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Trump Is Looking at Plans For a Global Network of Private Spies (vice.com)
David Gilbert, writing for Vice: The White House is reportedly looking at a proposal to create a ghost network of private spies in hostile countries -- a way of bypassing the intelligence community's "deep state," which Donald Trump believes is a threat to his administration. The network would report directly to the president and CIA Director Mike Pompeo, and would be developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince, according to multiple current and former officials speaking to The Intercept. "Pompeo can't trust the CIA bureaucracy, so we need to create this thing that reports just directly to him," a former senior U.S. intelligence official with firsthand knowledge of the proposals told the website. Described as "totally off the books," the network would be run by intelligence contractor Amyntor Group and would not share any data with the traditional intelligence community.
build da wall not spies
The U.S. government is becoming more and more corrupt.
How much does it pay? Sign me up.
Then he's not really doing a good job of directing it, is he?
You know.. If I wasn't a fan of the show. I would swear this has all the makings of the private intelligence agency that john greer started up.. So how long till we can expect samaritan and decima technologies?
Nice deflection there Ivan
I identify as an American, most of my views are central-right, but I have found the US gop to have abandoned my values in an attempt to create a russian-like oligarchy class
So, please take you deceptive spin and propaganda back to 4chan or wherever the hell you came from
Uh, isn't this the same reasoning that led to the creation of the SS in the 20s?
Hello comrade! How's Siberia?
Trump continues to go down the hole to hell further and faster.
America NEEDS mueller to really get on this probe. There is little doubt that Trump committed treason, but now, he is going off the deep end.
THis is exactly how dictators operate and need to be stopped.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You cannot tolerate your president trying to build a power structure outside the one constrained by your Constitution unless you WANT a dictatorship.
He's already tried to bring the FBI and court system to heel (including at least twice now declaring himself above the law), he's expressed an interest in controlling the media to ensure it aligns with his wishes (and taken a few practical steps in that direction), and now he's going to create a new intelligence service that is under his direct control?
Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
Yet they have been corroborated a gazillion times and are, unusually, one of the most trusted sources of relevant information these days. Gonzo style journalism sux at first, but it has a "raison d'etre" that sinks in pretty damn fast.
A nation-state capable private intelligence force? It isn't blackwater, but it sounds like a great way to keep presidential-scale power after the term-limits are done.
This is the making of a secret police agency that doesn't have any oversight from lawful civil authority (courts, Congress). This idea needs to be shut down. Hard.
So Trump wants us to run two completely independent intelligence networks? How is this not insanely wasteful? What happened to those small government principles?
And here is the kicker:
The group reportedly brought in former Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North to sell the idea to Trump.
Their salesman is going to be the poster boy for corruption in the military. The only reason he's not a felon is a technicality, and he admitted his wrongdoing in front of Congress.
I want to believe this is total bullshit. It's coming from Vice, so maybe it's safe to ignore it for the time being.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Who would be stupid enough to do something like this?
Trump can't even keep his mouth shut long enough to save himself from criminal liability or resist to the urge to give Russian government the location of U.S. nuclear submarines.
Any spy who reports directly to trump is a dead man walking.
This is basically a private secret police agency with no lawful oversight from the courts and Congress. Awful idea.
Intelligence gathered by private spies financed by Trump donors, targeting areas like Iran and North Korea
The best "intelligence" money can buy. Would be a shame if the intelligence leads us into an unnecessary war. A real $hame.
This shit is getting absurd, what's next, he's going to try to AirBNB the WH? This idiot needs the gallows. Sorry, no private spy network you dumb orange cunt. GTFO off to prison.
How is this legal? No really, how could this even begin to work. Let's take a simple argument avoiding Constitutional law on which I am no expert but I can't see this passing the sniff test there either... spies like to get paid. The Executive Branch requests a budget and Congress funds what they want. The CIA, NSA, NRO etc have been authorized as expenses by Congress. But a private spy network that is outside Congressional oversight? Does Trump really think that will pass? Remember they need 60 votes in the Senate for that. And I think some Republicans (Rand Paul) might chafe at that.
Both the linked article and its in turn linked source are of dubious integrity, and have highly questionable histories of independent/original reporting. The presentation here at minimum smacks of over-reach and speculation. Our intelligence services - and those of every other country - already do exactly this. So does wikileaks, which is frankly a private intelligence service in all but name. So if the simple story here is "Erik Prince to run privately funded PatriotLeaks" that's a far cry from a US government sponsored "replace the CIA" initiative.
You have been trolled, bro.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Don't announce your spying plans in public! ... hm, he wants us to believe he is founding a new spy company ... hm ...
But, well, I guess it is a trick
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Why are you bringing in the left when it has nothing to do with the article? Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy.
Tired of my customary (Score:1)
The nation with the most powerful army in the world needs to hire mercenaries. The nation with the biggest spy network and arguably the most shady shit in the clandestine operations needs a ghost network of contracted spies. What the hell is going on here? How does this Make America Great Again? Generally there's a hard enough time rooting out double agents in traditional spy networks, why won't this happen here? Why would they report to the CIA boss who has a perfectly good agency working underneath him? Anybody else think this is a terrible idea?
So your "solution" is a private spy network with even less accountability? YOU ARE A RETARDED CUNT.
How am I just now learning that Betsy DeVoss's brother is the Blackwater guy?! Erik Prince has a soul of pure, black, unadulterated evil. This whole thing is so fucking strange. If they think the CIA is that bad, why not fire everybody and hire new people? Is it even legal for the president to have a personal, private spying apparatus? No congressional oversight? No judicial review? Sure seems like a unconstitutional and unconscionable idea to me!
lol, then the whole freaking country has been trolled and it is time to do something about it beyond dismissing it is harmless
> Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy
It is not valid, but it's been pretty effective for about a year so far.
