Russia - The Gangster State

[Jetex Jim]

Well who could believe their own eyes and ears when the US President can hardly keep his story straight for the duration of a sentence?

However, it is all meaningless until the FBI and Mueller have done investigating. But I'm intrigued by the possibilities.

It is common knowledge that Facebook data was utilised by Cambridge Analytics. And it's not too difficult to determine candidate preference. But not everyone can be bothered to vote, even though they'll mouth off at length in the pub. So it's easy to imagine somebody putting a database together that would associate: Candidate Inclination, Address and Voter Registration status.

Tie that to the NRA's 'Trigger Votes' project, which is the NRA's initiative to get Jed Clampet and his family out to register to vote, and you can see where that 30Million USD or however much it really was might have gone to.

And yes, leaving aside the little matter of data mining of (notionally confidential) Facebook data, none of this is even particularly illegal. But if the Russians were involved maybe it's different?

As a colleague of mine put it (in relation to Facebook etc) if the service is free you are not the customer you are the product!

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Just to add to the fun, the Republicans in the House have just started formal impeachment proceedings against Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.

I just filed a resolution with @Jim_Jordan and several colleagues to impeach Rod Rosenstein. The DOJ has continued to hide information from Congress and repeatedly obstructed oversight--even defying multiple Congressional subpoenas.

We have had enough.

— Mark Meadows (@RepMarkMeadows) July 25, 2018

At the least, it's fighting fire with fire. Goodness only knows where this is going to end. I don't.

[G-CPTN]

Navalny poisoned with Novachok.

[4mastacker]

Navalny poisoned with Novachok.

Was he visiting a cathedral with a tall spire?

[FD2]

I'd like to think that the death of one of Putin's apologists back in April was tit for tat but don't suppose we'd play by the same rules.

A prominent former Kremlin advisor and advocate for Vladimir Putin who became a British citizen has died in London from a 'stroke'.

The death of Alexander Nekrassov, 63, came as a 'bolt out of the blue', a British friend of the Soviet journalist said.

He was seen in his later years in Britain as an apologist and propagandist for Vladimir Putin, denying that Moscow was behind the assassination bid on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ed-63.html

I'm not sure why the Mail has just inserted a story from April, but it's good to see Merkel trying, no doubt ineffectually, to embarrass the thug. He will just lie, lie and deny. Now if Merkel were to refuse to accept the new pipeline if would hurt him where it really matters.

[TheGreenGoblin]

I'd like to think that the death of one of Putin's apologists back in April was tit for tat but don't suppose we'd play by the same rules.

A prominent former Kremlin advisor and advocate for Vladimir Putin who became a British citizen has died in London from a 'stroke'.

The death of Alexander Nekrassov, 63, came as a 'bolt out of the blue', a British friend of the Soviet journalist said.

He was seen in his later years in Britain as an apologist and propagandist for Vladimir Putin, denying that Moscow was behind the assassination bid on ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in 2018.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ed-63.html

I'm not sure why the Mail has just inserted a story from April, but it's good to see Merkel trying, no doubt ineffectually, to embarrass the thug. He will just lie, lie and deny. Now if Merkel were to refuse to accept the new pipeline if would hurt him where it really matters.

He is a little nonplussed by Merkel who speaks fluent Russian and probably reminds the thug a little of his mom...

[Undried Plum]

Navalny is a nobody. An expendable pawn of the West.

As a foreigner (he's Ukrainian, not Russian), he's not allowed to stand for office against the incumbent President, or anyone else in Russian elections. His pathetic wee party polls one or two percent on a good day, usually less than 1%. He's no threat to Putin and of no particular interest to him.

As soon as the Novichok nonsense was trotted out, there was a demand that Nordstream-2 be stopped. Imagine my surprise!

Cui bono?

[FD2]

Care to enlighten us as to who benefits if the pipeline is stopped, UP? Can anyone else supply the gas to keep all these good EU people warm this winter, because if the new pipeline is stopped then I would bet the price of the existing supply would rise substantially? Who is paying for this new pipeline and likely to lose money if it is stopped? I'm a bit out of touch with world gas production.

