEN the authorities started investigating these alleged hacks?
That is ONE globalism that I could tolerate since so much of the media is concentrated in a few mega-corporations.
In 2016, we learned that the National Media COLLUDED with Hillary and Democrats. If the fourth-estate is now like this, it means we can't rely on the National Media.
So, if other nations wanna hack into the US and spill the beans, I say go right ahead... and this goes for Trump too.
Besides, since US meddles in the affairs of all nations and hacks into everything, it's just a balance of powers. Since hacking is relatively cheap and accessible to all nations, it is the one way in which they can counter the massive financial, military, and soft power of US that has been forcing globalism all over.
So, if Russia did something, I think we should thank it.
After all, dissidents in the USSR were grateful for any kind of foreign help, even by the CIA.Replies: @MarkinLA
Either way, there’s a fine line between ‘Russia shouldn’t be allowed to influence our elections’ and ‘No foreign country should be allowed to influence our elections, not even Israel’. I doubt they can keep emphasizing the former for very long without risking the latter.
https://youtu.be/tJXzKvb83hs?t=2
Walsh, who once considered a run for public office on the plank of making his song "Life's been good" the new US national anthem, was unavailable for further comment as his wife hurried him away through the airport terminal.
One remaining question for iSteve readers is "what should the new National Anthem be"? Walsh said "Life's Been Good" while others have suggested the theme from Hawaii five-0 by the Ventures as a good national anthem.
Both are reasonable suggestions. Imagine the Olympics of 2018 and an American has won the gold medal in plunge for distance and stands proudly upon the podium: What tune should play that best represents America? As a fan of Sailer I'd say Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles or maybe something good by the Clash.
https://youtu.be/Rcvo4U33_L4
https://youtu.be/i8p6FBYlhHc
https://youtu.be/jAYPN-1Yjt0Replies: @Desiderius, @pyrrhus, @Dave Pinsen, @anonymous
Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘America’ should be the anthem….
Happy 2017
https://youtu.be/tJXzKvb83hs?t=2
Walsh, who once considered a run for public office on the plank of making his song "Life's been good" the new US national anthem, was unavailable for further comment as his wife hurried him away through the airport terminal.
One remaining question for iSteve readers is "what should the new National Anthem be"? Walsh said "Life's Been Good" while others have suggested the theme from Hawaii five-0 by the Ventures as a good national anthem.
Both are reasonable suggestions. Imagine the Olympics of 2018 and an American has won the gold medal in plunge for distance and stands proudly upon the podium: What tune should play that best represents America? As a fan of Sailer I'd say Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles or maybe something good by the Clash.
https://youtu.be/Rcvo4U33_L4
https://youtu.be/i8p6FBYlhHc
https://youtu.be/jAYPN-1Yjt0Replies: @Desiderius, @pyrrhus, @Dave Pinsen, @anonymous
Time to call Mick.
What a coup for Trump.
Stones may the only band above any recriminations from either side.
They seem like they need or want the bread ,too.
I am sure they would play if the $ was enough.
Playing for Trump is outrageous, it fits their image.
“Irresponsibly” ! Makes me sound more dangerous than Carlos Danger. Better not let this go to my head. Ahhh, too late.
Note: My original comment had hyperlinks and pretty bolding and italics, if it matters.
Jenner Ickham Errican’s theory at least explains the Obama admin’s actions at the UN and Kerry’s speech. Yglesias is mystified by it:
Yglesias goes on to note that the Israel/Palestinian conflict is an issue that unites Republicans, for the most part, but splits Dems, and wonders why Obama would bring it up when Dems need to be unified to check the tyrant Trump.
Another explanation might be Obama letting a little of his inner Muslimist out, post-election. But this seems like one last kick at the rickety Democratic Party edifice by him on the way out. Too bad the title “Burning Down My Master’s House” is already taken. He’ll need something else for his third memoir.
The optics could not be worse for the Dems to try to keep holding Jewish voters. They scream ANTISEMITE HITLER HITLER at him for months, then he gets elected and shows he'll be the most pro-Jewish president in our history, while Obama flips Israel a symbolic bird in the U.N.
The resolution actually called the historic Jewish quarter of Jerusalem "occupied territory" and demanded they stop building houses there for Israel's growing population.Replies: @Jefferson
All this questioning about who did what, or if some were in on it together.
Access of Oy-Vey-il
All the fringe 9/11 Mossad conspiracy theories aside – there is very well documented evidence in the MSM that Mossad has committed substantial foreign spy work on American soil without approval from either FBI or CIA…..
The “dancing Israelis” on 9/11 probably weren’t cheering because they were in on it but rather they saw it as aa chance for us to “be on their side totally” now, or whatever.
There is also substantial evidence they investigated Islamic charities and other Palestinian and Muslim fundamentalist financing networks in the NY area the way Mossad allegedly had a Yemeni Jew as a mole inside al Qaida.
There are also allegations they have rogue SPLC &ADL employees as spies spying on far right groups on American soil even though many of these are Zionist…..
Also as a.piece by Fox News reporter Brit Hume did noted “Israeli art students” we’re stalkingDEA & FBI agents either to intimidate them and or to get narcotics investigation intelligence.
Rogue elements of Mossad – mainly those Russian Jews with ties to organized crime in the former Soviet Union were alleged by Hume and others to be involved in ecstasy and designer drug trafficking and financing.
So could Mossad – either rogue elements or with a nod from Bibi himself be behind this?
Sure….and given a fifth of Israel’s population is of Russian descent….they have personal, business, etc ties to Russia and easily could have planted the Russian “markers” to frame the FSB.
And the overpaid morons at the NSA/FBI would be none the wiser.
Israelis are the main source of ecstasy in my little Antipodean country town. They also supply guns in a 'gun free country'. Nasty guys you don't want to mess with.
Assange has a great track record. He denies any state actor.
Why not focus on the 28 year old dem staffer who was professionally murdered on the streets of DC?Replies: @whorefinder, @Rod1963
I agree.
In regards to Podesta’s emails, evidence points to him being fooled by a simple password request email hack. Go see TheGatewaypundit site for this.
Prior to the Russian accusation, our intel services admitted that Hillary’s email server was hacked by at least 5 nation states. It stands to reason that the DNC by putting it’s email on gmail was just asking to be hacked. No one with a ounce of intelligence would ever trust sensitive emails to something that is unsecure as gmail or any cloud based services.
The fact that the DNC didn’t hire top flight IT contractors to set up and manage their IT needs demonstrated how profoundly arrogant and out of touch their top people are – everything is political loyalty not competence with them. Hillary and Bill were quite stupid to think they didn’t have big fat bullseye painted on them on a 7×24 basis by nation state hacker groups along with private groups all looking for the slightest chink in their IT defense.
I don’t accept the premise that anything was hacked.
I think Ron Unz could code easily deploy a pop-up window that asked for my username and password in plain text before posting. If the Ruskies really hacked SSL a huge segment of modern commerce would come to a screeching halt and you’d running to bank tomorrow morning to withdraw what might be left.
Guccifer, the guy we know hacked into many US politicians emails (Colin Powell, etc), was a private east euro citizen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer
The big DNC hack is by someone who calls himself Guccifer 2.0, and appears to be Russian.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer_2.0
While some claim the Russian gov is behind him, the whole operation was kind of amateurish. Guccifer2 claimed to be Romanian, then used an awful machine-translation Romanian to try to prove it, but used Russian language VPNs. I just don’t see the KGB being that bad, I am sure they have actual Romanian speakers on staff, and know how to properly anonymize their country of origin.
I can also understand the Comey letter. FBI is law enforcement, and law enforcement types tend to be pro-Trump.
What I can't understand is why the media made such a big deal of the Comey letter. I'm glad it did. But it didn't have to. They could have buried that story.
I've seen a couple of people describe the media focus on that letter, during the first two or three days after it was sent to Congress, as a coup, as the powers that be switching their support from Hillary to Trump. Now, Putin does not control NYT and CNN. If something went on there, it must have been an internal US-elite event.Replies: @Neoconned
The Comey letter is overrated.
The white voters in the Midwest were going to go Trump no matter what “because jobs”…..
Trump said he’d bring the jobs back….Obummer and Hillary said those jobs weren’t coming back.
Hillary didn’t listen to her old adviser Carville “it’s the economy, stupid”…..
Hillary didn’t even lie and try to get those votes. She just smugly thought it was in the bag for her.
Only politico nerds like us give two shits about foreign policy or emails or Libya or whatever. Those Midwest people who elected Obama stayed home or backed Trump because he at least lied and said he’d bring their factory jobs back. Trump lied like Obama.
Hillary was too lazy and arrogant to listen to her husband.
Another explanation might be Obama letting a little of his inner Muslimist out, post-election. But this seems like one last kick at the rickety Democratic Party edifice by him on the way out. Too bad the title "Burning Down My Master's House" is already taken. He'll need something else for his third memoir.Replies: @Lot, @Jefferson
That’s a good way to put it. Over Obama’s 8 years they lost 12 each senators and governors and 900 state legislative seats.
The optics could not be worse for the Dems to try to keep holding Jewish voters. They scream ANTISEMITE HITLER HITLER at him for months, then he gets elected and shows he’ll be the most pro-Jewish president in our history, while Obama flips Israel a symbolic bird in the U.N.
The resolution actually called the historic Jewish quarter of Jerusalem “occupied territory” and demanded they stop building houses there for Israel’s growing population.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/12/13/a-clinton-campaign-aides-typo-allowed-hackers-to-access-john-podestas-email-account/Replies: @Lot
He’s still an idiot. I have been getting phishing emails since I had aol in 1995. Someone I can figure this out on my own without running to IT.
He did not follow IT’s direction to change his password either, they sent him a link to do so, and instead he clicked on the phishing email link. How hard is it to just go to google.com, log in, and chance your password?
At this point being a bit old is no longer an excuse. Computer networks were around in the mid-80’s at universities and everywhere by the mid-90’s. Podesta was not too old to learn the very basics of computer security.
Another explanation might be Obama letting a little of his inner Muslimist out, post-election. But this seems like one last kick at the rickety Democratic Party edifice by him on the way out. Too bad the title "Burning Down My Master's House" is already taken. He'll need something else for his third memoir.Replies: @Lot, @Jefferson
“Another explanation might be Obama letting a little of his inner Muslimist out, post-election.”
Barack Hussein Obama is culturally more Muslim than the half Syrian Steve Jobs.
The optics could not be worse for the Dems to try to keep holding Jewish voters. They scream ANTISEMITE HITLER HITLER at him for months, then he gets elected and shows he'll be the most pro-Jewish president in our history, while Obama flips Israel a symbolic bird in the U.N.
The resolution actually called the historic Jewish quarter of Jerusalem "occupied territory" and demanded they stop building houses there for Israel's growing population.Replies: @Jefferson
“The optics could not be worse for the Dems to try to keep holding Jewish voters. They scream ANTISEMITE HITLER HITLER at him for months, then he gets elected and shows he’ll be the most pro-Jewish president in our history, while Obama flips Israel a symbolic bird in the U.N.”
