umm, let me repeat the question
It's not why he lied, it is that he lied.
lots of people are "just doing their jobs", remember the nazis
Why is immensely important. It reveals the motive. When you're not sure that someone is lying, think about the possible motive. Does it makes logical sense or not? Does it make logical sense that all of those agencies are lying, among them are agencies that couldn't keep their government spying program a secret.
Or is the con man with a history of lying his ass off to get what he wants the one who's lying? The same person behind a lot of suspicious things that were said and done in the past year or so. An American with an anti-NATO and pro-Russian narrative that has appointed Rex Tillerson, a man with deep connections to Russia and a direct financial interest in lifting the sanctions? Can you say for certain that that person is not lying?
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The chuckles are long gone...
Smedley Butler is rolling in his grave and John Perkins is probably facepalming his own skull into oblivion.
Yes. Money. Budgets. Lobbying checks.
The russians (govmnt, not people) think being gay is as bad as cancer as well. I wonder what lobbyist said that?
LMAO you know when faithless electors vote for Colin Powell over Hillary Clinton, there's some issues!
this thread reeks of politics
fuel for the fire
war
yep, axe the thread already
same as pizzagate, tinfoil shit made by the opposing side that will not catch on
probably
tinfoil shit made by the opposing side that will not catch on
point proven
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that was brutal. but he didnt hold that confernece for them to ask question. it was to show he was stepping down and that being a president would be no benefit to his incoming cash flow. we all know that its hurting him
From the short skim of the report it looks like a joke.
Russians probably did interfere, they probably have every election, but this report is purely speculative.
people making a big deal out of this while this is a thing
we use teams called psyops for this. people are suprised when i tell them lol. i grew up @ a base where this was very largely recruited for during iraq
Im Australian so an outside view. The American media pumping up Russia's Intelligence when its average at best vs NSA and US spy machine. Try to pump up USA citizens for political reasons is comical....
The world knows USA messes with elections where it wants and over throughs whole governments. Well the USA tried to toss out Assad but Russia fucking destroyed that....Butt hurt... The USA was funding and arming the rebels killing thatrs countries women and children ....and holding them hostage.....USA USA
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The sense of my question was more like "why would you guys distrust your own intelligence agency rather than distrust a foreign agency who hasn't been caught redhanded probably only because they kill all the witnesses better". Why take a foreign agency over your own? This is not something you'd wish to outsource, it is actual people who have dedicated their lives and abstained from their own liberties to protect the country.
It is a separate issue being ordered to lie, being ordered to cause mess, being a janitor forced to cleanup a mess you didn't make, having presidents and secretaries who historically go against accurate intelligence reports causing mess, etc. There is almost certainly a degree of corruption in the agency due to the political nature of the leading positions, but I can't see it beyond that.
Anyways, other than discussing matters of faith, I still believe that the only on-topic conversation that does not end up in general politics is discussing what technical evidence you would find convincing if there was any evidence presented, and how one would go about verifying that evidence in a digital world, so that you can trust the verifier.
The "why" could be that they are pretty much completely unaccountable, even to the highest levels of government oversight. Lying comes second nature to them, because that is what they do, to their "enemies," to the nation, to their oversight committees, to the President, to the world. They are becoming a very powerful shadow government that is unaccountable and needs to be challenged and exposed to the light as much as possible.
Especially now, since the "intelligence community" has chosen to try to undermine a duly elected official for the Presidency, with innuendo, secret "redacted" and "classified" reports, filled with shadowy information and suspect conclusions. They think they are unaccountable, and they may be correct, because they obviously have Congress running scared, probably due to all of the illegally obtained blackmail information they have on them and if they don't have any, they can always just make it up and destroy a sitting member of Congress the way they are trying to isolate Russia as punishment for their embarrassment in Syria and take down Trump at the same time, because he wants friendly relations with the Russian State. If they continue to refuse to release the unredacted, full reports, then they have no credibility with me. They are publicly claiming my vote was altered in some way (even though I didn't vote for Trump or Clinton), due to another nation's subterfuge and misinformation, but unless I can see the actual proof and the methods for which that proof was obtained (including server logs, full traceroutes, traceable memos from Russian intelligence agencies, etc), then I am forced to assume our intelligence agencies are the ones who are lying due to their own history. The head of the NIA, lied under oath before Congress (their primary oversight power), about their agencies' criminal, reprehensible blanket spying, which I saw with my own eyes, and no repercussions took place due to that perjury. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
I also see Senator John McCain, who directly met with "rebels" in Syria, while setting up the apparatus for arming/funding/training them, gave the FBI their latest bogus smear dossier to use against Trump and the Russians. So, he's now fully in the mix as well. Whether he's a willing operative or they have something on him and are using him as an expendable asset, it is truly stunning to see how big the underwater portion of this iceberg has become over the past few years, since the CIA decided to destabilize Syria.