Communism and free gender reassignment surgeries for children starting at age 5.
Well the CIA did kill 10,000s of people, not soldiers, but women, children and elderly in Vietnam. They wiped out entire villages in the middle of the night.
This isn't a right or left thing, this is fact. The CIA has their own worldly agenda, apart from the US.
This isn't reform. This is privatization. This is taking an apparatus that is already basically beyond oversight, and putting it under the direct control of an unstable dictator who cannot tell fact from fiction. Just because we think the CIA is bad doesn't mean it can't get worse.
"If the liberals weren't so racist against Russians"
When did being Russian become a definable race?
Ninjas don't carry tic tacs
What could possibly go wrong? While some of the behaviour of the major 5 eyes agencies has been more than just concerning (black sites total surveillance etc), this is worse. In fact this solution displays fractal wrongness, the more you examine it the more levels of wrong you find, the idea is wrong in principle since it removes so many protections against abuse, the implementation looks bad, and anything involving the management of Bacon-bullets Blackwater (now with drugs! and Jesus!) is just going to come out terrible.
I'd ask what he was thinking but he doesn't, lets hope it fails fast.
Everytime I hear that my ears perk up. It's the kind of crazy conspiracy stuff that crazy dictators have used for years to breed distrust in Democracy so they can 'temporarily' supplement it.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Is the US included in those hostile countries?
I really don't know who to believe here - the Vice News source is less than reputable, but this sort of thing is consistent with Trump's outlook and past actions. Blackwater is demonstrably available to the highest bidder. That this scenario can be reported and not be an obvious fake is truly scary.
I havenâ(TM)t done any actual statistical work on this, but it seems like anyone who supports this or starts going ape-shit on âoethe leftâ is posting as an AC. Now why on earth would they do that? Hm...
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
trumps SS will they put the jews in camps?
This has been reported in other, more reputable sources. I don't know why /. went with Vice. Basically, the official line from Trump's people is that there is no way in hell he would agree to this. Seeing as how the guy's sister in in the cabinet, I bet there will be more of this story coming out. My guess is that Trump will tweet about what a great guy Erik Prince is, and what a true patriot Ollie North is, and that the CIA cannot be trusted. I guess we can't really guess what the Angry Cheeto will tweet until Fox and Friends comes out with their version of the story, though.
The same time Mexicans and Muslims did.
You don't have to be liberal to have a moral problem with assassination of foreign leaders.
Any sane person who complains about American intelligence agencies is going to focus on the the lack of oversight and accountability. The transparency and accountability will be far, far worse for private intelligence service that reports only to the President.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Russian isn't a race.
His english not so good. They have him training on Slashdot because of high vocabulary nerds and nobody else goes now there.
I am most definitely not Russian, but I find your comments highly offensive.
Just because slashdot is full of liberals doesn't mean it's a place for politically correct snowflakes like yourself.
Have you tried FARK? That's another dying 2000s website and they go well out of their way to accommodate emotionally handicapped paid posters. Be they Slav, Indian, Chinese, or Pinoy. FARK is a safe and inclusive place for paid shills of all colors and nationalities!
It seems like it would be cheaper and we'd settle a lot of this shit for at least 50 years, maybe longer.
...If the liberals weren't so racist against Russians
"Russian" in this context is a nationality. While "Race" was once used to distinguish people by language, location or politics, that custom disappeared several hundred years ago. Perhaps the gulag's educational system has not kept up?
Sidenote: when I was a kid I was bombarded with talk about them "Ruskies" and "Commies" from hard-core Republican adults. They wished that General George Patton had continued fighting at the end of WW II and leveled Moscow.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Since when did NeoConservative NAZI-Republican TRAITORS give a fuck-all about RACISM, lest of all RUSSIANS? Did these idiots forgot who they were pretending to be AGAIN? Wow simple bitches.
Impeach impeach impeach! Get that crazy fucker outta there! 8-(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"angry Cheetos guy" - This :))) This is why I wish I had mod points right now. But no, I don't follow Trump's Twitter account and I certainly don't want to hear Fox News version of this: Life's too short to follow everything batshit billionaires say.
I think it's very racist of them to assume you're a slav when all we know for certain is that you're posting from a smoky internet cafe for peanuts in order to support your starving family.
Who will hold this super-secret agency accountable?
because whataboutism is one of the first tactics that the Russian backed trolls use.
Neither are Mexicans or Muslims.
"I want unlimited power as if I was a king, and there are all these checks and balances! I'm just going to call it the Deep State when I'm not given total power."People with jobs don't like it when I appoint superiors with the directive to shut down their department! Wah wah."
When the Russian government started paying people to spread false information globally on the internet.
Dead on arrival.
No way in hell will something like this fly in the USA.
I imagine trump sits in his bed at night, under the covers with his smartphone, and dreams up things just like this as ways to troll the media, so he can point fingers and cry fake news later.
But then again, the more I think about it, the more it seems like this might have been the plan all along. Suddenly all the bananas bullshit of the past year and half starts to make sense when viewed through a "spin up the secret police" filter.
Seriously, if this comes to pass, it's time to start looking at the 2nd amendment solution.... and I don't say this lightly. Once something like this is a thing, people start falling into unmarked vans and black bags.
How far we have fallen.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
Yes, I'm sure all those "private spies" in that network will be totally trustworthy and only take $$ that they have earned...
Here at the FSB we have a thorough Equal Employment Opportunity Policy. Dont you belittle us !
That's what's been missing in the plan for global domination!
The Saudis pay billions to further their cause of Mohammedizing the world.