Just like racist, the definition of anti-Semite has become so broad that it’s a joke now. Anti-Semite used to be limited to people who thought that the Holocaust was a good thing, now anti-Semite means anybody on the political Right who is against open borders for The U.S. By that logic Jewish Milton Friedman is an anti-Semite. Jewish Michael Savage is an anti-Semite.
Also, I am not really sure how much play the DNC email contents got among the general population prior to the election - seemed to be the kind of thing political junkies pay attention to, but not the average voter. Hillary lost because blacks felt a whole lot less urgency about going to the polls for her and because her campaign took some basic voter outreach for granted in swing states.Replies: @Jefferson, @Anonymous, @Neoconned
So this.
Blacks up north stayed home and Hillary’s factory state union guys stayed home or voted Trump or Stein.
Hillary wouldn’t shut the fuck up about what Howard Dean called “God, gays and guns”……so that probably spooked even more Midwestern redneck types who falsely thought she’d go for their stupid rifle and pistol collection.
And instead of listening toCarville and her husband she doubled down on the BLM shit and amnesty while all she had to do is do what trump did and lie about bringing the factories back when they’ll just move from China to Bangladesh or some cheaper sweatshop state and the ones that do come back will be automated…..those jobs aren’t coming back.
Trump was smart enough to lie and say they were…..she was too lazy and stupid to “lower herself” to lie and grovel for votes.
She thought she could win babbling about racism and gays and taking away rifle collections from rednecks.
How hard is it to just go to google.com, log in, and chance your password?
I just watched you type your new password in on an IP camera.
Not really, I have other chores, but I am sure your keystrokes have been recorded on some surveillance video archive.
Maybe Trump will be arrested or worse by Jan. 20, Obama will declare the intelligence community declares the election invalid and extends his Presidency indefinitely, Biden resigns, Hillary becomes V.P., then Obama resigns and Hillary becomes President… just as it was supposed to be all along, and all is right with the world, Tom Friedman gushes, Kristof gives a sigh of relief and the NYT and Wapo are put in charge of censoring “fake news.” All those Russian sponsored web sites disagreeing have their assets stripped by the recent executive order.
Confirmation of a new VP requires confirmation by both chambers of Congress. Her confirmation might get through the Senate, with weaker Republican control and more RINOs, but it would be hard sledding in the House of Representatives.
You think Podesta’s office has video bugs? Or that this is common?
Also security is a matter of degree.
Colin Powell maybe can’t protect his email from the NSA and top foreign spies, he can from random dude in Romania whose day job was a taxi driver. Same for Podesta and his clicking on a phishing link.
Hillary was completely wreckless with Huma. Multiple family members in the Muslim Brotherhood and deep Saudi ties, married to a guy who compulsively does cybersex, including in one case with a minor.
The thing that sunk her at the end was the “reopening” of it when they discovered that Wiener and Huma shared a laptop and they mixed their work emails together on it.
If Hillary would have won, how easy would it have been for the Muslims to subvert Huma and every world spy agency that would have honey-pot blackmailed Weiner.
Then again, he also shouldn't have been part of a cheap private email server crime, but oh well.Replies: @anon
Podesta’s Password was ‘P@ssw0rd’
Isn’t that enough?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22335
Let's not forget that Dana Millbank and Glenn Thrush knew for years that Hillary Clinton was using an illegal private server. How? Because they were emailing her and her team at those email addresses, as Wikileaks has exposed.
Now you might say, "Hey, they didn't know it was a private server, that's for the government security hacks to know."
I say this: as long time Washington "reporters" they should have fact-checked why the emails from Hillary were coming from her name and not ".gov". So either they were deliberately blind (likely) or just plain stupid.
Not only that, but he didn't change it even after his E-mails started showing up on Wikileaks. They also published his P@ssword, and some guy upon seeing it tried it, and gained access to Podesta's G-mail account.Replies: @BB753
So…..
The big retaliation is kicking out some diplomat/spies?
Every part of this simply rounds to zero.
Pat Cooper used to say that “God Bless America” would have been our national anthem if Irving Berlin weren’t Jewish.
I think Ron Unz could code easily deploy a pop-up window that asked for my username and password in plain text before posting. If the Ruskies really hacked SSL a huge segment of modern commerce would come to a screeching halt and you'd running to bank tomorrow morning to withdraw what might be left.Replies: @neutral
I do not know if they hacked or not, but assuming they did then it does not have to be some advanced SSL cracking, it could have been an old fashioned honeypot.
Steve writes:
Hey, it’s almost the New Year! Time for new traditions, I say. From Newsweek:
Probably the most interesting stuff is when Yeltsin declassified much of the Soviet state archives, which in combination with the Mitrokhin Archive (of KGB documents), and the Venona transcripts (of FBI wiretaps) revealed all sorts of incredibly interesting stuff that got next to zero coverage or even acknowledgement by the media or historians.
Such as:
* Virtually everyone fingered by HUAC and Joe McCarthy really was a member of the Communist Party and/or a spy, and the US (and other NATO) state and defense departments really were packed up to the rafters with communist sympathizers and KGB assets.
* The anti-nuclear movement in NATO countries was created, massively funded, and its leaders took their orders from the KGB. Themes such as the once-popular, now-memory-holed “nuclear freeze” movement, and the still-conventional-wisdom “nuclear winter” scientific hypothesis, were created by the KGB.
* The US anti-Vietnam War movement was largely organized by the KGB. The Soviets spent more on funding the US anti-war movement than they did on military aid to the North Vietnamese et al.
* The Soviets directly funded, armed, and sheltered terrorist groups in NATO countries like the IRA, Red Army Faction, Black September and many others, and helped them with planning attacks on civilian targets.
* Sympathizers were heavily recruited to join the clergy and religious governing bodies, with great success in the Roman Catholic (“liberation theology” — I’m afraid JPII didn’t get the last laugh with that one), and mainline and black Protestant churches. In numerous cases, such as the Quakers and Jesuits, they managed to effect a near-as-makes-no-difference complete takeover.
* Radical trade union elements were also heavily supported by the Soviets to a far greater degree than had been believed. In the UK, for example, Arthur Scargill’s NUM was receiving millions in funding from the KGB.
* Far-leftists were encouraged to adopt labels like “progressive,” “Trotskyist,” “Maoist,” “anarchist” and “democratic socialist” to provide plausible deniability for accurate charges of being Soviet stooges. (Obviously, it also worked as a marketing tool to make their ideology sound more exotic and intriguing, and provided a pat response to any criticism of the Soviets they didn’t feel like refuting).
* Related to the last point: the Soviets had much greater influence over leftist and many Islamic (especially Shia and Palestinian) terror groups, Iran, and the “non-aligned” countries than either side let on. Soviet covert operations habitually used such third parties as intermediaries for plausible deniability.
* The Soviet leadership was terrified by Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which they believed to be much more advanced than it actually was. They spent many times our expenditure rushing to create their own missile defense systems and countermeasures, including comical white elephants like their own space shuttle (convinced it was really a nuclear delivery system that could bypass space-based countermeasures).
(cont.) More importantly, it spooked them into making much greater concessions than they otherwise would have at the arms-reduction negotiating table, and away from cracking down on domestic and other Eastern Bloc opposition groups.
* “Center-left” media outlets, politicians, advocacy groups and academics in NATO countries often had a much chummier relationship with the Soviets than they let on, and often were leaked, over informal channels, information the Soviets considered mutually beneficial.
(cont.) The reverse happened as well (e.g. Ted Kennedy’s letter to Andropov), but the Soviets didn’t take the full advantage they could have (believing the Marxist dogma that all “bourgeois” politicians are the same, they usually assumed it must’ve been a trick).
—
And I could probably go on for quite a while more. Basically, all the “right-wing smears” and “conspiracy theories” pertaining to Soviet influence were proven 100% correct.
As Wilson Follett points out, “generally or includes and. The weatherman’s snow or sleet tomorrow is no guarantee that we shall have only the one or the other.” The following contemporary sentences could substitute or for and/or with no appreciable change in meaning: “Have you forgotten your user name and/or password?” “Candidates can submit new and/or additional documentation.”
However in certain sentences, or by itself cannot replace and/or, as seen in this example from Theodore M. Bernstein’s The Careful Writer: “The law allows a $25.00 fine and/or thirty days in jail.” Fowler offers a straightforward alternative: “x or y or both of them.” Let’s try it with Bernstein’s sentence: “The law allows a $25 fine or thirty days in jail or both.” Problem solved. (http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/effective-writing/what-about-andor)
In regards to Podesta's emails, evidence points to him being fooled by a simple password request email hack. Go see TheGatewaypundit site for this.
Prior to the Russian accusation, our intel services admitted that Hillary's email server was hacked by at least 5 nation states. It stands to reason that the DNC by putting it's email on gmail was just asking to be hacked. No one with a ounce of intelligence would ever trust sensitive emails to something that is unsecure as gmail or any cloud based services.
The fact that the DNC didn't hire top flight IT contractors to set up and manage their IT needs demonstrated how profoundly arrogant and out of touch their top people are - everything is political loyalty not competence with them. Hillary and Bill were quite stupid to think they didn't have big fat bullseye painted on them on a 7x24 basis by nation state hacker groups along with private groups all looking for the slightest chink in their IT defense.Replies: @Anonymous, @Eagle Eye
The DNC didn’t use Gmail. (And was compromised anyway.) Podesta did (as did some others on her campaign).
At least he used Gmail, not some in-house job run by a bozo like Hillary’s personal server admin.
What I find slightly curious is that Google’s Eric Schmidt “played a crucial role in Team Hillary’s election tech” (http://qz.com/823922/eric-schmidt-played-a-crucial-role-in-team-hillarys-election-tech/) but doesn’t seem to have got their security up to standard.
But they made sure their feminist analytics computer had a safe space:
That seems to be a fairly regular difference: the Israelis share the information their intelligence services have gleaned, presumably privately, the Russians publish it.
Newsweek:The Prime Minister of Israel made a public announcement of existing “sensitive” information which directly contradicts our Secretary of State and vowed “We will share this information with the incoming administration.” Maybe Trump will keep quiet about the content. ;)
You think Podesta’s office has video bugs?
No, but Starbucks does. Don’t worry about Russian hackers so much but do consider the problem of being watched by cameras as your little human fingers type.
I am offering solid technical information.
“Russian Jews with ties to organized crime in the former Soviet Union were alleged by Hume and others to be involved in ecstasy and designer drug trafficking and financing.”
Israelis are the main source of ecstasy in my little Antipodean country town. They also supply guns in a ‘gun free country’. Nasty guys you don’t want to mess with.
I’m no expert on the general discretion of Israeli government disclosures, but my posted block quotes seem to show something less “close to the vest” and more “J’accuse…!”
Newsweek:
The Prime Minister of Israel made a public announcement of existing “sensitive” information which directly contradicts our Secretary of State and vowed “We will share this information with the incoming administration.” Maybe Trump will keep quiet about the content. 😉
“the Russians … Lenin and Trotsky.”
