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United States41992 Posts
On March 27 2019 23:02 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 22:57 Plansix wrote:
But why would they pick Trump in 2015? And why wouldn’t foreign intelligence agencies that are our allies tell the US that Russia is trying to fuck with our elections? And be like “Russia is reaching out to these people” that Trump hired? Maybe they were spying on all of the presidential candidates? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. They may very well have had a very legitimate basis for spying on Trump and raising the red flag. But the problems with that theory are 1) we know that the foreign intelligence did not come through proper channels, and 2) we now know that Trump and his team did not conspire with Russians. This begs the question of what were the foreign intelligence agencies really doing.
This is exactly the “were X doing Y? I’m just asking questions” that people always rip on Alex Jones for. You can’t brush aside every gap in your claim with “I don’t have answers, I’m just asking questions” because you’re not just asking questions. You have a conclusion in mind and by asking leading questions you’re hoping to sway others to that specific conclusion. Subsequently denying the attempt doesn’t mean there was no attempt.
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On March 27 2019 23:02 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 22:57 Plansix wrote:
But why would they pick Trump in 2015? And why wouldn’t foreign intelligence agencies that are our allies tell the US that Russia is trying to fuck with our elections? And be like “Russia is reaching out to these people” that Trump hired? Maybe they were spying on all of the presidential candidates? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. They may very well have had a very legitimate basis for spying on Trump and raising the red flag. But the problems with that theory are 1) we know that the foreign intelligence did not come through proper channels, and 2) we now know that Trump and his team did not conspire with Russians. This begs the question of what were the foreign intelligence agencies really doing.
Well the foreign intelligence agencies in question are our allies and they likely were just warning us of the potential threat of Russia screwing with our elections. Trump got caught up in it because he hired a bunch of people that were happy to talk to people connected to Russia and had a long history with Manafort. On top of that, his nature of concealing information and lying about everything, sometimes for no reason, gave an impression that he had something to hide. The reality will likely be that he was trying to hide base criminality, grift and tax fraud. There is no grand conspiracy. It is just that Trump is shady by nature and rubbed up against a bunch of foreign actors, giving the impression he was doing shady foreign shit.
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On March 27 2019 23:29 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 23:02 xDaunt wrote:On March 27 2019 22:57 Plansix wrote:
But why would they pick Trump in 2015? And why wouldn’t foreign intelligence agencies that are our allies tell the US that Russia is trying to fuck with our elections? And be like “Russia is reaching out to these people” that Trump hired? Maybe they were spying on all of the presidential candidates? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have all of the answers. They may very well have had a very legitimate basis for spying on Trump and raising the red flag. But the problems with that theory are 1) we know that the foreign intelligence did not come through proper channels, and 2) we now know that Trump and his team did not conspire with Russians. This begs the question of what were the foreign intelligence agencies really doing. This is exactly the “were X doing Y? I’m just asking questions” that people always rip on Alex Jones for. You can’t brush aside every gap in your claim with “I don’t have answers, I’m just asking questions” because you’re not just asking questions. You have a conclusion in mind and by asking leading questions you’re hoping to sway others to that specific conclusion. Subsequently denying the attempt doesn’t mean there was no attempt.
You guys are the ones asking me questions. I’ve been very up front with what I know and what is speculation. I was content to stick with what I know, but I’m not going to shy away from questions.
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On March 27 2019 23:17 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 23:11 xDaunt wrote:On March 27 2019 23:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 27 2019 22:54 xDaunt wrote:On March 27 2019 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:
There are only two interesting questions regarding xDaunt's conspiracy theory:
1. What was the aim of the conspiracy?
2. Why are they so bad at it? There are two obvious answers to the first question (not that they are exclusive or correct): 1) the ability to spy on a political opponent, and 2) destruction of a political opponent. Just look at how much damage has been inflicted on Trump over the past two years. The second question is the more interesting one. I think the answer to it could be that no one expected Trump to win the election, thus no one expected any of the Crossfire Hurricane stuff or any of the foreign intelligence-related stuff to come to light. Why are we creating a conspiracy to defeat a political opponent when we don't expect him to have a chance of winning the election? Well, the initial goal was to spy on him. Just think of how much opposition research you can do with the tools that law enforcement had available. Defeating him became the new, primary objective after he won. My hunch is that the people involved really thought that they would find something dirty on Trump which would allow them to somewhat ex post facto justify what they did if need be, but they failed to do so. So they created this epic conspiracy to go after your guy, and one of the main principles that they relied on for making it work was: "I hope xDaunt's guy is really guilty of the thing that I'm creating this conspiracy around, so that I don't look bad for having accused him of it"?