Last time they started killing Russians, though, Putin razed Grozny. Russians are not naive tools like Americans.
Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
When all of his supporters are too afraid of him and his secret police to speak out against him.
Oligarchy class? Don't kid yourself. Both major parties are run for the benefit of billionaires. They only difference is which particular billionaires benefit.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
... is much better than being with the enemies of your civilization, who have sworn to smoke your out - the Mohammedists.
But alas, you Anglos are corrupt beings and all your values can be bought with a serious amount of Shekels from Riad.
They bought GWB and could kill 4000 Americans without punishment. Instead, GWB dropped their neighbouring nation into the abyss of civil war. Iraq was not Islamist at all. But Iraq once offended Israel and the Saudis.
rather than the 'other party' or even better, a third party.
The badge next to a person's name is more important than either their stated policies or character. Although the policies on both sides tend towards extremism as well, rather than focusing on bipartisan bulletpoints and letting the social movement stuff be decided by the people when they are ready (or not.)
As to this private spy army: Look at who is involved in it Blackwater, Amyntor, the CIA director. This isn't spinning up a new spy network, this is simply taking an existing off the books intelligence network and placing it on the books. Giving legitimacy to an illegitimate network that has probably existed for 10-20 years, perhaps longer. The US has maintained extra-legal military assets outside of the country for 30-50 years, if not longer. Go look up 'Sandwind' I believe they used to be called... based out of Bermuda or the Bahamas. They were a primarily US ex-military mercenary unit that was incorporated off-shore to avoid US legal issues surrounding mercenaries while still being close enough to provide rapid deployment under covert US led and financed orders.
... already?
What could possibly go wrong? While we are at it how about setup a network of privately funded nuclear weapons? We can't trust the bureaucracy in the Pentagon with WMD's.
Russia isn't using the name any more.
these spies will still be loyal to him. Perhaps he can call them the Republican Guard.
17 spy depts that we pay for and he want to create yet another one? That answers only to him?
How far is the batshit allowed to go before he is removed? How many definitions of the word narcissist need to be explained?
How long before he wants to change 'President' to 'Utmost Supreme Leader"?
Your sig here!
You don't think maybe they call Trump a racist because he declared there were many very nice white supremacists?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
> "Russian" in this context is a nationality
This never stops liberals when they want to call someone a racist.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's why I voted straight ticket libertarian. Get some new billionaires in power.
Russia is playing both sides. The Republican party is being destroyed from within by Trump and his redhatters, meanwhile intersectionality is being used to great effect in order to divide the Democrats into smaller and weaker pieces that will fail to come together when it comes time to elect someone who doesn't "represent" their othersexual transracial angelkinness. Stay home, Bernie Bros, wymyn power will win the vote without you!
Honestly, I don't think so. There's a lot of people who have the feeling of "we'll just wait n more years and it'll be over" where n maxes out at 8. And "if it's truly bad enough, he'll be kicked out of office because the system works". Everything else comes across as squabbling as Presidents obviously are insulated from having a lot of effect on the vast majority of peoples lives. Even the effects that are most likely are a byproduct of Congressional action, and Congress is incredibly ineffectual (some would argue by design).
In short, Trump lacks the power to do much of anything by design, and its clear he's being effectively reigned in. Until Trump is doing more than just talking out of his ass--again--there's little reason for most people to really give a shit.
That's a false equivalency. It used to be true that both parties helped the rich donors while placating their voters, but they had core sets of values that they would more-or-less adhere to when push came to shove. There's a huge difference between Trump's "Republican" party and the old Republican and Democratic parties, and it's not and improvement to abandon all sense of truth and decency, eliminate as many checks and balances as possible, call reality "fake news", and lie so much and so blatantly that it almost becomes normalized..
Did you cash your Putin check today, apparatchnik?
That's not why people know him to be a racist.
Of course Dump and his administration cannot trust the CIA. The CIA's mission is to take out enemies of the United States of America. Dump and his entire administration *ARE* enemies of the United States of America. There is no way in hell that a PRIVATE army of spies should ever represent the interests of the U.S. or any other nation on the planet. PRIVATE spies CAN BE BOUGHT... at least, if not more, easily than ones that legitimately work for the government. This idea should be killed by congress and the courts before it gets off the ground... but it probably won't be. :(
Ten years for now, a civil war erupts in the USA, a secret war fought in the shadows. A spy war between the CIA and Trump's GRU. Chaos, confusion, collateral damage. John Powell is a solid American patriot, but he starts to question just who it is he is working for.
Trump's naked plans for a dictatorship, whereby people and agencies swear allegiance to him, bypasses the checks and balances in the system, and does whatever he wants.
Trump wants his own Stazi/KGB system, and doesn't give a fuck about the law or the Constitution.
No wonder he spends so much time sucking up to dictators and other assholes -- he seems to be of the belief he's now the king.
This can't be defended as anything other than a power grab, done by a crooked narcissist. Trump thinks he is the first king of America.
Be afraid of shit like this. He's decided the Constitution doesn't apply to him..
An organization kinda like Sector 7 from the Transformers movies! Maybe they will find NBEs here on Earth.
The Creepy Clown also wants to move the capital of the terrorist, rogue state of Israel to Jerusalem. Trump is a Zionist stooge who is creating conflict in the world instead of alleviating it. I don't know who is worse, Trump or Bush. Neither worked for America's best interests. Come to think of it, neither did O'bummer. The world is going to hell in a handbasket.
As a Trump supporter, It's really more like, if the news media told me the sky was blue, I'd have to go outside and check for myself.
If you want to be able to trust the media again, stop watching Fox News and reading Breitbart.
Hopefully all the "spies" are caught and executed. On Free-per-View TV.
