Russiagate

Ok, to continue the discussion makes no longer any sense. I see in the mails that Trump Jr. was happy that some information against Clinton has been offered, and sought this information, iceaura sees "accepting stuff" (sounds like naming information "stuff" changes the facts) and "making deals".

Why iceaura is trying to post fictional nonsense about what I'm trying to do will remain hidden too. Of course, monopoly does not mean 100%, not even in US law: To quote some US judge, "a market share of ninety percent 'is enough to constitute a monopoly; it is doubtful whether sixty . . . percent would be enough; and certainly thirty-three percent is not." United States v. Aluminum Co. of Am., 148 F.2d 416, 424 (2d Cir. 1945). https://www.justice.gov/atr/monopoly-power-and-market-power-antitrust-law and I was talking about the unipolar period, not about history around WW II.
 
Unfortunately Schmelzer, globalization means that the dependency on international law becomes much stronger. To have effective international law with enforcement provisions requires a unipolar world. ( United Nations at the very least).
To prevent or deter illegal election interference by foreign agents would be one of those yet to be "legislated" international laws.

If the information that was offered to Trumps campaign was legally attained or not has not been discussed and how this would effect the legality of the information transaction would be important. However because the information is being offered by a nation or nationals from a nation that has been threatening hostilities then any one with half a brain would know that to collaborate in any form other than through official channels would be tantamount to treason.
I am utterly amazed at the sheer stupidity of the Trump team in and during the election of the PoTUS no less.
 
(sounds like naming information "stuff" changes the facts)
It points to the violation of the law involved.

It doesn't matter what valuable stuff he was willing to deal for - he isn't allowed to make secret deals with foreign governments as an agent of a political campaign. The reason for that is obvious - we want our politicians representing us and acting in our interests, as is their sworn duty and job description.
and I was talking about the unipolar period,
There never was one.
sculptor said:
That is false. It has been proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Junior was accepting stuff and making deals with a foreign government, and acting as an agent of Trump's campaign when he did that.
Seriously?
Where?
When?
We're nineteen pages in, go back to sleep if you haven't been following.
 
If the information that was offered to Trumps campaign was legally attained or not has not been discussed and how this would effect the legality of the information transaction would be important.
I've discussed it, by mentioning that was of course illegally obtained and Junior et al of course knew that, and providing reason and evidence for that assessment.

That isn't important, at all. Its legality makes no difference whatsoever to Trump's Russian collusions or Junior's status as committer of crime (Or Kushner's, Manafort's, etc).
 
sculptor said:
ice said: "That is false. It has been proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Junior was accepting stuff and making deals with a foreign government, and acting as an agent of Trump's campaign when he did that."
Seriously?
Where?
When?
.
We're nineteen pages in, go back to sleep if you haven't been following.

be specific

so far, 19 pages of suspicions and accusations, hyperbole, and the concept that we should be concerned because someone else said that someone else was concerned

so, we're back to
Seriously?
Where?
When?

and
be specific if you really want to remove "reasonable doubt"



..........................
I get the impression; that when it comes to politics: Reason and sanity have left the building.
 
If anyone hears a faint knocking, would you please get up and see if it is reason and sanity trying to get back into the building?

please............................................
 
Unfortunately Schmelzer, globalization means that the dependency on international law becomes much stronger. To have effective international law with enforcement provisions requires a unipolar world. ( United Nations at the very least). To prevent or deter illegal election interference by foreign agents would be one of those yet to be "legislated" international laws.
I have no objection at all against international conventions. The signatories promise not to do X against other signatories, and accept penalty Y if arbiter Z establishes a violation. This is sufficient to solve most problems. Usually enforcing reasonable conventions is not that difficult, because against non-signatories every signatory is yet free to do X, and if doing X is harmful, you have a simple way to force others to sign too.
So, there is no necessity for a world government to obtain reasonable restrictions.
However because the information is being offered by a nation or nationals from a nation that has been threatening hostilities then any one with half a brain would know that to collaborate in any form other than through official channels would be tantamount to treason. I am utterly amazed at the sheer stupidity of the Trump team in and during the election of the PoTUS no less.
I have no problem with the qualification of the Trump team as stupid, they should have known that the enemies will use every archaic law to harm them. And my question is not at all if what Trump Jr. has done qualifies as treason. But if seeking or receiving information freely offered by some foreigner, or foreign government, is qualified as treason.
 
so far, 19 pages of suspicions and accusations, hyperbole, and the concept that we should be concerned because someone else said that someone else was concerned
You obviously haven't been following. Go back to sleep - we're having a discussion here.
What exactly, in those emails, supports iceaura's contention?
If you don't know, you don't know what the contentions are. We're 19 pages in, not starting over.
But if seeking or receiving information freely offered by some foreigner, or foreign government, is qualified as treason.
Depends on how this "seeking" and "receiving" and "offering" is being accomplished, and why.

