Putin tends to favour isolationists and non-interventions as well as bribable autocrats. I believe there was some pro-corbin Russian bots back in the day.
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My impression is more that Putin aims to foment division and infighting in western powers, rather than aim for any particular policy outcomes (with the exception of ‘drop sanctions on my mates’ of course). The Russian online disinfo agency has been caught posting on ALL sides of most arguments in US politics - they’ve impersonated Black Lives Matter activists and hardcore Trump-puppies and Republican local branches and 9-11 truthers and dedicated anti-Clinton dems and god knows what else. They support loud and fringe presidential candidates like Stein and Trump because these are the sort of people who destabilise the system - and because they’re less ‘professional’ and easily suckered than established people with more experience, so are more likely to accidentally compromise themselves which makes them potential blackmail targets down the line. In the UK Russian money has been focused on Brexit because they want to pry Europe apart to weaken potential rival power blocks. The argue and abuse and insult indiscriminately because that helps break down the internal cohesion of the nations they’re targeting - division is easier if we all hate our domestic political enemies.
Disrupt, sow confusion, break down trust in institutions and democracy in general. Promote the interests of know-nothing bozo politicians who can be relied on to weaken their country should they gain power. Implicitly promote the idea that democracy and democratic institutions are failures and that ‘I know Putin’s oppression etc is bad, but you’ve got to admit they’re strong and organised and have got their ■■■■ together’.
For many years now, political legitimacy has been implicitly assumed to derive from the will of the people. Even China and North Korea run elections, thoroughly faked as they might be. THAT is what Putin is targeting - the assumption of democracy as the best system - and he’s doing it by enhancing the divisions inside democracies, while suppressing reporting of the weaknesses in his own system. And he has plenty of help among the autocrats of China and increasingly those of Eastern Europe too.
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I had a good chat with a guy who’s company does the political analysis and campaign coordination for parties around the world. Asked him what impact the Russian meddling could have.
Answer, parties are doing similar style stuff domestically to win elections. What Russia is doing is similar and of a scale large enough to have a real impact. What impact it had can’t easily be measured, but it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t have an influence.
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What about if Russia hacks the private emails of the side they don’t want to win, and releases all sorts of embarrassing shitt through some 3rd party Leak site??
Does he think that could sway things one way or the other?
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I asked him about the social media campaign. The DNC hack was pretty clearly influential on the electorate.
This was a one off type conversation. I asked about what the Australian parties were doing in the social media space. It sounded very similar to the US Russian stuff, hence the follow up questions.
The DNC hacking stuff didn’t come up because I didn’t see any link to what this guy was involved with.
Interestingly, the market research works 24/7 during an election. The uk uses analysts in Australia to go through the data of the day before. By the time the politicians wake up they have 10 dot points to stick to for the day based on the polling of the day before.
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[quote=“bigallan, post:9156, topic:11277, full:true”]
The 1967 referendum outcome gave the Commonwealth the power to make laws for aborigines. Prior to that the power belonged exclusively to the States. Aborigines were never covered by the flora and fauna powers and there were no Commonwealth restrictions as such on the Commonwealth power to grant them citizenship.
[/quote]
(bolding by me)
This is worth quoting again, because so many people just do not understand what really happened, but parrot some fantasy of our history until it has become the accepted “truth”.
All good Benny, … it was a rhetorical question.
What good are rhetorical questions?
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Got that. Just wanted to say a little more about what I picked up. It was one of those chats that removes the covers off something generally hidden from view. The stuff you suspect happens, but never see in action.
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Yep - it’s the quality of jobs that matters. What’s the point of the job if you’re being paid starvation wages and still require Government assistance just to ■■■■■■■ buy some groceries? There are millions of people who are in this situation in the States. I’d love to know the true ‘underemployment’ figure of the USA - I reckon it would be pushing 15%
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Wage growth has been significantly higher in Australian than America. America has been pretty much stagnant for about 30 years. I couldn’t nail down the data at this hour, but Australia looks in the 30-40% wage growth over a similar period.
That’s a huge indictment on the American approach. Their economy has grown enormously over that period and none of the gains have “trickled down” to the broader population.
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I can tell by the comments on here that no one actually watches RT America. They actually have some fantastic American journalists who are there because there’s no way the MSM in the States would ever allow them on their networks. Why do you think someone like Chris Hedges or Gareth Porter have shows on RT America? It’s because they are literally shunned from any corporate news outlet ‘domestically’. NBC fired Phil Donahue for speaking the truth about the Iraq war and also binned Ed Schultz because he dared to cover Bernie Sanders in 2016.
If wages actually tracked productivity in the U.S the minimum wage should be close to something like $20/hr
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The best part about “whataboutism” is that it allows one to totally ignore the question being asked.
“You ask if RT is bad but what about CNN?”
“You ask if Trump is crooked but what about Hillary’s emails?”
In any case, here is what PBS (about as non-partisan as one can get) says about RT, Sputnik et al:
I have left the centre of learning and I am now in Cincinnati Ohio.
They love Mr Trump here, or vote Libertarian !!! Who seems to be the blokes who hate all
Government. and no political discussion here, they all hunt and fish and are good ol boys (and girls)
Off to Texas tonight, back into sanity ???
Don’t hold your breath! #SurviveTexas
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I have read this article twice and hopefully am getting it right. Trump/Ryan wanted to make the tax cut look good (“more money in your paycheck!”) so somehow it led to less withholdings on paychecks than should have been. So, when folks are filing their taxes they are now having to pay up. I mean, seriously?
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Farking lol - poor suckers got suckered by Don the Con; sadly won’t be the first or the last.
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Nope, environment and courts will bite for decades. There is no coming back from this. Fragile system at best but it worked, no longer.
House Intel commitee has voted to send its Russia investigation interview transcripts to the Special Counsel.