This would teach those immoral American bastards to think twice before acting in such a fashion, and in any event apply the appropriate "cleaning" of which the gene pool is in such desperate need ...
The spy agencies were created, because we as a group needed a way to get information from other groups for our common causes.
Subpoena's are supposed to cover this gap whereas you can subpoena a private company, get private data and turn them into your spies for a minute.
--
"Throw all of the tea over" - Samual Adams
"I could stand in the middle of fifth avenue and shoot someone, and people would still vote for me."
Yes, Trump fuckers, that's the kind of people that you are: Fucking morons. But don't take my word for it. Your Lord Trump himself says so, unambiguously.
How you digusting pieces of trash can still look your children in the eyes, knowing what you've done, is beyond me.
They wished that General George Patton had continued fighting at the end of WW II and leveled Moscow.
Guess they weren't paying attention when the Germans tried that?
Well you certainly do sound like one of those Russians. They object to being called Russian. They seem ashamed of admitting what they be.
It's not even doing that, because it leaves the CIA intact. I wonder who would approve a budget for it? We already know about the corrupt people and thought processes going into this idea.
The White House is reportedly looking at a proposal to create a ghost network of private spies in hostile countries
Since +/- 65% of Americans are hostile to The White House, I'm guessing that The U.S.A. is high on the list
This thread is actually very scary. Half of the population believes in a reality that's completely different from the reality the other half believes in. And they have absolutely no evidence, references, or rationale for believing it. They are just fatalists. It seems the nihilism instilled by our society's materialistic and superficial substance is actually causing mass mental illness.
Why exactly is Trump supposed to be evil, again? Because of a complicated tax reform that no one in the general public really understands?
We really need a new type of forum, for the sanity of humanity. We need facts and arguments laid out for all to see and discuss without a psychotic majority censoring the dissenters. Hopefully AI can give us a chance at this: objectively mapping out ideas and translating them into terms everyone can understand. Imagine a completely neutral moderator that encourages a logical discussion.
Most people would piss on it for being boring. But it's exactly what we need to give birth to the leader class of the future.
My karma was manually wiped by site staff https://slashdot.org/~slshdtisctrldbysjws 18 mod up, 10 mod down = bad karma
why is it whenever Benghazi is mentioned no one ever looks at the fact that a Republican controlled Congress slashed the security budget for the State Department?
I don't know if this applies to Benghazi but what the Republicans normally do is make sure that any spending cuts manifest themselves on the Democrat's watch. They are doing the same thing with the current tax cut. I believe it is called the "Two Santa Clause" strategy. Both parties have a Santa Claus, Republican Santa and Democrat Santa. What the Republicans must do is send in Republican Santa Claus, run up a huge deficit by having Republican Santa promise people massive and popular tax cuts, then defer the financing of those tax cuts until the democrats are in power and force them to shoot their Santa Claus to pay for Republican Santa's largesse. This theory was popularised by a guy called Jude Wanniski back in the late 1970s and the American electorate and the Democrat party are still falling for it, with Obama being the latest victim. Remember how the Republicans screamed their heads off over Obama's policies causing deficits that he actually inherited from the Bush administration? ... that was the Republicans forcing Obama to shoot Democrat Santa to pay for the presents handed out by Republican Santa (and if you don't believe me get a Republican strategy lesson straight from the horse's mouth). Apart from defeating Republican tax cut bills, the only way out of this would seem to be for the Democrats to become just as fiscally irresponsible as the Republicans and continue deferring the spending cuts in some way and dump them in the lap of the next Republican administration. Either that or mount a grass roots revolution, dump their current leadership, read Machiavelli and the Republican playbook, fight back and get massively better at communicating with the electorate but that seems about as likely to happen as a dog laying an egg and that egg hatching into a unicorn.
Rich white republicans don't have a conscious.
Trump just forked the CIA. Sort of like LibreOffice and OpenOffice but with guns.
It's not just the Gulag; there's no shortage of Americans calling Trump "racist" because he purposed a ban on Muslim immigration from certain countries, or because he wants to build a wall between the US and Mexico. This wanton abuse of the word "racist" is quite common.
Or maybe they're not-subtly saying that he's racist and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration because Muslims are predominantly Arab, and proposing to build an ineffectual and costly wall between the US and Mexico to tap into anti-Latino racism?
Seriously, it should be transparently obvious to everyone that Trump is racist because of the things he says and does, but it's not entirely his fault. He did grow up during the era of segregation. It's pretty likely that he was taught at an early age that blacks were inferior to white people. That type of mental damage can be hard to unlearn, and Trump doesn't like ever admitting that he was wrong, so fat chance of a sincere change of heart on his part, especially at his age.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Give the white house a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.
If you give Trump a private army / spy network / whatever, there would be no next president. Do you for one second think that Trump would step down from power if he had a private army? He has been attacking established intelligence agencies, The FBI, the free press, and grabbing power where ever he can. Even Nixon, one of the most arguably corrupt presidents we have ever had took six years to come to a point where he stated that a president cannot break the law because he is above it. Trump is defending his actions in under a year. You give this guy an inch and you will have America's first dictator.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
someone has to say it
Or maybe they're not-subtly saying that he's racist and proposing a ban on Muslim immigration because Muslims are predominantly Arab
Only about 15% of Muslims are Arab.
Also Arab isn't a race, either, so that's a double fail there.
and proposing to build an ineffectual and costly wall between the US and Mexico to tap into anti-Latino racism?
"Latino" also isn't a race. Neither is "Hispanic", any more than "Anglo" is.
Seriously, it should be transparently obvious to everyone that Trump is racist because of the things he says and does
When you have no clue what the words "race" and "racist" mean, I suppose it is. It's also wrong.
