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[US Foreign Policy] is still practicing drone diplomacy

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  • AngelHedgieAngelHedgie Registered User regular
    So, remember that time when it was reported that Trump was looking at buying Greenland? Turns out that was stupider and more Russian than we thought:


    The Danish intelligence has accused Russia of forging a 2019 letter to Senator Tom Cotton, claiming to be from Greenland's foreign minister & alleging there'd be an independence referendum.

    Tom Cotton claims to have given Trump the idea to buy Greenland.

    The author is a reporter specializing in Russian affairs.

    XBL: Nox Aeternum / PSN: NoxAeternum / NN:NoxAeternum / Steam: noxaeternum
  • XantomasXantomas Registered User regular
    What would Russia be trying to gain from doing that, I wonder? It ended up making Trump look foolish, but Russia would normally be working to do the opposite of that.

  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Xantomas wrote: »
    What would Russia be trying to gain from doing that, I wonder? It ended up making Trump look foolish, but Russia would normally be working to do the opposite of that.

    Huh?

  • XantomasXantomas Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    Xantomas wrote: »
    What would Russia be trying to gain from doing that, I wonder? It ended up making Trump look foolish, but Russia would normally be working to do the opposite of that.

    Huh?

    Why would Russia forge a letter from Greenland to a Trumpy US Senator claiming that Greenland is about to become independent? Why do they have to gain from doing that?

    Did they expect that Cotton would tell Trump that and Trump would try and buy Greenland based on that information? As a result Trump looked foolish on the world stage and I can't imagine that was Russia's intent. Russia has always interfered to help Trump for the most part.

  • ProhassProhass Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    Russia isn’t perfect at trolling, my guess is they put a lot of shit out there and some of it stick and some of it doesn’t. They have a lot of targeted campaigns but also a lot of chaff and contradictory noise.

    They wanted trump to succeed but would be happy to see him flail about and embarrass himself if it damages the reputation of the US and makes Russia look like it’s a puppet master. Sometimes they don’t really want to support opposition, so much as show they have influence over actors and look bigger and more powerful than they are.

    They’d happily make trump look like a buffoon as long as the impression is they’re the ones doing the humiliating of him

    Prohass on
  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    Xantomas wrote: »
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    Xantomas wrote: »
    What would Russia be trying to gain from doing that, I wonder? It ended up making Trump look foolish, but Russia would normally be working to do the opposite of that.

    Huh?

    Why would Russia forge a letter from Greenland to a Trumpy US Senator claiming that Greenland is about to become independent? Why do they have to gain from doing that?

    Did they expect that Cotton would tell Trump that and Trump would try and buy Greenland based on that information? As a result Trump looked foolish on the world stage and I can't imagine that was Russia's intent. Russia has always interfered to help Trump for the most part.

    Russia interfered in order to frustrate the interests of America and other foreign powers that are challengers to Russia's own ambitions.

    Trump was different in that Russia could flatter him into running interference for them. But being nice to Trump was only a means to an end.

  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    Russia doesnt care about Trump. They care about weakening the US so we can't interfere with them trying to reanimate the USSR / Russian empire.

    Trump is a means to an end that they would happily discard or leave hanging if it hurt the US. The only person who thinks Putin gives half a shit if Trump lives, dies, or goes to jail is Trump. As far as Putin is concerned internal turmoil is good.

  • XantomasXantomas Registered User regular
    There's no reason to believe it was targeted directly at Trump I suppose, maybe they were trying to make Cotton look foolish and Trump stepped on the rake instead.

    It's just such a minor rake though. Maybe it is just a raindrop in the greater storm of misinformation they flood us with. No greater plan or purpose or big score.

    I think that Russia cares about Trump in that his victory was a huge boon for them in that it weakened and embarrassed the US so much and even a small chance at US democracy failing or a civil war or something is worth whatever they expend to help him. Back in 2018 and still now when they signal boost the now Trumpcentric right wing fascism here.

    The damage is already done, so it's not like they'd care if he went to prison for tax fraud or something in the near future.

  • GoumindongGoumindong Registered User regular
    Xantomas wrote: »
    What would Russia be trying to gain from doing that, I wonder? It ended up making Trump look foolish, but Russia would normally be working to do the opposite of that.

    A weakened US. But also it’s potential leverage and information

    One of the way Nigerian prince scams work is that they intentionally weed out people smart enough to detect the scam before they have to deal with them personally by making the missive obviously fraudulent. That way you do not accidentally snare anyone who will raise an eyebrow at the second part of the scam. Thus lowering your costs for pulling it off*. So not only do they weaken the US they identify and compromise those dumb enough to become assets.

