Pentagon Reports 2000% Increase in Russia Trolls Since Friday (axios.com) 465
An anonymous reader shares a report: Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in Saturday's briefing that there has been a "2,000% increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," following the coordinated strike against Syria on Friday night.
Oh no (Score:2, Insightful)
So we're now calling people who dissent to bombing another country without the approval of congress trolls. Isn't this McCarthyism?
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Informative)
So we're now calling people who dissent to bombing another country without the approval of congress trolls. Isn't this McCarthyism?
Except in this case there's every reason to think that the majority of these people are directly (or indirectly) in the employ of the Russian government and under orders to advance Russian interests by influencing public opinion in the US.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
'every reason': No, it's just the narrative that has been pushed since the bitch blew the election.
We have 'every reason' to be very suspicious of this narrative.
Re: Oh no (Score:2, Interesting)
And the Pentagon is under orders to advance the US imperialistic agenda by manipulating the public too. What's the difference? And why do you trust the info from the Pentagon if you're so concerned about people's motives?
Re: (Score:2)
So is an American reading your trolling supposed to slap his face like Curly and go "Woo woo woo woo woo woo" and start punching things randomly?
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Interesting)
There are all sorts of good reasons reasons to be against military intervention (by the U.S. and Russia) but the troll arguments typically blossom only when the US and EU forces are the ones intervening, and their post-truth framing of the issues is often a tell.
Honestly, the cries of McCarthyism about this issue are also evidence of either being a mark, or in on the con.
Re:Oh no (Score:5, Insightful)
1) Strident
2) Inflammatory
3) Illogical non sequitur
4) Anon
5) First post
Confirmed troll. If I had to wager, I'd put money on alt-right false flagger rather than Russian, but anymore that could be the same thing...
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
"Exactly.
Also why label them trolls? They seem more like people sharing their opinions. Russians are entitled to opinions too. And, as a US citizen, I am entitled to listen to them if I want to."
You overdid the bit a bit, pardon the pun.
Spoken like a true troll.
Re: Oh no (Score:3, Insightful)
"Trolls" and "Russian" are merely the latest in the long list of throw away invectives used to dismiss someone with a different opinion.
Both sides do this, although in the last year, "Russian" has moved to the top of invectives, replacing, "Racist!". But only by a small margin.
Re: Oh no (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Who cares? The question is whether his statements are correct.
Re: Oh no (Score:2, Funny)
I don't know. Are Mexicans?
Good gravy (Score:3, Funny)
So... what???
This obsession is insane.
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
Re:Good gravy (Score:5, Insightful)
The Russians would get more payoff at this point from cyberattacking the electrical grid on Election Day. But those who are in a position to prevent this don't seem to mind the trolling at all.
Re: (Score:3)
As long as they stick to trolling, they can't do much more damage than they already have. At this point, you're either aware of them, or your mind is already in an alternate universe where kids get molested in nonexistent pizzeria basements by a presidential candidate who fits the typical pedo demographic to a "T".
Pretty much this. The effectiveness of the trolling and fake news reached a saturation point, and now is more entertainment than effective. In fact Americans of differing opinion are being accused of being Russian Trolls. Or useful idiots at best.
The Russians would get more payoff at this point from cyberattacking the electrical grid on Election Day. But those who are in a position to prevent this don't seem to mind the trolling at all.
Yeah, but that would be an act of war, and a Casus belli. For all of our faults and rowdyness, That would have more of a uniting effect than the division that the Kremlin and their useful idiots are after. And no one wants Americans to be united or focused. We get
Re:Good gravy (Score:5, Interesting)
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
And I predict a 4000% increase in Pentagon trolls.
Or are we not supposed to acknowledge the fact that the US gov't pays people and wages propaganda wars on the Internet?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
And I predict a 4000% increase in Pentagon trolls.
Or are we not supposed to acknowledge the fact that the US gov't pays people and wages propaganda wars on the Internet?
So can you give me some links to the "Pentagon trolls? Are they like the Russian Trolls? Looking forward to your defense of your thesis and how you identified them as trolls from the Pentagon.
