Hey, remember Sean “(Tolkien-inspired) Weddings Used to Be Sacred” Parker, the Internet-enabled billionaire who threw a 9,500-word on-line tantrum when Internet-enabled strangers made fun of his overwrought wedding planning? He’s still a douche canoe — or, at the least, a very public sucker. Heather Digby Partington Parton is not usually known for cheap mockery, but Parker just seems to have that effect on people:
The last we heard of the Napster billionaire and Baby Mugwump, Sean Parker, his interest in politics had led him to embrace a “No-Labels” style approach in which he would pay large sums of money to various inside the Beltway players to help him decide which members of both parties he should donate to. You see, he’s very concerned about the loss of bipartisan spirit in Washington and he wants to invent a new app for Congress!…
Yesterday, we got an update on his exciting new project. He’s hired the company of the tri-partisan former adviser to conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, President Barack Obama and the U.K. Conservative Party Jim Messina and his hardcore GOP partner Charlie Black. And they’re doling out the big bucks to Republicans who have drawn primary challengers. Evidently, the Beltway now sees that the only way to bring the country back to the sensible center is by helping very conservative Republican incumbents win reelection. How very convenient for the GOP…
It’s fairly clear what’s happening here. The youthful billionaire decided that he needed to talk to the “experts” about what to do with his money. And all those experts, knowing a rich sucker when they see one, persuaded him that the biggest problem in Washington was the lack of bipartisanship, which they attributed to the Tea Party. They told him that the only way to get anything done is to give money to incumbent Republicans…
More (bilious) entertainment at the link.
Either nobody shared the Original Poker Secret with Mr. Parker, or he was too egregiously self-assured to understand it: There’s a mark at every table. If you look around the table and can’t spot the mark — it’s you.
Joel Hanes
The only thing saving us from perdition is the astoundingly-low ROI that reactionary billionaires realize on their political investments. Yes, with billions invested, Kochism is rampant in the upper Midwest — but Adelson pretty much got shut out, and I think a lot of the bloom has gone off the rose of Rove’s arithmetical reputation. Saturation bomb PR could not elect Fiorina or Meg Whitman.
KG
Eh, anything that fucks up the Tea Party is at least passingly ok in my book. This is Skelator teaming with He-man to defeat Hordak shit
Wally Ballou
RIP Johnny Winter. Say hi to Bobby, Charlie and Tommy.
Botsplainer
@Joel Hanes:
Until somebody can figure out how to put political ads on Netflix, iTunes and Hulu, those dollars are wasted.
askew
@Botsplainer:
Don’t give them any ideas. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if Hulu has political ads because Hulu sucks so much. I just don’t get the idea of paying for a streaming service that requires you to watch more ads than if you watched a tv show on your tv.
raven
Goddamn, RIP Johnny Winter.
tybee
@Wally Ballou:
damn
ETA: raven said it better.
geg6
@raven:
Damn. My high school boyfriend played guitar in a band (they were actually pretty good for a bunch of very young guys…still have an old cassette of them and they hold up well) and Johnny Winter was his hero. Will have to email him with my sympathies.
raven
@tybee: The first time I saw him was at the Palm Beach Pop Festival in November, 1969. Went all the way from Champaign, Illinois to the gig. We were wet and frozen but it was insane.
Mustang Bobby
@raven: I am sure it was worth the trip.
OzarkHillbilly
@Wally Ballou: sh!t.
Keith G
No, I don’t.
I am sorta wondering how that trivial info would have crossed my transom and if it had, why should it concern me.
What is concerning me:
At this early hour, I am writing letters to editors (local papers and such). There are some proposals that resources in Harris County TX (Houston) be used to house kids who are a part of the border crisis. Well of course, that is generating a bit of noise. So I am putting in a bit of time to be sure more voices of the good guys (If I may call myself that) get heard and seen.
And I am determined that if there is an anti kid protest, I will be there as one loud son-of-a-bitch to voice the other side.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: I just found a picture of us on the website!
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: We;come to our all new game: Where’s Raven?
Mustang Bobby
@raven: There you are! Next to the guy with the hat!
Botsplainer
@Keith G:
Just keep posting Scrooge and Oliver Twist quotes to them. Decimate them with words from their superior white culture and words from their own apocalyptic death cult.
Maybe even entertain them with an all-Latino Spanish language Christmas Carol; bonus point if the young actor playing Tiny Tim is really named Jesus.
Make them drown in their hypocrisy.
NotMax
@raven
You’re the one behind Waldo, right?
NotMax
@raven
Heh. Guy with the horn-rimmed glasses at the bottom of the pic fairly screams ‘narc.’
BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: That would imply that they possess a conscience. Facts not in evidence counselor.
JPL
@Keith G: Mike Luckovich’s cartoon highlights the immigration crisis today.
http://luckovich.blog.ajc.com/2014/07/16/717-luckovich-cartoon-trade-deal/
Botsplainer
@BillinGlendaleCA:
Oh, it isn’t as much for them as it is for those on the soft side of bigotry. The ones get a furrowed brow on racial discussions and who say “I don’t hate people of other races like Stormfront posters, but…”
People like my mother, who love them some Jesus and Christmas and tales of Scrooge. Those are the ones you’re reaching.
currants
@Keith G: does my heart good to hear that. the kind of noise coming from the other side is a shame on all of us. I’ve got a friend working in TX (with workers in the Dallas area now, formerly in El Paso), and… there’s a lot going on. Bunch of folks up here (MA) are working out various ways to help, too (legally, physically, financially). But we’re here, mostly. So thank you for that, thank you so much.
workworkwork
@askew:
That ship has sailed.
In the 2012 election, Hulu was running ads for Mitt.
Botsplainer
@workworkwork:
Seriously? I watch streams to get away from that stupid shit.
raven
@NotMax: I’m next to my buddies with the big Jewfro’s in the upper middle I’d only been home for 2 months so I didn’t have long hair yet!
Lurking Canadian
@Keith G: make sure you are holding a giant sign that says, “Matthew 25: 31-46”, followed by “Now you won’t have to ask Him ‘When, Lord’?”
Baud
@Keith G:
Good for you, Keith G.
debbie
@Mustang Bobby:
Or the long sideburns.
debbie
@Keith G:
Steel yourself for whatever may come. Yesterday, Ted Nugent announced he was accompanying Glenn Beck to deliver venison meals to the children.
Villago Delenda Est
@Botsplainer: And there are a lot of them out there to be reached.
The unfortunate image of “Christianity” in this country, aided and abetted by the scum of the Village, is that they’re all screaming assholes who are totally squicked about anything sexual, and inclined to using their holy book to justify their racist hate.
This is only true for some, definitely not for all, and dare I say, the vast majority of actual Christians, as opposed to the fundie death cultists.
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are Christians. They’re just not screaming asshole fundie buttwipes.
MomSense
@Keith G:
Thank you for doing this!!!
MomSense
@Wally Ballou:
Damn.
Cervantes
Her name is Heather Digby Parton.
Cervantes
@Keith G:
Thank you.
Are all the letters/voices from local people?
Also, if you do take a trip to the front-lines, it might be less grim for you if you went with one or more friends.
rikyrah
When the fuck have Republican COMPROMISED.
Middle of the road?
G-T-F-O-H
Botsplainer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thing is, too many are very, very quiet, loudly so, in the face of extremist assholery.
In fact, the assholes claim the mass of Christianity as being behind them, and that loudly quiet demographic does nothing to distance itself.
Every time when given a chance to run things, Christian Conservatives have stood by and quietly supported the biggest assholes among their cohort through either rank cowardice or silent applause. Sure, a few probably “tsk, tsked” over the Alabama church bombings in the 60s, but it was just a few nigger girls, and things are awful stirred up. When Philadelphia, Mississippi’s finest delivered a spineless group consisting of a Yankee liberal, a Jew and a nigger to those courageous Christian boys from the Klan for a killin’ that was sad and all, but they were interferin’ with the way things work around here and they had to know what they were getting into.
