#Vladimir Putin owns the GOP

[republikkkanorcs]

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[rejectingrepublicans]

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at Think Big Picture:

For years, critics of Vladimir Putin have been warning that the Russians have taken over parts of the Republican Party. They raised the alarm as Republicans defended the Russian leader, parroted clear Kremlin talking points, and became mules for disinformation campaigns. In recent weeks, that criticism has shifted to include not just Republicans who have left the party, including former representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, but current GOP members. Recently, two powerful Republican chairs of the House Intelligence Committee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee warned openly about how Russian propaganda has seeped into their party and even made its way into speeches on the House floor. Other members are now even openly questioning whether some of their fellow officials have been compromised and are being extorted. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) suggested in a recent interview that the Russian spies may possess compromising tapes of some of his colleagues. It’s unclear where he’s getting his information or how accurate it is.

And then there’s this: According to a report by Politico, a number of European politicians were recently paid by Moscow to interfere in the upcoming EU elections by Russians pretending to be a “media” outlet called “Voice of Europe.” The Kremlin-backed operation used money to influence officials to take pro-Russian stances. Authorities have conducted some money seizures and launched an investigation into which members of the European Parliament may have accepted cash bribes. This in turn raises an important question for our own politics: Are the Russians doing the same with U.S. politicians, directly or indirectly? This piece walks through the three types of compromise—disinformation, extortion, and bribery—to give a sense of what we know and what we don’t really know, and, importantly, where we should be on our guard. As this summary will show, from the 2016 election till now, there’s enough Russian smoke now to assume there is a fire, one that compromises not only the integrity of our own system of elections, but the safety and security of the free world. Duped.

Over the past year, we have witnessed two distinct kinds of Russian propaganda in action. Both use our own elected officials and intelligence processes to amplify and even weaponize disinformation. The first kind originates online through Russian-backed internet channels. Information operatives begin spreading false rumors, for example about Ukraine, that then get repeated within right-wing silos before reaching willing purveyors of it within the halls of Congress. A chief culprit in Congress is Georgia’s Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Among the Russian-originated false narratives she has uplifted is the patently false claim that Ukraine is waging a war against Christianity while Russia is protecting it. On Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, Greene even claimed, without evidence, that Ukraine is “executing priests.”

Where would Greene have gotten this wild, concocted notion? We don’t have to look far. Russian talking points have included this gaslighting narrative for some time. The twist, of course, is that, according to the International Religious Freedom or Belief Alliance, it is the Russian army that has been torturing and executing priests and other religious figures, including 30 Ukrainian clergy killed and 26 held captive by Russian forces. The Russians have also targeted Baptists, whom they see as U.S. propagandists, according to an in-depth Time magazine piece on the violence and death directed toward evangelicals. The Congressional propaganda mouthpieces for Russia aren’t limited to the U.S. House. Over in the Senate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance was also recently accused of spreading Kremlin-backed disinformation about Ukraine, this time over spurious allegations that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy siphoned U.S. aid to purchase himself two luxury yachts.

[...]

The accusation that Russians are presently extorting and blackmailing U.S. politicians into supporting Russia’s agenda has some broad appeal. It would help explain some mysteries, including why people like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suddenly is no longer as supportive of Ukraine as before and constantly kisses the ring of Donald Trump these days—after presciently saying in 2016 that the GOP would destroy itself if it nominated him. 

The problem has been that these accusations aren’t supported by much evidence. That means that political extortion by the Russians is either not a very prevalent practice, or it’s so effective that no one dares expose it. Either way, we’re left without much to go on. The Russian word kompromat came into common parlance around the time that Buzzfeed published a salacious story about another intelligence report back in early 2017. In that instance, the author, a former British intelligence officer named Christopher Steele, was concerned Russia had compromising data on the soon-to-be president, Donald Trump.

That report never wound up being substantiated, and its sources and funding came into question as well. But intelligence agencies are in general agreement that obtaining kompromat is standard practice by Russia, and someone like Trump could have been an easy mark considering the company that he kept (e.g. Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell) and the projects he was involved with (e.g. the Miss Universe contest). Lately, the notion of kompromat emerged once again, this time not from Democratic-paid outfits but from within the GOP itself. Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) is one of the more “colorful” characters within the GOP, primarily known lately for being one of the eight members who voted to oust former Speaker Kevin McCarthy and even for getting into public jostling and shouting matches with McCarthy.

The Republican Party (or at least its pro-MAGA faction) is compromised by Russian kompromat.

[rickmctumbleface]

Denmark is stepping up to the plate to be the world leader while America fumbles and squabbles over bullshit, because the GOP has become Putin’s bitches. Denmark is sending all their artillery to Ukraine because they are smart enough to fight Russia over there, now, rather than later on their own soil with their own people. This is humiliating and embarrassing to watch other countries fill the void that America should be leading.

[foreverlogical]

How is this changed if the actions taken by Musk caused the deaths of soldiers in the alliance America is part of? And how is this changed if after having calls with Vladimir Putin, Musk starts advocating publicly for Ukrainian surrender? And what if he is making money off this? 

