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Putin's hatred of Clinton reflects classic paranoia


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2016 Oct 28, 10:04am   4,628 views  15 comments

by dublin hillz   ➕follow (1)   💰tip   ignore  

http://time.com/4422723/putin-russia-hillary-clinton/

"In December 2011, Vladimir Putin came closer than he’s ever been to losing his hold on power. His decision that year to run for a third term as Russia’s President had inspired a massive protest movement against him. Demonstrations calling for him to resign were attracting hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Some of his closest allies had defected to the opposition, causing a split in the Kremlin elites, and Russian state media had begun to warn of a revolution in the making.

At a crisis meeting with his advisers on Dec. 8 of that year, the Russian leader chose to lay the blame on one meddling foreign diplomat: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“She set the tone for certain actors inside the country; she gave the signal,” Putin said of Clinton at the time, accusing her of ordering the opposition movement into action like some kind of revolutionary sleeper cell. “They heard this signal and, with the support of the U.S. State Department, started actively doing their work.”

Five years later, the U.S. presidential elections may have given Putin his chance for getting even. According to Clinton’s campaign staff and a number of cyber-security experts, Russian hackers in the service of the Kremlin were behind last week’s leak of emails from the Democratic National Committee. The hacked messages appeared to show DNC officials, who are meant to remain neutral during the Democratic Party’s primary race, favoring Clinton over her then-rival, Senator Bernie Sanders.

Reactions to the leak so far, including from Clinton’s campaign managers, have focused on what Russia would have to gain from helping Donald Trump win the Presidency. Trump’s flattering remarks about Putin in the past, as well as his recent equivocating about whether the U.S. should defend NATO allies in case of a Russian attack, would seem to support the notion that Trump is Russia’s favored candidate.

If the Kremlin has indeed begun interfering in the presidential race on Trump’s behalf, the bad blood between Putin and Clinton would seem like enough of a motivation. Putin’s list of grievances goes back a lot further than Clinton’s alleged support for the Russian protest movement.

In 2009, soon after President Obama took office, his newly appointed Secretary of State initiated what the White House called a “reset” in relations with Russia. At the time, Putin had already positioned himself as an adversary to the U.S., or at least a check on American influence in the world, and he showed no inclination for making friends with Obama. But constitutional term limits had forced Putin to switch to the less powerful role of Prime Minister the previous year, and his younger protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, then took over the presidency. In sharp contrast to his mentor, Medvedev began to cast himself as a liberal Westernizer with a particular affection for high-tech American gadgets.

That presented Washington an opportunity and, in the first year of Obama’s presidency, the U.S. tried to sidestep Putin and build better relations with Russia through Medvedev. As Secretary of State, Clinton oversaw these efforts, which saw the two Presidents visit each other’s countries—Obama in 2009, Medvedev in 2010—and establish a range of bilateral commissions to cooperate on everything from counter-terrorism to the tech economy.

But among Kremlin hardliners, who have since come to dominate Russian politics, Clinton’s efforts to flatter and befriend Medvedev all seemed like part of a scheme to undermine Putin and subvert his role as a counterweight to U.S. dominance in world affairs. One incident in particular drove home that perception.

In the spring of 2011, the U.S. and its allies began pushing for a military intervention in Libya to prevent the regime of Muammar Ghaddafi from massacring rebel forces and their civilian supporters. But without Russia’s acquiescence, the West could not pass a resolution in the U.N. that would provide a legal basis for the intervention. So Clinton and Obama began pressuring Medvedev to play along, and he ultimately agreed not to veto the resolution in the U.N. Security Council.

Putin was furious. The resolution, he said, resembled “the medieval calls for a Christian crusade,” one that Clinton, as the top U.S. diplomat at the time, helped to orchestrate. Later that same year, when Russia’s flawed parliamentary elections set off a season of street protests, Clinton spoke up in support of the demonstrations. “The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted,” Clinton said. “And that means they deserve free, fair, transparent elections and leaders who are accountable to them.”

It was a fairly tame statement of support for the Russian opposition movement. But Putin took it as a personal affront against his leadership, as well as a sign that Clinton was intent on manipulating the Russian presidential elections that were then just a few months away.

With a campaign based on Cold War rhetoric against the conniving West, Putin won that vote handily, and it is easy to see how he would relish the chance to manipulate the U.S. presidential elections in return."

#politics

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1   Shaman   2016 Oct 28, 10:21am  

What a stupid and old article. According to Clinton campaign staff Russia did it? No bias there. Oh and don't forget various unnamed "cyber professionals" who can't be verified because their identities aren't disclosed.
And then they find out the leak was a DNC staffer who wound up dead of a mugging which took none of his valuables.
How stupid must one be to buy this OPs horse shit?

