Mueller probing alleged Flynn plan to deliver cleric to Turkey: WSJ

[G-Man]

[QUOTE]WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether U.S. President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, was involved in an alleged plan to seize a Muslim cleric and deliver him to Turkey in exchange for millions of dollars, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

Under the plan, Flynn, who was fired by Trump after just 24 days in the job, and his son, Michael Flynn Jr, were to receive up to $15 million for forcibly removing Fethullah Gulen from his U.S. home and delivering him to the Turkish government, people familiar with the investigation told the Journal.

The alleged plan emerged during Mueller’s wider investigation of possible Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and any collusion by the Trump campaign.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accuses Gulen of instigating a failed coup in July 2016 and wants him extradited to Turkey to face trial. Gulen has denied any role in the coup.

A spokesman for Mueller’s team declined to comment on the report on Friday.[/QUOTE]
[URL="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia/mueller-probing-alleged-flynn-plan-to-deliver-cleric-to-turkey-wsj-idUSKBN1DA1S6?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_content=5a05c02304d30154ad13e4fd&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook"]Reuters.[/URL]

[the rifleman]

Flynn and his son are so fucked, they're next on the block and will most definitely flip. In a week well see the white house branding him a "volunteer".

[Big Dumb Patriot]

Finally, Rueters. I have been wanting to post this all morning, but couldn't find an article that wasn't behind the WSJ paywall.

This is [I]major[/I]. In case people aren't aware why it's important, Erdogan and Putin are close. Erdogan's regime is effectively a puppet government, strongarmed into forced cooperation by the Kremlin, and tied closely with one another's political interests.

Not only does this establish yet another major link between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin's influence, it makes it extremely likely that Mueller already has proof of at [I]least[/I] one felony crime on the Flynns: acting as unregistered agents of a foreign principal. This confirms the leak a few days ago about Mueller having enough evidence to indict both Flynn and Flynn Junior.

[editline]10th November 2017[/editline]

[QUOTE=The Rifleman;52876377]Flynn and his son are so fucked, they're next on the block and will most definitely flip. In a week well see the white house branding him a "volunteer".[/QUOTE]

Remember Flynn offering to testify for immunity? This is likely the first of many things he wanted immunity from. Investigators knew there was dirt, and now that they are able to [I]actually[/I] hold something over Flynn's head, he'll be especially motivated to spill his guts.

[Fulcrum]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52876408]Finally, Rueters. I have been wanting to post this all morning, but couldn't find an article that wasn't behind the WSJ paywall.

This is [I]major[/I]. In case people aren't aware why it's important, Erdogan and Putin are close. Erdogan's regime is effectively a puppet government, strongarmed into forced cooperation by the Kremlin, and tied closely with one another's political interests.

Not only does this establish yet another major link between Trump's campaign and the Kremlin's influence, it makes it extremely likely that Mueller already has proof of at [I]least[/I] one felony crime on the Flynns: acting as unregistered agents of a foreign principal. This confirms the leak a few days ago about Mueller having enough evidence to indict both Flynn and Flynn Junior.

[editline]10th November 2017[/editline]

Remember Flynn offering to testify for immunity? This is likely the first of many things he wanted immunity from. Investigators knew there was dirt, and now that they are able to [I]actually[/I] hold something over Flynn's head, he'll be especially motivated to spill his guts.[/QUOTE]

maybe this time round his memory will better serve him

[GrizzlyBear]

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;52876463]maybe this time round his memory will better serve him[/QUOTE]

Maybe the greatest memory of all time can finally prove it's mettle.

[Big Dumb Patriot]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52879793]Erdogan isn't a Kremlin puppet LMAO - not even close to truth by any stretch of imagination

Like some things you post are supported by the press and intelligence agencies, but a lot of times you post appallingly ludicrous stuff like this that I can only describe as "paranoid" so much so that I have started to take none of the things you post at face value, similar to how I'd take the stuff posted by a known Trump shill. You really should stop speculating with half the facts, no matter how many times you luckily turn out right (and often times turn out wrong - keep those in mind as well).

We all need to exercise caution in speculation, as none of us really have all the facts and can judge things wrongly - illustrated here by you linking this news to Kremlin by a 100% wrong stretch / deduction.[/QUOTE]

[url]https://www.forbes.com/sites/annaborshchevskaya/2017/01/27/is-erdogan-a-russian-ally-or-putins-puppet/[/url]

Putin has been strong-arming Erdogan's regime. Over the last couple of years, Turkey's interests have effectively come to mirror Russia's. Erdogan is a Putin puppet. Flynn's work on behalf of Erdogan is, in effect, work performed on behalf of the Kremlin.

[tempcon]

I was just about to reply to that, I think you're becoming a little too obsessed BDA. This is like obama derangement syndrome-tier punditry.