Ad infinitum.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Villago Delenda Est: Don’t mean to quibble with you, but I think Jimmy Carter is a much better version of what a Christian is.
another Holocene human
@Keith G: would it help your memory if I were to remind you that he did it in a public park with a fragile ecosystem? The whole internet was talking about it.
beth
@Keith G: This seems to be the group that’s coordinating the anti-kid protests along with that group of loonies who hang signs from overpasses. They’ve got a list of protests for this weekend on their website:
http://www.alipac.us/ so if you want to see if there’s any in your neck of the woods this can help.
Eric U.
@rikyrah: hard to remember, but it wasn’t that long ago. I think the no compromise schtick really didn’t take hold until Bush the lesser took office. Before then they would compromise for the good of the country if forced. Not that they weren’t doing immense damage before GWB, but they would compromise.
Citizen_X
@JPL: “Race card! Race card! He played the race card!” *hyperventilate*
/wingnut
Citizen_X
@debbie: Huh. Well, good for Ted Nugent, then!
danielx
@raven:
Lots of Johnny Winter stories….including the time he was the headliner for one of the weirdest concerts at one of the weirdest venues I ever attended. ‘Twas a 5/8s mile dirt track in Jeffersonville, Indiana, right across the river from Louisville in July or August, and I’m here to tell you it gets very hot and very humid in that location in summer. The bill included Frampton’s Camel, John McLaughlin and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Johnny Winter his very own self. Crowd was a little volatile what with the hot weather and serious recreational drugs….Peter Frampton comes on and is semi-well received, Frampton being an okay guitarist and then at the peak of his popularity. Then John McLaughlin, another truly great guitarist, comes out and starts playing; but he seriously misreads the crowd and wants to be serious about his music and talk about his dedication to Sri Chinmoy and whatever. The crowd, a great many of whom appeared to be under the influence of pharmaceuticals produced by Rohrer Inc., didn’t take to this and were all FUCK YOU, LET’S BOOGIE, in so many words…..amd finally Johnny comes out and meets their every expectation.
Good times, but goddamn that was a miserable place for a show.
raven
@danielx: I saw him In 1971, at Wabash College in its tiny gym, we sat on the hardwood floor up front dead center and saw, Humble Pie (with Frampton and Marriott), ELP, and Johnny Winter And (with Rick Derringer). There was no stage, so we literally sat right at the feet of the performers. Played his ass off and went into smack rehab the next day!
eta Speaking of douchecanoes, how bout all this meaningless 70’s nostalgia?
Eric U.
if you can remember the ’70s, you weren’t there
currants
@beth: That is one horrifying link.
Cassidy
Nothing like a midmorning workout to get the blood flowing. Neilarey.com if anyone is interested in easy body weight workouts.
danielx
@raven:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times….
Shakezula
Napster? People still use that, huh?
Eric U.
@Shakezula: I saw an executive for Napster was killed riding his bike about a year ago. I was really surprised they were still around
danielx
@beth:
I was recently driving back from FL; stopped in Valdosta to hit a Starbucks right off I-75. We pull off and there’s some woman in her late 70s/early 80s (or maybe younger after a very hard life) who’s busy hanging signs off the overpass with the usual stuff – Impeach Obama, BENGHAZI!!, etc etc. The spousal unit, who is (let’s say) less politically attuned than I am, says, hey, what’s that all about? Says I, she’s old and white and this is south fuckin’ Georgia, what other explanation do you need? Her problem is that there’s a black man in the White House…everything else stems from that right there.
bemused
Local organizers of the Log Jam Festival in Stillwater, MN initially wanted to keep politicians out of their parade by charging them $1,000 to participate. Turns out it is illegal, state law, to charge candidates higher fees than other groups which is $375.
The Mayor, not running for re-election, said The Locals’ motivation was probably valid but I don’t think he was being intentionally ironic when he said, “No one wants to see politicians in a parade. You want to see clowns.”
raven
@danielx: Valdosta is North Florida!
beth
@danielx: Yeah, I don’t get how they’re allowed to affix signs to overpasses. It seems like a public safety issue if they fall off. They’re also creating a traffic disturbance when people slow down (usually on a highway or busy street) to look at them but I guess if retailers can do it, they can. I’m all for letting them parade around with their signs on the ground.
Davis X. Machina
@danielx: Of course the Freeway Blogger did it first and did it better…
Cassidy
@beth: Depends on who is hanging the signs. Nice, respectable white folk are just doing a public service.
askew
@workworkwork:
Ah, not surprising. Hulu sucks.
Kropadope
@Botsplainer:
This seems to be the truth across the board, not just within Christianity. I used to love working retail, listening to people come up and squawking Fox News something-or-other. I never really saw a lot of that from people wanting to disseminate more sensible (factual?) information. It’s like the people who have their head screwed on right don’t like to go out there and talk about this stuff to everyone they see.
beth
@Kropadope: This is truly anecdotal and proves nothing but I’m on a Facebook group for my hometown. It’s just to catch up with people and reminisce about growing up there. The rules of the group are that you can’t post anything political or controversial. In three years the only people who insist on breaking these rules are the ones posting the latest wingnut screeds. There hasn’t been one liberal thing posted on that page but anytime there’s a new rightwing “scandal” someone always manages to post it. And then they whine when the moderator deletes it and complain about how they’re being persecuted. It gets really tiring.
Cassidy
@askew: You get what you pay for. Hulu+ doesn’t have a lot of commercials. Maybe 3 breaks per show with 2 commercials apiece. Well worth not paying for the cable to get all the same programming.
Kropadope
@beth: At least yours has a data trail, mine is way more anecdotal and unlikely to prove anything. The sad part is that I live in Massachusetts and that’s what’s happening. It must get crazy in some places.
The Other Chuck
@beth: My problem with “no politics” rules is, I have a mother who volunteers for social justice groups, and a brother who’s gay. Under many interpretations of these rules, one can’t talk about any of her friends, and another can’t talk about who he is.
“No ranting, and the moderator is supreme” works for me.
jeffreyw
RIP Johnny Winter
kindness
I love Digby. She’s Malibu’s Molly Ivins. Except Molly was able to pierce right wing nuts hides better with humor as being a Texan gave her some cover.
Glad she is gaining a national voice. She helps us.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
The definition of a “crank” is basically someone who is incapable of shutting up about their obsession with a topic no matter how inappropriate the venue. Dealing with cranks is a pain in the ass because they genuinely have no clue why, say, Grandma’s funeral is not an appropriate place to start ranting about BENGHAZI!
Amir Khalid
It’s been nine hours since we had a new thread. I’m starting to get worried. I hate it when worrying things happen on my birthday.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
Oh, you’re just sneaking that in so people will wish you a happy birthday.
Happy birthday, by the way. ;-)
Belafon
@beth: Someone should occasionally post some really leftwing story just so that it can be deleted.
jeffreyw
@Amir Khalid: Best wishes on your birthday!
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne: It’s just impossible tp sneak anything past you.
And thanks for the birthday wishes.
Belafon
@Amir Khalid: I’m rooting for no new thread for another 3 hours, which will give us a twelve hour gap. It’s sort of like, after having suffered through 115 days of 100+ degree weather, you want the extra 8 days just so you can break the record.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Hey, I just saw an unconfirmed report on a Ukrainian site that a passenger plane from Amsterdam to KL went down in the area of Donetsk.
rikyrah
That No Labels nonsense was bullshyt from the word go
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: More reports of same, supposedly Malaysian Airlines.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Happy Birthday, Mr. Khalid.
Many more happy years to you.
And maybe some blogposting here in your new year? Hmmmm?
Calouste
@Gin & Tonic:
Confirmed by Interfax and reported by other major news agencies.
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: Well, Interfax appears to be the sole source as of now.
SiubhanDuinne
@Amir Khalid:
I hope you have a wonderful birthday!
