#Putin’s bounty on US troops | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 2 years

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‘Preferably With a Noose Around Your Neck’

In his February 24 speech announcing his invasion of Ukraine, Putin announced that. “we will…bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”

Echoing Putin’s language, Male State has filled their feeds with pleas for military tribunals. But they have also gone further in calling for executions of Ukrainian public figures. Among the many statements made by the Shvabra channel was a false claim that any members of private military companies encountered by Russian troops “can be killed on the spot without trial or investigation”. They also wished for journalist Dmitriy Gordon and Ukrainian far-right figure Sergei Korotkikh to be summarily executed on the streets of Kyiv. Posts also demanded that the mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi be executed after a military tribunal for stating that Molotov cocktails should be renamed ‘Bandera smoothies’ after Ukrainian nationalist icon Stepan Bandera.

“It’s a shame…” stated a post on Shvabra on the first day after the invasion and referring to Zelensky, “that the last time we’ll see you…will be at a Russian military tribunal, preferably with a noose around your neck.”

Pozdyankov himself boasted on March 1 that the mayor of the city of Chernihiv, in response to reportedly offering a bounty for Russian equipment and soldiers, was “an excellent candidate for the scaffold.” Pozdnyakov had earlier declared, on February 26, that the reason for Russian politicians’ statements about reinstating the death penalty was “the execution of the war criminals from the Zelensky junta.” These words echoed Russian state media use of the term “junta” to describe Ukraine’s democratically elected government.

“It’ll all be over in less than three days,” Pozdnyakov boasted on February 24, the day Russia invaded. Of course, that hasn’t transpired. Russia’s armed forces continue to face fierce resistance from Ukrainians, reportedly taking heavy casualties from a country they apparently expected would see them as liberators.

But Male State’s focus, of course, is always Russia itself. As Putin undertakes increasingly dictatorial efforts to stamp out domestic criticism and discussion of his faltering war effort‚ Male State has urged followers to archive and share information on so-called domestic “enemies of Russia”, even setting up a Kollaborant (‘Collaborator’) Telegram channel that, to Pozdnyakov’s dismay, was shut down after less than a week by Telegram after amassing more than 30,000 subscribers.

“Give the nationalists of Russia a full carte blanche,” Pozdyankov stated hours after the invasion began on February 24, “and we’ll quickly put things in order.”

Pozdnyakov, however, did not have much to say to Bellingcat. The Male State founder ignored our questions about why his channel contained so much antisemitic and violent content. “We are fighting against Ukrainian Nazism. Do you support it?” Pozdnyakov replied via Telegram. He then sent a video of a pro-Russian protest he said was from Podgorica, Montenegro.

Male State: The Russian Online Hate Group Backing Putin’s War

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robertreich · 4 years

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youtube

Trump’s 2020 Election Strategy in 25 Steps

Trump will do anything to be re-elected. His opponents are limited because they believe in democracy. Trump has no limits because he doesn’t.

Here’s Trump’s re-election playbook, in 25 simple steps:

1. Declare yourself above the law.

2. Use racist fearmongering. Demand “law and order” and describe protesters as “thugs”, “lowlife” and “rioters and looters”. Describe Covid-19 as “Kung-Flu”. Retweet posts from white supremacists. In your campaign ads, use a symbol associated with Nazis.

3. Appoint an attorney general more loyal to you than to America, and politicize the Department of Justice so it’s lenient on your loyalists and comes down hard on your enemies. Have it lighten the sentence of a crony convicted of lying under oath. Order investigations of industries you dislike.

4. Fire US attorneys who are investigating you.

5. Fire independent inspectors general who are looking into what you’ve done. Crush any whistleblowers you find.

6. Demean and ignore the intelligence community. Appoint a director of national intelligence more loyal to you than to America. Demand that the head of the FBI pledge loyalty to you.

7. Pack the federal courts with judges and justices more loyal to you than to the constitution.

8. Politicize the Department of Defense so generals will back whatever you order. Refer to them as “my generals”. Have them help clear out protesters. Order the military to surveil protesters. Tell governors you’ll bring in the military to stop protesters.

9. Purge your party of anyone disloyal to you and turn it into a mindless, brainless, spineless cult.

10. Get rid of accumulated experience and expertise in government. Demean career public servants. Hollow out the state department, the Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, and public health.

