Biden says Russia is clearly 'losing the war in IRAQ'

submitted by [deleted] from dailymail.co.uk

sorted by:
top
newinsightfulfun
you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (48 children)

He's only 3 years older than Trump

Also not a bastion of acumen nor eloquence in oratory.

He's not being investigated for crimes. There's a big difference.

There is a difference, but you're wrong. Trump is getting a huge free reign because the DOJ doesn't want to be seen as partisan. And there seems to have been someone high up protecting him personally. With the blatantly corrupt justice cannon overseeing his espionage crimes he may well walk on those, despite the clear evidence from tapes that have been uncovered by Jack Smith. But Trump also tried to get Georgia to change the vote count in his favor, and he's on tape for that too. And thats not all his election fraud. He's also behind the fake elector scheme.

Biden was investigated promptly for his classified documents. The thing is he didn't commit a crime.

Instead he's trying to fight an unwinnable proxy war using a bunch of corrupt Nazis and incompetent EU vassals against Russia

They're not Nazis. They have a jewish president. Who won with a huge majority of nearly three quarters.

It's not unwinnable. There was an insurrection that rocked Putin's entire power base.

while at the same time trying to provoke a war with China.

"Trying to provoke"? You might want to elaborate on that. And while you're at it, describe how best you would manage china's expansionism and the fishing fleet depleting the world's ocean's resources including in marine reserves, such as the galapagos?

All while the US is committing slow economic suicide.

How?

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (47 children)

Also not a bastion of acumen nor eloquence in oratory.

You're kidding, right? Trump knows how to push all the right buttons to get people following him. He might not be a smart man, but he has low cunning and charisma. If there is anything he knows what to do, its to talk bullshit.

Biden was investigated promptly for his classified documents. The thing is he didn't commit a crime.

I'm not talking about Biden's classified documents. It is legally impossible under both American law and common practice for a president or ex-president to mishandle classified documents. The precedence for this was well established under Bush and Clinton, if not going even further back, and then established in law by Obama's executive order 13526.

The president doesn't have to do anything to declassify documents. He doesn't have to ask permission, or fill out a form, or even say the magic words "this is now declassified" in front of witnesses. All he has to do is act as if they were declassified, and that's what they are. The DOJ know this. This is them running interference for the 2024 election.

They're not Nazis.

Nazis, Banderites, what's the difference? They use the same symbols, they follow the same philosophy of white supremacy, they commit violence against minorities.

Until the very end of 2021, everyone agreed that Ukraine had a massive problem with the extreme far right and that they were glorifying people who committed genocide during WW2. Fortunately, we have the New York Times around to carefully explain that while it is true that many Ukrainians wear Nazi symbols, and dress like Nazis, and express Nazi views, and act like Nazis, and celebrate Nazis, it's okay because they're not really Nazis. Thank goodness we have the NYT to set us right.

The Christchurch mass shooter Brenton Tarrant had links to Azov and other eastern European far-right groups. Every level of government from city councils to the national government itself does deals with the paramilitary groups, or turns a blind eye to them. His birthday is a national holiday. The Ukrainian military openly displays Nazi iconography.

Roman Shukhevych, an even more murderous Ukrainian Nazi who was responsible for the massacre of around 100,000 Poles, has a train station and a stadium named for him (over the protests of Poland).

Ukraine's Nazi problem used to be a bipartisan issue. Facebook used to classify Azov as a Nazi hate group for wanting to wage a race war. Now they're heroes to the sorts of people who talk about "bash the fash" and "Nazi punching".

They have a jewish president. Who won with a huge majority of nearly three quarters.

And by 2021 his popularity was just 19% after a complete failure to deliver his promises. This is probably why he decided to abandon even the pretence of keeping the Minsk II accords, and launch a full blown military invasion of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk right under the nose of the Russian army on the border. There's nothing like a war to boost your popularity.

I feel sorry for Zelensky. He ran on a very popular platform of ending the civil war, but the moment he tried to rein in the Nazis they threatened to murder him and he instantly folded like a piece of paper. He's spent the time since then with his snout in the trough getting richer and allowing, if not supporting, the far-right to continue their war against east Ukraine.

He's done nothing but a short-lived, half-hearted attempt to control the far-right groups.

Well maybe I don't feel that sorry for the corrupt coward.

It's not unwinnable.

It would take not just one but a whole series of miracles for Ukraine even to fight to an honourable draw.

Ukraine has run out of money and are reliant on loans from the west. Even if the war stops today, they have lost: their ass now belongs to the US. They will never pay back what they owe. They are begging the west to send them arms which the west has run out of too: Ukraine is fighting on the smell of an oily rag. During the Bakhmut slaughter, surviving Ukrainian troops reported that they were limited to just a handful of mortar shells a day while the Russians could fire literally hundreds of shells back.

They've run out of trained troops, and are so desperate that they're no longer just using press-gangs to kidnap people off the street in ethnic-Russian oblasts but have started conscripting actual West Ukrainians as well. Their NCO class has been especially hard-hit.

Russia has air superiority. Even if the west sends Ukraine F-16s, they have no pilots and nowhere to take them off from in Ukraine. They will have to use either NATO pilots, or their own pilots with an extremely accelerated training course (weeks rather than months). Either way, the only place they can take off from will be behind NATO lines (probably in Poland), which gives Russia a long time to intercept them before they reach the front lines.

Every one of the "game changer" weapons have been a total failure. Britain won't allow them to use Challenger tanks in the front lines where they can be destroyed and captured by the Russians like the Leopard were: the Challengers are sitting quietly in the rear, doing nothing. The US won't send Abrams for months, if at all, and if they do send some, they will be the second-class model without the DU armour.

Ukraine's counter-attack in the south has been a slaughter for them, they have lost a huge number of men and matériel for negligible gains. Far from breaking the Russian forces in two, they have "paused" the counter-attack after capturing a handful of villages without even reaching the Russian first level defensive lines.

There was an insurrection that rocked Putin's entire power base.

Oh are you still getting your fake news from Bizarro World?