That slip right there really gives one a look into the witch hunt effect of searching for a russian influence in all illiberal democracies (turkey, poland, hungary, etc.), online leak cultures like wikileaks, the rise of nationalism in the west, basically everything that's dissenting with our status quo. Shit, even the [url=https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj7ko7FibfXAhVE8IMKHZtcD5oQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fkenrapoza%2F2017%2F06%2F09%2Fu-k-labor-leader-corbyn-and-trump-have-something-in-common-russia%2F&usg=AOvVaw1F9GxXIjSSpYDKa4FLRGjH]dissident left[/url] is getting beaten with the 'russia stick'

This is all to set up for the big blow of accusing this dissent of being treasonous and using an external threat Russia to deflect from internal problems, and vindicating the foreign policy of an establishment candidate like clinton for being close to the post-reset breakdown with Russia and supposedly right all along.

Erdogan and Putin do not agree very much in their projected interests in Syria and the former is pro-Ukraine because of the opinions of Tatars. Turkey and Russia are not historical friends and one is a NATO power. There's a degree of nuance to their relationship because of gas pipelines, and outside of that the relations aren't the best. In fact, Putin just described them as having [url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-turkey-putin/putin-says-russias-relations-with-turkey-have-fully-recovered-idUSKBN17Z1O8]recovered[/url] from a low point.

[Big Dumb Patriot]

[QUOTE=Conscript;52879843]I was just about to reply to that, I think you're becoming a little too obsessed BDA. This is like obama derangement syndrome-tier punditry.

That slip right there really gives one a look into the witch hunt effect of searching for a russian influence in all illiberal democracies (turkey, poland, hungary, etc.), online leak cultures like wikileaks, the rise of nationalism in the west, basically everything that's dissenting with our status quo. Shit, even the [url=https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwj7ko7FibfXAhVE8IMKHZtcD5oQFggoMAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fsites%2Fkenrapoza%2F2017%2F06%2F09%2Fu-k-labor-leader-corbyn-and-trump-have-something-in-common-russia%2F&usg=AOvVaw1F9GxXIjSSpYDKa4FLRGjH]dissident left[/url] is getting beaten with the 'russia stick'

This is all to set up for the big blow of accusing this dissent of being treasonous and using an external threat Russia to deflect from internal problems, and vindicating the foreign policy of an establishment candidate like clinton for being close to the post-reset breakdown with Russia and supposedly right all along.

Erdogan and Putin do not agree very much in their projected interests in Syria and the former is pro-Ukraine because of the opinions of Tatars. Turkey and Russia are not historical friends and one is a NATO power. There's a degree of nuance to their relationship because of gas pipelines, and outside of that the relations aren't the best. In fact, Putin just described them as having [url=https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-turkey-putin/putin-says-russias-relations-with-turkey-have-fully-recovered-idUSKBN17Z1O8]recovered[/url] from a low point.[/QUOTE]

Russia is waging a global war of destabilization against the Western world. That their fingers have been pulling at every major social schism in the modern world is no coincidence. They may not be the root cause for every ugly woe we're looking at, but they pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into making them worse.

That everybody in Trump's inner circle has also been found to have links to Kremlin is also no coincidence.

I think that anything less than a complete dismantling of this administration, with life sentences for every single person who aided and abetted this treason, is simply non-negotiable. Alarm and outrage [B]are[/B] the proper response to our current situation. It is unprecedented in our nation's history, and we cannot allow it to continue unchallenged. Sniffing out and crushing the Kremlin's influence is imperative to global stability. You can call that a "witch hunt" if you like, but the fact of the matter is this: the cold war is back on, and the new weapon of mass destruction is modern social media. If you ignore that, Putin will continue to pry at the cracks running through Europe and North America.

[Firgof Umbra]

[QUOTE=Conscript;52879843]I was just about to reply to that, I think you're becoming a little too obsessed BDA. This is like obama derangement syndrome-tier punditry.[/QUOTE]

The thing is: He's not obsessed - he's just paying attention. Painting him as a 'borderline conspiracy theorist' does nothing to aid your argument. It doesn't deface his either - principally because it's not true.

[quote]This is all to set up for the big blow of accusing this dissent of being treasonous and using an external threat Russia to deflect from internal problems, and vindicating the foreign policy of an establishment candidate like clinton for being close to the post-reset breakdown with Russia and supposedly right all along. [/quote]

Ah, and there it is. "This is all about Clinton and you guys just want to lock us up for speaking 'the real truth' ". It isn't. Stop making everything about Clinton and, before you go there, 'stop making everything about Russia' doesn't fly. Russia has [I]made it all about itself[/I].

Might as well say 'stop making this about what Enron did' while we're discussing the crimes Enron has committed. You are as transparent as a sheet of wax paper in a burger king, conscript, just admit that what you're trying to say here is: "LOL, you guys believe Russia actually did anything? It was the DNC all along - the DNC did everything."

The facts are: Russia is an external threat. Russia is attempting to puppet nations with its cyber-espionage. Russia has meddled in elections routinely. Russia has meddled with governments routinely. That is their modus operandi. This fits perfectly in their modus operandi. We have our own problems, yes, but the [I]existence of those problems don't suddenly make 'the external problems' all a 'liberal conspiracy witch hunt'[/I].

