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Internet research agency story as fiasco of Russiagate

13 Russians as most effective election turning team to ever walk the planet... Until the story was buried by Cambridge Analytics scandal

News Purple revolution Recommended Links Attempts to find dirt on Trump and his associates using Special Prosecutor Mueller modeled after Ken Starr prosecution of Bill Clinton False flag operations in cyberspace History of American False Flag Operations Trump vs. Deep State Fusion GPS Coordinated set of leaks as a color revolution tool
Appointment of a Special Prosecutor gambit The problem of control of intelligence services in democratic societies Fake News scare and US NeoMcCartyism Anti-Russian hysteria in connection emailgate and DNC leak Strzok-gate Brennan elections machinations Anti Trump Hysteria Do the US intelligence agencies attempt to influence the US Presidential elections ? Michael Flynn
DNC and Podesta emails leak: blaming Vladimir Putin Hillary Clinton email scandal Wiretaps of Trump and his associates during Presidential elections  Audacious Oligarchy and "Democracy for Winners" The Deep State Bernie Sanders betrayal of his supporters National Security State New American Militarism History of American False Flag Operations
Deception as an art form The Iron Law of Oligarchy Principal-agent problem Neoliberalism US Presidential Elections of 2012 Non-Interventionism Skeptic Quotations Humor Etc
  More mindless idiocy courtesy of Robert Mueller. His indictment of Russians for meddling in the US election is a goddamn joke. Seriously? This kind of activity has been going on between Russia and the US for 60 plus years. Anyone remember Radio Free Europe? Voice of America? (And I can't disclose what we were doing covertly to meddle in Soviet/Russia politics, but we were).

And here is Mueller's conclusion: "anyone who was disparaging Clinton, may have "unwittingly" been a collaborator of the 13 Russian "specialists" who cost Hillary the election." God help America. We've lost our damn minds.

Who Is Lying John Brennan or James Comey by Publius Tacitus

The first thing to say about this indictment is that it is entirely declamatory.

There is no possibility that any of the Russians named in the indictment will ever be extradited to the US to stand trial there. Special Counsel Mueller cannot therefore obtain convictions against these people, which begs the question of why an indictment was issued at all.

The short answer is that the indictment is intended to give credence to the claim of 'Russian meddling' in the US election, which has been made both privately and publicly ever since campaigning in the US began in 2015.

Presumably, by giving that claim credence, more reasons can now be offered for keeping Special Counsel Mueller in his job.

Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf.

 Mueller indicts some Russians; clears Trump campaign of collusion
(detailed analysis of latest indictment)  
by Alexander Mercouris , Feb 17, 2018

 

Steele dossier became hot potato for anti-Trump color revolution plotters. now we have evidence that a former British MI6 spy, Christopher Steele, paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to dig up dirt on Trump, provide FBI and media false information -- a dossier of scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges, in order to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump. And that the FBI used this falsifications to get FISA Court warrants to surveil and wiretap the Trump campaign.

As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke as it became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war

The question instantly arises: why now? Where was all those immense power of NSA, CIA and FBI during election. Why that calmly observed  that Russian are destroying American democracy :-). Something is really fishy here.

James Corbett of The Corbett Report has a great video about how absolutely bizarre it is that the coverage of this story  is ignoring the fact that these trolls overwhelmingly used mainstream media like the Washington Post in their shares instead of outlets like RT and Infowars. As a scheme to acquire followers, it makes perfect sense. As a scheme to subvert America, it’s nonsensical.

Another interesting tidbit is the story of the USA interference in the Russian election s of 2011-2012. As Caitlin Johnstone observes the US’s long history in meddling in other countries’ elections is not “whataboutism,” but rather a highly germane point to understanding the context for the allegations of Russian meddling (America’s Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind – Consortiumnews )

A guy in a cowboy hat runs into a bar and starts punching people. Most of them just rub their sore jaws and hunch over their drinks hoping to avoid any trouble, but one guy in a fur cap sets down his vodka and shoves the man in the cowboy hat.

The man in the cowboy hat begins shrieking like a little girl. All his friends rush to his side to comfort him and begin angrily shaking their fists at the man in the fur cap.

“Hey, he punched me!” says the man in the fur cap.

“That’s a whataboutism!” sobs the man in the cowboy hat.

Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?

... ... ...

“According to his research, there were 117 “partisan electoral interventions” between 1946 and 2000. That’s around one of every nine competitive elections held since Second World War.
The majority of these – almost 70 percent – were cases of U.S. interference.

“And these are not all from the Cold War era; 21 such interventions took place between 1990 and 2000, of which 18 were by the US.”

Yet another interesting tidbit is Mr. Mueller role in  911 cover-up. And 911 was a huge interference into the US political life. It essentially finalized conversion to the national security state.

The most plausible reason is that Mr. Mueller failed to uncover anything substantial during his year long investigation and now tries to preserve his job extending the investigation to the next elections. That's why probably 13 Russians were extracted from the back pocket to justify Mueller carefully avoiding addressing those concerns.  In any case Mueller should probably announce the closure of his investigation. If nothing more substantial than "13 Russians" fiasco  can be produced, at this point it became a joke.  It is like sending armada of battleships to capture a small fishing boat which illegally entered territorial waters.  Here is a quote from comment  by a user with nickname  timmy ( 21 February 2018) to the post Project Lakhta - What was the goal in Sic Semper Tyrannis blog:

The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to allow for a vigorous public debate. The flaw in the above reasoning is that if the alleged goal of the supposed Russian "interference" was to "aggravate divisiveness" then that Russian troll farm was doing exactly what our founding fathers wanted the press to do, provoke a public debate about issues during an election.

When we compare these trolls to the New York Times, which admitted it intentionally kept news of Bush's illegal electronic spying from the American people during the Bush/Kerry election, specifically so it would not be an election issue, the trolls were doing exactly what our founding fathers wanted the press to do, while the NYT was not.

I believe that these Russian trolls were merely parts of a private profit making Internet advertising firm that had zero to do with election interference and everything to do with generating the most eyeballs for its customers' advertisements, However, the claim that these trolls were a Russian government operation intended to create "divisiveness" is based on the assumption that opposing Hillary Clinton was somehow divisive. Since when did criticism of a US politician become devisive?

This is the part I don't understand. The devisiveness stick can be swung against anyone and anything. My comments here can be seen by some as devisive. Same with the post I'm commenting on, this entire blog and every other person or group exercising their First Amendment rights by debating an issue. So while I believe the whole Russian thing is complete bullshit, the thing I worry about most is that it is being used to demand conformity and squelch our First Amendment rights. Vigorous debate, no matter who or what is sponsoring that debate, doesn't weaken our country. It only makes it stronger. What is really weakening our country is the current demonizing of free speech via evidence free claims that such speech is hurting the US and helping a supposed enemy country.

Mueller indictments look disingenuous. It looks like this greedy and sleazy Russian Internet marketing company has nothing or very little to do with politics. They just (or mostly) used polarization of the US society to extract money pandering to fanatical supporters. With the total staff working for US market of around 90 people. For them. as well as several other similar marketing companies (for example in Macedonia and Georgia) Trump was preferable candidate because posts about him were able to bring them more money. Also this particular  company might also be framed by Shaltai Boltai hacker group which has connections with Western intelligence services (See False flag operations in cyberspace ).Three members on this group were charged by Russian authorities with treason.

The fact that Mueller politicized the action of Russian Internet scammers (who are, at best,  petty criminals using clickbaits to earn money) suggest that he has nothing more significant to offer hungry US Russophobes. At this point Mueller turned  his investigation into pure political propaganda. The election manipulations which the Clinton forces engaged in to defeat Sanders during the Democratic primaries dwarfs, by orders of magnitude, anything alleged against the Russians by even the most hawkish backers of the Russia probe.

Adrian Chen, staff writer for The New Yorker – who first profiled the indicted Russian troll farm in 2015, sat down with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, where he proceeded to deflate Mueller’s big scary indictment to nothing:

“Tried to tamp down the troll farm panic on @chrislhayes show last night,” Adrian Chen tweeted. “It’s 90 people with a shaky grasp of English and a rudimentary understanding of U.S. politics shitposting on Facebook.“

Here is a tweet by Peter Van Buren, former US foreign intelligence officer:

 "Just did a quick read of the '13 Russian' indictment. Missing are

  1. any connections between the 13 and the Russian government and/or Trump campaign;
  2. any discussion of the impact (if any) their social media efforts had. It describes them buying Facebook ads, but nothing about if it affected votes;
  3. no connection shown between any of this and DNC, Wikileaks, hacking of emails;
  4. no discussion of motive;
  5. assumption that anything anti-Clinton was defacto pro-Bernie and/or pro-Trump.

And all indicted persons are Russians, and outside the U.S., so highly unlikely this is going anywhere further legally.

 in Dunran was even more sarcastic (13 Russian trolls indictment debunked by journalist who profiled the operation in 2015):

Here is a bullet point review of Mueller’s latest Russiagate stupidity (as summarized by Zerohedge)

And for all of this, Obama and Congress slapped sanctions on Russia, evicted two diplomatic compounds, and launched several Congressional investigations.

As Alexander Mercouris suggested it looks like US intelligence agencies has successfully hacked the Internet Research Agency, LCC, a fact which by the way suggests that its internal security systems are very weak. That's why they have so much information about its structure, funding, personnel and activities of this pet project of hot dog seller from Sanct Petersburg.  In other words the USA intelligence  agencies were involved in illegal activities on the territory of Russian Federation (Mueller indicts some Russians; clears Trump campaign of collusion (detailed analysis of latest indictment) )

 The first thing to say about this indictment is that it is entirely declamatory.

There is no possibility that any of the Russians named in the indictment will ever be extradited to the US to stand trial there. Special Counsel Mueller cannot therefore obtain convictions against these people, which begs the question of why an indictment was issued at all.

The short answer is that the indictment is intended to give credence to the claim of 'Russian meddling' in the US election, which has been made both privately and publicly ever since campaigning in the US began in 2015.

Presumably, by giving that claim credence, more reasons can now be offered for keeping Special Counsel Mueller in his job.

Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf.

The indictment concerning the tiny and sleazy (like all such companies) Russian Internet marketing company is so disgusting (and  strongly smells with misuse of taxpayers funds for partisan purposes)  that it  really should be the end of Mueller's enquiries. He now needs to provide the final report. Which should include answers on the following  questions (answers which he will never provided because he essentially stole a lot of US taxpayers funds to fuel partisan witch hunt):
  1. Who is responsible for known efforts and false flag operations by the US intelligence and  British agencies to implicate Trump in Russia connections? 
  2. How did the DNC and Podesta e-mails end up in the pages of Wikileaks? If it was a leak, who  did it? It sit connected with murder of Seth Rish?
  3. What was CIA  and personally Brennan role in creation of the Steele dossier? Did CIA supplied any of the materials?  Was there criminality involved in production and promotion of this set of memos on the Part of British intelligences services. Same question should also be  directed to the Clinton Campaign, GPS Fusion. What was the role of already know officials of DoJ and the FBI in the creation and propagation of dossier ?
  4. Was was the meaning of "insurance policy" sought by officials of the FBI and DoJ. Who was involved in launching the color revolution against Trump?
  5. Was there an actual conspiracy among the leaders of the IC and FBI to block Trump's election by selective media leaks and dirt about him?  Brennan's recent appointment as a "contributor" at CNN is interesting in that regard. Is CNN just a fully owned subsidiary of CIA ?  Kind of PR department?
  6. Did the aforesaid leaders of the IC obtain from British intelligence material held by them that was then used against Trump?

The indictment accuses Russia of attempting to "diminish the public's faith in democracy," or some such thing. I really don't think US voting public needs any Russia's help in doing that. Politicians  are openly despised.  Here is a typical non-partisan sentiment  of Internet  forums:

J said in reply to Bill H... 17 February 2018 at 11:51 AM

Nope, our crooked Politicians AND Intelligence/Law Enforcement entities are doing a good job of diminishing the public's faith. I don't know how many of my fellow Americans I have talked to have said to round them all the crooked politicians/intelligence/law enforcement and eradicate them from the earth permanently.

That is why we see more and more the crooked politicians/intelligence/law enforcement understanding well their simmering public anger, and because of their fear of the angry public that they have created the surveillance grids (has nothing to do with misnomer terrorism), their legislation/laws that further restrict the public's ability to fight back against their crooked ways.

Diminished public faith, that's putting it mildly.

DianaLC said...

Thanks,PT, as usual.

I have no connection to intelligence agencies. I'm a mere citizen. I've been spending the last few days making cold calls to registered party members here in CO, trying to get them interested in the caucuses that are coming up. Remember how the caucuses became an issue when Trump was running?

Almost no one responded that they were going to attend. Several said they were so sick of politics they would definitely not attend. I'm beginning to believe that I and our precinct cue, to a great extent, but I have to add to it. Yes, we need God to help American. And, yes, many Americans seem to have lost their mind. But what makes me sadder is that most of us who have not lost our minds are losing our belief that we could ever make a difference, to make things better.

It is difficult to access what is true in those allegations and what is false or planted. After Nunes memo stakes for Rosenstein are extremely high, so we can assume that facts in the indictment are verified or at least semi-verified, if this is applicable to cyber operation, where you can't distinguish a false flag from the real opponent (see False flag operations in cyberspace .)  Here is an excellent analysis from Moon of Alabama ( Mueller Indictment - The Russian Influence Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme)

Yesterday the Justice Department indicted the Russian Internet Research Agency on some dubious legal grounds. It covers thirteen Russian people and three Russian legal entities. The main count of the indictment is an alleged "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States".

The published indictment gives support to our long held believe that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S. election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote.

The indictment is fodder for the public to prove that the Mueller investigation is "doing something". It is full of unproven assertions and assumptions. It is a sham in that none of the Russian persons or companies indicted will ever come in front of a U.S. court. That is bad because the indictment is build on the theory of a new crime which, unless a court throws it out, can be used to incriminate other people in other cases and might even apply to this blog. The later part of this post will refer to that.

In the early 1990s some dude in St.Petersburg made a good business selling hot dogs. He then opened a colorful restaurant. He invited local celebrities and politicians to gain notoriety while serving cheap food for too high prices. It was a good business. A few years later he moved to Moscow and gained contracts to cater to schools and to the military. The food he served was still substandard.

But catering bad food as school lunches gave him, by chance, the idea for a new business:

Parents were soon up in arms. Their children wouldn’t eat the food, saying it smelled rotten.

As the bad publicity mounted, Mr. Prigozhin’s company, Concord Catering, launched a counterattack, a former colleague said. He hired young men and women to overwhelm the internet with comments and blog posts praising the food and dismissing the parents’ protests.

“In five minutes, pages were drowning in comments,” said Andrei Ilin, whose website serves as a discussion board about public schools. “And all the trolls were supporting Concord.”

