Trump Is Looking at Plans For a Global Network of Private Spies (vice.com) 481
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.
People at the top are not mentally stable. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: People at the top are not mentally stable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re: People at the top are not mentally stable. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Then he's not really doing a good job of directing it, is he?
Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
don't worry, he will do much better this time with no accountability
Re: (Score:2)
Huh? He had accountability?
trust the private spies (Score:2)
Yes, I'm sure all those "private spies" in that network will be totally trustworthy and only take $$ that they have earned...
Re:trust the private spies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:trust the private spies (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't the informant's fault, his masters had already decided they wanted a war and were just looking for someone to give them the intel they needed. They were not mislead, they mislead the UN and their citizens.
Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems to be a requirement in order to run a department for Trump. The head of the EPA didn't think it should exist because it hurt business too much. The head of the housing department came out with a bunch of statements against social housing. So not trusting your department would make you qualified to run it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Since I believe in democracy, I'm all for Trump being able to trash any and all federal departments - that's the power the Constitution gives him.
What I object to is the Byzantine palace intrigue bullshit. Don't trust the CIA? Fine - fire everyone, bar them from future government work, and start over. That's very transparent, very open, and sends a clear message to both voters and other departments. This double-secret probation stuff is just the worst.
Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Informative)
No it doesn't. The establishment and authority of those departments is law passed by Congress. The President is not a dictator.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Yes, but assuming the confirmed director of the CIA and Trump are working together (as seems to be the case here), they should be able to fire anyone or everyone in the agency, and hire replacements at their pleasure (well, conformant with EEOC rules etc).
Re: (Score:3)
> Don't trust the CIA? Fine - fire everyone
Problem is that's impossible. The whole structure relies on a lot of people who have been doing the same thing for years. Here's a good writeup on the topic:
"But there was another reason. During and after the Civil War, government laws and policies had become far more complex with more long-lasting effects on society. A presidential term lasted four years; policies could last for generations. If administrators were replaced every time a president left office, as
Re: (Score:3)
New administrators would constantly have to learn the complexities of their jobs, and by the time they mastered it, they would have to leave.
You say that like it's a bad thing. The more complex the government, the less I want it to be able to do. It isn't acting in our interests, after all.
Re: (Score:3)
That's a fair point, but just as replacing everyone every election would be bad, never cleaning house is bad. Large institutions become gradually more corrupt over time, and humanity has never found a fix for that, beyond the bigger hammer approach.
For the same reason, I think we should go back to state-appointment of senators (and then switch back again in 50 years or so) - the corruption is so firmly in place that simply switching the system will disrupt the finely-tune lobbying machine for decades. Bot
Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, if this is true, it's not about trusting or not trusting the CIA. It's about creating a spy organization that doesn't report to anyone but the leader. It would be about having spies, and probably assassins, that are free from oversight and regulation. It would be about creating a secure and loyal power base like the one that Putin has, that can eliminate anyone who challenges the leader's position.
Re:CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is the CIA is showing that most of these conspiracies are not real. So this doesn't fit Trump narrative. I honestly think that Trump just wanted to get into office, just to see all the real dirt that is going on, only to realize there was no grand conspiracy, just normal paper pushing, and a few good ideas and a few bad ideas. Trump being a Conspiracy theorist, and not getting the information that he knows in his heart to be true, figures the CIA is against him, purposely hiding information.
Trumps main chip on his shoulder is because he feels like the upper crust is always rejecting him. Hence his appeal to the middle class, who also have the same feeling that the upper class folks are trying to lock these people out. So no matter how rich he is, or powerful of a position he is in, the fact that he isn't accepted as one of them bugs him.
This man really is unfit for the position, and is more or less controlled by others, just as long as they keep his tweeter running.
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I can't believe I didn't see it coming. I wondered out loud last year "Once Trump is the Government how will he justify all of his bat shit government conspiracies?!" ...one year later: "I'm being attacked by the DEEP STATE, which is a parallel government where Obama and Hillary are co-presidents. I'm not president of that government, so if it's bad, it's them."
Fuck me.
Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Funny)
Ivan, this is poor English grammar. Will you be beaten and sent to a gulag for this mistake?
Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
New FSB directive: co-opt liberal and social justice terminology in an attempt to sow dissent. When called out for your shit, make sure to call it "racism" and say you are "deeply offended". If possible, say "so much for the tolerant left".
DO NOT BE RACIST TO PAID SHILLS! (Score:3)
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.
FARK is a paid shill safe space! (Score:2)
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!
Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:4, Insightful)
Islamic terrorists were behind 9/11. Liberals are fine going after Islamic terrorists, but not all Muslims. Conservatives seem to want to go after all Muslims, or at least treat all Muslims poorly. Or, to put it another way: "White gun owners were behind the attack in Las Vegas. Conservatives defend white gun owners at all costs."
The Russian government meddled in the 2016 elections with trolling that didn't kill anyone but which may have changed a presidential election. Liberals are horrified, conservatives defend Russians at all costs.
Bigotry is a better word than racism. Bigotry is hating all Muslims for the acts of a few, or all Russians for the acts of their government, or all white gun owners for the acts of a few. Bigotry is not really a conservative or liberal trait, though recently conservatives have chosen bigots as their leaders for some reason. There are certainly liberal bigots, but liberals try to not elect them.
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Actually, Al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks. Al-Qaeda was a terrorist organization that used propaganda and religious zealots to wage a political campaign of terrorist attacks against the United States and western democracies. It was estimated that there were between 200 and 1,000 members of Al-Qaeda. There are about 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Do you think it's right to condemn a group based on the actions of 0.0625% of it's membership?
You should also be further aware that part of the goal of A
Re: CIA Director doesn't trust the CIA? (Score:5, Insightful)
"which is why we also don't have the truth about things like Benghazi"
How do you know "we" don't know the truth?
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lol wut
... because two Santa Clauses ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [theguardian.com]). 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.
That sounds familiar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, isn't this the same reasoning that led to the creation of the SS in the 20s?
Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Exactly. (Score:4, Insightful)
No, that's baloney. "not private" means "authorized by Congressional law and, usually funded by appropriation, and subject to Congressional & judicial oversight".
Re:Exactly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Doesn't it report into the same CIA director? So not private. And we know about it? So not secret. And it's a spy agency? So not police. So, yeah, every word in "private secret police" is wrong.
Here's a hint: Secret police aren't police, they're spies. Otherwise they'd just be "police". The "secret police" part just means they have the power to make you disappear, permanently.
Holy shit (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
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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.
Demonstrating that conspiracy theories can get up mods on /., if you're promoting the right conspiracy theory...
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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There's no good that can come of this (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:There's no good that can come of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
I've heard Trump voters saying things along the lines of "If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it is true. That is how confident I feel in the president."
We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.
Re:There's no good that can come of this (Score:5, Insightful)
Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Even if they trust trump to the end of the world (which is batshit crazy all on its own), their rabid distrust of everyone else should slap them back down to earth.
Give the whitehouse a private army / spy network / whatever else controlled exclusively by the president, and it will still be there for the next president.
No matter what happens, whether it's 3 or 7 years, the next president will *not* be Trump.
We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.
key word being 'ostensibly Christian'; they're not Christian... at most they're just 'team Christian', and only when it suits. We're about to watch "ostensible Christians" in Alabama elect a pedophile because he's on the same team as the sexual predator in chief.
Re:There's no good that can come of this (Score:5, Interesting)
>Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
"It's OK to cheat to win, when you're right." Both sides are guilty of that, though I'm not going to argue whether it's an evenly divided guilt or not.
However, given that for Trump's base 'their guy' is in power, I doubt they're worried much about keeping him there - the rules can be bent to make a 2nd term happen, and then you have another 4 years to work on making a Republican dynasty a thing.
I mean... look at gerrymandering. It's not exactly an obscure attempt to manipulate democracy to ensure a win, and it's not a great long-term method for achieving that end repeatedly.
Trump the First (Score:3)
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 pr
Trump the First (Score:3)
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 'O
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Just ask them if they want this system in place the next time a democrat president sits in the whitehouse?
Some of them are secretly hoping that there won't be a "next time a democrat president sits in the White House", which is one potential consequence of giving the President his own secret army of spies and assassins...
Re:There's no good that can come of this (Score:4, Interesting)
Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
I've heard Trump voters saying things along the lines of "If Jesus Christ gets down off the cross and told me Trump is with Russia, I would tell him, hold on a second, I need to check with the president if it is true. That is how confident I feel in the president."
We have a pretty long way to go if ostensibly Christian voters will choose to believe Trump rather than their God.
I heard a (female) Trumpkin and self confessed eveangelical say that: "...he must walk with god, if you are that rich god must love you". It is fascinating how Americans have managed to turn Jesus who stormed into the temple in Jerusalem and toppled the moneylender's tables into a modern day god of money and greed.
Re:There's no good that can come of this (Score:5, Informative)
It's the prosperity gospel [wikipedia.org]. 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.
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Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
We'll likely found out at the conclusion of the Mueller investigation.
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And if it's a "fishing expedition" (it's not), Mueller at least knows where they're biting, as he's already gotten Guilty pleas.
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You cannot tolerate your president trying to build a power structure outside the one constrained by your Constitution unless you WANT a dictatorship.
well... according to the system utilised - known to be THE weakest form of government ever invented (democracy) - the citizens of the united states *do* want him in and thus *have* trusted him to make the right decisions for the four years of his term of office and thus *do* want a dictatorship oh hang on... https://politics.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org] https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org] https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org] https://politics.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
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Just how far does this guy have to go before he lacks the support to continue?
I came to the conclusion months ago that he can't do anything that will cause his hardcore supporters to stop supporting him. We're getting reports of people in places like Alabama saying if Jesus came back and ran as a Democrat they'd still vote for Trump. We need to admit in America that for about 80-90% of the population the only thing that matters is whether there is a D or an R by a candidate's name and all other issues are negotiable. Assuming he can avoid doing something illegal that gets him remo
Dangerous and terrifying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Private spy agencies would work for anybody who pays them.
Including any oligarch on the planet. Is it any wonder a rich guy would want that?
Dumbest Idea Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
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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There are 17 members [intelligencecareers.gov] in the US intelligence community. Not all of them perform intelligence gathering as this one would however there is the CIA and the DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency). I left out the FBI because it is supposed to be national but if this new private network of spies is true then they would probably work within the US too. And there would probably be some overlap with the NSA so you would be looking at it competing with possibly four departments.
Re:Dumbest Idea Ever (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a common play for leaders to develop parallel, privately controlled security and even military apparatuses where institutional or national loyalties may outweigh personal loyalty to the leader (Hitler's Waffen-SS), or where legalities restrain the leader prompting him to find ways to exercise power covertly and without restriction (Nixon's Plumbers).
It's not dumb, it's treacherous.
Re:Dumbest Idea Ever (Score:5, Insightful)
What happened to those small government principles?
The Republicans only want small government when some other party is in control. When Republicans are in control, they want an all-powerful government.
Everyone but trump (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Everyone but trump (Score:4, Informative)
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.
You're assuming these spies would be spying on governments hostile to the administration.
I think a more likely purpose for these spies is to collect dirt on domestic political actors and to provide back-channels to foreign governments that are secure from monitoring from the US government.
Both of these might put the spies at risk of criminal liability in the US, but the people and institutions they'll piss off are generally not the ones that go around ordering hits.
Re: (Score:3)
Keep trying. Go ahead. Are you actually hired for Trump media damage control?