Re:Good gravy (Score:2)
Or are we not supposed to acknowledge the fact that the US gov't pays people and wages propaganda wars on the Internet?
I think this is one of the things that qualifies as "not even wrong". Even if he's correct (I doubt it), I guess he feels that he'd rather be under the influence of Russian Trolls because someone is under the influence of American ones? I don't know really but it's an oddly common point of view here.
Re: (Score:3)
cid=56442457 Here it is [slashdot.org].
It seems that the US story is falling apart fast. The Pentagon claims that all missiles hit their target and the Syrian claim of shooting down ~3/4 of the missiles is nonsense. But there are online videos of missiles being shot down and the Pentagon now says they're going to study the attack. Trump is using the issue of chemical weapons to flip-flop and now refuses to pull out the thousands of US troops who presently occupy/control 28% of Syria.
The Pentagon has bluntly said:
Q: Genera
Re:Good gravy (Score:5, Informative)
So can you give me some links to the "Pentagon trolls?
Sure, here is some relevant reading:
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda [theguardian.com]
Pentagon ramping up public relations offensive: Agency moves to bolster image in face of mounting criticism of Iraq war [nbcnews.com]
U.S. Media Knew Kosovo Reports Were Propaganda [albionmonitor.com]
Meet The State Department Team Trying To Troll ISIS Into Oblivion [thinkprogress.org]
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi -- "The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers..." [washingtonpost.com]
Pentagon Paid for Fake âAl Qaedaâ(TM) Videos [thedailybeast.com]
The Government's Social Media Propaganda Machine [weeklystandard.com]
âoeOn the Offensiveâ: US State Dept. Gives $40M Boost to âoeTroll Farmâ Propaganda Efforts [mintpressnews.com]
How the American government is trying to control what you think [washingtonpost.com]
That should get you started.
Of course, our mass media tends not to emphasize such American skulduggery and propaganda. They'll do an initial report on the issue, but it's rarely, if ever, put into the news loop and repeated over and over and over again. Funny how that works, eh? It makes one think of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who once bluntly said, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."
If you want any more you'll have to search [duckduckgo.com] for it.
Re: (Score:3)
So do you believe those civilians were killed by poison gas from Syrian Government or was it propaganda devised as a smokescreen for Western aggression against a poor, mus-understood Russia?
I want evidence the video is actually real.
In 2016 Amnesty International bluntly stated [amnesty.org.uk], "Syria: armed opposition group committing war crimes in Aleppo - new evidence. The Aleppo Conquest armed groups may have used chemical weapons, as well as ‘hell cannon’ gas canister munitions."
Russia says that the video was faked and they blame the UK and our proxy rebel forces. The US and UK have a track record of lying through their teeth about chemical weapons (e.g. Iraq) and and the US routinely makes up
Re: (Score:2)
So... what???
This obsession is insane.
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
That is baseless prediction. We're talking about observations here, such as the 2000% increase in US media coverage (propaganda?) related to the airstrike since Friday.
Re: Good gravy (Score:5, Insightful)
Conservatives have an annoying habit of ascribing their own motives and behaviour to liberals.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Gosh, a long and extremely lucid comment. We're allowed to do those here?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, it tells us that there are still a few users around with both mod points and sense.
Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative'... (Score:5, Insightful)
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump. I've worked in a lot of rural areas, and the brand of angry conservatism/superlibertarianism is pretty rare among IT/Software guys. But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
Not that folks can't hold that view - it just seems disproportionate, compared to the population.
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The media, hollywood, most comedians, all of the big tech companies, and most social media is 24-7 hardcore anti-Trump for almost 2 straight years now. You see a couple of posts on slashdot that are right-leaning get modded up and all of a sudden it's "wildly conservative" now.
Might want to get your sensitivity meter adjusted just a touch.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The media, hollywood, most comedians, all of the big tech companies, and most social media is 24-7 hardcore anti-Trump for almost 2 straight years now. You see a couple of posts on slashdot that are right-leaning get modded up and all of a sudden it's "wildly conservative" now.
Might want to get your sensitivity meter adjusted just a touch.
Not to mention the story selection and summaries are massively tilted left.
