Strangely, the thing that seems to be most important in stopping nuclear war with Russia is Trump's outrageous friendly relationship with Tsar Putin, because he's already made it clear that he has no qualms about using nukes against those he thinks are enemies.

Do you have to demonize a man who assassinates his enemies and expands his country? There's no question that he's done those things, so I don't get his point at all. You don't have to demonize a demon.

How does he think he knows what classified proof there may be? His statement makes him seem silly, he's complaining he hasn't seen this proof, knowing he shouldn't be able to see it.

Russia incontrovertibly militarily and financially supports our enemies and attacks our allies. That alone makes them threat #1. Period. They are also expansionist on multiple fronts, which is hyper threatening.

It's only unwise to build up Polish border forces if you want Poland to be Russian.

Be clear, Putin didn't "put Trump into the whitehouse", but he certainly helped. The argument that he didn't just install him is a red herring, designed to distract from the legal and illegal things Russia did to effect the election, a plan that worked better than they ever hoped.

Fake news hysteria?!? Fake news is one of the most important issues today, because it denies progress on ANY other issue by confusing the facts, making negotiation impossible.

I hate hearing about Bakers "promise"....it wasn't in writing, it wasn't from America or NATO, it wasn't binding in any way even then, and thinking we should stand by it in the face of Russia breaking treaty after treaty is just insane and naïve. Remember, Russia promised to never invade Ukraine (including Crimea).

I don't really think Aleppo was liberated....there's nothing left to liberate there but rubble.
Really, he's claiming that when Mosul was "liberated", Iraq just let the enemy drive away? That's bullshit. We have bombed the fleeing militants, and the Iraqi have fought them with vigor this time.

For a professional on US, Russia relations, he's got some strange ways of seeing things.
I do agree with him that, to Russia, bolstering Assad IS fighting terrorism. I think we failed miserably when we didn't take Assad out after he gassed the populace AND support/safeguard the local populace (if not their militias)....no question in my mind, that's when we lost Syria. Once Daesh and others were allowed to take over the anti-Assad side, there was no "winning" that war.
I also agree, with our current leaders, the nuclear safeguard is no safeguard at all, it's a sword of Damocles, not a shield.

Pretty much interview scripted by Putin personally.

Why the drama about US - russian relations if the russians supposedly are not dangerous and Putin is not evil.

Building a case to sell Poland and the Baltic countries to Putin. Worked like a charm with Hitler and Czechoslovakia before WWII. Poland these days does not even have a border with Russia proper, only with what used to be Koenigsberg. Poland is part of NATO and if Abby and her friend the professor want to give that up then it is them who are pushing us all closer to a war (cold or not).

Ukraine has already exploded. Putin has already taken 1/3 of the country breaking bilateral treaties. Cant get much worse, hard to imagine how the US can get involved, Trump notwithstanding.

Syria - its basically over, except for the humanitarian and human rights catastrophe. Putins ally won - a slightly pyrrhic victory perhaps, but for the meantime Assad stays. Did they level cities or liberate them? Hard to tell the difference. Probably both. That said US involvement in the middle east is a grave shitstorm.

This awesome "analysis" somehow misses the biggest current problem of NATO - Turkey - possibly because Putin does not have a good handle on Turkey yet so its off-limits. Also Pakistan/India and North Korea does not get a mention for the same reason - no chance to push Putins agenda.

NATO might have reassured Gorby it had no intention to spread. It is important to understand that Warsaw pact countries generally accepted Russians as saviours from German occupation, by the 1970s this had changed firmly to perceiving Russians as occupants, political persecutors and economic idiots.

After the economic collapse of the USSR (supposedly somehow caused by Ronald Reagan :-) all these countries needed reassurance that the Russians were not coming back. The only possible reassurance was joining NATO. If that meant breaking a promise made to an ex-representative of a no longer existing country, that is fine by me. If NATO had promised not to spread to Mother Theresa I would be more concerned.

The problem with the Ukraine is that we (EU) made an offer that put them in danger (from Putin) and we could not back that up with real economic or military assistance. Dumb move. But also Ukrainian politics is an incredible mess and simply too many ethnic russians live there giving Putin a strong nationalist base.