The sheer number of credible media sources gives this madness, this Trump SS idea, a lot of believability. Everyone has dirt, and by gosh, he'll distract the media with what he finds.... and not necessarily within the lawful confines of his office.
Don Quixote couldn't have done better. You, either.
Forgive me if I wait until a credible source (Score:2)
First rule of spying (Score:2)
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
Re: (Score:2)
That's actually the second rule. The first rule is not to discuss the rules.
This just keeps getting weirder (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
What you are looking at is the emergence of a politically dominant hereditary aristocracy.
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"Deep State"? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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Well, the concept of a "state within a state" or a "military-industrial complex" didn't originate with the conspiracy theorists, they just picked it up and applied it selectively to state officials they don't agree with.
Maybe just have that civil war already (Score:2)
It seems like it would be cheaper and we'd settle a lot of this shit for at least 50 years, maybe longer.
Re: (Score:2)
>It seems like it would be cheaper and we'd settle a lot of this shit for at least 50 years
It's not impossible that it'll come to that, but I hope it's unlikely. War is nasty business, and a lot of innocent people generally get traumatized, maimed, or dead... and it really only solves the problem if one side is obliterated. I mean, c'mon, you still have people who resent losing the previous civil war and I think it's safe to say enough time has passed that shouldn't be a thing anymore.
On the other han
Impeach. (Score:2)
Impeach impeach impeach! Get that crazy fucker outta there! 8-(
Ah yes, the "Deep State." (Score:2)
"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."
No chance. (Score:2, Insightful)
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 c
Re: (Score:2)
Once something like this is a thing, people start falling into unmarked vans and black bags.
You might be the first if the regular secret service doesn't get around to giving you an interview before Trump's unaccountable network of mercenary spies is in place!
Sociopaths are going to put this guy on a pedestal (Score:2)
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"?
newspeak (Score:3)
Re:trump dat bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
What could possibly go wrong?
Re: (Score:2)
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty could go wrong. But there is also a lot wrong with the existing system.
The CIA/DIA/NSA are notoriously weak in HUMINT.
There are also benefits to not depending too much on one channel, or you may end up with another Kim Philby situation.
Re:trump dat bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
No, you're just an idiot A.C. crapflooding Slashdot.
Why is this even a topic on Slashdot? More clickbait from mishmash? I looked at the article and it appears to be a spun up fabricated nothing-burger. Not even credible enough to be buzzfeed fodder.
Have you really sunk this low, slashdot owners?
Re: (Score:2)
I think Hitler had something like this, no?
Yes. He had Garbo [wikipedia.org], who provided him with detailed information about the upcoming Allied invasion of Calais.
Re:Vice reports from an anonymous source (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Vice reports from an anonymous source (Score:4, Insightful)
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"If the liberals weren't so racist against Russians"
When did being Russian become a definable race?
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His english not so good. They have him training on Slashdot because of high vocabulary nerds and nobody else goes now there.
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...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.
Re: (Score:2)
> "Russian" in this context is a nationality
This never stops liberals when they want to call someone a racist.
Re: Great idea (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Great idea (Score:3)
Re: Great idea (Score:5, Informative)
That's not why people know him to be a racist.
Re: Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
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 [wikipedia.org] during the era of segregation [wikipedia.org]. 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.
Re: Great idea (Score:2)
You have been trolled, bro.
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You guys break me up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You guys break me up (Score:5, Insightful)
> Deflecting blame is not a valid counterpoint strategy
It is not valid, but it's been pretty effective for about a year so far.
Re:You guys break me up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You guys break me up (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: How is this legal? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Every day is April 1st now, and all the jokes are real!
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but what is truly terrifying is that there's a non-zero chance that the fatalists are right. Everything *has* changed with Trump, and not for the better. Even the most far-fetched conspiracy theories are now a tiny bit plausible. I for one have no doubt that Trump actually talked with some people about this idea. I do not believe, however, that it came to anything or will come to anything.
Before Trump there was a certain decorum, gravitas, and respect with which the president acted, both before fell