And Down the Rabbit Hole We Go

Discussion in 'The Red Room' started by Aurora, Feb 15, 2017.

  1. Spaceturkey

    Spaceturkey i can see my house

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    shut up, fiona
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  2. Captain X

    Captain X Responsible cookie control

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    Shut up, racist.
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  3. Man Afraid of his Shoes

    Man Afraid of his Shoes كافر

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    Okay. If the point is that our intelligence community might be lying, then fair enough I guess, but how did the whole "Russians hacked the election" story play out? I don't remember any intelligence agency suggest that the actual election was hacked...just the DNC and Podesta.

    I honestly don't remember Democrats in general worshiping Assange. A few here and there maybe, but not enough to indict the whole bunch of them. In fact, I thought Hillary and Obama both hated his guts. :shrug: If any one group thought he was a hero, it was the Libertarians.
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  4. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    Of course not. Did I suggest this?

    I must have failed to make myself clear. Obviously I didn't even suggest that Obama was playing race politics. At all. That's Donald's special preserve.

    I said Obama tried to "reason", "find consensus" with the Republicans. How stupid do you have to be to sincerely believe such a thing is possible? 'Specially if you're black. Meaning that I and millions of others could have told him that these guys aren't interested in discussion, thanks. And they really aren't interested in handing any sort of success to a black man.
    It would have been little different with President Bernie Sanders going the same route. Obama's blackness just made them dig their heels in all the harder.

    And note the word "sincerely". Maybe Obama was doing this consensus-seeking for show, just to demonstrate what a bunch of retrogressive shitheads they all are. If so it was a waste of time that could have been better used otherwise.
    If Obama really believed he could talk turkey with these idiots, then he's more of a fool than he looks.

    Of course. But Hilary is a woman. That's why I used Sanders: a white male.

    There -- you're making my point for me. The fence. It's fair enough to stay on the fence till you figure things out. But stay up there forever or almost? No, that's political cowardice.

    And when he finally came down it was over a social issue. I think that social issues are more important for some members of society than others. But practically everybody benefits from a job instead of unemployment, a decent wage, safe working conditions, freely available health care, etc.

    Obama did finally give birth to Obamacare. That's not nothing. It's quite an achievement to have got that through a kicking and screaming congress. And he did practise a sort of half-assed Keynesianism, thanks to which there was some sort of an economic recovery. But he could have done so much more.

    Remember January 2009: There was Obama with an enormous charge of political capital sitting there like a jetpack on his back. A lot of us stood appalled over the next year screaming at him "Light the fuse!!" He never did.
    And of course that charge eventually dissipated.

    He's a magnificent speaker. Imagine if he had done like FDR: I welcome their hatred!
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  5. Man Afraid of his Shoes

    Man Afraid of his Shoes كافر

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    So how about that press conference, huh?
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  6. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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    Absolute batshit but Sebastian Gorka was on the BBC last night defending it with many cries of "fake news!" (Incidentally, he appears to have lied on his resume about being called as an expert witness in a terrorism trial, and has been seen wearing a medal that was issued by a group that collaborated with the Nazis in rounding up Jews - which he claims is his Dad's and was for assisting in resisting Soviet aggression post-WW2).

    Standout line - Trump's bit about the protestors not being "the people our representatives represent" (or at least that's as close to what we can understand from the gibberish he actually said) which is about as close as you'll ever get to a US President admitting he doesn't care about US citizens that didn't vote for him.

    Puts me in mind of this Transmetropolitan quote from the outgoing President, and hell, even he didn't say whether the folk he was referring to were his base.

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  7. Guffbox

    Guffbox GCPC #1

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    I thought it was uncharacteristically lucid and coherent. For example:

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  8. matthunter

    matthunter Ice Bear

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  9. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    For just the 2nd time I heard the term "deep state" today on NPR. They were interviewing their Moscow stringer on current Russian reaction to Trump. NPR's guy said that Russia was cooling on Trump because he was not as pro-Russia as they thought he would be and that Trump may be under the influence of a "long arm," either a vestige of the Obama administration or the "deep state."

    Is "deep state" Russian propaganda or something I missed? google google...

    It may be a nascent movement of Trump's parentage. NY Times article from 2/16/2017

    WASHINGTON — A wave of leaks from government officials has hobbled the Trump administration, leading some to draw comparisons to countries like Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, where shadowy networks within government bureaucracies, often referred to as “deep states,” undermine and coerce elected governments.

    So is the United States seeing the rise of its own deep state?

    Not quite, experts say, but the echoes are real — and disturbing.

    Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions.

    That can be deeply destabilizing, leading both sides to wield state powers like the security services or courts against one another, corrupting those institutions in the process.​
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
  10. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    I wasn't aware intelligence agencies were serving the American public? Please cite another current example. They've made a shambles of foreign relations in prior decades but these were clandestine operations that failed, not intelligence gathering.

    I don't know where you got this impression, unless it was the Obama administration coming down hard on Assange. I don't recall him saying Assange was awesome. Nor do I see the liberal public coming down on Assange either before or after the DNC hack. Can you give specifics?


    It's not "the" claim, it's the consensus of all US agencies. I think you're in denial.

    No one ever claimed "the Russians hacked the election." Where did you come up with this? Did they influence the election? Of course they did: it's what they do.
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  11. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    The origin of the term is Turkish, not Russian. @Nono gaves a good quick summary earlier:

    Until last year there was a deep state in Turkey --- basically the military. Governments came and went, freely elected, but when things started to wander, the military stepped in. They were the guardians of the Kemalist project (and for all I know lining their own pockets at the same time.)
    I put all this in the past tense because apparently last year's failed coup has enabled Erdogan to clean house thoroughly and crown himself dictator.


    Kemalism = European oriented foreign policy (see NATO attempts to join EU) secular liberalism at home. When Islamist governments would win, they'd be given a bit of a leash. But as soon as they started to move away from Kemalism the Deep State would intervene and one way or another a new government would come to power.
  12. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    Just as historical tidbit, while Erdogan may slit the throat of the Deep State, Europe (and especially France) held it down. Back in the late 90s and early 00s when it looked like Turkey joining the EU was a real possibility democratic reforms were forced on Turkey as part of prep for joining. These reforms all centered around reducing the power of the military. The Deep State gambled that the country had progressed enough that secular liberalism could stand on its own until EU membership would cement it in place.

    When France and other European countries (but led by France) blocked EU membership the Kemalist party lost public support and the military no longer had the means to correct the situation.

    Thus, Erdogan. Good job Europe! :techman:
  13. Aurora

    Aurora Vincerò!

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    The Deep State is as close to an X-Files type conspiracy as you'll ever get; but I'm defining it broader than, for example, Wikipedia. The term itself is of Turkish origin but it exists in every single country. It's the whole shebang of mostly unaccountable services and some assorted members of the private sector.

    Usually you can't see them. They are not organized in any way; it exists by means of clandestine contacts. They also don't do much. It only becomes the Deep State once all the parts start working together towards a common goal. This is what we're seeing in the US right now. It's rearing its head. That is remarkable in itself because it makes them vulnerable.

    I wouldn't worry too much about such structures. They are deeply undemocratic but also completely unavoidable. They are also not alone. Clusters of contacts and common interests exist in every field there is.
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
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  14. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    I'm not an x-files fan. Nor do I think there was an established deep state in the US. One may be forming from disgruntled government officials now that Trump is in power. The NY Times article I linked above phrases it this way. Perhaps we're saying the same thing.
  15. Aurora

    Aurora Vincerò!

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    It's not an organization. It's people in certain positions whose goals align from time to time. Much like, say, one fraternity bro calling another fraternity bro and boom, highly paid job acquired in an informal way.
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  16. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    NYT quoted by @steve2^4: "Though the deep state is sometimes discussed as a shadowy conspiracy, it helps to think of it instead as a political conflict between a nation’s leader and its governing institutions."

    That's one way of thinking of it, a way in which the deep state isn't necessarily a sinister thing, but rather institutions with a certain inertia. Every reformer in history has found the bureaucrats a problem --- getting them to implement their reforms. This is good or bad depending on your view of the "reforms". Healthily conceived and robust institutions can stand in the way of a cheapjack fuck-up like Donald and -- worse -- the creeps he's appointed.

    On the other hand, I believe a sort of deep state was responsible for the assassination of Jack Kennedy. The CIA at least, if not some in the Pentagon. And the rest of the military/industrial complex --- even if they weren't involved --- heaved a sigh of relief.
    To me it's apparent that the Mafia was involved. But they were already working closely with the CIA over Cuba.
    The exact constellation is -- pathetically -- something we'll never know for sure.

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  17. Captain X

    Captain X Responsible cookie control

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    You'd have to ask the media and salty Clinton backers who have warped it into that story. It's repeated all over social media, and there were even a few claims here, with someone pointing out that in order to hack the voting machines that would have to be done in person. But that's kind of like pretty much everything Trump did or said on the campaign trail. Like how his statement that a lot of the illegal immigrants were murderers and rapists got warped into: "Trump says all Mexicans are rapists!"

