Liberal Forum

Trump’s Troll Army Isn’t Ready for War in Syria

The alt-right crowd breaks with the president.

The fractured elements of what was once called the alt-right were unified once more on Thursday night in condemning Donald Trump’s airstrike in Syria as a mistake. Or as Milo Yiannopoulos put it, “FAKE and GAY.”

This loose confederation of Web-savvy, anti-establishment right-wingers formed an important vanguard of Trump’s online support in last year’s election, and its unified opposition to the airstrike forewarns a political downside to intervention in Syria.

While foreign wars tend to boost presidents’ popularity in the short term, Trump risks losing the segments of his base that flocked to his isolationist, “America First” message.

In addition to its nationalist, anti-interventionist and anti-“globalist” views, the alt-right and its fellow travelers have also displayed a marked affinity for Syria’s ally Russia, whose government has returned the love by tweeting images of the alt-right's mascot, Pepe the Frog, from official accounts.

In reacting to the airstrikes, leaders of the movement placed those ideological reflexes over their personal loyalty to Trump.

Most noteworthy were the herculean efforts of blogger Mike Cernovich, who took to the livestreaming application Periscope to rally opposition to the strike in a marathon session that went on for several hours.

Just days after Donald Trump Jr. suggested he be given a Pulitzer Prize, Cernovich tweeted, “Sources telling me U.S. attack in Syria planned for tonight, we must stop! #NoMoreWar,” at 7:40 pm Eastern time, an hour and a half before NBC News broke the news of the airstrike.

During the course of the livestream Cernovich — at times holding his infant daughter Cyra in his arms — blamed a variety of actors for fomenting the conflict.

“They want war. Deep state, all these people want it, man,” he said.

Of the media, he said, “They’re trying to con Trump into believing the people want war.”

Cernovich also expressed his belief that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had been framed for the chemical attack, though he had not decided by whom.

“It was probably ISIS did it to themselves,” he said on the livestream, while also tweeting, “Did McCain give ‘moderate rebels’ (ISIS) in Syria poison gas and Hollywood style film equipment?”

Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes, founder of pro-Trump “Western chauvinist fraternal organization” the Proud Boys, joined Cernovich as a guest via Skype, and shared his skepticism.

To illustrate a parallel from his own life, McInnes recounted a story in which he said a female friend accused a man of rape and McInnes violently confronted the man, only to be convinced by the man’s incredulous response that he was not guilty of rape.

(In a text message, McInnes, who left Vice a decade ago, maintained his skepticism about the source of the chemical weapons attack but signaled support for Trump’s response).

Earlier in the day, alt-right online philosopher Stefan Molyneux also joined Cernovich to condemn the action and question whether Assad was really responsible for the chemical weapons attack.

Other callers offered even more disturbing theories.

One man expressed his concern that the “deep state” had approached Trump and threatened to kill him and his family if he did not get in line and voiced his suspicion that “the whole thing” could be traced back to Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice. “Yeah, could be,” responded Cernovich.

Others who have been associated with the alt-right were similarly dismayed by the news.

Yiannopoulos — who has kept a low profile since losing a CPAC speaking gig and a six-figure book deal over revelations that he once spoke favorably of pederasty — declined to elaborate on a text message describing the airstrike as “FAKE and GAY.”

White nationalist Richard Spencer, whose embrace of hard-core racism has led Yiannopoulos and others to distance themselves from the “alt-right” label, displayed no such reticence, calling the strike “a sad, shocking and deeply frustrating moment.”

“I condemn the strikes,” he said. “I’m going to wait and see. Perhaps Trump is slapping Assad across the nose and won’t go further.

Perhaps Russia was informed of the attacks.

Worst-case scenario: We’re replaying the 2000s: A conservative comes to office on a populist message and becomes a globalist and neocon shill.

Again, I’ll wait and see but I’m prepared to denounce Trump."

Spencer was not alone in vacillating between condemnations of the strike and expressing hope that Trump will not take further action against Assad.

The anonymous alt-right Twitter troll Ricky Vaughn tweeted, “THERE IS NO ENDGAME IN SYRIA if we remove Assad.

No leader that can hold together that country.” He also tweeted, “Hoping this is 88D chess giving Trump political space and an excuse for meeting with and negotiating with Putin.”

Over on The_Donald subreddit, a central hangout for Trump’s alt-right fans, debate raged all night.

One poster attempted to douse the discontent by writing, “Calm the **** down all you concern trolls.

This isnt WWW3 - its trump putting America first.