Although given the time difference, it’s probably over by now.
I hope you
haveHAD a wonderful birthday!Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Hmm. Interfax story cites unnamed sources. No statement yet from MAS or Boeing or Ukrainian authorities.
Elizabelle
Banner on The Guardian website:
What a shame.
shelley
A pig just flew by my window
SiubhanDuinne
@jeffreyw:
That’s just cruel. The man is fasting.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rikyrah: Part of me wishes the Huntsmans and the Rendells and the Bloombergs and the tote baggers would just form their own fucking party already, but they sort of already have, the Politico-Morning Joe-Sunday-Show Party, their platform: Cut Social Security, raise the eligibility age for Medicare (which should also be cut) and just stop talking about ‘social issues’.
Amir Khalid
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s okay. It’s after sundown here.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: “Ukrainska Pravda” is citing an unnamed source in the Ukrainian air traffic control system.
pamelabrown53
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think your description of their platform is spot on.
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
Well, now it is a new Amir birthday thread within the old thread. Happy birthday!
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: Now the Ukrainian Interior Ministry is confirming.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
You share a birthday with Angela Merkel (60 today) and Jimmy Cagney (would be 115; Turner Classic Movies honoring him today).
Calouste
It’s this flight by the looks of it: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/MAS17/history/20140717/1000Z/EHAM/WMKK
Tracking stops in Ukraine, which would confirm the reports, but could also mean that flightaware doesn’t have tracking there.
piratedan
damn….. Malaysian Airlines passenger plane down in the Ukraine, maybe the Russians have really stepped in it. Supposedly due to a Russian BUK missile system…
http://news.msn.com/world/malaysian-passenger-plane-crashes-in-ukraine-near-russian-border-ifax
it’s early, so unknown how much is really accurate… so stay tuned boppers, stay tuned.
Gin & Tonic
@Calouste: Malaysian Airlines has Tweeted that they’ve lost contact with MH17.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Funny how people who have more money than they would know what to do with in another 20 lifetimes advocate cutting the social safety net. I can’t really put my finger on it, but maybe it is that because it doesn’t affect them, it’s not important.
Belafon
@shelley: Console yourself with this: The deer they use will be the ones they hit on the way down there.
Amir Khalid
@Elizabelle:
On the other hand, Angela, Jimmy and I also share a birthday with David Hasselhoff.
jeffreyw
@SiubhanDuinne: More cruel than you realize – we finished that cake off weeks ago!
D58826
@piratedan: if it was shot down would not be the first time somebody with an itchy finger on a powerful weapon killed a plane load of passengers. Ashamed that Scotti can’t just beam up the landing party there is no intelligent life here.
The Dangerman
@piratedan:
Add this to the reason why we should drop to our knees and thank whomever our God may be that it’s not President Palin right now (she would have offed McCain somehow by now).
piratedan
@Amir Khalid: don’t tell me you also share a striking resemblance to Edward Mulhare?
Elizabelle
@jeffreyw:
Was it a carrot or spice cake?
Wanted some with my coffee this morning!
piratedan
@D58826: it’s early yet, I think that this is definitely a case where the 24 hour rule should apply. Just basing this on how accurate has any major story been on the first pass. However, if accurate and Putin’s band of liberators have shot down an unarmed passenger jet, the fallout and reactions… I just … well I just don’t know. Does Vlad double down? Again, maybe there’s another cause, regardless of that, it’s incredibly tragic for those folks on the plane and their loved ones.
D58826
Barbara Starr on CNN is reporting that the red lights are going off in the Pentagon and the WH. A Ukrainian cargo plane was shot down on Monday and at this point the US thinks the missile came from the Russian side of the border. Whither it was on Putin’s orders or just some renegade they don’t know. But they are concerned it is to co-incidental that a second plane crashed in the same area.
Calouste
Malaysia Airlines have now confirmed that they have lost contact with the plane.
piratedan
@The Dangerman: yeah, despite his constant display of indignant outrage, I wonder if Johnny Mav couldave survived the vetoing of the stimulus bill and watching the country completely tank on his watch, who would he have bombed to solve the problem?
jeffreyw
@Elizabelle: It was a basic chocolate cake. The first, and so far only, cake I ever made from scratch.
Amir Khalid
@piratedan:
That would be unlikely for a brown southeast Asian person such as myself.
Gin & Tonic
@D58826: Everything up until MH17 has been at relatively low altitudes. Shooting down a plane going 600 MPH at 30,000+ feet takes some pretty sophisticated hardware.
Elizabelle
@jeffreyw:
Ta. I made a sponge cake from scratch once. It was surprisingly easy.
Even more so for Betty Cracker, with all the fresh eggs.
Amir Khalid
@The Dangerman:
That’s the last thing Malaysia needs: the US starting World War III on our behalf. I too am very glad that McCain never made it to the White House, or brought that person with him.
ThalarctosMaritimus
@Amir Khalid: happy birthday, Amir!
piratedan
@Amir Khalid: well I didn’t want to presume :-) regardless, good tidings to thee on the anniversary day of your arrival amongst us.
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Sophisticated hardware, and likely premeditation too. One would have to wonder what Bob in Portland’s ragtag ethnic-Russian heroes were doing with the former, and what motive could possibly be behind the latter.
Gin & Tonic
@D58826: Will be interesting to see if the separatists who control the crash site and surrounding area allow any independent crash investigators in.
Davis X. Machina
@Amir Khalid: If the aircraft was flying at 10,000 meters, this isn’t a case of an errant MANPAD. Something the size of a state, or with the connivance of a state, is needed for that kind of reach.
Steeplejack
@raven:
Yeah, why don’t you also start a pointless fight with someone.
Elizabelle
@Amir Khalid:
Yup. Confirmed that Mr. Hasselhoff is prominently at the top of those who share your birthday.
That group (minor celeb, mostly) could only be improved by a photo of yourself.
Here’s a better list of birthday compatriots. Movie director Wong Kar-wai, vintage 1958. Way to go, Amir. (Also Erle Stanley Gardner and the less photogenic Mrs. Prince Charles).
Moi, I get Ernest Hemingway. OK, pretty far down the page … But he’s there!
D58826
@Gin & Tonic: The cargo plane on Monday was supposedly at 21,000 feet and today’s plane 30,000. the weapon system that is being mentioned is a BUK system. I have no idea what that means but suspect it would be like the ground to air systems that we have to shot down high flying aircraft. Given the conditions in the area it is at least plausible but then initial reports are always fragmentary and wrong. A spokesman for the Ukrainian gov’t is calling it a shotdown but then they would be quite happy to blame the last iceage on Putin.
Amir Khalid
@Davis X. Machina:
If the Russian military shot down MH17, or had a hand n it, I shudder to think of the geopolitical consequences. I don’t think Najib (or any Malaysian PM, including Anwar Ibrahim) would fancy a quarrel with Putin, even as an aggrieved party.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Happy Birthday and many more to my favorite Malaysian who occasionally writes in German!
jayjaybear
Man, Malaysia Airlines is NOT having a good year.
I’m sure our Juicer friend with the Putin sympathies will be along to blame it on the Ukrainian fascists any moment…
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: By “pretty sophisticated hardware” we are talking stuff used by superpowers to clear their skies of things that fly. Not some shoulder mounted rocket.
Gin & Tonic
@D58826: The official statement of Ukraine’s President Poroshenko (here in Russian) “does not exclude the possibility” it was shot down, but does not say it was. He categorically denies any Ukrainian military involvement and calls for investigation by the ICAO. Let’s see if the separatists allow that.
The BUK missile system reportedly has a range of 22,000 meters. According to The Interpreter, jouranlists from the AP report seeing at least one such system in eastern Ukraine earlier in the day.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: Not shoulder-mounted, but the BUK is mobile and self-propelled. Here’s a report from ITAR-TASS from about two weeks ago saying that the separatists have gained control of one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: How, I wonder, did the separatists get their hands on one? These things are not just found parked on the street.