    * consider that for every person who they catch they have to deal with and this means assigning a real person to work through the scam with all associated risks. If conversion rate is low you will need a lot of people to sort through the returns.

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  • AimAim Registered User regular
    Or they were trying to get someone high in the administration to come out in support of independence for Greenland to weaken Denmark's territorial/water claims in the artic.

  • zagdrobzagdrob Registered User regular
    The GIUK gap has been a major strategic weakness for the USSR / Russia, so undermining relationships between the countries that control it could be the play.

    Although its probably more just throwing everything at the wall and this was a little one that stuck.

  • XantomasXantomas Registered User regular
    Now that's some interesting speculation!

    Maybe it wasn't a rake to be stepped on, but more like bait. But instead of a US Senator or the President publicly crusading for Greenland independence, something that might end up benefiting Russian interests in time, they got Trump talking about how Denmark owes him for protection and should sell him Greenland so he can exploit the resources there and looking like an idiot and getting mocked for it. Trump/Cotton is too stupid for such subtle manipulation.

  • ZibblsnrtZibblsnrt Registered User regular
    I was thinking of Buchanan too, back in the nineties. "Especially nutty Republican says something dumb about annexing Greenland" is a recurring thing and has been for decades.

  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
  • SmrtnikSmrtnik job boli zub Registered User regular

    Or they figured out how to do it themselves and want to make since use of it.

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  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Smrtnik wrote: »

    Or they figured out how to do it themselves and want to make since use of it.

    Or maybe they were in on it from the start

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  • knitdanknitdan In ur base Killin ur guysRegistered User regular
    Secondary headline directly below that one:

    In about two dozen cases, however, the agency can’t rule out foreign involvement, including many of the cases that originated at the U.S. Embassy in Havana beginning in 2016.

    “I was quick when I came in here, I’m twice as quick now”
    -Indiana Solo, runner of blades
  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    How much of that is "Can't rule out" and "So long ago no one can prove or disprove shit"

    As someone who has watched a lot of people go crazy over Official Government Statements about UFOs, I think people tend to read too much into the statement "can't rule out" :P

    I needed anime to post. on
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  • OrcaOrca Also known as Espressosaurus WrexRegistered User regular
    This smells like fodder for the conspiracy thread.

  • I needed anime to post.I needed anime to post. boom Registered User regular
    Well yeah that's where Sammich got the link

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  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    Orca wrote: »
    This smells like fodder for the conspiracy thread.

    If you want to continue the idea that foreign governments have mysterious Bond-villain weapons that can conjure up these symptoms en masse, sure.

    "Foreign involvement" is fearmongering vaguery at its finest. Did the incidents in the UK result from heavy metal poisoning due to old pipes installed by a British plumber? FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT!

    DarkPrimus on
  • GiantGeek2020GiantGeek2020 Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    Orca wrote: »
    This smells like fodder for the conspiracy thread.

    If you want to continue the idea that foreign governments have mysterious Bond-villain weapons that can conjure up these symptoms en masse, sure.

    "Foreign involvement" is fearmongering vaguery at its finest. Did the incidents in the UK result from heavy metal poisoning due to old pipes installed by a British plumber? FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT!

    @Hevach 's explanation in the conspiracy thread does seem the most rational.

    Heavy metal and other water contaminants are pretty prevalent and you really do have to be careful about what you drink. Both inside and outside the US. If the local tap water tastes wrong folks don't fucking drink it if you have any other choice.

  • HevachHevach Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    How much of that is "Can't rule out" and "So long ago no one can prove or disprove shit

    It's largely this. The investigation at the time was half-assed and seemed predicated from the start on the assumption it was a directed weapon of some sort, some sufferers were actually denied testing for heavy metal poisoning. Two people who weren't affected were known to only drink bottled water, and one sufferer was diagnosed by his personal doctor with lead and mercury poisoning. When it started people were just realizing how badly Havana's water was contaminated with lead and mercury. At least one outside group did a lot of work correlating cases globally and found that there was no link to being in a hostile country, a country near a hostile country, or near assets of a hostile country, but there was a VERY strong correlation to being somewhere without reliable access to clean drinking water.

    Years after the fact we can't go back and test the water they drank at the time or the filters they used. And while we can test the sufferers a small group years later many of whom have been moving around the world the whole time isn't going to provide conclusive data.