2   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Oct 28, 10:49am  

It's amazing how Putin's FSB can manufacture Podesta Emails and Teneo Fundraising Memos, and get everything right down to the writing style of scores of highly placed political operatives - and totally faking the headers.

And they make 1000s of them daily! Truly remarkable.

Wonder why Podesta and the HRC Campaign don't show how the Emails have been "Altered". Of course, they've already admitted they're legit by complaining they were 'stolen'.

3   Gary Anderson   2016 Oct 28, 10:52am  

I believe Putin is miscalculating. Among the neocons, Clinton is likely the most passive, not wanting war, not wanting boots on the ground. However, she has engaged in regime change in Libya. Trump, on the other hand, is an Aryan Supremacist, not unlike Adolph Hitler in his beliefs. That should be a red flag for Putin but apparently it isn't.

A Russian fellow told me, however, that Putin will work with Clinton.

4   dublin hillz   2016 Oct 28, 10:54am  

Dictators are naturally paranoid and do not like to have their grip on power challenged. Understanding that they have stepped on many skulls and spines during their ascendancy, they develop a need for food tasters, body doubles when traveling, etc. A softer manifestation of paranoia involves "noticing" certain "signals" that are allegedly being sent to opposition and blaming foreigners for fomenting dissent. This is what Putin has done in this case and this blatantly apparent strategy is straight out of the book of arafat, saddam, and hugo chavez.

5   marcus   2016 Oct 28, 10:59am  

Translation: "the thesis and facts presented in that article make me uncomfortable."

Quigley is deplorable says

How stupid must one be to buy this OPs horse shit?

Compelling argument, you totally annihilated the authors point of view, proving once again that TIme is just a mouthpiece of the establishment. Great job Quigley.

6   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Oct 28, 12:42pm  

dublin hillz says

Dictators are naturally paranoid and do not like to have their grip on power challenged

You have Hillary down to a "T". I'd only add they're reflexively secretive, something her own staffers complained about.

7   marcus   2016 Oct 28, 12:57pm  

Quigley is deplorable says

leak was a DNC staffer who wound up dead of a mugging which took none of his valuables.

Which BS claim is this ? It's hard for me to keep them straight.

Ever heard of fact checking ?

http://www.snopes.com/seth-conrad-rich/

http://www.snopes.com/2016/08/10/4th-mysterious-death-connected-to-the-dnc/

10   marcus   2016 Oct 29, 10:17am  

Interesting that you resort to irrational nutjob fear of Hillary, when any sane person would see TRump as the riskier candidate.

11   Tenpoundbass   2016 Oct 29, 10:28am  

Marcus why is it everyone I know that is not an Institutional Liberal, meaning not a professional Social Justice Warrior with a majors in Liberal arts, in education, government and other hardcore Liberals.
But the ones that think they are Democrats voting for the Democrat because they have been imprinted with the idea that they will never vote for a Republican.
These voters, are clueless to world politics or really to any meaningful intrigue in Washington. Other than the SJW issues, Obama his wife and every other Lib likes to agitate and troll with.
They are clueless what is going on with Russia or China. They know something is going on in the news but they don't know what or why. They know China and Russia hacked us though.

12   MisdemeanorRebel   2016 Oct 29, 11:32am  

Marcus knows who McCarthy was but can't make the connection between Hillary's Russian Conspiracy and McCarthy. Even if she talked about evidence hidden in a pumpkin patch.

13   marcus   2016 Oct 29, 12:02pm  

TRB, that was incomprehensible, even for you.

Everyone I know, that are nothing like social justice warriors think that Obama and CLinton are in the middle of today's political spectrum, which puts them to the right of Reagan or Nixon.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Clinton is an establishment policy wonk, who knows more about world affairs than Trump could ever hope to know. He doesn't have the inclination, the attention span or the intellectual horsepower to grasp half of what CLinton does when it comes to foreign policy. This is something that any half way intelligent observer can see.

14   Gary Anderson   2016 Oct 30, 12:16pm  

marcus is NOT deplorable says

Interesting that you resort to irrational nutjob fear of Hillary, when any sane person would see TRump as the riskier candidate.

That is the plan of the Trump campaign, to pin all the flaws of a dangerous Donald Trump back onto Clinton, who is a globalist but not a crazy, racist, pervert, hater globalist.

15   HEY YOU   2016 Oct 30, 12:21pm  

Putin needs some some learin'.
Sit back while D & R voters finish destroying america.

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