[Scoops]

[QUOTE=Conscript;52879843]I was just about to reply to that, I think you're becoming a little too obsessed BDA. This is like obama derangement syndrome-tier punditry.[/QUOTE]

This is pretty hilarious coming from you.

[tempcon]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52879841][url]https://www.forbes.com/sites/annaborshchevskaya/2017/01/27/is-erdogan-a-russian-ally-or-putins-puppet/[/url]

Putin has been strong-arming Erdogan's regime. Over the last couple of years, Turkey's interests have effectively mirrored Russia's. Erdogan is a Putin puppet. Flynn's work on behalf of Erdogan is, in effect, work performed on behalf of the Kremlin.[/QUOTE]

Your opinion piece does nothing to substantiate the claim that, especially of the last couple of years, turkey's interests mirror russia's. It doesn't even contemplate the question of whether turkey is neither a russian ally or a putin puppet, because 5 seconds of research will tell you it's written by a member of a pro-Israel think tank who readily retweets John McCain, articles about Russian arms sales to gulf monarchies, and Russian interests in Iran. This think tank has had members in senior positions of the Bush I & II, Clinton, and Obama administrations, who together functioned as post-1991 uniparty when it came to US foreign policy that shares culpability for instability in the Middle East and rise of tensions with Russia, a foreign policy populists and progressives alike are dead set against.

Your argument is literally:
'Putin has some leverage over turkey through the PKK, russian tourism, and gas, erdogan compromised on his hardline stances in Syria that put him in bed with islamists and this can only be explained by Putin. Therefore Flynn is indirectly working with the Kremlin'

That's like saying Germany and parts of eastern europe are putin puppets because of the gas trade, and this explains the nuance of some of them when it came to the Ukraine issue and how Gerhard Schröder's soft approach to Russia made him a puppet.

It's amazing how a populist backlash to the foreign, trade, and immigration policy of this election's left wing candidate has triggered such a hysteria about Russia. The soul-seeking of the dems regarding why they lost is less about their platform, dismissing the progressives who urged campaigning in the rust belt, and more about external factors and where the right's reformulated positions came from.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]It's amazing how a populist backlash to the foreign, trade, and immigration policy of this election's left wing candidate has triggered such a hysteria about Russia.[/quote]

It's amazing how a foreign nation interfering in your elections makes people mad at the nation that sowed dissent. But that's all 'hysteria', right? Oh, sorry, and I forgot to mention that it's not about what Russia did, it's about what 'a certain candidate put forward in her campaign'. We're mad about [I]that[/I], not what Russia did, thus why we're hysterical right?

We're not allowed to be mad at big, muscly, Russia for all the crap they're putting our nation through because Putin's the hero we deserve or some crap?

[HumanAbyss]

[QUOTE=Conscript;52879972]Your opinion piece does nothing to substantiate the claim that, especially of the last couple of years, turkey's interests mirror russia's. It doesn't even contemplate the question of whether turkey is neither a russian ally or a putin puppet, because 5 seconds of research will tell you it's written by a member of a pro-Israel think tank who readily retweets John McCain, articles about Russian arms sales to gulf monarchies, and Russian interests in Iran. This think tank has had members in senior positions of the Bush I & II, Clinton, and Obama administrations, who together functioned as post-1991 uniparty when it came to US foreign policy that shares culpability for instability in the Middle East and rise of tensions with Russia, a foreign policy populists and progressives alike are dead set against. [/quote]

Where information comes from is important but you seem to think that it's more important than if things are true. You use literally any gap or wedge you can to drive a divide based on your "derangement syndrome-tier punditry"

[QUOTE]Your argument is literally:
'Putin has some leverage over turkey through the PKK, russian tourism, and gas, erdogan compromised on his hardline stances in Syria that put him in bed with islamists and this can only be explained by Putin. Therefore Flynn is indirectly working with the Kremlin'[/QUOTE]

So having both compromisies related to Turkey, and Russia(Yes both, you can't deny it, but you will)is innocuous? No it isn't

[QUOTE]That's like saying Germany and parts of eastern europe are putin puppets because of the gas trade, and this explains the nuance of some of them when it came to the Ukraine issue and how Gerhard Schröder's soft approach to Russia made him a puppet.[/QUOTE]

How is that a similar comparison?

[QUOTE]It's amazing how a populist backlash to the foreign, trade, and immigration policy of this election's left wing candidate has triggered such a hysteria about Russia. The soul-seeking of the dems regarding why they lost is less about their platform, dismissing the progressives who urged campaigning in the rust belt, and more about external factors and where the right's reformulated positions came from.[/QUOTE]

It's amazing to me at least, that you can accuse someone of ideological punditry while barely being able to muster a response that isn't driven or drawn from an accusatory position that everything is the "lefts" fault.