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
From Uncle Vlad, who else?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Amir Khalid: Happy birthday.
Davis X. Machina
RT’s version is, surprisingly, somewhat different….
Bob In Portland
Remember the Bay of Pigs? Remember the Gulf of Tonkin? Remember April Glaspie? Yesterday we were told that the rebels couldn’t hit an airliner, that it must have been the Russians.
So why would Russia shoot down a Malaysian airliner?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: HODOR!
The local apologist for Russian Imperialist fascists once again raises his hoary head and spouts bullshit.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est: You and I might think it’s a bad idea to have that sort of hardware in the hands of people whose favorite fashion accessory is a balaclava . But apparently that’s what all the acolytes of freedom are rocking these days.
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: Everything has a price and if your a badly paid Russian conscript then having a truck mount battery disappear might be an attractive proposition.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
If it’s a false flag operation, why did separatist commander Igor Strelkov publicly take credit for it?
LongHairedWeirdo
Technically, it’s “if you can’t spot the mark after a few hands, it’s you. Leave. Even if you’re winning.”
(Addendum. ESPECIALLY IF YOU’RE WINNING! Haven’t you ever heard of build-up winnings?
(You haven’t? Oh. Hey, want to play some poker? I have to warn you, I’m not very good….))
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Why would would Ukraine shot down a MAS plane? Why would the separatists? Only three suspects, no obvious motive for any of them. I’d keep a open mind on whodunit until, say, satellite data (possibly from the US) identifies the missile’s launch site.
Yatsuno
@Amir Khalid: Herzliche Grüße zum deinen Geburtstag!
Amir Khalid
@Yatsuno:
Vielen Dank.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bob In Portland: Did he just say Obama ordered the shoot down of this jet?
Amir Khalid
The Washington Post’s Wonkblog notes MH17 was on the same course it takes every day. So there wasn’t a suspicious course deviation. Somebody shot down that plane just because they could.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
I’m guessing (and this is a total guess) that somebody or somebodies got over-excited by their success at shooting down the Ukrainian plane a few days before and basically decided that any airplane in that airspace must be Ukrainian.
If it was the Russia-backed separatists who did this, this just made Russia’s little regional intervention into an international incident and puts even more pressure on Putin to GTFO.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: Oh, I don’t think that an entire BUK missile system was sold by some conscript to a “separatist” for some whoring around money.
These things do not go missing from the motor pool without some brass having some involvement. The chain of command can’t overlook the disappearance of an anti-aircraft system with high altitude capabilities….for one thing, they would expect their cut of the proceeds, at the very least. Several million roubles of state property just disappears in the middle of the night and no one investigates? Right, sure.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, clearly the Russians wanted to cause an international incident to bring more condemnation on themselves, just like the Vietnamese attacked the US Navy at the Gulf of Tonkin in order to bring more American troops into Vietnam, and just like Saddam attacked Kuwait because he wanted the US to attack it. How violent and stupid the rest of the world is.
As I’ve mentioned, there are reports that the Ukie army has suffered severe losses in recent days. Allegedly, dozens of Ukie soldiers have crossed the border into Russia to surrender. What happens without further international action (US action)? Kiev loses.
So expect, if it hasn’t happened already, that the US will find billions more in military aid for Kiev when they can’t rub together two coins to give water to people in Detroit. The war will heat up. The US will continue to cheer on Poroshenko to escalate until someone starts blowing up the Russian gas pipelines, which is the purpose of this exercise. That and FREEDOM!
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: Good god. Is there nothing that happens internationally that is not the nefarious result of secret US operations?
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: Well they seem to have gotten one some how. They have been bragging about it with photos on social media and the Russian media has reported on it. All of which must be taken with a grain (large) of salt.
Bob In Portland
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Did Johnson order the Bay of Pigs? Did the Bush Administration (and the NY Times) lie about WMDs? Everyone in the US government been on the up and up about Osama’s whereabouts this last decade? Was Reagan in the White House when we rescued the beleaguered med students in Grenada? Were the contras just like our founding fathers? Were the CIA not involved in Pinochet’s coup?
Oh, and even after the coup Pinochet was reelected, so that election was fair and honest. Right?
But we know that Obama is a wonderful guy and he’s in charge of our foreign policy, so to suggest that the US wanted a false flag would be oh, so wrong.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
And the reason separatist commander Igor Strelkov claimed responsibility for shooting the plane down is … ?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
That’s quite an interesting re-write of history. You might want to double-check your dates there, Bobbo.
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): I’ll let you list them.
If oil is involved and the US is involved, the interests of Exxon override other concerns, including yours. If you haven’t noticed this by now you might want to restrict yourself to saying mean things about Republicans.
Cui bono? How would Russia benefit by shooting down an airliner? It’s easy to figure out how Kiev and the US benefit. But how does Russia benefit?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Did he? Where?
raven
@Bob In Portland: Yea Moron, LBJ ordered the Bay of Pigs. What are you, fucking 10 years old?
Steeplejack
@Amir Khalid:
Okay, okay. Happy birthday already! Sheesh.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Sorry, were the Bay of Pigs a group of freedom fighters unaffiliated with the CIA? Did Johnson order the Gulf of Tonkin?
Will you admit that we’ve had a few false flag thingies since WWII?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I’ll just copy and paste my comment #132 directed at you since your scrolling finger seems to be broken, shall I?
Answer the question, Bob — if it was a false flag operation, why are the separatists publicly claiming credit for it?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: Until evidence to the contrary surfaces, I am going with the “someone fucked up” theory.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Undoubtedly, Russia is supporting the rebels.
But the US and Ukraine? Of course not. Just like the Bay of Pigs was a group of freedom fighters unaffiliated with the CIA and just like the contras were a self-sufficient group not aided by the US. Right?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Let’s start with Logic 101: Cats exist. That does not mean that all dogs are actually cats. Similarly, the fact that false flag operations exist does not make every incident, everywhere, worldwide a false flag operation. What’s next, telling us that the Sandy Hook shooting was a false flag? Michael Jackson’s death was a false flag? The rise to fame of the Kardashians is a false flag?
Amir Khalid
Per BBC liveblog, Interfax is saying that 23 of over 300 MH17 fatalities were Americans.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Still waiting for my answer, Bob — if this was a false flag by the US, why are the separatists publicly claiming credit for it?
Bob In Portland
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): It could be. The Ukies have shot down their own aircraft before. Who benefits is an easier answer.
Get out the flags, boys. They’re tossing babies onto bayonets again. Or out of incubators. Whatever. Hip hip.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Link, please.
Karen in GA
@Amir Khalid: I’m late to this, but I hope you have a happy birthday.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Linking for the THIRD time:
http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3391
If this is a false flag operation, why did the separatist commander publicly claim credit for it, Bob?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland: Fucking hilarious. If it is a fuck up, it must be the Ukrainians? You are pathological.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: So the two operative theories right now in this thread are: the Russian mercenaries of the Donetsk People’s Republic got their hands (somehow) on an advanced SAM system but didn’t have the intelligence or the fire control necessary and mistakenly shot down an airliner thinking it was a Ukrainian plane, or the US and Ukrainian military/intelligence framework conspired to deliberately shoot down a neutral passenger plane so that the US could send more military aid to Ukraine in an attempt to gain control of Russian gas transit pipelines? Is that about right?
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name):
I am looking into my crystal ball to predict now what Bob’s response is going to be to my link: the separatist commander is really a CIA double agent.
What do I win?
lol chikinburd
I’ll have to remember the “cui bono?” defense
the nextevery time I do something terrible that makes me look bad.D58826
@Mnemosyne: No No could not possibly be a double agent. He is actually the hidden twin brother of Obama. He was kept a secret for just such a time as Obama needed an excuse to do something but not sure exactly what.
