The Mueller investigation.

Discussion in 'Politics' started by Quantum Quack, Feb 17, 2018.

  1. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    The reverse - it's a "collect-a-mole" game.
     
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  3. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    According to local news sources Mueller has issued a subpoena for documents etc from Trump businesses. It is believed to be the first time such a request has been made on Trump.
    Market reaction to the news has been noteworthy.

    Although details of the subpoena were not available, this is the first known instance of Mr Mueller demanding material directly related to President Donald Trump's businesses.
    src: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-03-16/trump-organization-subepoena-sinks-wall-street-enthusiasm/9554388
    Note: One of the reasons I quote Australian sources is to avoid the strong biases often present in USA media.
    The ABC in Australia tends to have a small pro-DNC, anti Trump bias also.
     
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  5. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Sorry , but I was just reading the thread and noted this doozy!
    Just to add to your comment,
    One could say that any restriction on free speech ( self restraint or other ) inevitably leads to a state of deception ( fraud) Whether white lies or black is not the point.

    and true, even in oppressive speech settings, even greater fraud can be present...
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    To me there is no doubt that it was merely a message. I agree!
    The big question though is by whom and for who?
     
  8. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Isn't that a behavioral matter, though?

    How, for instance, would restriction on deception of consequence inevitably lead to a state of deception? I don't see the outcome as a necessary logical outcome, but, rather, a nearly inevitable willful behavioral assertion.
     
  9. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    Yes.. one that can manifest strongly in volition.
    One could suggest that the greater the oppression of freedom ( free speech, political systems etc) the greater the amount of fraud. An inevitable consequence due to human nature being what it is.

    I am unsure what you mean by
     
  10. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Then I am unsure what you mean by:

    Sorry 'bout that.

    (It has to do with connecting the dots of how we arrive at, "fraud exists even without free speech", and reading you wrongly within that framework.)
     
  11. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    I guess it is basically stating that truth is more elusive than we realize. In that just about everything is in some way a deception.

    perhaps another thread....as it is a big topic on its own.
     
  12. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    not true. and yet another distorted presumption your conditioning has set up.
    The insect issue was resolved ages ago and I simply assumed it as common knowledge.
    I am staggered to find that people still hold to your theory... oh well, that is my conditioning speaking...

    As it stands there are no answers to this mysterious event in Cuba.
    If you are able to put aside your insect causation belief for a moment what could you offer as a potential answer?
    ( remember I did say that there were many events globally, the Cuban one being only one, that indicate an unknown/hidden actor may be exercising coercive extortion.)

    ====
    Have you ever considered that the deplorable behavior witnessed over the course of the election by net users exploiting their freedom of speech has led to calls for net censorship and regulation?

    Have you ever considered that you and your ilk only have yourselves to blame for regulations being imposed?

    You may consider them as heroes but really their abuse of freedom has led to some wishing to take their freedom away from them.

    So you can only blame them for the regulation and censorship...
     
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2018
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    No. There is a difference between free speech and the consequences of free speech. Free speech itself is something simple - the state is not allowed to punish people for expressing their opinions. What are the consequences of free speech? This is far from clear, different people have very different opinions about the consequences. Some fear revolutions, chaos, the end of civilization, whatever. Others think that this is the base for a civilized society. The only thing which is certain is that there will be some bad people who will misuse free speech to reach their own evil aims.
    If you have free speech, you have to live with idiots who call this math too.
    The point being? Have you read at least the title of the link? "Cuba says cicadas are behind the “sonic attacks” that injured US diplomats in Havana"
    Fine, some progress. What was the evidence presented, which was not simply an unwanted form of speech? (And the triviality that several people doing the same in a coordinated way.) The question was not at all what such an indictment allows Mueller to do, or if he has enough evidence for this - the problem is clearly that the I do not see why the behavior I have described - I simply do what I do here, together with some friend - is not also "enough to obtain an indictment" against me and my friends. Is this the case? If not, what are the differences, which allowed Mueller to get this indictment, but makes me and my hypothetical friends safe?
    Ok, sorry, this was simply my guess based on your reaction.
    I have not cared at all about this. Why should I care about wild mysterious accusations of the US against an enemy state? Then, reading about the cicadas, I had a laugh, that's all.

    I'm simply not interested to consider wild conspiracy theories in a case where a simple natural explanation has been proposed.
    I have a different theory about the causes. Nobody would care (as they have not cared in the begin of the 90's) if the internet would not have started to endanger the power of the elites. This power was based on the control over the mass media. Initially, only authoritarian governments were endangered, where censorship of the media was open, and the internet has given access to uncensored information. But increasingly the "democracies" with their "free press" became endangered too. Because the people have learned to recognize that behind that "freedom of the press" is as much, simply more hidden, control of information, and started to use internet sources to access alternative information too.

    Once the elites decide that the internet has to be censored, what remains is political technology. Of course, one picks some unsympathetic examples to justify censorship. The other standard method is known as salami tactic. One only adds a little bit more censorship every time, and it is directed only against those evil outsiders. The real everyday application will be, in fact, hit much more than those few, but nobody will cry about this.
     
  14. Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Well, as long as you're just making it up as you go.

    Then again, that amnner of sloth is hardly news.

    Nor is that.
     