And what do we do with the reports that Musk privately acknowledged that he was “in” the Russia-Ukraine War—but not, per the evidence we currently have, on the same side as America?

Is there some reason the House GOP is scared to investigate this? Or DOJ? What am I missing here? 

How is all this inflected by the data confirming Musk complies with the demands of hostile foreign governments at a far higher rate than his Twitter predecessors did? And how is that inflected by the fact that his Twitter coowners are autocratic Saudi butchers allied with Russia? 

And in the midst of all this he comes out publicly and tells 150 million followers to vote Republican? At a time we know both the Russians and the Saudis have secretly interfered in American elections on behalf of the Republicans? And then he starts making all sorts of changes... 

...to what is more or less a public utility (even if it is privately owned) that benefit hostile foreign governments, agents of hostile foreign governments, American disinformation agents operating as “useful idiots” for hostile foreign governments, and anti-American Kremlinists? 

And as I recall, didn’t he at one point threaten to stop providing resources to the American government that he’d previously provided *while* he was simultaneously advocating for a Ukrainian surrender following multiple phone calls with Vladimir Putin? Like—that seems really bad? 

Again, I’m not an expert in this, but I’m asking at what point Musk runs afoul of FARA? Or the Logan Act? Or something rather more serious that relates to military conflicts in which the United States is involved? All of this seems really serious to me and everyone’s ignoring it. 

America just went through an eight-year period in which a narcissistic sociopathic far-right White male billionaire colluded with Russia and the Saudis to interfere in our elections and advance illegal Russian adventurism. Is it just me or is the exact same thing happening again? 

(PS) Obviously I’m leaving a ton of things out here, e.g. the fact that Musk, like Trump, has repeatedly been accused of fraud, or that Kremlin policy inside the U.S. is to foment racial and religious divisions to weaken America... and Musk has been doing exactly that on Twitter. 

(PS2) Are we sure we’re not in the middle of a national security situation here? Is it wrong to think the Senate Intel Committee should be holding hearings to find out what Musk has been doing secretly with the Russians—and whether or how it’s connected to Twitter and the Saudis? 

(PS3) If Elon Musk will do the bidding of Vladimir Putin in terms of disabling Ukrainian military equipment and proposing that Ukraine surrender a good portion of its land area to Putin and his war criminals, what *else* is he doing at the bidding of the Kremlin or Saudi royals? 

(PS4) When we see Musk simultaneously pushing the “Ban the ADL” hashtag even as hostile foreign agents intending to cause chaos in the U.S. are doing the same thing, and we know who Musk is holding secret calls with... uh, isn’t that all super concerning from a NatSec standpoint? 

(PS5) And not for nothing, but many of you will remember the major media report I just posted in which Musk confesses that he wants to “take over the world’s financial system.”

Uh, for whom? Will he seek to benefit Russia and Saudi Arabia and harm the United States in that, too? 

(PS6) Remember how Trump led with racism and antisemitism and other forms of ethnic and religious bigotry that caused *chaos* in the United States, only for us to learn he was in cahoots with Russia and the Saudis?

Does that not feel... familiar, now?

I have some concerns here. 

(PS7) I’ve never claimed to be an expert in these particular areas, which are a subspecialization within federal criminal practice that very rarely comes into play. But I certainly—as a citizen and voter—am wondering why the *hell* we’re not having congressional hearings on this? 

(PS8) There’s no question whatsoever that Congress has an obligation to exercise its oversight responsibilities very aggressively here—as if I’m understanding correctly Elon Musk has a defense contract. The revelations in the new book about him are therefore very f*cking serious. 

(PS9) And remember how Trump always accuses others of what he has just done or is about to do? Just as concerns that Musk could be doing the bidding of hostile foreign nations arise, he starts threatening to sue others for “controlled speech.” We have seen this playbook before...

(PS10) I would think the FBI, DOJ, FTC, FCC, NSA, SEC and *many* others would want to be all over this situation right now. Instead we are getting radio silence. Or, not radio silence, but Musk and his allies pushing racial and religious division inside the U.S. on a daily basis. 

[mariacallous]

It’s not too late, because it’s never too late. No outcomes are ever preordained, nothing is ever over, and you can always affect what happens tomorrow by making the right choices today. The U.S. Congress is finally making one of those right choices. Soon, American weapons and ammunition will once again start flowing to Ukraine.

But delays do have a price. By dawdling for so many months, by heading down the blind alley of border reform before turning back, congressional Republicans who blocked weapons and ammunition for Ukraine did an enormous amount of damage, some of it irreparable. Over the past six months, Ukraine lost territory, lives, and infrastructure. If Ukraine had not been deprived of air defense, the city of Kharkiv might still have most of its power plants. People who have died in the near-daily bombardment of Odesa might still be alive. Ukrainian soldiers who spent weeks at the front lines rationing ammunition might not be so demoralized.