11. Reward donors and cronies with bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, government contracts, regulatory rollbacks and plum jobs. Put their lobbyists in charge of your agencies. Distribute $500bn in pandemic assistance to corporations in secret, without any oversight.

12. Coddle dictators. Don’t criticize their human rights abuses. Refuse to work with the leaders of other democracies. Withdraw from international treaties.

13. Create scapegoats. Demonize migrants and lock up asylum-seekers at the border even if they’re children. Put a white nationalist in charge of immigration policy. Blame Muslims, Mexicans and Chinese.

14. Denigrate and ridicule all critics. Describe opponents as “human scum”. Attack the mainstream media as purveyors of “fake news” and “enemies of the people”.

15. Conjure up conspiracies against yourself supposedly led by your predecessor and your opponent in the last election. Without any evidence, accuse your predecessor of “treason”. Fabricate a “Deep State” out to get you.

16. Downplay real threats to the nation, such as a rapidly spreading pandemic. Lie about your utter failure to contain it. Muzzle public health experts. Urge people to go back to work even as the pandemic worsens in parts of the country.

17. Encourage armed supporters to “liberate” states from elected officials who disagree with you.

18. Bribe other nations to investigate your electoral opponent and flood social media with lies about him.

19. Use rightwing propaganda machines like Fox News and conspiracy theory peddling One America News to inundate the country with your lies. Ensure that the morally bankrupt chief executive of Facebook allows you to spread your lies on the biggest media machine in the world.

20. Suppress the votes of people likely to vote against you. Intimidate voters of color. Encourage Republican governors to purge voter rolls, demand voter ID and close polling places.

21. Seek to prevent mail-in ballots during the pandemic. Claim they will cause voter fraud, without evidence. Threaten to close the US postal service.

22. Get Vladimir Putin to hack into US election machines, as he did in 2016 but can now do with more experience and deftness. Promise him that in return you’ll further destabilize America as well as Nato. Allow him to put a bounty on killing U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

23. If it still looks like you’ll be voted out, try to postpone the election.

24. If you’re voted out of office notwithstanding all this, refuse to leave. Contest the election, claim massive fraud, say it’s a conspiracy, get your cult of a political party to support your lies, get your propaganda machine to repeat them, get your justice department to back you, get your judges and justices to affirm you, get your generals to suppress any subsequent rebellion.

25. Declare victory.

Memo to America: Beware Trump’s playbook. Spread the truth. Stay vigilant. Fight for our democracy.

#Trump #presidential election #video #videos

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thehalfwaypost · 3 years

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BREAKING NEWS: Trump Said He Was “Totally Going To" Ask Putin About The Russian Bounties On US Troops In February, But He Lost The Election So Now He Can’t

https://halfwaypost.com

#putin #russia #trump #satire #the halfway post

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mudwerks · 4 years

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(via 9 Wildest Answers in Trump’s Jonathan Swan Interview, Ranked)

9. John Lewis will be remembered for skipping Trump’s inauguration

Asked how history would remember the late civil-rights icon, Trump replied, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. I don’t know John Lewis. He chose not to come to my inauguration. He didn’t come to my State of the Union speech...

8. Having many different tests is good

The coronavirus testing system in the United States has been a disastrous hodgepodge. There is no uniform standard, it is difficult for parts of the system to coordinate or communicate with each other, and even people who do get tests have to wait so long for the response that the signal is useless.

7. The only problem with his Tulsa death rally was too few people attended

Swan asked Trump why he would hold a huge maskless indoor rally during a pandemic. Trump’s reply, incredibly, was to boast about the size of the crowd and insist it was twice as large as news reports (and photos) indicated.

6. “The manuals” say you shouldn’t test too much

Trump has repeatedly said he doesn’t like coronavirus testing because it shows how many cases you have, which makes him look bad. This time he attributed this position to undefined manuals and books.

5. The virus cannot be contained any better than it is now

On several occasions, Trump replied to questions about the coronavirus response by insisting the U.S. is containing the virus as well as it possibly could. When Swan points out that 1,000 Americans are now dying per day, Trump replies, “They are dying. That’s true. And you have — it is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it.”