He's using Racist in the same context as the liberal anti wallers.
If you want a wall for security you must be a racist because Mexican is a race now.
The CIA sure has a lot of friends here. I wonder why that is.
Women, blacks, Muslims, Mexicans, Democrats, Republicans, Congress, his own appointees, the FBI, ... The white racists are just about the only group he hasn't insulted which in Trump's world means they're best buddies.
Yeah, reminds me of someone who was a proponent of something called "The Big Lie".
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
No Russians here, my dude. We all are Americans being!
You cannot have the development of a "deep state" of permanent career government types who think themselves more in-charge than the people elected by the voters.
Trump and his team have been repeatedly attacked and undermined by these people for 1/4 of his 1st presidential term with people leaking everything up to and including the contents of his phone calls and the very parts of the government responsible for his security and protecting administration communications are instead working to protect the bureaucracy from this president they never wanted and any of the changes he was sent to the White House to implement.
Consider:
The deputy atty gen Rod Rosenstein is still an Obama appointee since the Democrats have delayed confirmantion hearings for Trump appointees for longer than the appointees of any previous president have ever been delayed - this was no accident, it is part of the rejectionism of the political party most-identified with big government.
In response to all the complaints that he was involved as a "surrogate" in the Trump campaign (just like Holder was for Obama), Trump's atty gen Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Trump/Russia investigation, thus leaving the Obama guy (Rosentein) in the driver's seat at justice. No Obama atty gen ever recused despite similar conflicts and Eric Holder was even found in contempt of congress for witholding documents from and lying to the congress to shield Obama in the Fast & Furious scandal (the document hidden have still never surfaced even though under subpoena - they have been smuggled out to the Obama library archives).
Former FBI director Comey was publicly denounced and his firing publicly called for by both Republicans and Democrats for his very public back-and-forth flip-floppery all through 2016 which EVERYBODY thought interfered one way or another in a presidential campaign, UNTIL TRUMP FIRED HIM and suddenly swamp creatures in both parties started screaming that Trump was wrong to fire him. Comey then leaked to the newspaper (something he swore he never did) in a ploy he now admits was designed to trigger the appointment of a special investiagtor - which would be appointed by HIS GUY Rosenstein rather then the recused Sessions. And by a PURE MIRACLE [eye roll] Comey's old pal Bob Meuller was appointed special investigator. Rosenstein gave Mueller an unusually broad license to investigate and contrary to the law governing such investigators, no specific assertion of any law broken by Trump or his Team. In other words, this investigator has no defined task other than "get that guy for SOMETHING!".
FBI guy Andrew McCabe who, former FBI director Comey had running the Hillary investigation, was getting money from Hillary's pal the Virginia governor and long-time Clinton family "bag man" Terry McAuliffe.
FBI agent Peter Strzok, now known to be a hardcore Hillary stooge, was working the Hillary case and helped protect her from prosecution. He made sure the FBI director avoided the language that would have made it totally obvious she had violated the exact language of the federal espionage act. Unusually for the FBI, the statement exonerating her was drafted before the investiagtion even interviewd her and many other witnesses and Hillary was interviewed NOT under oath and without any recording made or even any transcript written, which meant there was no record of the interview and it was thus impossible to use the interview for a "purjury trap". General Flynn was given the normal FBI treatment in his interview and is now in a purjury trap.
Strzok then got assigned to the Trump investigation, and Mueller has been refusing to tell congress anything about Strzok's involvement in either case even though congress has an oversight role here and a right to the information, indeed the law under which he operates is a congressional creation and his funding is from congress.
The President of the US (no matter who he/she is) is in charge of the executive and all these individual people are legally and technically
Right, surely people with different opinions than you are idiots who don't know the meaning of a common word. This must be a very comforting worldview.
The problem should be obvious to you, but you have blinders on. We'll stick to Trump no matter what because whatever is bad about him, you are worse.
That's what the current US administration is attempting to duplicate.
I can't see how this could be accomplished via normal government funding. Even black budgets have some level of congressional approval, literally nobody in congress is willing to write Trump a check for his own private spy agency. The best they could do is hand out some short term contracts, not create their own agency.
BONUS CONSPIRACY THEORY
A "private intelligence agency" could produce some really impressive results for cheap if all they needed to do was launder information from some other intelligence organization funded by a government.
But since this is all politics...who cares, right? Clinton rapes, Franken and Conyers molest, and there is no penalty.
You see, that's the problem. It is all politics. That's why Moore is going to win.
I'm sure his friend, the Little Russian Spymaster, is helping him out immensely with the initial planning.
#DeleteChrome
Maybe the Jesus you believe in is not the actual Jesus of scripture or belief. In fact, he assuredly isn't.
The history of Christianity is very complex and reveals more about the culture of Christians than it does about Jesus.
If Trump wants to be a totalitarian, the "Resistance" enabled it. The same way that the antiwar Left enabled Nixon.
Should have saved those bullets for when it counted instead of doing the full court press upon inauguration.
There's a book out there called "Nixonland" that would be educational on this point.
There's a difference between pointing out what a group \ country's govt has done that has some evidence to back it up and posting an obviously incorrect meme about black people being the root cause of 90% of all crimes from an organization that doesn't exist... Or how muslims are 20% poisoned skittles.
You're right, the term racism has been taken over to mean more than just a specific race. White, for example, is not a race.
Under Trump, "deep state" is code for "rule of law". -- David Frum
"Obama blah blah blah." "BUT BUSH!!!!!111111" Remember?
I'd gladly sign up to be a part of this network. Be afraid.