Mnemosyne
@Gin & Tonic:
Yes, it’s completely unbelievable that poorly trained fanatics wouldn’t have the intelligence or fire control to know the difference between a Ukrainian troop transport and a passenger plane. The only possible answer is “CIA,” which also just happens to be the answer to every incident around the world. Funny, that.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: OK, the last one is plausible, to be sure.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mnemosyne: No, the separatist commander was killed by the CIA and replaced with a robot – just like Putin. Because there are no other actors in the world – am I right?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: From Talking Points Memo:
I’ll have to wait longer for you to recognize what’s going on. How long does it usually take you to figure America’s involvement in things? How long did it take you to figure out the Gulf of Tonkin? WMDs in Iraq? April Glaspie?
I am asking you for a specific time period. Did it take you, say, a year or six months to figure out the WMD lie? Or just a month? How long until you figured out that the guys we were training at the School of the Americas were killing whole villages of people in Guatemala and El Salvador?
Why is this different than the other times? Why?
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: The latter theory constitutes the ravings of a useful idiot for Russian imperialism.
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Well, I had to throw in one that was not obviously insane.
Amir Khalid
For our man Bob’s benefit, some more from the BBC liveblog:
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Why did the separatist commander publicly claim credit for downing the plane, Bob?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: HODOR, why do you insist on ignoring what little we know about the incident in question and bringing up other issues that are, at best, and with a great deal of mental gymnastics, only very tangentially related to the incident in question?
Why are you throwing up all this chaff to obscure what happened today? You make Baghdad Bob look like a reliable source.
lol chikinburd
@Mnemosyne: William of Ockham was a CIA plant.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Ah, spoken like John McCain.
If Russia wants to conquer Ukraine they could do it fast. They don’t do it because they don’t want their gas lines to be destroyed, or at least justifiably destroyed. If Russia merely wanted to remove the Ukie army from eastern Ukraine they could do it in minutes. So why don’t they just blow the Ukies off the map? Why are they fiddling around if that is their goal?
And have any of you asked yourselves what the US wants in Ukraine? Any of you? Freedom? Come on, someone step up and explain the US strategic interests in Ukraine. You can’t because you’re incapable of doing it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The CIA, in concert with the Bavarian Illuminati and the Stonecutters, obviously shot down that plane.
There can be no other rational, reasonable explanation. Certainly the people claiming responsibility for it can’t be held liable.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Weren’t you supposed to give me a link? You weren’t lying, were you?
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland:
And with that, Hodor (aka Bob Romanov) demonstrates conclusively that Nurse Ratchet fucked up and missed his medication time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Did I ever promise to give you a link to anything? Probably you are confused.
No, definitely you are confused. Very confused.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Also, if you believe history is chaff, then go about your business. It’s an all-volunteer army now so you and your children won’t be going over there to die for Big Oil. And maybe you’ll groan twice a year about the Defense budget (since the CIA budget is secret you don’t know or care about that), but really, that bad man Putin…
Your chaff is your country’s history. You swallow the lies over and over. You are a proud American. The only difference between you and McCain is that he crashed more jets and you don’t get a cut of the war profits or the oil profits.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: On the contrary, I was a history major at Duck U.
However, I am smart enough to know when someone is using a shovel to litter the landscape with irrelevant conspiratorial bullshit in the vain hope of distracting the weak minded from what is actually going on.
Your pathetic attempts at Jedi mind tricks are laughable, at best. I do not add “young Padawan” because it’s so obvious the Force will never be with you.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bob In Portland:
Someone is projecting.
Bob In Portland
Who finances The Interpreter?
(Hint: It started out as an anti-Soviet site.)
Mnemosyne
@Villago Delenda Est:
Bob is probably referring to the link that I have now posted THREE TIMES that he’s pretending he can’t see.
Maybe I’ll just post it at the bottom of every comment in this thread for his convenience.
Link for Bob: http://pressimus.com/Interpreter_Mag/press/3391
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I win the pool!
D58826
@Amir Khalid: CNN is also reporting that the BUK battery belonged to the Ukrainians and was captured when a base in the eastern part of the country was overrun. As far as how would the separatists know how to operate the BUK, well maybe some of them are ex Ukrainian solders who served in anti-aircraft units.
Bob In Portland
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Enjoy it. All over again.
When were you onto the Gulf of Tonkin? How long to see through the Bay of Pigs? WMDs? Osama? How’s freedom going on in Libya? In Egypt? Boy, supporting those anti-Assad guys sure was a good move.
Someone explain to me why Ukraine is different from the rest of them, or haven’t you seen the similarities yet?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: When I finally saw the link I hit on it. The Interpreter began as an anti-Soviet website. Do you think it’s an honest, independent website? How is it funded?
Who was funding the Chechen relief site that Ruslan Tsarnev was operating out of Graham Fuller’s basement?
Mnem, do you know?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Villago Delenda Est: and they used the reanimated corpse of John F Kennedy to fire that missile! Why? Because liberals are the real war mongers as witnessed by the Iraq War, so Kennedy came back from the grave to just start another one for the win.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Bob In Portland:
Amir Khalid
From the BBC liveblog:
Uh-oh.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The first browser for the world wide web was not introduced until 1993. Kind of interesting that someone would have a dedicated anti-Soviet website when the Soviet Union didn’t exist anymore.
Please try to be more plausible in your slurs.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
No need to worry — since Russia had absolutely no involvement in this, I’m sure that they’ll give a full and unrestricted accounting of what’s on those flight recorders. Right, Bob?
Bob In Portland
@Bob In Portland: Well, I’ve tracked The Institute of Modern Russia through the Herzen Foundation back to American think tanks that were anti-Soviet, are now anti-Russian.
Why do you think that The Interpreter jumped the gun and published that when everyone else is denying it? Why is that little website ahead of the curve, Mnem?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Huh? It happened over Ukraine.
By the way, Herzen Foundation. CIA or not?
Bob In Portland
Mnem: Congress of Chechen International Organizations. CIA or not?
@Mnemosyne: I don’t know if you’ve ever read A PEOPLES HISTORY by Howard Zinn. In the back of the copy I used to own is a diagram of all sorts of front groups run by the CIA.
The Institute of Modern Russia is connected to the Herzen Foundation.
I guess you haven’t noticed the CIA releasing disinformation in your lifetime, have you? You’re clueless.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
From the BBC:
But I’m sure the BBC is an anti-Soviet site secretly run by the CIA, too, right, Bob?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: If the “separatists” have no involvement in this, wouldn’t you think they’d want to protect the crash site and wait for neutral technical experts to arrive, as opposed to snatching the flight recorders?
The Thin Black Duke
Jesus, Bob is boring as fuck, ain’t he? Why do you guys bother?
Mnemosyne
The Russians and/or separatists shot down two other planes this week:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-28345039
But it’s totally crazy to think that they may have shot down a third one. Nope, it must have been someone else entirely who did it.
D58826
@Bob In Portland: TWA 800 crashed today in 1996. Surely you have found the links between twa800 and MHA 17.
Amir Khalid
More from The Guardian:
Bob, do take note of that last paragraph.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: That post of Strelkov’s was public, on VKontakte, like Russia’s Facebook. Lots of people have screencaps of it. You can see it for yourself in multiple places. Oh, I forgot, you can’t read Russian. The Interpreter translated it to English, a little clumsily but more or less correctly. So unless the CIA hacked into Strelkov’s VKontakte account to post this, there aren’t any other viable explanations.
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
It’s like playing with a trained seal. Except that, in this case, the only thing the seal can bark is, “CIA! CIA!”
drkrick
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s a living.
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: In what world does that make any sense at all?
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: Threads with Bob in Portland go very quickly for me, kind of like how I fast forward through all the creepy parts in Criminal Minds and just watch the parts where the people in the BAU are figuring it all out. If it’s one of the super-creepy episodes, I can watch it in 15 minutes!
Edited to change “seconds” to “minutes”.