Re:Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative' (Score:5, Funny)
It can't be easy to be make a living as a pro-Trump comedian. The man is a parody of our times.
Re:Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative' (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more the down modding of any dissenting opinions that are critical of trump that are the problem. Even when they do end up with a positive score there are always troll and flamebait mods too.
Insults and innuendo (Score:5, Insightful)
It's more the down modding of any dissenting opinions that are critical of trump that are the problem. Even when they do end up with a positive score there are always troll and flamebait mods too.
Try sorting the dissenting opinions into "insults" versus "insight".
Almost all the "dissenting opinions" here are just simple name calling and deserve to be modded down.
Most of the rest are simple "I think $THE_OPPOSITE", with no background or support.
If you look at comments with that filter, I think you'll find that it's the insults that get modded down.
True insightful posts tend to get modded up.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The post you are replying to has been modded "troll".
Can you explain how it is insulting or of lower quality than yours? There is no insulting language, it doesn't use any name calling, it's a simple statement of opinion in the same manner as yours.
This thread is proof that this happens, and if you examine affected posts you will find it happens all too often.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
That's just probably a you thing. You are the one that is normally name calling and insulting anybody that doesn't agree with you. So people just don't even want to see your bullshit anymore.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Complaining about meta subjects such as comment moderation traditionally gets voted down Slashdot.
Do you think you are exempt from that pattern?
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Because AC comments start below the default threshold many people view at, it is definitely harder for them to get modded up.
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The new metamoderation system sucks. The original one was much more sensible, and likely more effective.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Are you seeing some different version of /. than I'm seeing? Does /. do some sort of tailoring of the scores to the logged in user? Because I've witnessed the opposite. Lots of inane junk like "fuck trump" getting a "+5 insightful", while well-reasoned, thought-out posts that use some logic to defend a particular action of his getting modded as troll, presumably by someone who didn't have any logic to argue back with.
Re: (Score:2)
Please mod parent down for not embracing the liberal agenda of fud and impeachment
Wait - was that post ironic?
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Damn, now I'm jealous. I thought I was pretty fluent at irony but now I see others reached the 'post ironic' stage.
Re: Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever considered that might be the work of Russian trolls?
They're known to play both sides so they can control the dialogue completely.
Re: Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative (Score:5, Funny)
You're on to us. Actually the Russian trolls are the only commenters left on this site. And bots of course. It's a honeypot site for the occasional visitor who strays onto the site. I spend most of the time quarrelling with myself under different ids in the hope I manage to trap a visitor. It's a lot of work.
Re: Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative (Score:2)
So true. Maybe slashdot has aged and become more far right leaning, but I think this hypothesis is more likely.
Re:Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative' (Score:5, Interesting)
noticed.
I'm very liberal and when I post my strong dislike for the R's that are ruining things for all of us, I get modded down very unrealistically, compared to how slash used to be (note, I do have a low enough number to know what slash used to be like in the early days).
IT is not conservative; slash is mostly IT based and yet the R's come here in storm and mod things down in a pretty organized manner.
I'd say there are definitely paid shills and trolls here and have been over about 10 years, now.
I dont' really care; since I realize that this place has long been invaded and ruined. I still speak my mind and the message still does get out. but it is a shame that the invasion of social media has mostly ruined it, as a true communication medium.
Re: (Score:3)
I'd say there are definitely paid shills and trolls here and have been over about 10 years, now.
I dont' really care; since I realize that this place has long been invaded and ruined. I still speak my mind and the message still does get out. but it is a shame that the invasion of social media has mostly ruined it, as a true communication medium.
Or it could be that a larger proportion of reasonable people simply disagree with you.
You must be new (Score:2)
Are you shitting me? The past year and a half we had multiple stories every day criticizing Trump and not related to tech at all. Its only calmed down lately since people started bitching. This site was always more towards the libertarian side.
Re: (Score:3)
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump.
It does seem like the extremes are over represented, but I suspect those are mostly just a few people using sock puppet accounts or AC. For my part, I find that if you arrive at a divisive story shortly after it’s been posted, the comments that have been moderated up disproportionately represent one side or the other. If you come back through a day or so later, things will have settled more in alignment with the general Slashdot groupthink.