I would be interested to know if there have been any studies (not sure how they would go about it) to see how many fighters in Syria are locals and how many are foreign mercenaries (not including the Russian army). I don't deny that you may be 100% correct, but I would like to see some figures to confirm, and to see just how bad this issue has gotten. For all I know, the Syrian secessionists (if that's what the original local revolutionists should be called) are all gone and the fighters of today are nearly all foreign invaders, I just don't know, I've never seen data about that.

Absolutely. We've had our share of - primarily Austrian and French - mercenaries as part of our internal wars. These were groups who enlisted for one of the fighting parties.

In Syria, however, you've had thousands of mercenaries who were not fighting for the government or the "rebels", but for their own. And we're not just talking about ISIS carving out pieces of Syria for their own caliphate, but also other jihadists who merely want to turn Syria into another failed state, like Libya.

To describe this as a civil war distorts the nature of this conflict, it makes it sound as if it were a struggle for control between two groups of Syrians. It may have been at some point years ago, but it hasn't been for a long time.

Mali is looking awfully similar by now, too. Lots of foreign fighters in nation states that were only ever stable on paper anyway -- a recipe for disaster.

What kind of balance are you speaking of? For the sake of argument, I'll assume that you mean spending somewhat equal time and effort on different sides of an argument.

That kind of balance can be expected from a news outlet. Many of them, especially American ones, overcook is massively by refusing to make judgements on the validity of opposing arguments. If argument A is backed by empirical evidence and argument B is smoke and mirrors, argument B should receive ridicule, not the same kind of respect that A receives.

Now, applying this kind of balance to individuals strikes me as wierd. They are not obliged to give a balanced view: they are obliged, as journalists, to present facts, and offer interpretations. The issues we're talking about here are not disputes between neighbours. We are talking about the war on terror, macroeconomics, propaganda, things of the utmost importance. And the media is doing a woeful job at presenting any dissenting view.

Thing is, you can get the major consensus narrative from countless news outlets out there. Want to here about the supposed benefits of multinational trade agreements? The NYT and the WaPo have dozens upon dozens of articles with praise of TTIP and TPP. If, however, you would like to hear about the consequences of previous trade agreements, or just some hard math on the numbers they like to throw in there, you won't find any. You'll have to go to Dean Baker at the CEPR, to Yves Smith at NakedCapitalism, you'll read Rick Wolff's take on it.

These people do everything in their power to restore the balance that the media drowned in buckets of party-line puff pieces. People recognise RT for propaganda, but somehow think propaganda stops when ownership is private.

Try to find proper articles about the global assassination program (drone warfare) and its effect on sovereign people abroad -- won't find anything in the media, you'll have to go to Jeremy Scahill.

Try to find proper articles about the desolation brought to communities in the developed world by (the current form of) capitalism, the epidemic of loniliness, the breaking apart of the social fabric, the monetarisation of every aspect of life -- silence. What about the slavery-like conditions it creates through indebtedness? The absurd inequality? Nothing.

What about the massive atrocities in Jemen? There was plenty about the atrocities committed by Russia in Syria, but when Saudis use US weapons to destroy an entire country, mum's word.

There is no balance in the media. They are the gatekeepers of knowledge, and anything outside the establishment's agreed upon consensus is ignored, marginalised, ridiculed, or straight up demonized.

CJ Hopkins had a great piece at Counterpunch the other day, titled Why Ridiculous Official Propaganda Still Works. He puts it more succinctly than I ever could. Reality doesn't matter, not for the mainstream media. The narrative matters.

And that's why I listen to dissenting voices like Chris Hedges, Abby Martin or Thom Hartmann, even when they are employed by a state propaganda outlet.

Serious problems, you guys!

Apropos Syria...

More Lies and BS from the POTUS. I've got you back, wink wink...He did the same for Ukraine and Syria. All talk and no action.

"Really, Hillary is evil?"

Well, Bill, I suppose it depends on your definition of evil, doesn't it.