WHILE THE MOON IS AN ARTIFICIAL ALIEN BASE THAT SPIES ON US. Face it, theres no terrain or chemical composition in common with earth, there aint no goddamn trees there, it has a perfect size and distance to make a total solar eclipse, its massively 1/4 the size of earth, we pretend to scientifically believe that it spins on its axis, and military remote viewers have seen the soul energy of the freshly dead go into a 7-mile tall crystal with a cube
WHILE THE MOON IS AN ARTIFICIAL ALIEN BASE THAT SPIES ON US. Face it, theres no terrain or chemical composition in common with earth, there aint no goddamn trees there, it has a perfect size and distance to make a total solar eclipse, its massively 1/4 the size of earth, we pretend to scientifically believe that it spins on its axis, and military remote viewers have seen the soul energy of the freshly dead go into a 7-mile tall crystal with a cube on top
according to multiple current and former officials speaking to The Intercept.
I've never heard of the The Intercept. Is this some new site that is on the down low? Why is it all of these anonymous sources keep throwing out nothing burgers and horse shit?
Harry Reid said somebody told him Mitt Romney never paid taxes and the news agencies ran with it. Then the fact checkers came along and said that what they reported was true because what they reported was that Harry Reid said somebody said something to him. What that person said was a lie but all the networks stood by their original story cause they was just reporting on what Harry Reid said.
This is fake news. People who get worked up over this have reading comprehension issues and are also stupid.
This is just the logical next step for someone so self-delusional - representing equally delusional and cowardly people - that he actually believes the latest lie out of his mouth, even if it contradicted the one before it.
> You don't think maybe they call Trump a racist because he declared there were many very nice white supremacists?
He actually scolded the white supremacists and had no praise for them at all. You see, this wasn't a thing with just white supremacists on one side, and he pointed out that there were people there who were just fine and weren't racist.
The Birther-in-Chief is NOT racist. Nor is his goal of erasing the n*gger years.
Ok, so how will they fund it? There's not a petty cash fund for creating redundant executive departments. That's a thing to watch.
Oliver North funded the Contras with arms deals. That sounds pretty super-villainous in fact.
-Dave
This company is based in Whitefish, Montana with 4-11 employees. Based in the same small town as Whitefish Energy that had the debacle over Puerto Rico. How much you want to Ryan Zinke is a chum of theirs?
The Waters of the United States issue was a clear power grab by Obama. It doesn't matter where you stand on the EPA. That was clearly a power grab.
And yet for all the slurs and barbs the right has concocted about Obama for no other reason than that he had the wrong skin color, there was a peaceful transition of power when his term was up. What reason is there to form a secret police force, other than to extra-judicially enforce the will of the president and keep him in power? The only reason to form a 'Off the Books' intelligence service is to BREAK LAWS.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
russia isnt a race, but dont let facts get in the way of a good story.
Why would Trump need anyone with intelligence reporting to him. He wouldn't know what to do. I can just see the missions his secret spy force would be going on... Go to China, Find the Leader, See if his daughter is hot, leave a note in her bedroom saying that Trump has YUUUUGE hands... and no troubles down there. Believe me, believe me. YUGE.
Which was a lie as every single person marching in the white supremacist side self identified as worthless scum.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
English is a language you have yet to learn at all evidently.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
that there won't be another Democrat. Ever. Come on, you've got to start keeping up with these things.
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the Republican party. Because once an idea like this is out there that's about the only thing that's going to stop it. I say that not to be partisan (though Lord knows I am) but because this idea was able to be flown in the first place and hasn't completely ended the Rebublican's mid-term elections. Seriously, you've got a party that is supposed to be in favor of limited gov't who's head (like it or not Trump's the president, so defacto head) just came out in favor of a secret police. Either the party cannot stand for that or the party is going to throw in with that. It's too extreme an idea for it to go any other way. And once a party starts trying to get something like this they're not going to stop. To do so would be to admit they did wrong, and the entire thing would unravel if they started doing that.
The trouble with the Republican party is, oddly, Clinton (the Mr, not the Ms). Bill moved the Dems far right to form an alliance of economically right wing and socially left wing to get him into office. It worked, but it left the Republicans without an identity. So they moved right, hard right so they could establish a new brand. They're going to keep going, and this is part of that. The next step is an actual dictatorship. Trump's lawyer has already said he's above the law (e.g. that he can't obstruct justice). And now this. The Republican party cannot survive this. Well, it can, but if it does Democracy in America can't.
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Trump is no Goldwater. Goldwater had some controversial opinions -- a few distasteful ones IMHO, and a lot of sensible ones, also IMHO.
Trump is bugfuck nuts, completely unqualified for office. It is not OK to elect a failed flimflam artist to the office of the US presidency. Don't do that again, OK?
Yet they have been corroborated a gazillion times and are
...the same news organizations that claimed in big bold letters "Trump will never be president" and the same news organizations that said we had to go to war with Iraq because of WMDs.
I understand that this is a very divisive topic that will get some at -1 and some at +5 due to party lines, not the truth, but still...
How many times do you need to be fooled before trusting evidence and distrusting the people that have lied to you?
this is how most democracies and through them empires die. The only difference is we've got a media reporting on it while it's happening. Damned if I can do anything to stop it. I'm knee deep in it. It's all I can do to survive.
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WTF are you even getting on about. You only posted that so you could ragefully call them 'scum.' It makes you just seem stupid to post content-free ranting. Grow up.
You're the same as the crybabies who kept calling Obama a King. Do you have even the slightest idea how government works?
You have extremely well developed ideas about what does and does not constitute racism. I wonder why that might be.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Add that to the list of Trump's mental illnesses.
Must be because I'm a Nazi.
Oh, it's the US that's responsible for that. I suppose that must have been after the Nazis, the USSR, and then Russia had had their turn. Has Pripyat stopped glowing yet?
Does Jack Ryan Jr. work for Amyntor Group? Sounds like The Campus in some of the later Clancy books - off the books, but with a safe full of signed Presidential Pardons with blanks for names to be filled in if needed. Loose cannons with plausible deniability. Too bad (for their sake) so much info has already leaked.
In vain may heroes fight and patriots rave,
If secret gold sap on from knave to knave.
Blest paper-credit! last and best supply!
That lends Corruption lighter wings to fly
Gold imp'd by thee, can compass hardest things,
Can pocket states, can fetch or carry kings;
A single leaf shall waft an army o'er,
Or ship off senates to some distant shore;
A leaf, like Sibyl's, scatter to and fro
Our fates and fortunes as the winds shall blow;
Pregnant with thousands flits the scrap unseen,
And silent sells a King or buys a Queen.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Que?
Private Spies
They're watching you
They see your every move
Private Spies
They're watching you
Private Spies
They're watching you
Watching you
Watching you
Watching you
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
This is obviously and poignantly wrong. We have a huge counter-example right here. The Democratic party supports net neutrality, the Republican party does not. How is that co-ordinated lock step?
It's a game. It involves abusing language, legal interpretation, and complexity. Note how neither party, while in the majority, thought it a wise idea to introduce modern legislation, instead of letting the FCC play 'designed to fail repeatedly' legal interpretation games relating to technology from the last century entirely unlike the internet. Let's start a betting pool on how many years it takes for congress to lift a pen for the matter.
Free Speech. Servers are where that power resides.
Gestapo much?
It's the prosperity gospel. The basic premise is that there is an all-good, interventionist, God, therefore the people that good things happen to must be good people, and the people that bad things happen to must be bad people. Unless, of course, bad things are happening to you or me, then it's God testing our greatness. The corollary is, of course, that taxes on rich people are inherently unjust because rich people are doing good while taxes on the poor are just what those sick depraved perverts deserve.
It's a truly sickening perversion of Christianity.
There have been worse. Pedophile priests, KKK lynchings, etc. Religion has always been in the mind of the conceiver. The first lesson I learned as a christian was the diversity (often in extreme opposition to one another) of various subsects. And of course the corollary that such was likely true of the other popular religions.
He was there and personally interviewed every single person in attendance. You should like totally trust him and stuff
I remember the good old days when vacuous comments on Slashdot were ignored instead of being modded "insightful". What a wonderful time that was.
... welcome our new Trump Praetorian Guard overlords. Hail President Donald Trump, Lord-God Emperor of EVERYTHING FOREVER!
Because you know his super-secret, accountable-only-to-him will operate EXCLUSIVELY in hostile countries, right?!? Like... America, for example, when enough Americans wake up and realize what kind of... "person," for want of a better word, is "president".
Christ... to think we have at most, (based on a human lifetime never being recorded to exceed about 117 years,) only about 45 more years of Trump being president before whichever of his kids takes over as President For Life. Now might be a good time for anyone not wanting to live under that to get out while the getting's good, because once the border walls go up, (mark my words, there'll be two,) they won't just keep other people OUT.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
Well, if you say so.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
He is personally the greatest risk to American security, and the one most likely to actually attack America since he tries on a daily basis.
Go back to your web brigade training camp - you are inept.
En Russo Sovieto que te pregunta!
When will you Americans learn to spell. It's cheque. FFS
I heard they will name or Gestapo II
holy crapatoly.... we need more spys to spy on the spys spying on...the spys that spy on the spys spying on stuff. Then we can appoint an anti spy guy as head of the spy agency to breakup all the spying and then create a a new agency. Or epa or Dept of Energy or whatever... just appoint the nemises as head and do whatever cuz we cant get along anyway
ignorance, hostility, frustration, impotence, financial/racial/political/sexual/religeous - divide. If you are lost in these things you are easily manipulated. The rest has already been purchased
Well duh, you need alternative intelligence to tease out the alternative facts. I can be a "private spy". All I'd need to do is sit in front of my computer and pull stories out of my ass that align with alt-right conspiracy theories.
Seriously, I read this headline as: "Trump refuses to believe ears and eyes, tries to obtain new ones."
Or I'm smart enough to figure out that "very nice people" don't say to themselves "hey, I think I'll go hang with the neo-Nazi scrum today and try to start a riot" you ignorant fucking douchebag.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Res ipso loquitor
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
This sounds like a very dangerous step.
Their website says "Copyright © 2015 Amyntor Group" on every page.
Also Arab isn't a race, either, so that's a double fail there.
"Latino" also isn't a race. Neither is "Hispanic", any more than "Anglo" is.
When you have no clue what the words "race" and "racist" mean, I suppose it is. It's also wrong.
Race covers all three of those groups, it's a loosely used word, so you can find people referring to the Arab race, Latin race, Hispanic Race, and English race. Only pointlessly blithering pedants try to pretend otherwise, yet their very attempts to create some particular conceptualization of race are even more flawed due to their faulty insistence on a restrictive terminology that is more subject to error than the people willing to accept the loose usage of the term.
Similarly, racist is also well known and established as a term of bigotry with some degree of ambiguity, but people are nonetheless familiar with it.
I mean, really, if you want to lament the ambiguities of the way humans use language, in particular the English language, you can, but you'll just look stupid hanging your hat on these specific examples.
Actually, it is one reason why. Yes, his coziness with white power nazis is one (main) reason, but plenty of people call him racist on a daily basis and specifically reference the Muslim ban and crackdown on illegal immigration.
Iâ(TM)ve gone expat and donâ(TM)t plan on coming back. As an educated person with liberal leanings, I feel like Jew fleeing Nazi Germany â" or a person with a high IQ fleeing s redneck backwater of hate filled brainwashed bigots
Heh. "Smart".