No Russian government officials supported Progozhin. No regional governors supported him. Both the Chechen forces and the Moscow National Guard prepared to fight him. No military officers supported Progozhin, and no military units deserted or joined him. Russia's overseas friends supported Putin -- Uganda offered to send troops to defend Moscow, which I'm sure Putin got a laugh out of before sending his thanks.

Only a small minority of Wagner's troops took part on the drive to Moscow, and before they got to Moscow smarter heads prevailed: how could they fight the Russian government when all their arms and ammunition is supplied by the Russian MoD? Most of Wagner is going to either sign with the MoD and become regular Russian soldiers, or end up in semi-exile in Belarus until Putin decides what to do with them. No charges laid or not, Progozhin better stand far away from any windows.

Putin's popularity has gone up. People in Russia appreciate that he controlled the insurrection without having to slaughter the Wagner fighters.

And most importantly of all, Ukraine was completely unable to capitalise on Progozhin's aborted insurrection. It was a minor crisis handled well, not a disaster.

[–]ActuallyNot 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (46 children)

You're kidding, right? Trump knows how to push all the right buttons to get people following him.

"I know words. I have the best words." - literal Trump quote. He's claiming to have superpowers of vocabulary but not managing to treat his audience to a word of two syllables.

I'm not kidding.

It is legally impossible under both American law and common practice for a president or ex-president to mishandle classified documents.

You're very wrong about that. Although i note that the charges bright to date are about defence information, not classified documents.

But under American law, the same law applies to presidents and ex presidents as crackwhores and ex crackwhores. It's called the rule of law, and it's the basis of the American democracy.

And by 2021 his popularity was just 19% after a complete failure to deliver his promises.

They're not NAZIs. Failure to deliver promises isn't being a jew. They knew he was Jewish when he was viewed into power in a landslide.

Ukraine has run out of money and are reliant on loans from the west.

The invasion of Ukraine is an invasion of europe.

Sweden and Finland are joining NATO to help hold the line in Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/natos-new-north-fresh-chances-contain-moscow-2023-07-03/

The west isn't going to let Ukraine fall.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (35 children)

They're not NAZIs.

If you are slicing extremist far right white supremacists that finely, then I suppose I will have to admit that only some of the Ukrainian far right are genuine neo-Nazis Hitlerites. The rest are merely "Nazi-adjacent" Banderites and other white supremacist extremists who have some minor differences with Hitlerite Nazis. If I was writing an academic political science paper I'd care more about the differences, but this is social media. If you give the Nazi salute and have a swastika tattoo then you're a Nazi even if your political position only agrees 95% with Hitler's.

They knew he was Jewish when he was viewed into power in a landslide.

Who? Zelensky? I never said he was a Nazi. He's just a venal, corrupt, cowardly crack head caught up in events too big for him. He's a media-friendly puppet and his Jewishness is pure whitewashing.

It's not Zelensky that's the problem. Its not even the average Ukrainian voter.

Its people like Andriy Biletsky, founder of Azov. Biletsky stated in 2010 that the Ukrainian nation's mission is to "lead the white races of the world in a final crusade...against Semite-led Untermenschen". He managed to get 33% of the vote when running as an independent, enough to get elected. (Hitler's Nazi Party managed to get about 33% of the vote too. Just saying.) But most far-right political parties don't do quite so well in elections. The average Ukrainian bod on the street is no more likely to be a Nazi than anywhere else.

Nazis exist in every country. Like the USA, and, yes, Russia, there are plenty of far-right extremists in Ukrainian law enforcement and the military, but where Russia actively bans fascist and Nazi groups, and the US turns a blind eye to them so long as they pay their taxes and aren't too vocal in their threats to overthrow the government, Ukraine supports and encourages them.

Oligarchs use the skin-head gangs and "volunteer battalions" (private militias) to settle scores with competitors. Town governments pay extremists like Right Sector to remove "undesirables" like Gypsies (Roma) from their towns. Azov is now officially integrated with the Ukrainian armed forces, but during the early stages of the civil war with Donbas, it was a private militia and recognised all the world over as a far-right neo-Nazi extremist group.

Azov are not even close to the worst. Right Sector and Svoboda are much worse. And they're still active.

Sweden and Finland are joining NATO to help hold the line in Ukraine.

Sweden and Finland are joining NATO because their governments are controlled by Russophobic neoliberal globalists.

In practical terms, this makes next to zero difference to Russia. Both Sweden and Finland already had full political and military cooperation with NATO, and mutual defence agreements with the EU and NATO, and a high degree of collaboration when it comes to tactics, training and weaponry. Since 1991, Sweden and Finland have become deeply integrated with NATO despite remaining outside of the formal NATO alliance. If Russia is worried about that, the ship has sailed long ago and they have had plenty of time to get used to the new world order that Sweden and Finland are part of the US-lead coalition of Russophobes in Europe.

For Finland and Sweden, "the greatest change with NATO membership will be with regard to identity and strategic culture". They will lose their identity and their strategic culture will become even more of a vassal of the USA.

By the way: Article 5 does not say what people think it says. Quote: "Article 5 does not lead inexorably to full-scale war; it offers a framework for developing a measured response, with each country deciding what action to take." There is no obligation for any NATO country to go to war.

The bottom line here is that the western media is pushing this ludicrous idea that the threat of Finnish and Swedish membership of NATO concerns Russia, but in practical terms that ship sailed a decade ago or more. Finland and Sweden have been closely integrated with NATO for many years.

The west isn't going to let Ukraine fall.

Ukraine fell to a hostile coup in 2014.

And the west is not capable of preventing Russia from taking back the ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine and leaving western Ukraine as a neutral shell.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (34 children)

Ukraine voted in a jew with a landslide.

Very few of them are anti-Semitic.

Ergo very few are nazis.

Azov was formed during the Euromaidan protests. Russia was already trying to set up Ukraine as a puppet state like Belarus.

They had some neo nazi influences, but being invaded brings out people's most base patterns of behaviour as you see your friends and family killed.

But they're divorced from that since they've been absorbed into the national guard, and Neo Nazi was never a particularly significant moment in ukraine by numbers.

