Things Aren’t What Trump Tells You: The Not So Friendly Russians

I usually rise early and check on the BBC news among others. I’m not sure whether that is included in Trump’s description of “fake news” or not. I would note that a poll taken by Rasmussen showed the winner of the fake news trophy in the United States is Fox News so maybe he only includes American news as fake.

On the last day of November I saw as the headline in BBC news of  “North Korea: Russia accuses US of goading Kim Jong-un” 

The article read: “Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has accused the US of seeking to provoke North Korea into stepping up its nuclear missile programme.”

“Wow,” I thought, “how did the Russians turn it around to aver we were provoking North Korea.”

The article went on: “He rejected a call by the American envoy to the UN Security Council to sever ties with the North after its latest ballistic missile test.”  I suppose that makes sense. An article in September noted: “Through Russian eyes, then, North Korea’s resolve in the face of American and international pressure is admirable and worth supporting. So while Russia may seem to go along with UN sanctions on North Korea, it works behind the scenes to make them as toothless as possible.”

Lavrov was speaking on a visit to the Belarussian capital Minsk. The article notes, “Mr Lavrov asked whether America was actively seeking to destroy North Korea.” It quoted him as saying: “One gets the impression that everything has been done on purpose to make Kim Jong-un snap and carry out further inadvisable actions.”

Now what could it be that the United States has done to make Kim snap. You don’t think he was referring to the many insults Trump has thrown at him, do you? Never thought it was a brave or wise foreign policy to insult other leaders especially one that is known to be on the brink.

Lavrov went on to say the Americans “should explain to us all what they’re after. If they want to find a pretext for destroying North Korea, as the US envoy said at the UN Security Council, then let them say it outright and let the supreme American leadership confirm it.

He called for new talks with North Korea, “We have already emphasised several times that the squeeze of sanctions has essentially come to an end, and that those resolutions which introduced the sanctions should have included a requirement to renew the political process, a requirement to renew talks. But the Americans completely ignore this requirement and I consider this a big mistake.”

Of course he doesn’t mention that doing that in the past brought us to this state. 

A little later after reading the article I saw that Trump had sent out the following tweet, “The Chinese Envoy, who just returned from North Korea, seems to have had no impact on Little Rocket Man. Hard to believe his people, and the military, put up with living in  such horrible conditions. Russia and China condemned the launch.” (my emphasis)

Is the president living in his own brave little world unconnected with reality? Russia didn’t condemn the launch as much as it blamed Trump for provoking “North Korea into stepping up its nuclear missile programme.” 

Not only does Russia put the blame on Trump for Kim’s missile launch it goes a step further of accusing him of wanting “to find a pretext for destroying North Korea.” Unfortunately what Russia is suggesting to the rest of the world about the United States doesn’t get much coverage back here. I’m sure few have read Lavrov telling the defense ministry last week in Moscow:  “the West is making clear it does not want to force Russia to change policy but wants to secure regime change.” 

As I see it you can’t have it both ways. You can’t suggest Russia is supporting you when it is doing all it can to undermine you. My real problem though is I don’t know if Trump has a clue about this. Is he unaware Russia is blaming him for North Korea’s actions and accusing him of trying to overthrow the Putin regime? Or is he knowledgeable about it but must pretend it is otherwise? Either way  spells big trouble for the United States.

 

 

27 Comments

  1. Great question

    for the uneducated and the uneducable

    ugh!

    https://www.ldsfreedomforum.com/viewforum.php?f=20

    ugh! Ugh!

    FBI Shut the ability to access data base on crimes committed by fbi agents
    I created

    Forbidden

    You don’t have permission to access /phpBB3/viewforum.php on this server.
    Server unable to read htaccess file, denying access to be safe

    Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

    google campus actvism forum fbi

    ugh ugh ugh

    scroll down

    http://whosarat.websitetoolbox.com

    also see

    rigorousintuition .ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=29177

  2. Once again, Msfreeh wanders into the Wild Blue Yonder. But, I guess that’s O.K.
    Msfreeh feel free to be you, and I’ll feel free to be me.

    I have one question: Are you conversing and posting elsewhere and simply cutting and pasting here, at will? I ask because your posts sometimes seem, how shall I say it, irrelevant to the topics at hand.

    This is America, the home of the brave and free, where free speech still rules, unlike in Britain where judges order people not to speak or behave in ways which would tend to “insult” people. Now, I digress. Pardon me!

    Here’s what one British judge prohibited according to NYT: “publishing or distributing material likely to cause racial hatred.” (Like what? “The Bell Curve” or “Soul on Ice”?). The judge also ordered Brits not to use “insulting words” or engage in “insulting behavior”. Can’t use vulgar sign language, I guess or say Crooked Hillary or call Warren Pocahontas, I guess.

    One Brit, in flagrant violation of the judge’s orders, has “distributed (at a so-called Christian patrol) mock newspapers with the headlines: ‘World War Three Has Begun . . . Islam Against the World.’ The Horror!

    She’s already been convicted and fined 2000 pounds for harassing a Muslim woman in the street and saying, “Who made you wear that hijab?” A non-physical brief argument ensued. That’s all.

    She’s also been convicted and is awaiting sentence for a speech she gave in Belfast against terrorism: she’s again charged under a British Law with using: “threatening, abusive, insulting words or behavior.”

    In the United States, our highest court, SCOTUS, long decided that even Nazis can parade and march, with signs, insignia, and hateful messages, down the streets of Skokie, Illinois, through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. It’s what Americans call free speech, and the remedy for bad speech, is more good speech, not censorship or repression.

    In other words, in America, we let the whirling dervishes whirl; we don’t stone or jail them. We let them be!

    We may use our free speech rights to denounce others using their free speech rights. We denounce the flag burners; we don’t jail or fine them. In Britain perhaps you’d be fined and jailed for burning an ISIS flag or a Palestinian flag or a Pakistani flag, but I suspect not for burning a Swedish flag with a cross on it.

    • “I have one question: Are you conversing and posting elsewhere and simply cutting and pasting here, at will?”

      I got struck by lightning once. I got struck by lightning once.

  3. ugh

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1982/12/02/did-hoover-know-of-pearl-harbor/7510d069-2ac9-4512-a543-d2ce1aceca7c/?utm_term=.4bc42bb5d595

    Did FBI Director Hoover Know Of Pearl Harbor?
    By Thomas O’Toole December 2, 1982
    In the war of words over who was to blame for the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 41 years ago, fresh evidence is emerging that the late FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had a hand in the intelligence bungles that led the United States to heed none of the warnings that the invasion was imminent.

    The new evidence is supplied by Michigan State University historians John F. Bratzel and Leslie B. Rout Jr., who write in the current issue of The American Historical Review that Hoover received a double warning more than three months before the attack that the Japanese were thinking of making a surprise aircraft attack on the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.

    Based on information in 40-year-old FBI documents and documents from the FDR library near Hyde Park, N. Y., the two historians also claim that the double warning to Hoover is the “missing evidence” that Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Toland said he and other Pearl Harbor writers have sought for years. Toland claimed in his last book, “Infamy,” that the “disappearance” of this evidence was part of a “cover up” to purge intelligence records damaging to high officials in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration.

    see

    https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000505150004-3.pdf

    Bratzel and Rout write that the story of the “missing evidence” begins in 1939 in Yugoslavia, where German military intelligence recruited a Mediterranean playboy named Dusko Popov to spy in England for them. Popov (code name Ivan) agreed but turned double agent (code name Tricycle) as soon as he arrived in England. The German Abwehr (intelligence) soon trusted Popov so much that they told him to go to the United States to set up a spy ring, an instruction that Popov immediately communicated to British intelligence.

    Upon his arrival in New York, Popov was met by agents of the FBI who grilled him for days. In his memoirs, Popov said that one of his first statements to FBI bureau chief John Foxworth was: “You can expect an attack on Pearl Harbor before the end of the year . . . ”

    The Michigan State historians say Popov had two pieces of evidence to back up his warning. One was a verbal communique’ from the German air attache’ in Tokyo, who had escorted Japanese naval officers to the Gulf of Taranto below the Italian boot, where British warplanes from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious had devastated the Italian fleet in November of 1940.

    “The Japanese wanted to know all about the attack in infinite detail,” the historians write. Popov’s German sources “had concluded that the Asian member of the Tripartite Alliance was planning to duplicate the British feat.”

    Of far more importance, the historians write, was the telegram in Popov’s possession when he arrived in New York. Hidden on the face of the telegram was a microdot message to Popov asking for defense information about the U.S. and Canadian air forces and listing a series of questions the Japanese had asked their German allies to answer. One third of the questions pertained to the defense installations that ringed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor.

    “The Germans wanted sketches showing the exact locations of Hickam, Wheeler and Kaneohe airfields,” the historians write. “They likewise wanted sketches of the installations at Pearl Harbor and detailed information concerning dredging, depth of water, torpedo nets, anchorages and the like.”

  4. Professor Ron Bryan is one of those Physics professors
    that winds up in those who’ s
    who compendiums.
    I contacted him 5 or so years ago hoping to arrange
    an interview on video with him
    because of his work with CIA Fort Meade
    trained remote viewer Joe McMoneagle
    . I had reaf Joe’s book Mind Trek after reading
    Psychic Warrior by Colonel David Morehouse.
    Morehouse was also a CIA Fort Meade
    trained remote viewer.

    Professor Ron Bryan had collaborated with Joe McMoneagle on a physics
    problem Bryan was hoping to resolve.
    Where are the portals between the 3rd and 4 dimensions The entranceway
    or doors into those realms.

    Here is the published result of that work.

    http://people.physics.tamu.edu/bryan/10text.preprint.pdf

    Looking into Higher Dimensions: Research with Joseph McMoneagle – Texas A&M University
    PDFTexas A&M University › physics › people › …
    by R Bryan · 2007 · Related articles
    1. Looking into Higher Dimensions: Research with Joseph McMoneagle. Ronald Bryan*. Department of Physics, Texas A&M University. College Station, Texas 77843-4242. September 7, 2007. Abstract. A world- class .

    The remote viewers at the Farsight Institute including Daz Smith from Great Britain
    and Dick Algire from Hawaii have the same level of skill.
    Follow the link I posted in my previous reply and watch their predictions
    for major events in December 2017 on the youtube clip

    Yup, you did not ask for opinion.

  5. P.S. pardon the typos, I’m working on something else . . . just thought I’d throw my two cents in . . . quickly

  6. I know you didn’t ask for my open
    but let me give it a shot

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2t_OjFeZLwc

  7. I wonder what kind of dastardly betrayal Sessions will pull to avoid his fate? Pence chained himself to Glorious Leader early in the game. He’s going to the bottom with him.
    Kushner’s good for a ten-ball, at least. Junior will get a bit, too. I have doubts their haughty routine will go over too well inside. Parted from the material props of their sanity, they might well find out who they really are. Oh, so, very interesting, but, not enough to be there listening.

  8. How’s Glorious leader leaving the WH, in a bathrobe, or, handcuffs? That’s the question. Thanks, deplorables. He couldn’t have done it alone. If you hadn’t voted for Trump, we wouldn’t be in the fix we are. This situation is very dangerous. As Trump sinks, he’ll lash out. When the Russians closed in on the Berlin bunker, the Fuehrer gave orders to destroy whatever was left of Germany. I’m hoping Trump has a shred of human decency and doesn’t pull down the temple. We’re headed toward a Constitutional crisis.

    • Back to the Hitler analogies.