I find that I’m much happier with the state of Slashdot
Re: (Score:2)
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump. I've worked in a lot of rural areas, and the brand of angry conservatism/superlibertarianism is pretty rare among IT/Software guys. But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
Not that folks can't hold that view - it just seems disproportionate, compared to the population.
Ryan Fenton
I've always thought that a big part of allowing the trolls to continue was just a matter of tracking them down.
Same with hate speech and some of the more fringe groups. Allowing them on the platform is a great way to keep tabs on them.
Re: (Score:2)
But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
I think you’re still seeing Slashdot as it was when people like you and I joined. Back then, the active membership seemed to be mostly made up of working people in IT-related professions, with a fairly wide range of ages.
Nowadays I see a lot of posts - political or not - which lead me to believe a fair number of our active seven-digit members are young guys in the 16-30 age range who are probably still interested in tech, but may not actually be employed in the field (or at all). It’s a differen
Re:Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative' (Score:5, Informative)
Sold to people with different goals (Score:2)
Been lurking here since the early days. Glad it's not just me seeing this.
I just don't get how slash ended up populated with trolls. Maybe all the reasonable people (like you) have left leaving only the dregs?
I miss the interesting conversations about geeky stuff that used to be the staple here.
I thought that alzheimers post might bring up some knowledgeable folk and interesting insight but it's just more bitching by small minded whiny right wing trolls.
Slashdot was originally run with the goal of excellence, then sold to people with a different goal.
Whipslash has said (in a comment) that he's not interested in making Slashdot popular, but that it's being run for a different reason.
He didn't say what that reason was, but my impression was that he wanted to push a political agenda. He used that reason to counter suggestions that people make for becoming more popular.
So comparisons to what other sites do, or looking at Slashdot historical popularity, come to
Re: (Score:2)
Have you not been to hackaday? Most of the articles are written by the editors about their projects or projects of friends. Most of the links go to to hackaday.io their community project board.
Re: (Score:3)
User-id digit-ist! (Score:2)
Are we to discriminate against people based on their Slashdot user-id digit length?
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Good thing in the United States of America, we don't really care about the popular vote.
Re: (Score:3)
Very few people 'like Trump'. He _was_ just the lesser of two evils.
Re: Yeah, Slashdot has become wildly 'conservative (Score:2)
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He _was_ just the lesser of two evils.
No he wasn't. Just about everything Hillary was accused of supporting he did or did worse. There was just something about Hillary that meant the minority would rather see the greater of two evils as president than have her in the job.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Where's the evidence? (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, I have never heard of Axios until I just now clicked the link to check out this story.
Judging by some of the other articles on their website, I can't tell if they're biased, sneaky, or just plain sloppy.
For example, they are running an article on "How Congress reacted to the strikes on Syria", with the reactions being "for" or "against". They labeled the following from Lindsey Graham as "against":
Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement: "President Trump deserves credit for working with our allies and ordering this strike against Assad...But I fear that when the dust settled this strike will be seen as a weak military response...It's not the type of sustained, game-changing strategy that will lead to Assad, Russia, or Iran changing or reevaluating their strategy in Syria."
I'd hardly label this call for more of a "sustained, game-changing" strategy as being "against" the airstrikes.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't know anything about Axios and I'm not arguing for or against trusting it generally. But...
The story is saying that the Pentagon announced there was an increase in Russian trolling. The Pentagon did indeed announce an increase in Russian trolling. Loads of other news sources have reported the same thing.
You can be annoyed that the Pentagon didn't provide evidence, but it doesn't really make sense to start bad-mouthing Axios for accurately reporting what the Pentagon said without also providing t
Re:Where's the evidence? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
So therefore we can logically conclude that you and whoever moderated you up are Russian trolls. Normally we might not assume that, but there's a 2000% increase in activity and you're now proof of it.
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Yay humans!
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statement that we're supposed to take as fact.