The only media source that appears reliable when it comes to disclosing and investigating the corruption and criminality in U.S. intelligence agencies, is Glenn Greenwald... It is very clear that the CIA wants to continue to foment an expanded war in Syria and they will punish anyone standing in their way. Even Democrat Sen., Chuck Schumer apparently recognizes that this is what is happening, per the article linked below: [Chuck Schumer issued a warning to Trump, telling Rachel Maddow that Trump was being “really dumb” by challenging the unelected intelligence community because of all the ways they possess to destroy those who dare to stand up to them].
What this nation really needs is a big, red, reset button.
I thought it only fitting to use Hillary Clinton's "reset" button that she used in a photo-op with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
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The American way is odd to people from other countries.
We still self-flagellate over the oddest things:
We went through the Red scare and McCarthyism.
We attack Russia for Crimea but what is the substantive difference between that and US invasion of Panama.
Putin gave Crimea the chance to vote to join Russia, we did not give that option to Panama.
(Trying to steer thread from the political towards the more substantive geo-political and realpolitik/historical)
The very nature of hacking makes proof problematic.
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This is the point I was trying to move towards. Really, what would the proof look like? How would one know the proof wasn't manufactured, or tampered with? What kind of digital signature would be necessary to attest the proof? Who would be trusted with attesting it?
I recall some material the prosecutor presented in the piratebay case - a screenshot of a torrent-client window. The court took it seriously in spite of the fact that a screenshot can be as easily doctored as a plain text file. I do not recall whether this particular material was specifically admitted as an "illustration of what it may look like", or as "proof of this actually happening".
Can there be a proof of such an event? What does such a proof look like?
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There was something about "Felix Edmundovich" in the heading of one of the hacks.
What is shocking is that Podesta used the word "password" as his password.
One thing that makes me distrustful is the tactics used in pushing this narrative. Example:
"GRAHAM: IF YOU DON’T WAN’T TO PUNISH RUSSIA FOR INTERFERING YOU’RE NOT A TRUE AMERICAN PATRIOT" from Senator Lindsey Graham.
The oddest thing I have seen is far far leftist Stephen F Cohen from the Nation magazine on night-time talk radio calling for sanity.
http://eastwestaccord.com
Giggle. Surely not the "Iron Felix"? Was it an obviously fake agent name, an obviously fake source, or a very peculiar godfather? My wicked sense of humor aside, how would one find this person, verify they exist, and then also verify they've done what's been claimed? How would one verify that the name comes from an actual intelligence report to begin with?
As for the posted links, I haven't been exposing myself to US press lately due to all the shit flying. After having a look, I can conclude that all the shit is still flying. Apparently, it is in a stable orbit, and there is more and more of it. There will be collisions. Man, I just felt like rubbernecking at a place of a horrible and messy accident.
Those links had some interesting material in them, particularly the discussion of the quality of the intelligence joint report, which I am assuming is the one linked in the OP.
Still, I find it hard to take in the orbiting claims at face value. I mean, I've read through it, and I can find at most one verifiable fact per article, and then a narrative rubber band connecting that fact to a mommy finger with an opinion bobblehead on top of that mommy finger. The narratives themselves are interesting for sure, but I find it more and more difficult to wade through all the non-verifiable stuff to get to a significant piece of information, without also having those narratives getting stuck to my trousers like velcro :) .
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Intelligence agencies don't need to lobby. And you really think they won't receive money and a proper budget? You think the best course of action for them is to engage in open warfare against their new president?
@kewldude007
Ad hominem is an attack against a specific person instead of their argument. I didn't attack a specific person and there was no argument either. For that to be an ad hominem there would first have to exist an argument made by a specific person and I'd have to ignore it in favor of a personal attack. I didn't. I simply stated an opinion about an unspecified number of members based on my observations of their previous thought patterns. If you don't like it, tough shit.
And a president who can't and in fact won't even separate his business interests from his duty as the president (which is unconstitutional) is going to do that? Get real.
My brain is reaching critical temperatures from all the conspiracy theories that you'd have to accept as irrefutable facts in order to write this post.
EDIT: as icing on the cake, do you know what Trump's pick for CIA director is all about?
Let me help you. He's for the surveillance state and he think that Edward Snowden is a traitor who deserves death penalty. He also wanted Obama to put boots on the ground in Syria.
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I honestly don't care if it's true or not. For the sake of argument let's assume that it's true. I don't think that prostitution should be illegal. I don't think people should care how other people get off. I don't think that we should care about what happens in other people's marriage. If his wife doesn't care that he likes to get pissed on why should anyone? And even if she does care, why should anyone else? As long as he's not fucking underage boys and girls it's all cool. Some sexual preferences might be hard to stomach, and being pissed on is one of them, but it says absolutely nothing about someone's capacity to do his job. The fact that he's a con man and an abysmal businessman is of much greater interest than his sex life.
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