[HumanAbyss]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52879996]Putin didn't "strongarm" anybody. We had a lot of fun after [I]shooting down a fucking Russian jet [/I]and going after Russia's prime ally in the region, and getting economic blockade in some sectors such as agriculture, and devastating our own tourism industry. In time, due to Turkey's shifting priorities in foreign policy and inner changes (that did not involve being a puppet of anyone) some of Turkey's interests aligned with Russia's.

Just like how you are making me agree with fucking Conscript here. Doesn't mean I am a Russian shill, does it?[/QUOTE]

Turkey is being run by a dictator with no regard for the outside world besides what his goals are. he doesn't care about the citizenry, and that's not a stretch for someone to make that statement based off of his actions.

Invalidating him as a "Puppet" based solely on the idea that there's been economic backlashes or failures during a period of tumultuous internal change for the Turkish political elements isn't sound logic.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]Being a dictator also doesn't mean being a puppet.[/quote]

It does if said dictator was installed by another country.

[Firgof Umbra]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52880036]What a useless reply. Is Erdogan installed by Kremlin? Or is this about some other dictator?[/QUOTE]

Yes, clarifying that a dictator that was installed is a puppet by definition is certainly useless to your argument that 'just because they're a dictator doesn't mean they're a puppet'.

He was installed by the Kremlin just as we, America, have 'installed' candidates we prefer: through espionage, deception, and political back-room dealings. That's what makes them a 'puppet' - they owe their dictatorship to those who got them into power. In this case, Russia's just taken a bit of a backhanded approach and gone through the people to make it 'appear legitimate' even though it was anything but.

They did exactly the same sort of thing in the US Elections. I could draw heavy comparisons to our own president who refuses to malign in any way Russia, including enforcing sanctions that he is required to by law after he refused to enforce those sanctions, forgiving Russian spy safehouses with no qualms despite their meddling in the election, and so on and so forth. Gracefully, he isn't a dictator - but he sure does love them and constantly is seeking permission to become one.

[AmfleetII]

Have Putin and Erdogan's conflicts over Syria been completely forgotten? The two look similar at times due to their strongman styles and nationalistic ambitions, but those same ambitions put them in direct conflict more often than not. It hasn't been so long since the two looked to be on the brink of war over their differences about Syria.

[Firgof Umbra]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52880101]What makes you believe Kremlin installed Erdogan? Can you link me to any "espionage, deception, and political back-room dealings"?[/QUOTE]

Well, for it to get to that point we'd have to assume that Russia was interested to begin with in engaging Turkey in cyber-warfare and espionage, right? Good news, I've plenty evidence of that.

[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/12057478/Could-cyberattack-on-Turkey-be-a-Russian-retaliation.html]For instance, Russia DDoSing 400k turkish websites.[/url] What could be the motive for them doing so?

[quote][B]There have been escalating tensions between the two countries after a Russian warplane was shot down by Turkish fighter jets on November 24.[/B] Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, described the incident as a "stab in the back" and since then, the war of words between Moscow and Ankara has become worse with continued heated exchanges.[/quote]

But surely this was the first time Russia's done this sort of cyber-warfare on its opponents, right?

It goes all the way back to 2007 when they hit Estonia, bringing down their banks, parliament, and media while Russia and Estonia were merely disagreeing.

So it's established that Putin enjoys deploying cyber-warfare on nations he feels have slighted him. It's also established that Putin has been meddling in elections, spreading disinformation, and waging general cyber-political-war on nations that he'd like to disrupt. Russia has also in the past seeded individuals in nations to 'activate' later as spies, hoping them to get into prominent positions in the government and such so as to position themselves to steal secrets and influence governments. And I'm not going to go into how Edrogan may have rigged his own election - and I won't as a consequence suggest that Putin suggested that he do so - but it is in the back of my mind here.

So you tell me: Are you convinced Russia would [I]not[/I] engage in espionage, deception, and political back-room dealings as they've done routinely for the past 40 years with their opponents? If you're asking for hard evidence, I'm afraid I have none.

All I can do is point out things like Putin agreed to normalize relations with Turkey when Edrogan won the vote to switch the presidential system, that they're now buying Russian arms despite NATO's advice, that they're stoking polarization between themselves and the Dutch - which is exactly what Russia would like - and that there are [I]many suspicious ties[/I] around not only Edrogan's election, but also Brexit and the US Election wherein people were bought out to do the bidding of Russia - met with Russian surrogates, and so on. I think it takes more proof to state 'Russia had nothing to do with any of this' than to state 'prove that they did', given all this stuff floating around.

Brass tacks: If I could prove it to you concretely then Putin wouldn't be a very good ex-KGB agent. He routinely murders those who might have loose lips and is beholden to his oligarchs, who are very mad about their money being presently locked up.