We need to stop Assad from killing his people. They flee and guess where they are going?”

The /pol/ section of the message board site 4Chan, another hotbed of online Trump support, was similarly torn asunder by the news, with one poster writing, “/pol/ hates Trump now. What happened?”

Meanwhile, internet troll Charles Johnson was not prepared to accept that the U.S. really had struck at Assad, saying that a source at CENTCOM told him the strike had actually targeted the Islamic State.

“I’m very skeptical of any claims made in the media on military matters,” he said. “Especially since the Iraq War.”

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 6:09 pm » wrote: Because the Russians were not trying to help get her elected you stupid jackass.

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 6:59 pm » wrote: The Trump administration trying to unmask the identity of a Twitter user.
Ironic.

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 6:59 pm » wrote:

How Twitter Sued the Trump Administration and Won Almost Instantly

Customs and Border Protection sent a summons to Twitter on March 14th and told them they had to comply by March 13th, and they used an administrative summons, one that the law says is supposed to be used in investigations of goods and imports at the border.

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 9:54 pm » wrote:
Incompetency.

Misty » 02 Apr 2017 8:16 pm » wrote: So you don't believe that Russia did anything to mess with the election?

I would tell you to watch Clint Watt's testimony, but it would be a waste of time.

I have no use for people who don't deal in reality, and who attribute views to me that I don't hold.
I NEVER said that they cost HRC the election.
Like Michael Hayden says, "that is unknowable."

I am not a member of the Democratic party, and I do NOT want anyone to win despite corruption.
That is really ironic coming from a Trump supporter.

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 6:09 pm » wrote:Because the Russians were not trying to help get her elected you stupid jackass.
And she was not the one praising Putin all over the place.

Two facts that are quite relevant when it comes to my concerns about Trump and Russian ties.

On March 9, BuzzFeed reported that Democrats on the committee are worried that their base is expecting dramatic results that simply won’t be coming.

Even some Democrats on the Intelligence Committee now quietly admit, after several briefings and preliminary inquiries, they don’t expect to find evidence of active, informed collusion between the Trump campaign and known Russian intelligence operatives,

though investigators have only just begun reviewing raw intelligence.

Among the Intelligence Committee’s rank and file, there’s a tangible frustration over what one official called “wildly inflated” expectations surrounding the panel’s fledgling investigation.

http://thefederalist.com/2017/04/07/sor ... oing-away/

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 1:36 pm » wrote: So you believe everything that a purveyor of FAKE News tells you.
Good for you.

Misty » 31 Mar 2017 5:11 pm » wrote: I don't care for the fact that Russia tried to **** with our election.
And it seems that TrumpCo. used that fact to their advantage.

Wikileaks Bombshell: Guccifer 2.0 Admits Seth Rich Was DNC Leaker
Jim Hoft Apr 8th, 2017 12:53 pm Leave a Comment

Wikileaks confirms Seth Rich as source of DNC Leak and provides proof–
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.

Wikileaks released a series direct messages from US alleged “Russian spy” Guccifer 2.0 to acress model Robin Young (according to Young).
In the stream of texts the discussion leads to the DNC leaker.
His name is “Seth”…

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.



.

This may explain why the DNC did not allow the FBI to look at its servers.

On July 8, 2016, 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich was murdered in Washington DC. The killer or killers took nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.
Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead” saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case” possibly involving the Clinton family.

Seth Rich’s father Joel told reporters, “If it was a robbery — it failed because he still has his watch, he still has his money — he still has his credit cards, still had his phone so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life.”
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/04 ... nc-leaker/

IMAGINE THE ALTERNATIVES

President Hillary Clinton quietly sent her son-in-law, investment banker Marc Mezvinsky, to Iraq on Monday, adding “winning the war against ISIS” to his growing list of responsibilities, which also include “solving Middle East peace,” “heading the new White House Office of American Innovation,” “managing the U.S.-China summit,” and “ending the opioid crisis.”

The Chinese government, convinced of Mezvinsky’s importance in the Clinton White House, not only has established a “back channel” to him through its ambassador in Washington, it has also quietly encouraged a Chinese state bank to invest in his troubled hedge fund.

While Clinton’s husband has largely stayed out of the White House and remained at home in New York, her daughter Chelsea has also taken a unpaid role in the administration while continuing to run the family foundation and earning five- and six-figure fees giving speeches to corporations with interests in Washington.

Meanwhile, most top sub-Cabinet level positions are still unfilled, though in one piece of unexpected news, longtime Clinton confidante and political adviser Sidney Blumenthal has been removed from his brief stint as a member of the National Security Council.