D58826
I almost miss the cold war. At least the two sides tried to kept it’s crazies under control
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
You may be thinking of a different book. There is such a diagram, originally published by the Washington Post (February 26, 1967), reprinted in the back of Killing Hope, by William Blum, a former CIA employee.
Could this be the book you’re thinking of?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Amir Khalid: well what are the flight recorders going to show? The plane flying along fine when the controls and or engines suddenly stopped working.
Bob In Portland
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Obama doesn’t have the rank to order that.
Amir Khalid
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
If they show that, it will eliminate the “rogue captain” theory which was so eagerly bandied about a few months ago in relation to that other MAS Boeing 777 disaster. And which, who knows, someone might bring up again with this one.
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: Obviously Jonathan Eyal, director of the Royal United Services Institute, is a CIA operative who is spreading disinformation in order to slander the brave anti-Nazi forces of the “separatists” fighting the SS controlled legions of Ukrainian revanchists out to make the innocent as the driven snow around a Chinese coal fueled power plant Vlad “Fuzzy Bear” Putin look bad.
Get with the flippin’ program, already.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Thin Black Duke: I like to punch target dummies.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: The “neutral” crash site experts are all CIA operatives.
Another commenter who needs to get with the flippin’ program.
Captain C
@Villago Delenda Est: I’m pretty sure the Boy Sprouts, Cat Fanciers, and Orbital Mind Control Lasers were also involved.
D58826
And the good news keeps coming. Bibi has ordered the IDF to start moving ground troops into Gaza. Not a surprise but depressing none the less
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne: Taking entries into the “What color is they sky in Bob’s world?” contest. Winner receives their own right out of a little old lady in Donetsk’s garage BUK missile system, complete with trained crew no longer wearing Russian uniforms but dressed smartly in NIKE soccer sweats.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: What happened to the “humanitarian” cease fire? I guess since Hamas didn’t all put pistols to their heads and pull the triggers, per the LIkud request, it’s back to killing kids on the beach for the brave troops of the IDF.
Bob In Portland
@Cervantes: It was Howard Zinn’s book. Maybe 25 years ago. I’m sure that many of those groups don’t exist now, so maybe it was dropped from the appendix in more recent additions. CIA front groups come and go. They change their names or dissolve and get reinvented. The Herzen Foundation was an anti-Soviet group. When the Soviet Union dissolved it did too. It apparently handed off to The Institute of Modern Russia, which runs The Interpreter website and is anti-Russian. Instead of the CIA retweeting an alleged message from someone they have a website do their work.
In the Zinn book there was the mention of one think tank financed by the CIA whose name I cannot now recall, in Texas, with which Leon Jaworski was intimately involved. Not surprising.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Herzen Foundation. Who financed them?
Amir Khalid
Some reactions from Malaysia, from The Guardian.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Pan Am 103. Who was on the ground there in Lockerbie? It wasn’t the KGB.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: Which has preczactly ZERO to do with what happened in the skies over the Holy Russian Borderland Region today, now does it?
Cripes, the stupid, it burns!
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Yesterday we were told that the rebels did not have the capability to shoot down a plane and that Russia shot down that military plane. So if the rebels don’t have the capability to hit something at 30,000 feet, why would the rebel commander claim that his forces shot it down? Does he want the world to hate him?
But when these false flag operations occur there are people who will point fingers no matter. Rebels, Russians, who cares? Let’s send in the Marines.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: Poroshenko would not extend it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bob In Portland: What do you mean “we”, paleface?
Amir Khalid
@Villago Delenda Est:
The ceasefire was meant to last only five hours, as I recall, from 10am to 3pm.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: Ukrainian state security has released tapped phone conversations among “separatists” talking about the shootdown (taking credit for it.)
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Might just be my misunderstanding of global affairs, but I didn’t think Poroshenko had the authority to extend the Israel-Hamas ceasefire.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Yesterday we were told that the rebels did not have the capability
Link?
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: Ukrainian State Security is OBVIOUSLY a CIA front. Or a Herzen Foundation front. Or a front of the Herzen Foundation which is a front of the CIA.
Why is dumbass even MENTIONING this “Herzen Foundation” anyways? More chaff tossed up in a pathetic attempt at a Jedi mind trick.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic: Bob can’t keep track of his misdirections. He needs a program or something. Or programming.
Amir Khalid
This is intriguing, from the Guardian liveblog:
Villago Delenda Est
@Amir Khalid: How generous! Enough time to scrape the kids off the beach, I guess.
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
I just said in the thread above that I am medium-convinced that this was a fuck-up by the separatists (possibly assisted by the Russians), not a planned attack. A horrendous fuck-up with gigantic consequences that killed hundreds of totally innocent civilians, but a fuck-up nonetheless. They had a shiny new toy, they mistook the airliner for a Ukrainian plane and …
D58826
CNN is reporting that the US government has concluded that the plane was shot down. They are still trying to backtrack the missle’s path to determine if the launch site was on the Ukraine side of the border or the Russian side.
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
I concur. A fuck-up does seem more likely because there is no tactical/strategic advantage from this. If Russia is shown to have had a hand in this, international support for the pro-Russian separatists (such as there is) will be hit hard, and the case for more sanctions against Russia only grows stronger.
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: None of you can answer when you realized the last twenty okeydokes were okeydokes. So this one must be true, whatever the truth is.
Amir Khalid
Meanwhile, quite a few governments are reporting they haven’t determined if their nationals are aboard MH17. MAS should have released the passenger/crew manifest by now.
Mnemosyne
I can’t parse this NewsMax headline, and I’m not willing to give them a click:
Because, what, Soviet-era missiles have just been floating around in the air since 1991 and happened to hit a jet liner?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
We’ve answered that before, Bob. Multiple times. But since you have the memory of a goldfish, there’s no point in repeating the same information to you over and over again because you’re not going to remember it.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: You’re halfway there, Amir. What happens if the US insists it was Russia?
Let me explain. More military aid to Ukraine. A ratcheting up of the Cold War 2.0. Acts of sabotage to separate Europe from Russian gas.
I asked yesterday if anyone could say what the US’ interests in Ukraine are. I haven’t seen any replies on that. It’s like Juicers’ eyes glaze over and their brains are incapable of even exploring that.
Why did the US (and Judith Miller) lie about the WMDs in Iraq? Why did the US stay in Afghanistan after Osama slipped across the border to our allies’ territory? Maybe you haven’t been able to figure that out either, because no one seems to be able to respond to that.
Why did the North Vietnamese attack the US Navy? Why did Allende kill himself? Why did liberals in Buenos Aires disappear?
Over and over, but this time it’s different, say Mnem and others here. I must be a Russian spy. Or I’m a useful idiot for Putin. It can’t be that the country that lied to you over our last dozen or two wars is lying to us now. No, it’s easier to ignore that as chaff.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: No, wrong ceasefire that ended.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Here’s the post you responded to with your Poroshenko comment.
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: You knew it right away, right? Yeah, answered before, so you say, although I haven’t seen those replies. Maybe I’m just not monitoring you enough. You guys were right on top of those lies, right?
So now that you admit that the US government is constantly lying to you in international affairs and war, why do you believe anything it says about Ukraine? Because you know that Russia must be lying? How do you know that? Because the US government tells you that Russia lies.
Mnem, what is America’s interest in Ukraine? Please tell us. Freedom? Democracy? Come on, Mnem, when you break down to mere insults you lose your moral high ground. Tell us, if you know that the US government has lied to you about all these wars, what makes what they’re telling you about Ukraine true?
And no one here, none of you, seem to be able to explain what America’s interests in Ukraine are.
You see, you can answer your own damned questions, but you need to ask them first. Pathetic.
Bob In Portland
You see? It’s a “game-changer”. Amir, you see? It’s a game. Let’s go, team!
Cervantes
@Bob In Portland:
Perhaps. In any case, about the following:
Yes, they published samizdat manuscripts.