The trick worked beyond expectations. Prigozhin had found a new business. He hired some IT staff and low paid temps to populate various message boards, social networks and the general internet with whatever his customers asked him for.

You have a bad online reputation? Prigozhin can help. His internet company will fill the net with positive stories and remarks about you. Your old and bad reputation will be drowned by the new and good one. Want to promote a product or service? Prigozhin's online marketeers can address the right crowds.

To achieve those results the few temps who worked on such projects needed to multiply their online personalities. It is better to have fifty people vouch for you online than just five. No one cares if these are real people or just virtual ones. The internet makes it easy to create such sock-puppets. The virtual crowd can then be used to push personalities, products or political opinions. Such schemes are nothing new or special. Every decent "western" public relations and marketing company will offer a similar service and has done so for years.

While it is relatively easy to have sock-puppets swamp the comment threads of such sites as this blog, it is more difficult to have a real effect on social networks. These depend on multiplier effects. To gain many real "likes", "re-tweets" or "followers" an online persona needs a certain history and reputation. Real people need to feel attached to it. It takes some time and effort to build such a multiplier personality, be it real or virtual.

At some point Prigozhin, or whoever by then owned the internet marketing company, decided to expand into the lucrative English speaking market. This would require to build many English language online persona and to give those some history and time to gain crowds of followers and a credible reputation. The company sent a few of its staff to the U.S. to gain some impressions, pictures and experience of the surroundings. They would later use these to impersonate as U.S. locals. It was a medium size, long-term investment of maybe a hundred-thousand bucks over two or three years.

The U.S. election provided an excellent environment to build reputable online persona with large followings of people with discriminable mindsets. The political affinity was not important. The personalities only had to be very engaged and stick to their issue - be it left or right or whatever. The sole point was to gain as many followers as possible who could be segmented along social-political lines and marketed to the companies customers.

Again - there is nothing new to this. It is something hundreds, if not thousands of companies are doing as their daily business. The Russian company hoped to enter the business with a cost advantage. Even its mid-ranking managers were paid as little as $1,200 per month. The students and other temporary workers who would 'work' the virtual personas as puppeteers would earn even less. Any U.S. company in a similar business would have higher costs.

In parallel to building virtual online persona the company also built some click-bait websites and groups and promoted these through mini Facebook advertisements. These were the "Russian influence ads" on Facebook the U.S. media were so enraged about. They included the promotion of a Facebook page about cute puppies. Back in October we described how those "Russian influence" ads (most of which were shown after the election or were not seen at all) were simply part of a commercial scheme:

The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not part of a political influence op.
...
One builds pages with "hot" stuff that hopefully attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on these pages and fills it with Google ads. One attracts viewers and promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook mini-ads for them. The mini-ads are targeted at the most susceptible groups.

A few thousand users will come and look at such pages. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant for or against LGBT and further spread them. Some will click the Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scaleable and parts of it can be automatized.

Because of the myriad of U.S. sanctions against Russia the monetization of these business schemes required some creativity. One can easily find the name of a real U.S. person together with the assigned social security number and its date of birth. Those data are enough to open, for example, a Paypal account under a U.S. name. A U.S. customer of the cloaked Russian Internet company could then pay to the Paypal account and the money could be transferred from there to Moscow. These accounts could also be used to buy advertisement on Facebook. The person who's data was used to create the account would never learn of it and would have no loss or other damage. Another scheme is to simply pay some U.S. person to open a U.S. bank account and to then hand over the 'keys' to that account.

The Justice Department indictment is quite long and detailed. It must have been expensive. If you read it do so with the above in mind. Skip over the assumptions and claims of political interference and digest only the facts. All that is left is, as explained, a commercial marketing scheme.

I will not go into all its detail of the indictment but here are some points that support the above description.

Point 4:

Defendants, posing as US. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive US. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by US. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. persons to post on social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans ...

Point 10d:

By in or around April 2014, the ORGANIZATION formed a department that went by various names but was at times referred to as the "translator project." This project focused on the US. population and conducted operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By approximately July 2016, more than eighty ORGANIZATION employees were assigned to the translator project.

(Some U.S. media today made the false claim that $1.25 million per month were spend by the company for its U.S. campaign. But Point 11 of the indictment says that the company ran a number of such projects with some directed at a Russian audience while only the one described in 10d above is aimed at an U.S. audience. All these projects together had a monthly budget of $1.25 million.)

(Point 17, 18 and 19 indict individual persons who have worked for the "translator" project" "to at least in and around [some month] 2014". It is completely unclear how these persons, who seem to have left the company two years before the U.S. election, are supposed to have anything to do with the claimed "Russian influence" on the U.S. election.)

Point 32:

Defendants and their co-conspirators, through fraud and deceit, created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop certain fictitious U.S. personas into "leader[s] of public opinion" in the United States.

The indictment then goes on and on describing the "political activities" of the sock-puppet personas. Some posted pro-Hillary slogans, some anti-Hillary stuff, some were pro-Trump, some anti-all, some urged not to vote, others to vote for third party candidates. Some of the persona called for going to anti-Islam rallies while others promoted pro-Islam rallies. There was in fact no overall political trend in all of this. The sock-puppets did not post fake news. They posted mainstream media stories. The sole point was to create a large total following by having multiple personas which together covered all potential strata.

At Point 86 the indictment turns to Count Two - "Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Bank Fraud". The puppeteers opened, as explained above, various Paypal accounts using 'borrowed' data.

Then comes the point which confirms the commercial marketing story as laid out above:

Point 95:

Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.

There you have it. There was no political point to what the Russian company did. Whatever political slogans one of the company's sock-puppets posted had only one aim: to increase the number of followers for that sock-puppet. The sole point of creating a diverse army of sock-puppets with large following crowds was to sell the 'eyeballs' of the followers to the paying customers of the marketing company.

There were, according to the indictment, eighty people working on the "translator project". These controlled "hundreds" of sock-puppets online accounts each with a distinct "political" personality. Each of these sock-puppets had a large number of followers - in total several hundred-thousands. Now let's assume that one promotional post can be sold per day on each of the sock-puppets content stream. The scheme generates several thousand dollars per day ($25 per promo, hundreds of sock-puppets, 1-5 promos per day per sock-puppet). The costs for this were limited to the wages of up to eighty persons in Moscow, many of them temps, of which the highest paid received some $1,000 per month. While the upfront multiyear investment to create and establish the virtual personas was probably significant, this was, over all, a highly profitable business.

Again - this had nothing to do with political influence on the election. The sole point of political posts was to create 'engagement' and a larger number of followers in each potential social-political segment. People who buy promotional posts want these to be targeted at a specific audience. The Russian company could offer whatever audience was needed. It had sock-puppets with pro-LGBT view and a large following and sock-puppets with anti-LGBT views and a large following. It could provide pro-2nd amendment crowds as well as Jill Stein followers. Each of the sock-puppets had over time generated a group of followers that were like minded. The entity buying the promotion simply had to choose which group it preferred to address.

The panic of the U.S. establishment over the loss of their preferred candidate created an artificial storm over "Russian influence" and assumed "collusion" with the Trump campaign. (Certain Democrats though, like Adam Schiff, profit from creating a new Cold War through their sponsoring armament companies.)

The Mueller investigation found no "collusion" between anything Russia and the Trump campaign. The indictment does not mentions any. The whole "Russian influence" storm is based on a misunderstanding of commercial activities of a Russian marketing company in U.S. social networks.

There is a danger in this. The indictment sets up a new theory of nefarious foreign influence that could be applied to even this blog. As U.S. lawyer Robert Barns explains:

The only thing frightening about this indictment is the dangerous and dumb precedent it could set: foreign nationals criminally prohibited from public expression in the US during elections unless registered as foreign agents and reporting their expenditures to the FEC.
...
Mueller's new crime only requires 3 elements: 1) a foreign national; 2) outspoken on US social media during US election; and 3) failed to register as a foreign agent or failed to report receipts/expenditures of speech activity. Could indict millions under that theory.
...
The legal theory of the indictment for most of the defendants and most of the charges alleges that the "fraud" was simply not registering as a foreign agent or not reporting expenses to the FEC because they were a foreign national expressing views in a US election.

Author Leonid Bershidsky, who prominently writes for Bloomberg, remarks:

I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted. I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent.

I am German. I write pseudo-anonymously for a mostly U.S. audience. My postings are political and during the U.S. election campaign  expressed an anti-Hillary view. The blog is hosted on U.S, infrastructure paid for by me. I am not registered as Foreign Agent or with the Federal Election Commission.

Under the theory on which the indictment is based I could also get indicted for a similar "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States".

When Yevgeni Prigozhin, the hot dog caterer who allegedly owns the internet promotion business, was asked about the indictment he responded:

"The Americans are really impressionable people, they see what they want to see. [...] If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

Posted by b on February 17, 2018 at 03:09 PM | Permalink

It might well be yet another false flag operation to implicate Russians

The key figure in this story is a hotdog vendor who ventured into other areas and who discovered that by using Internet trolls you can sqash the wave of indignation for his rotten lunches, supplied to Moscow schoolchildren. 

One extremely weak point in the official story is connected with the fact that Russians typically are very bad English speakers. Even those who emigrated to the USA and live here for ten to twenty years still are having problems with both correct pronunciation and the grammar.  Also in no way Russian can access the politicall landscape in the USA. Actually even Clinton campaign operative failed to access it correctly. To assume that Russian could predict that Trump is a viable presidential candidates in 2014 is tantamount  to being God.  who for example could predict that Trump will morph into a Neocon Interventionist in  just  three months of his presidency? Who could predict that Tillerson would turn into a neocon on  a dime.

But one strange issue noted by many commenters is that events are limited to 2014-2015. At this point  it was unclear who will became candidate from each Party. Are those 13 Russians a bunch of political visionaries? Also the idea that 13 Russians influenced the USA Presidential election, which is implicit in indictments (otherwise, why Mueller, why now ?) is definitely a stretch.

Wikipedia assumed that  the company behind those activities is a real legal entity (Internet Research Agency). There is at least one  (hopefully informed) opinion that Internet Research  Agency was/is a fake entity ( A Brief History of the "Kremlin Trolls"  by Scott Humor (Oct 15, 2017 | thesaker.is) The main argument that it was removed from Federal Registry.  Scott Humor also directly suggested that this was a false flag operation as in saying On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog - Wikipedia ;-). In general you can't find a better  way to fuel anti-Russian hysteria then false flag operations. He attributes this particular one  to CIA operating via agents, who were members of a special disinformation group which used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona. They specialized on forgery of damaging for Russia  documents.  which is pretty devious idea:

 "They were creating files about fake nonexistent companies and employees, files with blurry fake paystubs, memos, emails, phone messages and so on. The fakes looked convincing, but they still were forgeries that could be easy disproved for someone who had access to the real information."

Some members of this disinformation group were arrested in November 2016 and revealed to be the FSB and former FSB officers.

Here is Scott Humor take on  this:

If we accept that the Shaltay-Boltay group was working to create and distribute documents they forged, claiming that those files were “hacked,” we would also understand a mysterious statement made by them to BuzzFeed.

“In email correspondence with BuzzFeed, a representative of the group claimed they were “not hackers in the classical sense.”

“We are trying to change reality. Reality has indeed begun to change as a result of the appearance of our information in public,” wrote the representative, whose email account is named Shaltai Boltai, which is the Russian for tragic nursery rhyme hero Humpty Dumpty.”

Just think about this working scheme: Shaltay-Boltay with a group of anti-government "activists" created the "Internet Research Agency," they and some "activists" created 470 FaceBook accounts used to post comments that looked unmistakably "trollish."

After that other, CIA affiliated entities, like the entire Western Media, claimed the "Russian interference in the US election." Finally, the ODNI published a report lacking any evidence in it.

... ... ...

The only reason why they don't provide us with evidence, with at least one lousy IP address with the Russian trace roots that would convincingly point at the company named the Internet Research Agency, is because this company never existed, it never had any IP addresses assigned to it that would be verifiable via third parties like RIPE network coordination and via online domain tools.

hackers who "leaked" the information about this "Agency" were arrested and successfully charged for treason because they worked for the CIA should prevent the CIA to run fake news about the entities and people they themselves made up. You would think that the matter of the "Kremlin trolls from Saint Petersburg" should be dead and buried after the arrest. The CIA and other 16 intelligence agencies should know better than to use information that is being known now as "discovered' with their "help."

... ... ...

Just think about this working scheme: Shaltay-Boltay with a group of anti-government "activists" created the "Internet Research Agency," they and some "activists" created 470 FaceBook accounts used to post comments that looked unmistakably "trollish."

After that other, CIA affiliated entities, like the entire Western Media, claimed the “Russian interference in the US election.” Finally, the ODNI published a report lacking any evidence in it.

Here is more extended quote that  gives some  additional information about this line of reasoning:

Saint Petersburg, Savushkina, 55 is the most famous office building in the world, thanks to the relentless promotion of the United States government, the CIA, FBI, and by the powers of the entire Western media, financed by Western governments. VOA, NPR, and Svoboda, by the government of the US; the BBC by the government of the UK; CNN by the governments of Saudi Arabia; the DW, by the government of Germany; and so on and so forth. You name it, they all punched time to promote this office building.

To be specific, it’s not even a building, but several adjoined buildings that cover an entire city block, an urban development plan common for Saint Pete’s. That’s why every business here has the address of Savushkina, 55 followed by a building number. You can take a virtual tour around it, to see for yourself. The buildings are shared by several dozens of private businesses, by the local Police department, and by the newsrooms of half a dozen Russia Media sources like the FAN (Federal News Agency), the Neva News (Nevskie Novosti), Political Russia, Kharkov News Agency, publishing Ukrainian news, and others. They all are privately owned and operated and generate over 55 million unique visitors per month. Overall, several thousand people come to this building to work every morning. But you wouldn’t know this by account of Western media. For over two years now, these people are being harassed and collectively branded as “THE KREMLIN TROLLS.”

The building is very popular because it’s located in a quiet historical neighborhood and is in walking distance from a suburban train station. It’s newly renovated offices offer open floor plans with Scandinavian fleur so very appreciated by the news people. In addition, the rent for this building is less than in center city. Which is why Evgeny Zubarev, a former top editor for the RIA NEWS, choose it for his media startup. He took several offices allowing him to manage his growing media giant without wasting time to commute. Now, the FAN newsroom alone employs about 300 journalists.

This wasn’t always the case.

At the beginning of 2014, the building was still under construction and renovation, when an anti-Russian government group of hackers called first “The Anonymous International” and latter “Shaltay-B0ltay” fingered it as the “Kremlin trolls’ layer.”

Their wordpress blog is still here. It was last updated on November 2016. Its title states: “Anonymous International. Shaltay Boltay/Press Secretary of the group. Creating reality and giving meaning to words.”

