[Macros]

DJ talking about firing Muller now after they raised his offices.

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 10 April 2018 - 06:05 AM, said:

DJ talking about firing Muller now after they raised his offices.

What's most amusing is that it was Trump himself (in his blatant idiocy) who made the whole raid on Cohen's offices possible! Because he denied any knowledge of the Stormy Daniels payment by Cohen, that frees up the whole "privilege" aspect of it, as they raid can focus on the illegal activities of the lawyer, and assume (since Trump said he didn't know about it) that they aren't stomping on any client-specific privileges. I mean, it's very obviously a lie by Trump (he fucking knew)...but the law has their loophole when he said he didn't.

That's why he's ALL-CAPS rage tweeting about it.

Secondarily amusing, to get a raid of this calibre off they needed a lot of sign-offs of high up people in the Justice Dept. including a lot of Trump-appointed Republicans.

This post has been edited by QuickTidal: 10 April 2018 - 12:57 PM

[worry]

Here's a good (afaik) law-POV take on the whole situation, cutting through the "attorney client privilege" claims: https://lawfareblog....fraud-exception

The funniest thing about this is, if DJT had just not won the election and had gone on to do Trump TV instead where he could still be as Breitbarty and racist as he wanted, he and Cohen could have probably done their mafia LARPing forever without consequence.

[Cause]

Is the cold war cooling again?

Russia and America seem on the verge of a new proxy war in Syria. Russia seems to be resurgent with the Crimean fiasco, the American eliction meddling, the possible brexit meddling the spy poisoning in the UK and now the diplomatic shit storm. China has made it clear it stand with Russia for now.

Is this all as significant as it seems? Does Russia really have the money and the pull to try and bully the USA and NATO? I'm inclined to think not but the west is beset by an enormous apathy these days, case in point crimea.

[Obdigore]

Cause, on 11 April 2018 - 12:38 PM, said:

Is the cold war cooling again?

Russia and America seem on the verge of a new proxy war in Syria. Russia seems to be resurgent with the Crimean fiasco, the American eliction meddling, the possible brexit meddling the spy poisoning in the UK and now the diplomatic shit storm. China has made it clear it stand with Russia for now.

Is this all as significant as it seems? Does Russia really have the money and the pull to try and bully the USA and NATO? I'm inclined to think not but the west is beset by an enormous apathy these days, case in point crimea.

Not really. Russia's economy is tiny and completely dependent on natural resource sales to other locations.

If the US didn't have a tangerine dumbass as a president, it wouldn't be an issue.

The whole thing in Syria has been going on for years, it isn't anything new.

Russia is still trying to talk a big game to prove that they still matter on the world stage. Honestly, this is just a natural outcome of permanent security council seats.

[Slow Ben]

Macros, on 10 April 2018 - 06:05 AM, said:

DJ talking about firing Muller now after they raised his offices.

A group of bipartisan senators is introducing new legislation to limit President Trump's ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

http://thehill.com/h...protect-mueller

We'll see what happens.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 11 April 2018 - 04:17 PM

[Obdigore]

Slow Ben, on 11 April 2018 - 04:17 PM, said:

Macros, on 10 April 2018 - 06:05 AM, said:

DJ talking about firing Muller now after they raised his offices.

A group of bipartisan senators is introducing new legislation to limit President Trump's ability to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

http://thehill.com/h...protect-mueller

We'll see what happens.

It's simple. The turtle wont allow it to be voted on.

[Maark Abbott]

Cause, on 11 April 2018 - 12:38 PM, said:

the spy poisoning in the UK

A fair few of us over here are concerned that this is a false flag. Tory popularity dwindles day by day as people are ground 'neath the yoke of endless austerity. That the chemical weapons plant based near to the site of the alleged attack have said they can't conclusively say it was the Russians leaves a lot of questions hanging - burden of proof isn't satisfied (although if you request that BOP is satisfied like Corbyn, you're branded a communist traitor).

More suspect is that emergency services attending at the scene did so without any protective equipment despite the apparent toxicity and lasting nature of the toxin in question.

[amphibian]

The EMTs have no idea why anyone is dying or in distress. They have to do their jobs and unfortunately, that means when chemical weapons or bio weapons are used, they're going to get hurt too. I don't think that's a great reason to be skeptical.

I have a friend who was an EMT for years before going to physician assistant school now. Sometimes minutes make big differences and they're used to taking a lot of personal risks beyond the obvious "put blood barriers on" and "don't get attacked".

Funny thing is that he's 6'8" and would always have to drive because he was too big to move around fast in the back. The wheel was often between his knees.