According to the theory of an infinite universe (as explicated by astrophysicist Brian Greene), somewhere out there it’s statistically possible that there’s a planet just like Earth where the above paragraph is actually happening, and you betcha, the opposition party and media out there would also largely be acting like “This is normal.”

Misty » 09 Apr 2017 12:19 pm » wrote:IMAGINE THE ALTERNATIVESPresident Hillary Clinton...

Misty » 07 Apr 2017 6:09 pm » wrote: Because the Russians were not trying to help get her elected you stupid jackass.
And she was not the one praising Putin all over the place.

How the Clintons Sold Out U.S. National Interests to the Putin Regime
Kremlin-crazed Trumpophobes snored as Hillary and Bill made Russia great again.
By Deroy Murdock — April 7, 2017

The Democrats and old-guard news media (forgive the redundancy) are pathologically obsessed with the hypothesis that Team Trump and Russia rigged last November’s presidential election. If Donald J. Trump so much as played Tchaikovsky’s Marche Slav on his stereo, these leftists deduce, he was in cahoots with the Kremlin.

Meanwhile, the same folks who spy a KGB agent behind every filing cabinet in Trump’s White House are aggressively apathetic about Hillary and Bill Clinton’s policies, decisions, and actions that gave aid and comfort to Russia.

Hillary’s much-mocked “Russian reset” established the tone for the Clintons’ coziness with the Kremlin. On March 6, 2009, during a trip to Geneva, she presented Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov a small, red button. Hillary thought it was emblazoned with the Russian word for “reset.” Her team mistranslated and the button actually read “overload.” Nonetheless, Clinton and Lavrov jointly pressed the symbolic button. And a new era in U.S.–Russian relations erupted.

While visiting Moscow on March 24, 2010, Hillary explained the Reset’s purpose: “Our goal is to help strengthen Russia.”

(edit: Which at the time was not illegitimate)


Hillary said this in an interview with veteran broadcaster Vladimir Pozner of Russia’s First Channel TV network. Pozner is a Soviet-era relic who still communicates in barely accented English. During the Cold War, he popped up on American TV and radio programs and presented the views of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Pozner’s pleasantries made him and his totalitarian bosses seem blandly benign.

The shadiest deal that the Clintons hatched with Russia is called Uranium One. This outrage should mushroom into Hillary and Bill’s radioactive Whitewater scandal.

Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining mogul and major Clinton Foundation donor, led a group of investors in an enterprise called Uranium One. On June 8, 2010, Rosatom, the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation, announced plans to purchase a 51.4 percent stake in the Canadian company, whose international assets included some 20 percent of America’s uranium capacity.

Because this active ingredient in atomic reactors and nuclear weapons is a strategic commodity, this $1.3 billion deal required the approval of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS). Secretary of State Clinton was one of nine federal department and agency heads on that secretive panel.

On June 29, 2010, three weeks after Rosatom proposed to Uranium One, Bill Clinton keynoted a seminar staged by Renaissance Capital in Moscow, a reputedly Kremlin-controlled investment bank that promoted this transaction. Renaissance Capital paid Clinton $500,000 for his one-hour speech.


While CFIUS evaluated Rosatom’s offer, Clinton Cash author Peter Schweizer observed, “a spontaneous outbreak of philanthropy among eight shareholders in Uranium One” began. “These Canadian mining magnates decide now would be a great time to donate tens of millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.”

These included Uranium One’s then-chairman, Ian Telfer, whose donations to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative (CGSGI) totaled $3.1 million. Giustra himself gave $131.3 million to the Clinton Foundation. Before, during, and after CFIUS’s review, Schweizer calculates, “shareholders involved in this transaction had transferred approximately $145
million to the Clinton Foundation or its initiatives.”

Others were less enthused about this deal.
“Russia’s record of transferring dangerous materials and technologies to rogue regimes, such as those in Iran and Syria, is very troubling,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, wrote to CFIUS’s then-chairman, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The top Republicans on the Financial Services, Homeland Security, and Armed Services Committees also signed Ros-Lehtinen’s letter of October 5, 2010.

“We believe that this potential takeover of U.S. nuclear resources by a Russian government–owned agency would pose great potential harm to the national security of the United States,” the letter read, “and we urge the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to block the sale.”

As a CFIUS member, Hillary could have heeded this warning and stopped Vladimir Putin from controlling a fifth of U.S. uranium supplies. America’s chief diplomat and former first lady either welcomed this prospect or was too uncharacteristically demure to make her objections stick.