The delay has changed American politics too. Only a minority of House Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson, joined most Democrats to approve $60 billion in aid yesterday. What is now clearly a pro-Russia Republican caucus has consolidated inside Congress. The lesson is clear: Anyone who seeks to manipulate the foreign policy of the United States, whether the tin-pot autocrat in Hungary or the Communist Party of China, now knows that a carefully designed propaganda campaign, when targeted at the right people, can succeed well beyond what anyone once thought possible. From the first days of the 2022 Russian invasion, President Vladimir Putin has been trying to conquer Ukraine through psychological games as well as military force. He needed to persuade Americans, Europeans, and above all Ukrainians that victory was impossible, that the only alternative was surrender, and that the Ukrainian state would disappear in due course.

Plenty of Americans and Europeans, though not so many Ukrainians, supported this view. Pro-Russia influencers—Tucker Carlson, J. D. Vance, David Sacks—backed up by an army of pro-Russia trolls on X and other social-media platforms, helped feed the narrative of failure and convinced a minority in Congress to block aid for Ukraine. It’s instructive to trace the path of a social-media post that falsely claimed that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky owns two yachts, how it traveled up the food chain late last year, from the keyboard of a propagandist through the echo chamber created by trolls and into the brains of American lawmakers. According to Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, some of his colleagues worried out loud, during debates about military aid to Ukraine, that “people will buy yachts with this money.” They had read the false stories and believed they were true.

But with the passage of this aid bill, Russia’s demoralization campaign has suffered a severe setback. This is also a setback for the Russian war effort, and not only because the Ukrainians will now have more ammunition. Suddenly the Russian military and Russian society are once again faced with the prospect of a very long war. Ukraine, backed by the combined military and economic forces of the United States and the European Union, is a much different opponent than Ukraine isolated and alone.

That doesn’t mean that the Russians will quickly give up: Putin and the propagandists who support him on state television have repeatedly stated that their goal is not to gain a bit of extra territory but to control all of Ukraine. They don’t want to swap land for peace. They want to occupy Kharkiv, Odesa, Kyiv, and more. Now, while their goals become harder to reach, is a good moment for the democratic countries backing Ukraine to recalibrate our strategy too.

Once the aid package becomes law this week, the psychological advantage will once again be on our side. Let’s use it. As Johnson himself recommended, the Biden administration should immediately pressure European allies to release the $300 billion in Russian assets that they jointly hold and send it to Ukraine. There are excellent legal and moral arguments for doing so—the money can legitimately be considered a form of reparations. This shift would also make clear to the Kremlin that it has no path back to what used to be called “normal” relations, and that the price Russia is paying for its colonial war will only continue to grow.

This is also a good moment for both Europeans and Americans to take the sanctions and export-control regimes imposed on Russia more seriously. If NATO were running a true economic-pressure campaign, thousands of people would be involved, with banks of screens at a central command center and constantly updated intelligence. Instead, the task has been left to a smattering of people across different agencies in different countries who may or may not be aware of what others are doing.

As American aid resumes, the Ukrainians should be actively encouraged to pursue the asymmetric warfare that they do best. The air and naval drone campaign that pushed the Black Sea Fleet away from their coastline, the raids on Russian gas and oil facilities thousands of miles from Ukraine, the recruitment of Russian soldiers, in Russia, to join pro-Ukraine Russian units fighting on the border—we need more of this, not less. The Biden administration should also heed Johnson’s suggestion that the United States supply more and better long-range weapons so that Ukrainians can hit Russian missile launchers before the missiles reach Ukraine. If the U.S. had done so in the autumn of 2022, when Ukraine was taking back territory, the world might look a lot different today.

This war will be over only when the Russians no longer want to fight—and they will stop fighting when they realize they cannot win. Now it is our turn to convince them, as well as our own pro-Russia caucus, that their invasion will fail. The best way to do that is to believe it ourselves.

[izooks]

ES Family Trust which opened an account with Paxum Bank, a small bank registered on the Caribbean island of Dominica operated like a shell company for a Russian-American businessman named Anton Postolnikov, who co-owns Paxum Bank and has been a subject of a years-long joint federal criminal investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) into the Trump Media merger.

Postolnikov, the nephew of *Aleksander Smirnov, an ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Postolnikov appears to have used the trust to loan money to help save Trump Media – and the Truth Social platform – because his bank (Paxum) itself could not furnish the loan.

🤔 What a coincidence that Trump’s funding source is also the nephew of the GOP led impeachment hearings key witness Alexander Smirnoff. 🤨

[perrysoup]

Been seeing stuff about the Green Party and one part has me worried.

Jill Stein

Now, I want to say that I have a hard time fully understanding all propaganda I get shown. That's literally the point of it, confuse people into thinking it's right.

(Note: this is using Propaganda as the following definition: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.)

With that, I remember not knowing who she was until 2020 came around, and the key thing I was shown over and over was her apparent (I say that because I'm genuinely curious if what I was shown was evidence or lying by omission) ties to Putin and the Russian Oligarchy.

