About Time
US expels Russian diplomats over cyber attack allegations:
The US has expelled 35 Russian diplomats as punishment for alleged interference into last month’s presidential elections, giving them 72 hours to leave the country.
It will also close two compounds used for Russian intelligence-gathering.
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In a statement, President Obama called the moves a “necessary and appropriate response to efforts to harm US interests” and said “all Americans should be alarmed by Russia’s actions”.
Mr Obama also announced the US would declassify technical information related to Russian cyber activity to “help network defenders in the United States and abroad identify, detect, and disrupt Russia’s global campaign of malicious cyber activities”.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, the top Republican in Congress, said in a statement that despite the measures being overdue “it is an appropriate way to end eight years of failed policy with Russia”.
I know, I know – ‘just wanted to keep an eye on them … didn’t want them to know that we knew what they were doing … sources & methods have to be protected …’
Of course, Drumpf will apologize to his buddy Putin and cancel the sanctions.
6 comments
Ahhh… Yes. 🙂 The “Yes, Prime Minister” solution! One of the UK’s favorite ploys for decades. 😀
Oh, if anyone is interested:
Yes, Prime Minister: Official Secrets (Series 2, Episode 2)
NOTE: The expulsion of 76 Soviet diplomats recalls the Heath Government’s 1971 decision to expel 105 Soviet diplomats on charges of espionage.
I don’t know, this whole Russia brou-ha-ha smells like fake news to me. And even if true, the putative misdeed was releasing valid information to the general public? O the humanity!
Mutual expulsions have been popular with all governments for decades, Better than declaring war. I loved both series [Minister & Prime Minister] for a dose of political reality.
The problem, PJ, is they hacked computers and only released info about one side. What was released could hardly be considered ‘vital’ or even terribly interesting and we don’t know how much was actually true. WikiLeaks is also based in Russia. The fact that they did it during an eletion is a major no-no, especially given Putin’s reaction to complaints from the West about human rights as interference in internal affairs.
Oddly, Putin is saying he won’t retaliate which would seem to mean he believes that Trump will cancel them. If Trump does cancel the punishment, he will set up a conflict with his Congressional majority right off the bat.
I was a fan of wikileaks when they brought out their iraq war logs (great stuff). I lost all respect for them after their release of the climategate emails (they, wikileaks, have no clue about how science is done, nor do they care). and I was vastly skeptical of their cablegate releases (mostly ho hum, if there was anything in there worth reading, there was too much to wade through to make it worth the trouble).
it wasn’t until some time after either climategate or cablegate that I saw a copy of the essay that assange had written 10? 20? years ago, which was basically about how his aim in releasing as many secrets (of any organization, no matter what kind, good or evil or …) as he possibly could was solely for the purpose of destroying as many organizations as he possibly could. he is the quintessential bomb-thrower type of anarchist, where all organizations are viewed as evil and need to be destroyed (except his organization, of course).
I have never brrn a particular fan of ASSange because he has always been an arrogant ass about women. If you have no respect for half of the world, it is hard to see what your point is. Snowden has been very careful in what he has released to minimize the possible threat to people
I don’t know why anyone bothered with the hacked e-mails of the Clinton campaign. No one cared and a lot of people objected when I talked about her speeches to Wall Street, but that was a long time ago.