Like I said, I don’t know. But the value of spying on a political opponent is self-evident, regardless of the additional contingencies that are planned.
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On March 27 2019 23:41 xDaunt wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 23:17 Nebuchad wrote:On March 27 2019 23:11 xDaunt wrote:On March 27 2019 23:01 Nebuchad wrote:On March 27 2019 22:54 xDaunt wrote:On March 27 2019 22:29 Nebuchad wrote:
There are only two interesting questions regarding xDaunt's conspiracy theory:
1. What was the aim of the conspiracy?
2. Why are they so bad at it? There are two obvious answers to the first question (not that they are exclusive or correct): 1) the ability to spy on a political opponent, and 2) destruction of a political opponent. Just look at how much damage has been inflicted on Trump over the past two years. The second question is the more interesting one. I think the answer to it could be that no one expected Trump to win the election, thus no one expected any of the Crossfire Hurricane stuff or any of the foreign intelligence-related stuff to come to light. Why are we creating a conspiracy to defeat a political opponent when we don't expect him to have a chance of winning the election? Well, the initial goal was to spy on him. Just think of how much opposition research you can do with the tools that law enforcement had available. Defeating him became the new, primary objective after he won. My hunch is that the people involved really thought that they would find something dirty on Trump which would allow them to somewhat ex post facto justify what they did if need be, but they failed to do so. So they created this epic conspiracy to go after your guy, and one of the main principles that they relied on for making it work was: "I hope xDaunt's guy is really guilty of the thing that I'm creating this conspiracy around, so that I don't look bad for having accused him of it"? Like I said, I don’t know. But the value of spying on a political opponent is self-evident, regardless of the additional contingencies that are planned.
Sure spying is cool but you did mention yourself that after they lost the election they turned to trying to destroy him. So when they made that decision, your theory is that they relied heavily on him being guilty of something that they created a conspiracy about, or, and I quote: "I don't know".
And please consider that we are pretending that there weren't signs of the "destruction" part before the election, not just the "spying", in order to have this conversation.
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The FBI and CIA are filled with Republicans. If they are going to spy on your political opponents in the other party, this seems like a great way to get caught. And if Obama did it, why did he tell Mitch McConnell about it right before the end of the 2016 election?
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On March 27 2019 23:47 Plansix wrote:
The FBI and CIA are filled with Republicans Rino's.
If they are going to spy on your political opponents in the other party, this seems like a great way to get caught. And if Obama did it, why did he tell Mitch McConnell about it right before the end of the 2016 election?
And Obama obviously did it because he is dumb.
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On March 27 2019 20:48 Gorsameth wrote:
Ah yes, the Steele dossier. The one that McCain handed to the FBI, not Hillary, and who did that AFTER the elections, not before.
When the investigation into Trump was started months before after an Australian diplomat in Britain heard Papadopoulos, who worked for Trump, brag about knowing that Russia had Hillary's emails.
Repeat a lie often enough and hope that no one remembers the truth.
Remember, we have always been at war with Eurasia.
There's a very complicated set of facts involved in this whole story and you're demonstrating somewhat of a lack of knowledge of them. The only reason Papadapolous "knew" Russia had emails was because a Western intelligence asset, Mifsud, who for some time beforehand had been attempting to get P to think that he was a Russian agent (in suspicious and not entirely convincing ways), told him that. Around this time, various agents from the "five eyes" countries were approaching P and not even being subtle about it. The encounter with the Australian diplomat (Downer) was not a chance one - it was part of the five eyes' approach and it was arranged by a Western intelligence agent. Downer then likely recorded his conversation with P. The possibility that this raises is that Mifsud was a plant, and they wanted P to then go and tell some other agent what Mifsud had told him. That in turn raises the possibility that they were attempting to manufacture a predicate for a wider investigation.