November 7, 2014, Khodorkovsky, who acted as an integral part of the CIA “Kremlin trolls” Project, tweeted the picture of one of the entrances to one of the buildings saying: “Savuchkina 55. New home for bots. ID check system. Not a sign there. I won’t say who took the photo.”

... ... ...

The phone number on the picture 324-56-06 belongs to the commercial real estate company Praktis Consulting & Brokerage that managed the rent of offices.

Midsummer 2014, Evgeny Zubarev with his start up and several hundred journalists moved in, along with the Police department, and a slew of other businesses people. Little did they know what was to come.

The best way to get information is to make it up.

Everything what we know now about the so-called "Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin's favorite chef," came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.

They were arrested in November 2016 and revealed as the FSB and former FSB officers . One of them even managed a security department for the Kaspersky Lab. They all were people highly skilled and educated in manipulating and creating large online databases, in any online research imagined, and the knowledge of hacking and altering databases, including those that were run by the Russian government. They weren't poor people. They weren't there for the money. They were ideologically driven. Their hatred towards Russia and its people was the motive for their actions.

At some point, Gazeta.ru, an online Russophobic publication, suggested that " Shaltai-Boltai was just a distraction meant to confuse everybody." They themselves were more concise by stating that they were working to change the reality.

Russian authorities, the courts, and the lawyers, refused to call these men hackers. There was a reason for this. They weren't so much hackers in a classic sense, as in when someone gains access to real information and copies it. This group wasn't necessarily hacking existing information, but planting information. They were creating files about fake nonexistent companies and employees, files with blurry fake paystubs, memos, emails, phone messages and so on. The fakes looked convincing, but they still were forgeries that could be easy disproved for someone who had access to the real information.

That's when the hacking took place, when the FSB agents went into government databases and created records of people and companies that didn't exist.

I think that part of the reasons why some of them got the mild sentences of three years in general security prison, and some were left free, wasn't just the fact that they agreed to collaborate with the Russian government, but also the fact that they didn't actually steal information from government officials like Medvedev and his press secretary, Nataliya Timakova, or the owner of the largest in Europe catering business, Evgeny Prigozhin. They made information up and claimed that it was real.

These guys gave a bad name to all hackers, whistleblowers, leakers and spies. Now, journalists presented with some "hacked" and leaked secrets has to think it over, less they end up with an egg on their face like journos from the Fontanka, Vedomosti and Novaya Gazeta in case of the "Kremlin's trolls."

If we accept that the Shaltay-Boltay group was working to create and distribute documents they forged, claiming that those files were "hacked," we would also understand a mysterious statement made by them to BuzzFeed. "In email correspondence with BuzzFeed , a representative of the group claimed they were "not hackers in the classical sense."

"We are trying to change reality. Reality has indeed begun to change as a result of the appearance of our information in public ," wrote the representative, whose email account is named Shaltai Boltai, which is the Russian for tragic nursery rhyme hero Humpty Dumpty."

Bazzfeed also said back in 2014, that " The leak from the Internet Research Agency is the first time specific comments under news articles can be directly traced to a Russian campaign." Now, this is a very important grave mark.

Just think about this working scheme: Shaltay-Boltay with a group of anti-government "activists" created the "Internet Research Agency," they and some "activists" created 470 FaceBook accounts used to post comments that looked unmistakably "trollish."

After that other, CIA affiliated entities, like the entire Western Media, claimed the "Russian interference in the US election." Finally, the ODNI published a report lacking any evidence in it.

The link to their report is here, but I don't recommend you to read it. You will gain as much information by reading this report as you would by chewing on some wet newspaper. Ask my dog for details.

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections

https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

Only three paragraphs is interesting on the page 4:

"Russia used trolls as well as RT as part of its influence efforts to denigrate Secretary Clinton. This effort amplified stories on scandals about Secretary Clinton and the role of WikiLeaks in the election campaign.

The likely financier of the so-called Internet Research Agency of professional trolls located in Saint Petersburg is a close Putin ally with ties to Russian intelligence.

A journalist who is a leading expert on the Internet Research Agency claimed that some social media accounts that appear to be tied to Russia's professional trolls -- because they previously were devoted to supporting Russian actions in Ukraine -- started to advocate for President-elect Trump as early as December 2015."

In other words, in its report with a subtitle: "Background to "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections": The Analytic Process and Cyber Incident Attribution" the Office of the Director of National Intelligence ODNI, is quoting the Shaltay-Boltay, a group that had been proved to work for the CIA by "creating reality."

The only reason why they don't provide us with evidence, with at least one lousy IP address with the Russian trace roots that would convincingly point at the company named the Internet Research Agency, is because this company never existed, it never had any IP addresses assigned to it that would be verifiable via third parties like RIPE network coordination and via online domain tools.

We understand that having hundreds of people working ten to twelve hours a day, as they claimed, posting hundreds messages hourly, would use huge amount of bandwidth. They would need a very fast internet connection with unlimited bandwidth that only a business can get. Inevitably, this internet connection would come with the assigned IP addresses. No internet provider would let this kind of bandwidth hog to create this kind traffic without being forced to separate them from other customers.

One example, a woman with the last name Malcheva filed a lawsuit in court against the companies "Internet Research, LLC" and "TEKA, LLC," claiming unpaid wages.

The court asked her to produce evidence of her work, and then denied her claim after she produced a photo of a computer with an IP address on its screen as evidence of her employment.

IP Address 109.167.231.85

inetnum: 109.167.231.0 – 109.167.231.255

netname: WESTCALL-NET

descr: S-Peterburg Hotel Corintia Wi-Fi

An IP address that was assigned to a luxury hotel in Saint-Petersburg. A hotel that was awarded multiple international awards for excellence. An immensely popular hotel among discriminating travelers. A very expensive hotel located in the center of a historic city. The woman claimed that she was an "online troll' working from this location ten hours a day with hundreds of other virtual trolls. The judge didn't believe her. Would you?

People from the Shaltay-Boltay group weren't hackers in the proper terms because they worked with and for the CIA. Middle-of the-road and run-of-the-mill intelligence agencies would collect and analyze information for their governments. The CIA invents information, then goes on to manufacture and forge documents in support of their invented information; they then recruit people inside other countries and other governments to claim that they "obtained" this explosive evidence. Being the dirty cops that they are, the CIA doesn't obtain and secure evidence, but instead they plant fake evidence on their victims.

By this act alone they change our current and past reality, and they change our future. They change our history by forging never existing "proof" of invented myths. They hire and train groups of military men to act as "protesters" around government buildings, while other military men from other countries shoot at unsuspected bystanders whose death allows Washington to claim the sovereign governments' wrongdoing.

... ... ...

...Knowing full well that the hackers who "leaked" the information about this "Agency" were arrested and successfully charged for treason because they worked for the CIA should prevent the CIA to run fake news about the entities and people they themselves made up. You would think that the matter of the "Kremlin trolls from Saint Petersburg" should be dead and buried after the arrest. The CIA and other 16 intelligence agencies should know better than to use information that is being known now as "discovered' with their "help."

... ... ...


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[Jul 14, 2020] Trump confirms he ordered a cyberattack on a notorious Russian troll farm during the 2018 midterms

"It is unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare tactics" Is not the USA position itself to consider such an attack to be a declaration fo war?
Jul 14, 2020 | news.yahoo.com

REUTERS/Yuri Gripas

President Trump confirmed in an interview with the Washington Post that the US launched a cyberattack against infamous Russian troll farm the Internet Research Agency (IRA) during the 2018 midterms.

The Post reported the attack in February 2019, but this is the first time Trump has confirmed it took place. It is unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare tactics.

The IRA was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 for conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Russian influence campaigns were also detected during the 2018 midterms .

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories .

President Trump has confirmed that the US launched a cyberattack on the Internet Research Agency (IRA), an infamous Russian troll farm, during the 2018 midterm elections.

The Washington Post first reported on the attack, which blocked the IRA's internet access, in February 2019. The administration did not comment on the report at the time, but Trump confirmed the attack in an interview with Post columnist Marc Thiessen published Friday.

Thiessen asked whether Trump had launched the attack, to which the president replied "correct." This is the first time Trump or the White House has confirmed the attack, and it is unusual for countries to publicly talk about cyberwarfare tactics.

According to The Post's 2019 report, US Cyber Command's attack started on the first day of voting for the November 2018 midterm elections, and continued for a few days while votes were tallied. "They basically took the IRA offline," one source familiar with the matter told The Post.

"Look, we stopped it," Trump told Thiessen. The Internet Research Agency was indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in 2018 for conspiracy to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. Russian influence campaigns were also detected during the 2018 midterms .

Trump also claimed that Obama had remained silent on the issue of Russian disinformation campaigns ahead of the 2016 election.

"[Obama] knew before the election that Russia was playing around. Or, he was told. Whether or not it was so or not, who knows? And he said nothing. And the reason he said nothing was that he didn't want to touch it because he thought [Hillary Clinton] was winning because he read phony polls. So, he thought she was going to win. And we had the silent majority that said, 'No, we like Trump,'" Trump said.

In October 2016, the Obama administration formally accused Russia of hacking into Democratic computers to steal emails that ended up on Wikileaks. In December 2016, one month after Trump had won the election, Obama ejected 35 suspected Russian intelligence officers in retaliation .

Trump's assertion that he took a tougher stance against Russian disinformation campaigns than Obama comes the week after he commuted the prison sentence of former aide Roger Stone , a move that came just days after Facebook announced it had taken down a network of disinformation accounts after an "investigation linked this network to Roger Stone and his associates."

Trump's attitude to Russia has come under fire from critics recently after reports emerged in late June that he was briefed on Russia offering the Taliban bounties to kill US troops in Afghanistan , and chose not to retaliate.

Read the original article on Business Insider


[Jun 23, 2020] CIA's massive 'Vault 7' leak resulted from 'woefully lax' security protocols within the agency's own network by Sonam Sheth

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on ..."
"... most of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said ..."
"... The Center for Cyber Intelligence also did not monitor who used its network, so the task force could not determine the size of the breach. However, it determined that the employee who accessed the intelligence stole about 2.2 billion pages -- or 34 terabytes -- of information, the Post reported. ..."
Jun 20, 2020 | taskandpurpose.com

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared on Business Insider .

The Central Intelligence Agency's elite hacking team "prioritized building cyber weapons at the expense of securing their own systems," according to an internal agency report prepared for then-CIA director Mike Pompeo and his deputy, Gina Haspel, who is now the agency's director.

The Washington Post first reported on the document , which said the hacking unit's failure to secure the CIA's systems resulted in the theft of highly classified cyberweapons in 2016.

In March 2017, US officials discovered the breach when the radical pro-transparency group WikiLeaks published troves of documents detailing the CIA's electronic surveillance and cyberwarfare capabilities. WikiLeaks dubbed the series of documents "Vault 7," and officials say it was the biggest unauthorized disclosure of classified information in the agency's history.

The internal report was introduced in criminal proceedings against former CIA employee Joshua Schulte, who was charged with swiping the hacking tools and handing them over to WikiLeaks.

The government brought in witnesses who prosecutors said showed, through forensic analysis, that Schulte's work computer accessed an old file that matched some of the documents WikiLeaks posted.

Schulte's lawyers, meanwhile, pointed to the internal report as proof that the CIA's internal network was so insecure that any employee or contractor could have accessed the information Schulte is accused of stealing.

A New York jury failed to reach a verdict in the case in March after the jurors told Judge Paul Crotty that they were "extremely deadlocked" on many of the most serious charges, though he was convicted on two counts of contempt of court and making false statements to the FBI.

Crotty subsequently declared a mistrial, and prosecutors said they intended to try Schulte again later this year.

The report was compiled in October 2017 by the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force, and it found that security protocol within the hacking unit that developed the cyberweapons, housed within the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence, was "woefully lax," according to the Post.

The outlet reported that the CIA may never have discovered the breach in the first place if WikiLeaks hadn't published the documents or if a hostile foreign power had gotten a hold of the information first.

"Had the data been stolen for the benefit of a state adversary and not published, we might still be unaware of the loss," the internal report said.

It also faulted the CIA for moving "too slowly" to implement safety measures "that we knew were necessary given successive breaches to other U.S. Government agencies." Moreover, most of the CIA's sensitive cyberweapons "were not compartmented, users shared systems administrator-level passwords, there were no effective removable media [thumb drive] controls, and historical data was available to users indefinitely," the report said .

The Center for Cyber Intelligence also did not monitor who used its network, so the task force could not determine the size of the breach. However, it determined that the employee who accessed the intelligence stole about 2.2 billion pages -- or 34 terabytes -- of information, the Post reported.

More from Business Insider:

[Apr 02, 2020] Bloomberg spent north of $500 millions to become president with zero results, and you want me to believe that Russians spent 1% of that and got better results

Highly recommended!
Apr 02, 2020 | hub.jhu.edu

PBO kenformerlyfromRI8 days ago ,

There is no conspiracy, they didn't make up false documents to start a Russian investigation, oh wait they did.. I just read that Bloomberg spent north of $500,000,000.00 to become president and you want me to believe the Russians spent 1% of that and got better results.. You have to be a special kind of stupid.

[Mar 17, 2020] DOJ drops charges against Russian trolls after they dared demand evidence in US court -- RT USA News

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... "promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation's security," ..."
"... "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination, ..."
"... "information warfare against the United States of America ..."
"... The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is "a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction." That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller's case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court. ..."
"... The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller's prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord's lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks "exposure of law enforcement's tools and techniques." ..."
"... Mueller's team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to "discredit " the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no "collusion " between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election. ..."
Mar 17, 2020 | www.rt.com

The US is dropping the much-hyped indictment for 'election meddling' against a company supposedly behind the so-called Russian troll farm, closing the opening chapter of special counsel Robert Mueller's Russiagate investigation. Further pursuing the case against Concord Management & Consulting LLC, "promotes neither the interests of justice nor the nation's security," the Department of Justice wrote to the federal judge overseeing the case on Monday, in a motion to drop the charges.

DOJ lawyers cited "recent events and a change in the balance of the government's proof due to a classification determination, " saying only that they submitted further details in a classified addendum.

Wow.The DOJ moves to dismiss the charges against the Russian Company (Concord) who conducted the alleged "information warfare against the US"The troll case will be dismissed w/ prejudice.How embarrassing for Team Mueller. pic.twitter.com/wfZ78EWgKc

-- Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) March 16, 2020

Concord was one of the three companies – the Internet Research Agency is another – and 13 individuals charged in February 2018 with waging "information warfare against the United States of America " using social media.

Also on rt.com US indicts 13 Russians for 2016 election meddling, but 'no allegations' they influenced outcome

The DOJ rationalizes the motion to dismiss by arguing that Concord is "a Russian company with no presence in the United States and no exposure to meaningful punishment in the event of a conviction." That has always been the case, however. What really changed since the indictment was filed is the complete implosion of Mueller's case, helped in part by Concord fighting the case in court.