    If they hated his guts, it wasn't until after the DNC email business.
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  18. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    You know, I think admitting Turkey to the EU was never really politically possible. And these days it really isn't possible.

    Anyway, it seems to me that most Turks have long since come to terms with the reality that they'll never get in to an already over-sized Europe.
    There really are two Turkeys: the reactionary majority who back Erdogan, and mostly live outside the big cities, and the Western-looking people in Istanbul or wherever. But the latter can't possibly still dream that they're going to get into the EU, whatever governments still say formally.

    Anyway, I'd be very interested to know why last year's coup failed. Is there now a Kemalist/Islamist split in the military as well?
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  19. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    It is only if you buy into black-helicopter/chem-trails fantasy paranoia about the Almighty Federal Government.
    Talking about X-file and tinfoil hats is just a cheap put-down of a serious subject.

    To me, the deep state in the US consists only partly of the state. It's there to protect the power of the powerful. And since Big Private Industry has incredible political power, it has to be included.

    So perhaps Military-Security/Industrial Complex is the better term.
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  20. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    Whelp, then Europe shouldn't have strung Turkey along did. Thanks to them we have the dismantling of the Turkish secular republic and a turn to Russia and the ME.

    As I said, good job Europe! Your racism and xenophobia wins again! :techman:

    The pro-democracy reforms pushed by Europe put civilian leadership in charge of the security organs and command and control systems of Turkey for the first time. Up until that point the military itself was basically an independent organ of the state. The ultimate check. Also until that point Kemalism had been the secular religion of the military (taught in all military academies, the unifying principle of service, etc). 15 years of civilian (Islamist) control and that unity had weakened to the point where the coup failed and you get the death of the Turkish Deep State, and secular liberalism.
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  21. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    I think it's quite unfair to blame Europe for the collapse of Kemalism and the return to a sort of would-be Ottoman Empire (I mean, not forgetting the "stans" and even Xinjiang ....). It's like blaming Mexicans for Donald's election victory.

    It's not only in Turkey that there's a revival of Muslim Consciousness these days. It's all over the Middle East and beyond. Erdogan's success owes a lot to this anti-Western backlash.

    If it was that easy to defeat Kemalism, then Kemalism was a paper tiger all along.

    Also, it's intellectually lazy to pick out one scapegoat (Europe) and blame it for all your problems.
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  22. Ancalagon

    Ancalagon Scalawag Administrator Formerly Important

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    :lol:

    Typical Euro. Can never accept responsibility for your actions.

    As you admitted in your first post, Europe is too xenophobic to admit Turkey, so why string them along? Why tell them that if make the 'right' reforms they can get in?

    You removed Turkey's check on Islamism and say it's unfair to blame you for Islamism seizing power. And now that it is Islamist they can never get in (with undertones that this proves that they shouldn't have been let in).

    As I said, good job. Well played. :techman:
    Last edited: Feb 17, 2017
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  23. Dayton Kitchens

    Dayton Kitchens Banned

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    That is bat crazy insane.

    With not a shred of evidence to support it.
  24. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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  25. Paladin

    Paladin Overjoyed Man of Liberty

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    That's really absurd. The President's job isn't to "keep the majority of people in the country alive." He's an official whose job is to enforce the laws of the land.

    Sorry if I've missed some sarcasm or irony here, but it bugs me when people think some official in Washington is somehow creditable for people going about their normal lives. The President doesn't dispense the blessings of life.
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  26. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    You make him sound like Sheriff in Chief.
    Part of his role is also to initiate new policies where needed.
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  27. Ten Lubak

    Ten Lubak Salty Dog

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    That doesn't hold up, Typical Euro
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  28. Nono

    Nono Fresh Meat

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    That's precisely the point, numnutz. But then am I surprised the obvious has escaped you?
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  29. steve2^4

    steve2^4 Aged Meat

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    So, Russia is characterizing Trump as a naive risk-taker. Can't wait to see his tweet on this one. NBC news

    MOSCOW — A dossier on Donald Trump's psychological makeup is being prepared for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    Among its preliminary conclusions is that the new American leader is a risk-taker who can be naïve, according to a senior Kremlin adviser.
    What is another term for naive risk-taker?

    And why would Moscow see a benefit to going public with this bit?
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  30. Steal Your Face

    Steal Your Face Anti-Federalist

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    Actually the President's role was initially very limited and for a long time, he basically waited for Congress to pass laws. Unfortunately, every President has increasingly ceased power that was never given to them.