    Hevach on
  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    A lot of the cases were stuff like "I just flew to India and now my head hurts". It was pretty clear once they put out the general reporting notice the entire thing was going to get kinda silly

    Styrofoam Sammich on
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  • DiannaoChongDiannaoChong Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    How much of that is "Can't rule out" and "So long ago no one can prove or disprove shit"

    As someone who has watched a lot of people go crazy over Official Government Statements about UFOs, I think people tend to read too much into the statement "can't rule out" :P

    My understanding when this all started years ago, it was from an contracted analysts report that was seasoned, but who was professionally referred to in the technical term "Loon". Like he has a history of batshit government reporting and flies under the radar and is ignored. But other loons found his work as legitimizing their nonsense. His grift is effectively similar to Tom Delonge(of blink182's fame) contractors doing "alien ufo research" for the government (It's called 'To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science').
    "TTSA's technology solutions, which leverage developments in material science, space-time metric engineering, quantum physics, beamed energy propulsion, and active camouflage, have the potential to enhance survivability and effectiveness of multiple Army systems," an official TTSA news release read.

    Anyways, every other expert pointed out this was obviously lead poisoning when it first started popping up.

    So a loon said "commie lasers?!?!?!?!?!?!?", got paid for it, and now here we are. Stupidest timeline.

    DiannaoChong on
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  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    Loons feeling justified by loons feeling justified by loons is actually a pretty good description of a lot of the US intelligence community historically

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  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    Clearly it was caused by a ██████ ████, which is now ██████ in the ████████ of the ███████ ██████ ██ ███████

    Lanz on
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  • DarkPrimusDarkPrimus Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    Relatedly to the thread title...

    A massive dam in Syria was on a U.S. no-strike list.

    Tens of thousands people lived downstream.

    When it was bombed, the Pentagon said the US didn't do it.

    A general dismissed even the possibility as "crazy reporting."

    The U.S. did it.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html

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    Intentionally bomb a dam on a list of places you said you would not bomb, drone strike the civilians trying to repair the damage, deny everything. Sounds about us.

    DarkPrimus on
  • JusticeforPlutoJusticeforPluto Registered User regular
    Is that the same Task Force 9 that bombed a crowd of civilians near a river? That's not the first time I heard that name.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/13/us/us-airstrikes-civilian-deaths.html

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    Relatedly to the thread title...

    A massive dam in Syria was on a U.S. no-strike list.

    Tens of thousands people lived downstream.

    When it was bombed, the Pentagon said the US didn't do it.

    A general dismissed even the possibility as "crazy reporting."

    The U.S. did it.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html

    q0o30ikmel8h.jpeg
    yazntmfm4ztb.jpg

    Intentionally bomb a dam on a list of places you said you would not bomb, drone strike the civilians trying to repair the damage, deny everything. Sounds about us.

    Reminder: the official policy of the US is no one from our military or it’s command structure can ever be held internationally accountable

    Unofficial policy is they won’t be held accountable within our systems, either

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  • Styrofoam SammichStyrofoam Sammich WANT. normal (not weird)Registered User regular
    DarkPrimus wrote: »
    Relatedly to the thread title...

    A massive dam in Syria was on a U.S. no-strike list.

    Tens of thousands people lived downstream.

    When it was bombed, the Pentagon said the US didn't do it.

    A general dismissed even the possibility as "crazy reporting."

    The U.S. did it.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/20/us/airstrike-us-isis-dam.html

    Intentionally bomb a dam on a list of places you said you would not bomb, drone strike the civilians trying to repair the damage, deny everything. Sounds about us.

    American foreign policy is one endless murderous exercise in bloodletting that will never be held accountable and forces all of us to share in its sin.

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  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    When this shit does get reported by one of the few officers who has a spine/basic morality, it gets ignored at best and that person suffers consequences at worse. The US military is just a gang of murderers. And just as we refute the "bad apple" argument for cops, we must do so for soldiers. Those who aren't brutally murdering people or actively covering up murders are complicit. If there's no such thing as a good cop, there sure as hell isn't such a thing as a good soldier.

    Even on the left, we tiptoe around this, because the US is so jingoistic, and the troops are sacrosanct. I propose an alternative rhetorical approach: Fuck the Troops. It is well past time that the US military is condemned as a whole, the same way American police are. They are a violent and oppressive institution.

    The special operations forces in particular need to be either imprisoned en masse or coerced into re-education/rehabilitation programs, every story I read about those units (gangs, really) is shocking and disgusting.