Ukraine fell to a hostile coup in 2014.

Parts of Ukraine are currently occupied by Putin's Russia. The liberation is ongoing.

[–]weavilsatemyface 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (22 children)

More than 50% of eligible voters either voted against Zelensky, or didn't vote for him. Even in the second round run-off election, Zelensky only received 45% of potential votes. Some landslide.

  • When given a wide choice of 39 candidates, just 30% of voters supported Zelensky; if you include those who were eligible to vote but didn't, it was only 19% of the eligible voting population who preferred him: 81% of voters preferred somebody else.
  • In the second round of voting, when asked to choose between only incumbent president Petro Poroshenko and Zelensky, 73% choose Zelensky; if you include those who chose to stay away and not vote at all, that was only 45% of eligible voters.
  • And a year later, his popularity had plummeted to just 10% approval rating as the Ukrainian people discovered that Zelensky was even more corrupt than the crooks he replaced, and was completely incapable of either bringing the far-right under control or ending the civil war.

Quote: "With no previous political experience, Mr Zelensky's campaign focused on his difference to the other candidates rather than on any concrete policy ideas. ... Analysts believe Mr Zelensky's informal style and vow to clean up Ukrainian politics resonated with voters who are disillusioned with the country's path under Mr Poroshenko." Kinda like Trump, don't you think?

So to summarise: Zelensky, a professional actor who was very popular, managed to fool 19% of eligible voters in the first round of the election, which was enough to get into the second round. Poroshenko, already widely disliked, lost the election to somebody even more dirty and corrupt who could put on a better false face.

Ergo very few are nazis.

You're probably right. If I was to take a wildly unscientific stab in the dark, my guess is that probably only about 2% of Ukrainians are hard-core far right extremists, and only a fraction of those are specifically obsessed with THE JOOS like Hitler was. And? What's your point? 2% of 44 million is a lot of people.

Nazism is more than just antisemitism, and its not solely the true believer extremists that are the problem. Its the thousands more of more moderate right-wing fellow travellers who are associated with them, and the millions of easily-lead followers who go along with the true believers out of patriotism, or fear, or greed, or because they're just following orders. Even in Nazi Germany, most Nazis were not raging antisemites who wanted to exterminate all the jews -- not at first. Even Hitler himself originally planned to just expel the Jews from Europe.

There is little or no chance that the extreme right will take power in Ukraine through democratic and fair elections but that's not how the extreme right takes power. The far right never takes over by convincing 51% of the voters to support death camps.

They take power by challenging the state's monopoly on violence, and gaining support and protection from fellow-travellers and sympathisers in positions of power. In 1920s Italy, the government and the king caved to threats from Mussolini's fascist minority and gave him power. In 1930s Germany, the establishment political elite made Hitler Chancellor thinking that they could control him like a puppet, that he would do their dirty work for them and allow them to keep their hands clean.

In Ukraine, far right paramilitary operates with impunity, often with the open support of police and military. They are funded and supported by wealthy oligarchs. Far right terror attacks and even murders are rarely investigated and even more rarely prosecuted. Nobody has been charged for the Maidan murders, or the burning alive of protesters in Odessa, or the attacks against Gypsies.

Azov was so powerful that the Ukrainian government simply integrated them with their military, without making any attempt to weed out the extremists.

Ukraine is officially unapologetic for the murder of tens of thousands of Poles, Hungarians and Ukrainian Jews at the hands of the Banderites during WW2. Even during this war, with Russophobic Poland champing at the bit to fight Russia, there is a certain amount of diplomatic tension between Ukraine and Poland every time the Ukrainians name another street or public arena after a genocidal murderer or celebrate their birthday as a national holiday. Until 2022, all of Ukraine's neighbours agreed that Ukraine has a deep seated problem with neo-Nazis. Until 2022, there was bipartisan recognition in the USA that Ukrainian neo-Nazis were a problem. Obama refused to send them weapons for that reason.

Now the narrative is "bUT tHEy'Ve ChANgEd thEIr WayS aND aREn't NazIS AnYMoRE!" even as they zeig heil on camera.

Azov was formed during the Euromaidan protests.

No, Azov officially was formed after the Euromaiden protests.

Azov Battalion's official creation by Andriy Biletsky was in May 2014. The Euromaiden protests ran from 21 November 2013 to 22 February 2014, so Azov didn't form until three months after the Euromaiden protests and the violent insurrection that removed democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych from power.

Russia was already trying to set up Ukraine as a puppet state

Nonsense on stilts. That's pure American propaganda and not based on any reality at all. In 2014 Russia was still satisfied for Ukraine to remain politically and militarily neutral and Yanukovych frequently went against Russian interests to move Ukraine economically closer to the EU.

And the irony is that after the so-called "Revolution of Dignity" coup, it was the Americans (specifically that poisonous toad Victoria Nuland) who choose the senior Ukrainian government ministers, from people who didn't even have Ukrainian citizenship at the time and had to quickly apply for citizenship to make their new position legal. And you think that it was Russia who was turning Ukraine into a puppet state??? 🙄

like Belarus.

Belarus has more independence from Russia, despite their infinitely closer cultural and ethnic ties, than Germany or the UK has from the USA.

  • Russia and Belarus have partial economic integration? "BeLArUs iS A pUPPeT sTaTE!"
  • Western European have much stronger and more complete economic, legal and taxation integration? "That just makes good economic sense."
  • Russia and Belarus have partial military integration? "BeLArUs iS A pUPPeT sTaTE!"
  • Most of Europe has a much stronger and more complete military integration, dominated by the USA? "That just makes good military sense."
  • Russia has two military bases in Belarus? "BeLArUs iS A pUPPeT sTaTE!"
  • The US has at least four military bases in Australia, plus free access to at least six other ADF bases? "That's for the protection of Australia."
  • The US has forty military bases in Germany? "That's for the protection of Germany."
  • The US has eight military bases in Italy? "That's for the protection of Italy."
  • The US has six military bases in the UK? "That's for the protection of the UK."
  • The US has another 700 military bases in at least 80 countries? "That's for their protection."

