Moderator: Dux
I’ve always been interested in Russia. I’m Slavic on one side, studied Russian in junior high, read much of the literature, friends with quite a few locals who are from there. Would love to visit there. I’d like to visit the former Stalingrad and walk the battlefields.
IF NATO was no big deal, Russia wouldn’t spend so much time and effort trying to break it up.He says that Trump is clever enough to understand that NATO is useless for USA defence.
DrDonkeyLove wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 12:44 amTrump is a NYC developer so he has to be neck deep in shenanigans and maybe some of them are Russian - just like Bill & Hillary. Mueller seems immune to political pressure from the right so let the investigation continue and we'll see.Thud wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 11:17 pmIs this an attempt at moral equivalence?DrDonkeyLove wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 9:46 pm Anti-Trump deep staters provide "highly classified" info to anti-Trump NYT and potentially help Putin burn a US asset in Russia so the NYT can cast more suspicion that Trump is a Putin/Russian puppet. The ironies here are nth level stuff.
Help me quantify. How bad is it when a source (lets call him "deep throat") outs a traitor?
My point is not moral equivalence, more like moral hypocrisy. What appears to be a massively important Russian intelligence source was compromised by someone with a very high security clearance & the NYT and it's not even acknowledged as something quite valuable to the evil Putin. It's despicably funny.
BTW, Nixon wasn't a traitor, he was a petty criminal. Teddy Kennedy, , now there was a traitor.
Hard to argue with that. I still think that Russia and the United States can have a brilliant future as friendly states. Think about it; neither has something the other side absolutely needs, but both sides have things the other might want. We both have an educated populace, plenty of space, natural resources, etc. There's no real reason for us to be enemies. Nobody wants to be communist anymore, except for some street-shitters in Seattle (thanks Kaz!).nafod wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:46 pmI’ve always been interested in Russia. I’m Slavic on one side, studied Russian in junior high, read much of the literature, friends with quite a few locals who are from there. Would love to visit there. I’d like to visit the former Stalingrad and walk the battlefields.
But they have issues with governments.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/19/we ... opulation/Putin’s Russia has been on the precipice of a demographic cliff for some time, through little fault of the current regime. When communism collapsed 25 years ago, it took not only the Soviet Union down with it, but also unleashed an unprecedented demographic catastrophe. During the decade-long economic depression of the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, Russian mortality skyrocketed. Male life expectancy bottomed out at around 59 years. At the same time, fertility plummeted. Few parents chose to have children they could not provide for, leading to a “baby bust” and steep population decline for most of the 1990s. Few girls born in the 1990s means few potential mothers today, producing a natural “echo” that demographers have anticipated for years. What we are witnessing, then, is the beginning of an inevitable long-term shrinkage of the Russian population that, by 2050, will make Russia only the 15th–most–populous country, behind the Philippines and Tanzania.
https://www.economist.com/china/2017/09 ... ing-deeperAs a whole, China has too few young adults relative to the size of older generations, meaning it will not have enough workers to support its pensioners (or children) properly in the future. But some areas will hit demographic trouble earlier and harder than others, with serious implications for economic growth and regional stability. Wang Feng, of the University of California, Irvine, dubs the problem “the Balkanisation of Chinese demography”. The place with the lowest fertility is Beijing, where the rate was 0.71 in 2010. The highest rate that year was in Guangxi, a province in the south bordering Vietnam, where the fertility rate was 1.79. Both rates are below the replacement level...
Ageing matters because pension provision is partly a provincial responsibility in China. The value of the basic state pension is fixed nationally, but provinces set their own contribution rates, administer the money collected and distribute the pensions. How heavy a burden this is depends on a province’s demography. As a rule, the lower the fertility rate, the faster the rise in the dependency ratio (the number of pensioners relative to the number of working people). In relatively fecund Guizhou and Yunnan, the ratio is still falling. In Beijing and Shanghai, it rose by more than four percentage points between 2010 and 2015, more than the national average.
The basics of blackmail involve the exploitation of greed, stupidity, ego, and sexual appetite. Trump is 4 for 4 on that. He is the easy target. So predictable. So manipulable.
The GRU committed a crime by pulling off a Watergate-level break-in in order to get Dem secrets and then reveal them in order to help influence the base and get Trump elected. Duh.What did the Russians do?
Yes. Also, there were allegations that Hillary was running a Pedo ring out of a pizza parlor in DC.
You didn't answer the question, Nafod. Let's look at what Trump is doing...
If she had run an honest primary she probably would have won the nomination. The Sanders supporters, happy that their man was given a fair shot at the prize, would have come on to vote for her. Hillary lost Pennsylvania by just 110,000 votes. Lots of Sanderistas would have covered it.
That's what the indictment says. You sound certain. More so, you sound certain that it mattered. What I don't get is why the Russian Military Intelligence was running the operation. That sounds more like an SVD/MGB area of influence.
Been a conviction or two too. He paid a fine of over $90,000 as part of an agreement with Special Prosecutor Ray. He gave "misleading testimony". Mr. Clinton also gave up his law license for five years and paid the legal bill of $25,000.}JimZipCode wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 1:54 amYes. Also, there were allegations that Hillary was running a Pedo ring out of a pizza parlor in DC.
And allegations that Hillary had a Christmas tree decorated with syringes and condoms in the White House (in the 90s).
There've been a lot of allegations about the Clintons over the past ~25 yrs.
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/yulia-s ... ning-61553Yulia Skripal Says She Wants to Return to Russia in First Appearance After Poisoning
Golf and grandchildren.
Heh
Thank you for the news flash that Bill Clinton was not completely candid about the Paula Jones affair. Hugely informative.
NATO bombed Serbia, Libya, and Syria. Russia just might have a problem with such offensive behavior.nafod wrote: ↑Fri Jul 20, 2018 10:51 pmIF NATO was no big deal, Russia wouldn’t spend so much time and effort trying to break it up.He says that Trump is clever enough to understand that NATO is useless for USA defence.
Just like in WWII, if there was war, those countries, military and civilian, would be in the thick of it. Us...just the military. Worth spending the money to make sure the war is over there if it happens, and to be sure we run it.
The Swiss seem to do fine without them.
President Washington's farewell address....It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard.
Nice try at the sleight of hand, reframing Mr. Clinton's conviction as a "violation of his privacy".JimZipCode wrote: ↑Fri Jul 27, 2018 11:39 pmThank you for the news flash that Bill Clinton was not completely candid about the Paula Jones affair. Hugely informative.
Trump isn't undermining anyone. He's playing games to benefit himself politically. If he gets tariffs cut while improving employment this benefits him.
British leaders have repeatedly blocked efforts to create a European army because of concerns that it would undermine the NATO alliance, the primary defense structure in Europe since 1949.
This article is from 2016. There is a small "Eurocorps".The Süddeutsche Zeitung reported that it had obtained a copy of a six-page position paper, jointly written by French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and his German counterpart, Ursula von der Leyen. The document calls for the establishment of a "common and permanent" European military headquarters, as well as the creation of EU military structures, including an EU Logistics Command and an EU Medical Command.