I'm not saying any of the above is proven, but it seems quite possible that the real "collusion" suspicion was in fact just a sting. Of course, Trump being Trump, he was surrounded by goons who didn't react well to there being an investigation, and generally lived lives of criminality that couldn't stand up to scrutiny. But the question here is the validity of the original collusion suspicion.
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United States41992 Posts
On March 28 2019 00:14 JimmiC wrote:
I was listening to Joe Rogan's pod cast on a super long drive and he was talking about the Russian troll farms and how they actively attempted to divide America and did work to get Trump elected.
I understand that there is argument on whether or not Trump knew about this and helped with it. But I am correct that everyone agree's that this happened. Correct?
Or do people think that the Russian troll farms are also fake news?
This is a good question because it’ll show us if we’re all working from the same set of basic facts.
I think any doubt died when the guy Stone was emailing forgot to turn on his VPN one morning and left his location showing as the GRU headquarters in Moscow.
Also Trump Jr was getting emails from Russian agents talking about the Russian government’s official support of the Trump campaign which may have tipped him off.
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On March 28 2019 00:14 JimmiC wrote:
I was listening to Joe Rogan's pod cast on a super long drive and he was talking about the Russian troll farms and how they actively attempted to divide America and did work to get Trump elected.
I understand that there is argument on whether or not Trump knew about this and helped with it. But I am correct that everyone agree's that this happened. Correct?
Or do people think that the Russian troll farms are also fake news?
Although I agree that these 'troll farms' did happen and some of them did come from Russia, there are also many, many examples of the same phenomenon coming from elsewhere. Eastern European and balkan countries were a huge source of fake news circa 2015/16 if i remember correctly.
This wasn't all about political interference. Much of the problem was due to the fact that these fake news stories went viral incredibly quickly, thus they were a great source of income for teenagers in countries with low average incomes.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281
Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising.
The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.
It's not the image that 19-year-old university student, Goran, sitting far back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other wants to portray.
"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?"
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On March 28 2019 00:23 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 27 2019 20:48 Gorsameth wrote:
Ah yes, the Steele dossier. The one that McCain handed to the FBI, not Hillary, and who did that AFTER the elections, not before.
When the investigation into Trump was started months before after an Australian diplomat in Britain heard Papadopoulos, who worked for Trump, brag about knowing that Russia had Hillary's emails.
Repeat a lie often enough and hope that no one remembers the truth.
Remember, we have always been at war with Eurasia. There's a very complicated set of facts involved in this whole story and you're demonstrating somewhat of a lack of knowledge of them. The only reason Papadapolous "knew" Russia had emails was because a Western intelligence asset, Mifsud, who for some time beforehand had been attempting to get P to think that he was a Russian agent (in suspicious and not entirely convincing ways), told him that. Around this time, various agents from the "five eyes" countries were approaching P and not even being subtle about it. The encounter with the Australian diplomat (Downer) was not a chance one - it was part of the five eyes' approach and it was arranged by a Western intelligence agent. Downer then likely recorded his conversation with P. The possibility that this raises is that Mifsud was a plant, and they wanted P to then go and tell some other agent what Mifsud had told him. That in turn raises the possibility that they were attempting to manufacture a predicate for a wider investigation. I'm not saying any of the above is proven, but it seems quite possible that the real "collusion" suspicion was in fact just a sting. Of course, Trump being Trump, he was surrounded by goons who didn't react well to there being an investigation, and generally lived lives of criminality that couldn't stand up to scrutiny. But the question here is the validity of the original collusion suspicion. Sure, that, Roger Stone and the Trump tower meeting were all just happy coincidences during a grand conspiracy by multiple foreign nations to spy on Trumps campaign for 'reasons'.
