MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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Hits of the Day
Why did Russians give $1 million to Wisconsin's Walker?
By PeraclesPlease on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 2:31am |All for Scott Walker, or something else in play? That's a fuckload of money for a gubernatorial candidate in a flyover state. What was Walker's quid pro quo? Voting machines? What other miracles were expected from what polled as a fairly safe swing state up to election night?
URL:
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/wisconsin-walker-russia/4669/
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Comments
The Dallas Morning News:
Trump loves the uneducated but only wants rich people owning and running government. Oh and evangelicals don't care because Trump was sent by God to hate the same people they do.
by NCD on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 3:23pm
Conspiracy theories! Cool!!!
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 4:32pm
Well, uh, people don't just hand over $1 million for no reason.
And this isn't just any Aunt Minnie from Topeka.
Why do you try to dismiss this with the pejorative "conspiracy theory"? I want to know why this guy is handing out $7 million to RNC heavy hitters - what did he expect out of it? (since anyone who gives that kind of sum expects something, no? I'm skeptical that he's just interested in the good of the conservative movement)
So are Esquire & NY Times & Bloomberg all in on the conspiracy now?
by PeraclesPlease on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 6:18pm
Here's an Al Altep Holdings $1 million 3/2017 contribution to the GOP Senate PAC at the Federal Election Commission link. The Russian money is fact, not conspiracy.
by NCD on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 8:28pm
Should have used an emoji or something. Since you didn't come here yesterday I guess I thought you would know that I am not opposed at all of theorizing about what and where evidence suggests the truth might fall even if it requires assuming some things which make sense, fit well known patterns, and are rationally believable but haven't been proven. I think they are particularly worth considering when they make better sense than the story we are handed but which are so often accepted without critical examination. We are expected to just trust without proof, and often that 'truth is just too convenient for the vested interests to not raise questions in my simple mind. In this screed I am considering a "conspiracy theory" to be a theory which includes the existence of a conspiracy and letting the loaded term be my statement was a bit of a dig at the ridicule I have taken when something I posted or said was called a conspiracy theory with all the negative connotation the term normally carries. The way I read your link it can be legitimately call a CP by my own way of using the term or can be called a CT in the derogatory sense based on the same standards I have often seen applied when said theory implicates the favored tribe or group or party or whatever. I believe we can be ultra-confident that whatever the truth is, that truth involves a conspiracy. Cynic that I am, I believe we are sometimes misled by our own government through the agency of our 'trusted' members of th MSM. I bet that with an incentive to do so that you could come up with about a zillion examples yourself. [I never exaggerate]
I will add that recently you slammed a piece from Consortium News partly based on the fact that they linked to other reporting on the same site for supporting evidence making no allowance for the fact that some of those supporting links were to the work of different respected writers featured there. Your Palmer Report link in this case refers multiple times to its own reporting to build its case. I think it is just fine in both cases to the extent that it is good reporting being cited. One thing I give Robert Parry at Consortium credit for is that he makes clear distinctions between what is speculation and what he accepts as fact and why. He is very critical of reporting unproven beliefs as established fact which I believe to be the proper stand for journalists if they are not to become abetters of propaganda. As Parry often points out, that is very often not the standard of major news sources reporting to the American public these days.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 8:52pm
Robert Parry concocting a conspiracy theory on the MH 17 downing.
This was a time consuming unraveling of his elaborate twisting of facts in context from reports he cites, a not unusual technique to get clicks.
I didn't trust the Palmer Report either which is why I went to the FEC site to confirm at least one contribution (the FEC site seems designed to impede comprehensive searches).
I won't bother again with Party as concoction seems his meal ticket/gig, from 2016:
Robert Parry is a kind of thinking mans Alex Jones. He takes bits of information, mixes, rehashes them and then concludes there are enormous conspiracies about.
For instance, the article you (Lulu) link touches on his MH-17 crash reports. I looked into Parry on that. His links to his links etc.
He here uses the 10-13-2015 first post-crash Review Report Arising from the Crash of MH-17 to debunk the recent Dutch final report that a Russian Buk in rebel hands was responsible for the crash.
If you bother to work through the links in Parry's articles which he links to other Parry articles, to finally find a link to something not at Consortium News, you find the post-crash Dutch Report of 10-13-2015 was specifically a cover their ass analysis to exonerate themselves from not closing the flight route, from the front page of that report:
Parry then goes on to cite the same report in one of these string of his articles absolving Russia of accountability for the shoot-down by saying the final report on the shoot-down (which blamed the rebels using a BUK unit from Russia) was to be doubted because that new report Parry 'Troubling Doubts":
What he doesn't mention from that same first after crash report is that the Ukrainian Buk missile battery was at a Ukrainian base, and that had been taken over by the rebels.
And "that reliable sources indicated that the systems that were at the military base were not operational."
Therefore, they could not be used by the CIA or Ukraine, or the rebels. Therefore in the recent final report that Buk is not mentioned.
Again from the 2015 Dutch report:
So Parry uses a post-crash preliminary report meant to cover the ass of Dutch Defense officials over not closing the flight path over the Ukraine, that a Ukrainian Base which the rebels had captured (which Parry didn't mention) had a non-functional (which Parry also didn't mention) Buk, which Buk was not further discussed in the year later final report - to spread doubt over the whole Dutch investigation which recently concluded that it was a Russian Buk that shot the plane down, being used by the rebels. Facts which fit with the previous report if you bother to read it. Which I assume Parry did, pulling out stuff out of context to spread disinformation.
As I have said before on the MH-17 shoot down when you posted on this, the plane wreckage and bodies came down on the rebels in their territory, the cell phones, which they picked up, used. Gravity tells me Parry is full of shit on this. The Russian backed rebels were the ones who shot it down with a Russian missile, I don;t need phone call intercepts which Parry also throws doubts on to believe that.
And your primary Parry link could be summarized as "people in the news who still have jobs in the news didn't stop the Iraq War, ergo, there will be war with Russia over Syria'.
Unlikely, but possible.
Far more likely with a Republican there than a Democrat. Parry doesn't take sides, he is a both sides conspiracy seller. Like far too many in the media business. Making a living at liquidating our democracy by spreading fears, innuendoes, dismissing facts. His implication is invariably we cannot trust anyone in ours or any western government. Yet he seems to trust Vladimir Putin.
If any more wars are started it will most likely be by the GOP.
Both siderists come in many forms. Parry promotes the democracy dissolving mantra that our entire government, and even the Dutch in this case, produce nothing but lies and cannot be trusted with telling the truth.
by NCD on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 9:57pm
As this is just a replay, slightly edited, of your comment in a similar vein from eleven months ago I am comfortable standing on my reply made at that time.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sat, 09/02/2017 - 11:58pm
NCD, I have just gone back and re read the article thread where your response above was initially posted. It covers a lot of ground. You make your entire case trying to discredit the author from one very small part of it.
Do you actually believe that you have completely destroyed the credibility of the entire article by your absolutely debatable stand on this one issue which as you say, the article "touched on"? The article holds up very well and I hope everybody reads it now just as I hoped then that everybody would.
edited to add the link I recommended then and now.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 1:01am
This is strange. I can go to NCD's quoted link and copy the URL and paste it to my browser to go to the article rather than the resulting comments. I cannot paste it in here as a link that works.
by A Guy Called LULU on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 1:08am
Wake me if there's something I should say or do. Meanwhile, Russians gave $1 million to Wisconsin governor's campaign, and I don't think it was for parks and playgrounds.
And since Palmer is just repeating a mainstream news item and asking that same obvious question without uttering a bunch of otherworldly speculation, ther's no need for whatever references or other authority you're asking for. I just referenced him out of politeness to note where I read the news item first, but you can go read Bloomberg or NBC or wherever it was reported. (Sadly MSM doesn't always ask the obviious questions though)
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 2:11am
Are tweets right that a 'pro-Putin Ukrainian' gave Scott Walker $1 million?
@ Politifact Wisconsin June 21st, 2017 at 5:00 a.m.