I'm gonna just Copy/Paste the section from Wikipedia so I don't miscommunicate what it shows:

On December 18, 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking at Stein's presidential campaign for potential "collusion with the Russians."[90] The Stein campaign released a statement stating it would work with investigators.[91]

In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Internet Research Agency boosted Stein's candidacy through social media posts, targeting African-American voters in particular. After consulting the two reports, NBC News reporter Robert Windrem said that nothing suggested Stein knew about the operation, but added that "the Massachusetts physician ha[d] long been criticized for her support of international policies that mirror Russian foreign policy goals." Windrem reported that his publisher (NBC News) had found that in 2015 and 2016 there had been over 100 favorable stories about Stein on Russian state-owned media networks RT and Sputnik.[92] In 2015, Stein was photographed dining at the same table as Russian president Vladimir Putin at the RT 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, leading to controversy.[93][94] Stein contended that she had no contact with Putin at the dinner and described the situation as a "non-event".[95]

In an official statement, Stein called one of the reports, the one authored by New Knowledge, "dangerous new McCarthyism" and asked the Senate Committee to retract it, saying the firm was "sponsored by partisan Democratic funders" and had itself been shown to have been "directly involved in election interference" in the 2017 US Senate election in Alabama.[96]

By July 31, 2018, Stein had spent slightly under $100,000 of the recount money on legal representation linked to the Senate probe into election interference.[97] In March 2019, Stein's spokesman David Cobb said she had "fully cooperated with the Senate inquiry."[98]

In October 2019, Hillary Clinton said that Russia's ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections included a plot to support a third-party candidate in 2020, which could either be Jill Stein, whom she described as a "Russian asset," or Tulsi Gabbard.[99] A few days later, Clinton's comments were clarified to indicate that she thought that it was, in fact, Republicans who were behind the plot.[100] Stein denounced Clinton's comments on both herself and Gabbard, describing them as "slanderous".[101]

So the question is, is she a Russian asset? Does she genuinely have a history related to Putin? I believe there is a photo of her at a dinner with Putin and some other GOP people, but is it taken out of Context? Is it a meeting where she realizes she doesn't agree with them stuff? Legit I don't know, I want information, with sources please.

[tomorrowusa]

People in Washington have belatedly been taking notice that Ukraine, a country with not much of a navy, has chased Putin's fleet out of much of the Black Sea. Things are relatively close to normal for Ukrainian grain exports which use shipping on that sea.

In the Black Sea, Ukraine forced the Russian fleet to retreat from the historic headquarters of Sevastopol in Crimea after hitting ships and key buildings repeatedly with drones and missiles. That was a personal blow to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who lauded the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.  The maritime success also opened a corridor for Ukraine to move grain shipments in defiance of Russia’s decision last summer to cancel an export deal, an economic and symbolic victory in the war.  “Ukraine won in the Black Sea,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a trip to Washington last month.  Zelensky has made the Black Sea victories a central part of his pitch to Western allies and supporters in the past couple of months — a sign of Ukrainian strength after the ground counteroffensive launched in June largely failed, delivering a stalemate on the frontlines of eastern Ukraine.  “This is huge,” said Olga Lautman, nonresident senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “They literally shifted the balance in the Black Sea. … Besides practically reopening the Black Sea, they’ve taken out Russia’s navy and pushed them out for the most part. And the attacks continue.”  Ukraine has maintained an edge in the waters of the Black Sea since the war began in February 2022 — and Kyiv does not have a naval force, let alone one the size of the Russian fleet.  In the early days of the war, Ukraine secured its hold on Odesa, a Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine, and sunk the Russian flagship the Moskva.  Ukrainian troops also liberated Snake Island, where defiant Ukrainian troops emerged famous for cursing at a Russian warship, in spring 2022.  In August, Ukraine stepped up attacks on the Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol, a hub for the Russian navy since Moscow annexed Crimea, but which has historical importance for Russia going back to the 1700s. In September, one strike damaged the headquarters of the Russian navy in Sevastopol. That month also saw Ukrainian special forces retake oil platforms in the Black Sea from Russia years after Moscow first seized them.  For the next two months, Ukraine kept assaulting Russian ships, leading to a full Russian naval retreat from Sevastopol and western Crimea.  After the fall attacks, Zelensky hailed Ukrainian forces for “pushing the Russian navy out to the eastern part of the Black Sea,” saying they “totally changed” the situation in the maritime domain.  “Russia can no longer use our sea to expand its aggression to other parts of the world,”  Zelensky said in an Oct. 31 address, “Ukraine’s success in the battle for the Black Sea will go down in history books, although it’s not being discussed much today.” 

It's become increasingly difficult for Russia to resupply its positions by sea. Last month Ukraine sunk a Russian ship loaded to the brim with munitions. This took place in Feodosia in occupied eastern Crimea which is only 100 km by road from Kerch where Ukraine damaged a bridge which connects occupied Ukraine to Russia.