You’re better than this, Steve.
#1 is a joke because anyone with a credit card anywhere in the world can get the same account within 15 minutes.
#2 is a joke because a sizable proportion of hacking tools freely available on Internet was made in Russia. Lots of good programmers with plenty of spare time in Russia + some of the commercially-oriented hacking is a profitable business.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
FBI report that says to present technical details presented absolutely nothing.
The whole thing is a conspiracy that started as an attempt to undermine Trump campaign and evolved into the current attempts to de-legitimatize Trump presidency. That's all there is. There is a non-zero chance that Putin was involved but the chance is pretty small - if FSB/GRU really wanted to hack these guys, they would have done it far more stealthily than ugly phishing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @MarkinLA, @Mr. Anon, @Eagle Eye
Regarding #3, 9-5 Moscow time is something like 7a-3p Central European Time, or 6a-2p Greenich Middle Time in winter, and 8a-4p CET and 7a-3p London time in the summer.
No serious adult believes the Russians ‘hacked’ the election, gave info to wikileaks, or committed any other shenanigans. They would be criminally negligent not to have monitored the wide open illegal server but that’s not what was released. What was released was the frustrated results of a staffer who was sick of the fraud and cheating. The fact that the emails make the dems look like petty, skeezy, dishonest out of touch, criminal money grubbers is because they are just that.
The dems have to throw the crybullies a bone so it’s big bad Boris again. This also poisons the water for Trump. Look for more ridiculous, mean spirited, damaging petty displays like this before Obama leaves office. The fact that these morons are willing to damage relations with the second largest nuclear power just out of spite speaks volumes by itself. The fact that they are certainly going to make life harder and more dangerous for Americans and our allies just to give a big ‘f-you’ to the people they hate proves they should never be allowed near the levers of power again.
“Denying Russian skulduggery? You do know what happened 100 years ago tomorrow?”
What did happen on December 31, 1916? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916 says:
December 31: The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the United States at the time, burns to the ground.
What’s so significant about that?
So it wasn’t enough of a priority for the Kremlin to authorize any overtime?
How many google hits for "Russian Orthodox Work Ethic?"
I do not think it is easy getting people in a large ex-communist bureaucracy to work overtime.
How many google hits for “Russian Orthodox Work Ethic?”
Isn't that enough?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22335Replies: @whorefinder, @Mr. Anon
How do you know our national press is corrupt? Because the politicians are committing crimes so openly and so poorly that even a little investigation by a good reporter would give them a major scalp or two.
Let’s not forget that Dana Millbank and Glenn Thrush knew for years that Hillary Clinton was using an illegal private server. How? Because they were emailing her and her team at those email addresses, as Wikileaks has exposed.
Now you might say, “Hey, they didn’t know it was a private server, that’s for the government security hacks to know.”
I say this: as long time Washington “reporters” they should have fact-checked why the emails from Hillary were coming from her name and not “.gov”. So either they were deliberately blind (likely) or just plain stupid.
Assange has also stated that Wikileaks never states who its sources are, even if dead, because he wants to let all his sources know they will be fully protected and that their families won’t suffer reprisals after they die. And Assange’s offer of a reward in regards to the Seth Rich execution speaks volumes.
An associate for Wikileaks (and former UK ambassador) has stated that the DNC emails were leaks, not hacks. Assange has not denied this, he’s just saying he won’t say who it came from. Assange stepped out and denied the Russian angle because Assange is anti-war and doesn’t want to be seen as a Russian agent.
who ever did deserves our hearty thanks. Is Putin one of histories great men ? a very little time shall tell.
> Israeli computer nerds and Israeli far-right settler types who hate Obama are probably not much of an overlapping set however
beg to differ. The centroids of the various settlement blocks, are about a 20-minute drive to Outer Metro TelAviv. Well, depending on traffic.
Quite a few of the hilltop settlements can see the TeAviv beaches with a simple sniper scope.
These aren’t going to be handed over to any foreign army. Take that to the bank.
Seems like the Russians have made a pretty smart strategic decision. They lack the ability to influence things on the high seas with a blue water navy. But they can attack their enemy’s weakness via the press and false stories. Seems like this should be some center of gravity boring article in Proceedings. Or maybe a depressing book by Orwell like the Burma one.
They’ve definitely operated through intermediaries and stories also. Look at Ukraine and the motorcyclists. And Georgia and Ossetia. Also, sudden moves like the Afghan airport and cornering the Bosnian airport ahead of us.
Sneaky bastards really. Smart. But backstabbers. Had a Finnish colleague and he told me never trust a Russian.
Forgive my being pedantic, but I must protest the montrosity “and/or.” Its ascendancy over my lifetime gets on my last damn nerve. Use “or” alone or, if need be for clarity, add “both”:
As Wilson Follett points out, “generally or includes and. The weatherman’s snow or sleet tomorrow is no guarantee that we shall have only the one or the other.” The following contemporary sentences could substitute or for and/or with no appreciable change in meaning: “Have you forgotten your user name and/or password?” “Candidates can submit new and/or additional documentation.”
However in certain sentences, or by itself cannot replace and/or, as seen in this example from Theodore M. Bernstein’s The Careful Writer: “The law allows a $25.00 fine and/or thirty days in jail.” Fowler offers a straightforward alternative: “x or y or both of them.” Let’s try it with Bernstein’s sentence: “The law allows a $25 fine or thirty days in jail or both.” Problem solved. (http://data.grammarbook.com/blog/effective-writing/what-about-andor)
This type of “what if” question is slander at best. It basically paints the Israelis as guilty until prove innocent. If the Israelis don’t deny it, the accuser can claim that the lack of denial is ‘proof’ that it must be true. If the Israelis do deny it, the accuser can claim that because they responded so publicly it must be true. What good can come from this type of “what if” question? None. It does not add to the conversation.
Someone on another board put his finger on what seems to be the crux of all this paranoia-mongering about the Russians. It's the donors. Two days after the election, there was a newspaper article about the uproar among the Democratic party donors. They were furious about the loss and demanding answers. A few of the donors even said they wouldn't give to the party again. I think it's this last point that has terrified the Democrats. Neither Hillary nor the party's officials want to say to a donor who gave them a million bucks, "Uh, sorry, we screwed up big time and we did it with your money."
No tech billionaire wants to hear that. They'll yell and fire employees who try to hand them that line. They're used to getting results with their cash, and if they think they're throwing it away on a bunch of idiots who don't know how to win, they'll quit donating for good. At first, the Dems tried to blame everyone except themselves, but after deciding they needed to coordinate and get behind a single narrative, they've decided to make the Russians their fall guy. Since Putin's already humiliated Obama, Obama's going along with this nonsense to placate his smarting ego. Aleppo more than anything explains why Obama is going after the Russians now.
Democrats have been losing seats ever since 2010, and in 2018 they have 23 Senate seats up for relection while the Republicans have only 8. Of the Dem's 23, 5 are in swing states with Republican governors. In sum, if the donors cease their support, the Democrats are looking another potential wipeout 2 years from now, and maybe in 2020 if they can't raise enough cash to support their own candidates in their own strongholds. New York and California have a lot of low information voters among minorities, and they tend to vote for the guy they've heard of vs. the guy they haven't, and to be heard about, you need campaign money for ads and for your street teams to knock on doors, and your 'walking around money' for the black reverends to turn out the black vote. Democratic campaigns are a bit like a social welfare program tacked onto a normal political campaign, and without the 'social welfare' bit to grease the necessary palms, their supporters disappear. It's an old Dem party trait that goes way back to Boss Tweed and the original Irish machine. You paid your supporters to vote, by God. You had to bribe the necessary people to make them show up.
Even worse from the Democratic perspective, if Trump delivers jobs to working class blacks and gives upper-middles a booming stock market that makes them significantly richer, they may choose personal gain over the Democrats and vote Trump in 2020. The Dems are frightened they may suffer virtual party death in 2020 akin to what the Liberal party suffered in England, disappearing permanently as an important party from the scene. Hillary, Obama, and the party officials are all hardcore political animals who know they have a weak future bench, and they can tally the seats they've lost. They know they're headed for disaster.
One last point: If Hillary or Obama want a nice, well-funded retirement of speech making, etc., or if any other future Democratic pol wants to create a financially successful 'foundation,' they cannot have their donors walking out on them.Replies: @SFG, @sabril, @Anon
Sadly, we are at the up part of a business cycle–they just don’t do much for ordinary people anymore. Trump’s likely to have to deal with a recession or two during his (first?) term.
Of course, he might be just the guy to accommodate it with construction, etc. spending.
It wasn’t a hack. It was a leak.
Crooked Cankles reminds a lot of Black voters of the White female teachers they had in K-12 who they feel extreme hatreds toward, so they stayed home.
There is a scene in Dangerous Minds where Michelle Pfeiffer is called a White bread bitch by one of her vibrant students. That is how a lot of Black students talk to their White female teachers.Replies: @Detective Club
Black men really hated Hilary – – – and I know more than twenty Black males on a first name basis. What surprised me about Nov. 8, 2016 was that Black turnout was down by only 15% in 2016 when compared to 2012; I was expecting Black turnout to be down by at least 25%, based on the flak that I was hearing about Hillary.
Black men really, really, really, really, really, really hated Hillary in 2016!
Did I say Black men really hated Hillary? One cannot over-emphasize this fact strenuously enough! One Black guy, whom I’ve known for over thirty-five years, said that “she’s just a dried-up old White stink bitch with the shakes, dressed up in a piss pants suit, that only a blind Bowery bum would pay cash money for!”
Yeah, it seems that Black men really hated Hillary with a passion in 2016.
Black women probably make up a significantly larger share of the black vote than do black men, given the large number of black men who are "judicially involved".
https://youtu.be/tJXzKvb83hs?t=2
Walsh, who once considered a run for public office on the plank of making his song "Life's been good" the new US national anthem, was unavailable for further comment as his wife hurried him away through the airport terminal.
One remaining question for iSteve readers is "what should the new National Anthem be"? Walsh said "Life's Been Good" while others have suggested the theme from Hawaii five-0 by the Ventures as a good national anthem.
Both are reasonable suggestions. Imagine the Olympics of 2018 and an American has won the gold medal in plunge for distance and stands proudly upon the podium: What tune should play that best represents America? As a fan of Sailer I'd say Lyin' Eyes by the Eagles or maybe something good by the Clash.
https://youtu.be/Rcvo4U33_L4
https://youtu.be/i8p6FBYlhHc
https://youtu.be/jAYPN-1Yjt0Replies: @Desiderius, @pyrrhus, @Dave Pinsen, @anonymous
Barbara Bach was the Bond Girl Anya Amasova in “The Spy Who Loved Me”. She is Marjorie Bach’s sister and yes, they look alike.
Barbara Bach has been married to Ringo Starr since 1981.
Marjorie married Joe Walsh in 2008.
Catherine Bach – the immortal Daisy Duke – is not currently married to a singer, although she was married for a while to Angela Lansbury’s son.