Everything that the US claims Russia does, is what the US actually does.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (21 children)

More than 50% of eligible voters either voted against Zelensky, or didn't vote for him. Even in the second round run-off election, Zelensky only received 45% of potential votes. Some landslide.

You're counting people who didn't vote?

Meaning you think that when Trump won in 2016, he only had the support of 27% of the country?

When given a wide choice of 39 candidates, just 30% of voters supported Zelensky;

More than 11 times the average of those 39 candidates?

And about twice as many votes as the second highest polling candidate?

Most people would call that reasonably decisive. I reckon "Landslide" is fair.

In the second round of voting, when asked to choose between only incumbent president Petro Poroshenko and Zelensky, 73% choose Zelensky;

Improving his margin to about 2.7 times Poroshenko's vote. Again, not close.

And a year later, his popularity had plummeted to just 10% approval

I get 11% "strongly approval". But you're missing the 38% "somewhat approve". For a total of 49% approval. From this source. Where do you get the 10% from?

Even so, the 73% support in the final round refutes your claim that Ukrainians are Nazis.

Nazism is more than just antisemitism

Agree. antisemitism is a necessary but not sufficient condition. You also need to be fascist, racist, white supremacist, support eugenics and dictatorship.

Belarus has more independence from Russia, despite their infinitely closer cultural and ethnic ties, than Germany or the UK has from the USA.

Belarus has a Russian puppet government, that retains power through "elections" that are neither free nor fair, and subvert the will of the people. https://www.voiceofbelarus.org/belarus-news/golos-proved-that-tsikhanouskaya-had-defeated-lukashenko-in-the-first-round/

Nonsense on stilts. That's pure American propaganda and not based on any reality at all.

Nope. Russian oligarchs tried to seize power to stop Ukraine moving towards the EU wrt trade.

https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1vhgp5/yesterday_my_country_became_north_korea_20/

And during the protests, Russians were disappearing protesters to try to cool them. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/where-have-the-many-missing-ukrainian-protesters-gone/

It didn't work, so Putin outright invaded. That's not working either. He's lost support of the Wagner mercenaries, and nearly lost his government. More nearly than Zelensky has to date.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

You're counting people who didn't vote?

Meaning you think that when Trump won in 2016, he only had the support of 27% of the country?

Absolutely.

In Australia we consider a voter turnout of less than 90% a threat to democracy.

When AOC won her seat in Congress, she did so with the votes of 12% of the eligible voters. Low voter turnout is bad for democracy, it encourages extremists and posers and government for and by special interests (usually the wealthy elite and corporations, but not only them).

More than 11 times the average of those 39 candidates?

And about twice as many votes as the second highest polling candidate?

Yes.

The question isn't whether or not he was the most popular candidate at the time. The question is what that tells us about the influence of far-right neo-Nazis (or Banderites, or "alt-right", or whatever you want to call them) in Ukrainian government. And the answer is, precious little.

You seem to be arguing against somebody else's argument that "Poroshenko is literally Hitler, and Jews were prohibited from holding office and even if they weren't nobody would vote for them". If that were my argument, then Zelensky's election victory would be good evidence against my argument -- but that is not my argument.

I don't know how often I have to say this before you will take it in. The problem isn't that all Ukrainians, or even a majority, are Nazis. Or that the Ukrainian government is openly and officially Nazi. It is that there are significant numbers of neo-Nazis, Banderites and other Hitlerite-adjacent extremists in the country, many of them are organised into paramilitary organisations, some are openly part of the government and military, and that they have the support and protection of oligarchs, officials, and organs of the state such as the military, the judiciary, the police and other government agencies.

Before 2022 none of this was controversial. Everyone agreed that Ukraine was home to many powerful far-right groups. Israel and Poland especially were, and remain, upset that Ukraine continues to celebrate genocidal war criminals like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych. In the US, it was a matter of bipartisan agreement that Ukraine has a Nazi problem. It was why Obama limited aid to Ukraine to non-lethal equipment, due to fears that weapons would end up in the hands of extremists.

Where do you get the 10% from?

I misremembered this source that states his approval was 19%. Sorry.

Nazism is more than just antisemitism

Agree. antisemitism is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Political parties change over time to suit local conditions and the personalities of their leaders, none of whom live forever. Consider how the Republicans of Lincoln differ from the Republicans of Trump, or the neo-con Republicans of Bush Jr. Or the Dixie Democrats who crossed over to become Republicans.

The German Nazi Party of the 1920s through 40s was especially influenced by the malign and unhinged racial views of Hitler, Himmler and a handful of other top leaders. Hitler took the regular anti-semitic views of many Germans in the 1920s and turned it up to 11. But that doesn't mean that all neo-Nazis who follow have to be equally obsessed with Jews beyond all else, or even that all antisemites are Nazis. Local conditions matter.

People forget that while Hitler attempted genocide against the Jews, killing six million of them, he also attempted genocide against the Slavs and killed around 8 or 9 million civilians and POWs, mostly Russians. You know who aren't Slavs? Western Ukrainians.

[–]ActuallyNot 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

In Australia we consider a voter turnout of less than 90% a threat to democracy.

The higher turnout is attributable to compulsory voting.

The question isn't whether or not he was the most popular candidate at the time.

Yes it is.

And his margin was vast.

The question is what that tells us about the influence of far-right neo-Nazis (or Banderites, or "alt-right", or whatever you want to call them) in Ukrainian government.

No. The question is what influence far right neo-Naizis have over the Ukrainian people.

I misremembered this source that states his approval was 19%. Sorry.

It states that he was polling at 19%. That would be amongst all parties, because it is an incorrectly rounded down of the lowest poll that he had amongst that which was 22 Jan 2021. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_Ukrainian_presidential_election). The comparable figure to this 20% would be the 30% that he won in the first round of the election, not the 70% that he won in the second round.

At that time he still would have come first in the first round of a presidential election.