Despite heavy and embarrassing losses, Putin will not give up his desire to conquer Ukraine unless he is forced to. Ukraine has been holding its own, but it needs help obtaining weapons and equipment. The GOP House of Representatives is holding up aid to Ukraine for its own political purposes. We need to contact our representatives and tell them to quit acting like Putin's agents on Capitol Hill.

Find out who your House member is.

Find Your Representative

Then contact him or her using the contact information given at the site. With Republicans, invoke the name of Ronald Reagan and insist that they quit supporting measures which help the Evil Empire. Be firm but polite.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Bagley * * * *

“You are not allowed to give up.”

February 17, 2024

ROBERT B. HUBBELL

Vladimir Putin killed his chief political opponent on Friday. Alexei Navalny, a Russian hero and patriot, is the latest in a long line of victims of Putin’s murderous regime. Navalny was in prison north of the Artic circle when he allegedly “died suddenly” on a “walk.” Most of Putin’s victims “fall out” of second-floor windows or die from exotic poisons or nerve agents. President Biden said,

Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death. What has happened to Navalny is yet more proof of Putin's brutality. No one should be fooled, not in Russia, not at home, not anywhere in the world.

Of Navalny, Biden said,

He was brave. He was principled. He was dedicated to building a Russia where the rule of law existed and where it applied to everybody.

Putin kills with impunity. Coincidentally, Donald Trump is currently urging the Supreme Court to grant him (and all other US presidents) the power to kill their political opponents with impunity. Even more coincidentally, Trump has not condemned Putin’s assassination of Navalny—leaving Trump alone among US and Western democratic leaders, all of whom condemned Putin for the death of Navalny.

The assassination of Navalny comes as the GOP is under the thrall of Putin. Trump and congressional Republicans are doing Putin’s work by refusing to provide supplemental funding for Ukraine. MAGA poster boy Tucker Carlson provided a platform last week for Putin to spread his lies about Russia’s history and territorial claims—including his claim that Ukraine is “not really a separate country.” Even Putin was derisive of Tucker Carlson’s pathetic interview. See Business Insider, Putin Says He Thought Tucker Carlson Would Ask Tougher Questions.

President Biden also condemned Congress for its inaction on Ukraine in his remarks on the assassination of Navalny. After his formal remarks, a reporter asked President Biden if there was anything the US could do to accelerate the delivery of aid to Ukraine. Biden responded,

No, but it’s about time [Congress] step[s] up, don’t you think? Instead of going on a two-week vacation.” Two weeks, they’re walking away. Two weeks. What are they thinking? My God, this is bizarre, and it’s just reinforcing all of the concern and almost – I won’t say panic – but real concern about the United States being a reliable ally. This is outrageous.

The heroism of Navalny highlights the cowardice of House Republicans. Mike Johnson is damaging US foreign policy so he does not provoke the ire of Marjorie Taylor Greene. See op-ed by Eric Garcia in The Independent, Navalny’s death has shown Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson up as a coward.

Garcia explains that Mike Johnson did not spend the last two work days on the Senate bill granting aid to Ukraine but instead wasted time on the Mayorkas impeachment:

Johnson did [so] in the service of appeasing Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump ally from Georgia, who is also an ardent opponent of funding for Ukraine. The fact [Johnson] refused to cross the person largely responsible for him being Speaker shows how unserious he is. Marjorie Taylor Greene has pledged that if aid to Ukraine goes to the floor of the House, she will file a motion to vacate the chair of Johnson. This comes despite the fact that many in Johnson’s conference want to support Ukraine and most Democrats would vote to help pass a bill doing so.

In other words, Mike Johnson is willing to allow Ukraine to fall to Putin because he wants to remain in his job as Speaker of the House—under the thumb of Marjorie Taylor Greene. What a pathetic, cowardly existence.

Against Mike Johnson’s cowardice (emblematic of all congressional Republicans) is the heroism of Alexei Navalny. In anticipation of his own assassination, Navalny left these words to those who remained behind:

If they decided to kill me, then it means we are incredibly strong. We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed . . . . We don’t realize how strong we actually are. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing, so don’t be inactive. You’re not allowed to give up.

We do not need to make Alexei Navalny’s ultimate sacrifice to follow in his footsteps. We just need not to give up—even when the odds against us seem overwhelming. We can do that. We have been doing that.

Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter

[odinsblog]

These two stories are not unrelated.

Under the misleadership of Elon Musk, Twitter has officially declared itself as a major platform of disinformation, misinformation, and irresponsibility, with no responsibility or desire to reign in lies, hate speech or Nazism.

And he has turned Twitter into a haven for hate speech, Nazis and crackpot conspiracy theorists.

Musk has repeatedly subtweeted and retweeted known white supremacists, so let’s dispense with the flimsy excuses that his latest retweet of pedophile and known neo-Nazi, Kevin Alfred Strom, was somehow an “accident.”

We have an election coming up next year, and Musk has abandoned any semblance of truth and is intentionally sabotaging one of the biggest social media platforms on earth. How many more times does Elon get to “accidentally” retweet racists and Nazis before people stop calling it an honest mistake??

The wealthy white nationalist from South Africa is purchasing GOP legislators in Florida, and using Twitter to back a racist Republican candidate for president, while constantly retweeting & signal boosting white nationalists from around the globe.

And Musk has been using Twitter to dabble in the elections of other countries - on the side of authoritarians. (source)

I’ve also seen “Nazis in Ukraine” and various pro-Russian, anti-NATO hashtags trend at least three times this week alone. I refuse to believe that Musk isn’t manipulating the algorithm to boost those anti-Ukrainian trends, which again, always seem to “coincidentally” favor authoritarians. Musk has been caught manipulating the algorithms to boost his own tweets before (not to mention, he’s also used Twitter to manipulate financial markets), and the U.S. presidential candidate he is supporting has flatly said he would stop helping Ukraine should he become president.

SN: Look, I may or may not be the most up to date person on authoritarians and elections in other countries, but when Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and the GOP all seem to prefer Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, that pretty much tells me practically everything I need to know about which side is the wrong side. Twitter is being flooded with homophobic, pro-authoritarian troll bots & racist right wing spammers - you cannot convince me that this isn’t happening without Musk’s explicit blessings.

Didn’t we already see what happens in 2016 when Robert Mercer used Facebook algorithms to mess with elections in the U.K. and in the U.S.??

What are they waiting for?

What are we waiting for?

Brexit 2.0??

The next Trump?

The only real question remaining is, how long will it take before governments and media outlets begin calling out Musk’s thinly veiled dog whistles for what they are? When will journalists call a white nationalist a white nationalist?

Musk is, objectively speaking, a very bad person, and definitely not a “free speech” altruist. Musk is a megalomaniac with the ability to continually force his narrative onto key media markets, and with a virtually unlimited supply of capital. Rupert Murdoch ain’t got nothing on Musk.

Elon Musk isn’t simply a racist and a white nationalist—with his vast wealth, political influence and control of a global social media platform, he is an unelected unaccountable existential threat to global democracy.

He needs to be called out every single time, and ultimately he needs to be held accountable.

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

A bad year for the bad guys

In key countries around the world, 2022 was the year democracy proved it could fight back.

On the night of February 23, the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I attended a reading group with a number of prominent Washington foreign policy experts and journalists. We had convened to discuss the work of Carl Schmitt, an interwar German political theorist who believed — among other things — that politics is, at base, about violence. The fundamental political distinction, in Schmitt’s view, is between “friend and enemy”; the fundamental political act is killing one’s enemies. A peaceful democratic world is, in his mind, a fantasy; ultimately, politics would always return to brutality.

As we were wrapping up, Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared on television to announce a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The mood in the room was dark, full of foreboding; one of the world’s largest and most fearsome military powers appeared on the verge of gobbling up a smaller and weaker neighbor. A world some of us believed was governed by rules and democratic politics felt like it was giving way to Schmittian barbarism.

At the time, the Ukraine war seemed likely to be the first of several catastrophes for the democratic world in 2022. In Brazil, the world’s fourth-largest democracy, a looming presidential election was expected to lead to a democratic crisis — its own January 6 moment. The US midterm elections seemed almost certain to elevate supporters of Trump’s election liesto key electoral administration positions, raising the likelihood of another meltdown. This all came amid a decade-long decline in the number of democratic governments around the world, a global transformation that seemed to herald a new world order with China as its leading power.

But as the year winds to a close, the story has turned out to be quite different. Instead of showing weakness, democratic systems displayed resilience. Instead of showing strength, authoritarian systems displayed vulnerability. It was, all in all, a surprisingly good year for democracy.

In Ukraine, the initial Russian lightning strike was decisively repulsed. It has devolved into a grinding conflict in which Ukraine, despite brutal losses, managed to repulse the Russian attack and even retake significant amounts of territory — with major support from the democracies of Europe and North America.

In Brazil, right-wing populist President Jair Bolsonaro lost his reelection bid and left office quietly. His most aggressive effort to overturn the results, a lawsuit alleging fraud, ended in a hefty fine for his party for engaging in what the chief justice of the Supreme Electoral Court termed “bad faith litigation.”

In the United States, election deniers lost every swing state race for governor or secretary of state — crushing defeats that may have even undermined the former president’s standing in the GOP.

And in China and another influential authoritarian state, Iran, major protest movements emerged, each calling for democracy and free elections. While the Chinese protests appear to have slowed, they were the greatest popular challenge to the government since Tiananmen Square. And the Iranian protests are still going strong, posing a formidable threat to the Islamic Republic.

These events pointed to an old truth, hard-won knowledge from the struggles of the 20th century: Democracy enjoys some fundamental advantages over its autocratic rivals.

Authoritarian systems have a tendency toward groupthink and ideological rigidity, frequently proving unwilling or unable to properly assess information and change course when existing policies prove disastrous. Democracy, meanwhile, tends to be widely supported by people who live under it, creating problems for authoritarian forces who are too blatant in their aims to subvert the system.