It's certainly possible to seek, receive, and offer, anything - including information - in a way that involves committing treason.

But none of that is relevant to this thread - if you have abstract concerns about theoretical matters, maybe another thread would be more appropriate.
 
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I have no objection at all against international conventions. The signatories promise not to do X against other signatories, and accept penalty Y if arbiter Z establishes a violation. This is sufficient to solve most problems. Usually enforcing reasonable conventions is not that difficult, because against non-signatories every signatory is yet free to do X, and if doing X is harmful, you have a simple way to force others to sign too.
So, there is no necessity for a world government to obtain reasonable restrictions.
but what is government except to manage, reform and implement it's laws?
Implementing and enforcing international law is government.
I fail to see how it could be anything else...

Opinion:

As far as Trump Jnr is concerned I think it is all a red herring being part of a broader plan to keep every one screaming "scandal". ( a distraction ) Trump is still in office and the investigations keep on mounting up in number...flooding the various committees with formal obligations and preventing good governance because of it.
Just wait... next week there will be another investigation called for and then the week after likewise....until eventually there will be no capacity to do anything.
 
Notes on Denial


Click because it's more entertaining to do so.

First of all it is ridiculous, given that I have not made it.

As I said, your argument circumstantially requires that societies have no right to elect their own leaders and must allow hostile foreign nations to participate:

"UDHR art. 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. (#336↑)

"I simply assume that it does not follow in a way obvious to Trump Jr. that the information offered had something to do with DNC at all. So, whatever one thinks about DNC is irrelevant for the case of Trump Jr." (#305↑)

"Here we have a nice example for the last question. We have the UHDR, art. 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. And we have a guy, who has heard that somebody has some valuable information for him and wants to talk with him, and has accepted this. And all you cry 'hang him', nobody even cares about his own rights. And all this simply because he is a political enemy." (#294↑)

"LOL. The point of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not about the right of individual persons to break laws. It is about the obligation of states who have signed it, that they should not have laws which forbid to do the things they have a right to do." (#276↑)

"No problem? I see, up to now, nothing but him using this right. He seeks some information, which could damage Hillary, and tries to get it using all sources available to him." (#266↑)

"And what does this have to do with Trump Jr. right to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers?" (#263↑)

Meanwhile, Bells↑ went and made the point about a nation's elections, vis à vis Article 21, and it's easy enough to notice you skipped out↑.

You keep overlooking some basic facts:

(1) Taking the meeting was itself illegal, according to Donald Jr.'s own descriptions in some of his accounts, and the email chain he released.

(2) One participant and member of the Trump administration, Jared Kushner, has furthermore broken the law by omitting the meeting from his SF-86 clearance application; it turns out Mr. Kushner omitted multiple contacts with foreign nationals. Not all of these meetings are inherently illegal, but omitting them from the SF-86 was.

(3) Another participant in the meeting, then a campaign manager for Donald Trump, has broken the law by failing to register as a foreign agent; we also know that Paul Manafort has been blackmailed, ostensibly over his participation with the Yanukovych administration.

(4) Meanwhile, we also have a bizarre story swiriling in which a longtime GOP operative sought out the Wall Street Journal to assert his efforts in pursuit of Hillary Clinton's email, which he believed to be in the hands of Russian-sponsored hackers. Everything about the story is weird, but it has outside corroboration, and we now have a witness asserting that, in addition to simply boasting cooperation with Mike Flynn and the Trump campaign, he saw some manner of paper document that could at this point either be real with its full implications, real as part of a swindle run by Peter Smith and therefore untrue, or an invention of the witness, naming Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis (now at Agriculture), Mike Flynn, and the CEO of ALEC, Lisa Nelson.

(5) And, oh, yeah, we also need to include that Mike Flynn apparently committed crimes by omitting contacts from his SF-86 and failing to register as a foreign agent.​

At this point it's worth looking back to #261↑ and your conspiracy theory list that opens with, "The media invent some fake news. No necessity for any proofs." As I said↑ then, it sounds like you're describing the Arkansas Project. Nobody needs to make up fake news to warrant the attention the known crimes have garnered, nor the increasing weariness and wariness people are showing the Trump administration and family about that weird phenomenon that is either extraordinary and in some cases potentially pathological lying, or else a bizarre outcome akin to a statistically impossible string of perfect accidents.

