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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.
Then he's not really doing a good job of directing it, is he?
Uh, isn't this the same reasoning that led to the creation of the SS in the 20s?
No, the stink of corruption rises form the attempt to disassemble the US government, parcel the things of value out to private enterprises and shove the cost of paying for this theft off on to the middle-class
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?
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.
This is basically a private secret police agency with no lawful oversight from the courts and Congress. Awful idea.
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!
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..
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.
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
Exactly. And once you realize that both parties do it relentlessly, in coordinated lockstep, and that partisan idiots give their own party a complete pass when they do it, you will see how impossible it is to stop.
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?
You are right that your elected officials don't (usually) hate one another but they aren't in this together, either. The Republicans and the Democrats are competing for the same positions, they may have gentlemen's agreements on what is acceptable behaviour, but they are still die-hard competitors for the same positions. I think, in general, their relationship could be summarised as frenemies, though I think with the introduction of Tea Party and Alt-Right candidates the legislature is moving away from friendships and towards partisan enemies.
This means that government can get away with anything. You don't think the parties start with what they want to achieve and work backwards from there? You don't think that they divide up the unpopular positions to push down the throats of their own supporters?
Yes, I don't think that and I don't think any sane person would. Politicians are political, they have views and beliefs and while they may compromise those beliefs for the sake of winning an election, they are not working together towards a single unified goal. Beyond that, keeping a conspiracy of that sort secret would require levels discretion that clearly the average elected official is not capable of maintaining. You can imagine that everyone running for office in America is secretly a super-villain, but I don't think that delusion is going to help you understand anything.
Yeah, keep telling yourself that elected republicans hate democrats, and vice versa. You silly child. Hate is only good for manipulating stupid people. "Our" elected officials are all in it together.
There's a middle ground between those extremes, and that's where sanity lies. Republican and Democratic officials, generally speaking, don't hate each other, but they aren't working towards the same goals either. There are consistent differences between the positions of the two parties over multiple election cycles. It is true, that there is a lot of similarity between the two parties, but that's because they operate in the same country, solicit money from the same donors and fight for the votes from the same people.
Basically you are arguing that competing tool manufacturers are secretly working together because they produce tools that look very similar. No, the tools look the same to the untrained eye because they have been produced to do the same job with similar technology and similar materials. An expert, however, will be able to tell you if one company produces a better quality tool than the other for the job you want to get done. And just like in construction, in every election you should be trying to pick the best tool for the job.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
"Off the books"?!? In other words, they can spend as much as they want, and congress cannot cut off the funds, even if they are used explicitly for espionage on businesses competing with businesses owned by the Trump mob family?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.