5 ms·

I stopped buying the Russia narrative. It's been going on for too long and the proof and substance vis-a-vis the hours and effort and noise and predictions gene

• mistermann 9y ago
  One (or two?) CNN employees were caught on hidden cam entirely candidly admitting it was for ratings, orders from the top of CNN. Seems fairly consistent with reality, especially the longer it goes on.
• beaner 9y ago
  It is also interesting to me to observe how quickly liberals accept that the promotion of their own ideas is divisive - as long as someone else is to blame for it.
  • tdb7893 9y ago
    Promotion of any political issue is obviously going to be divisive. If everyone already agrees on something then it's not really a political issue.
    • beaner 9y ago
      I don't know. I feel like if people listen and be kind, they can have an influence on others. When you get defensive and militaristic about it, people just close up and get defensive themselves, and that's what causes division.
      • tdb7893 9y ago
        Terms like "liberal" and "conservative" can encompass up to 100 million very different people. Practically even if most people are understanding and kind (which honestly has been my experience) there still will be a huge minority that are militaristic assholes. I think there theoretically could be ideas that people care about but aren't divisive but I'm not sure that realistically it could happen
• SomeStupidPoint 9y ago
  Your comment reads as somewhere between /r/iamverysmart and outright shilling, rather than thoughtful commentary on the situation. You strip out all the nuance, cite the most extreme claims that most people never heard anything like, and seem to be trying to muddy what's a clear and obviously developing narrative. The cherry on top of course: ending in whataboutism.
  • rdtsc 9y ago
    > and outright shilling, Yes I am a paid spy from Moscow, hacking democracy right here from my living room. Getting a check signed by Putin every month, which I use to buy vodka and borscht with. > rather than thoughtful commentary on the situation. Well so far that's the commentary I have, some of it referencing stuff I read on /r/politics and /r/worldnews. I am sorry it is not deeper, but you can help out reply with deeper insights. > The cherry on top of course: ending in whataboutism. And commenting about whataboutism is meta-whataboutism :-) Which is thrown around when hypocrisy is pointed out. Yes, in pure logical argument whataboutism doesn't work and is a fallacy. But it also turns out people don't like hypocrisy. In this case it wasn't just the cherry on top, it was a main ingredient.
• hourislate 9y ago
  I can understand why someone like yourself stopped buying into the Russian narrative. It's more than likely you don';t really understand how the Russians operate. I don't have the desire to educate you on the subject but here is some good reading material from a reddit post about Trump and his Russian mobster friends. https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6grvkp/my_lawyers_got_trump_to_admit_30_lies_under_oath/disodvu/?context=1 https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/6grvkp/my_lawyers... Enjoy...
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • hourislate 9y ago
      It will be interesting watching the Russians tear America apart without ever firing a shot. Just slowly sowing the seeds of chaos and manipulation, taking advantage of American ignorance and naivety. Eastern Europe has gone through this already. The Russians have installed a 5th column throughout many countries and have become excellent at sowing misinformation and manipulating the populations. Democratically elected Governments are struggling to contain the campaigns of Russian Intelligence against them. Money pours in along with agents to fund groups that otherwise wouldn't have a chance. America is in the cross hairs of a massive this Russian Hybrid War. Considering they are dealing with millions of people who couldn't even find Russia on a map it shouldn't take much to incite madness in the streets. By the time they are finished with this there won't be much of the America you or I know. I have the means to run...where you going to go?
• objclxt 9y ago
  I will admit it can be very difficult to get out of the echo chamber, be it on the right or the left. People like Louise Mensch going around shouting "impeachment is coming!" to anyone who will listen isn't helping. But I think it's highly likely that Russia actively engaged in an influence campaign in the US election, and I think that's an opinion shared by many people with direct Russian foreign policy knowledge. It's a modus-operandi of the Russian intelligence apparatus (there's a great interview on NPR's Fresh Air last month with John Le Carré who talks about this). > Now that's some interesting foreign influence worth talking about Why? Bill Clinton's not in power, last time I checked? Whereas the founder of the Donald J. Tump Foundation, another charitable endeavor with even more suspicious looking finances, is. Almost the entire Wikipedia page for the foundation is taken up with "Legal & Ethical Controversies". I think there's room for a reasoned debate of the effect and impact of Russian influence in this past election. Who knew about it? Was it small-scale, or a massive operation? Did it actually have any impact? Going "but look at the Clintons!" rather undermines the discussion. [1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_J._Trump_Foundation
  • imron 9y ago
    > Bill Clinton's not in power, last time I checked And neither is his wife. One does wonder though if the same standards of foreign nations interfering in a U.S. election would have applied to Hillary if she'd been elected. If memory serves me correctly however, anyone mentioning such things before the election was told that the U.S. election can't be rigged/influenced and to suggest so was an attempt to undermine democracy.
  • marknutter 9y ago
    Honestly, with the level of scrutiny Trump is receiving by the types of people who would be willing to edit Wikipedia pages and who are prominent in tech and the media in general, it's completely unsurprising to see such a large "Legal & Ethical Controversies" section. The left is drowning in their own data because criticizing Trump is such a cheap way to get clicks these days. It's what leads to so many duds in terms of scandals, like this Russia nonsense.