Didn’t the Russian Revolution start in February?
There were two revolutions. The first, in March (Tsarist Russia still followed the Julian calendar, by which the revolutions occurred in February and October), deposed the Tsar in favor of a "Provisional Government" (which I'll abbreviate as PrG) led by the democratic opposition, the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) and social democratic Socialist Revolutionary (SR) parties.
The PrG was at first mostly composed of Kadets, who had little popular support outside the tiny middle class, whereas the SRs had a much larger bank of support thanks to their extremely popular platform of breaking up the large estates and distributing land equally among the peasants (which, it should be noted, was basically the opposite policy to the Bolsheviks' forced collectivization of farmland).
To the SR's left were the two factions of the [Marxist] Social Democratic Labour Party, the Mensheviks ("minority"), who favored cooperating with other socialist groups in the PrG, and Lenin's Bolsheviks ("majority" — as the name implies the larger faction), who favored total opposition and resistance to any government until such time as it could be overthrown and replaced by an SDLP-led revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
The SDLP were much less popular than the SRs, but crucially their support was concentrated among a few crucial groups, including the industrial working class, the educated intelligentsia, and among the Jewish population and other minority ethnicities. Most importantly, they were especially popular in the capital Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and largest city Moscow, and the multiplying radicalized elements within the military.
At the same time as the PrG had been formed, the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) jointly formed "soviets" (councils), purportedly governing bodies by and of the working class, which seized most power in the major cities. Whenever the PrG made an unpopular decision, the Soviets (in particular the Petrograd Soviet, where Lenin had returned to lead the Bolsheviks in April) would issue contradictory orders or organize strikes until the PrG was forced to cave.
Faced with little ability to govern and an ever more unpopular war, the Kadet Prime Minister Prince Lvov was forced to give the SRs a continuously larger role in the PrG. In July, the Bolsheviks took to the streets of St. Petersburg with half a million demonstrators demanding "all power to the soviets!" Order was restored only when Lvov and the other Kadets resigned, leaving the PrG in the hands of SR leader Alexander Kerensky.
Kerensky was an extremely ineffectual leader, somewhat of a Jerry Brown type in that he preferred to focus on loopy pet causes with little relationship to reality, while neglecting the most important and pressing issues.
He announced military units would be allowed to abolish all ranks and govern themselves by democratic vote — precipitating, while still at war with Germany, a total collapse at the front. Discipline broke down entirely and soldiers deserted en masse.
But Kerensky made his gravest errors closer to home. On taking power he proclaimed that, a socialist government having been established, the PrG would now assume the powers of the soviets. But, crucially, he did not order they be forced to dissolve.
Minus the presence of many SRs who had joined the PrG, the soviets continued to hold session, and moved in an increasingly radical direction as the Bolsheviks purged Mensheviks and the remaining SRs from their ranks. Even as the Bolshevik-led soviets openly declared their intent to topple his government, Kerensky refused to take action against them, claiming he recognized "no enemies to the left."
Meanwhile, conservative elements in the military considered the situation with the Bolsheviks and with Germany to have become intolerable. In August, the newly-appointed commander in chief of the army, Gen. Kornilov, suddenly stopped responding to Kerensky's communications.
Fearing that a right-wing coup was imminent, and that the army would be loyal to Kornilov over himself, he authorized the Petrograd Soviet to distribute arms among the workers. The Bolsheviks now commanded a large force of paramilitary Red Guards loyal only to them. Kornilov made his move, announcing that he was dissolving the Petrograd Soviet, but the attack came too late; finding themselves far outnumbered, he and his officers were arrested by the Red Guards.
All the while, the Germans were advancing almost at will. In late October they captured Riga, dangerously close to Petrograd. Kerensky ordered Petrograd's garrison to help in stopping the German advance at the front, but unwilling to march to a suicide mission in a war that was already lost, two thirds of the garrison declared they would only follow orders from the Petrograd Soviet.
Within days, on November 7, Lenin declared the PrG dissolved and the Petrograd Soviet as the only government. Kerensky ordered the army to resist, but, disgusted by the treatment of Kornilov, even anti-communist units refused to leave their barracks, and so Kerensky was forced to leave the country. While it would be shortly followed by a devastating civil war, the "October" Revolution itself was virtually bloodless.
A little over two weeks later, November 25, the PrG had scheduled what was to be Russia's first democratic parliamentary election, an event the Bolsheviks surprisingly allowed to go forward. The results were: 58% of the vote and 370 out of 703 seats for the SRs, 24% of the vote and 175 seats for the Bolsheviks, who simply ignored the results. They would never hold another one.
One of the more striking examples of rhyming history, IMO, is 1917/1991; seemingly radical reformer (Kerensky, Gorbachev) is replaced by ideologically-similar but even more radical opponent (Lenin, Yeltsin) who gradually usurps the central authority with a dueling government (Petrograd Soviet, Russian Federation), particularly after he alone foils a hardliner coup in August, which allows him to take total control on November 7 (October Revolution, Yeltsin bans Communist Party), but of a rump state with roughly the same borders (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dissolution of the Soviet Union).
Whew! Sorry for writing War and Peace…Replies: @reiner Tor, @OLD JEW
Someone on another board put his finger on what seems to be the crux of all this paranoia-mongering about the Russians. It's the donors. Two days after the election, there was a newspaper article about the uproar among the Democratic party donors. They were furious about the loss and demanding answers. A few of the donors even said they wouldn't give to the party again. I think it's this last point that has terrified the Democrats. Neither Hillary nor the party's officials want to say to a donor who gave them a million bucks, "Uh, sorry, we screwed up big time and we did it with your money."
No tech billionaire wants to hear that. They'll yell and fire employees who try to hand them that line. They're used to getting results with their cash, and if they think they're throwing it away on a bunch of idiots who don't know how to win, they'll quit donating for good. At first, the Dems tried to blame everyone except themselves, but after deciding they needed to coordinate and get behind a single narrative, they've decided to make the Russians their fall guy. Since Putin's already humiliated Obama, Obama's going along with this nonsense to placate his smarting ego. Aleppo more than anything explains why Obama is going after the Russians now.
Democrats have been losing seats ever since 2010, and in 2018 they have 23 Senate seats up for relection while the Republicans have only 8. Of the Dem's 23, 5 are in swing states with Republican governors. In sum, if the donors cease their support, the Democrats are looking another potential wipeout 2 years from now, and maybe in 2020 if they can't raise enough cash to support their own candidates in their own strongholds. New York and California have a lot of low information voters among minorities, and they tend to vote for the guy they've heard of vs. the guy they haven't, and to be heard about, you need campaign money for ads and for your street teams to knock on doors, and your 'walking around money' for the black reverends to turn out the black vote. Democratic campaigns are a bit like a social welfare program tacked onto a normal political campaign, and without the 'social welfare' bit to grease the necessary palms, their supporters disappear. It's an old Dem party trait that goes way back to Boss Tweed and the original Irish machine. You paid your supporters to vote, by God. You had to bribe the necessary people to make them show up.
Even worse from the Democratic perspective, if Trump delivers jobs to working class blacks and gives upper-middles a booming stock market that makes them significantly richer, they may choose personal gain over the Democrats and vote Trump in 2020. The Dems are frightened they may suffer virtual party death in 2020 akin to what the Liberal party suffered in England, disappearing permanently as an important party from the scene. Hillary, Obama, and the party officials are all hardcore political animals who know they have a weak future bench, and they can tally the seats they've lost. They know they're headed for disaster.
One last point: If Hillary or Obama want a nice, well-funded retirement of speech making, etc., or if any other future Democratic pol wants to create a financially successful 'foundation,' they cannot have their donors walking out on them.Replies: @SFG, @sabril, @Anon
I think that’s a good point about donors. I would guess part of the problem is that in all likelihood, most of Hillary Clinton’s donors aren’t just people who agree with her ideologically and want to see her elected. As opposed to people who want to buy influence.
For such people, the choice between donating to Republicans and donating to Democrats is like the choice between buying a Honda and buying a Toyota. They may prefer one to the other but they are not so loyal that they wouldn’t consider switching after a bad experience.
So yeah, I would not be surprised if this whole “blame the Russians” thing is a story to placate these fat cat donors. But if that’s case, it’s pretty crazy for Obama to get on board to the point of actually sanctioning the Russians.
I really would like to believe that there is solid evidence of Russian misconduct both in terms of hacking e-mails and releasing them. But the timing is pretty suspicious, it seems that the authorities did not take this issue seriously until after the election.
Do the reports state WHEN the authorities started investigating these alleged hacks?
I think there are such things as Jewish Anti-Semitism, Catholic Anti-Catholicism, etc., but they’re not nearly as widespread as some people would have us believe.
“…Hillary becomes V.P…”
Confirmation of a new VP requires confirmation by both chambers of Congress. Her confirmation might get through the Senate, with weaker Republican control and more RINOs, but it would be hard sledding in the House of Representatives.
Well, if you’re a Catholic who doesn’t like Catholicism you can just leave the church.
Likewise today with Jews.
What did happen on December 31, 1916? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916 says:
December 31: The Hampton Terrace Hotel in North Augusta, South Carolina, one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in the United States at the time, burns to the ground.
What's so significant about that?Replies: @Elsewhere
It must be this one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin
Israeli companies Narus and Verint were subcontracted by NSA to collect all communications from all telecoms in the US. All telecoms agreed except for Qwest to install special intercepts. Subsequently Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was investigated for insider trading and ended up in jail.
It’s all in James Bamford books on NSA. Also some of it in 2008 interview with Amy Goodman (46:00)
Anyway, the bottom line is that it is reasonable to assume that whatever NSA gets also ends up in Israel.
“*Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record,” Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California company, said. “We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6
Ketcham quoted former CIA case officer David Steele: “Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA’s warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping.”
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/israeli-surveillance-machine/#sthash.0CzZdagU.dpuf
______________
ISRAEL BLACKMAILED BILL WITH MONICA TAPES; SPY HUNT ENDED AFTER MOSSAD BUGGED PREZ SEX CHATS
http://nypost.com/1999/03/03/israel-blackmailed-bill-with-monica-tapes-spy-hunt-ended-after-mossad-bugged-prez-sex-chats-book-exclusive/
Is Mr. X Spying Again in Washington?
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-18/opinion/op-59966_1_pollard-affair
When Catholics were dominant, say in the Sun King’s France, that wasn’t such a simple proposition.
Likewise today with Jews.
Exactly. Plus since Trump proposed banning any additional Muslim immigration, which if you look at it right is exactly the same as deporting all Muslims, which if you look at it right is exactly the same as buying all American Muslims 1-way AMTRACK tickets to the human soap factories, Hilary is insulated from Muslim anti-Israel rabble-rousing attacks from the left. “Hey, I just saved your dumb a$$es from joining Kazir Khan’s dumbf@@k son in the great hereafter, so shut-the-f@ck-up and get in place at the back of the line, you dumb towel-headed sons-of b!thces.” Plus ol’ Hil’ is such a stone-cold sociopath that any social media pity porn about drowned toddlers washing up on the beach, videos of Palestinian boys getting killed in Intifada crossfire, etc. would have absolutely 0 impact on her affective regions (assuming she still has any).