And about this:
That was the Anderson Foundation — not much of a think tank. Jaworski was its attorney and one of its trustees. Between 1958 and 1967, it funneled about $700K in laundered CIA funds to the American Fund for Free Jurists in New York. (Don’t ask.)
But how is the well-known existence of innumerable CIA front organizations related to the downing of the Malaysian airliner?
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
And what happens if it is Russia, or its separatist friends in Ukraine? Because for all that you keep asserting it, based on previous conduct, you have not managed to show that the US is meddling in this particular affair.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re a Russian spy. Nor would consider you a useful idiot for Putin. Given your lack of success in convincing anyone here of your beliefs, I don’t see how you have been useful to Putin. Then again, the other half of that description …
Bob In Portland
@Villago Delenda Est: The Institute of Modern Russia. They were right on top of the fake tweet. Just like Poroshenko immediately knew that it was a terrorist act.
Are there US medical students in Donetsk? Is Saddam hiding his weapons of mass destruction in eastern Ukraine? Maybe the airliner was shot down by the North Vietnamese. Maybe Khadafy blew it up. Maybe it was Assad. Or Osama. Or Fidel. Or Putin did it because he wants to start a world war on his doorstep?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: Maybe Putin or his people looked the other way while advanced weapons systems leaked to ostensible but, in the event, deniable allies who didn’t have the knowledge or the self-control to avoid fucking up and doing something that could end up making Putin look bad? Wouldn’t be the first time in history that sort of thing had happened, would it, o master of history?
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Amir, let’s say it was Putin. To what purpose? If it were merely a fuck-up in a war zone, then I would say it’s time for airliners to change their courses. That would be for any of the players.
How did Poroshenko know it was an act of terrorism?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: Maybe, in which case it is an accident of war whoever fired it.
What if Ukraine did it to draw the US deeper into this? Oh wait, we’re not allowed to think that here at BJ.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
They (we) want Ukraine to join the European Union to be a brake on Russia’s power. Russia doesn’t want that.
Because it’s not the US government telling me that separatists and/or Russians shot the plane down. It’s the separatists themselves saying it.
You can tie yourself into as many knots as you like trying to convince us that somebody hacked Strelkov’s account, or that the recordings are fakes, or that the tweets from the separatist groups are all fakes. You don’t seem to understand the difference between the New York Times publishing bullshit straight from the White House and information coming from other sources outside of the White House.
Everything you’ve cited has been information released by the government itself. Please point to a similar situation where information from completely outside sources backed up, say, the invasion of Iraq. Not information fed to Judy Miller by Cheney, not speeches in front of the UN by Powell, but actual outside information.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: If it was Russian intelligence officers, then the story that Mnem was parading about the tweets from a rebel commander must be a lie. So that means that Mnem was quoting a website that was lying to pin the blame on the rebels. You can’t have two different people sort of shooting down an airplane.
So why would the Institute of Modern Russia post falsehoods? Since Mnem is the one who found it, perhaps he knows or has a theory.
And why do you think that the BBC would call it a “game-changer”? Or haven’t you thought that far ahead?
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Why do you believe that this isn’t a false flag by US interests? I mean, you must have a reason to not even entertain the possibility that Ukrainians, who have been following US instructions on this civil war, did not do it. What is your assurance that this isn’t a false flag? Because you always recognize false flag ops? Because the US is too moral to pull that kind of stunt but Russia isn’t?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I thought the US was controlling all of Ukraine’s actions. That’s what you’ve been claiming for months. Are you saying the Ukrainians actually do have some independent thought and action outside of what their CIA handlers are telling them to do? Or did you just forget to put in the qualifier that the CIA told the Ukrainians to shoot down the plane?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: No need to bifurcate Kiev from Langley. It’s a distinction without a difference now. Poroshenko gets aid from the US for hopping to the tune.
And obviously, the US wasn’t controlling Judith Miller’s actions, was it? Oh, sorry, that’s chaff. We can never look back.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof.
@Bob In Portland:
If pro-Russian separatists fucked up and shot MH17 down by mistake, it’s still an act of terrorism. If the Russian military committed the fuck-up, it’s still an act of war against Malaysia, the Netherlands, Germany, Britain and all the other countries with citizens aboard MH17. And it doesn’t reduce Russia’s, i.e. Putin’s, culpability.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Amir’s pull-quote is incomplete (sorry, Amir!). The accusation is that the separatists who shot down the plane immediately reported it to Russian intelligence, which the SBU (Ukrainian intelligence service) claims proves that the Russians have been controlling the separatists.
Amir Khalid
@Bob In Portland:
Why do you insist that it is?
Amir Khalid
@Mnemosyne:
Thanks for the correction. It does say something about where the puppet’s strings lead to, doesn’t it?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: Better go over to The Interpreter and check out your scoop.
Every other news organization says that all sides are denying it, including the rebels. So did The Interpreter jump the gun and publish a false tweet? You verify it for me.
So do you think this is a “game-changer”? Ready to send more weapons, more instructors over to Ukraine? Ready to blow up the Russian gas lines? How does the game change now?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
That’s quite different from your claim of, “What if Ukraine did it to draw the US deeper into this?” If Ukraine is incapable of independent action, then it’s impossible for the Ukrainians to have done it to “draw the US deeper into this.” Your claim is that Ukraine=the US right now, so there is no possibility that the Ukrainians were trying to “draw the US deeper into this” since they have no independent action. Right?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Gosh, you mean that everyone from all sides is pointing fingers and no one is immediately admitting to accidentally murdering almost 300 civilians? What a shocker! After all, whenever anyone makes a massive fuckup and kills people, human nature is to immediately step forward and admit that you fucked up and killed almost 300 people. Really, I can’t think of any situation where any group didn’t immediately admit their mistakes and make a full confession, can you?
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: So why would the Institute of Modern Russia post falsehoods? Since Mnem is the one who found it, perhaps he knows or has a theory.
As I’ve told you multiple times, the Strelkov post was on a public site. There are screen caps of it everywhere. The Interpreter was a convenient site to point *you* to, because you don’t understand Russian. But it was as if he posted on Facebook “we shot down a plane” and it was seen by millions.
Bob In Portland
@Amir Khalid: Okay, you can’t answer, and in all fairness, I can only go by my experience. Throughout my long life the US has used these false flag events to advance its strategic goals. This smells like a false flag, especially coming on top of the Ukrainian army’s big defeat the other day.
A little anti-Russian website scoops everyone by a dubious tweet that a rebel leader was bragging about shooting down the airliner. In order to believe that you have to believe that the rebels want to alienate the world. Or Putin, for that matter.
This is going to escalate the war. As the BBC says, “It’s a game-changer!” Do you think that they meant it was a game-changer in that now everyone will sit down and discuss peace rationally? I don’t think that’s what they meant.
You’re familiar with the concept of “false flag operations”, right? You’re familiar with the concept of propaganda, right?
Was it the rebels or the Russian intelligence officers? One, at least, has to be a lie. If The Interpreter lied, then how and why? If whoever is the source of the Russian intelligence officers that did it is lying, then why? Somebody wants a further escalation in Ukraine and is willing to lie about it. Who?
It was not that long ago that the US was ready to go to war in Syria because of a poison gas attack that from the evidence now appears to have been from al-Nusra. That would be yet another false flag. Are you ready to start a world war on any of the sources here? Ready to change the game?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
In the thread above, I am learning some extremely naughty words in Russian that were censored from that story. Assuming it’s real, the separatists on that audiotape and their Russian contacts were very upset to discover they’d shot down a passenger plane by mistake.
Davis X. Machina
@Mnemosyne: I blame NATO…
…and the ECB.
And the IMF.
And the NED.
And the CIA.
And the neo-Nazis.
And the anti-Semites.
And Angela Merkel.
And Victoria Nuland.
Did I leave anyone out?
Because Ukrainians don’t have agency.
If anything happens in the their country, it has to be done to them or for them by shadowy outside forces.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Not if the rebels were reporting in to Russian intelligence, which means that the rebels did it but the Russians knew very quickly that the rebels had done it. Which, if you’d bother to read the story, you would know is the actual claim, as opposed to the one you’ve made up in your head.
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: How do you know that Strelkov posted it? Paul Krugman claims that he has no twitter account and lots of posts attributed to him keep showing up. Is Krugman lying to us or is someone else posting under his name? You’ve apparently studied this closely enough to believe that Strelkov wants to tweet about shooting down an airliner. Is The Guardian lying about the Russian intelligence officers?
What usually happens in the immediate hours after one of these things is that you get numerous explanations pointing to your enemy. If you think it was the rebels you embrace the Strelkov tweet. If you realize that the rebels don’t have surface to air missiles that go 30,000 feet you need to fall back on the Russian intelligence officer story.
The way propaganda works is that you target various audiences with differing explanations. You apparently bought the rebel one.
Remember when the German intelligence ship in the eastern Mediterranean gave absolute proof that the poison gas attack was done by Assad? Almost went to war over that one. How positive are you today? Are you as positive as you were about Saddam’s WMDs? How about Afghanistan? We stayed there all this time because of Osama, right?
I’m waiting for one of you Juicers to whine, “He beats me, but he loves me.”
Bob In Portland
@Davis X. Machina: Did you believe the North Vietnamese attacked the US Navy? Simple question. When did it start smelling to you? Oh, maybe you’re too young. But our government didn’t lie about those WMDs, right? And we went into Afghanistan for no other reason than to catch Osama, right?
If Poroshenko decided to wage a civil war on the Russian border because it’s better than negotiating, do you think he had no assurances from the US?
I’ve asked others but only Mnem says anything, which is to say “I’ve answered that so I won’t tell you.” So when did you know that the US government lies to the public in order to create and escalate wars? When did you first notice this? And why isn’t this another “game-changer”?
Bob In Portland
@Mnemosyne: And do you often brag about killing planeloads of innocent civilians?
Bob In Portland
Now let us consider what SHOULD be the consequences of a civilian airliner shot down over eastern Ukraine.
Would you take from this that maybe we should engage in peace talks and let all sides express their grievances and work out a peace plan? Or would you take from this that we should send more weapons to Ukraine and try to alienate Russia with more sanctions? And what do you think will happen?
Remember, the BBC says that this is a game-changer. What change do you want, and what change do you foresee? And what is the game?
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
See? You’re kind of starting to understand actual human behavior. Unless there was a specific reason to shoot down the plane that you want to publicize — say, as a terrorist attack — then no one is going to admit it. And if it was a fuckup, that’s even more reason to point your finger really hard at the other guy and try to blame it on him.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
Why don’t you ask Vladimir Putin the same questions? Oh, right, he’s just engaging in self-defense against the big, bad US and certainly doesn’t have any interest of his own in Ukraine.
Mnemosyne
@Bob In Portland:
I’m pretty positive that the Syrian government did it. So is the UN. Turns out that Sy Hersch had bad sources that gave him false information.
The Watcher
@Cassidy: Not worth it at all. With my satellite I get a DVR, and I never watch commercials.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Don’t be too positive about that. A study done at MIT casts doubt on that conclusion; or, indeed, on any conclusion. It’s possible the Syrian government was responsible; or that its stockpile was simply the source of the material used; or that someone else was responsible.
Here are highlights:
(Pardon the capitalization; the text is from a PowerPoint slide.)
No, I don’t think so. I think what Hersh reported is plausible and consistent with the known facts.
Gin & Tonic
@Bob In Portland: You’re a real fucking idiot. Strelkov did not claim to have shot down an airliner, he claimed, consistent with other claims he’s made, that they shot down a Ukrainian military AN-26. This has been told to you multiple times. Half an hour after MH-17 disappears, he posts, not a Tweet, but a post on VKontakte, claiming a military accomplishment. Except the plane they thought was an AN-26 wasn’t. Oops.
Only one side in this fight has been using SAM’s. Ukraine does not have any in the Donbass because they are fighting a force that does not have aircraft. ITAR-TASS reports two weeks ago that the DNR people got hold of a Buk. That’s not the NYT, that’s ITAR. Lo and behold, two weeks later a Buk is (apparently) used, perhaps twice in two days. Coincidence?
Bob In Portland
@drkrick: You know nothing about the incident. How much did you know about the WMDs that Saddam had?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: You really don’t know what weapons units that Ukraine has in the area.
But let us say that the rebels shot down the plane by mistake. Since Ukies have had bombing runs against eastern Ukraine, shouldn’t they defend themselves? Would the cancellation of the cease-fire by Poroshenko have any responsibility for continued warfare?
So what do you propose? Peace talks? Or the destruction of the rebels? How do you propose stopping the fighting?
Bob In Portland
@Gin & Tonic: I’m about to sink to your level.
No, I won’t.
If it were an accident, that the rebels thought it was another transport bringing reinforcements to the beleaguered Ukie forces, then isn’t that what Poroshenko wants. He ended the ceasefire. And isn’t what Poroshenko wants what you want?
By the way, Ukrainian is not a commonly studied language in the US. I think you were about to tell us where you learned the language. I’m curious. Please share, Gin.
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Bob In Portland:
Why does that matter? If you want to call him a fascist, just sack up and do it.
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
Links? Right now, I’m afraid I find the United Nations (pdf) to be more credible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an exchange of chemical weapons between the Syrian government and the rebels, which would definitely muddy the waters about whodunnit. Like an Agatha Christie novel, the solution may be that there are multiple guilty parties, not just one.
Gin & Tonic
@Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): That ship sailed a long time ago. (Although it looks like somebody cleaned up the worst of the mess.)
Cassidy
@The Watcher: I pay a lot less than I would for satellite and renting the DVR.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
More credible than what?
If you’re looking for the MIT study I mentioned, here are some slides based on it. I’m curious to know how credible you find the section entitled “Comparison of the Trajectories of the GRAD Artillery Rocket with the Trajectory of the Syrian Improvised Chemical Rocket When Both Rockets Use Motors with the Same Propellant and Specific Impulse.”
As for the UN report that you cite, I have to ask you: have you read it? It says nothing about who was responsible for the attack in question. All it does is confirm that chemical munitions, delivering sarin in particular, were used. It does not say what you claim it does.
You may be thinking about more recent UN reports. For example, there was a report issued by the UNGA (A/HRC/25/65) on February 12, 2014:
(I highlighted that last sentence for you because you said you find UN reports to be “more credible.”)
In short: I stand by my earlier comment.
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
Sorry, I didn’t realize that we were still debating the rationale for a bombing campaign against Syria that never actually happened.
Seriously? We’re supposed to still be debating maps and statements by the White House when the only action that was taken was that Syria’s chemical weapons stores were peacefully destroyed without incident? This is the most important thing to be hashing through?
Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)
@Mnemosyne: You asked for links. Cervantes is nothing if not thorough, thus links were provided.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Is that what you were doing?
Silly me! I thought you were making unjustified remarks as follows:
And I responded to those remarks.
Is this you admitting that you had no idea what your UN report actually said?
Mnemosyne
@Cervantes:
No, this is me not realizing that you’re so committed to pedantry that you’re debating whether or not the rationale for a war that never happened was geometrically possible.
The UN report said that chemical weapons were used but it was difficult to say for certain exactly where they had come from, which is what prompted my comment that I suspected both sides were using them against each other at the same time. They did not rule out the possibility that the Syrian government had used them — they simply could not say for certain.
But, hey, if you want to buy into Bob in Portland’s conspiracy theories, be my guest.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne: I think you need a nap.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
No, contrary to your assertion that your UN report called Hersh into question, in fact it did not even address the question of where those weapons came from.
The next time you want to say that, try not using these words:
The UN has said no such thing, despite your being “pretty positive” about it.