This does not mean that democracy will inevitably triumph in any specific country, let alone across the globe. Democracies have weaknesses, ones that authoritarian-inclined forces inside democratic states have repeatedly proven capable of exploiting. In 2022, elections in Hungary, Israel, and the Philippines all showed that the authoritarian challenge remains enduring and potent.

But when we look at the year’s events in the world’s largest and most influential countries, the story is on balance a positive one. The authoritarian governments that were supposed to outcompete democracy floundered, while some of the biggest democracies staved off major internal challenges.

In 2022, we lived through a relative rarity in recent memory: a decent year for democracy.

Continue reading.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Donald Trump on Monday reiterated a belief that sent shockwaves through Washington in 2018 when he first famously described it while standing next to Vladimir Putin.

The former president was roundly denounced by both Republicans and Democrats at the time for denigrating the work of America’s intelligence community and in particular for taking the word of Russia’s president over his own Director of National Intelligence.

But on Monday he proved that his beliefs were changed little if at all by the wave of criticism he received at the time with a post describing members of the intelligence community, presumably including the CIA, NSA, FBI and cybersecurity agencies, as “lowlifes”.

“Remember in Helsinki when a 3rd rate reporter asked me, essentially, who I trusted more, President Putin of Russia, or our ‘Intelligence’ lowlifes[?]” wrote the former president on Truth Social in a Monday morning post.

He continued: “My instinct at the time was that we had really bad people in the form of James Comey, McCabe (whose wife was being helped out by Crooked Hillary while Crooked was under investigation!), Brennan, Peter Strzok (whose wife is at the SEC) & his lover, Lisa Page. Now add McGonigal & other slime to the list. Who would you choose, Putin or these Misfits?”

It’s an example of the kind of comment that will gin up excitement and agreement from Mr. Trump’s hardcore base of supporters but will alienate potential allies in Washington as he pursues a third bid for the presidency.

Mr. Trump is likely to face a cadre of Republican rivals for the 2024 GOP nomination including, potentially, former CIA director Mike Pompeo who could very well take issue with his former boss’s words during the campaign.

The former president was loathe to acknowledge the conclusion of US intelligence agencies that Russia meddled in the 2016 election — apparently on his behalf, or to Hillary Clinton’s detriment — throughout his four years in the White House.

The involvement of Russia in the election sparked a years-long and politically damaging investigation into Donald Trump and his inner circle, headed up by special counsel Robert Mueller of the Justice Department, which eventually resulted in no criminal charges for the President (though others were convicted of unrelated charges in the course of the probe).

Mr. Trump has long held a grudge against the FBI and Justice Department for that reason, a feud which spilled back into vocal maligning of the agency’s personnel and mission last year after FBI agents raided his residence and resort at Mar-a-Lago and seized documents including materials marked classified which he had retained without permission.

[mitchipedia]

Russian denialism is the original sin of the Trump era. In 2016, Vladimir Putin attacked the US election. This has been documented by Democratic and Republican congressional investigations, Robert Mueller, the US intelligence committee, and independent cybersecurity experts. The assault was mounted to help Donald Trump win the presidency. And we saw it with our own eyes, as cyber-pilfered documents were released by WikiLeaks, first to derail the Democrats’ convention and then in the final weeks of the general election to hamper Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Yet Trump both denied Moscow’s assault was real—which aided and abetted the Russian operation by providing cover for it—and sought to benefit from it, as detailed in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report released two years ago when Republicans controlled the Senate. That report also shockingly revealed there was a “direct tie between senior Trump Campaign officials and the Russian intelligence services” while Moscow was clandestinely endeavoring to elect Trump president.

Trump and his allies engaged in a profound betrayal of the United States to gain the White House, assisting an act of war mounted by a foreign adversary.... After Trump’s narrow victory, he and his comrades in the GOP and right-wing media continued to deny Putin’s attack—calling it a hoax—to hide his treachery and erase the dark stain on his presidency.

...

After Trump’s narrow victory, he and his comrades in the GOP and right-wing media continued to deny Putin’s attack—calling it a hoax—to hide his treachery and erase the dark stain on his presidency.

[sa7abnews]

As Trump fumes, Republicans wince at ‘public nervous breakdown’

New Post has been published on https://sa7ab.info/2024/08/06/as-trump-fumes-republicans-wince-at-public-nervous-breakdown/

As Trump fumes, Republicans wince at ‘public nervous breakdown’

Donald Trump spent Monday morning labeling the turmoil in the global financial markets the “Kamala Crash,” giving Republicans hope that he might turn his focus to an economic message.

It didn’t last. By midday, the former president was already back to re-litigating his controversial appearance in Chicago last week, where he questioned Kamala Harris’ Black identity and suggested a major network journalist should be fired — “I didn’t know who she was, she was nasty,” he told a livestreamer.

And if Trump had an opening to hit Harris on the economy, it was unclear even to leaders of his own party if he could sustain it.

