Trumpaggedon, It Woz The Ruskies I Tell Ya!

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-38463025
More sour grapes from the democrats?

[ichkeria]

What Obama should have done was publish the details of the money Putin has stolen from the Russian people and sequestered in foreign bank accounts. This action, while welcome in itself, begs the question why not expel any Russian spy at the time rather than saving them up as hostages for situations like this.
As it is Trump can just come in next month, huff and puff and even offer to reinstate them. You can't 'unrelease' details of money laundering.
We can only hope Barack will make more effective steps in his remaining weeks: ones less easy to laugh off.
Better than nothing though. SWIFT expulsion is the holy grail we really need for these international outcasts

[ichkeria]

Nicely timed, though, I must say: "trumping" the headlines about the so-called Syrian truce

[mikey4444]

Good on you Obama !

[mikey4444]

Ichkeria...I agree....is a truce sign by a War Criminal worth the paper its written on ?

[ichkeria]

Good on him indeed mikey. I hope though that he will go further. As it is these actions probably hit Trump harder than they hit Putin. If Trump wants to reverse this it'll set him against his own security services. Putting him I'd say in a near untenable position

[ichkeria]

No you can't mikey. It's very good they have some sort of truce but we were near that anyway before Russia intervened to support Assad's genocide.
This is all about embarrassing the US, not about anything humanitarian

[Jackdaw33]

I've heard of conspiracy theories but this one takes the biscuit.

[ichkeria]

It plainly is not a conspiracy theory. Or is your assessment of intelligence selective?

[ichkeria]

Those of you with an unhealthy attachment to a misogynistic in tight golfing trousers should ask yourselves where this muddle is taking you :-)

[Orderlimit]

Off topic, but a two part article in Robert Parry's consortiumnews.com site worth a read about Syria

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/20/the-us-hand-in-the-syrian-mess/

Parry founded the Consortium for Independent Journalism Inc. (CIJ) as a non-profit, US-based independent news service which publishes the website Consortiumnews. In October 2015 Parry was award the I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence by Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism, "for his career distinguished by meticulously researched investigations, intrepid questioning, and reporting that has challenged mainstream media."

[ichkeria]

'Challenging mainstream media' usually means 'spreading propaganda designed to sow doubt and confusion'
Anyway, as you say, rather off topic

[Orderlimit]

It is off topic but did you read the articles

Can I ask whether you still support Turkey now? just your avatar has changed recently

Sorry TTT

[ll_billym]

What does do sour grapes have to do with this?

The origin of the phrase as I understand it is that a party who did not get what they wanted pretends that they never wanted it in the first place.

Don't see how it relates to this at all sorry.

[Orderlimit]

Trump says "we don't need problems with Russia, why can we not get on"

Is he really wrong?

[ichkeria]

Exactly billy. I've pointed this out to Tora a few times but he plainly doesn't want to know :-)
In any case, these allegations were being made long before Trump win the election so being a bad loser is nothing to do with it
This is all part of the myth of Trump as the 'outsider' and I suspect his Putin fetish had little more to it than the idea that 'my enemy's enemy is my friend'
He plainly sees himself as the outsider still but he won't be able to keep that conceit going for long

[ll_billym]

Yes, it's a fact that all governments and organisations spy on each other and use information gathered to execute actions in an attempt to manipulate the world in their favour - acting rationally with respect to their world view.

This is what the Obama administration have just done with this act and what Trump has been doing if he's not totally stupid and will certainly do a hell of a lot more of once in power. No grapes involved.

[ichkeria]

I don't know what Trump will do: I suspect that he'll rein in his rhetoric about Putin. The regime in Moscow is fundamentally inimical to not just America but the civilised world. As I suggested previously, Trump's pro Putin ranting is probably largely just a way of getting at what he sees as the 'establishment' - an attitude which is basically unpatriotic and childish. When he starts reading the intelligence briefs and even he is confronted with the views of sensible Americans in congress and the CIA etc, well, one can but hope

[naomi24]

//Are the bitter Democrats deliberately trying to sour relationships with Russia before Trump is inaugurated? Looks that way to me. //

Looks that way to me too.

[Khandro]

Not long ago, Obama having hacked into Merkle's phones, had full knowledge, if he required it, of even her hairdressing appointments.
Everyone spies on everyone else as long as they can get away with it. But ordering an abstention on the UN vote over Israel on the false grounds, without any proof whatsoever, that Russia had somehow rigged the US Presidential election, is the politics of a deranged mind.