Has the nice President For Life Mr Putin changed the rules so that someone from Georgia, for instance, cannot be in a position of power or was that just during the Soviet era? Thank goodness he's not a threat to Putin, who will no doubt be urging his forces of law and order to get to the bottom of who poisoned the man.

Some of us would like to eliminate our national political nuisances, and I could think of several in the UK Parliament who would be on my list, but poisoning is so out of fashion in civilised countries.

[Undried Plum]

[Undried Plum]

Care to enlighten us as to who benefits if the pipeline is stopped, UP?

Guess who!

The godalmighty Empire cannot possibly hope to compete on price with their expensively fracked and shipped LNG, so they feel a need to crush the free market fair competition from Russian and Asian piped gas.

[FD2]

So the US can supply all the gas needed to replace any supplies which may be cut off from Russia? It's good to know there's an alternative, just in case the Impaler is provoked enough by the EU to do something nasty! And I thought Vladimir was Donald's best friend after Helsinki.

I don't suppose I'm alone in thinking, about people like the Cambridge and Portland spies, that someone should have just killed them but it takes a certain je ne sais quoi in a world leader to actually send people to do that sort of thing.

It is amazing that someone could have big enough cojones to poison a man in Russia with a pretend Russian nerve agent then let another country spend time and money trying to heal him - all the while letting his old chum Vladimir take the flack. Amazing that is, for a man who has so far, imho, shown us to have a shorter attention span than my dog.

[Undried Plum]

I have no doubt that Pootypoots has the ruthlessness and resources to bump off a rival.

I do, however, doubt that his hitmen would bungle the job or that it would look like a state-sanctioned hit.

A simple road accident perhaps, or an armed robbery gone 'wrong'. Or perhaps a conveniently arranged air accident, Murricane style, as with Zia ul Haq.

This Navalny clown is no rival for Putin. As a non-Russian citizen he is not allowed to stand for public office. Anyway, his little group of troublemakers are trivial in their scale. He's as much a threat to the Russian state as Tommy Sheridan is to the UK. A naeb'dy.

As for the Novichok nonsense, gimme a break!

The ***** UKUSA version of the Skripal tale would have us believe that Novichok is a weapons grade military nerve agent.

Y'know, the sort of battlefield weapon which lets a dosed enemy soldier go for a drive and a walk in the park to feed the ducks, which don't die despite having been hand-fed by the guy who closed the outside door of the Novichok-besclabbered door handle, and then go for a drink in a pub and then go for a meal in an Italian restaurant and then another walk in the park and then suddenly, as if by magic, two dosed soldiers of massively differing ages and body masses, fall unconscious simultaneously, hours after being dosed. That sort of military weapon.

[Undried Plum]

So the US can supply all the gas needed to replace any supplies which may be cut off from Russia?

The Septics don't need or want to supply all of the European demand. They just want to supply all of their own surplus, at inflated prices because the demand is not being met by the aggregated supply.

It would also help to boost domestic prices within the ConUS because the supply/demand ratio would be restored to a level which benefits the big oil/gas magnates.

It's Economics 101.

[FD2]

What a conspiracy eh? Here's me thinking Trump couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time!

[Undried Plum]

Chump knows nothing of the oil patch, but his money masters certainly do and they run the show from the background.

They always did, even before the Bush Crime Family became figureheads.

Chump is just the latest in a list of crime family beneficiaries to become Emperor.

His German granpappy laid the foundations of that crime family on the proceeds of running a whorehouse in a gold rush.

His pappy make squillions in the building trade in NYC. You don't do that without the backing and support of the 'wise guys'.

Kennedy The First made his squillions by bootlegging during Prohibition. He couldn't have done that without the deals he made with the Wise Guys of his generation. He then converted the proceeds of Crime into Power.

The fascist Empire is laced with gangsterism. It's based on gangsterism.

The interconvertibility of Power and Money and Money and Power is the very essence of the fascist Empire.

The Russians are **** amateurs in that respect. Hopelessly outclassed and outgunned and outspent by the gangsters of the fascist Empire.


Appended to add:

Even the very best of PotUSs, FDR, derived his capital and income from the proceeds of crime.

His granpappy made the family fortune from the opium trade in China which enslaved an entire country, yet to be recovered by The Empire. That Battle, not War, is what a crook's accountant would call 'Work In Progress'.