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United States41992 Posts
On March 28 2019 00:28 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2019 00:14 JimmiC wrote:
I was listening to Joe Rogan's pod cast on a super long drive and he was talking about the Russian troll farms and how they actively attempted to divide America and did work to get Trump elected.
I understand that there is argument on whether or not Trump knew about this and helped with it. But I am correct that everyone agree's that this happened. Correct?
Or do people think that the Russian troll farms are also fake news? Although I agree that these 'troll farms' did happen and some of them did come from Russia, there are also many, many examples of the same phenomenon coming from elsewhere. Eastern European and balkan countries were a huge source of fake news circa 2015/16 if i remember correctly. This wasn't all about political interference. Much of the problem was due to the fact that these fake news stories went viral incredibly quickly, thus they were a great source of income for teenagers in countries with low average incomes. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281Show nested quote +Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising.
The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.
It's not the image that 19-year-old university student, Goran, sitting far back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other wants to portray.
"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?"
The troll farms were Twitter, Reddit, news comments etc groups that deliberately worked to shape narratives, not fire and forget Facebook forwards. The ones where there was no profit motive and the individuals doing it had to be getting a paycheck. While fake news was used by troll farms they’re not the same thing.
Social media has been incorporated into the psyops of pretty much all modern militaries. During the Russian annexation of Crimea we saw the first major deployment to spread the pro Russian view all over popular Western social media. It’s a part of manufacturing consent. Our civilian eyeballs have never been more exposed to hostile propaganda.
If this were 1935 Europe we’d be seeing “TIL: the people of the Sudetenland speak German” posts on Reddit.
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On March 28 2019 00:30 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2019 00:28 Jockmcplop wrote:On March 28 2019 00:14 JimmiC wrote:
I was listening to Joe Rogan's pod cast on a super long drive and he was talking about the Russian troll farms and how they actively attempted to divide America and did work to get Trump elected.
I understand that there is argument on whether or not Trump knew about this and helped with it. But I am correct that everyone agree's that this happened. Correct?
Or do people think that the Russian troll farms are also fake news? Although I agree that these 'troll farms' did happen and some of them did come from Russia, there are also many, many examples of the same phenomenon coming from elsewhere. Eastern European and balkan countries were a huge source of fake news circa 2015/16 if i remember correctly. This wasn't all about political interference. Much of the problem was due to the fact that these fake news stories went viral incredibly quickly, thus they were a great source of income for teenagers in countries with low average incomes. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising.
The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.
It's not the image that 19-year-old university student, Goran, sitting far back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other wants to portray.
"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?" The troll farms were Twitter, Reddit, news comments etc groups that deliberately worked to shape narratives, not fire and forget Facebook forwards. The ones where there was no profit motive and the individuals doing it had to be getting a paycheck. While fake news was used by troll farms they’re not the same thing.
Fair point. I think it all blurs into one to be honest.
As I see it, the troll farms were doing the same thing that the fake news sites were, the same thing that often mainstream media outlets in this sense. Controlling the narrative is easy when you are looking at a population who is uncritical of stories that back up their opinions.
I don't really see much of a difference between what Russia was doing on the internet and what every other government uses the internet for. Maybe the troll farms were an extreme version of this, but its been well known for a long time that US allies do the same thing. Think Israel, for example, and the way their trolls have helped to exacerbate islamophobia worldwide.
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On March 28 2019 00:48 JimmiC wrote:
Joe Rogan also made the point that this is similar to what the US has done in other nations it was attempting to destabilize forever. I'll be interested when he has his expert guest and they get more into it. I'm not trying to get into the should they have done it, we do it so they do it kinda thing.
I more just wanted to make sure that everyone still agrees that it did happen. If we all agree on that (and I'm interested in what Daunt thinks). And then if Trump was not part of the conspiracy. Why did the Russians want Trump over Hillary? They thought he was friendlier to their interests? They thought he would create anger and destabilize? What about Trump did they prefer?
They also wanted Sanders over Hillary. Trump is a divisive and controversial figure, and a divided US is a weaker US, which is in the interrest of Russia. If it was actually be that much better for them in hindsight is a different question.