[tempcon]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52879868]Russia is waging a global war of destabilization against the Western world. [b]That their fingers have been pulling at every major social schism in the modern world is no coincidence.[/b] They may not be the root cause for every ugly woe we're looking at, but they pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into making them worse.[/quote]

It sounds like your issue is that they've started to play a game we have been since we've entered the end of history, it's just we are exploiting much older (particularly sensitive WW2 and russian civil war era) historical schisms to expand an liberal economic project that, after Russia's failed miserable liberalization in the 90s, came to be something that grew at the expense of it. As a result, we support nationalists/color revolutionaries/arab spring types through our far-reaching media and NGOs funded by our wealthy or the federal government, and they support nationalists and disgruntled conservatives in the West through hybrid warfare. It's a two-way street, you just have cognitive dissonance because of your ideology where you sincerely believe one form of imperialism is more humanitarian, democratic, or righteous because it's based on soft power. You're better off seeing Russia as the successor to the USSR and America as the successor to the British empire, then realize great power politics never actually ended and the problem for either side is a domestic ruling elite.

That's why it's not Cold War II by the way, it lacks an ideological component. This is much more akin to an older brand of geopolitics, it's [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game]Great Game II[/url].

All of this quite clearly began with our, SoS Clinton's in particular, frustration with Putin returning to the helm in 2011 which was when he turned on the pro-West Russian liberals that originally put him into power in 1999, that swelled his popularity with Russia's populist masses. This is why he's described as the harbinger of nationalist backlash to globalization, because Russia is the first failed experiment with it, and it sees similar trend of frustration in our countries particularly among the working class, the countryside, and of the cultural conservatives. His re-election would eventually signal NATO and EU expansion into the fSU would be opposed, we would no longer have mostly uncontested hegemony over the middle east and be free to conduct regime change, and Russian economic interest in Europe is at odds with the West's.

[quote]You can call that a "witch hunt" if you like, but the fact of the matter is this: the cold war is back on, and the new weapon of mass destruction is modern social media. If you ignore that, Putin will continue to pry at the cracks running through Europe and North America.[/quote]

The Cold War (or the great game, rather) is indeed back on, but we don't need corrupt hawks in the Democratic party, or the GOP for that matter, to follow the line of thinking most recently manifested by candidate Clinton to solve it, because they are simply reiterating an uncompromising economic and foreign policy that is responsible for stupid wars in the middle east, a russia disenfranchised from the european project, and a forgotten and pissed off working class (that's growing because our middle class is shrinking). We don't need you exploiting the consolidation of media in a few to control it and erode the freedom of the internet as it has evolved today, dominated by a few social media platforms.

The cracks are forming because of our own philosophy that went haywire in the late 20th century and after 1991, and has completely broken the balance between business, government, and the people domestically and tried to reshuffle the deck abroad. As a result of this and the right seizing on frustration with that through this new populism, and regional powers opposing our growing influence over a global economy, the center-left is caught cornered and is digging in its heels rather than rediscover its roots as once a movement for the little man and against war, as distinguished to the corporate neocon sellout.

What we need is to temper globalization and money in politics so we don't leave people behind, worsening inequality and therefore faith in democracy. We need to acknowledge we no longer have free reign for regime change over eastern europe and the middle east rather than threaten american and european lives by fighting to restore it. We also need to look towards diplomatic solutions and detente, acknowledging (as Jeffrey Sachs, economist advisor involved in post-communist transition, says) we missed an opportunity in the 90s to enfranchise Russia in the european project due to lack of interest and triumphalism, which put it on a path to failed liberalization and Putinist reaction.

The center-left is going to do exactly none of that.

[QUOTE=Firgof Umbra;52879975]It's amazing how a foreign nation interfering in your elections makes people mad at the nation that sowed dissent. But that's all 'hysteria', right?[/quote]

My problem with American liberals is that they've become staunch defenders of a broken status quo because, after Obama's triumph in 2008, they believe the current path will eventually bring much of the country to their side and render the conservatives into an existential crisis. They have no serious interest in reforming anything, that's why the progressives have failed to make gains after Trump's win.

They're not mad at just Russia, they're mad at how the internet has enabled a leak culture, provided a basis for alternative media to displace their monopolized cable media, and has harbored political ideas outside of the mainstream. They're mad at Europe for having states that won't get on board like Poland and Hungary, and for having a lot of inertia towards a hard-line over the Ukraine crisis. They're mad at conservatives for harnessing a reactionary red state subculture that resents their vision for the country.

And they're super pissed that all of this came to fruit in the 2016 election, not only causing a completely unexpected defeat for an establishment candidate but calling into question their entire value system and set of positions (shared by both parties) that they took for granted, because current year. So yea, I fear the wrath of a major party, cable news, a class of influential thinkers in the policy debate, and of course wealthy donors whipping up hysteria in the populace and it coming at the expense of democracy and freedom, because we're dealing with a pissed off oligarchy.