      Others predict not a shred of evidence linking Trump to “collusion” “during the election” Mueller’s supposed assignment . . . and as Professor Dershowitz repeatedly astutely notes: “Colluding is not a crime!” We all are colluding on Matt’s Blog. Diplomats collude and arrange dinner dates to further collude about matters of state. Lobbyists collude all the time.

      President Trump is as far from being deposed, indicted, or incarcerated, as you and I are. The likelihood is about equal to Obama being deposed for being falsely allegedly born in Kenya; although there’s more evidence of that, than there is of Trump colluding with Russians to fix and election.

      Who did collude? Hillary and the DNC when they hired a British Spy to collude with Russians and paid them $$$ to tell stories against Trump which they put in a Dossier which Comey and Dems et al use to (1) get wiretaps on Trump’s campaign; and (2) intimidate Trump post election.

      We’ll see, won’t we.

      Time will tell.

  9. FYI: Update from the Washington Examiner: Russia says North Korea will negotiate with US provided Russia is partner to negotiations.

    “North Korea is currently ready to conduct negotiations with the US with the participation of Russia as a third party,” Vitaly Pashin, a member of the Russian legislature, told state-run media following a trip to the Korean Peninsula.

    “Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s team has refused to consider direct talks with North Korea until the regime stops testing ballistic missiles and agrees that the negotiations would result in the loss of its nuclear weapons. But the North Koreans have defied that expectation, culminating in the testing of an intercontinental ballistic missile that seem capable of striking any locale in the United States.

    “The North Korean leadership noted that the country is regularly subjected to external aggression on the part of the U.S.,” Pashin said. “According to North Korean representatives, they were forced to demonstrate the ability to adequately respond to any aggression from the U.S., the ability to strike at any territory of America. This is the first missile launch since the last one carried out by North Korea on September 15. Since then, Pyongyang had refrained from military provocations for 75 days awaiting reciprocal steps from the US, which, instead of meeting [North Korea] halfway, announced large-scale surprise military drills.”

    “That’s a precise echo of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who accused the United States of using military drills to “bait” the North Koreans into continuing the development of their nuclear weapons program. Lavrov has argued that the Trump team, particularly U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, is looking for an excuse to invade North Korea.

    “If somebody is very eager to use force to wipe out North Korea, as the United States’ UN envoy has said (a very bloodthirsty tirade it was), I believe that it was a big mistake and an attempt to play with fire,” Lavrov said Friday. “WE WILL DO OUR UTMOST TO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN AND TO ENSURE THE PROBLEM BE RESOLVED EXCLUSIVELY BY PEACEFUL POLITICAL AND DIPLOMATIC MEANS.”

    Haley warned the UN Security Council that North Korea’s continued aggression makes war more likely. “We have never sought war with North Korea, and still today we do not seek it. If war does come, it will be because of continued acts of aggression like we witnessed yesterday,” she said. “And if war comes, make no mistake, the North Korean regime will be utterly destroyed.”

    Question: Who is baiting whom? It seems a very dangerous game of chicken!

    • Bill:

      You want to accept the words of the Russians over Americans what can I say. Do you think we have a plan for regime change in Russia as the Russians are saying? Know your enemy.

      • Matt: We had plan for regime change in the Ukraine and in Serbia and in Iraq (Rmember WMD) and in Vietnam (Remember Gulf of Tonking) and in Cuba (Remember the Maine).
        The Russians are right about Syria.
        The US has been funding terrorists.

        I listen to all sources; Every day on the Internet I read Fox News, CNN News, MSNBC News . . . I’ve mentioned all the free newspapers I get everyday ….

        I don’t knee-jerk believe what Government Bureaucrats tell us, especially those who’ve dragged us into needless wars for over a century.

        Yes, I don’t believe the CIA, FBI, etc. I make up my own mind, after considering numerous sources.

        I don’t have a bias against information coming from Russia. I view it the same as info coming from any source.

        We’ve been lied and deceived by our own government countless times in my life. The liberal MSM (CNN,, MSNBC, BBC, PBS, Boston Globe, Washington Post, NYT, et al,) have been exceptionally deceitful.