Hillary would have made the perfect fine-de-siecle sort of inbred, crazy, dying-Hapsburg sort of President. All her “color” and all the inevitable drama over her health, sexual proclivities, embezzlement, etc. would have been a useful distraction to paper over the cracks in her coalition of the fringes. “OK, now that the alt-right’s been put away for good, let’s have a serious discussion about boycott-divestment-sanctions against Israel.” “Umm…. hey, is that Jay-Z over there!”
1. Hussein doesn’t like Bibi, and Bibi doesn’t like Hussein.
2. Hussein probably doesn’t much like Israel.
3. Hussein has Muslim sympathies.
4. Hussein probably thinks Israel routinely gets away with murder.
5. It puts daylight between Hussein’s administration, and Trump’s. It’s Hussein’s way of stealing the silverware on the way out (Hussein has made a show of not stealing the silverware on the way out, the way the Clintons did – he’s doing it all politically, bureaucratically).
6. It may not have much effect on the facts on the ground, but it does send a message.
7. Maybe Hussein, Trump, and Kevin Macdonald all have the same idea of putting some daylight between Israeli Jewry, and American Jewry.
True. Maybe he’s putting principle over party unity. Maybe he wants a Keith Ellison Democrat party.
That is some serious spin, my friend. Trump has not shown that at all. You guys are ALWAYS going on about how Israeli Jewry and diaspora Jewry have such distinct interests, now you’re trying to conflate them? Nope, not buying that. Trump is shaping up to be the least pro-diaspora-Jewry (globalist), and most pro-Israeli-Jewry (nationalist) president in living memory. That’s the situation.
Forgot the preamble:
Yeah, I dunno. The math is pretty counterintuitive. The American establishment hates Hates HATES Trump. The American establishment was fully behind Clinton. Jews and Zionists are the dominant plurality in the American establishment. Clinton was plenty friendly to Jews and Zionists, who overwhelmingly backed her. She showed no sign of any rebellious streak where Israel was concerned.
History lesson time!
There were two revolutions. The first, in March (Tsarist Russia still followed the Julian calendar, by which the revolutions occurred in February and October), deposed the Tsar in favor of a “Provisional Government” (which I’ll abbreviate as PrG) led by the democratic opposition, the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) and social democratic Socialist Revolutionary (SR) parties.
The PrG was at first mostly composed of Kadets, who had little popular support outside the tiny middle class, whereas the SRs had a much larger bank of support thanks to their extremely popular platform of breaking up the large estates and distributing land equally among the peasants (which, it should be noted, was basically the opposite policy to the Bolsheviks’ forced collectivization of farmland).
To the SR’s left were the two factions of the [Marxist] Social Democratic Labour Party, the Mensheviks (“minority”), who favored cooperating with other socialist groups in the PrG, and Lenin’s Bolsheviks (“majority” — as the name implies the larger faction), who favored total opposition and resistance to any government until such time as it could be overthrown and replaced by an SDLP-led revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
The SDLP were much less popular than the SRs, but crucially their support was concentrated among a few crucial groups, including the industrial working class, the educated intelligentsia, and among the Jewish population and other minority ethnicities. Most importantly, they were especially popular in the capital Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and largest city Moscow, and the multiplying radicalized elements within the military.
At the same time as the PrG had been formed, the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) jointly formed “soviets” (councils), purportedly governing bodies by and of the working class, which seized most power in the major cities. Whenever the PrG made an unpopular decision, the Soviets (in particular the Petrograd Soviet, where Lenin had returned to lead the Bolsheviks in April) would issue contradictory orders or organize strikes until the PrG was forced to cave.
Faced with little ability to govern and an ever more unpopular war, the Kadet Prime Minister Prince Lvov was forced to give the SRs a continuously larger role in the PrG. In July, the Bolsheviks took to the streets of St. Petersburg with half a million demonstrators demanding “all power to the soviets!” Order was restored only when Lvov and the other Kadets resigned, leaving the PrG in the hands of SR leader Alexander Kerensky.
Kerensky was an extremely ineffectual leader, somewhat of a Jerry Brown type in that he preferred to focus on loopy pet causes with little relationship to reality, while neglecting the most important and pressing issues.
He announced military units would be allowed to abolish all ranks and govern themselves by democratic vote — precipitating, while still at war with Germany, a total collapse at the front. Discipline broke down entirely and soldiers deserted en masse.
But Kerensky made his gravest errors closer to home. On taking power he proclaimed that, a socialist government having been established, the PrG would now assume the powers of the soviets. But, crucially, he did not order they be forced to dissolve.
Minus the presence of many SRs who had joined the PrG, the soviets continued to hold session, and moved in an increasingly radical direction as the Bolsheviks purged Mensheviks and the remaining SRs from their ranks. Even as the Bolshevik-led soviets openly declared their intent to topple his government, Kerensky refused to take action against them, claiming he recognized “no enemies to the left.”
Meanwhile, conservative elements in the military considered the situation with the Bolsheviks and with Germany to have become intolerable. In August, the newly-appointed commander in chief of the army, Gen. Kornilov, suddenly stopped responding to Kerensky’s communications.
Fearing that a right-wing coup was imminent, and that the army would be loyal to Kornilov over himself, he authorized the Petrograd Soviet to distribute arms among the workers. The Bolsheviks now commanded a large force of paramilitary Red Guards loyal only to them. Kornilov made his move, announcing that he was dissolving the Petrograd Soviet, but the attack came too late; finding themselves far outnumbered, he and his officers were arrested by the Red Guards.
All the while, the Germans were advancing almost at will. In late October they captured Riga, dangerously close to Petrograd. Kerensky ordered Petrograd’s garrison to help in stopping the German advance at the front, but unwilling to march to a suicide mission in a war that was already lost, two thirds of the garrison declared they would only follow orders from the Petrograd Soviet.
Within days, on November 7, Lenin declared the PrG dissolved and the Petrograd Soviet as the only government. Kerensky ordered the army to resist, but, disgusted by the treatment of Kornilov, even anti-communist units refused to leave their barracks, and so Kerensky was forced to leave the country. While it would be shortly followed by a devastating civil war, the “October” Revolution itself was virtually bloodless.
A little over two weeks later, November 25, the PrG had scheduled what was to be Russia’s first democratic parliamentary election, an event the Bolsheviks surprisingly allowed to go forward. The results were: 58% of the vote and 370 out of 703 seats for the SRs, 24% of the vote and 175 seats for the Bolsheviks, who simply ignored the results. They would never hold another one.
One of the more striking examples of rhyming history, IMO, is 1917/1991; seemingly radical reformer (Kerensky, Gorbachev) is replaced by ideologically-similar but even more radical opponent (Lenin, Yeltsin) who gradually usurps the central authority with a dueling government (Petrograd Soviet, Russian Federation), particularly after he alone foils a hardliner coup in August, which allows him to take total control on November 7 (October Revolution, Yeltsin bans Communist Party), but of a rump state with roughly the same borders (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dissolution of the Soviet Union).
Whew! Sorry for writing War and Peace…
The best definition I’ve heard is “anti-semite: someone semites don’t like”.
Black men really, really, really, really, really, really hated Hillary in 2016!
Did I say Black men really hated Hillary? One cannot over-emphasize this fact strenuously enough! One Black guy, whom I've known for over thirty-five years, said that "she's just a dried-up old White stink bitch with the shakes, dressed up in a piss pants suit, that only a blind Bowery bum would pay cash money for!"
Yeah, it seems that Black men really hated Hillary with a passion in 2016.Replies: @Pericles, @sabril, @Mr. Anon
So what you’re saying is, black men really loved Hillary in 2016.
#1 is a joke because anyone with a credit card anywhere in the world can get the same account within 15 minutes.
#2 is a joke because a sizable proportion of hacking tools freely available on Internet was made in Russia. Lots of good programmers with plenty of spare time in Russia + some of the commercially-oriented hacking is a profitable business.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
FBI report that says to present technical details presented absolutely nothing.
The whole thing is a conspiracy that started as an attempt to undermine Trump campaign and evolved into the current attempts to de-legitimatize Trump presidency. That's all there is. There is a non-zero chance that Putin was involved but the chance is pretty small - if FSB/GRU really wanted to hack these guys, they would have done it far more stealthily than ugly phishing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @MarkinLA, @Mr. Anon, @Eagle Eye
3) that hacking activity followed strictly 9-5 Moscow time work hours.
That anybody takes this as proof of anything is amazing. Spying is a 24/7 job and the idea that spies regularly punch their time card and clock in is ridiculous. Any real spy would be more than willing to do the work during normal US business hours. It is more likely CIA disinformation designed to fool the idiot American.
Posdesta was like a lot of middle-aged (and older) apparatchiks; he’s always had an IT guy, so he knows nothing about it himself. Everybody whose had to do his own lifting in the cyber age knows you go to the login, you don’t let the login come to you.
Whoever did the hack should receive the highest honor …The Honor of Truth…Exposing corruption is good as long as it’s the Truth…. Maybe soon they will Drop the Truth Bomb about Obama that will expose the Truth about him.
Isn't that enough?
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/22335Replies: @whorefinder, @Mr. Anon
“Podesta’s Password was ‘P@ssw0rd’”
Not only that, but he didn’t change it even after his E-mails started showing up on Wikileaks. They also published his P@ssword, and some guy upon seeing it tried it, and gained access to Podesta’s G-mail account.
No doubt a pizza lover.
Black men really, really, really, really, really, really hated Hillary in 2016!
Did I say Black men really hated Hillary? One cannot over-emphasize this fact strenuously enough! One Black guy, whom I've known for over thirty-five years, said that "she's just a dried-up old White stink bitch with the shakes, dressed up in a piss pants suit, that only a blind Bowery bum would pay cash money for!"
Yeah, it seems that Black men really hated Hillary with a passion in 2016.Replies: @Pericles, @sabril, @Mr. Anon
I would guess that in general the African, Latin-American, and Middle-Eastern people coming into the United States have a harder time accepting female leadership than do whites. It would be nice if liberals took these types of issues into account in deciding what kind of immigration policy to push for. But of course they won’t, because for the most part what they care about is short-term virtue-signalling and status enhancement.
And even us Trumpeters had a nagging feeling that these revelations were not that earth shattering. We kept hoping for an October/November surprise when something really huge was going to drop. And... nothing ever came of it.Replies: @Mr. Anon
“Those leaks/hacks had been retconned into a much bigger deal than they were at the time. I remember the election season, it wasn’t that long ago. No one paid any attention to this stuff except for Trump supporters. Certainly not the mainstream media or even the GOP establishment.”
You are right. Only people who already hated Hillary paid much attention to them. The MSM gave them almost no coverage. Even FOX News didn’t talk about them much. I don’t think they had much, if any, effect on the outcome at all.