[QUOTE=HumanAbyss;52879995]Where information comes from is important but you seem to think that it's more important than if things are true. You use literally any gap or wedge you can to drive a divide based on your "derangement syndrome-tier punditry" [/quote]

Erdogan being a Russian puppet or an ally isn't true, this isn't negotiable. It's hysteria by a writer from the washington institute that's clearly upset with the independent path pursued by Turkey moving away from the West, for better or for worse, and tying it to wider dissent and cracks in our position in the world. For example, Russia. Trump factors into it because he's more focused on terrorism than Assad, who is a regional threat to Israel because of his ties to Iran. That's why half of the article is about Erdogan eroding freedoms just like Putin as a set up to point to his compromises with Russia over Syria, the Sunni rebels and the Kurds.

[quote]So having both compromisies related to Turkey, and Russia(Yes both, you can't deny it, but you will)is innocuous? No it isn't[/quote]

How is Gulen and the Turkish coup related to Russia?

[quote]How is that a similar comparison?[/quote]

How isn't it? Russian influence and ostensible strong-arming accounting for a position towards Russia that deviates from allies

[quote]It's amazing to me at least, that you can accuse someone of ideological punditry while barely being able to muster a response that isn't driven or drawn from an accusatory position that everything is the "lefts" fault.[/QUOTE]

I've quite clearly singled out center-left liberals, as distinct from progressives, and neocons as the problem.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]My problem with American liberals[/quote]

Whereas my problem mainly lies with people who presume that the only ones who're mad about this are 'american liberals'.

As to the rest of your:
'Liberals are weak, they're going to fail, and they don't even know what they stand for. They're mad at the world, not Russia, because they're scared fools. They can't be mad at the establishment [I]and[/I] Russia because [insert reason]. They're going to smite us because they're frothing at the mouth crazy and more importantly they lost!!!'

You have written fan fiction; please label it as such.

Also, drop trash like this from your replies please.
[quote]because current year[/quote]

[Big Dumb Patriot]

Frankly, with Flynn's direct personal connections to top Russian officials, including private conversations with Sergey Kislyak, appearances on Russia Today, and a 2013 visit to GRU, Russia's military intelligence headquarters, there exists [B]ample[/B] enough evidence for Flynn to be a primary link to the Kremlin in and of himself. With proof that he was also acting as an unregistered foreign agent for [I]at least[/I] one other dictatorship, accepting bribe money to kidnap a US resident, it's proof that [I]yet another[/I] key player in Trump's administration was dirty.

Beyond Flynn, we now also have links between the Kremlin and several other key players in Trump's campaign, such as Manafort and Papadopoulos.

So, whether or not Erdogan and Putin are in bed together really doesn't fuckin' matter. It's a point that we don't [B]need[/B] to argue about, outside of what this charge means for Flynn and Flynn Junior (namely, that they are [U]fucked[/U] unless they reach a deal with Mueller's team).

[tempcon]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52880206]Frankly, with Flynn's direct personal connections to top Russian officials, including private conversations with Sergey Kislyak, appearances on Russia Today, and a 2013 visit to GRU, Russia's military intelligence headquarters, there exists [B]ample[/B] enough evidence for Flynn to be a primary link to the Kremlin in and of himself. With proof that he was also acting as an unregistered foreign agent for [I]at least[/I] one other dictatorship, accepting bribe money to kidnap a US resident, it's proof that [I]yet another[/I] key player in Trump's administration was dirty.

Beyond Flynn, we now also have links between the Kremlin and several other key players in Trump's campaign, such as Manafort and Papadopoulos.

So, whether or not Erdogan and Putin are in bed together really doesn't fuckin' matter. It's a point that we don't [B]need[/B] to argue about, outside of what this charge means for Flynn and Flynn Junior (namely, that they are [U]fucked[/U] unless they reach a deal with Mueller's team).[/QUOTE]

But that's really not the issue. I don't think anyone here disputes Flynn's ties to Russia. I personally dispute this apparent one-dimensional view of yours that the fact he 'dealt with another dictatorship [conspiring against liberal-democracy]' is of any significance, that Turkey is a puppet of Russia, and other things that will be used to suggest we should have a hard-line position not only on either, but Syria, Ukraine, etc. I'm suggesting there's going to be excesses of the hysteria and your post flat out saying Erdogan is a putin puppet and this is more evidence of Flynn being one too is one of them.

The issue is this backlash to Trump & Brexit (and external factors like a resurgent Russia and middle east problems), which were born from exhaustion with our foreign policy and economic slump, will eventually bleed over to backlash against anti-war movements, economic progressivism and nationalism alike, and so on. This is because people do things like, say, identify the source of the refugee crisis as our interventionism and tie it to their economic frustrations with globalization.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]The issue is this backlash to Trump, Brexit, and a resurgent Russia, [B]born from exhaustion with our foreign policy and economic slump[/B], will eventually bleed over to backlash against anti-war movements, economic progressivism and nationalism alike, and so on.[/quote]

Oh, yes, it's absolutely born from what you say it is because: [Your Source Here].

Could you fill in that blank for me? Please convince me that this backlash isn't a result from [I]a foreign nation interfering in elections and important laws/measures to sew disruption across the western nations.[/I]

[Big Dumb Patriot]

Do you believe that Russia is justified in committing acts of information warfare against the United States and Europe?

Do you believe the the US and Europe should just accept these acts of subversion without consequence?

Do you believe that the Trump administration, at this point all but proven to have [I]cooperated[/I] with the Russian government in an act of warfare against our country, should be excused from their great betrayal?

You're calling this investigation a "witch hunt." You're saying that the "leftists" are "hysterical" about Russia. But this [I]happened.[/I] What do you believe the appropriate response [I]should be[/I] to discovering that your nation's sovereignty has been compromised by a hostile state?

[Sableye]

[QUOTE=The Rifleman;52876377]Flynn and his son are so fucked, they're next on the block and will most definitely flip. In a week well see the white house branding him a "volunteer".[/QUOTE]

if the reports are remotely true, Flynn will do anything to protect his son, possibly spilling his guts to mueller, if he hasn't already started to do so.

[Firgof Umbra]

[quote]Meddling in paper-based elections of another sovereign country is impossible. Erdogan tries to influence his elections in some ways, but "Putin suggested it" is a ridiculous, laughable thought and concern. I really dont need to elaborate any further. [/quote]

Or in other words 'Hah, that can't happen because it can't happen and you're ridiculous'. Just like how Russia couldn't have interfered with US elections by messing with the machines and/or selectively purging the voting roles right?

"Can't be messed with" but they suddenly had 4.5 million extra votes compared to their June election. Yep.

[quote]However, you and people like you exaggerate their success and abilities to a great extent.[/quote]

They just won a US President. I don't think their success or abilities even need be questioned. That's a tremendous, ridiculous, achievement that requires a great deal of ability to pull off.

[quote]They can do it, but they'll leave a trace.[/quote]
I'm willing to tacitly agree with that - but that doesn't mean that said trace wasn't then immediately buried. We're talking about people who routinely murder those who they even suspect of betraying them and then have enough power and influence to state 'no, this was an accident case closed'. I wouldn't underestimate what they're willing to do here when something as large as the office of a Presidency is on the line.

[quote]Russia wanted to back Brexit and Trump causes to weaken the West, by any amount they could hope to achieve, and they naturally had people on the ground creating contacts. They did not, and could not, fix those votes.[/quote]

I'm not saying they fixed them. I'm saying they influenced them such that it swung the election into the direction that they wanted. Votes do not need to change for the outcome of an election to dramatically change - all you need to change is the people's opinions and to deny a vote to those who you know won't be swayed by your arguments.

Also, I just want to point out that at the same time you're saying 'Russia wanted to do that and deployed assets to try and do that but they didn't do that because they didn't and couldn't so there'.

[quote] They are meant to be heard by his constituents, stoking us v them hysteria and creating support for him for standing up against the foreigners. [/quote]
I wonder who'd like to create hysteria and discord in nations that are in a position to weaken or harm Russia. Hmmmmmmmmm.

[quote]Kremlin isn't the all-mighty mastermind behind every single thing. They like to get involved, but their exaggerating their effect is counterproductive.[/quote]

"Stop thinking that the Kremlin is behind all these things they probably are because that's nonsense and I can't live in a world where Russia is actually doing things."

Nobody's exaggerating anything. We're making logical deductions from available evidence. Russia [I]was involved[/I] in most of these things. What we really should be debating here is 'how much'. We are talking about a country that is literally being run by a spymaster. To state 'nah, there's no way they'd do stuff like this' is a bit ridiculous; as is people who're yelling 'but that's a huge conspiracy!' like it being a huge conspiracy somehow means that it can't happen.

You'd best start believing in ghost stories, Miss Turner, you're in one.

[tempcon]

[QUOTE=Big Dumb American;52880244]Do you believe that Russia is justified in committing acts of information warfare against the United States and Europe? [/quote]

I only suggested nuance on the issue of great power rivalry, specifically in the context of what we did in the middle east and eastern europe following soviet collapse and Russia's own shitty economic transition. None of it has done anything to help Russian liberals westernize and liberalize their country. It pretty much alienated russian people and allowed a strongman like Putin to come to power, which would naturally aid similar outgrowths of frustration with a transition going on over here as part of an escalation over East-West clashes in Ukraine and to a lesser extent Georgia. There is political meddling on both sides.
[quote]Do you believe the the US and Europe should just accept these acts of subversion without consequence? [/quote]

Of course not. But I also don't believe it will be used as anything but momentum for some positions of Hillary that I believe capture feelings among political leaders and people influential in the policy debate, in both parties. Russia will be used as get out of jail free card after pent up frustration with the way things have been running.