4. Defending Putin’s bounties on U.S. soldiers

This was the first clip Axios released from the interview. In it, Trump denied that Russia is paying bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops, denied that reports of the bounties were in his intelligence briefing (they were), defended Russia for arming the Taliban, and admitted he didn’t even bring the issue up in his last phone call with Vlad.

3. Ghislaine Maxwell might be innocent?

Trump has previously expressed his well-wishes for Jeffrey Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell. “Mr. President, Ghislaine Maxwell has been arrested on allegations of child-sex trafficking,” he asked.

2. Nonsense chart exchange

Trump is attempting to obscure the fact that the U.S. currently has a much worse outbreak than almost any peer country. The method of obfuscation he is trying to use — most likely, that his aides have prepped for him — is to cite the raw numbers of tests performed and the death rate of patients who have coronavirus. This allows him to avoid the fact that the U.S. has far-higher rates of both coronavirus infections and deaths.

1. The Civil Rights Act hasn’t worked out very well

Swan: Lyndon Johnson! He passed the Civil Rights Act.

Trump: Ask, ask: how has it worked out? If you take a look at what Lyndon Johnson did. How has it worked out?

Swan: You think the Civil Rights Act was a mistake?

Trump changed the subject back to his administration and the fact that black unemployment was low. (Before it became very high.)

#tv-prez #gop corruption #uneducated #unwilling to learn #interview #axios #politics #Jonathan Swan

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ignorantsanonymous · 4 years

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Leaked notes obtained by the Telegraph say that when Theresa May asked for Trump to take a strong stand after Russia poisoned Sergei Skripal, Trump replied “I’d rather follow than lead.”

Everybody works for somebody; we all know who Donald works for now. There is no benefit for him in this behavior because it doesn’t help his base or his donors, so he must owe Putin big time for something else. He’s been funded by Russian money since 1984:

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.

► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.

► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)

► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.

► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.

► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.

► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.

► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."

► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower

► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”

► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.

► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. that is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.

► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties tot he Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.

► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnel got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.

► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."

► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.

Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:

► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.

► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. "I don't care, I believe Putin"

► Trump met in secret with Putin the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.

► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.

► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.

► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.

► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7

► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.

► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty

► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.

► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)

► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.

#potus #Trump #donaldtrump #the donald #donald trump #donald j #trumps america #trump taxes #president trump #trump administration #corrupt #corruption #political corruption #corrupt politics

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feelingbluepolitics · 4 years

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"American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops — amid the peace talks to end the long-running war there, according to officials briefed on the matter.

"The United States concluded months ago that the Russian unit, which has been linked to assassination attempts and other covert operations in Europe intended to destabilize the West or take revenge on turncoats, had covertly offered rewards for successful attacks last year.

"Islamist militants, or armed criminal elements closely associated with them, are believed to have collected some bounty money, the officials said.

..."The intelligence finding was briefed to [t]rump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.

"An operation to incentivize the killing of American and other NATO troops would be a significant and provocative escalation of what American and Afghan officials have said is Russian support for the Taliban, and it would be the first time the Russian spy unit was known to have orchestrated attacks on Western troops.

"Any involvement with the Taliban that resulted in the deaths of American troops would also be a huge escalation of Russia’s so-called hybrid war against the United States, a strategy of destabilizing adversaries through a combination of such tactics as cyberattacks, the spread of fake news and covert and deniable military operations.

..."The officials familiar with the intelligence did not explain the White House delay in deciding how to respond to the intelligence about Russia.

"While some of his closest advisers, like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, have counseled more hawkish policies toward Russia, [t]rump has adopted an accommodating stance toward Moscow.

"At a summit in Helsinki in 2018, [t]rump strongly suggested that he believed Mr. Putin’s denial that the Kremlin interfered in the 2016 presidential election, despite broad agreement within the American intelligence establishment that it did. [t]rump criticized a bill imposing sanctions on Russia when he signed it into law after Congress passed it by veto-proof majorities. And he has repeatedly made statements that undermined the NATO alliance as a bulwark against Russian aggression in Europe.

..."[O]fficials spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the delicate intelligence and internal deliberations. They said the intelligence has been treated as a closely held secret, but the administration expanded briefings about it this week — including sharing information about it with the British government, whose forces are among those said to have been targeted.

..."[A]s [t]rump seeks re-election in November, he wants to strike a peace deal with the Taliban.