Your insistence on trying to frame the issue as mere information exchange functionally rejects the right of a nation to reserve its elections to its own people:

"And this is what I'm arguing about. If what Trump Jr. has done, according to the emails, is illegal, then your government infringes your human rights. If you don't care, feel free to ignore my postings about this."

Donald Trump, Jr., in a statement released with the emails, explained that he thought the Russian meeting would bring political opposition research, and that, in a political campaign, is unquestionably a thing of value. Attempting to collect this thing of value from a foreign resource violates the campaign laws that reserve the election to Americans. This is further complicated by his direct invitation of the campaign itself. Donald the Younger's campaign role is actually described as surrogate, which means the attempt to collect a thing of value to interfere with the election would have been just his problem, such as it was, but then he brought Kushner and Manafort into the loop, and that makes it Manafort's problem, Kushner's problem, the Trump campaign's problem, and Donald Trump's problem both personally and as President of the United States. And, you know, there is, of course, the whole bit directly implicating Trump père, when Goldstone suggests he can send the information directly via Rhona, that is to say, a longtime personal secretary and assistant to Donald the Elder who is apparently still within the Trump private-sector organization.

Indeed, the one thing that really does stand out in all of this is the ludicrous blatancy of the emails, and of Donald Trump Jr.'s ridiculously confessional response to the issue; furthermore, that the White House itself is caught up in the clodhopping conceits is worth noting, as that adds another vector by which President Trump is entangled.

Trying to deceive by pretending the obvious aspect your argument requires, and makes precisely no sense without, is somehow irrelevant is hardly innovative behavior.

No, I support contract law. You are obliged to do what you accept by signing contracts. Contract law can be enforced by reputation, and does not require any world government. Has the US signed the UDHR or not? If yes, it is obliged to follow it. If they don't, they are contract breakers.

Once again, your argument circumstantially requires that societies have no right to elect their own leaders and must allow hostile foreign nations to participate.

Whatever they are does not matter. One can sign contracts with the mafia too. And one would be obliged to follow them even in this case - with the penalty of losing reputation. Even if you have broken a contract with some evil force, I would be stupid to believe you are not ready to break a contract with me too. And the same holds for the mafia. If a mafia gang is known to hold contracts, it will have advantages from this.

That says more about you than anything else, Schmelzer.

Reputation — This is one of the stupidest things about your pathetic, antisocial tantrum: What in the history of human civilization suggests people will choose "reputation" over greed or perceptions of self-preservation? This article of faith is utterly laughable.

Evil force — Most would worry about the fact of having entered into a contract with some evil force. The exception, however, is if one had no reasonable way of knowing they were entering into a contract with an evil force, and in that case, your sense of honor would appear to advocate evil, Schmelzer, and, you know, good on you—that's just super.

Mafia gang known to hold contracts — Recognizing the principle of honor among thieves is hardly innovative; most people, these days, seem rather quite wary of the notion since so many thieves have shown themselves willing to pretend honor in order to advance their dishonest work—we are wise to view the convention as unstable.​

You can't just keep wandering around trying to say the complications you can't deal with simply don't matter.

―End Part I―
 
Part the Second


Click for another distraction.


Okay, let's go over this one briefly. You asserted:

"And once to publish even stolen information is fine, it follows that even if Trump Jr. would have received stolen information, this would be nothing worth to mention." (#327↑)

And as I said: "You have claimed that aiding and abetting crime—in this case, theft, at the very least—'is fine'." (#346↑)

And all you can say is: "No."

Alright, then.

My argument does not need help, given that art. 19 even explicitly excludes this, and allows to seek information regardless of frontiers.

Which brings us back to your argument requiring, in contravention of Article 21, that nations cannot reserve their elections to their own people, and must allow hostile foreign nations to participate.

Cheap attempt. Whenever somebody argues that the UDHR, or the constitution or so forbids to make X a crime, this can be defamed as "advocacy of crime".

Oh, quit with the cheap, uneducated swindle. Either deal with Article 21 and the general principle that a nation should or should not be allowed to reserve its elections to its people, or stop pushing this pathetic, whimpering excrement. Seriously, you don't have an actual, legitimate argument:

Let's see what iceaura wrote. After disposing the usual ..., there remains ....

Yeah, that reminds me of when you ran away from Bells↑: "Off-topic disposed."

That is to say, the factual portion you are unable to respond to is dismissed as irrelevant to your argument. That manner of screeching ignorant cowardice is hardly unfamiliar.

Quantum Quack has, instead, a good point. In a global world, at least as long as there is something remembering the free internet of the past, you have no chance to prevent governments from influencing foreign elections. I would like to add that, with the end of the unipolar world order, the US has no longer a monopoly of influencing foreign elections. Tit for tat becomes unavoidable. What makes it possible for citizens to distribute their opinion for free, helps other states too. They do not have to own or control worldwide media empires to influence elections in other states.

British Young Fabians working a Florida-based voter-encouragement campaign comports with law. Four dudes from Australia wandering around telling Americans to please consider their international neighbors comports with law. Attempting to facilitate the transfer of a thing of value from foreign nationals in order to influence an election or aid a campaign specifically does not, on any level, comport with law.

†​

Really, Schmelzer, that was kind of ridiculous.

As I have previously suggested, your critique seems subordinate to anti-American identity politics. There are plenty of reasons and ways to criticize the United States as a nation, but it's usually quite clear when someone is blowing what should be an easy case by trying to ride anti-Americanism as a mask for one's own antisocial sloth.

That is to say:

¶ 1) Lie.
¶ 2) Undermining your own appeal.
¶ 3) Meaningless.
¶ 4) Laughably meaningless.
¶ 5) Laughably pretentious and self-serving.
¶ 6) Lie.
¶ 7) Misrepresentation.
¶ 8) Vapid cowardice.
¶ 9) Fallacy: Straw man.
¶ 10) Ignorant cowardice.
¶ 11) Fallacy: Straw man; false equivalence; red herring.​

Really, Schmelzer, I don't know, maybe it feels like you're putting in a lot of effort, and you're certainly generating a lot of posts, but it also looks like you're not really trying.

―Fin―
 
#PutiTrump | #WhatTheyVotedFor


Via The Hill:

In a special segment on “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly,” NBC News’ Katy Tur reported on the meeting Donald Trump Jr. and other members of the Trump team had during the campaign with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton.

“Donald Junior made a mistake,” former Trump adviser Michael Caputo, said, “and he’d do it entirely differently if he had an opportunity.”

Asked if the meeting should have raised red flags, given that Russian government connections were implied in the emails setting it up, Caputo said “for an experienced campaign operative? Yeah, it should have raised a red flag. For a family member, for a first-time candidate for president of the United States in a whirlwind like we were in? I’m not surprised.”

He said it wasn’t unusual for members of the campaign to have unplanned meetings, saying, “the place was pell-mell.”

Instead of showing evidence of collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia, Caputo said Trump Jr.’s involvement “shows more the naiveté of his first experience in a political campaign."

So, this is the defense, at present, and it is not what we might call impressive, or inspiring of confidence: "There was no collusion," Caputo explained. "Do you think the place was organized enough to collude with the lunch counter across the street? It just wasn't."

And, you know, we get it: The Trump family just isn't competent enough to collude properly. The attempt, however, is still legally problematic. That one is too incompetent to pull off the crime he is attempting does not a proper defense make.
____________________

Notes:

Master, Cyra. "Former Trump adviser Caputo: Trump Jr. 'made a mistake' with meeting". The Hill. 16 July 2017. TheHill.com. 17 July 2017. http://bit.ly/2vsT8zr
 
Instead of showing evidence of collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia, Caputo said Trump Jr.’s involvement “shows more the naiveté of his first experience in a political campaign."
We're seeing people quote Michael Caputo for information and insight on Russian collusion by Trump? Is that a fucking joke?

From the link,

to what we are apparently supposed to take as a report or some kind of punditry or news or something, and not an attempt by a news organization to cover up major news and hide what happened,

we get this gem:
Caputo defended the Trump campaign against allegations of collusion with Russia, saying, “The Donald Trump campaign had nothing to do with Russia.”
Look: the Trump campaign waded in up to its waist in involvement with Russia when it hired Kremlin employee and Gazprom Media associate and Bloc Letvyn hired gun Michael Caputo to be a campaign "Senior Advisor". That's Caputo's wheelhouse, his stock in trade - his connections in Russia and Ukraine, his Russian involvement.

The only semi-reliable information about Trump/Russia collusion that can be had from that guy is whatever he provides under oath to the House Intelligence Committee or government investigation team. And so far all any of those entities have seen fit to do is politely request his voluntary cooperation in telling them whatever he sees fit to remember. (Republicans don't make other Republicans testify under oath, unless cornered like a rat in a stairwell).