Nazism is more than just antisemitism

Agree. antisemitism is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

that doesn't mean that all neo-Nazis who follow have to be equally obsessed with Jews beyond all else

As with the original Nazis

or even that all antisemites are Nazis

Agree. antisemitism is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

You know who aren't Slavs? Western Ukrainians.

You know who's a jew? The Ukrainian Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

The higher turnout is attributable to compulsory voting.

Gosh, thanks for explaining it to me, an Australian. All these years I thought it was because of the democracy snags.

The question isn't whether or not he was the most popular candidate at the time.

Yes it is.

Actually not.

Zelensky's popularity in the presidential elections has zero to do with the existence of a genuine far-right neo-Nazi threat in Ukraine.

In Germany after World War One, Kurt Eisner was elected as premier of Bavaria. Walther Rathenau and Rudolf Hilferding were both elected to the cabinet in the Weimar Republic (Rathenau served as Foreign Minister, and Hilferding as Finance Minister). By your logic this proves that there was no antisemitism in Germany between the wars.

No. The question is what influence far right neo-Naizis have over the Ukrainian people.

Of more immediate concern is the power and influence of neo-Nazis within the apparatus of the state: government, police, military. And there is no doubt that this is much too high.

In America, the amount of official government support for the Confederacy and various slave-owning Confederate generals is remarkably high, but at least nobody has made Nathan Bedford Forrest's birthday a national holiday, or put the Aryan Brotherhood organisation into the US Army to be trained and supplied while still allowing them to keep their extremist ideology and recruiting.

And then, when the international media spotlight falls on them, simply declares that although the Aryan Brotherhood Battalion still uses all the same language, rhetoric and symbology of their racist past, they're no longer actually racist anymore, just because 🙄

The FBI is soft on the far-right until they commit actual crimes, but they do go after those who commit crimes. In Ukraine, right-wing violence is often not investigated at all, and local authorities have been known to pay the far-right to attack Roma (gypsy) communities to fore them to move away. "We're not nazis, but the thugs we pay to strong-arm our enemies are" summarises the Ukrainian governments. That puts them closer to German 1930 than 1940.

that doesn't mean that all neo-Nazis who follow have to be equally obsessed with Jews beyond all else

As with the original Nazis

Even among the Hitlerite Nazis, levels of antisemitism varied greatly from those who had no strong feelings towards Jews either way to those who wanted them all dead -- especially once the Nazi Party gained power.

In any case, Ukraine in 2023 is not Germany in 1923 and Ukrainian neo-Nazi far-right white supremacist extremism is not identical to the Nazis. Even the Nazis were not identical to themselves: there are significant differences between the Nazism of Hitler compared to either Ernst Röhm, or the Strasserists.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (14 children)

Belarus has a Russian puppet government

So you say, but you give no evidence for your claim that Belarus and Lukashenko exist only to do Russia's bidding.

There is a spectrum from puppet government (one which is independent only in name), to vassal state (one which still retains some independence, but only within limits), to allies linked by shared culture and interests.

Americans in particular seem to have trouble believing that any two countries can be on friendly terms unless one of them is the master and the other at least a junior staff, if not outright slave. Probably because that's how they behave so they think everyone else must too.

If you want to demonstrate that Belarus is a puppet state of Russia, you need to prove that they actually have no real independence at all, not just that they are friendly, collaborate, and have each other's backs.

that retains power through "elections" that are neither free nor fair

If you expect me to defend Lukashenko as a paragon of democracy, I'm going to disappoint.

But having said that, you're linking to Voice Of Belarus as your source? Okay.

VOB is aimed at American audiences not the local people of Belarus. That's why its in English. Their funding is obscure, which suggests that most of their money comes from the National Endowment for Democracy or even the CIA. Even if it doesn't, they're still parroting the CIA line: Lukashenko bad, Tsikhanouskaya good, Belarus needs a colour revolution to bring them into the US sphere of influence.

Tsikhanouskaya is astonishingly unpopular in Belarus even among the pro-Western, anti-Lukashenko crowd. The method used by VOB to cough "prove" cough she won is laughably bad. It might as well have been a Twitter poll.

And then you go on to use an anonymous Reddit user -- a deleted user at that -- as your source that "Russian oligarchs tried to seize power". A few problems with that:

  • This random Redditor describes genocidal mass murderers Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych as "freedom fighters"
  • and supports open discrimination against 25% of the country on the basis of ethnicity
  • but most of all, he doesn't mention Russian oligarchs even once.

He's lost support of the Wagner mercenaries, and nearly lost his government.

Its hard to take you seriously when you fall for such cartoon takes. You're believing the same clowns who claimed that Putin had fled the country and that this silly little drive to Moscow by an egotistical billionaire caterer ex-con was the start of a new Russian Revolution. You need to get a better source of information than the mainstream US press, which always tells the truth when absolutely no other alternative, including dead silence, presents itself.

Only a tiny fraction of Wagner were active participants of this aborted march on Moscow. Most of the rest are signing up with the Russian military. I'll admit I have no idea of what's happening with Progozhin or why he hasn't fallen out of a window yet, but his home has been raided and his companies have lost all their MoD contracts. (Mind you, the contracts were already under investigation for financial fraud before the march occurred.)

No Russian government officials supported Progozhin. No regional governors supported him. No military officers supported Progozhin, and no military units deserted or joined him. There was no popular support for his aborted drive on Moscow, and Putin's popularity has gone up, not down, for taking a fucked up situation and unfucking it quickly, decisively and without having to slaughter the heroes of Bakhmod.

Even if you hate Putin for personally raping your dog and shooting your wife and kids, you have to admit that he called Progozhin's bluff masterfully.

[–]ActuallyNot 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (13 children)

So you say, but you give no evidence for your claim that Belarus and Lukashenko exist only to do Russia's bidding.

While Ukraine is resisting Putin, Belarus is becoming his puppet

RUSSIAN INFLUENCE IN BELARUS

Americans in particular seem to have trouble believing that any two countries can be on friendly terms unless one of them is the master and the other at least a junior staff, if not outright slave.

Both countries are dictatorships. The relationship is not between the people but between Lukashenko and Putin. Neither takes advice from their country.

