The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Discussion of cultural, religious, political or irrational subjects of any type, such as UFOs, wacko cults, mad dictators, horrible cult bands, ridiculous publications, whatever
Post Reply
User avatar
Larkin
Sucks
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:16 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Larkin » Sun Mar 19, 2017 9:57 pm

Out of curiosity I did a little research on Gorka's claim that his father was betrayed by Kim Philby. Breitbart repeats it uncritically here, while the DT offers 'possibly' here.

As I thought was probably the case, there's no real source for the claim other than his father Paul Gorka himself, who was arrested in 1950 and served some 6 years before escaping in the abortive 1956 revolution. Gorka was bitter about the way MI6 had used him, but the prosaic fact of the matter is that he was a minor operative in one of numerous groups at the time thoroughly infiltrated or even fronted by the Soviets. Stephen Dorril at p. 178 of MI6: inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service discusses the matter thus:

Image

Later in exile in London, Paul Gorka came into contact with Holocaust denier David Irving, his wife in fact working as a translator for Irving.

Only connect...

User avatar
Flip Flopped
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 564
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:38 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Flip Flopped » Sun Mar 19, 2017 10:07 pm

Larkin wrote:I had a read at Daniel Nexon's Foreign Policy piece you linked, It's pretty damning. In Part IV of his associated blog he raises the question whether "Larvatus Prodeo" (I wear a mask) in the comments is a Gorka sock. Me and my super little computer do think that's pretty likely. To be fair to Gorka, I can't find any evidence that he socks Wikipedia (though I think it's clear that his BLP was furnished by an essentially single purpose editor - wife perhaps?).
I hadn't read the blog comments, but now that I have I must agree that Gorka most likely turned up to battle the author.

Larkin wrote:Part III of a series about Gorka by HungarianFreePress.com is out today. It examines his association with far-right pro-Iranian political figures in Hungary.
Thanks for that link. It's a quick read and learning more about the situation in Hungary does explain much more about Gorka.

Larkin wrote:Thanks for the link to the Mensch interview. I'll look at it.

Added: Did watch that Andrew Neill interview. Entertaining. I thought she held her own reasonably well. Hopefully we shall get some indication on Monday if her sources are any good. I have to say I think it's unlikely. We shall see.
The interviewer did his best to throw some "gotcha" moments in there. Mensch has said some unusual things but she seems to think clearly. I think most of us "believe" some things that we cannot back up with strong evidence rather than instinct and suspicion. It's rather courageous of her to share those opinions.

User avatar
Flip Flopped
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 564
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:38 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Flip Flopped » Sun Mar 19, 2017 10:10 pm

Larkin wrote:Out of curiosity I did a little research on Gorka's claim that his father was betrayed by Kim Philby. Breitbart repeats it uncritically here, while the DT offers 'possibly' here.

As I thought was probably the case, there's no real source for the claim other than his father Paul Gorka himself, who was arrested in 1950 and served some 6 years before escaping in the abortive 1956 revolution. Gorka was bitter about the way MI6 had used him, but the prosaic fact of the matter is that he was a minor operative in one of numerous groups at the time thoroughly infiltrated or even fronted by the Soviets. Stephen Dorril at p. 178 of MI6: inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service discusses the matter thus:

Image

Later in exile in London, Paul Gorka came into contact with Holocaust denier David Irving, his wife in fact working as a translator for Irving.

Only connect...
I haven't read about this elsewhere and I'm surprised by that.

User avatar
Flip Flopped
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 564
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:38 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Flip Flopped » Mon Mar 20, 2017 12:49 am

John Schindler, author of Fall of the Double Eagle: The Battle for Galicia and the Demise of Austria-Hungary, is encouraging people to not call Gorka a Nazi or fascist without more information. I still think it's an issue if Gorka didn't disclose his supposed membership in the Vitézi Rend when he immigrated or when he was naturalized.

I'm not sure if I can embed tweets here, but these are the links:

https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843617304864800768

https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843617769971159040

https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843617999361839105

https://twitter.com/20committee/status/843620092969664512

archive Tweet1

archive Tweet2

archive Tweet3

archive Tweet4

User avatar
Flip Flopped
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 564
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:38 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Flip Flopped » Mon Mar 20, 2017 1:47 am

Susan Hennessey contextualized Mensch's Heat Street reporting on a FISA warrant and her NYT opinion piece "What to Ask about Russian Hacking." Here's Hennessey's series of 23 tweets: https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/843615824955002882 (and archive). Edited to add: Hennessey seems to think there is not much chance that reporting about the existence of a FISA warrant as described by Mensch is correct.

User avatar
Larkin
Sucks
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:16 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Larkin » Mon Mar 20, 2017 5:43 am

Flip Flopped wrote:Susan Hennessey contextualized Mensch's Heat Street reporting on a FISA warrant and her NYT opinion piece "What to Ask about Russian Hacking." Here's Hennessey's series of 23 tweets: https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/843615824955002882 (and archive). Edited to add: Hennessey seems to think there is not much chance that reporting about the existence of a FISA warrant as described by Mensch is correct.


Yes, both Schindler and Hennessey in our twitter feed and sound reasonable to me. In particular I think Hennessey must be right in her reservations about Louise's sources (I've also seen the BBC's Paul Wood mentioned as claiming sources in connection with his assessment of Christopher Steele's dossier).

In general, I would say the Resist twitter movement have unreasonably high expectations of today's committee proceedings.

User avatar
Larkin
Sucks
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:16 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Larkin » Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:26 am

Our tash in Moscow (hey Irina, not long now eh? ;) ) has fixed Seb's fanciful Wikipedia claim that he was involved in counter-terrorism as a so-called "student" (also fanciful we suspect) at London University (archive).

Seb can safely expect an international incident if he tries to roll this back.

User avatar
Strelnikov
Sucks Admin
Posts: 1119
Joined: Fri Feb 24, 2017 11:25 pm
Has thanked: 475 times
Been thanked: 287 times

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Strelnikov » Mon Mar 20, 2017 7:27 pm

NY Attorney General Hires Prosecutor To Target Trump, Huffington Post

long quote:

....New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has reportedly hired a prosecutor to examine the activities of the Trump administration.

Schneiderman has tapped public-corruption expert Howard McMaster from the office of former Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, The Wall Street Journal reported. Bharara was fired by Trump last week even though he was in the middle of a number of investigations, including one allegedly involving stock trades by Trump’s Health And Human Services Secretary Tom Price.

Schneiderman spokesman Eric Soufer confirmed McMaster’s hiring, and told the Journal that McMaster will work on a range of “civil and criminal investigations ... including public corruption,” and potentially litigation against the Trump administration.

Last month, at a meeting of the National Association of Attorneys General, Schneiderman revealed that his office was discussing strategies and doing research to determine what kind of action could be taken to address concerns about Trump’s potential conflicts of interest, and possible violations of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, which prohibits anyone holding a federal “office” from accepting payments from foreign entities.

“Certainly, my office is looking at anything that’s passed on to us and doing our own research,” Schneiderman said. “We’ve had meetings with people discussing these matters already.” But, he added that it was “premature to say one way or another how this is going to proceed.”

Schneiderman emphasized that it is “not sustainable” for Trump to “refuse to divest from all of his vast holdings and refuse to disclose what those holdings are.” Schneiderman called Trump’s situation “so far beyond the bounds of anything that anyone has ever attempted that people are having trouble coming up with a clear legal strategy to address it.”

Schneiderman has successfully targeted Trump operations in the past. He filed a lawsuit against the now-defunct Trump University, an expensive certificate program that was supposed to impart Trump’s business acumen but had no license to function as a school and was the target of scores of complaints. Shortly after his election, Trump agreed to pay $25 million in fines and restitution to settle the state’s case and two class action suits against the operation.

Schneiderman also shut down the Trump Foundation in October after discovering several questionable practices and determined that it wasn’t properly registered.....
Still "Globally Banned" on Wikipedia for the high crime of journalism.

User avatar
Larkin
Sucks
Posts: 64
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 5:16 pm
Has thanked: 5 times
Been thanked: 3 times

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Larkin » Mon Mar 20, 2017 11:42 pm

Larkin wrote:Our tash in Moscow (hey Irina, not long now eh? ;) ) has fixed Seb's fanciful Wikipedia claim that he was involved in counter-terrorism as a so-called "student" (also fanciful we suspect) at London University (archive).

Seb can safely expect an international incident if he tries to roll this back.


I'm preparing a note on the sources offered for Gorka's claim (repeated on Hungarian websites) that he worked in a counter-terrorism unit within the Territorial Army 1989-92. Meanwhile, I can note his profile at the Institute of World Politics, which records "In the UK he served with 22 Company of the Intelligence and Security Group (V) of the Territorial Army". This group is currently the subject of a Freedom of Information request to the Ministry of Defence (UK) by an individual not connected with us.

I will keep this forum informed as to how the FOI proceeds.

Added: We surmise the 'V' in 22 Company of the Intelligence and Security Group (V) stands for Volunteers consistent with Adrian Wealan's blog we cite in our edit. The question is what this group did. We say routine translation for NATO. Gorka on the other hand claims a counter-terrorism role assessing the threats posed by groups like the IRA.

User avatar
Flip Flopped
Sucks Warrior
Posts: 564
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 3:38 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: The (new, straight-from-scratch) Trump thread

Post by Flip Flopped » Tue Mar 21, 2017 2:56 am

Larkin wrote:
Flip Flopped wrote:Susan Hennessey contextualized Mensch's Heat Street reporting on a FISA warrant and her NYT opinion piece "What to Ask about Russian Hacking." Here's Hennessey's series of 23 tweets: https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/843615824955002882 (and archive). Edited to add: Hennessey seems to think there is not much chance that reporting about the existence of a FISA warrant as described by Mensch is correct.


Yes, both Schindler and Hennessey in our twitter feed and sound reasonable to me. In particular I think Hennessey must be right in her reservations about Louise's sources (I've also seen the BBC's Paul Wood mentioned as claiming sources in connection with his assessment of Christopher Steele's dossier).

In general, I would say the Resist twitter movement have unreasonably high expectations of today's committee proceedings.
So far nobody has tried to re-add "counter-terrorism" to Gorka's Wikipedia CV. :) I appreciate your friend making that edit in the service of public understanding. Happily, Gorka's gun charge at the airport has now been added to Wikipedia. :P

When I decided to filter out Resist Twitter I did so because I needed to focus on higher information sources. Things are moving so quickly that I want to see news developments. I intended to check out Resist Twitter regularly, but that hasn't occurred. I do work to listen to a range of voices on Twitter. I picked Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) as the closest thing to Trump supporter that I can stand; I wouldn't call him an actual Trump supporter because of the schadenfreude he takes in watching Trump's pratfalls.

Schindler caused a bit of a stir when he wrote on Twitter that an IC friend of his told him, "He will die in jail," in reference to Trump. His worst "scandal" appears to be his past online "affair" which involved a penis pic between consenting adults. He knows what he's talking about and I appreciate his Twitter feed and articles.

Hennessey is writes like the NSA attorney that I think she is.

Post Reply