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Thread: Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats

  1. #1

    Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats

    Obama imposes sanctions on Russia, expels 35 diplomats in response to election-related hacking

    President Barack Obama retaliated Thursday against Russia for cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the 2016 presidential campaign, imposing sanctions on top Russian intelligence officials and agencies and expelling 35 Russian operatives from the U.S.

    As part of the administration's response, the FBI and Homeland Security Department also were set to release a report with technical evidence intended to prove Russia's military and civilian intelligence services were behind the hacking to expose some of their most sensitive hacking infrastructure.
    ...
    Among those targeted in the sanctions announced by the Treasury Department were the chief and deputy chiefs of GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. Cybersecurity experts in the U.S. have linked GRU to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and party officials through a group they have nicknamed APT 28 or Fancy Bear. The U.S. also is sanctioning the Federal Security Service and Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian state and cyber companies associated with them.

    Those expelled were described by Obama as intelligence operatives and the U.S. also shut down two Russian compounds — one in Maryland and another in New York — used for "intelligence-related purposes."
    ...
    The moves will ratchet up tensions with Russia less than a month before Trump's inauguration. The president-elect, who has said the hacking could have been the work of "somebody sitting in a bed someplace," told reporters Wednesday that "we ought to get on with our lives."

    They also raise the possibility of an escalating cycle of finger-pointing and retaliation between Washington and Moscow despite Trump's pledge to seek better relations with Putin. The Russian government, which has denied responsibility for the hacking, has vowed to respond to any new sanctions with unspecified counter-measures.

    The actions announced Thursday may be matched by covert countermeasures intended to warn Russia that the U.S. is able to breach its most sensitive computer systems, while preserving public deniability.
    ...
    "I'm going after Russia in every way we can go after Russia," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CNN this month. "I think they did interfere with our elections, and I want Putin personally to pay a price."
    ...
    More: http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/n...229-story.html
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
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    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.



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  3. #2
    Washington Warmongers Make 11th Hour Attempt To Start a War With Russia
    By Daisy Luther - December 29, 2016

    In the final days of Barack Obama’s presidency, the warmongers in Washington, DC are hell-bent on causing as much chaos as possible. If they don’t manage to start a war with Russia before Donald Trump is sworn in, it won’t be for lack of trying.

    The Military Industrial Complex stands to profit by billions of dollars if this comes to fruition. War is very profitable for politicians and their corporate cronies, but for the rest of us, it would inflict a heavy toll. (If you haven’t read it yet, I strongly recommend picking up a copy of the anti-war classic, War Is a Racket by General Smedley Butler.)

    Today, 35 Russian diplomats were expelled from the US for their alleged part in tampering with the election:

    The US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats as punishment for alleged interference into the presidential election.

    It will also close two Russian compounds used for intelligence-gathering, in Maryland and New York, as part of a raft of retaliatory measures.
    ...
    Sanctions have also been announced against nine entities and individuals including the GRU and FSB Russian intelligence agencies.

    Two Republicans, John McCain and Lindsey Graham, and a Democrat, Amy Klobuchar, all voiced their support for action to be taken against Russia for “meddling with the presidential election” in November. The three are currently stirring up trouble on a tour of NATO countries near Russia’s western border.

    McCain, Graham, and Klobuchar are claiming that there is support from 99% of both Republicans and Democrats for actions against Russia, and particularly against Vladimir Putin personally.
    ...
    More:
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  4. #3
    Well,,

    How incredibly stupid.
    Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
    Ron Paul 2004

    Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
    It's all about Freedom

  5. #4
    /////This is where Trump Truly stands on Russia, otherwise they would of tried to oust him at the convention.

    House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Republican, called the sanctions "overdue," adding that it is an "appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia."
    "Russia does not share America's interests," he said in a statement Thursday. "In fact, it has consistently sought to undermine them, sowing dangerous instability around the world. While today's action by the administration is overdue, it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia."

  6. #5

    https://twitter.com/MZHemingway/stat...79205295972352
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
    "Beware the Military-Industrial-Financial-Pharma-Corporate-Internet-Media-Government Complex." - B4L update of General Dwight D. Eisenhower
    "Debt is the drug, Wall St. Banksters are the dealers, and politicians are the addicts." - B4L
    "Totally free immigration? I've never taken that position. I believe in national sovereignty." - Ron Paul

    Proponent of real science.
    The views and opinions expressed here are solely my own, and do not represent this forum or any other entities or persons.

  7. #6
    Flashback- 2010: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press...set-fact-sheet

    U.S.-Russia Relations: “Reset” Fact Sheet

    In one of his earliest new foreign policy initiatives, President Obama sought to reset relations with Russia and reverse what he called a “dangerous drift” in this important bilateral relationship. President Obama and his administration have sought to engage the Russian government to pursue foreign policy goals of common interest – win-win outcomes -- for the American and Russian people. In parallel to this engagement with the Russian government, President Obama and his administration also have engaged directly with Russian society -- as well as facilitated greater contacts between American and Russian business leaders, civil society organizations, and students -- as a way to promote our economic interests, enhance mutual understanding between our two nations, and advance universal values. On the occasion of President Medvedev’s visit to the United States and one year after President Obama visited Russia, it is time to take stock of what has been achieved from this change in policy and what remains to be done in developing a more substantive relationship with Russia.
    More at link. Will Trump be another failed false start in relations or will it really be a new beginning?

  8. #7
    http://foreignpolicy.com/2012/10/16/...oreign-policy/

    How the Russian ‘Reset’ Explains Obama’s Foreign Policy

    The president's naivete about Vladimir Putin is the root cause of his failure.

    As violent mobs shouting Islamist slogans rampaged against U.S. diplomats across the Middle East and Southeast Asia in the weeks following the fatal Sept. 11, 2012 attack on U.S. officials in Libya, Russian President Vladimir Putin saw a chance to kick the United States when it was down. He did it by expelling the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose work — advising private groups on democracy, as it has done since the 1990s — he evidently resented. For good measure, he just cancelled the longstanding Nunn-Lugar program of cooperation on destroying and securing old Soviet weapons of mass destruction. His message: Russia doesn’t need any help from the Americans.

    These moves by Putin are just the latest in a long string of affronts and rebuffs mocking U.S. President Barack Obama’s hope that he could "reset" U.S.-Russian relations. The policy’s very name implied that the strains in the relationship were largely America’s fault — that Obama had to rectify U.S. policy. He expected to turn Russia into a cooperative partner by showing greater humility and by accommodating Putin’s sensibilities on Iran, ballistic missile defense, nuclear arms treaties, and other matters.

    This Russia policy aligned with Obama’s general approach to national security. For years, Obama and his national security team argued that, by and large, America’s problems in the world resulted not from aggression or the ideological extremism of hostile actors abroad, but were the bitter fruit of America’s history of bullying, selfishness and militarism, especially during the George W. Bush administration. They complained that America had long been acting like a rogue nation, arrogant in defying the rights of others, self-serving in defining its interests in national rather than global terms, and unilateralist in refusing to constrain itself to actions approved by multilateral institutions or endorsed by progressive commentators (the latter often refer to themselves as "the international community"). They contended that the United States should be humble, out of a due sense of shame, and should adopt a "doctrine of mea culpa."

    Anne-Marie Slaughter, who served Obama as the head of Policy Planning at the State Department, wrote a February 2008 Commonweal article called "Good Reasons to be Humble" in which she said that the United States "should make clear that our hubris … has diminished us and led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths." Current White House adviser Samantha Power, while a Harvard University lecturer, wrote in the New Republic‘s March 3, 2003 issue: "Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors."

    The Obama administration has had plenty of time to test its diplomatic theories. It was back in July 2009 that the president told the New Economic School in Moscow that the U.S.-Russian relationship required a reset. "There is," he said, "the 20th-century view that the United States and Russia are destined to be antagonists, and that a strong Russia or a strong America can only assert themselves in opposition to one another. And there is a 19th-century view that we are destined to vie for spheres of influence, and that great powers must forge competing blocs to balance one another." Obama called these assumptions mistaken, and added: "In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries."

    What are we to make of this idea that the Obama presidency is a new era, in which the great powers will no longer behave as they have for centuries? Was the president offering this up as an observation of fact? Was it an apology? A promise? A sermon?

    Did Obama intend to imply that powerful nations will no longer act selfishly or aggressively? Was he suggesting that his accession to power has transformed international affairs, consigning to history’s dustbin the writings of Thucydides, the venerable Athenian historian who, roughly 2,300 years ago, observed that nations, like men, pursue what they perceive as their interests — sometimes with judgment, sometimes without, and occasionally with tragic results. If so, we can expect Thucydides to have the last laugh.

    Obama first spoke of "reset" less than 12 months after Russia invaded Georgia, a U.S. friend and partner. Soon after that, the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear reactor in Iran began operations. As rebels tried to bring down the government of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad in early 2011, Russia supplied the Syrian dictator with military equipment by sea. Reuters reports that Moscow sold Damascus $1 billion dollars of military hardware since the uprising began. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Russia in June 2012 against sending helicopters to assist the Syrian regime in its attacks against civilians and rebels. In August 2011, Putin, then the prime minister, accused the United States of living "like a parasite" on the world economy. At a May 2012 international missile defense conference in Moscow, Russia’s top military officer Gen. Nikolai Makarov denounced U.S-NATO plans to build defenses against ballistic missiles launched from the Middle East. Referring to potential Eastern European sites for such defenses, General Makarov made a remarkable threat: "A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens."

    In short, in the 39 months since Obama announced that great powers do "not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries," Russia has exerted itself to defy the United States and NATO and increase its political investment in rogue regimes — in particular in Syria and Iran. In the three-and-a-half years since the policy’s inception, the Obama reset has been a head-shaking disappointment.

    Yet throughout the summer of 2012 the Obama administration repeatedly voiced hope that Putin, newly re-elected as Russian president, would help end the carnage in Syria. Despite thousands of civilian casualties in Syria’s expanding civil conflict, Obama invoked no interest or principle in favor of supporting the anti-Assad dissidents, though he had cited a "responsibility to protect" the Libyan rebels, who suffered fewer casualties. As the New York Times explained, Obama’s focus in the Syria crisis was on working with Russia and through the United Nations Security Council. He strove to persuade Putin to encourage the Syrian dictator to step down. Though generally friendly to the Obama administration, the Washington Post’s editors lamented its naďveté toward Russia: "Even if Mr. Putin could be persuaded, he probably lacks the means to force out Mr. Assad and his clan. Mr. Obama’s apparent faith that Mr. Putin is ready to do business with him is at odds with the strongman’s recent behavior…" Obama failed to appreciate Putin’s interest in reasserting Russian influence in the Middle East. Russia’s predominant interest is in high oil prices and Middle Eastern turmoil serves that interest, yet Obama simply assumed that Russia would cooperate with American efforts to promote Middle Eastern stability.
    More at link.

  9. #8
    What we all going to say about communists zippy and nickers if Trump is lifting all sanctions by end of 2017?



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  11. #9
    Everybody is communist, comrade.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Everybody is communist, comrade.

    No you are a communist. Specifically you and every liberal here hiding the fact that you are liberal. See I am a real man. I state my convictions and don't hide behind trolling. You on other hand look to argue for liberals without stating that this is what you are doing. Parasite.

  13. #11
    Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.
    BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky – Washington liberals are trying to push through the so-called DREAM Act, which creates an official path to Democrat voter registration for 2 million college-age illegal immigrants.
    Rand Paul 2010

    Booker T. Washington:
    Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose
    fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides.

  14. #12
    If we avoid war and something good happens between Russia and USofA, it will be because of the magical mysterious powers of DJ DonMaster Trump.
    1. Don't lie.
    2. Don't cheat.
    3. Don't steal.
    4. Don't kill.
    5. Don't commit adultery.
    6. Don't covet what your neighbor has, especially his wife.
    7. Honor your father and mother.
    8. Remember the Sabbath and keep it Holy.
    9. Don’t use your Higher Power's name in vain, or anyone else's.
    10. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

    "For the love of money is the root of all evil..." -- I Timothy 6:10, KJV

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by RandallFan View Post
    Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.
    It is a symbolic thing. It does not reduce the ability of the US and Russia to communicate or to hack one another like maybe it could have a couple of hundred years ago- before electronic communications were possible. US kicks out a few known spies. Russia kicks out a few known spies. Spying continues. The sanctions are not on the Russian economy like they were over the Ukraine issue but on a couple of companies and a few individuals.

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/29/politi...y-white-house/

    Russia's first visible action came later Thursday, when Russian authorities ordered the closure of the Anglo-American School of Moscow, a US official briefed on the matter said. The order from the Russian government closes the school, which serves children of US, British and Canadian embassy personnel, to US and foreign nationals.

    The order also closes access to the US embassy vacation house in Serebryany Bor, near Moscow.
    The State Department also has kicked out 35 Russian diplomats from its embassy in Washington and consulate in San Francisco, giving them and their families 72 hours to leave the U.S. The diplomats were declared persona non grata for acting in a "manner inconsistent with their diplomatic status."
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 12-29-2016 at 04:57 PM.

  16. #14

    Bipartisan neocon chickenhawks united

    Juan McCain and his significant other Lindsey have tracked the Ruskies to Estonia. They gonna do sumpin!

    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    You only show up to attack Trump when he is wrong
    Make America the Land of the Free & the Home of the Brave again

  17. #15
    Quote Originally Posted by RandallFan View Post
    Is this whole thing toothless? What more does Russia intelligence need to know.
    We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their $#@! messed with. Not by us, by Russia, this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them. This could severely crash their economy if it is taken seriously. Depending on the intelligence the United States shares with our allies and leaks out. If you see Russia bending over backwards to kiss our ass, or any sort of serious response from them, then it had teeth. My bet is we will see a serious response from Russia.

  18. #16
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their $#@! messed with. Not by us, by Russia, this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them. This could severely crash their economy if it is taken seriously. Depending on the intelligence the United States shares with our allies and leaks out. If you see Russia bending over backwards to kiss our ass, or any sort of serious response from them, then it had teeth. My bet is we will see a serious response from Russia.
    Nah- it doesn't go that far.



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  20. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Nah- it doesn't go that far.
    If you look at different sources it either says 35 diplomats or 35 spies. If you are another country are you going to give the Russian diplomats in your country a second look?

  21. #18
    Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place.

  22. #19
    Quote Originally Posted by 69360 View Post
    Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place.
    Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.

  23. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    If you look at different sources it either says 35 diplomats or 35 spies. If you are another country are you going to give the Russian diplomats in your country a second look?
    It is no secret that many spies operate under the cover of diplomatic immunity. For almost all countries. That is no revelation. The Russian Embassy in DC has almost 200 people working there- and this will effect less than 20 of them.

    Similar thing happened under GW Bush when fifty were expelled: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93757&page=1

    In a return to the days of Cold War games, a diplomatic face-off was launched today between Washington and Moscow with the expulsion of dozens of Russian diplomats suspected of spying America.

    Four Russian diplomats have been declared “persona non grata” and ordered out of the country in 10 days as a result of the Robert Hanssen spy case and another 46 have been asked to leave by July 1, a senior State Department official said today.

    Two other Russian diplomats believed to be directly related to the Hanssen case had already left the country, the official said.

    Hanssen, a 25-year FBI veteran, was arrested in a Virginia park on Feb. 18 after allegedly trying to make a “dead drop” to his Russian handlers. He is accused of spying for the Soviet Union and Russia since 1985.
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 12-29-2016 at 05:17 PM.

  24. #21
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...=.517a079d2ab0

    Russia is harassing U.S. diplomats all over Europe

    Russian intelligence and security services have been waging a campaign of harassment and intimidation against U.S. diplomats, embassy staff and their families in Moscow and several other European capitals that has rattled ambassadors and prompted Secretary of State John F. Kerry to ask Vladimir Putin to put a stop to it.

    At a recent meeting of U.S. ambassadors from Russia and Europe in Washington, U.S. ambassadors to several European countries complained that Russian intelligence officials were constantly perpetrating acts of harassment against their diplomatic staff that ranged from the weird to the downright scary. Some of the intimidation has been routine: following diplomats or their family members, showing up at their social events uninvited or paying reporters to write negative stories about them.

    But many of the recent acts of intimidation by Russian security services have crossed the line into apparent criminality. In a series of secret memos sent back to Washington, described to me by several current and former U.S. officials who have written or read them, diplomats reported that Russian intruders had broken into their homes late at night, only to rearrange the furniture or turn on all the lights and televisions, and then leave. One diplomat reported that an intruder had defecated on his living room carpet.

    In Moscow, where the harassment is most pervasive, diplomats reported slashed tires and regular harassment by traffic police. Former ambassador Michael McFaul was hounded by government-paid protesters, and intelligence personnel followed his children to school. The harassment is not new; in the first term of the Obama administration, Russian intelligence personnel broke into the house of the U.S. defense attache in Moscow and killed his dog, according to multiple former officials who read the intelligence reports.

    But since the 2014 Russian intervention in Ukraine, which prompted a wide range of U.S. sanctions against Russian officials and businesses close to Putin, harassment and surveillance of U.S. diplomatic staff in Moscow by security personnel and traffic police have increased significantly, State Department press secretary John Kirby confirmed to me.

    “Since the return of Putin, Russia has been engaged in an increasingly aggressive gray war across Europe. Now it’s in retaliation for Western sanctions because of Ukraine. The widely reported harassment is another front in the gray war,” said Norm Eisen, U.S. ambassador the Czech Republic from 2011 to 2014. “They are hitting American diplomats literally where they live.”

    The State Department has taken several measures in response to the increased level of nefarious activity by the Russian government. All U.S. diplomats headed for Europe now receive increased training on how to handle Russian harassment, and the European affairs bureau run by Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland has set up regular interagency meetings on tracking and responding to the incidents.

    McFaul told me he and his family were regularly followed and the Russian intelligence services wanted his family to know they were being watched. Other embassy officials also suffered routine harassment that increased significantly after the Ukraine-related sanctions. Those diplomats who were trying to report on Russian activities faced the worst of it.

    “It was part of a way to put pressure on government officials who were trying to do their reporting jobs. It definitely escalated when I was there. After the invasion of Ukraine, it got much, much worse,” McFaul said. “We were feeling embattled out there in the embassy.”

    There was a debate inside the Obama administration about how to respond, and ultimately President Obama made the decision not to respond with similar measures against Russian diplomats, McFaul said.

    A spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington sent me a long statement both tacitly admitting to the harassment and defending it as a response to what he called U.S. provocations and mistreatment of Russian diplomats in the United States.

    “The deterioration of U.S.-Russia relations, which was not caused by us, but rather by the current Administrations’ policy of sanctions and attempts to isolate Russian, had a negative affect on the functioning of diplomatic missions, both in U.S. and Russia,” the spokesman said. “In diplomatic practice there is always the principle of reciprocity and, indeed, for the last couple of years our diplomatic staff in the United States has been facing certain problems. The Russian side has never acted proactively to negatively affect U.S. diplomats in any way.”

  25. #22
    http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/08/politi...k-us-diplomat/

    U.S., Russia expel each other's diplomats


    Diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Russia began to unravel after Moscow said Saturday it had expelled two American diplomats and the U.S. revealed it had tossed two Russians in response to an attack on one of its personnel.

    "On June 17, we expelled two Russian officials from the United States to respond to this attack," State Department spokesman John Kirby told CNN, referring to an American diplomat who the spokesman said "was attacked by a Russian policeman" while trying to enter the U.S. embassy last month in Moscow.

    Russia revealed Saturday it had responded in kind.

    According to Russian State News Agency Sputnik, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said two Americans were declared persona non grata after an "unfriendly move" by the U.S. that was not specified.

    The State Department declined to comment directly on that report.


  26. #23
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.
    You are a beautiful contrarian indicator.

  27. #24
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Similar thing happened under GW Bush when fifty were expelled: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93757&page=1
    Bush was so anti Russia, I hope the president after him campaigns on restoring our diplomatic ties with them and the "Iraq" war somehow still goes on.



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  29. #25
    Obama said he would restore relations with Russia and end the Iraq war. Then reality hit.

  30. #26
    From Drudge;

    Russian Embassy in UK responds to sanctions with 'lame duck tweet'

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7501376.html

    The Russian response to Barack Obama’s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing.

    As officials in Moscow said that US diplomats would be ordered to leave in a tit-for-tat response, the Russian Embassy used Twitter to make its point with little panache.

    “President Obama expels 35 ��iplomats in Cold War deja vu. Everybody, including the American people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration,” it said.

    Mr Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S. It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack.

    “All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” he said. He added: “Such activities have consequences.”

    If anyone gives a $#@! there's a tweeter picture at the link....

  31. #27
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    Washington has a plan for that, whatever Trump's intentions used to be he can't even pretend to have the same intentions if he starts getting perceived as weak for caving to Russian influence.
    The only people who will see it as weak are the people who are actually buying the bull$#@!, and they are a minority. Though, they are a very LOUD minority, and could be mistaken for popular opinion.

    Quote Originally Posted by tod evans View Post
    From Drudge;

    Russian Embassy in UK responds to sanctions with 'lame duck tweet'

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7501376.html

    The Russian response to Barack Obama’s announcement that he was expelling 35 diplomats over the alleged cyber attack on the US election, was fast, and in some cases, rather amusing.

    As officials in Moscow said that US diplomats would be ordered to leave in a tit-for-tat response, the Russian Embassy used Twitter to make its point with little panache.

    “President Obama expels 35 ��iplomats in Cold War deja vu. Everybody, including the American people, will be glad to see the last of this hapless administration,” it said.

    Mr Obama on Thursday sanctioned Russian intelligence services and their top officials, kicked out 35 Russian officials and closed down two Russian-owned compounds in the U.S. It was the strongest action the Obama administration has taken to date to retaliate for a cyberattack.

    “All Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions,” he said. He added: “Such activities have consequences.”
    If anyone gives a $#@! there's a tweeter picture at the link....
    I'm more alarmed by Obama's actions. He's got less than 30 days to start a war.

    Pressure's on.
    Last edited by nobody's_hero; 12-29-2016 at 06:52 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by timosman View Post
    This is getting silly.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    It started silly.
    T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men

    "One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." - Plato

    We Are Running Out of Time - Mini Me

    Quote Originally Posted by Philhelm
    I part ways with "libertarianism" when it transitions from ideology grounded in logic into self-defeating autism for the sake of ideological purity.

  32. #28
    Quote Originally Posted by 69360 View Post
    Kind of stupid and pointless. Obama has less than a month left. Trump like him or not (I don't) has already announced he intends to have good relations with Russia. I'm sure they all get to come back or others will take their place.
    Yes, this seems to be more about sandbagging the new administration than anything else.
    Last edited by AZJoe; 12-29-2016 at 07:20 PM.
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  33. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by nikcers View Post
    We pretty much told the world not do business with Russia or they will get their $#@! messed with. Not by us this wasn't a message to Russia per say but to the whole world not to trust them ...
    Trust? Don't trust Russia because Washington (still without evidence) blames Russia for the DNC corruption leaked by Seth Rich? This from Washington, the government that was forced to admit its NSA was hacking and tapping the phones of 35 world leaders including Angela Merkel's cell phone. That's not a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Its a case of the whole coal mine calling the teacup black.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-leaders-calls


    Last edited by AZJoe; 12-29-2016 at 07:21 PM.
    "Let it not be said that we did nothing." - Dr. Ron Paul. "Stand up for what you believe in, even if you are standing alone." - Sophie Magdalena Scholl
    "War is the health of the State." - Randolph Bourne "Freedom is the answer. ... Now, what's the question?" - Ernie Hancock.

  34. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Obama said he would restore relations with Russia and end the Iraq war. Then reality hit.
    Obama said a lot of things. Who freaking cares? I'm thinking he just to be impeached 20 plus days or not.

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