The motion inadvertently reveals that Mueller's prosecutors never intended the case against Concord, two other entities and 13 individuals to actually go to trial, otherwise they would have anticipated what ended up happening: Concord's lawyers demanding discovery documents from the DOJ, which the US authorities say risks "exposure of law enforcement's tools and techniques."

But the Russians *did* show up, got to claim they were innocent until proven guilty, availed themselves of discovery, tied up the court in time, cost hundreds of thousands of $ in legal bills for DOJ, and gave Mueller a few black eyes in the process, and ended up victorious

-- Undercover Huber (@JohnWHuber) March 17, 2020

Mueller's team tried to fight the discovery proceedings by arguing in January 2019 that Concord was leaking them to "discredit " the investigation. Within two months, however, the investigation discredited itself, by having to admit there was no "collusion " between US President Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election.

Also on rt.com Another nail in Russiagate coffin? Federal judge destroys key Mueller report claim

They still insisted that Russia had "meddled " in the election, but there too the case proved a problem. Concord successfully petitioned Judge Dabney L. Friedrich in May last year to rebuke the prosecutors for presenting their allegations as facts.

This is not to say that the DOJ is ready to disavow 'Russiagate' as a debunked conspiracy theory, however. Though the Concord case was dropped, the charges against the Internet Research Agency and the 13 Russian individuals were not. Given that none of them have a presence in the US, and have not dignified the indictment with a response, it is unclear how – if at all – the DOJ intends to proceed with the case.

Keeping it on the books may keep the flames of 'Russiagate' alive, though, which is very convenient for the media and others heavily invested in the narrative of Moscow somehow menacing US elections, despite not a shred of actual evidence being presented to back it up.

For a snapshot in time, this was the NYT homepage after the Russian troll farm indictment back in February 2018. Russia, we were told, "is engaged in a virtual war against the United States." pic.twitter.com/Z0xXCZoT9P

-- Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) March 16, 2020

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!

[Feb 02, 2020] Despite being told for years that "Internet Research Agency" was working for Putin the DOJ admits it's not going to offer any evidence in the case "that the Russian Government sponsored the alleged conspiracy"

Feb 02, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Qparticle , Feb 2 2020 16:13 utc | 2

Russiagate:

Rosie memos @almostjingo - 1:40 UTC · Jan 30, 2020

Well geez this is awkward. Despite being told for years that "Internet Research Agency" was working for Putin the DOJ admits it's not going to offer any evidence in the case "that the Russian Government sponsored the alleged conspiracy" MUH RUSSIA. @TheJusticeDept
-- --

Neither The DoJ or the FBI are aware of the fact that more than 60% of Israeli army speak Russian fluently just like their native hebrew, or better!?

JUST SAYING...

[Nov 28, 2019] New Study Russian Trolls Did Not Sow Discord - They Influenced No One

Notable quotes:
"... The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election. ..."
"... U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one. ..."
"... FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both stations promote by and large similar products. ..."
"... The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers. ..."
"... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else, you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media ..."
"... Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion, it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is "fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it. ..."
"... Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts. ..."
"... The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy. ..."
"... RT may have the insidious effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought propaganda from American mass media. ..."
"... "One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!" ..."
"... The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin is economic nationalism. ..."
Nov 28, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

New Study: "Russian Trolls" Did Not "Sow Discord" - They Influenced No One

The U.S. has claimed that the Russia government tried to influence the 2016 election through Facebook and Twitter.

Russia supposedly did this through people who worked the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg (Leningrad), Russia. The IRA people ran virtual persona on U.S. social networks which pretended to have certain political opinions. It also spent on advertising supposedly to influence the election. U.S. intelligence claimed that the purpose of the alleged Russian influence campaign was to "sow discord" within the United States.

But the IRA had nothing to do with the Russian government. It had no interests in politics. And a new study confirms that the idea that it was "sowing discord" is blatant nonsense.

The Mueller investigation indicted 13 Russian persons and three Russian legal entities over the alleged influence campaign. But, as we wrote at that time, there was more to it than the media reported:

The published indictment gives support to our long held believe that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S. election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote. The size of the operation was tiny when compared to the hundreds of millions in campaign expenditures. It had no influence on the election outcome.

The IRA hired people in Leningrad for little money and asked them to open accounts on U.S. social media. The virtual persona they created and ran were to attract as many persons to those accounts as possible. They did that by posting funny dog pictures or by taking strong political positions. They were 'influencers' who sold their customers' products to the people they attracted.

The sole purpose was the same as in any commercial media. Create content to attract 'eyeballs', then sell those eyeballs to advertisers.

As Point 95 of the Mueller indictment said :

Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the [financial] accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages . Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts , including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.

The was no Russian government campaign to influence the 2016 election. There was only a Russian commercial media enterprise that used sock-puppet accounts with quirky content to attract viewers and sold advertisement space to U.S. companies.

The IRA also bought advertisement to attract more people to its accounts. But the amount it spent was tiny. The final price tag for the 2016 election was $6.5 billion for the presidential and congressional elections combined. The IRA spend a total of $100,000 to promote its own accounts. But only some $45,000 of that was spend before the election. It was 0.000007 cent for every election dollar that was spend during that time. It is statistically impossible that the mostly apolitical IRA spending had any effect on the election.

That the IRA ran a marketing machine and not a political operation was also obvious when one analyzed the content that those sock puppet accounts posted. Most of it was apolitical. Where it was political it covered both sides. Some IRA accounts posted pro-Trump content, others posted anti-Trump stuff. Some were pro-Clinton others against her.

U.S. intelligence services tried to explain that away by claiming that the Russians wanted to "sow discord". There is zero evidence that this was really the case. It is simply an explanation that was made up because they failed to find a better one.

The real answer to the question why different IRA accounts posted on different sides of the political spectrum is that the IRA wanted to maximize its income. One has to cover both sides if one wants to optimize the number of eyeballs one attracts.

FOX News is not pro-Trump because it wants to sow discord. Nor is CNN anti-Trump to serve that purpose. Both are in the business of attracting viewers to - in the end - sell advertisements. People flock to the TV station that fit to the opinion they already have. Both stations promote by and large similar products.

The virtual IRA persona worked in a similar ways. They took political positions to attract people who already had a similar one. One persona did that for the left, another one for the right. Neither changed the opinions of their followers.

A recently published study which looked at Twitter users who followed IRA sock puppet accounts and their content confirms that. It found that the IRA sock puppets had no influence on the opinions of their followers.

The study by U.S. and Danish researchers is headlined Assessing the Russian Internet Research Agency's impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of American Twitter users in late 2017 . It found:

Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts substantially impacted distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network , high interest in politics, and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized.

Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN. Neither TV station changes the core opinions of their viewers. They reinforce them.

The "Russian trolls" were virtual persona created to cover -in total- a wide spectrum. Some persona played hardcore Republican, other played hardcore Democrats. They created and posted content that fit to the role they played. Each attracted followers with opinions similar to those the virtual persona pretended to have. No opinion was changed through those contacts. No discord was sown.

The IRA then sold advertisement space to vendors to monetize all eyeballs its virtual personas attracted.

The U.S. intelligence agencies pretended that the commercial IRA was a political agency. It helped them to sell animosity against Russia and to pretend that Trump was somehow colluding with Putin.

But it all never made any sense.

Posted by b on November 27, 2019 at 18:33 UTC | Permalink


james , Nov 27 2019 18:52 utc | 1

thanks b... of course it didn't matter, as when you have ignored 9-11 and everything else, you may as well buy into Russia influencing the election with some commercial enterprise like the ira... it's shocking actually, to see how many otherwise intelligent people can be bamboozled so easily via the cia with swamp media in tow... again - emptywheel is a good case in point.. complete drivel about russia stole my sandwich on a 24-7 basis.. they have their heads up their asses so far, there is no light able to shine in...
james , Nov 27 2019 18:54 utc | 2
as for twitter and facebook - two other NSA snoop dog outlets - there may be some value in these two creations, mostly with the intel agencies, but it is slim pickins' for most everyone else... the sooner they go the way of the dodo bird, the better..
plantman , Nov 27 2019 18:58 utc | 3
Excellent report.
Thanks.

Now that you've shown that the IRA was not a "Russian influence campaign", I hope you will refute the claims that were made on last Sunday's 60 Minutes
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russian-hackers-2016-election-democratic-congressional-campaign-committee-60-minutes-2019-11-24/

Title --How Russian intelligence officers interfered in the 2016 election, CBS

Alot of people still think 60 Minutes is a credible news source, but their wild and unsubstantiated claims in this segment really cast doubt on whether they can trusted or not.

Charles Dunaway , Nov 27 2019 19:18 utc | 4
Every single mainstream media organization refers to Russian interference in the 2016 election as though it were a proven fact. When the government makes an unfounded assertion, it is reported one time as "government sources say" but every time thereafter it is referenced as fact. If you find an alternative source that contradicts the government lie and try to post it to social media, you will be tagged with a "Warning" that claims your story is "fake news". Orwellian doesn't begin to describe it.
jeestun , Nov 27 2019 19:26 utc | 5
Once MSM propagandists broadcast 'Russian meddling' hundreds of thousands of times, their audience becomes impervious to the simplest of logic and barest of facts.

Science.

Jay , Nov 27 2019 19:27 utc | 6
"Most hardcore Republicans watch FOX New, most hardcore Democrats watch CNN."

No, most hard core Democrats are repulsed by CNN. The Democrats who watch CNN, and believe it, this goes for NPP, the NY Times, the New Yorker, and MSNBC, are Democratic Party loyalists. There's a big difference.

The first is set of people largely loyal to the party of FDR, and the other is a group of corporatists--largely loyal to big businesses like JP-Morgan Chase, Amazon, and many military contractors.

Lawrence Magnuson , Nov 27 2019 19:45 utc | 7
I watched a bit belatedly the 60 Minutes affair on the link provided. As the video was unusually very slow to appear, I read the text and then started looking around for when it was posted. Unbelievable. New stuff? I wrongly thought this had to be an old, superannuated piece. @emptywheel the producer or just the muse? This sort of nails down the coffin lid on a free media for me. And for you. We're in a very bad place.
uncle tungsten , Nov 27 2019 20:04 utc | 10
Lawrence Magnuson #7

Did you refer to Marcy Wheeler who scribbles the emptywheel blog. That gal is all rim and no spokes. The entire site is obsessive fantasising, Russia hating, Trump loathing to attract eyeballs and sell patreon donations.

Marcy couldn't fart and chew gum at the same time.

Cliff , Nov 27 2019 20:17 utc | 11
@b: Sorry b, but I don't buy it. Running a commercial scheme by posting *highly* political memes in a *foreign* country, such as promoting secession of Texas and California or inciting race tension, simply isn't a wise idea. Even if it weren't meant political, it still was political. Cat memes would have been a different story.
karlof1 , Nov 27 2019 20:32 utc | 13
Cliff @11 clearly falls off by failing to note b's and the study's major point--the Russian Government in no way meddled in the 2016 election. IRA as the commercial entity that didn't either has zero links to said government.
William Gruff , Nov 27 2019 20:32 utc | 14
It is funny how Cliff @11 apparently believes that commercial exploitation is innocent, but efforts at political influence are sinister.

This disorder is part and parcel of the disease that is destroying western culture. The total loss of perspective is also one of the key symptoms of the hysteria that is clearly still gripping the West.

I wonder if this is something that the West can ever possibly recover from? I figured by now the hysteria would have burned itself out, but here it still seems to be going strong.

pretzelattack , Nov 27 2019 20:33 utc | 15
uh cliff, what "highly political memes". 100k spent on pictures of kermit the frog hand puppets or "buff bernie" is not highly political, and even if they were, they influenced nobody. it's all horseshit.
bevin , Nov 27 2019 20:42 utc | 16
Cliff@11

It might not have been wise but it is obviously what happened.The important point is that there is not the slightest suggestion of there being any evidence that the Russian state was involved.

To put the matter in context: hundreds of other sets of influencers did what the IRA did but because none of them could be associated in any way with Russia their, collectively order of magnitude more important efforts, most of them pushing Clinton who was thought to be a clear favourite, but their work goes unanalysed.
Not that there is any evidence of the IRA's connection with the Kremlin except that it is located not in Moscow but Petrograd, where Putin is from. And that the hustler running the organisation is said to have supplied sandwiches to meetings in the Kremlin -- hence the media's coinage "Putin's Chef!"

b in this post is hammering yet one more nail into the coffin of Russiagate, there can't be much more room on the lid for more. And there isn't much room left in the coffin either-it already contains half of the Democratic Party, several presidential candidates, poor old Marcy wheeler and the entire Mainstream Media. High time it was six feet under.

S.O. , Nov 27 2019 20:54 utc | 18
Oh Noes!

You mean the russian click bait add spam farm, that looks and behaves like an add spam farm, which everyone with a functioning brain in their skulls said is an add spam farm... might just turn out to behave like an actual add spam farm?

Well, colour me amazed. ..it's like no one remembered geocities pop up storms or something.

Allen , Nov 27 2019 20:57 utc | 19
The US media is still trying to breathe some life into a case which should have been declared dead on arrival, beltway politics must carry on its partisan shows, with the corporate media trying to whip audiences into a frenzy, over the most ridiculous plots in order to ignore that the body politic is corrupt beyond redemption and is as dead as US democracy.

Is Trump a Putin stooge? Let's 'investigate' or continually mu(e)ll over this possibility even more! Meanwhile, the stooges in Washington we are instructed to call 'our representatives' remain bipartisan in pursuing the dictatorial goals of class elites, no matter which CEO is temporarily managing affairs for the Fortune 500.

Who needs Russian meddling in an electoral process that means next to nothing when it comes to affecting in the slightest the homegrown depravity of our oligarchy?

We still have plenty of Dem Party hacks telling us in the most convoluted language what to think about a report vomited out by a professional liar (See: Mueller Iraq War Crimes for but one example of Mueller's long and sordid career) and we are suppose to believe any of this? Oh and let's see we are suppose to care that an orange-haired, spray tanned criminal buffoon won the Kabuki (s)election in Potemkin Empire against the insanely corrupted and proven War Criminal Donkey Queen Bee? You just have to wonder how much per word these pundits are paid to pump out their bilge?

The entire "Russiagate" smokescreen is a perfect example of how propaganda works. Accuse your "enemy" of the very thing you have been doing in plain sight so that when accusations are levied against you it will be harder to make them stick- keep that external enemy front and center so that the real enemy within remains hidden.

To believe that the Mueller report ever was anything than a wax show piece in a stale play one must put aside all the obvious items such as- 1) Zero evidence; 2) US elections are already rigged by the US elites before a single vote is cast; 3) The US has been tampering in just about every countries elections for decades overtly and covertly; AND 4) Recent attempts BY THE US to ACTUALLY tamper in Russian elections through the ever-handy NED.