        I view them all through a “glass darkly.”

        The MSM lies and tells us Russia hacked the DNC and all 14 national intelligence/ security agencies agree. Turns out only 3 agree and another is a qualified “moderate confidence” in the allegation.

        Turns out Computer Scientists say you can’t “hack” that quantity of data in the form and time alleged. It had to be downloaded; an inside job.

        Rememberthe Maine! Remember American Imperialism, too, and the neocons, and the interventionists in the CIA and State Departments and Pentagon.

        And yes I support a strong US military and reasonable Intelligence gathering, but not excessive interventionism, over reliance on clandestine operations, subterfuge, deceit, and spreading propaganda to the American people.

        Remember the lying NSA director, Clapper, who falsely told Congress “We don’t collect bulk data on the American people.” Remember James Comey who changed Gross Negligence (a crime) to Extreme Carelessness ( which he conclude was not a crime. The smug, hubristic, two-faced, forked-tongued, autocratic, bureaucratic so and sos!

  10. Maybe George Washington and George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton?
    But since American and World history are beset with troubles, domestic and foreign, and insurrections, wars, depressions, quarrels, quandaries, and hornet nests have always abounded, in some sense everyone who ever sat in that office has sat on a hot seat . . . . I guess.

  11. Name a president that didn’t inherit a mess.

  12. Khalid:

    1. Time will tell!

    2. I guess you’d conclude that the 1/3 of Americans who you say are “neo-fascists” would include most all of Trump’s supporters who Hillary described as “Deplorables.”

    I’d say you and Hillary both are exaggerating . . . perhaps hysterically so.

    3. I’d say “epithets” alone like “rumors” do little to advance arguments.

    4. Trump’s been in office a year; he’s tweeted and said some tactless stuff; his decision-making seems sound; he’s been checked by both Congress and the Judiciary, at times, and supported by both, at times. He has as much a right to throw stones at the Press as Harry Truman had or Lyndon Johnson “The press lied on the Tet Offensive.” He has defenders and critics in the Media: some are seriously slanted in their reporting, including CNN, MSNBC. I don’t trust the WaPo NYT, BBC etc; I believe their biased, excessively so, at times. I do read NYT, WaPo, WSJ daily ( I get them free) and watch all T.V, and websites, including RT.

    I like hearing all sides.

  13. You guys are living in dream land. Trump’s finished, unless, off course, you’re willing to go to civil war. Since, neo-fascists only comprise a third of the population, that might get tricky for you. Glorious Leader is caught up. Mueller’s got him. All Trump can do is wriggle on the hook.

    Bill: I’m sorry it took this long.

  14. Bill’s assessment is correct. As Billy Joel’s song says We didn’t start the fire. Trump inherited this mess. America, Japan and the ROK have made it clear to the Kim government that a nuclear N. Korea is unacceptable. Ideally Kim realizes he must disarm through negotiations. If not what follows is bloody constraint. If force is required the causus beli will be the acquisition by N. Korea of WMD not the response of the U S and Japan. Hopefully Kim’s survival instinct will compel him to disarm. 2. Russia didn’t accuse Trump of trying to overthrow the Putin regime. Russia did assist the West in allying itself with Assad and destroying the ISIS Caliphate in Syria and Iraq. Iran, Assad, Russia, the Kurds and Hezbollah should all be thanked for the Takfiris defeat. 3. Fox news is superior to the others but they are Fake News when they claim Iran is the biggest state sponsor of terror. The thousands of Americans killed by Muslim terrorists and the hundreds of Europeans killed have died at the hands of Sunni Muslim jihadists, ISIS and Al Qaeda. These terror groups are funded by the Saudis and the other Oil Sheiks. Iran has been the victim of ISIS terror which accounts for their support of Assad. 4. Two American members of congress filed legislation to prevent the Obama government from funding and assisting the terrorists in Syria. For six years the U S was helping AL Nusra and ISIS in Syria. What incompetents were running our government. Obama, Hillary and Kerry were all demanding Assad leave power. Now he has won the civil war and U S influence is minimal. The Shia in Iraq with the aid of Iran control that country. After all the blood and treasure expended by our country our future impact there is quite limited. 5. Our economy and stock market are doing great under Trump. Will there be a womans march against Charlie Rose, Lauer, Franken, Conyers and Weinstein? All the media excused Bill Clinton’s behavior and now we find out why. They mistreated woman just as badly as the sex predator Clinton. The frauds in the press uniformly denounced Clarence Thomas for his at most minor offenses( Most people didn’t believe the trumped up claims) Yet they looked the other way at serious criminal violations by their co workers. What a sorry lot of hypocrites and propagandists the American media are.