And, as you said, there was no enormous smoking gun in them – just a lot of little things. The most damning thing to me was the revelation about the content of some of Hillary’s speeches, such as her admission about being duplicitous (holding a public and a private position) and her desire for open borders:
“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”
BTW, regarding that quote by Hillary: Snopes.com (which even admitted the quote) declared the notion that she supports open borders “Mostly False”.
You think it is “slander” to wonder aloud whether a foreign intelligence agency might have been engaged in spying?
#1 is a joke because anyone with a credit card anywhere in the world can get the same account within 15 minutes.
#2 is a joke because a sizable proportion of hacking tools freely available on Internet was made in Russia. Lots of good programmers with plenty of spare time in Russia + some of the commercially-oriented hacking is a profitable business.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
FBI report that says to present technical details presented absolutely nothing.
The whole thing is a conspiracy that started as an attempt to undermine Trump campaign and evolved into the current attempts to de-legitimatize Trump presidency. That's all there is. There is a non-zero chance that Putin was involved but the chance is pretty small - if FSB/GRU really wanted to hack these guys, they would have done it far more stealthily than ugly phishing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @MarkinLA, @Mr. Anon, @Eagle Eye
“3) that hacking activity followed strictly 9-5 Moscow time work hours.”
Do hackers usually work 9-5 hours?
Black men really, really, really, really, really, really hated Hillary in 2016!
Did I say Black men really hated Hillary? One cannot over-emphasize this fact strenuously enough! One Black guy, whom I've known for over thirty-five years, said that "she's just a dried-up old White stink bitch with the shakes, dressed up in a piss pants suit, that only a blind Bowery bum would pay cash money for!"
Yeah, it seems that Black men really hated Hillary with a passion in 2016.Replies: @Pericles, @sabril, @Mr. Anon
“I was expecting Black turnout to be down by at least 25%, based on the flak that I was hearing about Hillary.”
Black women probably make up a significantly larger share of the black vote than do black men, given the large number of black men who are “judicially involved”.
Trelane (on Trump’s Anthem): I’d go with a Van Halen’s Jump with modified lyrics. My second choice would be Billy Joel’s You may be right.
https://twitter.com/MickJagger/status/796282071580864512Replies: @pepperinmono
Agree .
What a coup for Trump.
Stones may the only band above any recriminations from either side.
They seem like they need or want the bread ,too.
I am sure they would play if the $ was enough.
Playing for Trump is outrageous, it fits their image.
#1 is a joke because anyone with a credit card anywhere in the world can get the same account within 15 minutes.
#2 is a joke because a sizable proportion of hacking tools freely available on Internet was made in Russia. Lots of good programmers with plenty of spare time in Russia + some of the commercially-oriented hacking is a profitable business.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
FBI report that says to present technical details presented absolutely nothing.
The whole thing is a conspiracy that started as an attempt to undermine Trump campaign and evolved into the current attempts to de-legitimatize Trump presidency. That's all there is. There is a non-zero chance that Putin was involved but the chance is pretty small - if FSB/GRU really wanted to hack these guys, they would have done it far more stealthily than ugly phishing.Replies: @reiner Tor, @MarkinLA, @Mr. Anon, @Eagle Eye
Agree.
3) that hacking activity followed strictly 9-5 Moscow time work hours.
#3 sounds completely improbable and is most likely made up.
Indeed. Who has ever heard of computer nerds working “strictly” 9-5?
As others have noted, Russia and other state players possess much more sophisticated hacking tools and methods that do not require the target to click a phishing link.
Interesting side note (AIRPORT NOVEL WRITERS TAKE NOTE): It is quite likely that SEVERAL of the usual suspects (Russia, China, Israel, UK, Japan, North Korea, Germany …) penetrated Hillary’s “private” email server and were monitoring it SIMULTANEOUSLY. If so, it is quite possible that some of the lurkers were aware of the presence of OTHER lurkers on the same system from the tell-tale backdoors installed by each.
Presumably a tacit understanding would be in place e.g. not to interfere with the other guys’ backdoors, perhaps even cheeky communications AMONG the lurkers on the hacked system itself. One would expect lurkers to hail and taunt each other with subtle derogatory messages using specially targeted file names. For example, to taunt the Israelis, one might create a small text file named 8200.txt or well7.txt containing suitably cryptic invective.
A more classy lurker might post his “public key” on the hacked system as an invitation to back channel exchanges either through the hacked system or through an established message exchange such as Telegram.
There were two revolutions. The first, in March (Tsarist Russia still followed the Julian calendar, by which the revolutions occurred in February and October), deposed the Tsar in favor of a "Provisional Government" (which I'll abbreviate as PrG) led by the democratic opposition, the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) and social democratic Socialist Revolutionary (SR) parties.
The PrG was at first mostly composed of Kadets, who had little popular support outside the tiny middle class, whereas the SRs had a much larger bank of support thanks to their extremely popular platform of breaking up the large estates and distributing land equally among the peasants (which, it should be noted, was basically the opposite policy to the Bolsheviks' forced collectivization of farmland).
To the SR's left were the two factions of the [Marxist] Social Democratic Labour Party, the Mensheviks ("minority"), who favored cooperating with other socialist groups in the PrG, and Lenin's Bolsheviks ("majority" — as the name implies the larger faction), who favored total opposition and resistance to any government until such time as it could be overthrown and replaced by an SDLP-led revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
The SDLP were much less popular than the SRs, but crucially their support was concentrated among a few crucial groups, including the industrial working class, the educated intelligentsia, and among the Jewish population and other minority ethnicities. Most importantly, they were especially popular in the capital Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and largest city Moscow, and the multiplying radicalized elements within the military.
At the same time as the PrG had been formed, the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) jointly formed "soviets" (councils), purportedly governing bodies by and of the working class, which seized most power in the major cities. Whenever the PrG made an unpopular decision, the Soviets (in particular the Petrograd Soviet, where Lenin had returned to lead the Bolsheviks in April) would issue contradictory orders or organize strikes until the PrG was forced to cave.
Faced with little ability to govern and an ever more unpopular war, the Kadet Prime Minister Prince Lvov was forced to give the SRs a continuously larger role in the PrG. In July, the Bolsheviks took to the streets of St. Petersburg with half a million demonstrators demanding "all power to the soviets!" Order was restored only when Lvov and the other Kadets resigned, leaving the PrG in the hands of SR leader Alexander Kerensky.
Kerensky was an extremely ineffectual leader, somewhat of a Jerry Brown type in that he preferred to focus on loopy pet causes with little relationship to reality, while neglecting the most important and pressing issues.
He announced military units would be allowed to abolish all ranks and govern themselves by democratic vote — precipitating, while still at war with Germany, a total collapse at the front. Discipline broke down entirely and soldiers deserted en masse.
But Kerensky made his gravest errors closer to home. On taking power he proclaimed that, a socialist government having been established, the PrG would now assume the powers of the soviets. But, crucially, he did not order they be forced to dissolve.
Minus the presence of many SRs who had joined the PrG, the soviets continued to hold session, and moved in an increasingly radical direction as the Bolsheviks purged Mensheviks and the remaining SRs from their ranks. Even as the Bolshevik-led soviets openly declared their intent to topple his government, Kerensky refused to take action against them, claiming he recognized "no enemies to the left."
Meanwhile, conservative elements in the military considered the situation with the Bolsheviks and with Germany to have become intolerable. In August, the newly-appointed commander in chief of the army, Gen. Kornilov, suddenly stopped responding to Kerensky's communications.
Fearing that a right-wing coup was imminent, and that the army would be loyal to Kornilov over himself, he authorized the Petrograd Soviet to distribute arms among the workers. The Bolsheviks now commanded a large force of paramilitary Red Guards loyal only to them. Kornilov made his move, announcing that he was dissolving the Petrograd Soviet, but the attack came too late; finding themselves far outnumbered, he and his officers were arrested by the Red Guards.
All the while, the Germans were advancing almost at will. In late October they captured Riga, dangerously close to Petrograd. Kerensky ordered Petrograd's garrison to help in stopping the German advance at the front, but unwilling to march to a suicide mission in a war that was already lost, two thirds of the garrison declared they would only follow orders from the Petrograd Soviet.
Within days, on November 7, Lenin declared the PrG dissolved and the Petrograd Soviet as the only government. Kerensky ordered the army to resist, but, disgusted by the treatment of Kornilov, even anti-communist units refused to leave their barracks, and so Kerensky was forced to leave the country. While it would be shortly followed by a devastating civil war, the "October" Revolution itself was virtually bloodless.
A little over two weeks later, November 25, the PrG had scheduled what was to be Russia's first democratic parliamentary election, an event the Bolsheviks surprisingly allowed to go forward. The results were: 58% of the vote and 370 out of 703 seats for the SRs, 24% of the vote and 175 seats for the Bolsheviks, who simply ignored the results. They would never hold another one.
One of the more striking examples of rhyming history, IMO, is 1917/1991; seemingly radical reformer (Kerensky, Gorbachev) is replaced by ideologically-similar but even more radical opponent (Lenin, Yeltsin) who gradually usurps the central authority with a dueling government (Petrograd Soviet, Russian Federation), particularly after he alone foils a hardliner coup in August, which allows him to take total control on November 7 (October Revolution, Yeltsin bans Communist Party), but of a rump state with roughly the same borders (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dissolution of the Soviet Union).
Whew! Sorry for writing War and Peace…Replies: @reiner Tor, @OLD JEW
That was a good comment.
It's all in James Bamford books on NSA. Also some of it in 2008 interview with Amy Goodman (46:00)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVEbWr6mRcM
Anyway, the bottom line is that it is reasonable to assume that whatever NSA gets also ends up in Israel.
"*Anything that comes through (an internet protocol network), we can record," Steve Bannerman, marketing vice president of Narus, a Mountain View, California company, said. "We can reconstruct all of their e-mails along with attachments, see what web pages they clicked on, we can reconstruct their (voice over internet protocol) calls."
http://www.businessinsider.com/israelis-bugged-the-us-for-the-nsa-2013-6
Ketcham quoted former CIA case officer David Steele: “Israeli penetration of the entire US telecommunications system means that NSA’s warrantless wiretapping actually means Israeli warrantless wiretapping.”
http://mondoweiss.net/2014/04/israeli-surveillance-machine/#sthash.0CzZdagU.dpuf
______________
ISRAEL BLACKMAILED BILL WITH MONICA TAPES; SPY HUNT ENDED AFTER MOSSAD BUGGED PREZ SEX CHATS
http://nypost.com/1999/03/03/israel-blackmailed-bill-with-monica-tapes-spy-hunt-ended-after-mossad-bugged-prez-sex-chats-book-exclusive/
Is Mr. X Spying Again in Washington?
http://articles.latimes.com/1997-05-18/opinion/op-59966_1_pollard-affairReplies: @Eagle Eye
There is much LESS here than meets the eye.
MUTUAL cooperative eavesdropping has been a standard practice among “Five Eyes” countries (U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) for decades for practical and legal reasons, so using Israeli capabilities is little more than an extension of well-established practice.