There is no other country that intervenes in the political affairs of foreign states so directly, regularly and shamelessly as the United States. American foreign policy is one massive intervention in the politics of other countries, running the gamut from propaganda, destabilization, financing of opposition parties, electoral fraud and coups to military bombardment and occupation.

Professor Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University assembled a database documenting as many as 81 occasions between 1946 and 2000 when Washington interfered in elections in other countries.

There is zero solid evidence that Russia "meddled" in the US elections. It is all speculation and innuendo. Even if one were to blindly assume that the stories were accurate, whatever Russia may or may not have done pales in comparison to the operations of US intelligence agencies all over the world, including within the United States itself, not to mention the billions of dollars spent by the corporate and financial elite to manipulate US elections and determine their outcome.

The claim, moreover, that Russian Twitter and Facebook posts are responsible for social discontent and "disruptions in the democracy" of the United States -- one of the most unequal countries in the world -- is beyond ludicrous.

Andrea Sutton , Nov 27 2019 21:39 utc | 20
I didn't believe that the Russians interfered with the election anyway, but this exposition of the raw data used by the intell. services as a basis for promulgating the fiction, is fascinating and hilarious if the consequencies hadn't been so dire. The basis is so utterly mundane and so "American" if you forgive my saying so, I mean the IRA was just trying to make money. I suppose the intell. services knew this, knew they were peddling lies as Pompeo says they are taught to do. All for what? Not just to hurt Trump. No, to feed a McCarthyite fear to keep the endless wars going. Evil.
Trailer Trash , Nov 27 2019 21:57 utc | 21
The "Russia Stole Our Election" story is wearing thin? Fortunately a UK stink tank has discovered a "Gun Gap" to scare us with:

British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe, according to a defence think-tank.

Research by the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) found that the Army, as well as Nato allies, has a "critical shortage" of artillery and ammunition.

The research comes ahead of a meeting of Nato leaders in London next week to mark the 70th anniversary of the alliance.

I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia, China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?

Trailer Trash , Nov 27 2019 22:00 utc | 22
I meant to add that there is an easy solution to the scary new Gun Gap: don't attack Russia (or anywhere else).
Clueless Joe , Nov 27 2019 22:02 utc | 23
"British ground forces would be "comprehensively outgunned" in a conflict with Russia in Eastern Europe"

So fucking what, if that were actually true? UK is a group of islands in NW Europe, it's not Poland, and UK hasn't any business to have troops in Eastern Europe to begin with; meanwhile, the European part of Russia is very much a big chunk of Eastern Europe; odds are that they'd have their military ready to defend and fight there. These useless hacks should come back only once they can claim that the British forces would be outgunned in a conflict with Russia in Essex; that would be worrying.

Robert Snefjella , Nov 27 2019 22:10 utc | 25
But there is a sense in which Russia may have subtly influenced the election. For any well informed American - and in my opinion finding such is more likely than say spotting a Sasquatch - the varied political presentations of say RT may have the insidious effect of injecting bits of reality-oriented counter news to the ubiquitous lame bought propaganda from American mass media.

And the Putin-effect over the last two decades too may be quite insidious: after all, in the realm dominated by political banality, lies, stupidity and bad acting, an articulate, and in practical terms effective, political leader of a major country is a rather extraordinary phenomenon. Such things are possible, discover wayward Americans! But what explains its near complete absence in our exceptional indispensable nation?

Putin and Russia: the success that haunts us.

karlof1 , Nov 27 2019 22:51 utc | 29
Obama's D-Party set up what the following article describes which I provide as a marker of that party's leadership's immoral mindset. Imagine what BigLie Media would do if this was done in Russia or China! We'd read/hear/see all about it 24/7/365.
Jackrabbit , Nov 27 2019 23:13 utc | 30
b neglected to mention a few things:

1) USA interferes in other countries elections all the time. Recent and very stark examples: Bolivia and Venezuela.

2) USA's broken, money-based electoral system practically invites "interference"/"meddling" by powerful interests and skews the results toward candidates that will serve powerful interests that can afford to support the electoral farce that provides an illusion of democracy.

3) Pro-Israel Zionists and Zionist organizations, like Haim Saban, Sheldon Adelson, and AIPAC, contribute huge sums to the duopoly that controls US politics. Their contribution is vastly greater than a few facebook ads.

4) The vast majority of the "Russian oligarchs" that are supposed to have influenced Trump are Jewish with closer ties to Israel than Russia.

!!

Montreal , Nov 27 2019 23:19 utc | 31
Bevin @ 17
Evgeny Progozhin - supposedly behind IRA - was - and maybe still is - VVP's chef. I think it is probably him who started that joke about his being a "hot-dog salesman" in St P. But he was much more than that.

More importantly he was the man who re-introduced fine restaurants to St Petersburg. In the nineties he opened several very good restaurants in a city which hadn't seen a decent meal since the Revolution - a bit like England before it joined the Common Market. He was a great perfectionist with a tremendous eye for detail. His difficulty was in finding staff in a city which had no history of training staff beyond the very low levels demanded by the Intourist hotels - and as soon as he trained them they were poached by would-be rivals, so often he gave the top places to French and English specialists.

The very best of his restaurants was the Old Customs House on the University Embankment. I haven't been there for a couple of years but in its hey-day it could match any restaurant in Europe.

He would also fly his staff to other Russian cities to lay on banquets for the President. He then went into mass catering and by the sounds of it different fields altogether. An admirable man, one of those who helped Russia into the 21st Century.

DougDiggler , Nov 27 2019 23:52 utc | 34
Let's compare the IRA's lame content to what is being emitted by the thousands of 'bots in Bolivia.
the pessimist , Nov 28 2019 2:06 utc | 36
Fresh Air has an interview with Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch of Fusion GPS posted on their page . There seems to be a full court press on to solidify the 'consensus' narrative, with stories on BBC and other main US news outlets, including many on NPR, 'explaining' various aspects of the Russophobic/Sinophibic view of the world, and attacking as 'conspiracy theories' that are proven false (mainly by way of reciting innuendo and accusations by anonymous sources and professional liars) any counter narratives.

In my experience, even if people retain some skepticism, they assume the main points of the narrative as proven fact to the extent that it is nearly impossible to have a reasoned discussion about the basic assumptions of the narrative.

I see that Chrystia Freeland has been appointed deputy prime minister of Canada.

Dr George W. Oprisko , Nov 28 2019 2:21 utc | 37
I am amazed.......... that one and all haven't noticed the inability of the USG to deal with any.... and I mean any.... issues affecting the people of the USA.
  • Lead in Drinking Water.....
  • Farm Bankruptcies.....
  • Failed Corn & soybean crops.....
  • Medical prescription costs going through the roof.
  • Key medicines no longer available to combat serious infections....
  • Boeings that are designed to crash....

INDY

FSD , Nov 28 2019 2:32 utc | 38
Examining direct state-actor involvement would be one thing. But this 'study' is little more than a sui generis, slow motion ethnic slur. What about Russian-American US citizens in Boston who happen to tweet benign and banal messages about nothing in particular? Can we get cooties from them as well? Does it come thru the WIFI?

The sizable Russian-American population has been absolutely stoic during this whole protracted episode. I can think of many other groups who'd be screaming bloody murder.

As for the IRA indictments, they were a sham from top to bottom. Here's the Powerline blog:

"One hates to be in the position of rooting for the Russians, but the Mueller Switch Project is so distasteful that it is hard not to enjoy the prospect of Mueller having to deal with an actual adversary in court. Meanwhile, this is probably the first time in the history of litigation that a plaintiff (here, prosecutor) has told a court that it may not have obtained good service of process on a defendant that has appeared to defend the case on the merits. Mueller to Court: We didn't really mean it, Judge! We had no idea they might actually show up!"

None other than Michael Moore is another IRA victim. So much for Trump-Russia.

https://fullspectrumdominoes.wordpress.com/2019/06/28/7864/

JW , Nov 28 2019 3:01 utc | 39
#21

"I know we are supposed to believe that US is so wonderful and exceptional that Russia, China, Iran, etc. all want to conquer it. But why would they want to? What would they do with a place like Detroit, Camden, and all the rest of the broken down infrastructure?"

Also, the greatest political system ever conceived in mankind according the Americans somehow can just simply crumble in the face of a tiny bit of alleged foreign money.

bevin , Nov 28 2019 3:12 utc | 40
The proverb " A dog will return to its vomit" obviously applies to New Yorker writers too. Jane Mayer, author of a famously gushing fanmag feature on Christopher Steele is at it again. https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/59965-focus-the-inside-story-of-christopher-steeles-trump-dossier
lysias , Nov 28 2019 3:28 utc | 41
Jane Mayer used to write good journalism. Her book "Dark Money" from a couple of years ago was an eye-opener. What happened to her? I guess the same question could be asked about Marcy Wheeler. And what happened to Democracy Now and Amy Goodman?
Innocent Civilian , Nov 28 2019 3:36 utc | 42
The real sin of Russia, is not, of course, the nonsense election meddling, but its resistance against the US culture of open free markets, its threat of closing its markets to the US, its national doctrine against the Full Spectrum Dominance and US-led neo-liberal order. Its sin is economic nationalism.

Its sin is taking shares of Christopher Steele's in Gazprom by force, who had them by tax fraud in the first place. Its sin is allowing Government of Russia holding more than half of the shares of Gazprom. Its sin is becoming self-reliant in oil and gas (and recently food thanks to sanctions), backed with a substantial military force. A huge country that can industrialize its resources and that can defend itself and deter any aggression on her soil. A recipe for nightmare for neo-liberals.

Since the Americans voted for a president who is against the neo-liberal order and promotes nationalism, they are on fire and afraid they are going to have to take it by four more years.

[Nov 13, 2019] The CONCORD MANAGEMENT CONSULTING LLC (Internet Research Agency) trial is getting weird.

Nov 13, 2019 | www.courtlistener.com
The CONCORD MANAGEMENT & CONSULTING LLC (Internet Research Agency) trial is getting weird.

This (one page) Order, dated October 25, was filed on November 8:

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580/gov.uscourts.dcd.193580.239.0_1.pdf

The main page for the trial is here:
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/6386795/united-states-v-internet-research-agency-llc/?filed_after=&filed_before=&entry_gte=&entry_lte=&order

[Jul 28, 2019] Mueller Crumbles Under Questioning by Barbara Boland

Highly recommended!
On one hand Mueller supported and promoted the witch hunt which is the Russiagate. On the other water suddenly became a little bit hot for him and his henchmen as there is a slight chance that Barr is not joking.
Mueller is the first prosecutor in the history of Justice Department who claimed that he does not exonerate the falsely accused of Russian connections President. Which is 100% pure McCartuism-style witch hunt. Of course as he supported Iraw WDM and presided over Anthrax investigation (or cover up to be more correct) this is easy for him to be legal innovator in this area.
Notable quotes:
"... the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books. ..."
"... On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic? ..."
"... Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)! ..."
"... Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim. ..."
"... Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see." ..."
"... Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks. ..."
"... To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?" ..."
"... That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget. ..."
"... Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is. ..."
Jul 28, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com

That answer appears to directly contradict page 180 of the report which states, "As defined in legal dictionaries, collusion is largely synonymous with conspiracy as that crime is set forth in the general federal conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371," Collins pointed out.

"Are you sitting here today testifying something different than what your report states?"

Mueller stuttered and appeared confused, flipped to the relevant page of the report, and said that he would defer to the report.

Throughout the hearing, Democratic members would read the definition of corruption or obstruction and then try to get Mueller to explain how various actions did not qualify or why the report did not reach a finding. Each time, Mueller declined to comment.

To say that watching his testimony was painful is an understatement.

In an exchange with Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) that exemplifies the entire hearing, the Pennsylvania Republican asked, "You made a decision not to prosecute, right?"

"No, we made a decision not to decide whether to prosecute or not."

In the afternoon intelligence committee hearing, Rep. John Ratcliffe asked Mueller to clear up confusion regarding his morning testimony, where he appeared to contradict the report on the question of whether he had whiffed on an indictment because the Office of Legal Counsel said it was not possible to indict a sitting president.

"What I wanted to say [in the morning] is that we did not make any determination with regard to culpability, in any way. We did not start that process, down the road," said Mueller.

But in his morning testimony before the House Judiciary committee, he said: "The president was not exculpated for the acts that he allegedly committed."

See if you can make sense of this exchange:

Democratic Rep. Andre Carson: "Would you agree that these acts demonstrated a betrayal of the democratic values our country rests on?"

Mueller: "I can't agree with that. Not that it's not true, but I cannot agree with it."

This was typical of Mueller's bizarre testimony throughout the day.

Democrats used the hearing to read huge portions of the report, as well as Donald Trump's tweets and campaign utterances, as if somehow they were covering new ground. In one such exchange, a member asked: "Trump and his campaign welcomed and encouraged Russian interference?"

Mueller: "Yes."

Question: "And then Trump and his campaign lied about it to cover it up?"

Mueller: "Yes."

Anyone who has followed news coverage of the Mueller report knows that line of questioning is not breaking new ground, as the report was clear that members of Trump's team had been encouraged to lie to investigators, and this had been widely reported throughout the media and in several books.

Even so, Democrats persisted in reading publicly available Trump statements aloud. During his portion of time, Rep. Mike Quigley chose to read Trump's campaign trail statements about Wikileaks .

"I love Wikileaks."

"This Wikileaks is like a treasure trove."
"Boy, I love reading those Wikileaks."

He then asked Mueller to react to Trump's statements. "Problematic is an understatement, in terms of giving some hope or some boost to what is and should be illegal activity," Mueller said. Did we really need Mueller's opinion on Trump's statements uttered on the stump, all of which were made before he was elected president? How is this type of commentary valuable?

On many important questions, Mueller stated that he could not comment because those matters were under investigation by other departments, or they were not "in my purview." That was his response to questions about the Steele report and the FISA warrant used to spy on the Trump campaign, which are under investigation by the Department of Justice. But he also responded this way to questions on the Russia investigation. How can the special prosecutor charged with investigating whether Russia interfered with our elections decline comment on the topic?

Congressional hearings aren't like a court room. There's no judge that can order an uncooperative witness to answer. That's one of the many reasons that highly politicized Congressional hearings often quickly descend into kangaroo-court style bludgeoning of the witness.

Yet today, because the confused witness appeared flummoxed by rapid-fire questions and by the contents of his own report, his evasions and memory lapses instead undermined the credibility of the report itself, and had people questioning whether Mueller had really led the investigation or not.

Barbara Boland is 's foreign policy and national security reporter. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC.


eddie parolini 3 days ago • edited

In reference to Russia meddling in the 2016 election, he specifically said that Russia had meddled in the past, Russia was meddling as of right now, and Russia would continue to meddle in the future.

I guess that qualifies as having nothing to say about Russia meddling if you want to believe that he had nothing to say about Russia meddling in our elections.

Sid Finster eddie parolini 3 days ago • edited
Well that proves it, I guess. After all, did Mueller testify to Congress as to the extent of Iraq's much-vaunted WMD program, and lo! there it was(n't)!

https://fas.org/irp/congres...

Or for that matter, Mueller claimed that Concord Management had ties to the Russian government. Turns out that he had no evidence for his claim.

https://assets.documentclou...

gdpbull 3 days ago
Mueller is the god that failed. The Democrats considered him their savior. It was "wait til the Mueller report". "Soon it will be Mueller time". "Just wait on Mueller, you'll see."

Then, in the Mueller hearing they quoted scripture from the book of Mueller, asking their savior to provide more divine wisdom on the scripture. But he was no god. He was a human whose mental faculties had declined due to the aging process all of us mortals must endure. And it became abundantly clear that he had been just a figurehead in a witch hunt by radical major Democratic party donor prosecutors. Mueller was shamelessly used by morally bankrupt Democrat apparatchiks.

But they will not stop just because their god failed. They will find another god and keep right on investigating.

MAGA_Ken 2 days ago
To all the Mueller supporters, he couldn't even answer simple questions like "when did you and your team conclude there was no collusion/conspiracy with Russia?"

That question 1) fell under his purview, 2) arose from the four corners of his report, 3) not in anyway prohibited by the DoJ directive and 4) not about something that would be easy to forget.

Yet he refused to answer. Some stand up guy he is.

[Jul 28, 2019] There may be some fireworks with that judge because of Mueller's statements. He was expressly warned by the judge that she would consider a range of sanctions were there any repetition

This is semi-senile Deep State patsy just was unable to change the course on the middle of the action ;-)
Jul 28, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

Paul Merrell , July 25, 2019 at 15:53

@ "Mueller implied in his testimony that there was a link between the IRA and the Russian government despite an order from a judge for him to stop making that connection."

There may be some fireworks with that judge because of Mueller's statements. He was expressly warned by the judge that she would consider a range of sanctions were there any repetition. On the other hand, as far as I could tell a few years ago when I had last researched the topic, federal judges are very reluctant to sanction federal attorneys. I could find only one published instance where that had occurred, and it was only a measly $500 penalty. (Rule 11 sanctions are supposed to compensate the other side for the expenses of opposing an unjustifiable position, as measured by the reasonable billing rate of the other side's lawyers, although judges do have authority for departures.)

Misbehavior by federal lawyers is exceedingly common, I suspect precisely because they are so seldom held to account for unprincipled behavior. That Mueller conducted such a shoddy investigation is no surprise to me.

Me Myself , July 25, 2019 at 13:31

Robert Mueller can easily be seen as carrying democrats hopes and dreams just like a good Mueller.
Why does it matter where truth of damning information about our government officials comes from ( rhetorical ).
I appreciate knowing it.
Watching what appears to be a modern day Coup d'état in this country is more than just disappointing not surprising though.
No focus from congress on what was clearly demonstrated in the evidence provided by publishing's of undisputed truth by (Chelsea Manning .Julian Assange and Others)

I thought it would be interesting living in the Middle Ages, once upon a time, Its not as fun as thought it might.

[Jul 25, 2019] When Alex Stamos announced that the Internet Research Agency's ad buys were a drop in the ocean, Zuckerberg was promptly taken to the Congressional Woodshed and told to report to the Atlantic Council.

Notable quotes:
"... I think he fails to understand that Facebook is now an NSA asset. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

GramSci , , , July 23, 2019 at 8:04 am

When Alex Stamos announced that the Internet Research Agency's ad buys were a drop in the ocean, Zuckerberg was promptly taken to the Congressional Woodshed and told to report to the Atlantic Council. Those two billion-odd fake accounts may be a fraud perpetrated on the advertisers, but they are invaluable to US "law" enforcement and to US propaganda, where the ability to open a fake account on Facebook gives the illusion of privacy.

With all due respect to Mr. Greenspan and his Lowell House creds, I think he fails to understand that Facebook is now an NSA asset.

Summer , , July 23, 2019 at 11:55 am

+1
NSA and other law enforcement asset.
Remember stories about stupid criminals on the run who took the time to update their Facebook page?

The Rev Kev , July 23, 2019 at 10:38 am

This is a fascinating article and it certainly put a smile on my dial. As an asset for use by governments around the world, Facebook may be too invaluable to just let sink. One guy reported that he was in a meeting with Facebook’s top brass including the Zuck when a head honcho of the FBI came into the meeting and sang Zuck’s praises for all the help that Facebook gave the FBI. So the question remains. Just how many “real” Facebook accounts does Facebook have? Ones that people check on daily. Now that is the killer question.

[Jul 24, 2019] Fraud of Facebook user numbers

Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

bruce , July 23, 2019 at 4:14 pm

I have three Facebook accounts. The two I never ever look at are the one for my cat and the one for my feminine alter ego. My own account is used for only one thing, watching "People You May Know" to see how far they've penetrated my graph; occasionally disturbing, occasionally hilarious. I've never looked at my "wall", issued or accepted a friend request, posted anything, messaged anyone but they have my email, and wow do I hate this company!

May 2018, a woman I loved and was ultimately going to get to move in died (age 70, natural causes). Twice a week on average I get emails from Facebook inviting me to read her most recent messages. You can imagine how I feel about that. SHE DED!

Facebook has boasted on the order of 2-3 billion users, a significant percentage of the world's population, and I don't believe a word of it. One may assume that the early adopters were people with more tech savvy, affluence and most important, leisure time to screw around on the internet, and the proles don't have a lot of leisure time. Moreover, the value to the advertiser of a set of eyeball impressions is directly related to the amount of disposable income those eyeballs have, and sure, India has about one and a half billion people, but a lot of them have zero disposable income and zero leisure time.

Die Facebook die!

otishertz , July 23, 2019 at 5:37 pm

From the cited lawsuit:

"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400%) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago. Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, Facebook's asserted Potential Reach in Kansas City was approximately 200% higher than the number of actual 18-54 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Kansas City. This inflation is apparent in other age categories as well."

otishertz , July 23, 2019 at 5:40 pm

"These foundational representations are false. Based on publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, Facebook overstates the Potential Reach of its advertisements. For example, based on publicly available data, Facebook's purported Potential Reach among the key 18-34 year-
22 old demographic in every state exceeds the actual population of 18-34 year-olds ."

[Jul 24, 2019] If one accepts that FB user numbers are fraudulent, the Russiagate narrative falls apart.

Notable quotes:
"... Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts. ..."
"... The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Unsympathetic , , July 23, 2019 at 8:29 am

If one accepts that FB user numbers are fraudulent, the Russiagate narrative falls apart.

What if the fake ads were only "viewed" by fake accounts?

Larry , , July 23, 2019 at 8:38 am

Bingo. But it's a great story for political elites to paper over their complete failure to maintain their control.

Michael Fiorillo , , July 23, 2019 at 9:42 am

Russiagate, the most extensive disinformation/propaganda campaign since Iraqi WMD, has fallen/is falling apart without any need to reference fake Facebook accounts.

The Collusion narrative/conspiracy theory was preposterous from the get-go, riven with internal inconsistencies, and the recent Federal court ruling that prevents Mueller from continuing to publicly accuse Concord management of "undermining our democracy" (that's a hot one) discredits the second of the three bases of the narrative.

Someday the McResistance TM and unhinged liberals possessed by magical thinking must grapple with the fact that Trump was elected in America, by Americans, and that there is no Santa Claus.

Then again, maybe not.

[Jul 24, 2019] In case you didn't notice, Mueller has been enjoined from making any more claims about those Facebook pages as products of Russian state actors, since the accused unexpectedly showed up in court and demanded discovery of evidence, which Saint Santa Claus Mueller was unable to provide.

Notable quotes:
"... "Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the election. ..."
Jul 24, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Michael Fiorillo , July 23, 2019 at 2:14 pm

Yep, those "Buff Bernie" and "Jesus Arm Wrestling With Satan" pages, often written in broken English and most of which appeared after the election, really did the job, didn't they?

In case you didn't notice, Mueller has been enjoined from making any more claims about those Facebook pages as products of Russian state actors, since the accused unexpectedly showed up in court and demanded discovery of evidence, which Saint Santa Claus Mueller was unable to provide.

Give it up, already: Trumpismo must be defeated politically, through traditional and creative political methods, and not via wishful thinking based on an opportunistic convergence of interests among the Clinton/Obama/Donor Class wing of the Democratic Party, factions in the National Security State that don't consider him an effective steward of empire, and a corporate media that gave him billions in free media but now wants us to think it opposes him.

Leslie Moonves of CBS' quote about how Trump was bad for America, but great for CBS shareholders, says far more about Trump's victory than all the hair-on-fire reports about Russia and Putin.

If there isn't some kind of reckoning for this disgraceful episode, which has only inoculated Trump against reports of what he actually is doing, and is an inestimable political gift to him, the Next Trump is going to make far more sinister use of it.

John Wright , July 23, 2019 at 2:16 pm

I look at the "Facebook threw the election to Trump" story as equivalent to blaming the camel's back breaking last piece of straw for the camel's injury without observing that the entire prior heavy straw loading made this possible.

The exposure of HRC's "deplorables" comment, or her "public positions vs private positions" comment or her selection of Tim Kaine as VP or her Wall Street speeches could have all been far more significant in her loss than any liked/forwarded Russian Facebook postings.

I have never done Facebook, so perhaps I am completely in the dark as far as its influence on potential voters.

How does one know that actual votes were flipped via a Facebook posting?

For example, if the Facebook forwarding content served only for confirmation bias, perhaps a very small number of voter minds were changed, as the voters were already Trump leaning.

That is a fundamental problem of any advertising/influence campaign, getting an ad possibly viewed is one thing, knowing that it was influenial is very difficult.

How exactly did Mueller determine, with any confidence, that voters' minds were changed via the Facebook platform?

If Mueller determined that these Facebook postings were truly influential in changing would be HRC voters to Trump voters, he could have a new, very profitable, career in the advertising industry.

jrs , July 23, 2019 at 2:36 pm

Question for you: Can you prove that the influence of social media was greater than the influence of mainstream media which covered Trump CONSTANTLY?

Mainstream media gave Trump $2 billion worth of free media, more coverage than any other candidate by far.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-2-billion-free-media_n_56e83410e4b065e2e3d75935

I find it hard to believe social media had more of an effect than constant mainstream media coverage and as far as I know noone has accused them of being influenced by Russians. Can you show otherwise on either of those points?

Because if the negative influence of Putin whatever it may be is less than the negative influence of selling ad revenue on t.v. well then the problem is capitalism not Russian oligarchy destroying democracy.

Yves Smith Post author , July 23, 2019 at 5:36 pm

You need to get that knee tended to.

"Russia" with respect to Facebook was "Internet Research Agency," a Russian troll farm that ran a teeny number of ads in terms of both volume and dollar spend. A Federal judge ordered Muller to quit trying to depict its principals as connected to the Russian government because it was prejudicial to their case. No connection has ever been established nor is it it likely to be established. The ads were stunningly amateurish, all over the map in terms of messages, and apparently 25% were never viewed, and IIRC, over half ran after the election.

[Jul 17, 2019] Sic Transit Gloria Mueller by Ray McGovern

Mueller looks more and more like dirty Clinton fixer.
Notable quotes:
"... The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions." ..."
"... In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump. ..."
"... Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday." ..."
"... CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted. ..."
"... With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees. ..."
Jul 17, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

... ... ...

Requiem for 'Interference'

Daniel Lazare's July 12 Consortium News piece shatters one of the twin prongs in Mueller's case that "the Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion." It was the prong dripping with incessant drivel about the Kremlin using social media to help Trump win in 2016.

Mueller led off his Russiagate report, a redacted version of which was published on April 18, with the dubious claim that his investigation had

" established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations. First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents."

Judge to Mueller: Put Up or Shut Up

Mueller: Needs more time. (Flickr)

Regarding the social-media accusation, Judge Friederich has now told Mueller, in effect, to put up or shut up. What happened was this: On February 16, 2018 a typically credulous grand jury -- the usual kind that cynics say can be persuaded to indict the proverbial ham sandwich -- was convinced by Mueller to return 16 indictments of the Internet Research Agency (IRA) and associates in St. Petersburg, giving his all-deliberate-speed investigation some momentum and a much-needed, if short-lived, "big win" in "proving" interference by Russia in the 2016 election. It apparently never occurred to Mueller and the super-smart lawyers around him that the Russians would outsmart them by hiring their own lawyers to show up in U.S. court and seek discovery. Oops.

The Feb. 2018 indictment referred repeatedly to the IRA simply as a "Russian organization." But in Mueller's report 14 months later, the "Russian organization" had somehow morphed into "Russia." The IRA's lawyers argued, in effect, that Mueller's ipse-dixit "Russia did it" does not suffice as proof of Russian government involvement. Federal Judge Friedrich agreed and ordered Mueller to cease promoting his evidence-less charge against the IRA; she added that "any future violations of her order will trigger a range of potential sanctions."

More specifically, at the conclusion of a hearing held under seal on May 28, Judge Friedrich ordered the government "to refrain from making or authorizing any public statement that links the alleged conspiracy in the indictment to the Russian government or its agencies." The judge ordered further that "any public statement about the allegations in the indictment . . . must make clear that, one, the government is summarizing the allegations in the indictment which remain unproven, and, two, the government does not express an opinion on the defendant's guilt or innocence or the strength of the evidence in this case."

Reporting Thursday on Judge Friedrich's ruling, former CIA and State Department official Larry C. Johnson described it as a "potential game changer," observing that Mueller "has not offered one piece of solid evidence that the defendants were involved in any way with the government of Russia." After including a lot of useful background material, Johnson ends by noting:

"Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth–if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers."

IRA Story a 'Stretch'

Last fall, investigative journalist Gareth Porter dissected and debunked The New York Times 's far-fetched claim that 80,000 Facebook posts by the Internet Research Agency helped swing the election to Donald Trump. What the Times story neglected to say is that the relatively paltry 80,000 posts were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over the two-year period in question -- before and after the 2016 election.

Stretch and executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google hauled before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on crime and terrorism on Oct. 31, 2017.

In testimony to Congress in October 2017, Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch had cautioned earlier that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds." Shamefully misleading "analysis" by Times reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti in a 10,000-word article on September 20, 2018 made the case that the IRA's 80,000 posts helped deliver the presidency to Trump.

Shane and Mazzetti neglected to report the 33 trillion number for needed context, even though the Times ' own coverage of Stretch's 2017 testimony stated outright: "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."