    Edit - oh for fucks sake it's Talon Anvil/Task Force 9 again, those are the guys I was posting about in this thread a few weeks ago. They wantonly slaughtered tens of thousands of people during the US's bombing campaign in Syria, so this story isn't surprising. They were the guys who appalled CIA drone assassins with their disregard for civilian casualties. And they were protected by the military hierarchy every step of the way. All of those guys deserve to be brought to the Hague and tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Scum of the earth right there, I put them at about the same moral level as ISIS.

    Kaputa on
  • KaputaKaputa Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    An addendum to my previous post:

    I retract the statement about spec-ops guys needing mass imprisonment. I do not believe in mass imprisonment for anyone. That statement was just a vengeful expression of my impotent rage. You would think after 20 years of reading about the US committing war crimes in various countries, I would grow inured to it, or detached. Instead each one I read about makes me more angry and upset than the last - to be quite honest I sometimes have a hard time dealing with it. And I feel completely powerless to do anything about it. So my anger takes the form of a vitriolic screed like that above. Nonetheless I usually I try to hold myself to a slightly higher standard than "jail 'em all", so I apologize for that. Although the part about Talon Anvil deserving to be tried at the Hague is something I do believe in earnest.

    I stand by my main point in that post - that those of us who care about the lives of others should be more vocal and harsh in our condemnation of the military, and that we should view it as institutionally violent and oppressive in the same way that many of us view the police. And I do believe that every soldier is complicit in this - but an important counterpoint that I left out is that I am also complicit. I mean my taxes pay those guys, if nothing else. Anyway, I could have expressed that point in a less edgy and abrasive manner. Maybe next time I'll wait a bit after reading about war crimes before posting, so that my words aren't coming from a place of helpless fury and despair. So I apologize if my words hurt anyone, I know we do have soldiers and/or ex-soldiers here and I do not have any negative feelings toward them as people.

    Kaputa on
  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    Does it count as regulatory capture when it’s the DoD and military being run by The defense industry?

    Walter Shaub, former Director for the US Office of Government Ethics and current senior ethics fellow at the Project On Government Oversight runs down the list of our nation’s leadership in the DoD and military and their ties to the defense industry:


    It's hard to trust the Defense Department to put the public's interest first when it's consistently run by defense contractors, lawyers & consultants for defense contractors, and shadow lobbyists. This administration is no exception. Here's a depressing list that makes the point:

    These are just top appointees and nominees to Senate-confirmed positions. The list doesn't even include presidential appointees and noncareer (politically appointed) senior executives who don't need Senate-confirmation.

    As they say, "personnel IS policy." Sigh.

    Personnel listed in the thread because it’s too long to quote here

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  • LabelLabel Registered User regular
    Not that I doubt the general thrust of argument, but is there any specific evidence for the ties claimed? Walter Shaub is a name i recognize, but just writing names and companies next to each other is a little tenuous for me.

  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Label wrote: »
    Not that I doubt the general thrust of argument, but is there any specific evidence for the ties claimed? Walter Shaub is a name i recognize, but just writing names and companies next to each other is a little tenuous for me.

    Walter Shaub was the head of the Government Accountability Board. I believe he resigned because Trump removed all of his authority.

  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited January 2022
    Label wrote: »
    Not that I doubt the general thrust of argument, but is there any specific evidence for the ties claimed? Walter Shaub is a name i recognize, but just writing names and companies next to each other is a little tenuous for me.

    Secretary of Defense Austin, for instance, was at both named companies: Raytheon’s Board of Directors and Booz Allen Hamilton’s advisory board, until his assuming the role of Secretary of Defense.

    https://thehill.com/policy/defense/533631-biden-pentagon-pick-could-make-up-to-17m-from-leaving-raytheon?amp

    Christine Wormuth, Secretary of the Army, as Director ofRAND International Security and Defense Policy Center
    https://www.rand.org/news/press/2018/06/27/index1.html

    Etc

    Lanz on
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  • LanzLanz ...Za?Registered User regular
    edited January 2022


    Joe Dunman is a Legal Studies Professor, host of the Heightened Scrutiny podcast and represented the Kentucky plaintiffs in Obergfell V Hodges
    Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I noticed the US government use the phrase “lethal aid” as a euphemism for “arms” or “weapons.” By the very next day, national media adopted the phrase without even using quotes.

    Weapons and ammo are officially “lethal aid” now I guess

    Reminder as always: language shapes perception and thinking

    Lanz on
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  • FencingsaxFencingsax It is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understanding GNU Terry PratchettRegistered User regular
    Nonlethal aid has been a phrase for a very long time

  • Jealous DevaJealous Deva Registered User regular
    That’s hilarious in that it isn’t even a good euphemism. Its like calling them “murder presents”.

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