Coming soon to the South China Sea -- Maritime Hybrid Warfare:Originally Posted by Ma'ake
http://www.usni.org/magazines/procee...warfare-coming
Coming soon to the South China Sea -- Maritime Hybrid Warfare:
http://www.usni.org/magazines/procee...warfare-coming
"It'd be nice to please everyone but I thought it would be more interesting to have a point of view." -- Oscar Levant
The breaking news about the Russian hacking intelligence assessment is as sobering as it gets, folks.
As a nation, we have a pretty small window to wake up, because a Trump administration wouldn't just stifle the release of the assessment, it would probably find some drugged up wannabe hacker from New Jersey to use as a decoy, and get a confession.
Consider the flagrant dishonesty in Trump's reaction to the breaking news about the consensus intelligence assessment of Russian hacking:
"This is from the same people who gave us the Saddam WMD intelligence, and besides, that election happened so long ago".
Throw the entire intelligence community under the bus for a politically based, controversial assessment from 13 years ago, and announce the election *last month* was "so long ago"?
A lot of Trump supporters will buy this line as is, but are our fellow citizen Republicans really *this* blinded by power?
Will anyone besides John McCain and Lindsey Graham speak up? I expect Utah Republicans to pretend this news never arose. What about people like LA Ute?
[This is part of how the fake news device is useful - create so much noise and distraction that when serious issues are revealed, they can be fairly easily swatted down. And after awhile, people don't really believe anything, including serious issues. Richard Nixon would be deeply envious. There's a method to the madness.]
I am still learning about this. What do you think should, or can, be done about it? I am sure that this information will now be used to question Trump's legitimacy as POTUS. Just speculating, I wonder if that was the result the Russians wanted, no matter who won the election? You can bet that if Hillary had won and this news came out, there would be 8 years of screaming from the right that she was not legitimately elected. I think the Russians know us all too well.
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
--Yeats
“True, we [lawyers] build no bridges. We raise no towers. We construct no engines. We paint no pictures - unless as amateurs for our own principal amusement. There is little of all that we do which the eye of man can see. But we smooth out difficulties; we relieve stress; we correct mistakes; we take up other men's burdens and by our efforts we make possible the peaceful life of men in a peaceful state.”
--John W. Davis, founder of Davis Polk & Wardwell
I think you're exactly right. Putin may have held a grudge against Clinton for how she held his feet to the fire in previous Russian moves, but the larger goal is to simply de-stabilize the US, wreak havoc and more broadly, weaken the West, weaken NATO.
This is the same stuff the Russians have pulled in Eastern Europe, and what Angela Merkel is now warning against in Germany, for their elections coming up. (Remember, Merkel and Putin go way back, to his Soviet days. She knows him.)
When it was becoming clear what was happening, Congressional Democrats pushed Obama to release the findings - in September - but he held off, not wanting to appear to sway the election. My hunch is Obama and Democratic professionals felt Clinton was likely to win, and for the sake of the nation, it was better to keep this information out of the campaign.
We already had enough problems - no need to give life to Trump's contention that the election was rigged.
With any other Republican candidate, had Hillary lost it would have been part of our national "fabric" of ebb and flow in political power. I think Obama is truly out is looking for the best interests of the United States, having served his time. Even though many have honest disagreements with his politics, I think most people can agree Obama's been presidential about things, in general.
I think at this point Obama - and probably people like McCain and Graham - think it's better to get this information out, because this goes quite a bit beyond any given election.
If Republicans - and Democrats - can effectively moderate Trump, maybe we can get through this. If Trump is trying to turn America into a genuine autocratic oligarchy, that's something neither Republicans nor Democrats, nor 99% of Americans, would want.
We're seeing the beginnings of the "nationalism" Steve Bannon talks about (with or without the racial aspects).
My sense is that people like Mitt Romney are trying to jump in to do just that - act as a moderating force, in the interests of the nation. If I thought Mitt Romney stood a chance at surviving in a Trump oligarchic circus, I would be more optimistic about things. (This explains how Mitt went from his previous harsh criticism of Trump to wanting to be Sec of State).
Last edited by Ma'ake; 12-10-2016 at 10:37 AM.
You really should compare Trump's response to this to Bill Cosby's response when asked if he drugged and raped women. Anyone with a basic knowledge of interviews and interrogation could see the parallels and the dodge that came with these statements. Basically it was this:
Interviewer: Did you drug and rape women?
Cosby: (Rambling answer that doesn't address the issue...)
Correct answer if innocent: "No, I did not do any of those things..."
CIA: It appears Russia was actively tampering with the election in favor of Trump's campaign
Trump: This from an organization that claimed there were WMD in Iraq. Plus the election was so long ago...
Correct answer if not involved: This is a concerning development and we need to maintain the integrity of the election process. We as a campaign would have never been complicit in any foreign election tampering and as an administration will actively look into exactly what happened and how to prevent such purported attacks on democracy in the future.
LA, you ask what we should do? Congress should set a commission to investigate these claims and the places where recounts are being requested shouldn't be obstructed. People act like what is done is done, but there is no reason to not investigate this stuff and if necessary impeach. If it can't be proved that Trump was involved we still need to know how to protect our democratic process in the future.
Every American should be alarmed by this, it could just be the tip of an iceberg.
Last edited by Rocker Ute; 12-10-2016 at 03:34 PM.
I've learned a lot about our nation and culture, by looking through the eyes of people of different cultures and nations... hence my name, "Ma'ake", which is Mark, in Tongan. Many fascinating insights, and in the process I've come to really appreciate a lot of America, and American history, our culture, our Founding Fathers, etc.
We ain't perfect, but there's a helluva lot of GOOD in the world, because of Americans and our ideals.
A coworker is a woman in her mid-50s, from Mexico, a healthcare outreach professional, who came to the US in the 90s. She said she and her friends - also professionals, from Mexico - are alarmed mostly at the cabinet Trump is putting together. "This is exactly what happened to Mexico, with Carlos Salinas".
I vaguely remember Salinas, who was an economist who as president in the mid 90s oversaw the dismantling of Mexico's state-owned industries, in the process created some powerful oligarchs, such as the richest man in the world, Carlos Slim, who was given the Mexican telcom enterprise.
"Lupe" told me Salinas created the oligarchy, which led to some pretty severe corruption, which eventually led to ties to with the drug cartels and the dysfunctional hellish situation that characterizes a lot of Mexico, today. Salinas ended up fleeing Mexico and is somewhere in Europe, today.
Mexico and the US are very different, in many ways. So, how does Mexico's situation relate to US? Read on...
A broad array of economists have decried the Carrier jobs deal, because working out deals with individual corporations is an invitation to quid pro quo corruption. "What is it going to take for you to keep these jobs here?"
Conservatives and most economists prefer to establish a level playing field, and let the market determine winners and losers, at least in general. Democrats prefer greater government intervention to spur broader initiatives - solar energy - and Republicans prefer less regulation and less government involvement. It's an honest debate, but no Democrat is looking to nationalize an entire industry, and Republicans aren't looking to dismantle the EPA. Our politics are more common, than different, on the broader scale.
A cabinet full of Billionaires, including a Pro-wrestling magnate, a fast-food tycoon (who is pushing for more automation in fast food, because "robots don't call in sick"), an EPA Director with pending litigation against the EPA... these are all sending off huge alarms with my professional coworker, who says "I've seen this movie before".
"I left Mexico because what Salinas did there, and now Trump is the incoming president here. The similarities make my skin crawl."
As for Carlos Slim, the Mexican world's richest man - he says that if Trump "succeeds" in America, Mexico wins. "I would be more worried as an American about Trump, than I would be as a Mexican".
That might be worthless BS from a Mexican oligarch. Or maybe he has some insight, knows what's coming.
Last edited by Ma'ake; 12-10-2016 at 10:28 AM.
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