Can you imagine if most of the Russian population were against Putin as a president? Would be pretty sweet, wouldn't it?
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On March 28 2019 00:48 JimmiC wrote:
What about Trump did they prefer?
He hates NATO, he loves autocrats, he hates Germans and the French, he's deeply in debt, he's a narcissist who puts his own well-being over literally everything else... He's also weak and doesn't have the mental faculties to understand expert advice.
Honestly, you couldn't craft a more perfect Russian asset in a lab if you tried. His complete retardation and disregard for American institutions alone are destabilizing in a way Putin couldn't have wished for in his wildest dreams.
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On March 28 2019 00:37 Jockmcplop wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2019 00:30 KwarK wrote:On March 28 2019 00:28 Jockmcplop wrote:On March 28 2019 00:14 JimmiC wrote:
I was listening to Joe Rogan's pod cast on a super long drive and he was talking about the Russian troll farms and how they actively attempted to divide America and did work to get Trump elected.
I understand that there is argument on whether or not Trump knew about this and helped with it. But I am correct that everyone agree's that this happened. Correct?
Or do people think that the Russian troll farms are also fake news? Although I agree that these 'troll farms' did happen and some of them did come from Russia, there are also many, many examples of the same phenomenon coming from elsewhere. Eastern European and balkan countries were a huge source of fake news circa 2015/16 if i remember correctly. This wasn't all about political interference. Much of the problem was due to the fact that these fake news stories went viral incredibly quickly, thus they were a great source of income for teenagers in countries with low average incomes. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-38168281Many of the fake news websites that sprang up during the US election campaign have been traced to a small city in Macedonia, where teenagers are pumping out sensationalist stories to earn cash from advertising.
The young man sitting in the cafe looks barely more than a boy - he hasn't shaved for a few days, yet he's a long way off achieving designer stubble. The hair on his chin and cheeks is still soft and his smart navy blazer and clean white shirt make him look as if he's in school uniform.
It's not the image that 19-year-old university student, Goran, sitting far back in his chair with one leg crossed over the other wants to portray.
"The Americans loved our stories and we make money from them," he boasts, making sure I see the designer watch he's fiddling with. "Who cares if they are true or false?" The troll farms were Twitter, Reddit, news comments etc groups that deliberately worked to shape narratives, not fire and forget Facebook forwards. The ones where there was no profit motive and the individuals doing it had to be getting a paycheck. While fake news was used by troll farms they’re not the same thing. Fair point. I think it all blurs into one to be honest. As I see it, the troll farms were doing the same thing that the fake news sites were, the same thing that often mainstream media outlets in this sense. Controlling the narrative is easy when you are looking at a population who is uncritical of stories that back up their opinions. I don't really see much of a difference between what Russia was doing on the internet and what every other government uses the internet for. Maybe the troll farms were an extreme version of this, but its been well known for a long time that US allies do the same thing. Think Israel, for example, and the way their trolls have helped to exacerbate islamophobia worldwide.
You are correct. But as citizens we should not accept this reality as our future. We are inviting a 1984ish propaganda nightmare into our homes and saying “Well all the other countries do it, so I guess Russia isn’t that big of a deal.” It shouldn’t be so hard for the average citizen to figure out which news is real or cut through the noise. If this becomes the norm for the next generation, democracy as a form of government is completely fucked. We won't make it.
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On March 28 2019 00:55 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2019 00:48 JimmiC wrote:
Joe Rogan also made the point that this is similar to what the US has done in other nations it was attempting to destabilize forever. I'll be interested when he has his expert guest and they get more into it. I'm not trying to get into the should they have done it, we do it so they do it kinda thing.
I more just wanted to make sure that everyone still agrees that it did happen. If we all agree on that (and I'm interested in what Daunt thinks). And then if Trump was not part of the conspiracy. Why did the Russians want Trump over Hillary? They thought he was friendlier to their interests? They thought he would create anger and destabilize? What about Trump did they prefer? They also wanted Sanders over Hillary.
No they didn't. They supported anyone who could take votes away from her.
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EPT