The chances that Americans saw any of these IRA ads -- let alone were influenced by them -- are infinitismal. Porter and others did the math and found that over the two-year period, the 80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just 0.0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time. Porter commented that this particular Times contribution to the Russiagate story "should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time."

And now we know, courtesy of Judge Friederich, that Mueller has never produced proof, beyond his say-so, that the Russian government was responsible for the activities of the IRA -- feckless as they were. That they swung the election is clearly a stretch.

The Other Prong: Hacking the DNC

The second of Mueller's two major accusations of Russian interference, as noted above, charged that "a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign, and then released stolen documents." Sadly for Russiagate aficionados, the evidence behind that charge doesn't hold water either.

CrowdStrike, the controversial cybersecurity firm that the Democratic National Committee chose over the FBI in 2016 to examine its compromised computer servers, never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, the Justice Department admitted.

The revelation came in a court filing by the government in the pre-trial phase of Roger Stone, a long-time Republican operative who had an unofficial role in the campaign of candidate Donald Trump. Stone has been charged with misleading Congress, obstructing justice and intimidating a witness.

The filing was in response to a motion by Stone's lawyers asking for "unredacted reports" from CrowdStrike challenging the government to prove that Russia hacked the DNC server. "The government does not possess the information the defendant seeks," the DOJ filing says.

Small wonder that Mueller had hoped to escape further questioning. If he does testify on July 24, the committee hearings will be well worth watching.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years and a presidential briefer. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. His colleagues and he have been following closely the ins and outs of Russiagate.


Carlos , July 17, 2019 at 12:52

With Erin Ratner being named as a conduit between Seth Rich and Wikileaks in a lawsuit yesterday – the second flimsy leg of Mueller's claims – gets cut off at the knees.

cletus , July 17, 2019 at 05:29

just read your article at lewrockwell on 7/17.

you gave all the facts that irrefutably condemn the mueller hoax and reveal what a con man he is. I salute you for this.

unfortutunately, you then come to a conclusion that cannot be supported by an reasonable person.

you think that mueller's con will be called out by the republicans on the committee.

what a joke. They will avoid like the plague revealling that the russia claims by mueller are a hoax.
they'll focus completely on ' you did conclude that trump didn't collude with the russians, right?"

anyone who's been paying attention at all knows this.

Robert G. Hilton , July 17, 2019 at 01:13

There was no expert report showing hacking because the expert had found that the Russians did not hack. Simple as that. The way it works is, that an expert puts nothing in writing until AFTER orally consulting with the attorney who hired him. If the news is bad for said attorney, then the expert is instructed NEVER to put the bad news in writing. I used to hire experts when I litigated patent infringement cases, and that is the way it works. If you pay the expert, then you make the rules. The judge may understand this too. I'm pretty sure that the Crowd Strike expert also gave Muller (Andrew Wiseman?) the same news about no hacking.

michael weddle , July 16, 2019 at 22:41

Why, shortly after Random Juan claimed the presidency, was a Crowdstrike employee trying to stoke the Venezuelan coup?

https://steemit.com/venezuela/@michaelweddle/crowdstrike-employee-tweeting-pro-coup-propaganda-on-venezuela

Bailey , July 16, 2019 at 20:27

I wish that this constant debunking of Russia Gate would be doing some good. Sadly it's not. Most of the members of daily kos believe everything about Russia Gate and even after reading some of the great essays written here that debunks it they instead say that this website has been bought out by Russia.

I once thought that if people really looked at the evidence or lack of it that they would wake up and smell the propaganda. It has always been so obvious to me that there was never any there there and I couldn't understand how people bought into it. But I think it has to do with who people voted for in the last election. Hillary's supporters just can't believe that she could have lost without outside interference. Sad.

ex-PFC Chuck , July 16, 2019 at 18:08

A post yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse expands on a Gateway Pundit post about an amended filing to the court in a Texas libel suit that could blow the whole Russia-gate hoax wide open, taking with it whatever shred of credibility the Mueller Report might still have. Not to mention the rationale for silencing Assange, General Flynn's prosecution, and the murder of Seth Rich.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/

Vera Moldt , July 16, 2019 at 17:13

It looks like this fraudulent fable has finally been debunked by the US judicial system. Now the Hillary bots will have to come up with another excuse for her wealthy donors as to why she lost the election to a much maligned TV host that spent a small fraction of her campaign funding. This also takes some of the fuel out of using the Russiagate fraud for a march to war with Russia that was accompanied by large defense spending increases. Russiagate was the perfect gift to the Clinton campaign apologists and the MIC that needs a causus belli to feed the public war machine. That gift box has now been unraveled to display an empty box. I'm surprised Ray McGovern did not bring up the issue of the alleged hacking of DNC emails to have been contrary to the capability of the internet at that time. The rate of transfer was consistent with downloading to a flash drive but impossible for transfer of packets across an IP network – further debunking the Russia hacking narrative. This whole house of cards has crashed in and it seems that it will be impossible for the Russiagate fraudsters to reconstruct their tawdry myth.

jaycee , July 16, 2019 at 14:08

Perceptive bloggers identified the IRA as a commercial clickbait operation two years ago. Everything about that operation was consistent with that description. Describing the IRA as a Russian government psy-op program, in turn, was inconsistent with the evidence at hand and so required the assumption that its purpose was to "sow chaos", or similar guesswork. It should be remembered that the Facebook / Twitter people were initially reluctant to go along with the latter theory, and only came on board after a great deal of pressure from members of Congress such as Mark Warner. So this whole nonsensical story was magnified at the insistence of powerful Democratic congressional persons, and Mueller was simply bolstering their arguments – which was his job it appears. The result has been not only a false consciousness deliberately seeded through the public, but also a raft of social media and alternative news censorship which has been silencing both alt-right and progressive voices.

Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 13:45

Thanx, Ray. I've said from the outset that Russiagate was bullshit perpetrated by Three Names who just couldn't stand the fact that this was the latest in a long string of failures that this incompetent, arrogant woman perpetrated on the American people. It was bullshit from jump street because Three Names won the election by 3M votes but in the American presidential election you not only need the votes, you need the distribution. Distribution she didn't have. Russia (or any other actor sufficiently large and determined) can sway votes for one candidate or another but they can't sway distribution. I personally thought the claim that Russia via the Internet Research Agency sought to sway the election by disparaging Three Names and pumping up Thump. Three Names won by 3M votes. Looks like Russia's IRA did a spectacularly poor job of meddling.

There are some take aways from this that the government should be looking into/doing something about.
1. Russiagate never had any legs. The legs that it got came from an effort by the deep state to create them out of thin air. The deep state tried to take on the role of the Praetorian Guard in old Rome. Their role originally was to protect the emperor but it morphed over the years into picking who would be the emperor. The likes of Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Struck (however you spell it) and his femme fatale (at a minimum, there may be more) should all be marched off to jail and locked up for a considerable period of time for their attempts to destroy our democracy (or republic – a distinction without a difference).

2. Seth Rich's murder needs to be actually investigated now that he has been outed as the source of the leak to Wikileaks.

3. The Republican party needs to be banned as a political party. Any clear eyed view of the 2016 election will conclude that the decades old effort by the Republicans at voter suppression and gerrymandering are what resulted in the 2016 results. 80,000 votes in three states that the Republicans have invested great voter suppression efforts – Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania would have changed the election results. This should have been a major neon sign that winner take all for electoral votes is a bad idea. If proportional EC votes were mandated, third parties would have a chance and our presidential elections might become actual contests. Otherwise, we'll continue to have elections that are between two candidates – worse and worser.

John Puma , July 16, 2019 at 12:36

The proportion of IRA "stories" among total Facebook postings
in the period in question, can be expressed in manner a bit more
readily grasped: on average, one IRA posting appeared among
every 412 million total. For perspective the US population is now
about 330 million.

The FBIs bungling with Crowdstrike information is reminiscent
of its reported 9-11 careless incompetence.

Jill , July 16, 2019 at 13:06

This may be why NPR featured that story:

"Businessman Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit on Monday that outed FOX News reporter Ellen Ratner was his source for the Seth Rich information.

This comes after Michael Isikoff's report last week that labeled Butowsky as a Russian source."

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/breaking-lawsuit-outs-reporter-ellen-ratner-as-source-for-seth-rich-information/

Chet Roman , July 16, 2019 at 13:12

Yahoo's reporter Michael Isikoff is a sock puppet for the CIA/FBI that provided the info to NPR and was one of the first to spread the lies told to him by Steele about Russian interference. He must have tried to head off the lawsuit filed today. Ed Butowsky filed a lawsuit against the liberal media claiming defamation and business disparagement. He claims that Assange told Ellen Ratner (Fox News analyst and sister of Assange's lawyer who passed away) that Seth and Aaron Rich provided the emails to Wikileaks.

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2019/07/15/lawsuit-claims-julian-assange-confirmed-dnc-emails-received-from-seth-rich-not-a-russian-hack/

Kieron , July 16, 2019 at 17:22

I don't think anyone with a couple of brain cells would dismiss the idea that an insider with the DNC having access to delicate, perhaps damaging material, being what seems on the surface, to be the victim of a motiveless murder would ask the question, was there any connection between Seth Rich's demise and the crap storm that ensued after the Wikileaks release. Really hello !

LarcoMarco , July 16, 2019 at 17:46

"NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Michael Isikoff" – what a predictable farce! "We talked to Deborah Sines, who was the federal prosecutor in charge of the investigation into Seth Rich's death. She was an assistant U.S. attorney in the U.S. attorney's office in the District of Columbia, which prosecutes local murders. And she would see these conspiracy theories about her case circulating on the Web. She was – she wanted to find out where they were coming from."

At least we now know that Seth Rich's death is/was a Federal case. No more claiming the DCPD has jurisdiction. But no disclosures of the contents of Seth Rich's cell phone and laptop.

Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 10:38

The author seems consumed by this carnival of politicized legalized covert intelligence operations, by people and entities trying to retain money and power.

What's important is that the system hasn't been working for decades, and there's going to be increasingly serious problems, maybe fatal ones, rising if a big overhaul doesn't occur.

Al Pinto , July 16, 2019 at 09:43

The DNC and MSM sold, and sold well, the Russiagate to the general public. Does it really matter, if the "Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election has now come apart at the seams"? Neither the DNC, nor the MSM will report/mention either of the court case, pretty much a blackout for the general public.

Even, if these court cases are widely reported, do you really believe that the majority of the people would change their mind? After almost three years, there's no way that these people will change their mind. The only change that widely reporting these court cases would result in is, that Trump and HRC supporters would hate each other even more.

This Russiagate will be with us pretty much forever, it'll morph in to accusing people of being Russian agents and/or Russian Bots. We already see this taking place and just wait, until next year. It's not going to be pretty

michael , July 16, 2019 at 12:40

Aaron Mate has done a brilliant job researching and debunking Russiagate. Unfortunately for him, he is now ostracized and has to survive on the margins, with other people with critical thinking skills.

Blessthebeasts , July 16, 2019 at 13:28

You're right. The truth doesn't matter, just the BS narrative that has been shoved down our throats for the last few years. It never made any sense to anyone who really thought about it but the media whores just keep spewing total nonsense and they surely won't change their ways now. The fact that the entire crock is really irrelevant to the majority of our citizens doesn't matter to them a bit.

AnneR , July 16, 2019 at 09:42

Thank you again Mr McGovern for another article on this never ending saga. While I hope that sanity begins to dawn among the so-called progressives, I have serious doubts.

1. Neither the BBC World Service nor NPR have mentioned (at least while I've been listening) Judge Friedrich's ruling vis a vis provide the evidence (discovery) to the IRA 12's lawyers or tear up the indictment (essentially). Indeed, I've not heard, on the MSM, anything about those 12 IRA folks employing a lawyer and challenging Mueller's indictment. Silence works as well as obfuscation, lies.

2. The Demrats simply will not let their Russophobia go. I gather (from RT – tut tut I must be an RU bottle) that Ms Harris AIPAC schmoozer, keen and eager lock 'em up and throw away the key, corporate-capitalist crony Kamala has been accusing the Russians of stirring up the controversy surrounding Kaepernick's bending of the knee. The Russians and their bots did it.

3. And then this morning on NPR – a Steve Inskip interview with Michael Isikoff focusing on the Seth Rich "conspiracy theory" and of course the whole thing (or that segment which I could stomach hearing) presumed as a matter of established, and thus true, fact that everything that went wrong for the DNC's HRC campaign was caused by the Russians – for which read Putin. Isikoff was there as an "investigative" journalist for "Yahoo News" – and his "investigation" had shown that the Russians were – who else – behind the conspiracy theory that Seth Rich was killed by HRC thugs in order to keep him permanently quiet about corruption in the DNC. (Corruption – a rather mealy-mouthed way of avoiding bringing into NPR daylight what the DNC were actually doing: determining who would be the Dem candidate willy nilly of who the voters wanted. But this mealy-mouthedness is fully in keeping with NPR's basic silence on what Wikileaks revealed via that insider download.)

Orwellian. Propaganda at its Bernays, Goebbels best. Despair . This business is *not* going away. The Demrats – both in DC and their bourgeois/progressive supporters have far too much invested in the whole confabulation for them to admit that the former deliberately lied and the latter were willing? hoodwinked.

Ray McGovern , July 16, 2019 at 14:57

Dear AnneR,

Thanks for your comment. I would like it if somehow "despair," could be disallowed.

There are enough of us, after all. And, as Annie Dillard put it, "There never was anybody but us."

I also take some inspiration from the dismal-sounding, yet somehow uplifting words of I. F. Stone:

"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins."

THE CHALLENGE IS TO ACCEPT THAT, AND FIND JOY IN TRYING -- AND EVEN IN LOSING.

I believe the losing does not last forever; think we all need to do our part in the "interim."

Best regards,

Ray

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 19:44

That sums things up precisely, Ray.

None of us may live to see a complete turn-around, yet it is the honest effort to encourage and build the foundation for that fundamental systemic change to conscious and principled human awareness which is the measure we must make of ourselves.

Your sense of moral presence, Ray, is very much appreciated.

It serves as inspiration for all, and especially the young, who already understand, and encourages, as example, those who are coming to understand.

DW

AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 08:33

Dear Mr McGovern – thank you for reading and replying to my comment.

And, yes, I do understand the objection to despair – though not, might I add, any thought that its frank expression be expunged!

Were it only the whole Russiagate fabrication, delusions, time and money waste (oh well, only taxpayers' money) and fallout that was so dreadfully wrong, being heinously enacted. Indeed were it all that our taxes were being wasted on.