In either case, on October 23, 2010, within three weeks of that letter, CFIUS approved Rosatom’s purchase of a majority stake in Uranium One.

Thanks to subsequent investments, Rosatom’s share of Uranium One grew to 100 percent by January 2013. Robert Gill of Morrison Williams Investment Management told Canada’s Financial Post: “By doing this acquisition, they can continue to build the company they intended to build, but they can do so without the transparency required by the public markets.”

Rosatom CEO Sergei Kiriyenko crowed just after taking total control of Uranium One, “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20 percent of U.S. reserves.”

A headline in Pravda boasted on January 22, 2013: “Russian nuclear energy conquers the world.”


My old friend Michael Caputo performed public-relations work for Renaissance Capital in 1999–2000. He says it subsequently became “a practical arm of Vladimir Putin.” Caputo was stunned at the speed with which CFIUS approved Rosatom’s purchase of Uranium One.

“In 2010–2011, I ran acquisition communications for Safran Group, the French government–controlled defense contractor which bought the US biometrics company L-1,” Caputo wrote in PoliticsNY.net. “It took us almost two years to gain CFIUS approval for France, an historic ally, to purchase a biometrics firm, not even remotely a strategic asset.” He added, “These two CFIUS approvals were happening at precisely the same time. Safran couldn’t buy a break and was questioned at every turn. Somehow, Kremlin-controlled Rosatom’s purchase sailed through on a cool breeze.”

A strong wind lifted Hillary’s efforts to help Boeing seal a major sale to the Kremlin. She visited Moscow on October 13, 2009. She was there, in part, to boost the American jet manufacturer.

“We’re delighted that a new Russian airline, Rosavia, is actively considering the acquisition of Boeing aircraft. And this is a shameless pitch for Rosavia,” Clinton said at Moscow’s Boeing Design
Center. “The Ex-Im Bank would welcome an application for financing from Rosavia to support its purchase of Boeing aircraft.”

Three days later, according to the Washington Post, “Boeing formally submitted its bid for the Russian deal.”

On June 1, 2010, the Kremlin-owned Rostekhnologii company — mercifully, it’s now called Rostec — had great news for the plane maker: It decided to buy as many as 50 Boeing 737 jets for Russia’s national airline, Aeroflot. Reported price: $3.7 billion.

That August 17, just ten weeks later, Boeing announced a $900,000 gift to the Clinton Foundation to “help support the reconstruction of Haiti’s public education system” after a massive earthquake pulverized the impoverished nation the previous January.

The Clinton Foundation’s website declares total contributions from Boeing to be between $1 million and $5 million.

Boeing also very generously supported the USA Pavilion at the 2010 World’s Fair in Shanghai, a project that Hillary championed. While visiting China on November 16, 2009, Hillary announced that Boeing “has just agreed to double its contribution to $2 million.”
But this gift was fishy, too.

“Clinton did not point out that, to secure the donation, the State Department had set aside ethics guidelines that first prohibited solicitations of Boeing and then later permitted only a $1 million gift from the company,” Rosalind S. Helderman explained in the April 13, 2014, Washington Post. “State Department officials ruled out soliciting Boeing and other large firms with significant business relationships with the government.” These authorities then changed their minds and permitted Boeing’s contribution, although no one can explain how Boeing shattered that $1 million ceiling.

Hillary Clinton also favored Skolkovo, an “innovation city” near Moscow, which enjoyed some $5 billion in Russian-government seed money. She discussed Skolkovo with Russia’s then-president, Dimitry Medvedev.

“At a long meeting I had with Medvedev outside Moscow in October 2009, he raised his plan to build a high-tech corridor in Russia modeled after our own Silicon Valley,” Hillary said. “When I suggested that he visit the original in California, he turned to his staff and told them to follow up.”

The month before Medved’s June 2010 visit to Silicon Valley, the State Department arranged for 22 leading U.S. venture capitalists to tour Skolkovo. Under Hillary, State encouraged American companies to participate in the Skolkovo project. Cisco, Google, and Intel are among those that got involved.
By 2012, Skolkovo boasted 28 “Key Partners” in the U.S., Europe, and Russia. Among these major supporting organizations, three-fifths had donated or pledged funds to the Clinton Foundation or paid speaking fees to Bill Clinton. According to From Russia with Money, an August 2016 study by the Government Accountability Institute, these 17 “Key Partner” entities donated between $6.5 million and $23.5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Far more troubling, in 2014, the FBI wrote companies that operated in Skolkovo or backed the Skolkovo Foundation.