And then you go on to use an anonymous Reddit user -- a deleted user at that -- as your source that "Russian oligarchs tried to seize power".

He describes the fall from democracy, and the laws that were attempted to be pushed through, that set of the Euromaidan protests. And he links to those laws, and he describes how the parliament voted on them outside the normal process.

That that happened and that the Euromaidan protests resulted is known to history.

this silly little drive to Moscow

It's a silly litte drive that took out Russian Military Helicopter, and a shot down a Il-22M airborne command-center plane.

How much defending hardware to you have to destroy or capture before you're no longer "silly"?

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (12 children)

While Ukraine is resisting Putin, Belarus is becoming his puppet

Quote: "Katia Glod is an independent analyst and Fellow with the Democratic Resilience Program of the Center for European Policy Analysis (Washington, DC)." So another state-affiliated NGO doing Washington's propaganda for them 🙄

Did you read the article? Or stop at the headline? Its a long-list of assertions that Belarus is "becoming" a puppet of Russia (which implies that they aren't a puppet yet), but a complete shortage of any credible evidence for this claim except that Vladimir Makei "pledged" that all Russian troops would leave Belarus after the military exercises but they didn't. That's pretty thin stuff. Ministers often say one thing and do another.

Wikipedia is completely colonised by Anglo-American TLA shills, but even their page on Russian-Belarussian relations is less one-sided and more credible than your source.

Belarus is a small, poor state next to a big, powerful, rich one. Actually, in area they're not that small. But they are weak and poor. It has a lot of economic problems, including corruption and the generally backwards nature of the country. Culturally they're effectively Russian, and Russia gives Belarus billions in subsidies. But Russia doesn't hold all the cards and Belarus is frequently able to dictate terms to Russia, or stare them down, e.g. during the 2004 dispute over gas when Belarus started stealing Russian gas intended for Germany and Poland, and again in 2007, and the Milk War.

Russia and Belarus are close, but Belarus guards its independence jealously and Lukashenko is quite capable of saying no to Putin.

Both countries are dictatorships.

Our common political language is so impoverished. 🙁 Everything is either an "authoritarian dictatorship" (bad) or a "Free™ democracy" (good) and democracy is put up on a pedestal as the One True Perfect Political System. Unless the People vote for Donald Trump.

Dictators rule by fiat. I see no evidence that Putin rules by personal fiat. Let us agree that Russia is a semi-autocratic hybrid democracy.

Lukashenko I have no comment because I don't know enough about the country to comment sensibly.

He describes the fall from democracy, and the laws that were attempted to be pushed through, that set of the Euromaidan protests.

He describes what he claims is the fall from democracy, which other Ukrainians who don't celebrate genocidal murderers dispute. Gosh, people can have different opinions about political events, who would have imagined it???

And he links to those laws

Yeah, you didn't actually click on that link did you? You just assumed that it supported his story.

It's a silly litte drive that took out Russian Military Helicopter, and a shot down a Il-22M airborne command-center plane.

So we're told, but its not exactly clear what happened. I don't think that the Russian government has at yet confirmed that Wagner shot down anything, which could just be them staying mum, or it could be because it didn't happen.

But let's suppose that they did shoot down two Russian aircraft and killed two pilots. How does that get them closer to overthrowing the government?

Nidal Hasan killed 12 soldiers and 1 civilian, and injured 33 more people, at Fort Hood. Does that mean that the US government was at risk of collapse too? It takes more than a few random acts of violence to overthrow a government.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (10 children)

Ukraine voted in a jew with a landslide.

Very few of them are anti-Semitic.

Zelensky received 13.5 million votes in the second round of the 2019 presidential election, out of about 36 million adults in the country. All you have proved is that around 38% of Ukrainians are either not antisemites, or hated Petro Poroshenko enough to vote for a jew. You can't say anything about the 26 million adults who didn't vote for Zelensky. How many of them are antisemites?

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

You can't say anything about the 26 million adults who didn't vote for Zelensky.

I can say that the overwhelming support for Zelenskyy amongst those who felt strongly enough to vote demonstrates that there's no broad culture of antisemitism in Ukraine that would support the claim that "Ukrainians are Nazis".

The people who felt strongly antisemitic, would have voted. If the country tolerated antisemitism, he wouldn't have had a shit-show.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Your argument in a nutshell: "The election of Barrack Obama proves that there are no racists in the USA -- or at least no broad culture of racism or systematic racism."

there's no broad culture of antisemitism in Ukraine

Oh please. Antisemitism is widespread across eastern Europe including Ukraine. Quote:

Jew-hatred in Ukraine declined from a record 46% index score in 2019 to 29% in 2023, “potentially driven in part by the popularity of the Jewish president, Volodymyr Zelensky, whose approval ratings have risen dramatically over the last few years in response to his defiance in the face of Russian military attacks,” per an ADL release.

So in 2019, the year of Zelensky's electoral victory, 46% of Ukrainians were described as "Jew-haters" by the ADL.

In any case, Ukrainian neo-Nazi hatred of Jews is probably a secondary concern to Putin than their hatred of Russians.

that would support the claim that "Ukrainians are Nazis".

If I meet anyone who believes that all Ukrainians are Nazis, I'll be sure to mention that Zelensky is a Jew to them.

By the way: history is more complicated than the cartoon version most people learn. Even the original Nazis were complicated. Around 150,000 of men of Jewish descent, including practicing Jews, fought for Nazi Germany. If Jews could fight for the Nazis, Nazis can vote for a Jewish president.

[–]ActuallyNot 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

"The election of Barrack Obama proves that there are no racists in the USA

I didn't say that there were no neo nazis in Ukraine. I said that there were few. And it follows that Putin's claim that he is invading to "de-nazify Ukraine" is obviously bullshit. He's invading because the Ukrainian people what the economic freedom of being closer to Europe, and that doesn't mesh with his viscous expansionist ideals.

-- or at least no broad culture of racism or systematic racism."

That's true. Most voters voted for a great politician and great orator. And it didn't detract from that that he was black.