Trump wants to "create a ghost network of private spies in hostile countries "? Isn't that a basic description of Wikileaks?
The Trumpster ought go outsource this to Acme Co. ; It always worked out for the Cayote!
Heh. Plonk
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Ads just went up on the mil channels for data scientists, AI devs, and hackers for his new Brownshirts.
Just remember, this will be on the War Crimes test at Nuremburger. Mnunch Mnunch.
He wonâ(TM)t staff the State Department but wants his own personal spy agency?!?
Remember when he said how much he loves dictators and it would be so easy to be one?
This guy will kill the US unless the spineless republicans in Congress stop him. It is all on their heads!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
Hmmmm. Sounds like someone currently squatting in the White House.
You don't think maybe they call Trump a racist because he declared there were many very nice white supremacists?
In wikipedia/journalism terminology- 'citation requested'. If you really want to discuss the issue, you need to expand it beyond the boundaries of tweet thought constriction limitation, and address the likelyhood of Trump's overarching strategy (not novel, except perhaps for magnitude in this geographic region) of trolling political opponents with thoughtfully worded comments designed to provoke an over-reaction (in political realist terms) of his political opponents.
Now I'm not saying he's *not* racist, but you do have to expand the discussion beyond tweet level thought constriction limitations if you want to really understand the issue.
Way too much power for 1 person using my tax dollars!
Dear Mr Trump: Your insecurity is showing! Try honest, transparent, reasonable actions and see if that gains any new allies!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
The Decline and Fall of the American Empire...
Obama weaponized the IRS, the EPA, the BLM against half of all Americans, and even allowed the Library of Congress to have a SWAT team! Don't return a book late!
Called the "Deep State" these unelected upper and middle level bureaucrats have been hrowing re-bar into the spokes of our government, desperately trying to unseat a duly elected President by any means possible, legal or illegal, and replace him with Obama II.
It has been proven beyond a doubt that the NSA and the CIA have been making ordinary Americans their targets of covert spying for decades, "to protect us". Obama even signed an Executive Order unilaterally declaring that he has the authority to unilaterally declare ANY American citizen a "threat" to America and have them executed without due process, or even a kangaroo court process.
Spy on other countries if you must, Mr. President, but spy on the spies as well. The enemies within the gates are more dangerous than those without.
I thought that government was "By the people, for the people". Here we want a billionaire to bypass the people, to bypass the CIA, and then congress and the senate.
Give it 8 years and the USA will be more of a dictatorship than it already is.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
If "Race covers all three of those groups" because "it's a loosely used word", then the original dipshit saying that people are "racist against Russians" is equally correct. Since, you know, it's a loosely used word.
I understand that there are millions of morons who misuse the word; that does not magically legitimise it.
Everyone's racist, he's just the wrong kind of racist.
There IS a reason they are called "La Raza" after all, whitebread
1, Patton would have been slaughtered by Zukov.
2, Communist policies did not set food prices worldwide such that 1/2 BILLION died of hunger over the 75 years of Capitalist control of food pricing via commodities exchanges (see "maximum value theorem")
3, in fact, the Capitalist Axis powers killed far more than Mao and Stalin combined
Lie
He in fact said there were "Good people" among them
That is the Democrats and Republicans in a nutshell.
Which of them is good and which of them is bad is subjective for the voting constituents, but they only need to slightly change their stances to maneuver weakminded moderates from one side to the other while making it look like 'the people had spoken' about whatever policy they attempt to push.
Sometimes they don't even pretend, until and unless the people rise up against the idea (As can be see in SOPA, TPP, the recent FCC move, etc.) Unless there is sufficient outrage the desired change will go through, or sometimes an undesired change, but one which will be rolled back soon enough during a 'concession' to make some other desired people of legislation look more palatable to the easily manipulated masses.
This isn't rocket science, it is just an understanding of psychological techniques that have been known for ages as methods for the leadership class to lead their flocks.
Sounds like their Priests/Preachers...
Have failed to explain to them the guises the Devil comes in, and how he will lead them astray into Sin.
Shit man, I am an atheist, but I seem to know more of my Bible than the average republican. Of course 9/11 made that obvious, since America didn't do its part as upstanding Christians to 'Turn the Other Cheek' after the towers came down, and instead chose to start an unjust war resulting not only in hundreds of thousands of deaths, many of civilians just as innocent of their government or religious extremists misdeeds as America's civilians were of its military-industrial complexes' foreign colonial and imperialism. It additionally resulted in untold devastation for religious artifacts of Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and even older religions monuments spanning much of the middle east.
I can only hope if any of their gods are real that these things get weighed against all those complacent in these misdeeds and the choice between heaven, hell, purgatory and oblivion is carefully weighed.
Also: props out to crumax, I2P's cyberChristian crazy.. still more sane than our global leaders.
It has been the go to strategy for conservatives and their children since I was a little kid. I didn't really understand the political difference until I got into high school and my US history class turned into a political flagging area between conservatives and liberals, but so many things from my childhood started making sense in that context. Combined with my ultraconservative family members and how they would deflect arguments both when their guy was in office and when 'not their guy' was in office, this strategy has been their go to for at least 3 decades now and maybe longer. While I have also seen it from ultraliberal apologists, it is far more prevalent on the right than the left, but on either end it quickly ends any conversation with a 'firm win' in their smug minds because debating or arguing with them just results in metaphorically bashing your head against a wall, which any rational person will find stupid and probably harmful to their wellbeing.
"Protection Squadron", perhaps (like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., read up on them and see the parallels). It is sadly ironic to see America - who fought against Nazism and Stalinism - now taking the same path as their once enemies.