A link I posted earlier:
http://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/05/21/who-is-michael-caputo-and-what-can-he-tell-us/
 
As I said, your argument circumstantially requires that societies have no right to elect their own leaders and must allow hostile foreign nations to participate:
Nonsense. Who elects the own leaders is defined by the right to vote, and this right is restricted to citizens.

A society which has signed UDHR gives, voluntarily, away its "right" (if it has such a right) to forbid its citizens to do what is described in art. 19.
Meanwhile, Bells↑ went and made the point about a nation's elections, vis à vis Article 21, and it's easy enough to notice you skipped out↑.
I skipped this because it is irrelevant. If you oblige yourself in one contract, or one paragraph of one contract, not to do one thing, you cannot get rid of this obligation by other contracts or other paragraphs. (This does not exclude the possibility of self-contradictory contracts, where one paragraph allows what another forbids, but this would be a bad contract. And in fact Art. 21 gives nothing in this direction.
You keep overlooking some basic facts:(1) Taking the meeting was itself illegal, according to Donald Jr.'s own descriptions in some of his accounts, and the email chain he released.
Not at all, I have not made claims about what is legal or not. In a totalitarian state, one cannot live without permanently violating one law or another, "three crimes a day", and the US is close to this. So one would better never say something is legal in the US.
What in the history of human civilization suggests people will choose "reputation" over greed or perceptions of self-preservation?
In a world where reputation is known to everybody, and where it leads (because of everybody's greed) to serious harm (nobody agrees to make contracts with him) if one gets the reputation of a contract breaker, it is greed which forces to care a lot about reputation.
but what is government except to manage, reform and implement it's laws?
Implementing and enforcing international law is government.
I fail to see how it could be anything else...
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, once there is none. In a society based on contract law, all the people act in their self-interest. This includes that one is not that stupid to make contracts with known contract breakers. Given that nobody making contracts is a harsh penalty in a society where contracts fulfilled by both sides give both sides advantages, this is a hard penalty for contract breaking and sufficient to enforce contracts. But you have no conventions everybody has to sign, no subset of actors obliged to enforce any contracts, nothing remembering usual government.

If you choose to name this system government, this is nothing but newspeak.
Just wait... next week there will be another investigation called for and then the week after likewise....until eventually there will be no capacity to do anything.
And the US doing nothing is very good for the rest of the world.
 
Whatever it is, it doesn't matter, once there is none. In a society based on contract law, all the people act in their self-interest. This includes that one is not that stupid to make contracts with known contract breakers. Given that nobody making contracts is a harsh penalty in a society where contracts fulfilled by both sides give both sides advantages, this is a hard penalty for contract breaking and sufficient to enforce contracts. But you have no conventions everybody has to sign, no subset of actors obliged to enforce any contracts, nothing remembering usual government.

If you choose to name this system government, this is nothing but newspeak.
total unworkable nonsense!
In a totalitarian state, one cannot live without permanently violating one law or another, "three crimes a day", and the US is close to this. So one would better never say something is legal in the US.
Yes well.. in Russia it would be at least double. 6 crimes a day on a good one... you should know this well I guess...
 
And the US doing nothing is very good for the rest of the world
The US won't do nothing overseas - it's just the domestic governance part that will get jammed up. The foreign violence and economic imposition and so forth will be largely unaffected - even abetted, by diminished civilian oversight of the military and diminished regulation of corporate behaviors and collusions.

You really didn't see this guy coming.
In a world where reputation is known to everybody, and where it leads (because of everybody's greed) to serious harm (nobody agrees to make contracts with him) if one gets the reputation of a contract breaker, it is greed which forces to care a lot about reputation.
In wingnut Utopia all things are possible. In Chicago under Al Capone, whose reputation was known to everybody, not so much.
 
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sculptor said:
ice said: "That is false. It has been proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) that Junior was accepting stuff and making deals with a foreign government, and acting as an agent of Trump's campaign when he did that."
Seriously?
Yes.

Trump Jr was offered Russian intelligence as an agent of his father's campaign: "The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with his father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father. This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump."

Trump Jr accepted the deal: "Seems we have some time and if it's what you say I love it especially later in the summer."

Trump Jr then participated in the meeting.

He then lied about it, changing his story three times before we got to the latest (no doubt still untruthful) account.

This isn't left wing conspiracy theory. This is HIS OWN EMAIL that HE RELEASED.
 
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