..."The officials briefed on the matter said the government had assessed the operation to be the handiwork of Unit 29155, an arm of Russia’s military intelligence agency, known widely as the G.R.U. The unit is linked to the March 2018 nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury, England, of Sergei Skripal, a former G.R.U. officer who had worked for British intelligence and then defected, and his daughter.

"Western intelligence officials say the unit, which has operated for more than a decade, has been charged by the Kremlin with carrying out a campaign to destabilize the West through subversion, sabotage and assassination.

"American intelligence officials say the G.R.U. was at the center of Moscow’s covert efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. In the months before that election, American officials say, two G.R.U. cyberunits, known as 26165 and 74455, hacked into Democratic Party servers and then used WikiLeaks to publish embarrassing internal communications.

"In part because those efforts were aimed at helping tilt the election in [t]rump’s favor, his handling of issues related to Russia and Mr. Putin has come under particular scrutiny. The special counsel investigation found that the [t]rump campaign welcomed Russia’s intervention and expected to benefit from it, but found insufficient evidence to establish that his associates had engaged in any criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

..."The disclosure comes at a time when [t]rump has said he would invite Mr. Putin to an expanded meeting of the Group of 7 nations, but tensions between American and Russian militaries are running high."

It's only trump pushing to bring the enemy back into the fold. The other G7 leaders refuse.

Meanwhile, the entirety of elected Republicon officials fought from the beginning, starting with Moscow Mitch, to shield trump's secret dealings with Russia. They have accused Democrats of dirty political "witchhunts" for any investigations, claiming that it's nothing but "hatred" for trump. Every one of the Republicon officials has therefore also worked tirelessly to shield and hide Russia's attacks on our nation. They shielded trump even though they know he also bullied Ukraine, and begged China, threatening American national interests but advancing his own interests, and Republicon power.

Even now, Graham and Barr are working to portray the investigations by the FBI and Mueller as false, to discard all findings implicating trump and Russia. trump's DOJ dropped Flynn's guilty pleas for lying to the FBI and colluding with Russia for trump! The trump/Republicon hand-picked Judge Rao allowed it, and faulted the district court judge for 'inappropriate investigations" of matters before him in his own courtroom!

In terms of the "inadequate" evidence exposing direct criminal conspiracy between trump and his people, and Russia, of course we would have that if the trump criminals weren't hiding it and lying, as criminals do, and as American traitors do.

It appears that Republicons won't stop at enabling Russia to attack our elections. They are now going to bluster perhaps, but let it slide, that Russian spies have set up assassinations of our troops by working with other enemy spies. Because trump wants to stay on Putin's "good" side, for...various additional reasons we still do not know.

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popolitiko · 4 years

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Russia Paid Bounties To Kill US Troops, US Intel Says; Trump Mum:

NYT | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC

Rachel Maddow reviews the details of a New York Times report that U.S. intelligence told Donald Trump in March that Russia was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill coalition troops, including U.S. troops. Trump has yet to respond and instead has advocated for Russia's return to the G8. Aired on 6/26/2020.

youtube

Bounty - The Lincoln Project

Putin paid a bounty to kill American soldiers. Donald Trump knew about it but did nothing. How can Trump lead America when he can't even defend it?

youtube

#Russia Paid Bounties To Kill US Troops #Rachel Maddow #NYT #Bounty #The Lincoln Project

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republicansaredomesticterrorists · 4 years

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marchagainsttrump · 4 years

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Trump in new HBO/Axios interview: It's ok for Russia to kill American soldiers, because Ronald Reagan helped the Mujahideen resist the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s. // Republicans love to cosplay as Super Patriots, but they don't even care about the killing of US troops. - [ https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/29/russia-bounties-biden-blasts-trump-over-putin-call-and-afghanistan.html ]

#MarchAgainstTrump #March Against Trump #Against Trump #Donald Trump #President #Trump in new HBO/Axios i

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tomorrowusa · 4 years

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Yep, Trump’s overseer Vladimir Putin is paying terrorists a bounty to kill US troops in Afghanistan.

That’s not surprising, Putin has been assassinating opponents with polonium and novichok since he rose to power 20 years ago. He probably regards the Soviet Union’s failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s as a great humiliation and is trying to get back at the United States.

Trump was apparently briefed about Putin’s rubles for American blood scheme within the past week.