  • rdtsc 9y ago
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• 13years 9y ago
  Agree, I keep thinking back to Iraq and WMD's. Something all of our intelligence and even most of our allies all agreed was true. We should be cautious of these narratives, especially when they can lead to hostility between nations. We know some level of covert intervention is attempted all the time. Ironically, we are some of the leaders in doing this to other nations. If we put this microscope on all other nations I'm sure we would find incidents there as well.
• meritt 9y ago
  Your post history indicates that you're not only Russian [1][2], but that you've also been dismissive of the "Russia narrative" since details first surfaced [3][4], and you have a very vibrant history of being vehemently anti-Clinton [5]. You're free to believe whatever you want, but please drop charade. You have a very obvious agenda and you're doing a disservice to the rest of HN with your bullshit implication that you "stopped buying the Russia narrative". [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13797023 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793971 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12793971 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973995 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12973995 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12200173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12200173 [5] https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+rdtsc+clinton https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+...
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • marknutter 9y ago
    Anyone else think it's particularly gross when people voyeuristically root through people's comments history to try to discredit them?
    • sosborn 9y ago
      Not really.
    • zaroth 9y ago
      Yes, definitely. I flagged the comment for that reason. You can disagree with the original comment. You can downvote the initial comment. You can flag the initial comment. Hell, you could even engage and reply to the initial comment. But I don't want to see the personal attack.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  • asnfaiosnfsa 9y ago
• adamnemecek 9y ago
  The fact of the matter is that Manafort met with Russian officials before the election. What was that meeting about do you think?
  • asnfaiosnfsa 9y ago
    Manafort is almost assuredly dirty for something he's done, but it's hard to say if that meeting was related to his campaign work or some loose ends from his past.
  • rdtsc 9y ago
    It looks shady, I heard in the notes there was the word "donor" mentioned. First it was "donation" but it was corrected later as "donor". https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-opens-momentous-term-monday-n805641 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/supreme-court-opens-mom... Then that meeting in the tower with Trump J., was also shady. Those are good to investigate and find out what's going on. But I wish media would back away and do something else instead of insinuating the smoking gun is right around the corner. Because so far, I don't see that meeting or the Black activism ads influencing election results in a major away, and definitely not to the level of overturning them. I think the Russians but also other countries try to influence US elections. US is world power and who runs for office here affects other countries. Yes, Putin in particular didn't like Clinton, since she criticized his election results (and rightly so, there were some out of whack results like 103% of voters voting for him from what I remember), so Russia probably tried harder. But to me from the beginning, focusing on Russia seemed like a PR campaign more than anything. I gave an example with $1M gift to show the level of evidence, that would be good to see. Imagine we found a copy of a $100M check to the RNC which allowed them to canvass 10x the neighborhoods that the Democrats could or buy more air time or FB ads and so on. That would be more believable.
• asnfaiosnfsa 9y ago
  So question, despite the Russia madness appearing to be BS, it did, via machinations by the FBI, give us a Special Counsel which will in all likelihood destroy Trump based on his corrupt business practices unrelated to Russia. I can't decide if this is a good thing or not. The winners won't be a real left party, they'll be mainstream Democrats (centrist-liberal establishment capitalists) assuming impeachment doesn't start a civil war. On the other hand, we'll be bereft an authoritarian racist that is diminishing this country each day he is in office as he dismantles social programs and blows up the climate.
  • rdtsc 9y ago
    > via machinations by the FBI, give us a Special Counsel which will in all likelihood destroy Trump based on his corrupt business practices unrelated to Russia. I am all for shedding light and investigating things. We've had enough corruption, anything that leads to less corruption is good in my book. > The winners won't be a real left party, they'll be mainstream Democrats (centrist-liberal establishment capitalists) That's the deeper loss here. The opportunity cost talking about Russia and how many scoops of ice-cream Trump had. What happened to those people who voted for Bernie Sanders. He was mostly unknown before the election started and then mobilized a huge amount of followers even while the media was blacking him out. Sure most voted for Hillary but what happened to that energy and enthusiasm. I think we are missing out on creating a new party or at least unseating the old guard at the DNC.
• kristjansson 9y ago
  > here is Qatar giving a $1M birthday "gift" to Bill Clinton: It's worth noting that they gave the money to the Clinton Foundation[1], not to some nefarious personal account. [1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-foundation/clintons-charity-confirms-qatars-1-million-gift-while-she-was-at-state-dept-idUSKBN12Z2SL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-foundation/c...
  • rdtsc 9y ago
    Sure but that's the example of the kind of influencing you'd expect to be proportional to the hype that media has been stirring up. Giving money to the "foundations" is how pay-to-play usually works at avoids a more direct route which is illegal.
• kafkaesq 9y ago
  I stopped buying the Russia narrative. You don't have to buy any "narratives". It may be better to simply take stock of the chain of events of what actually happened. In this case - was there, in fact, something like a high-level, coordinated effort on their part to conduct various covert social media shenanigans (as opposed to open campaigns, like buying ads) in the U.S., for whatever purpose? Maybe the effort was ultimately futile and wasteful (like the "Illegals Program" a few years back -- but the more important question - was there such an effort? Available evidence increasingly indicates that, in fact, there was. How much was spent on these adds, how many hundreds of millions? Oh just $100k. No idea where you're pulling those numbers from. But the overall scope easily suggest a budget >> $100k. Did the Chinese buy ads, the French? Wide-scale social media trolling != "buying ads". Without hypotheticals, here is Qatar giving a $1M birthday "gift" to Bill Clinton https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism