SCENE: A conference room at the FBI in Quantico, Virginia. Special Agent Charles SIEGELMEYER, in charge of the Russian Online Political Espionage (ROPE) desk, sits at the head of the table.
In the room are Jared SCHLAUTERMEYER, a cybersecurity analyst with the ROPE desk, Juliana SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO, a senior Russian policy analyst, and Oscar VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ, from the Central Intelligence Agency. SIEGELMEYER convenes the meeting.
SIEGELMEYER: OK. Welcome to the task force on Russian political cyberespionage. Juliana, do we have an update on the Clinton case?
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: Nothing, really. Nobody, either at State or at FBI can tell what Putin would stand to gain by punking Clinton.
SIEGELMEYER: Devil’s advocate here – less defense of the Baltic States?
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: At the risk of getting all of Europe to start rebuilding its military?
SIEGELMEYER: I agree. At worst, I think Putin is just imparting chaos, because…
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: …chaos increases your options.
SIEGELMEYER: Jared?
SCHLAUTERMEYER: Well, so far it’s just a story. Nothing hard to pin it on.
SIEGELMEYER: Huh. So it sounds like this investigation…
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: …is at a standstill?
(SIEGELMEYER, SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO and SCLAUTERMAYER nod glumly)
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: Let me interrupt here…?
SIEGELMEYER: I’m sorry – this is Oscar Villanueva-Lopez, from the CIA. You’re from the…
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: I’m from the Cuba desk. And we’ve really got one theory here.
SIEGELMEYER: Shoot.
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: Let’s hear it.
SCHLAUTERMEYER: Anything’s better than nothing.
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: So the question is “who is running a cybermole operation in the US, we’ve had one big clue to work with. In Cuba, the people at the top of the food chain are given to giving these loooooong speeches – four, five, even six or seven hours. They just go on and on. And sometimes it’s just babble; they’re not a whole lot more “accurate” than Kim Jong Un, plus they’re all full of that Latino sense of drama. It literally is about hearing their gums flap.
SIEGELMEYER: Interesting.
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: Huh
SCHLAUTERMEYER: Fascinating.
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: Now, at the CIA, one of our analytical tools is “Berg’s Law“, specifically Berg’s Seventh Law…
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: …Oh, yeah! “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character, humanity or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: Wow – you use Berg’s Seventh here at FBI, too?
SIEGELMEYER: Absolutely.
(SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO and SCHLAUTERMEYER nod in enthusiastic agreement)
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: Excellent. So the DNC has accused the GOP of colluding with a foreign power, that means…
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: Someone at the DNC is colluding with a foreign power.
SCHLAUTERMEYER: Damn.
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: And the Russians are know to work through proxies. What you need to do is find a long-winded liberal commentator who makes endless proclamations, puffed up with lots of drama and strurm und drang, but all talk. Not just any long-winded BSers – the longest-winded, most BS-addled ones!
SIEGELMEYER: And they’ll be a Cuban mole?
VILLANUEVA-LOPEZ: Yep.
(SIEGELMEYER, SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO and SCHLAUTERMEYER nod in agreement).
SCHMIDT-BULAWAYO: So we just need to find an American liberal commentator that goes on and on and on and on, and never really says anything of value?
SCHLAUTERMEYER: Hmmm.
SIEGELMEYER: We’ll obviously have to continue this discussion. I’ll schedule a meeting on Monday.
Who. Who, indeed.
And SCENE
Cubans might have to listen to interminable speeches, but Venezuelans can be forced to work in the field for a minimum of 60 days. Forced labor, eh? The death spiral continues apace.
Hmmm… this sounds like a start of a new novel for Mitch.
Great contorted conservative fantasy; I’m sure the Mitch-bots are creaming their bermuda shorts.
Sadly it has no correspondence to reality.
This is pretty good as a source. I would also encourage you to have a look at the considered opinions of our allies who live in closer proximity to Russia.
Oh, wait — that’s right, you don’t believe in expertise. Presumably you get your dental and other health care from your neighborhood mechanic. Wouldn’t want any genuine specialization in knowledge or information.
More seriously –
https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/russia-no-long-term-fascist-danger-by-vladislav-inozemtsev-2016-07
“Completing the formula, Putin appeals to Russians’ sense of historical loss and former glory, openly praising irredentism and militarization. Victory Day celebrations commemorating the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany now surpass the bombast of the Soviet period; and state propaganda constantly fuels anti-Western sentiment with claims that parts of “historical Russia” were illegally seized – hence the need to “reclaim” Crimea by force in March 2014.
…Second, Russia is a multi-ethnic country that for centuries developed as an empire, not as a nation-state. Therefore, fascistic tendencies here are more imperialistic than nationalistic. ”
The article also references an interesting definition of fascism that includes an emphasis on EXPANSION, by an expert on that topic.
“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal constraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.”
When you have so many previous Republican administration figures, as well as people like Leon Panetta, former head of DOD and CIA seeing a danger here, I suggest your fantasy is suitable only for coloring with crayons by little children.
Unless you prefer to continue your disconnect from objective, factual reality?
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DG,
Let me guess – do you think you speak for “objective, factual reality?”
I’m getting tired of asking you to go back to your prior threads, and show how your “objective facts”, and especially your “arguments and Brod have been savage by people who, you know, know what they’re talking about.
Is “Objective Factual Reality” the brand name of the pills you’re taking, Dog Gone? If so, I don’t think they do what you think they do …