According to the Times, the Trump administration held expanded briefings about the intelligence assessment this week and shared information about it with the British government, whose forces were also believed to have been targeted.

The newspaper reported that officials thought of possible responses, including beginning with a diplomatic complaint to Moscow, a demand to cease, and sanctions -- but the White House has yet to authorize any action.

Trump apparently hasn’t responded to the Russian provocation. He was last seen at a private golf course in Sterling, Virginia on Saturday.

Trump may be quiet about Putin paying bounties for American blood but the Lincoln Project has already produced a video about it.

youtube

#rubles for american blood #russian bounties #us troops #taliban #afghanistan #vladimir putin #donald trump #golf #stirling va #the lincoln project

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 14, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

Today, President Joe Biden announced that by September the United States will withdraw the 2500 or so troops remaining in Afghanistan. We have been on a military mission in the country for almost 20 years, and have lost 2488 troops and personnel. Another 20,722 Americans have been wounded.

The U.S. invaded Afghanistan a month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—which killed almost 3000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania-- to go after Osama bin Laden, who had been behind the attack. The Islamic fundamentalist group that had controlled Afghanistan since 1996, the Taliban, was sheltering him, along with other al Qaeda militants. Joined by an international coalition, the U.S. drove the Taliban from power, but its members quickly regrouped as an insurgent military force that attacked the Afghan government the U.S. propped up in their place. By 2018, the Taliban had reestablished itself in more than two thirds of Afghanistan.

In the years since 2001, three U.S. presidents have tried to strengthen the Afghan government to keep the nation from again becoming a staging ground for terrorists that could attack the U.S. But even a troop surge, like President Barack Obama launched into the region in 2009, could not permanently defeat the Taliban, well funded as it is by foreign investors, mining, opium, and a sophisticated tax system it operates in the shadow of the official government.

Eager to end a military commitment that journalist Dexter Filkins dubbed the “forever war,” the previous president, Donald Trump, sent officials to negotiate with the Taliban, and in February 2020 the U.S. agreed to withdraw all U.S. troops, along with North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies, by May 1, so long as the Taliban stopped attacking U.S. troops and cut ties with terrorists.

The U.S. did not include the Afghan government in the talks that led to the deal, leaving it to negotiate its own terms with the Taliban after the U.S. had already announced it was heading home. Observers at the time were concerned that the U.S. withdrawal would essentially allow the Taliban to retake control of the country, where the previous twenty years had permitted the reestablishment of stability and women’s rights. Indeed, almost immediately, Taliban militants began an assassination campaign against Afghan leaders, although they have not killed any American soldiers since the deal was signed.

Biden has made it no secret that he was not comfortable with the seemingly endless engagement in Afghanistan, but he was also boxed in by Trump’s agreement. Meanwhile, by announcing the U.S. intentions, American officials took pressure off the Taliban to negotiate with Afghan leaders. The Pentagon’s inspector general noted in February that “The Taliban intends to stall the negotiations until U.S. and coalition forces withdraw so that it can seek a decisive military victory over the Afghan government.”

Making his announcement in the Treaty Room in the White House, where President George W. Bush announced the initial strikes on terrorist training camps in Afghanistan in October 2001, Biden reminded listeners that we went into Afghanistan to guarantee that it would not again be used as a base for terrorists to attack the U.S. That goal was accomplished and Osama bin Laden was killed… ten years ago, he noted. But the U.S. stayed on, even as the terrorist threat changed, spreading around the world.

Now, Biden says, he will honor Trump’s agreement—“an agreement made by the United States government… means something,” Biden said—and he will begin a final withdrawal on May 1, 2021. It will be complete before September 11, the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Biden acknowledged the arguments of those who say that Afghan diplomacy depends on the presence of U.S. troops. But, he said, that thinking would keep us there indefinitely. “[W]hen will it be the right moment to leave? One more year, two more years, ten more years? Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollars more above the trillion we’ve already spent?” No one seemed to be able to give a clear answer to what conditions would permit us to leave, he said, which suggests there is no clear mission in staying.

Biden denied that withdrawing would hurt U.S. credibility, saying the opposite is true. “We went to Afghanistan because of a horrific attack that happened 20 years ago. That cannot explain why we should remain there in 2021.” He noted that the parents of some of those serving in Afghanistan served in the same military action. “War in Afghanistan was never meant to be a multi-generational undertaking. We were attacked. We went to war with clear goals. We achieved those objectives. Bin Laden is dead, and al Qaeda is degraded in Iraq — in Afghanistan,” he said, “And it’s time to end the forever war.”