Republicans on Monday reeled from Trump’s undisciplined approach to the opening stages of his new general election matchup with Harris — following a weekend that saw him praise Russian leader Vladimir Putin while smearing Harris as “low IQ,” and “dumb” and attacking a popular swing-state GOP governor whose turnout operation he may need in November.

“This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump administration appointee. “This is a guy who cut through the Republican primary like a knife through butter. This is a guy who pummeled a semi-conscious president in a debate and literally out of a race. And now this is a guy who cannot come to grips with a competitive presidential race that would require discipline and effective messaging. And we’re seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely melt down.”

Republicans who saw their party lose the White House and both chambers of Congress during Trump’s presidency have worried before about Trump’s lack of discipline. But Trump’s venting now comes at a critical point in the election, with Harris surpassing him in fundraising and gaining ground in some battleground state polls.

“Democrats are racing to remake Kamala Harris from real life Selina Meyer into the female Obama — and Donald Trump’s lack of discipline is letting them,” said a national Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Every day Trump swipes at shiny objects — attacking the popular governor of a swing state, questioning the race of his opponent, or battling cat lady comments by his VP — is a day he is letting Harris define herself on her own terms.”

Trump on Saturday uncorked on Georgia Republicans, including Gov. Brian Kemp, calling him “a bad guy.” Reacting to that rally message, former Georgia Republican Party leader John Watson said: “Attacking Brian Kemp and his family is a galactic, unforced error.”

“Among battleground voters, we win if we have the discipline to contrast on policy and we lose if voters decide on likability. Really, really simple,” he added.

A Trump campaign official, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the former president’s Monday effort to yoke Harris and the Biden administration to market instability and unrest in the Middle East did not amount to a shift in tactics, but was a complement to his other suite of attacks. Asked if Trump should focus entirely on going after Harris’ policy vulnerabilities, rather than going after her personal traits or Republicans like Kemp, the official said that Trump can do it all.

“The president is good at pushing multiple messages at the same time,” the official said, noting that Trump and his team were also criticized early on for mocking President Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive condition — and were urged by some to stick to bashing his policy. “We can walk and chew gum at the same time on this campaign.”

Similarly, Trump’s Republican allies sought to play down his feud with Kemp.

“Just like Thanksgiving or family reunions in the South, sometimes family members don’t always get along, but we still look forward to seeing them at next year’s function and we don’t love them any less,” said Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.). “The priority for all Georgia Republicans must absolutely be getting Trump across the finish line in November. Hopefully, at some point, we can get the personalities to reconcile, but in the meantime, Americans are suffering and dying from bad policies, not mean tweets.”

Trump going off book and attacking fellow Republicans — and the resulting intra-party heartburn — is hardly new for GOP lawmakers. The fact that they’re mostly staying quiet is in line with many Republicans’ long-standing practice of grumbling privately while downplaying concerns in public. Still, the agitation within the party this time appeared to cut deeper than before, dashing some Republicans’ hopes that the ex-president was exercising more discipline after his 2020 loss.

And Kemp wasn’t the only Trump-endorsing Republican governor that the former president went after in recent days. On Friday, Trump fired off multiple Truth Social posts excoriating Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, the chair of the Republican Governors Association, for being a “RINO.” Lee’s sin, according to Trump, was that he had months ago endorsed an incumbent GOP state senator, while Trump had more recently endorsed the challenger.

Trump’s posts left Lee’s aides “baffled,” and appeared to come “out of nowhere,” according to a person with knowledge of their reaction who was granted anonymity to speak freely. Lee, who initially stayed neutral in the Republican presidential primary, citing his role as RGA chair, quickly endorsed Trump after his Super Tuesday victories in Tennessee and elsewhere, and praised Trump onstage at the GOP convention just last month.

“Lee is going to vote for him, Tennessee is going to vote for him, whatever,” said a Republican strategist in Tennessee. “It’s just indicative of a total lack of focus on the point.”

Trump’s attacks on his fellow Republicans came in concert with coarsening fusillades on Harris’ intellect, calling her “low IQ” and “dumb” just days after he had questioned her Black identity in an appearance before the National Association of Black Journalists.

On Monday, even as he tried to shift the conversation back to the economy, Trump waded back into familiar territory, telling the livestreamer Adin Ross that ABC’s Rachel Scott, who participated in the NABJ panel, should be fired.

“It was like a booby trap,” Trump said of Scott’s question at the NABJ conference.

During the 90-minute live stream, Trump also suggested Venezuela will soon move “all of their criminals into the US,” said Kanye West is “a really nice guy, but he can get himself into trouble,” compared Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to Eva Perón and listened to Elvis in a Tesla Cyber Truck adorned with a picture of the former president.

“I think we are long past the time where we thought he could maybe rein in his worst angels and he’s going to keep doing this and no amount of polling data or advice from people close to him will change him,” said Barrett Marson, an Arizona-based Republican strategist. “He’s a 78-year-old guy stuck in his ways. And this has been his way for decades.”

Irie Sentner contributed to this report.