To me, voting for both the invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act (twice!) is an absolute disqualifier. Like it used to be in '08 when HRC ran against Obama. Remember that one, Bill?

Now, looking at it from a country that had its leaders punished for waging a war of aggression, and rightfully so, Hillary meets my definition of evil. Her push for war in Libya, her immoral comments on the ghastly death of Gaddafi, her militaristic calls for a more robust foreign policy (aka war), her calls for a no-fly zone in Syria (aka war with Syria & Russia)... Bill, that shit is evil. And it's only the lesser of two evils because her opposition is Trump.

So spare me the horseshit. I don't even have to judge her economic policies which basically are the same flavour of neoliberalism as always, her hawkishness is enough evil for several lifetimes.

So... someone who knows nothing about the situation in Syria/Aleppo makes a video about it, and proves he is a complete dipshit.
Perhaps he could mention the rebels in Aleppo taking citizens hostage?
Or them shelling escape routes?
Or them mining every exit point?
"Assad bad! Assad Bad!" he might as well chant over and over. I'm sorry, chappy, it aint as simple as that.

And the US having tried everything to solve the situation? How about NEGOTIATION??? Since day 1, they have refused to, and undermined all and every effort to actually discuss the problems in Syria, and instead and repeatedly fuelled the chaos by provided arms, including another 50 tonnes of weapons and ammo dropped this week. Yes, it is more complex than that, but in a nutshell, that's better than this cretan's attempt.
So, a fucking awful attempt to explain the situation.

I'm basically done with defending WikiLeaks as well, after the shit they pulled with the leaks of Turkish data. Completely irresponsible, that one.

However, WikiLeaks doesn't need credibility -- the data does. And the data they published vis-á-vis Clinton/Podesta/DNC is, as of now, solid. There was one fake document, but that was shown to have been injected by someone other than WL.

"Strong bias" -- oh, I do have a strong bias. Plural, as in biases, actually. For instance, I'm disinclined to take anything the US intelligence agencies say at face value, given how they manufactured more than one casus belli. I don't put much weight into (un-)official statements in general, but especially since all the misinformation they spread about issues like the coup in Honduras or the actions of Nazi militias in Ukraine.

In this particular case, however, my argument is much simpler: Occam's razor seems much more likely than malicious intent. Propaganda outlets on both sides are run by people. Maybe the propaganda outlet Sputnik intentionally twisted the content of email, or maybe they just fucked up, like people are wont to do. Maybe someone intentionally fed Trump this bad info, maybe his people are just as incompetent as he is.

There are too many parts in this that include people who have more than once proven themselves to be utterly incompetent, or in complete ignorance of even the concept of truth. I don't think Trump gives a shit about truth or facts, he strikes me as the typical blowhard who spouts whatever shit comes to mind, and spins stories on the fly like a 4-year-old when caught red-handing.

No need for a conspiracy there, with all this incompetence, naiveté and plain disregard for facts.

So when they keep on pushing the Russian angle in this, it just seems like a desperate attempt to conjure up the old unifying enemy. Why worry about Russian propaganda when there's plenty on FOX and MSNBC/CNN? Why worry about Russian hackers when you accept the unbelievably insecure method of eletronic votes, partly without paper trails, and completely controlled by private companies?

It's just very strange to an outsider like me to see them focus on perceived external influences when the internals are a complete clusterfuck. And this presidential election is the biggest clusterfuck I've seen in 30 years, which doesn't mean much, admittedly.

That said, we can't just be looking at it from the outside with binoculars, not when people are back to full-blown Cold War rhetoric. When the ruling class in the US and/or the ruling class in Russia start their pissing contests and other forms of grandstanding, it's usually brown people who pay the price, like they have been in Syria for the last couple of years. And Libya. And Yemen. And Somalia. And Afghanistan, And Iraq. And Pakistan.

Personally, all the rhetoric about "standing up to Russian aggression" and similar nonsense makes me keenly aware that the bridge just outside my hometown was constructed with a shaft to place explosives in, to slow down advancing Soviet troops... so yes, I would very much like to bitch-slap all these warmongerers on both sides, but particularly the ones in the US since they are currently the ones racking up the highest death toll.

Edit: I should have made it clearer. Yes, WL is absolutely biased against Clinton and they do seem to act in support of Trump. Assange in particular. Which bums me out to no end, since I actually met the guy in person when they presented WL at the 26C3.

Argument pro plain incompetence/stupidity: https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/in-the-democratic-echo-chamber-inconvenient-truths-are-recast-as-putin-plots/

On a personal note: Olberman throwing accusations at foreign governments without solid evidence while claiming that WikiLeaks "hacks Podesta's email" is not helping his credibility. He's always been prone for exaggeration, but at a time when your military is bombing people in nearly a dozen countries and you're fighting a proxy-war against a nuclear-armed superpower in Syria, going off on an almost McCarthy-ite rant is not helping.

Glen Ford: Apocalypse Hillary

"The Trump campaign is in its death throes, and Hillary cannot be stopped. But she can be slowed down in her rush to war. Those “progressives” that were resigned to cast their vote for Hillary out of fear of Trump have no reason to tremble at the prospect of an orange presidency. Rather, they should be terrified of Hillary Clinton getting the kind of landslide that she will interpret as a mandate for war with Russia – a war in defense of al-Qaida in Syria."

I know it's a bit of a cliche to say it, but this whole video is just so much Russian propaganda. Right from the very first story 'ignored' by the MSM, you have the very same day coverage by the BBC here:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36835678

The only difference is that the BBC coverage has some details that the video's source leaves out, like that the Free Syrian Army condemned the beheading and was seeking to punish those responsible.

There is absolutely zero question that Syria is currently a war zone, with Russian jets dropping Russian made bombs on Syrian civilians. There is overwhelming evidence that chemical weapons have been deployed by BOTH ISIL and the Syrian government.

I'm not really sorry if it seems like the MSM is drawing a picture that makes the Assad regime look like bad guys. The reality is that the FACTS make the Assad regime bad guys. That doesn't make ISIL good guys because they are fighting Assad, criminals try and kill each other all the time and that's what's happening. The really troubling aspect is there exist plenty of Syrian people in the region who legitimately wanted an end to Assad's dictatorship and started a legitimated rebellion and have been almost completely cut out and killed off by both Assad and ISIL. If you've been paying attention, Russian bombing strikes focus heavily on the NON-ISIS rebels because they have legitimacy and thus need to die first.

Yeah, the Syrian refugees are mostly either displaced within Syria, or in the surrounding countries (6.6m internally displaced in Syria, 2.7m registered in Turkey, 1m registered in Lebanon, 650,000 registered in Jordan). Then there are 600,000 in Germany and another million or so not registered (and many of those are in Greece).

The notion that guns and mercenaries from the west are flooding in is simply untrue. You have the curious responsibility of explaining how the US has been incapable of removing Assad if it has provided such overwhelming support as you claim. What is true, is that Assad overreacted to the Arab Spring protests, unlike say Jordan decided to fire on protests almost immediately and brought a civil war on his hands.

Meanwhile, we also know the origin of the trajectory of the Sarin rockets fired were from areas of government control. We know Assad had a chemical weapons program. We know the volume of the attacks was almost certainly unattainable by anyone other than a state actor. We know that most of the victims were either civilians or the opposition. It's also a curious that these attacks only seemed to occur in Syria.

Again your idea that oil is still a motivation for US involvement in the Middle East is an outdated concept. The US surpassed Saudi Arabia as the largest global producer in the world thank to shale oil. The price of oil has crashed as a result and will likely remain low for a prolonged time as a result. The only beneficiary who stands to gains from revisiting the conflict between the US and Russia is Putin because it boosts his domestic popularity to be locked in a struggle with the US.

Many governments in the Middle East regularly throw out the excuse that anything that goes wrong (and is usually their fault) is a result of a US conspiracy. Egypt has regularly done it, Turkey has just recently blamed the attempted coup on the US even though the incentives for the US are clearly for a stable government there to provide a base from which to attack ISIS in Iraq. You should not be so gullible as to believe this is always the case just because the US has intervened covertly in the past.