  15. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    If you think common insect noises of any kind cause brain damage to people in Cuban hotels you are a fucking idiot.
    https://www.sott.net/article/378291...ndrome-but-theres-no-proof-they-were-attacked
    The noises that were matched to the recordings and the fraction of the injured who mentioned noise (many did not) were from Jamaican field crickets - these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gryllus_assimilis
    The point being that loud insects are the common experience of lots of people, including Americans. And the Cuban crickets that were the source of the noise in the recordings are quieter than many US cricket species.

    And such insect noises are common throughout the US and Mexico and the Caribbean Islands, including such popular tourist areas as Florida and Cuba, without causing brain damage to tourists living in hotels.
    The evidence is not the crime, and has not been made public in detail - for all I know Mueller will introduce shoelace purchases and pizza delivery times as evidence. Read the indictment for part of it, show up at the trial if it ever happens - they are normally open to the public, in the US - if you're curious about the rest.
    If you are going to insist on mistaking the evidence for the crime, there is no way for you to ever feel safe. There is probably no kind of human behavior on this planet that has not been offered as part of the evidence for somebody having committed a crime.
    Meanwhile, the crime is not unwanted speech or anything of the kind. Free speech has nothing to do with it.
    Most authoritarian governments never bothered pussyfooting - China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Russia, just censored what they could when they could.
     
    Last edited: Mar 17, 2018
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    from your link:
    Internet censorship in the Russian Federation is enforced on the basis of several laws and through several mechanisms. Since 2012, Russia maintains a centralized internet blacklist (known as the "single register") maintained by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). The list is used for the censorship of individual URLs, domain names, and IP addresses. It was originally introduced to block sites that contain materials advocating drug abuse and drug production, descriptions of suicide methods, and containing child pornography. It was subsequently amended to allow the blocking of materials that are classified as extremist by including them to the Federal List of Extremist Materials.[1] These regulations have been frequently abused to block criticism of the federal government or local administration.[2][3] A law prohibiting "abuse of mass media freedom" implements a process for the shutting down of online media outlets.


     
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Of course, but the evidence should contain some facts which make it somehow plausible that the indicted person did the crime. In civilized countries, with some resemblance to rule of law, that means, it contains some description of what one thinks the person has actually done, and that doing this constitutes the crime this person is accused of. After this, the evidence that that person has really done what is described.
    Learn how to behave appropriately in a public discussion.
     
  18. sculptor Valued Senior Member

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    8,466
    Did you ever get the feeling that maybe Mueller is a tool of the republican old guard/Koch brothers whose purpose is to oust Trump so that the Koch's boy-Pence could take his place?

    There is this:
    Mueller was even OK with the CIA conducting torture programs after his own agents warned against participation. Agents were simply instructed not to document such torture, and any “war crimes files” were made to disappear. Not only did “collect it all” surveillance and torture programs continue, but Mueller’s (and then Comey’s) FBI later worked to prosecute NSA and CIA whistleblowers who revealed these illegalities.

    Neither Comey nor Mueller—who are reported to be “joined at the hip”—deserve their current lionization among politicians and mainstream media. Instead of Jimmy Stewart-like ‘G-men’ with reputations for principled integrity, the two close confidants and collaborators merely proved themselves, along with former CIA Director George “Slam Dunk” Tenet, reliably politicized sycophants, enmeshing themselves in a series of wrongful abuses of power along with official incompetence.

    from:
    https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entr...obert-mueller-and_us_5936a148e4b033940169cdc8

    Or
    do you trust Mueller completely?
    .................
    the above was written by
    Coleen Rowley
    who is an American former FBI special agent and whistleblower
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    And it does. That's how Mueller got the grand jury to indict.
    That was completely appropriate. There was no "discussion" involved.
    You don't honestly think that claiming outside insect noises are the cause of concussion-level brain damage symptoms in people who stayed in tourist hotel rooms is "discussion", do you?
    Of course not. For starters, he's a Republican appointee - the entire Republican Party and every appointment of it is an organized betrayal of an American's trust.
    But he seems, however authoritarian bred in the bone, to have a sense of honor.
    That's not an "old guard". That's the new reich.
    And Mueller's not a "tool", even if he has powerful allies now for exactly the reason you describe. His ascension depended on Comey's firing, and other factors beyond Koch control.
    Of course once Trump crashed the Party the long term goal was to get rid of him. That was even the justification proffered by some evangelicals for electing him - that he couldn't last, and they were really voting for Pence to assume the office. We saw that on this forum.
    But the monster off its leash is not so easy to get rid of. The Kochs may well have underestimated the Republican voting base, and overestimated the amount of control they had over it. In particular, they probably cannot keep Mueller's investigation in whatever bounds they prefer - and Pence is dirty. They have a lot riding on the midterms, and if Mueller can't or won't keep Pence clear of the crash he may be too crippled to do much or run next even if he's allowed to hang onto office.
    The entire intelligence apparatus organized under Republican Party authority since 1980, and especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, is going to have to be dismantled and cleaned up, at least partly, if the US is to survive as a Constitutional democratic republic.
    The problem is, and has been for a couple of decades now, the rise of fascism and its takeover of the Republican Party. Everything that Party has wrecked since 1980, the damaged machinery of governance, needs rebuilding and restoration.
     
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Ok, EOD.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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  22. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Nope. I get the feeling he's a prosecutor doing his job. If he wanted to "oust Trump" he would be leaking every bit of incriminating information he's gotten.
    Yep. He was a good Republican, not questioning GOP policy.
    Nope. I will wait until he presents the evidence.
     
  23. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Republicans trust him, which is why I guess they appointed him. Trusted enough to run the FBI for 12 years.
     

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