So in 2019, the year of Zelensky's electoral victory, 46% of Ukrainians were described as "Jew-haters" by the ADL.

Somebody's figures are wrong. 70% of those people voted for a Jew in the final round of the election.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I said that there were few. And it follows that Putin's claim that he is invading to "de-nazify Ukraine" is obviously bullshit.

No, that doesn't follow, not by any form of logic or sense. The absolute number of nazis does not matter one jot. What matters is their position of influence and ability to wield power.

If there were ten million nazis rotting in Ukrainian prisons, never to be released, they would have no power and no influence and nobody would care about them.

If there was one nazi in Ukraine but he was worshipped as Absolute God-Monarch whose every word was law and could not be questioned or gain-stayed, then everyone would care.

He's invading because the Ukrainian people what the economic freedom of being closer to Europe, and that doesn't mesh with his viscous expansionist ideals.

"They hate our freedoms!!! Putin is the next Hitler and wants to conquer the world!!!"

800+ military bases in close to a hundred countries all over the world, 251 wars since 1991, millions dead, promises broken, governments overthrown, nations destroyed, but it's Russia that is the threat to peace 🙄

Everything the US says about Russia is projection.

or at least no broad culture of racism or systematic racism."

That's true.

Denying the existence of systematic racism in the USA? That's very fascist of you.

46% of Ukrainians were described as "Jew-haters" by the ADL.

Somebody's figures are wrong. 70% of those people voted for a Jew in the final round of the election.

The figures are fine. It is your interpretation of them which is wrong. Real life is not a 1940s western where the Good Guys wear white hats and the Bad Guys wear black hats and the hardest moral decision you have to make is whether or not you have to wait for the baddie to draw his six-shooter before drawing yours.

People are complicated and there is no conflict between people with antisemitic opinions, or even "Jew haters" to use the ADL's term, voting for a Jew, if they think the alternatives are even worse.

Just as Jews fought in Hitler's Wehrmacht, and even Hitler was known to intervene personally to have individual Jews declared honorary Aryan and protected from deportation to the camps.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

He's claiming to have superpowers of vocabulary

I never said that Trump has the vocabulary of (say) the late Clive James. I said he knows how to push people's buttons. Short, snappy sentences with simple words are best if you want to appeal to the hoi polloi. He won't attract one single extra vote by using sesquipedalian lexemes in place of ordinary language.

Besides, many intelligent people write short sentences with simple words. Ernest Hemingway sends his greetings. One of the most powerful verses in the bible is two words: "Jesus wept."

You're very wrong about that.

Executive order 13526 says I'm not.

The Espionage Act is frequently and widely abused in the US:

and "defence information" is meaningless.

But under American law, the same law applies to presidents and ex presidents as crackwhores and ex crackwhores.

Indeed. If a crack whore becomes president, executive order 13526 will apply equally to her as it does to Obama, Trump and Biden, and she too will be able to declassify documents on a whim.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

Short, snappy sentences with simple words are best if you want to appeal to the hoi polloi.

"China has 1.4 billion people, we have 325 -- probably 325 million approximately -- nobody can give the exact count, we're trying to get an exact count but you have, over the years, many illegals who have come into the country, so it depends on how you want to count it." - Donald Trump being snappy

Other examples of snappy oratory from Donald Trump:

  • "Possibly it's one of the reasons -- certainly it's one of the very big reasons trade and things related to trade that I got elected in the first place -- I've been talking about it for a long time, along with many other subjects, frankly."

  • "But it's still -- we've done a great job, get no credit for it and I don't want the credit, I want the people that have done this great job -- the people that have done such an incredible job in building the ventilators and doing the testing and building a testing platform that's been amazing."

Executive order 13526 says I'm not.

You're very wrong about that too.

From your link

1) Classification doesn't expire because an ex president wills it:

"If the original classification authority cannot determine an earlier specific date or event for declassification, information shall be marked for declassification 10 years from the date of the original decision, unless the original classification authority otherwise determines that the sensitivity of the information requires that it be marked for declassification for up to 25 years from the date of the original decision."

2) The declassification procedure is detailed. It does not include an ex-president thinking about it.

The Espionage Act is frequently and widely abused in the US:

Illegally keeping government information, revision to give it back, and lying about having it will lead to charges under the espionage act.

If a crack whore becomes president, executive order 13526 will apply equally to her as it does to Obama, Trump and Biden, and she too will be able to declassify documents on a whim.

Wrong and also irrelevant.

The declassification procedure detailed in your linked order does not include "on a whim". Moreover Trump is on tape saying that he didn't declassify the documents about the invasion plan of Iran was still classified.

“It is like, highly confidential,” Trump told those present, “see as president I could have declassified it… Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

And the charges bright under the espionage act are USC 18 section 793

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793

You'll notice that it's about defence information. It doesn't mention the classification status of the information.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Donald Trump being snappy

Is there something wrong with those sentences? They make sense to me. You probably hear sentences more mangled a dozen times a day and don't even notice. Some of them obviously are following on from a previous sentence and so they don't express a complete thought on their own.

"Donald Trump is a bad speaker" is a weird hill for you to die on. A bit like "Bill Clinton and JFK were not popular with the ladies." Shall we compare him to Joe Biden or George Bush Jr? Or Dan Quayle?

I'm reminded of this experiment: what if Clinton and Trump swapped sexes?

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is there something wrong with those sentences?

They're not snappy.

The "snappy" line for explaining why Trump's got the vocabulary of a precocious three year old didn't work.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

And the charges bright under the espionage act are USC 18 section 793

The espionage act is the weapon the US government uses when the gloves come off and they go full on authoritarian. Is quite ironic that Trump is being hit by it too.

After spending months attacking Trump for holding onto "Top Secret" documents, the prosecutors presumably realised exactly the point people have been saying all along: the president, and former presidents, are legally empowered to implicitly declassify any documents they like by simply treating them as declassified. This was enshrined in precedence going back to Bush and Clinton and possibly even further back, and then made explicit by Obama. Quote:

As the Times points out, "prosecutors would not technically need to prove that [the documents at Mar-a-Lago] were still classified because the Espionage Act predates the classification system and does not refer to it as an element."

