OMG, that guy’s avatar is amazing…
And that map is 100% true in that it’s how capitalist see a diverse and complicated continent of people. And people actually believe it’s the correct and rational lens to view their fellow human beings.
Wander’s current take on Russiagate.
Assessing the evidence:
- The Buff Bernie memes.
These are just transparently absurd; a collection of bad cheesy memes, distributed to an audience of almost nobody, with no clear ideological intent, many of them after the election.
To me, Occam suggests that these had nothing to do with any supposed attempt to influence the election. I think they were just filler or carriers for some spam accounts or somesuch.
- Russian trolls.
Not a significant factor.
All sides in the election used paid online trolls; most notably, Clinton’s Correct the Record. Trump, OTOH, is cheap and cheesy, and quite likely hired the services of some dodgy Eastern European troll farms as well as setting up a US operation.
Again, not evidence of FSB subversion.
- Assorted financial/lobbying/money laundering links between Trump associates and Russian gangsters.
Trumpeters are crooks, and the crimes of the 0.1% are transnational. No surprise there. Again, not evidence of a coup.
- The Podesta hack.
This is the most significant one, and the only one that had real impact on the election.
However, the only evidence that the hack was Russian is “the FBI says so”. Not a source that I’m willing to trust blindly.
Even if we assume that the hack was FSB, it still doesn’t imply the massive campaign of election rigging suggested by the Dems. Opportunistically publicising a bit of dirt on a foreign politician known to be militantly hostile is routine self-defence, not a coup.
Motivations and consequences of Russiagate:
The Dems aren’t totally stupid; they know their case is thin, which is why they aren’t going to impeach on it. So why chase it so hard?
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It provided a very useful distraction from the post-election analysis of their own corruption and incompetence. All of the people who lost 2016 are still in place.
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It provided a useful excuse to mute the growing collection of left wing media. The effective banning of Telesur and RT [i] etc from Facebook and Twitter has done massive damage.
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It allows them to attack Trump without actually having to commit to any policy critique.
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It provided the opportunity for establishment Dems to throw accusations of Russian subversion at any and all of their ideological opponents. Neo-McCarthyism.
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The New Cold War is going to be immensely profitable for the security state and the arms industry. Troop levels are already being ramped up by NATO on the Russian borders.
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[i] RT is Russian propaganda in the same way that the BBC World Service is British propaganda or Radio Free Asia is American propaganda. Most of their content is independently managed left-wing critique of US issues, not Kremlin dictates.
The reason why all of the decent left commentators in the US were working for Telesur, RT and al-Jazeera etc was because they are systematically excluded from the corporate media to an extreme degree. Now, most of them have had their audience reach drastically reduced.
From 2014:
See in particular the bit at the one minute mark.
I guess I would have died in Aktion-T4. I wish I could do something to stop what’s going on, but with all my disabilities, I don’t think I can.
Thread.
You and me both. I wouldn’t survive five seconds in a streetfight these days.
OTOH:
Every bit counts, even if it’s just baking scones for the meeting.
Thread:
