Presidential Celebrity Deathmatch #3

The thread was gonna get made one way or another.

https://www.thenation.com/article/did-the-white-house-declare-war-on-russia/



Nation Contributing Editor Stephen F. Cohen and John Batchelor continue their weekly discussions of the new US-Russian Cold War. (Previous installments are at TheNation.com.) Cohen reports that a statement by Vice President Joe Biden on NBC’s Meet the Press on October 16, released on October 14, stunned Moscow (though it was scarcely noted in the American media). In response to a question about alleged Russian hacking of Democratic Party offices, in order to disrupt the presidential election and even throw it to Donald Trump, Biden said the Obama administration was preparing to send Putin a “message,” presumably in the form of some kind of cyber-attack. The Kremlin spokesman and several leading Russian commentators characterized Biden’s announcement as a virtual “American declaration of war on Russia” and as the first ever in history. Cohen observed that at this fraught stage in the new US-Russian Cold War, Biden’s statement, which clearly had been planned by the White House, could scarcely have been more dangerous or reckless—especially considering that there is no actual evidence or logic for the two allegations against Russia that seem to have prompted it.

 Biden was reacting to official US charges of Kremlin hacking for political purposes. Cohen points out that in fact no actual evidence for this allegation has been produced, only suppositions or, as Glenn Greenwald has argued, “unproven assertions.” While the US political-media establishment has uncritically stated the allegation as fact, a MIT expert, professor Theodore Postol, has written that there is “no technical way that the US intelligence community could know who did the hacking if it was done by sophisticated nation-state actors.” Instead, Cohen suggests, the charges, leveled daily by the Clinton campaign as part of its McCarthyite Kremlin-baiting of Donald Trump, are mostly political, and he laments the way US intelligence officials have permitted themselves to be used for this unprofessional purpose. Moreover, it is far from clear that the Kremlin actually favors Trump, despite Clinton’s campaign claims.
....

The best one can hope for is that Mr Trump doesn't violate his restraining order.

The "Let Jill Debate"; "Jill Not Hill" protestors in the background of the MSNBC coverage made me smile.
I'm watching the actual debate with the hosting network, though.

I never thought she would go this far.

>2 davidgn: Yep, I heard a smattering of that rhetoric and was a little taken aback even though it came off as technical hijinks between non lethal intent technos. & that attitude is kind of silly for a nation . A better tone would just be assurance of prevention and technical elimination of those threats. Imoho

Trump is getting crushed, although "Rip the Baby" might catch on in certain circles.

>7 theoria: Trump is corralling his core people but the pollsters say the even more bizarre "undecided " are the only hope for trump - and also crucial for Hillary.

I just threw up in my mouth a little. She had to cite the agitprop photo.

The day after Omran made headlines, the left-wing British news site the Canary publicized another photograph that exposed a grim reality behind the iconic image.

Culled from the Facebook page of Mahmoud Raslan, the activist from the American-operated Aleppo Media Center who took the initial video of Omran, it showed Raslan posing for a triumphant selfie with a group of rebel fighters. The armed men hailed from the Nour Al-Din Al-Zenki faction. At least two of the commanders who appeared in the photo with Raslan had recently beheaded a boy they captured, referring to him in video footage as “child” while they taunted and abused him. The boy has been reported to be a 12-year-old named Abdullah Issa and may have been a member of the Liwa Al-Quds pro-government Palestinian militia.

This was not the only time Raslan had appeared with Al-Zenki fighters or expressed his sympathy. On August 2, he posted a selfie to Facebook depicting himself surrounded by mostly adolescent Al-Zenki fighters dressed in battle fatigues. “With the suicide fighters, from the land of battles and butchery, from Aleppo of the martyrs, we bring you tidings of impending joy, with God's permission,” Raslan wrote. He sported a headband matching those worn by the “suicide fighters.”

http://www.alternet.org/world/inside-shadowy-pr-firm-thats-driving-western-opini...

Utterly shameless.

cf. http://www.librarything.com/topic/226334#5760697

ETA: And I'll just remind one more time: Max Blumenthal, the author of the above investigative piece, is Sidney Blumenthal's son. I can only admire Max's courage.

A horrid act on both of the children. the photo does not choose political sides for most of the world, just exemplifies the tragedy of the situation.

>9 davidgn: just skimmed the first link - didn't the civil war evolve from social media groups organizing? No surprise it continues.

>10 DugsBooks: Tell that to the entire goddamn US mainstream media.
Case in point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MUeOwGgxw

ETA: And there's some truth to that, yes. But I'd be wary of calling it a civil war. It involved external intervention from earliest days. And the planning went back years before that.

Here's a good piece I posted yesterday on that same thread that captures much of the story: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/10/14/an-urgently-necessary-briefing-on-syria/ - by Gary Leupp (Prof. of History at Tufts). I'd also recommend the pieces by Kinzer (Senior Fellow at Brown's Watson Center) and RFK, Jr. -- posted earlier in that thread -- for background.

Another with an agenda to promote & using that tragedy to promote it - that is disgusting.

I've updated >11 davidgn:. But >12 DugsBooks:: you're damn right.

ETA:
And here's a very fitting new piece for tonight.

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/19/the-democrats-joe-mccarthy-moment/
(Robert Parry)

Washington's Blog can be very uneven, but sometimes it just pulls everything together perfectly. This is one of those times.
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/10/russia-hack-dnc-really.html

Also of interest to those who seek multiple points of view:
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/10/24/how-russia-saw-americas-third-debate/