    • All should reflect long and hard on NC’s excellent post.
      As well as Matt’s thoughtful commentary and the serous questions and issues raised by both, by all!

      • Interesting Freudian slip: I meant serious, not serous.

        Serous denotes serum. Blood serum (blood minus clotting factors and cells) still has medical applications today. Of course, primitive blood transfusions saved many lives in WWI and exponentially more in WWII after blood typing and transfusion techniques had become refined.

        “Blood serum” is useful today treating “gas gangrene, diphtheria, botulism, and tetanus and bites from three snake species (mamushi, habu, and yamakagashi) and the redback spider. It is hoped that this review will help clinicians to learn about clinical serum therapies and become familiar with their applications.” Quotes from a learned journal!

  15. Ding Dong the witch is almost dead. It’s a bad day for neo-fascists. Glorious Leader is going into a death dive. Let’s hope Trump doesn’t take us all with him.

    • Khalid, so far you’re predictions about Trump’s longevity and Mosul’s longevity in the hands of Isis have been as reliable as environmental extremists’ predictions that the oceans will rise in 8 feet by 2020. Trump’s lasted past May; Mosul fell without 150,000 additional American troops; and yes the seas have risen 7 inches since 1900, and “scientists” “predict” another one to four inch rise by the End of the 21st Century.
      So what? Trump could fall, so could the stock market; so could the sea-levels? But what is likely to happen? Who knows? Pittsburgh beat Miami. A Serb shot an Austrian Archduke! Who could’ve predicted that would start WWI which in turn gave us WWII?

  16. ” and get rocket man to back down and back down to earth.”

  17. Good analysis. Thought provoking.

    Of course, re: North Korea, there are mixed signals all over the place. Clinton, Bush, Obama sat idly by as NK acquired nuclear weapons.

    Yes the NK regime does not care if it’s people starve.
    Yes, Russia, China, US have agreed to increased sanctions. What good are they doing?

    Two big issues:
    (1)For world and especially the US: Do we let NK develop nuclear armed ICMBs capable of reaching US? (Bejing, Moscow.)

    (2) Do we do something before the Winter Olympics in Seoul in February 2018?

    Now generally, I view Russia post-Stalin less hostilely and less suspiciously than Matt does. We have our reasons. I’d spin the BBC stories slightly differently.

    Diplomats oftentimes send contradictory signals. Diplomacy requires tact, give and take, delicacy. We all agree Trump oftentimes lacks tact (in his words.) His actions seem more tactful. Actions speak louder than words. But Teddy Roosevelt told us to speak softly and carry a big stick. Trump should speak and twitter more tactfully.

    But, I remember Nikita Khrushchev ) saying he’d “bury us” while pounding the table with his fist. But some said he was speaking only rhetorically, not literally, and after Sputnik he was saying he’d bury us economically and technologically. But, he did, with all his bluster, pull the missiles out of Cuba, averting nuclear war.

    Hopefully Trump, Putin, and Xi will avert nuclear war, and get rocket man to back down.

    • When Nikita Khrushchev said he would “bury us”, what he actually said was that he would be our undertakers, using an idiomatic Russian expression for his system outlasting ours.

      If we continue to let those on the left dictate terms to us, Khrushchev will have been correct.