Biden has indicated that the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan is part of a larger plan to readjust our position on the world stage. He made it a point today to say that it is time to fight the battles of the next twenty years, rather than the last twenty, and he called out “an increasingly assertive China” as our main focus. He also called for reinforcing international norms that “are grounded in our democratic values… not those of the autocrats.”

Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an indication that he intends to stop flexing U.S. might, but rather that he is deploying it elsewhere. Last week, the U.S. destroyer the USS John S. McCain passed through the Taiwan Strait and the carrier Theodore Roosevelt entered the South China Sea to “conduct routine operations.” While these are international waters, China strongly objects to foreign naval activity in them, and the U.S. activity there indicates support for a secure Taiwan.

At the same time, Russia is building up its military presence around Ukraine to a level much like that when it invaded Crimea in 2014. Experts speculate that Russia is trying to distract attention from opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s slow decline in a prison camp. It could also be trying to keep Ukraine from making a deal to join NATO or creating a defense pact with Turkey. NATO’s secretary general has warned Putin to cut it out, and the U.S. Navy is apparently sending two destroyers to pass through the straits in Turkey that lead to the Black Sea, on which both Ukraine and Russia sit.

If the Biden administration is showing military strength, perhaps even more powerfully it is demonstrating the nation’s financial might. Today, the administration indicated that it will be announcing sweeping financial sanctions for Russia’s recent cyberattack on the United States, the report that the Russian government offered bounties to Taliban soldiers for killing U.S. troops, and the Russian effort to interfere in U.S. elections since at least 2016.

On April 13, in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden “made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to Russia’s actions, such as cyber intrusions and election interference.” He also called for building a “stable and predictable relationship” with Russia, and proposed a meeting in a third country to hash out “the full range of issues facing the United States and Russia.”

Finally, Biden’s attention has turned from Afghanistan likely in part because of the rise of right-wing domestic terrorism to its highest level in 25 years. Combatting domestic terrorism is an imperative part of our foreign policy, for if the U.S. cannot defend democracy at home, it will have no credibility in trying to defend it abroad.

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Quotes #political #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #Afghanistan #Russian #history

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gregador · 4 years

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It’s an American holiday and you damn well better take notice!

Time to celebrate how awful wonderful the US has become. Now when we say ‘Fourth of July’, it means how many family members have contracted or died of Covid-19 in July of 2020.

Fireworks! In Pennsylvania! No, not firecrackers and little bottle rockets, but full-on pyrotechnic extravaganzas in every damn neighborhood, at all hours, landing on your roof, waking and scaring the dogs, aimed at people in the streets, making your PTSD neighbor inject herion, and causing a milquetoast response from the effing legislators who thought it would be fabulous for the state budget. Oh, fireworks!

We’re number one [in Covid-19 cases and death]! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea! Can you feel the brotherhood?

Have you heard about the how everything in the US is for sale to authoritarians of every stripe? Hey, if you can just do the president a favor in the election, it’s all yours. Now that’s cause for celebration.

Winning! Holy eff, we’re so much better off than back in 2016 I can’t stand it. Locally, the nazis and racists have blown up Facebook, they’ve come out in numbers [dozens are numbers, right?] to get a haircut while brandishing their firearms open the county and declare their freedom to spit on everyone while stiffing their restaurant server. But, the George Floyd riots in Erie are the story. I’m still waiting for the EPD to disclose the outside forces that caused all the rioting. Hey, someone ‘asked for directions’ so clearly there’s a faction from LA that started the riots. In the meantime, we’re only going to charge 16 people from Erie.

Russian bounties on American troops…kissing the ass of Putin…acting as if the pandemic is over…never expressing grief or admitting an error…advancing racism…claiming the drop in unemployment is creating jobs…never wearing a mask…suing to destroy Obamacare…causing US citizens to be denied entry to other countries…caging children…vomiting billions to corporations…firing anyone who won’t fawn and promote White House lies, and so much more. Happy 4th, hope you survive the next 6 months! I can’t wait for the election.

#it's the fourth of july and the US has been destroyed by republicans

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