I believe it. In other news there has been an infinite% increase in the amount of US Pentagon reports on Slashdot since Friday. Seriously the Russians better lift their game.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it's not fake news precisely, since the Pentagon spokesperson did, in fact, say this (pretty easy to confirm via google). But yeah, whether what she said is accurate is up in the air. A fair number of other news sources reported on this quotation (I saw a Newsweek article) and it doesn't appear that she offered up any additional details (and as far as I can tell, no news sites have have even guessed at what kind of activity she might have been talking about).
Re: (Score:2)
Source 1 [newsweek.com]
Source 2 [thehill.com]
Source 3 [twitter.com] (video clip from the briefing)
People, before calling fake news, try googling first.
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This is the problem. Just because a number of "news" sites have reported about it doesn't mean that it is not fake, or untruthful.
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I sometimes look over the comments that follow Washington Post Articles. There are many many troll comments there. Like every 3 or so. They only appear in articles mentioning Trump for the most part.
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A 2000% increase in Russia trolls since friday? (Score:5, Funny)
Well, there's no need to panic until it's over 9000%.
Goddam! ... (Score:2)
... not a fucking 3-pointer in the whole thread.
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That theory would work if automated mods were reading all our ...
Fuck!
The trade war America can win (Score:4, Funny)
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We really don't know what that means. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not without knowing the criteria the Pentagon is using to brand an actor as a "troll".
That said, I doubt an increase in activity of that magnitude from state agents is feasible. You don't keep 95% of your workforce slack. So for this to be true, either they hired a lot of people in a hurry, or they moved a lot of their trolls off of other projects onto the anti-America beat. But the thing is, that takes specialized language skills and training for a Russian.
I don't doubt that paid Russian anti-American trolls are working overtime, but I very much doubt they've upped their output by 21x. We are very likely to be looking at an increase in activity by a mix of paid mindfuckers and Internet randos who are doing it for their own reasons.
You can just bring on people for gig work (Score:2)
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Not without knowing the criteria the Pentagon is using to brand an actor as a "troll".
That said, I doubt an increase in activity of that magnitude from state agents is feasible. You don't keep 95% of your workforce slack. So for this to be true, either they hired a lot of people in a hurry, or they moved a lot of their trolls off of other projects onto the anti-America beat. But the thing is, that takes specialized language skills and training for a Russian.
I don't doubt that paid Russian anti-American trolls are working overtime, but I very much doubt they've upped their output by 21x. We are very likely to be looking at an increase in activity by a mix of paid mindfuckers and Internet randos who are doing it for their own reasons.
I think it's two things.
1) Russian has a huge internal propaganda industry, there's probably enough of those folk with English skills that you can reassign a bunch to US/international propaganda when you need a boost.
2) There's a lot of ordinary Russians with English skills who love Putin and love to argue for Russian interests on US site. You have a few internal propagandists stir the pot in Russia and those ordinary Russians decide to spend an evening mixing it up online.
Re: (Score:2)
3) Semi-automated bots.
I'd love to see their methodology (Score:4, Insightful)
It could be literally this simple "Russians curious about what is going on are checking US media and social media"... literally that.
I mean, who thinks they're doing quality control on that number?
PEPSii (Score:2)
aha (Score:2)
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Look. I know it's the evil Russians and all, but do you suppose the Pentagon is the right outfit to cast the first stone?
No I do not! it's really saddening that a public official can lie while on the podium, saying OPCW officials were denied access to the alleged chemical bombing site even before they landed in the country. It's really sad.
Hours later, they did indeed land and were welcomed by authorities. The media only finds time to regurgitate government propaganda, sadly.
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I think the nature of the Russian threat is different now and the level of the propaganda has gone up. One easily forgets that McCarthyism happened in a real cold war environment. There were some valid reasons. Now there has been an escalation which can be better described as 'Russian insubordination' while in the west the Russians are actually not taken seriously as a threat. When the politicians in the west show so little fear to escalate it becomes very hard to avoid a war with Russia. And it will be our
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Nonsense. You user ID says you should remember the level of Soviet propaganda during the cold war.
Granted it didn't get much traction in the USA, outside liberal arts departments at universities anyhow.