The legal reason for these mutual arrangements is to circumvent prohibitions against DOMESTIC spying by agencies such as the CIA, MI6 etc. which are tasked with seeking international intelligence. To get hold of domestic intelligence data for their own countries without dirtying their own hands, agencies such as the CIA and MI6 simply agree to swap electronic surveillance data hoovered up by MI6 in the U.S. and by the CIA in the UK and Europe.
You mean to circumvent their own laws. Clearly they are violating the spirit of the law by telling the government of another country: "We can't spy on our own people. Here, you spy on them for us, and tell us what they said." It all rather makes one wonder who is working for whom.
I saw in a news story about the Obama Administration's retaliation against Russia for the (so-called) hacking, that they expelled 35 russian diplomats, many of whom were known to be intelligence agents. Here's a question - if we knew they were FSB agents, why didn't we expel them before? Why don't we just routinely revoke the diplomatic credentials of everyone we discover to be a bona fide foreign intelligence agent? Why do we knowingly suffer spies to reside in our country?Replies: @reiner Tor
Narus and Verint were Israel companies ? They were run and operated by “former” Israel intelligence agents. Do not side track to Five Eyes countries! Are you Israeli or a Jew?
Not only that, but he didn't change it even after his E-mails started showing up on Wikileaks. They also published his P@ssword, and some guy upon seeing it tried it, and gained access to Podesta's G-mail account.Replies: @BB753
“They also published his P@ssword, and some guy upon seeing it tried it, and gained access to Podesta’s G-mail account.”
No doubt a pizza lover.
Someone on another board put his finger on what seems to be the crux of all this paranoia-mongering about the Russians. It's the donors. Two days after the election, there was a newspaper article about the uproar among the Democratic party donors. They were furious about the loss and demanding answers. A few of the donors even said they wouldn't give to the party again. I think it's this last point that has terrified the Democrats. Neither Hillary nor the party's officials want to say to a donor who gave them a million bucks, "Uh, sorry, we screwed up big time and we did it with your money."
No tech billionaire wants to hear that. They'll yell and fire employees who try to hand them that line. They're used to getting results with their cash, and if they think they're throwing it away on a bunch of idiots who don't know how to win, they'll quit donating for good. At first, the Dems tried to blame everyone except themselves, but after deciding they needed to coordinate and get behind a single narrative, they've decided to make the Russians their fall guy. Since Putin's already humiliated Obama, Obama's going along with this nonsense to placate his smarting ego. Aleppo more than anything explains why Obama is going after the Russians now.
Democrats have been losing seats ever since 2010, and in 2018 they have 23 Senate seats up for relection while the Republicans have only 8. Of the Dem's 23, 5 are in swing states with Republican governors. In sum, if the donors cease their support, the Democrats are looking another potential wipeout 2 years from now, and maybe in 2020 if they can't raise enough cash to support their own candidates in their own strongholds. New York and California have a lot of low information voters among minorities, and they tend to vote for the guy they've heard of vs. the guy they haven't, and to be heard about, you need campaign money for ads and for your street teams to knock on doors, and your 'walking around money' for the black reverends to turn out the black vote. Democratic campaigns are a bit like a social welfare program tacked onto a normal political campaign, and without the 'social welfare' bit to grease the necessary palms, their supporters disappear. It's an old Dem party trait that goes way back to Boss Tweed and the original Irish machine. You paid your supporters to vote, by God. You had to bribe the necessary people to make them show up.
Even worse from the Democratic perspective, if Trump delivers jobs to working class blacks and gives upper-middles a booming stock market that makes them significantly richer, they may choose personal gain over the Democrats and vote Trump in 2020. The Dems are frightened they may suffer virtual party death in 2020 akin to what the Liberal party suffered in England, disappearing permanently as an important party from the scene. Hillary, Obama, and the party officials are all hardcore political animals who know they have a weak future bench, and they can tally the seats they've lost. They know they're headed for disaster.
One last point: If Hillary or Obama want a nice, well-funded retirement of speech making, etc., or if any other future Democratic pol wants to create a financially successful 'foundation,' they cannot have their donors walking out on them.Replies: @SFG, @sabril, @Anon
I say let all nations hack into US politics and reveal the secrets of both parties.
That is ONE globalism that I could tolerate since so much of the media is concentrated in a few mega-corporations.
In 2016, we learned that the National Media COLLUDED with Hillary and Democrats. If the fourth-estate is now like this, it means we can’t rely on the National Media.
So, if other nations wanna hack into the US and spill the beans, I say go right ahead… and this goes for Trump too.
Besides, since US meddles in the affairs of all nations and hacks into everything, it’s just a balance of powers. Since hacking is relatively cheap and accessible to all nations, it is the one way in which they can counter the massive financial, military, and soft power of US that has been forcing globalism all over.
So, if Russia did something, I think we should thank it.
After all, dissidents in the USSR were grateful for any kind of foreign help, even by the CIA.
How is this side tracking?
The big picture noted in the earlier comment is that “foreign intelligence” services in each country help each other spy on THEIR OWN citizens which for very good legal reasons they are not allowed to do. This has been going on for decades.
Whether spying on own citizens is done through traditional “Five Eyes” buddies or through quasi-Five Eyes countries such as Germany and Israel makes little difference IN THIS RESPECT.
QUOTE: * The anti-nuclear movement in NATO countries was created, massively funded, and its leaders took their orders from the KGB.
You mean all those nice, vicious, double-talking, far-left “anti-nuclear” activists including many current and recent European A-listers (e.g. Anthony “Tony” Blair who came up through the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament”) were Soviet stooges?
But surely all these paragons of anti-nuclear virtue later rose to high office all through their own charisma and hard work, without any help from their KGB handlers?
That is ONE globalism that I could tolerate since so much of the media is concentrated in a few mega-corporations.
In 2016, we learned that the National Media COLLUDED with Hillary and Democrats. If the fourth-estate is now like this, it means we can't rely on the National Media.
So, if other nations wanna hack into the US and spill the beans, I say go right ahead... and this goes for Trump too.
Besides, since US meddles in the affairs of all nations and hacks into everything, it's just a balance of powers. Since hacking is relatively cheap and accessible to all nations, it is the one way in which they can counter the massive financial, military, and soft power of US that has been forcing globalism all over.
So, if Russia did something, I think we should thank it.
After all, dissidents in the USSR were grateful for any kind of foreign help, even by the CIA.Replies: @MarkinLA
We also learned that Obama knew that Hillary was using a private server when it was exposed he sent e-mails using an alias. Obviously, everybody was on board with trying to keep Hillary’s scams secret.
Accuse Russia and play victim to distract people from massive Democratic collusion with deep state.
Trump victory casts a dark shadow over Obama's presidency.
Obama exits with a refutation of his legacy...as with Bush II.
Trump blew out the torch handed to Hillary.
There were two revolutions. The first, in March (Tsarist Russia still followed the Julian calendar, by which the revolutions occurred in February and October), deposed the Tsar in favor of a "Provisional Government" (which I'll abbreviate as PrG) led by the democratic opposition, the liberal Constitutional Democratic (Kadet) and social democratic Socialist Revolutionary (SR) parties.
The PrG was at first mostly composed of Kadets, who had little popular support outside the tiny middle class, whereas the SRs had a much larger bank of support thanks to their extremely popular platform of breaking up the large estates and distributing land equally among the peasants (which, it should be noted, was basically the opposite policy to the Bolsheviks' forced collectivization of farmland).
To the SR's left were the two factions of the [Marxist] Social Democratic Labour Party, the Mensheviks ("minority"), who favored cooperating with other socialist groups in the PrG, and Lenin's Bolsheviks ("majority" — as the name implies the larger faction), who favored total opposition and resistance to any government until such time as it could be overthrown and replaced by an SDLP-led revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.
The SDLP were much less popular than the SRs, but crucially their support was concentrated among a few crucial groups, including the industrial working class, the educated intelligentsia, and among the Jewish population and other minority ethnicities. Most importantly, they were especially popular in the capital Petrograd (St. Petersburg) and largest city Moscow, and the multiplying radicalized elements within the military.
At the same time as the PrG had been formed, the socialists (SRs, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks) jointly formed "soviets" (councils), purportedly governing bodies by and of the working class, which seized most power in the major cities. Whenever the PrG made an unpopular decision, the Soviets (in particular the Petrograd Soviet, where Lenin had returned to lead the Bolsheviks in April) would issue contradictory orders or organize strikes until the PrG was forced to cave.
Faced with little ability to govern and an ever more unpopular war, the Kadet Prime Minister Prince Lvov was forced to give the SRs a continuously larger role in the PrG. In July, the Bolsheviks took to the streets of St. Petersburg with half a million demonstrators demanding "all power to the soviets!" Order was restored only when Lvov and the other Kadets resigned, leaving the PrG in the hands of SR leader Alexander Kerensky.
Kerensky was an extremely ineffectual leader, somewhat of a Jerry Brown type in that he preferred to focus on loopy pet causes with little relationship to reality, while neglecting the most important and pressing issues.
He announced military units would be allowed to abolish all ranks and govern themselves by democratic vote — precipitating, while still at war with Germany, a total collapse at the front. Discipline broke down entirely and soldiers deserted en masse.
But Kerensky made his gravest errors closer to home. On taking power he proclaimed that, a socialist government having been established, the PrG would now assume the powers of the soviets. But, crucially, he did not order they be forced to dissolve.
Minus the presence of many SRs who had joined the PrG, the soviets continued to hold session, and moved in an increasingly radical direction as the Bolsheviks purged Mensheviks and the remaining SRs from their ranks. Even as the Bolshevik-led soviets openly declared their intent to topple his government, Kerensky refused to take action against them, claiming he recognized "no enemies to the left."
Meanwhile, conservative elements in the military considered the situation with the Bolsheviks and with Germany to have become intolerable. In August, the newly-appointed commander in chief of the army, Gen. Kornilov, suddenly stopped responding to Kerensky's communications.
Fearing that a right-wing coup was imminent, and that the army would be loyal to Kornilov over himself, he authorized the Petrograd Soviet to distribute arms among the workers. The Bolsheviks now commanded a large force of paramilitary Red Guards loyal only to them. Kornilov made his move, announcing that he was dissolving the Petrograd Soviet, but the attack came too late; finding themselves far outnumbered, he and his officers were arrested by the Red Guards.
All the while, the Germans were advancing almost at will. In late October they captured Riga, dangerously close to Petrograd. Kerensky ordered Petrograd's garrison to help in stopping the German advance at the front, but unwilling to march to a suicide mission in a war that was already lost, two thirds of the garrison declared they would only follow orders from the Petrograd Soviet.
Within days, on November 7, Lenin declared the PrG dissolved and the Petrograd Soviet as the only government. Kerensky ordered the army to resist, but, disgusted by the treatment of Kornilov, even anti-communist units refused to leave their barracks, and so Kerensky was forced to leave the country. While it would be shortly followed by a devastating civil war, the "October" Revolution itself was virtually bloodless.