[QuickTidal]

Maark Abbott, on 12 April 2018 - 06:58 AM, said:

A fair few of us over here are concerned that this is a false flag. Tory popularity

So wait, you're flat out conspiracy theorizing that an entire section of government employees in your country purposely utilized a chemical attack on two civilians (one of whom turned coat for Britain from Russia [who had jailed him]) and then blamed it on Russia? Aside from the fact that the claim would need a dark cabal of "Tory's" to gather in a room and agree upon this strategy, the cover up, and the treason (which already sounds like a bad plot from a Bourne movie)...what purpose does that serve? Sure it MIGHT spark an international incident with Russia...but how does that help the Tories in any significant way? It's a crime that has any number of outcomes internationally...none of which would be guaranteed...That's a lot to twisting and hoop jumping to get to a theory that fits the narrative of "The Bad Gov't party did this to gain favour!"

Does it not make infinitely more sense that Russia attempted to kill its former agent (one they previously had jailed) who turned his coat against them?

[Macros]

Didn't the international.independant chemical thingy people come out and say the chemical was of Russian origin??

[Aptorian]

Not that I agree with Maark's suspicion but:

1. If somebody shoots you with an American made weapon, does that mean an American did it?

2. Considering how infamous Russia's "alleged" use of polonium as a poison is, it wouldn't take much to frame Russia if you did, in fact, want to pull a false flag operation.

So, who stands to gain from Russia going on the even naughtier list?

I have no idea. Don't really care. Russia are a bunch of assholes. Whether they get boycotted for this, their aggressive foreign policies or their political hacker attacks doesn'y really matter to me.

[QuickTidal]

I just think it's crazy to come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory...when the one we have been seeing in the news is actually the one that makes the most straightforward sense. Russians attempted to kill their agent.

[Aptorian]

I think what raises eyebrows is just how brazen it is.

This wasn't just a case of the famous poisoned umbrella or somebody drowning in their bathtub. This was very messy and very public. Which would lead me to two different possible reasons for why the Russians could have done something this crazy:

1. They fucked up. They wanted to do something sinister but subtle but accidentally used too much what ever that thing is.

2. They deliberately did it to send a message, not to potential traitors and spies but to the British government or MI6 or some equivalent there of.

But because of how unproffessional the whole thing seems I still wouldn't be surprised if there was some third party involved or just independent actor from Britain or Russia.

Hell it was probably Elon Musk. Not sure what he would get out of it but he's definitely a Supervillain.

[QuickTidal]

Alternative Goose, on 12 April 2018 - 02:24 PM, said:

I think what raises eyebrows is just how brazen it is.

But the Russians under Putin have never been anything BUT Brazen.

[Malankazooie]

I would say with the election (another 6 years of Putin and probably more), the poisoning, the military display of power, Putin's popularity in Russia, the ban from the Olympics. et. cetera, et. cetera. There definitely are echos of the cold war era, for sure.

[champ]

Alternative Goose, on 12 April 2018 - 02:24 PM, said:

I think what raises eyebrows is just how brazen it is.

Why wouldn't they be?

Look at what they have done lately, Georgia, Crimea, their Syria play and the Troll Farms meddling in the elections to name a few... nothing has come back against them apart from the sanctions.

They see the UK as weak after Brexit and they've already "gotten away" with one assassination on UK soil...

Putin has said on national tv that the one thing he cannot forgive is betrayal and that traitors deserve to die...

So why not strike...whilst all this trouble in the world is going on to confuse matters even more...

I just think he underestimated the response from all the countries banding together to give him a bloody nose with the Diplomats and it put them on the back foot.

And yes, the OPCW confirmed that the toxin used was in line with the UKs initial analysis... and that the toxin is of a high grade substance that means only a few labs in the world have the capability to manufacture it.

But yeah... it makes more sense that the Torys did it...

[Aptorian]

I guess it's a question of how you spin it but the way the West have chosen to view this attack, is as a chemical attack - as in the use of a chemical agent or a poisonous gas.

Which, if we want to weigh different acts of power or tools of warfare, has been a big no no, from WW1 and forward. Perhaps even more feared than Nuclear War is the proliferation or just casual use of chemical and biological warfare.

Maybe the Russians just don't care but I can't see them being this sloppy. Maybe I just have a more noble idea of what kinds of rules that are at play in the cold war games between the bigger nations but I'd hope even Russia didn't want to play chicken with chemical warfare.

Then again, considering the things Russia is wlling to do to its own people, who knows.

This post has been edited by Alternative Goose: 12 April 2018 - 07:52 PM

[champ]

I sat and watched the broadcast of the first UN meeting on this subject and listening to the Russian Ambassador you could see their way of spinning it but it just sounds ludacris...

He started to talk about fiction actually and brought up Sherlock Holmes saying that the UK could do with him now where as all we have are Detective Lestrades trying to figure out what happened...

The UK Amb. dropped the mic by ending it with, "We don't need fiction when we have real life proof and evidence of your President going on live TV and stating all traitors should die!"

As for sloppy? Not at all, they wanted us and others to know that they did it the same with Litvinenko, it was a message sent out.

Plus again, I guess they figured they could get away with it and didn't predict the response.

I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

[worry]

Isn't the actual potential conspiracy that British police were ignoring Russian ties to quite a few previous deaths? And that's why Putin got so brazen, but this time overreached such that it couldn't be ignored?

https://www.independ...t-a7793151.html