[quote]Do you believe that the Trump administration, at this point all but proven to have [I]cooperated[/I] with the Russian government in an act of warfare against our country, should be excused from their great betrayal? [/quote]

No, but I don't think rapprochement with Russia, a compromise over Syria and Ukraine, and a tempering of the pace of globalization for the sake of the economically vulnerable and frustrated should be thrown away with Trump. And you and I both know the baby will be thrown out with the bathwater, since the Dems are pretty keen on keeping the progressives from capturing power in the party and any failure of Trump will serve as a warning inside the GOP against populism.

[quote]You're calling this investigation a "witch hunt." You're saying that the "leftists" are "hysterical" about Russia. But this [I]happened.[/I] What do you believe the appropriate response [I]should be[/I] to discovering that your nation's sovereignty has been compromised by a hostile state?[/QUOTE]

Everything up to the point of a party in a post-election existential crisis (having lost a lot in governorships, state legislatures, the House, the Senate, the presidency, and the Supreme Court despite feeling great about Obama's record) essentially questioning the loyalty of populist dissent and otherwise chalking its growth up to Russian trolls, although I'm not sure how to separate them. We need to realize it's a product of loss of faith in our politicians and mass media, a 'culture war', and loss of faith in our economic system, not some russians buying ads on facebook which is a narrative easy to invest in since it carries fewer implication for the party's leadership. These divisions were exploited by but do not exist because of Russia. The party needs to reform itself, however this won't happen if everything is laid to blame on Russia. We know this because the issue has completely overshadowed the struggles of progressives in the party, aside from a brief break with Donna Brazile.

[Sableye]

Its plenty possible to meddle in the ballots, in fact, the GOP sent an army of lawyers to wisconsin and Michegan to stop any paper recount, and most states don't do automatic audits of their paper ballots. Even then, russia was after the voter ID databases, which theoretically they could use to delete people, forcing them to take provisional ballots which could be thrown out or invalidated and since the GOP has been hell bent on passing ID laws, if you name isn't in the database which the russians DID hack, then you don't get to vote period. All russia had to do was make the GOP's voter suppression efforts a little more effective to flip states, and that's before we get into how little they had to do to sway people with their propaganda campaign, which reached hundreds of millions of people. 70,0000 people is nothing when you look at how large of an audience they had.

There's ways to influence the election based on the level of access we know russia had.

[Firgof Umbra]

[QUOTE=Trebgarta;52880344]Do you know anything at all about what happened in Turkey between June and November 2015? Not things that serve Russia's interest, to provide you a summary.[/quote]
They're incapable of playing a longer game?

[quote]You need to fill me in on that, because you seem to believe Russian hackers entered into voting systems and changed the final tallies. As far as I am aware, Russia's main effort was not tangible fixing, but disinformation & influence.[/quote]

Nice dodge on not arguing of the purging of voting rolls. The machines were warehoused, they've proven to be able to be hacked, we know that they attempted to penetrate multiple databases throughout the country and in many cases may have succeeded. We're having trouble finding out whether they were successful or not [I]because said states are refusing to turn their machines over[/I] and in a recent case [I]deleting their data[/I] when they were required to produce them to be looked over.

They also bought tremendous amounts of Facebook ads, run a huge twitter-bot network, penetrated Reddit and other communities, organized [both sides] of protests to drive up contention between voting parties, and so on, yes. But they [I]also[/I] at least investigated our machines and [I]definitely[/I] went after our voting rolls. It's likely they considered going after the machines but figured it'd be more contentious if they instead just purged people from the rolls where people were already not paying attention to their databases.

I have congressional testimony that states they went after the voting rolls and at very least gained the administrative passwords and logins in order to do so in many states. Also an admission that if other databases were hacked that they might not necessarily have left evidence of that hacking (since at least some of their 'hacking' was wholly social was the implication I believe). Where's your evidence that states 'despite them going after that and obtaining that, they definitely didn't do anything with it despite having the motive, means, and opportunity to do so'. Especially when they'd already been given data on who to target across the country.

[quote]I said they wanted to back Trump - until October - and Brexit, meaning they wanted to influence, by any degree they could. They did not try to fix the votes through tangible vote changes.[/quote]

Please prove they didn't try when all evidence points to them trying if not succeeding; also, still not talking about 'fixing' the vote. Denying a vote is not 'fixing' or 'changing' a vote but is nonetheless influencing.

[quote]If you think all disputes among NATO nations is on Russia by the virtue of them being disputes among NATO nations, I don't know what to tell you.[/quote]
Wasn't my argument.

[quote]Read? And no, not really since you seem to believe Russia has won Trump the elections singlehandedly, just like they got UK through Brexit and put Erdogan in power all the way back in 2002. I am trying to debate "how much" but you seem to be really confused on how much Russia can actually do, let alone what they have done so far.[/QUOTE]

I'm not confused, you just refuse to admit that Russia could wield that much power.

[Flameon]

Turkey and Russia have historical rivalries

less we forget the United State still stations a handful of tactical nuclear weapons in Turkey under NATO Nuclear Sharing as a means to deter russia.

i would need to see a lot of evidence to think that Erdagon is Putin's puppet.