Since the original legal theory that Trump had broken the law by holding onto classified documents failed to hold water, the prosecution had to find another excuse to go after him. And the Espionage Act is great for that because it is so easy to abuse. For example:

Joe Biden just admitted publicly that the US military is all but out of 155mm artillery shells, and that's why they're sending cluster munitions to Ukraine. Many people have attacked him for this, claiming that he's revealed information related to national defence to America's enemies. Which is true, since levels of munitions is related to national defence, and America's enemies have access to the Internet and media where Biden's comment has been widely reported.

Of course it's a stupid accusation, since everyone already knows that America is out of munitions and cannot ramp up production to levels needed to fight a peer adversary like Russia or China. But regardless of whether it is a stupid claim or not, under the Espionage Act Biden has just committed a crime:

"Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with ... information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits ... the same to any person not entitled to receive it ..."

Oops. Maybe Trump and Biden can share the same cell in Guantanamo Bay? 😃

Of course this assumes that the Justice Department is applying the law equally to everyone. And if you think that, I've got a great NFTs to sell you.

That's the problem with the Espionage Act: it is so overly broad and sweeping (almost anything could be related to "national defence" under a sufficiently imaginative prosecutor) that it is easy to abuse. And so it has been abused.

[–]ActuallyNot 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

the president, and former presidents, are legally empowered to implicitly declassify any documents they like by simply treating them as declassified.

Oh, ex presidents too?

You think Jimmy Carter can will secret documents into different classifications by thinking about it too?

That's kind of funny.

"In my administration, I'm going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law." - Trump 2016

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” - Trump 2021

"Secret. This is secret information. Look, look at this" - Trump 2021, same recording as above.

Since the original legal theory that Trump had broken the law by holding onto classified documents failed to hold water, the prosecution had to find another excuse to go after him

The charges weren't changed. Crimes under the espionage act, and mishandling of NARA documents were the ones on the search warrant.

And since the video evidence shows Nauta moving boxes out of the store room the day before Trump's attorneys searched the room to comply with the grand jury subpoena for their return, we know that Trump was attempting to conceal that he had documents.

Biden did nothing of the sort, and you know it.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Oh, ex presidents too?

You think Jimmy Carter can will secret documents into different classifications by thinking about it too?

Carter doesn't have access to secret documents any longer and cannot just walk into the White House to get them.

But I expect that if it was discovered that he had taken home some documents in 1980, and 43 years later they were discovered in his sock drawer, or a private think-tank they would probably be covered by the same precedent and Executive Order.

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” - Trump 2021

Oh so now Trump is considered the ultimate authority on the law? 🙄

Trump hasn't been charged with being wrong, or being inconsistent, or being mistaken about his failure to declassify the documents.

The charges against him don't even require that the documents be classified. They could be a menu from the White House canteen and the Espionage Act could still apply, provided the prosecutor can come up with a sufficiently imaginative story as how that could effect national security.

Doesn't even have to be that imaginative: if Putin knows what they are serving in the canteen, he could sneak into the warehouses distributing the food and poison it. Actually most judges don't even require a theory for how something affects national security, they're quite happy to believe the prosecutor when he says "we can't tell you how because it is classified". Kinda like juries that believe cops who repeat the catchphrase "I feared for my life" when they shot somebody in the back as they were lying face down on the street in handcuffs...

[–]ActuallyNot 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Carter doesn't have access to secret documents any longer and cannot just walk into the White House to get them.

Oh! Ex-presidents can only change the classification of a document if that document is in their hand?

I didn't see that bit about proximity to the document in any of your links to the law. Can you point out the part where it says that?

Oh so now Trump is considered the ultimate authority on the law? 🙄

Nope.

But it shows that he didn't declassify the document. And it shows that he understands that an ex-president can't.

The first part is important for the trial, because it shows criminal intent.

The charges against him don't even require that the documents be classified.

The ones on the search warrant didn't. But Smith can bring other charges. The photographic evidence in the indictment show that there were crimes being committed with respect to the handling of classified documents.

They could be a menu from the White House canteen and the Espionage Act could still apply, provided the prosecutor can come up with a sufficiently imaginative story as how that could effect national security.

The document that we have in the tape recording was the attack plan for the invasion of Iran.

That's the one that they could release what it was.

[–]weavilsatemyface 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Oh! Ex-presidents can only change the classification of a document if that document is in their hand?

The precedent and executive order imply that a president does not have to do anything special to declassify a document (although of course they can go through normal channels if they so choose). The mere act of treating the document as if it were unclassified by, for example, giving it to aides without clearance, or taking it home, makes it so.

Carter, as a former president, cannot do anything at all with documents he doesn't already possess, so he cannot treat them as unclassified if he doesn't already have them. If he does have them now, it would be because he already declassified them in 1980 when he took them home.

But it shows that he didn't declassify the document. And it shows that he understands that an ex-president can't.

So what's your theory here? That Trump is a paragon of virtue who has never lied or bent the truth, and would never, ever big note himself by pretending to be showing classified documents? That everything he says is 100% accurate and he is incapable of misspeaking or being mistaken about the classification status of a document? That by merely stating that the document is classified, he has reclassified it as secret?

There is no executive order or precedent that ex-presidents can reclassify documents as secret. So it doesn't matter if Trump said the document is secret. He was lying, or mistaken.

But as you say, the Espionage Act doesn't require the document to be secret. If the DoJ wanted to, they could go after somebody for showing a copy of the New York Times to a journalist on the theory that the NY Times contains information that could be useful to America's enemies. The Espionage Act does not require the information be secret, or classified, or define a threshold of "militarily useful", and the mere fact that it is common knowledge is no defence.

And if the defendant was Donald Trump, after six years of unrelenting propaganda that Trump is a Russian agent, you could easily find tens of thousands of jury members who would willingly convict him.

The document that we have in the tape recording was the attack plan for the invasion of Iran.

That's impossible. Only Russia invades other countries. They must have been plans to deliver freedom to Iran.