Politifact Wisconsin is supported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the biggest newspaper in the state. It's generally considered to be centrist, as it is the result of a merger long ago of the left-of-center Journal and the right-of-center Sentinel.
They rated the accusations "mostly false" but if you read their interpretation it's really more like "the accusations are lacking nuance, it's more complicated than that." And what they glean in the end is actually still grist for the mill that's being grinded on this thread.
The local NBC station (which is owned by the Journal-Sentinel, I believe, they are a big monopoly) ran a segment on this Politifact story on June 22.
by artappraiser on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 12:58pm
Excerpt:
Read on for further on his Russia connnections.
So keep in mind this is a wealthy conservative U.S. citizen giving money to a conservative super-PAC. Even if he did it because he is pro-Putin, that's allowed. No plot by foreign government to affect U.S. election involved no two ways about that! Unless you want to get into proving Putin has brainwashed U.S. citizens with Russian heritage in order to affect U.S. elections.
There's no there there at the end of this "investigation." Could very well be an attempt to get more favorable treatment for Russia by U.S. government, but American citizens are allowed to want that.
by artappraiser on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 1:16pm
Noted and accepted, though still want to explore his toxic Deripaska Russiagate connection, Blavatkin's entry into Miami real estate, his office across from Trump Tower, and other 6-degrees-of-freedom coincidences.
More on Blavatnik at New Yorker.
by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 09/03/2017 - 1:45pm
"So, calling him a Ukrainian businessman is not accurate." Yes, Russian business is more accurate. Pro-Putin rather definitely.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/04/2017 - 2:08am
The whole question is interesting in a global era. Big picture. Do you get the point I am getting at? I.E., what is considered treasonous might have less and less meaning as time goes on.
Interfering with voting software directly is clearly criminal behavior. But lobbying with funding a super PAC to influence the electorate is not, that's free speech.
Given that it would be impossible to expect the electorate to vote on foreign policy propositions every week, you've got to rely on elected people to make decisions. With the internet and all the ways the electorate can be manipulated, continually adjusted strict campaign finance reform is the only way to keep unfair influence to a minimum. But then, I think, even that's not enough
It's precisely because we are so powerful with a huge military and huge influence on the world economy that other countries care (same for like Germany, UK, France.) If we were Iceland, not so much of a problem, foreign powers not interested in what Iceland thinks. Isolationism like Geo. Washington wanted in a simpler era avoids all of this problem.
But in this day and age, there could be thousands of the equivalent of AIPAC's, funded by citizens. Everybody's got an opinion on Saudi Arabia today, in ten years it might be that everyone's got an opinion about Nigeria, too. If there's money behind it, there will be lots of bots and faux news. Campaign finance reform can't really get at this in the end, only education of the voter will work, or undoing mis-education.
by artappraiser on Mon, 09/04/2017 - 2:36pm
p.s. Comes to mind: brainwashing the electorate works if you do it for many years! Famous example: it's extremely difficult for any outside powers to get the Russian people to vote Putin out of power.
by artappraiser on Mon, 09/04/2017 - 2:42pm
I certainly understand that a tycoon with US & UK passports but acts Russian is probably outside the scope of how our election laws & common ideas of "citizen" actuall mean.
Funneling Russian money into Wisconsin elections is not legal. But if it's from a billionaire without being laundered, and one of his passports is American, it's harder to find the illegality in that, but if he's still taking marching orders from the Kremlin and that's picked up via say NSA or GCHQ intercepts or Deripaska testimony, there still may be a case.
"Strict campaign finance reform" - well, they busted a new hole through that idea, didn't they? And packed the court to make sure it doesn't revert, including stealing Obama's court nominee.
Educating voters - whew, we have our work cut out for us. As that piece about brainwashing you snuck in posits.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/04/2017 - 2:50pm
PS - see the Blavatnik effect (Azerbaijan et al) - and then read the Azeri article from The Guardian. Hard to find a place to put all these connections.
by PeraclesPlease on Mon, 09/04/2017 - 3:40pm