A little over two weeks later, November 25, the PrG had scheduled what was to be Russia's first democratic parliamentary election, an event the Bolsheviks surprisingly allowed to go forward. The results were: 58% of the vote and 370 out of 703 seats for the SRs, 24% of the vote and 175 seats for the Bolsheviks, who simply ignored the results. They would never hold another one.
One of the more striking examples of rhyming history, IMO, is 1917/1991; seemingly radical reformer (Kerensky, Gorbachev) is replaced by ideologically-similar but even more radical opponent (Lenin, Yeltsin) who gradually usurps the central authority with a dueling government (Petrograd Soviet, Russian Federation), particularly after he alone foils a hardliner coup in August, which allows him to take total control on November 7 (October Revolution, Yeltsin bans Communist Party), but of a rump state with roughly the same borders (Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, dissolution of the Soviet Union).
Whew! Sorry for writing War and Peace…Replies: @reiner Tor, @OLD JEW
Have never read such a clear summary. And I have consumed so many books and movies about the Revolution. Many, many Thanks.
Fuck you, it should be the Maple leaf forever, you backward american savages.
Happy 2017
2. Hussein probably doesn't much like Israel.
3. Hussein has Muslim sympathies.
4. Hussein probably thinks Israel routinely gets away with murder.
5. It puts daylight between Hussein's administration, and Trump's. It's Hussein's way of stealing the silverware on the way out (Hussein has made a show of not stealing the silverware on the way out, the way the Clintons did - he's doing it all politically, bureaucratically).
6. It may not have much effect on the facts on the ground, but it does send a message.
7. Maybe Hussein, Trump, and Kevin Macdonald all have the same idea of putting some daylight between Israeli Jewry, and American Jewry.True. Maybe he's putting principle over party unity. Maybe he wants a Keith Ellison Democrat party.That is some serious spin, my friend. Trump has not shown that at all. You guys are ALWAYS going on about how Israeli Jewry and diaspora Jewry have such distinct interests, now you're trying to conflate them? Nope, not buying that. Trump is shaping up to be the least pro-diaspora-Jewry (globalist), and most pro-Israeli-Jewry (nationalist) president in living memory. That's the situation.Replies: @Lot, @reiner Tor, @Desiderius
Who does that? Not me. Not anyone I can think of. They are closely aligned, which is why Israel and the USA are such close allies.
Trump is not opposed to globalism, he is opposed to blind globalism that thinks invading/inviting in dusky low-IQ foreigners is a good idea. With civilized nations from Poland to Russia to Israel trump will bring us warmer relations than Obama.
And why should America and Israel be "such close allies" based on the ethnic interests of about 2% of the American public? There are far more Americans who are of irish descent, so why isn't Ireland one of our closest allies? In what way are the interests of average, gentile Americans aligned with those of Israel?Replies: @Lot
Best defense is offense.
Accuse Russia and play victim to distract people from massive Democratic collusion with deep state.
Trump victory casts a dark shadow over Obama’s presidency.
Obama exits with a refutation of his legacy…as with Bush II.
Trump blew out the torch handed to Hillary.
2. Hussein probably doesn't much like Israel.
3. Hussein has Muslim sympathies.
4. Hussein probably thinks Israel routinely gets away with murder.
5. It puts daylight between Hussein's administration, and Trump's. It's Hussein's way of stealing the silverware on the way out (Hussein has made a show of not stealing the silverware on the way out, the way the Clintons did - he's doing it all politically, bureaucratically).
6. It may not have much effect on the facts on the ground, but it does send a message.
7. Maybe Hussein, Trump, and Kevin Macdonald all have the same idea of putting some daylight between Israeli Jewry, and American Jewry.True. Maybe he's putting principle over party unity. Maybe he wants a Keith Ellison Democrat party.That is some serious spin, my friend. Trump has not shown that at all. You guys are ALWAYS going on about how Israeli Jewry and diaspora Jewry have such distinct interests, now you're trying to conflate them? Nope, not buying that. Trump is shaping up to be the least pro-diaspora-Jewry (globalist), and most pro-Israeli-Jewry (nationalist) president in living memory. That's the situation.Replies: @Lot, @reiner Tor, @Desiderius
He isn’t really shaping up to be anything like that, or at least I haven’t seen much to suggest that he’ll be like that. He’s just appointed half the Goldman Sachs executives to run his administration. He could, of course, in spite of all this, be a great anti-globalist president (and unless he starts yet another pointless Middle East war, I wouldn’t mind him being the most pro-Zionist president, moving the US embassy to Jerusalem etc.), but the early signs are not perfect. We will see anyway, so no need to worry much about that.
2. Hussein probably doesn't much like Israel.
3. Hussein has Muslim sympathies.
4. Hussein probably thinks Israel routinely gets away with murder.
5. It puts daylight between Hussein's administration, and Trump's. It's Hussein's way of stealing the silverware on the way out (Hussein has made a show of not stealing the silverware on the way out, the way the Clintons did - he's doing it all politically, bureaucratically).
6. It may not have much effect on the facts on the ground, but it does send a message.
7. Maybe Hussein, Trump, and Kevin Macdonald all have the same idea of putting some daylight between Israeli Jewry, and American Jewry.True. Maybe he's putting principle over party unity. Maybe he wants a Keith Ellison Democrat party.That is some serious spin, my friend. Trump has not shown that at all. You guys are ALWAYS going on about how Israeli Jewry and diaspora Jewry have such distinct interests, now you're trying to conflate them? Nope, not buying that. Trump is shaping up to be the least pro-diaspora-Jewry (globalist), and most pro-Israeli-Jewry (nationalist) president in living memory. That's the situation.Replies: @Lot, @reiner Tor, @Desiderius
They have many common interests though also some divergent ones. The common ones are more legitimate for Israelis than for putative Americans with dual loyalty at best.
“Who does that? Not me. Not anyone I can think of. They are closely aligned, which is why Israel and the USA are such close allies.”
And why should America and Israel be “such close allies” based on the ethnic interests of about 2% of the American public? There are far more Americans who are of irish descent, so why isn’t Ireland one of our closest allies? In what way are the interests of average, gentile Americans aligned with those of Israel?
But our interest in Israel is far more than closeness of blood.Replies: @Mr. Anon
“MUTUAL cooperative eavesdropping has been a standard practice among “Five Eyes” countries (U.S., Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) for decades for practical and legal reasons,…”
You mean to circumvent their own laws. Clearly they are violating the spirit of the law by telling the government of another country: “We can’t spy on our own people. Here, you spy on them for us, and tell us what they said.” It all rather makes one wonder who is working for whom.
I saw in a news story about the Obama Administration’s retaliation against Russia for the (so-called) hacking, that they expelled 35 russian diplomats, many of whom were known to be intelligence agents. Here’s a question – if we knew they were FSB agents, why didn’t we expel them before? Why don’t we just routinely revoke the diplomatic credentials of everyone we discover to be a bona fide foreign intelligence agent? Why do we knowingly suffer spies to reside in our country?
You mean to circumvent their own laws. Clearly they are violating the spirit of the law by telling the government of another country: "We can't spy on our own people. Here, you spy on them for us, and tell us what they said." It all rather makes one wonder who is working for whom.
I saw in a news story about the Obama Administration's retaliation against Russia for the (so-called) hacking, that they expelled 35 russian diplomats, many of whom were known to be intelligence agents. Here's a question - if we knew they were FSB agents, why didn't we expel them before? Why don't we just routinely revoke the diplomatic credentials of everyone we discover to be a bona fide foreign intelligence agent? Why do we knowingly suffer spies to reside in our country?Replies: @reiner Tor
Actually, once you identified him, you can easily neutralize him, or better, feed him false information. You can find his contacts. You can eventually find out his vulnerabilities and maybe even blackmail him or turn him around. It’s often better to keep the known devil around.
And that certainly makes a lot more work for our own intelligence and counter-intelligence people. I often think the last think that a lot of CI guys would want would be for all the foreign spies to disappear. The old bureaucratic imperative.
And why should America and Israel be "such close allies" based on the ethnic interests of about 2% of the American public? There are far more Americans who are of irish descent, so why isn't Ireland one of our closest allies? In what way are the interests of average, gentile Americans aligned with those of Israel?Replies: @Lot
It is more like 8% of young white Americans who are at least partly Jewish, and even higher than that for the upper and upper middle class. Higher still if you include by marriage, step and half siblings, etc.
But our interest in Israel is far more than closeness of blood.
Kim Dotcom.
But our interest in Israel is far more than closeness of blood.Replies: @Mr. Anon
“It is more like 8% of young white Americans who are at least partly Jewish, and even higher than that for the upper and upper middle class. Higher still if you include by marriage, step and half siblings, etc.”
But what fraction of them self-identify or particularly care about Israel.
“But our interest in Israel is far more than closeness of blood.”
Like…………………..?
Again, why should Israel weigh more heavily on U.S. foreign policy than Ireland? I see no reason.
“Actually, once you identified him, you can easily neutralize him, or better, feed him false information. You can find his contacts. You can eventually find out his vulnerabilities and maybe even blackmail him or turn him around. It’s often better to keep the known devil around.”
And that certainly makes a lot more work for our own intelligence and counter-intelligence people. I often think the last think that a lot of CI guys would want would be for all the foreign spies to disappear. The old bureaucratic imperative.
In regards to Podesta's emails, evidence points to him being fooled by a simple password request email hack. Go see TheGatewaypundit site for this.
Prior to the Russian accusation, our intel services admitted that Hillary's email server was hacked by at least 5 nation states. It stands to reason that the DNC by putting it's email on gmail was just asking to be hacked. No one with a ounce of intelligence would ever trust sensitive emails to something that is unsecure as gmail or any cloud based services.
The fact that the DNC didn't hire top flight IT contractors to set up and manage their IT needs demonstrated how profoundly arrogant and out of touch their top people are - everything is political loyalty not competence with them. Hillary and Bill were quite stupid to think they didn't have big fat bullseye painted on them on a 7x24 basis by nation state hacker groups along with private groups all looking for the slightest chink in their IT defense.Replies: @Anonymous, @Eagle Eye
QUOTE: “DNC didn’t hire top flight IT contractors to set up and manage their IT needs demonstrated how profoundly arrogant and out of touch their top people are – everything is political loyalty not competence with them. ”
You don’t say! Reliance on email without open-source, end-to-end encryption is insane. (Nor are those precautions anywhere near sufficient.)
Also, one doesn’t really see bio-clock watching 34-year old Georgetown girls being wise to the importance of solid IT. IT is not as popular as the traditional estrogen-sodden disciplines, nor is the real importance and substantive practice of IT (or any technology) taught to CultMarx students at Georgetown or Columbia.
If you are the bees’ knees as a Georgetown grad with a masters from Columbia or UC Berkeley and pass feminist muster, why worry your pretty little head about headache-inducing subjects like IT, nuclear technology, real economics, etc.?
Assange: Russian government not the source of WikiLeaks emails