“The foundation may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application,” warned Boston-based FBI agent Lucia Ziobro. “The FBI believes the true motives of the Russian partners, who are often funded by their government, is to gain access to classified, sensitive, and emerging technology from the companies.”

The U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Program at Fort Leavenworth concluded in 2013: “Skolkovo is arguably an overt alternative to clandestine industrial espionage.”

The Clintons actually did these things. This is no unicorn hunt. No theory, speculation, or breathless, Cold War fantasy is required. These actions (and inactions) happened.

When it comes to Team Trump, Democrats and their journalist pals are as relentless as bloodhounds chasing escaped jailbirds. And yet, regarding the Clintons, the Democrats and old-guard news people are as ferocious as puppies enjoying a roaring fireplace.
By all means, let Congress and the media get to the bottom of what, if anything, Russia may have done to influence last year’s elections and what, if anything, Team Trump did to help.

But let’s also root out what, if anything, the Clintons did to advance Russia’s strategic position, while feathering their nests.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/4 ... tin-regime

Termin8tor » 08 Apr 2017 5:00 pm » wrote:Say, what's this?
Wikileaks Bombshell: Guccifer 2.0 Admits Seth Rich Was DNC Leaker

Though “Guccifer 2.0” maintained that he was a lone “hacktivist” committed to “fight all those illuminati,” a U.S. intelligence assessment concluded with “high confidence” that the G.R.U., Russia’s military intelligence service, was operating the “Guccifer 2.0” persona, which communicated through Twitter, a WordPress blog, and a series of burner e-mail accounts.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/documents/ ... fer-913684

The ThreatConnect Research Team is an elite group of globally-acknowledged cyber intelligence experts, dedicated to tracking down existing and emerging cyber threats.

Recently, the ThreatConnect Research team has been exploring the breaches to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) and has posted their findings in a series of blog posts.

Follow the breadcrumbs left by Guccifer 2.0 and the pawprints from COZY and FANCY BEAR to uncover what’s really going on.

https://www.threatconnect.com/guccifer- ... ncy-bears/

Guccifer 2.0: All Roads Lead to Russia

ThreatConnect follows Guccifer 2.0’s French breadcrumbs back to a Russian VPN service.

Guccifer 2.0 has denied having any links to Russia. But digital fingerprints were left on the hacks that led the US intelligence community — as well as several private cybersecurity firms — to conclude that the cyberattacks were largely, if not entirely, carried out by two Russian intelligence groups.

http://www.businessinsider.com/roger-st ... rty-2017-3

Misty » 09 Apr 2017 4:01 pm » wrote: So you really have become a total tin foil hat wearing wingnut now.
Taking the word of Guccifer 2.0 which is a front for Russian Intelligence groups.
How sad.

Your source is now someone from Russian Intelligence exchanging messages with a porn star.
And you are exploiting the death of poor Seth Rich.
Have you no shame?

Misty » 09 Apr 2017 4:01 pm » wrote:Have you no shame?

Misty » 09 Apr 2017 4:01 pm » wrote: Have you no shame?

Wikileaks Is Exploiting Seth Rich's Murder Again.

Wikileaks is pointing followers to purported screen caps of Twitter direct message exchanges between Guccifer 2.0 and a former Playboy playmate to once again fuel speculation that murdered DNC staffer, Seth Rich, was assassinated for leaking DNC emails.

The alleged exchanges between Guccifer 2.0 and Robbin Young, also known by her “Erotic Look-Alike” moniker, Marilyn Moanroe, are a mix of flirtation bordering on cybersex, horrendously bad erotic “poetry” about a blowjob, an obscene abundance of heart emojis, Young’s pro-Trump/anti-Clinton political views — and the money shot — the dubious claim that Seth Rich was murdered for leaking DNC emails and documents to the entity known as Guccifer 2.0, who alleged confessed:

Guccifer 2.0:
“his name is seth, he was my whistleblower”
“I suppose u know who i'm talking about”
"i'm eager to find fact about seth, i'm sure it wasn't just a robbery"
"i'd be greatful to u if there's any chance u can help me find the person who can find the evidence seth was assassinated"

Termin8tor » 09 Apr 2017 5:40 pm » wrote:Speaking of having no shame, you've been lying that Trump is "Putin's pet."
Trump has already taken a tougher stance against Russian in just months than Obama did in his entire eight years.