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I'm saying the in the cold war the Russian threat was more real so where's the disagreement. If you know Orwell's 'freedom of the press' article you also know that after the war there was too much goodwill and self censorship in the UK towards Russia.
Western level of propaganda now has gone through the roof. We've become a propaganda society. The WMD claims are a good example. Maybe I'm overstating but I would claim that in the last 25 years it has been clear to all regimes that if you have any semblance of
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Rose colored glasses. We've always been a 'propaganda society'. The Soviets were a bigger threat because they had a philosophy, which morons bought into, world wide. The Rusky's now are just another bunch of corrupt money grubbers, led by a corrupt money grubber.
Gulf of Tonkin incident, Bay of Pigs, Pearl Harbor, Sinking of the Main, Shot Heard round the World, Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars etc etc etc. Wars have always included propaganda.
Syria is, IMHO, about maintaining a new Shia/Sunni war
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I agree with a lot here. In the time they had a philosophy and now they don't. Now they're just doing 'realist politics'. I appreciate a few realist political theorists (Walt, Mearsheimer) so I can live with that.
I don't agree maintaining the war is a good outcome, I'm not that cynical. But I agree maintaining the war has been the aim, to the extent the aim was not to overthrow Assad. Now things escalate because as they say 'Assad threatens peace'.
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I know. But the sarin case was wrong and VX is just a guess. The chlorine cases could have happened because they plain industrial ingredients and are so far removed from 'WMD', these cases could also be revisited.
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I agree Russia does play the game well in this instance, but the analysts I pay attention to (and people like Stephen Cohen and Gilbert Doctorow are treated as Russian shills) emphasize the sense of impending doom in Russia. That there is going to be war.
At this time the task for the opposition is still clear: set up another incident. Assad is winning, the population is more and more on his side, the presence of the US becomes untenable. The US is controlling most of the Syrian oil , for what reason again?
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Maybe it's not the Russian government who funds them but actually Assad?
What's the difference? That's like saying maybe the palestinian riots are not funded by Iran, they're funded by the hezbollah.
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fucking disgusting how pro-corporate, pro-cia, pro-pentagon everyone seems to be
Have Comrade Putin confiscated your cheese [npr.org] recently?
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fucking disgusting how pro-corporate, pro-cia, pro-pentagon everyone seems to be
Wait so now the Russian trolls are working against Trump, after getting him elected? Or are they pretending to be against Trump so anti-Trumps suddenly turn into pro-Trumps? I know Russians are great chess players but this Russian Trolls narrative starts to feel like the story arc of a bad soap opera that lasted too long.
Here's an idea. Let's close Facebook, Twitter and all those shitty blogs so we can get back to being lied to only by CNN and Fox News. That way, maybe we'll get real republicans and democra
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Thank you Trump for putting Israel First!
You are clearly trolling, but still, I don't see why it would be a problem to put a civilized allied country first, as opposed to beheaders, suicide bombers and chemical weapon users that all have in common their hatred of democracy and western civilization. Why don't you guys just stop looking for reasons to hate your own culture and instead help the other half of the country who's trying to make America great again?
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Russia and their civilized allied country is Syria
Dude, Syria has never been an allied for Russia, the whole thing is just a big marketing operation to sell Russian weapons to Egypt and Iraq since long time customers like Gaddafi have stopped sending orders. Get real.
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I agree. The current Sunni/Shia stalemate is very well done. We should be able to maintain it until oil is irrelevant to the world's energy picture.
But I won't give too much credit to the Americans. The Sunni/Shia war is 1300 years old, all anybody really had to do was eliminate the dictators and we knew the war would restart. Muslims can't help themselves, comes with being that sure they are the 'right ones'.
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It's not a smokescreen, it's a simple domino effect of bad US foreign policy.
The Iraq invasion was already a bad idea because it was a somewhat stable player in the area, but taking away the power from the pro-Sunni minority and giving it to the pro-Shia majority angered and worried the sunnis, and fueled the growth of Al Qaeda and ISIS, which led to the bloodbath all over the place and especially in Syria.
The USA should just walk away from this mess, it's just too complicated to predict any kind of positiv
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