Perhaps that's it – Russiagate while distracting from the things that the DNC and HRC did, said, *also* makes for good deflection from the war crimes we are committing, the never ending imperialist warmongering we are engaged in, from the fact that many Demrats voted for those nice tax breaks given to the wealthiest tiers in our society, that many of those Demrats voted to hand over to the MIC *even more* loot even as the Pentagon can't account for the billions, or whatever fantastikal amount, it has already received over the years, deflection from the fact that despite such a "good" economy increasing numbers of people are living ever more economically precarious lives, rents rise astronomically, healthcare is a joke (or would be were its lack not so serious for so many). And that's not to mention the realities of climate change or the continuing (and MSM ignored) 70 plus year plight of Palestinians, among so many others.

My late husband used to tell me to write to NPR, the BBC, to let them know that they weren't codding everyone with their disinformation, non-information, lack of objectivity – their propaganda. And I did, often and used to ask for a response. Did I even get those? You must be joking

AnneR , July 17, 2019 at 14:08

In case someone might think that I expected either the BBC or NPR to alter their ways because of my "letters" (interestingly the BBC only allows/ed for around 1000 characters or something equally useless) – no. But when (in the case of the BBC) you can tick the "please reply" box and get total silence, not even a "thank you for your blah blah we shan't pay any attention to your complaints ," in response it is pretty frustrating.

As for NPR – I stopped our contributions. Why would we *pay* for the privilege of being propagandized? I just wish we had stopped them years earlier

Anyway, thank you Mr McGovern for your continuing coverage of this whole affair. I just wish my late partner in life and love had known of this website.

ML , July 16, 2019 at 09:24

Each morning when I arise, I get my coffee and settle down to read Consortium News. I also make a habit of a quick perusal of what the stenographers are jawing about on CNN today, there is a real doozy smearing Assange. The spinners are working overtime to patch over all the holes in their hoax story. I couldn't get through the whole thing because it's another smear piece and a long one including the old saw that Assange smeared feces on the Ecuadorian embassy's walls. I had to stop reading. Gosh, I can't abide those people. Thanks Ray, for telling the truth. We are drowning in $h** out there in la-la land. CN offers a much-needed dose of reality medicine. Thank you kindly, all.

Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 10:19

Here's a good essay by Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Assange hit-piece.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/new-cnn-assange-smear-piece-is-amazingly-dishonest-even-for-cnn-e7c361d98639

Marko , July 16, 2019 at 07:31

Even worse news for the Russiahoaxers is the recent revelation , documented in a lawsuit , that Ellen Ratner , sister of deceased Wikileaks' lawyer Michael Ratner, met with Assange in the fall of 2016 and was told by him that Aaron and Seth Rich provided the DNC leaks to Wikileaks. Ed Butowsky was made aware of this , with instructions by Ms. Ratner for him to relay the information to the Rich family. When he did so , in December 2016 , he was told by Joel Rich , Seth's father , that he was already aware of his sons' involvement.

This is no longer conspiracy talk , folks. Ed Butowsky is not dumb enough to make these claims on court documents without knowing he can back them up. Shit is about to get real for Mueller and the DNC.

"BREAKING: Lawsuit Outs Reporter Ellen Ratner as Source for Seth Rich Information" @ Gateway Pundit

Skip Scott , July 16, 2019 at 08:43

Wow! Thanks Marko. Here's the link.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/07/breaking-lawsuit-outs-reporter-ellen-ratner-as-source-for-seth-rich-information/

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 09:37

Well, Skip Scott, either this revelation will put "paid" to the "Russia-did-it!" charade, or else the Voracious Memory Hole will act like a giant black hole and the event horizon will be swallowed into total nothingness as a new Middle-Eastern Adventure captures the hearts and minds of the happy warriors and consumers of U$ Imperialism.

Whatever happens, it will be wholey interesting times ahead.

DW

jmg , July 16, 2019 at 10:01

There was a related, extensive 2018 interview about Butowsky's private investigation into the Seth Rich case to help the family, what they found, and what happened (the DNC assigned someone to represent the family, etc.; the mentioned lawsuits were later dropped/dismissed). It included, without naming Ratner, the unverified mention: "his friend came back from London with information that he said he wanted to get to the Rich family." Since this alleged private message appears to be not only doubtful, but of course also not confirmed by WikiLeaks, we can't really know if it happened or not.

Ed Butowsky Sits Down With Gateway Pundit for First Interview After Being Sued by Family in Seth Rich Murder Mystery -- March 19, 2018
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/03/ed-butowsky-sits-first-interview-gateway-pundit-sued-family-seth-rich-murder-mystery/

Eric32 , July 16, 2019 at 11:17

I wonder why Seth's murder hasn't been solved?
I wonder why there's almost no media attention paid?

O Society , July 16, 2019 at 17:32

Marko, polo! Here it is:

Seth Rich, disgruntled DNC worker, blows the whistle on HillBillary Clinton rigging the Democratic presidential primary against Bernie Sanders, so he gives data supporting his discovery of rigging to Wikileaks. Rich got the data on a thumdrive downloaded at DNC HQ itself.

No Russians, no hacking, just a whistleblower on the fraud ironically called US "democracy." We've all seen the data Rich leaked. Emails detailing HillBillary Clinton's graft and fraud and collusion against Sanders.

No wonder no other candidates besides Sanders ran against HillBillary, for they all knew the fix was in from its inception!

I dunno who killed Seth Rich, but I do know the Democratic party stole the election from Bernie, then projected its own crimes onto Russia, same way a kid projects his own crime of breaking a cookie jar on his brother when he tells Momma "He dit it –> He ate the cookies and broke the jar!" Meanwhile, there's chocolate smeared all over the DNC's face.

We have evidence for this, the leaked emails themselves tell the story

Gregory Herr , July 16, 2019 at 18:15

Seth Rich copied and leaked the DNC e-mails and was murdered for it. For this to become irrefutable common knowledge will be quite one godsend of a reality check. Maddow might not be able to get out of bed for weeks.

Repeat after me Rachel there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack, there was no Russian hack

jmg , July 16, 2019 at 07:13

From the Brennan–Comey–Rogers assessment/opinion (January 6, 2017):

"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump's election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. CIA and FBI have high confidence in this judgment; NSA has moderate confidence. . . .

"- High confidence generally indicates that judgments are based on high-quality information from multiple sources. High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.

"- Moderate confidence generally means that the information is credibly sourced and plausible but not of sufficient quality or corroborated sufficiently to warrant a higher level of confidence."

Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf

-- -- –

"When they say they have 'high confidence', that means they don't have any evidence!"
-- Bill Binney, former NSA Technical Director

DW Bartoo , July 16, 2019 at 07:10

Thank you, Ray McGovern for this splendid article laying out the facts which make clear the absurdities of these last several years. One hopes, now that the "Russia-did-it" canard is fully exposed, by US courts, that the truth may finally get through, over or around, the media wall of enforced ignorance and Mueller hero-worship, and reach the ears and eyes of the people.

Should that actually happen, it might even be possible that other truth, long subject to media manipulation and distortion, the cases of Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning come readily to mind, could be seen in the honest light of day after an almost eight year protracted nightmare of media driven deceit, psychological torture, and deliberately vicious character assassination is revealed, in Assange's case, as it might well be, by Nils Melzer's report to the UN.

The legacy U$ corporate media have much to answer for, from promulgating lies that led to war, to missile attacks, and to brutal economic sanctions, a form of economic warfare, to efforts to start a new Cold War, and to aggrandize intelligence agencies which have sought to pervert justice and to illegally influence the political process by falsely accusing, on the flimsy words of partisan political operatives, another nation of the very actions those agencies have used, repeatedly and for many decades,to destroy the political processes of other nations, including the very nation singled out to take the blame for Hillary Clinton's abysmal and pathetic failure in the 2016 election.

What a waste of time, resources, trust, and energy it has bee, these last years, yet it was all so very profitable and lucrative for the media, even if it were "not good" for the country.

The media have damned and convicted themselves.

The U$ intelligence agencies have exposed themselves as corrupt, completely dishonest, vindictive, petty, and thoroughly untrustworthy.

It remains to be seen if the people have learned anything, and whether they will do anything with this costly, yet necessary, education.

DW

Allan , July 16, 2019 at 07:04

Will Adam Schiff spend the week with Bob Mueller to get their story straight

UserFriendly , July 16, 2019 at 05:18

?Unfortunately this is partially bunk. The first bit the judge didn't rule that there was no evidence, she ruled that Mueller publicly saying that the IRA = kremlin and they did try to help Trump win was prejudicial in the case against the IRA (quite obviously so). But him not being able to say that during his testimony should go over well with the democrats. Of course if he actually wanted to explain all he would have to do is drop the case against the IRA because it's never going to trial anyways. Almost makes you wonder if he filed those charges expressly so he wouldn't have to connect the imaginary dotts.

Aiya , July 16, 2019 at 11:03

What they called "trying to help Trump" was a miniscule amount of social media posts, 56% of which were made AFTER the election. And Facebook had to look 3 times to come up with ANYTHING–what they finally reported were posts coming from Russia or eastern Europe, posts in Cyrillic language, and posts from people with Russian/European names.

[Jul 13, 2019] Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Looks like Mueller and his team were extremely sloppy and just milked the US government and try to feed rumors to the media.
Mueller emerged as a stooge of Clinton mafia.
Notable quotes:
"... In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge. ..."
"... The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report. ..."
"... On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them. ..."
"... Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7. ..."
"... the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions. ..."
"... But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment: ..."
"... By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government. ..."
"... But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. ..."
"... Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence. ..."
"... I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out. ..."
"... The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner. ..."
"... a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .) ..."
"... Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ ) ..."
"... 'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.' ..."
"... Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.' ..."
"... It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017. ..."
"... Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding). ..."
"... Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team. ..."
"... The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko. ..."
"... A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way. ..."
Jul 13, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Mueller Does Not Have Evidence That The IRA Was Part of Russian Government Meddling by Larry C Johnson

In the criminal case against alleged Russian operatives--Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and Consulting LLC--a Federal judge has declared that Robert Mueller has not offered one piece of solid evidence that these defendants were involved in any way with the Government of Russia. I think this is a potential game changer.

The world of law as opposed to the world of intelligence is as different as Mercury and Mars. The intelligence community aka IC can traffic in rumor and speculation. IC "solid" intelligence may be nothing more than the strident assertion of a source who lacks actual first hand knowledge of an event. The legal world does not enjoy that kind of sloppiness. If a prosecutor makes a claim, i.e., Jack shot Jill, then said prosecutor must show that Jack owned a firearm that matches the bullets recovered from Jill's body. Then the prosecutor needs to show that Jack was with Jill when the shooting took place and that forensic evidence recovered from Jack showed he had fired a firearm. Keep this distinction in mind as you consider what has transpired in the case against the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management and Consulting.

To understand why Judge Friedrich ruled as she did you must understand Local Rule 57.7. That rule: restricts public dissemination of information by attorneys involved in criminal cases where

"there is a reasonable likelihood that such dissemination will interfere with a fair trial or otherwise prejudice the administration of justice." It also authorizes the court "[i]n a widely publicized or sensational criminal case" to issue a special order governing extrajudicial statements and other matters designed to limit publicity that might interfere with the conduct of a fair trial. . . .

The rule prohibits lawyers associated with the prosecution or defense from publishing, between the time of the indictment and the commencement of trial, "[a]ny opinion as to the accused's guilt or innocence or as to the merits of the case or the evidence in the case."

In short, the US Government cannot come out and declare that Concord Management, for example, was acting on behalf or or in collaboration with the Russian Government without presenting actual evidence. A prosecutor cannot simply claim that Concord is a Putin Stooge.

The lawyers for Concord Management read the Mueller report and noted significant discrepancies between what was alleged in the original complaint and what was asserted as "fact" in the Mueller report.

On April 25, 2019, Concord filed the instant motion in which it argues that the Attorney General and Special Counsel violated Local Rule 57.7 by releasing information to the public that was not contained in the indictment. Concord's main contention is that the Special Counsel's Report, as released to the public, and the Attorney General's related public statements improperly suggested a link between the defendants and the Russian government and expressed an opinion about the defendants' guilt and the evidence against them.

Concord's lawyers wanted Judge Friedrich to find Robert Mueller and Attorney General Barr in contempt for violating rule 57.7.

Judge Friedrich gave Concord a partial victory:

Although the Court agrees that the government violated Rule 57.7 , it disagrees that contempt proceedings are an appropriate response to that violation. Instead, the Court has entered an order limiting public statements about this case moving forward and cautions the government that any future violations of that order will trigger a range of potential sanctions.

But the Judge did not stop there. She pointed out some glaring discrepancies between the Mueller Report and the actual indictment:

The Special Counsel Report describes efforts by the Russian government to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. . . . But the indictment . . . does not link the defendants to the Russian government. Save for a single allegation that Concord and Concord Catering had several "government contracts" (with no further elaboration), id. ¶ 11, the indictment alleges only private conduct by private actors.

. . . the concluding paragraph of the section of the [Mueller] Report related to Concord states that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA). By attributing IRA's conduct to "Russia" -- as opposed to Russian individuals or entities -- the Report suggests that the activities alleged in the indictment were undertaken on behalf of, if not at the direction of, the Russian government.

Similarly, the Attorney General drew a link between the Russian government and this case during a press conference in which he stated that "[t]he Special Counsel's report outlines two main efforts by the Russian government to influence the 2016 election." . . . The "[f]irst" involved "efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations." Id. The "[s]econd" involved "efforts by Russian military officials associated with the GRU," a Russian intelligence agency, to hack and leak private documents and emails from the Democratic Party and the Clinton Campaign.

The Report explains that it used the term "established" whenever "substantial, credible evidence enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence." . . . It then states in its conclusion that the Special Counsel's "investigation established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by the IRA." In context, this statement characterizes the evidence against the defendants as "substantial" and "credible," and it provides the Special Counsel's Office's "conclusion" about what actually occurred.

But the activities of the IRA and Concord Management are not established. In fact, Mueller's own report undermines his claims, as noted in a recent article by Nation's Aaron Mate. Although Mueller claims that it was "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election through the 'active measures' social media campaign carried out by" Concord's co-defendant, the Internet Research Agency (IRA), he provided no such evidence.

According to Mate :

After two years and $35 million, Mueller apparently failed to uncover any direct evidence linking the Prigozhin-controlled IRA's activities to the Kremlin. His best evidence is that "[n]umerous media sources have reported on Prigozhin's ties to Putin, and the two have appeared together in public photographs."

Mate's article, as I mentioned in a previous piece, does an excellent job of showing that the Mueller Report is based on heartfelt beliefs but devoid of corroborating evidence.

Some readers will insist that Mueller and his team have actual intelligence but cannot put that in an indictment. Well boys and girls, here is a simple truth--if you cannot produce evidence that can be presented in court then you do not have a case. There is that part of the Constitution that allows those accused of a crime to confront their accusers.

Posted at 11:09 PM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink


Sonal Chawhan , 12 July 2019 at 05:38 AM

Impressive!Thanks for the post
SAS Base and Advance

Peter VE , 12 July 2019 at 09:14 AM

Minor quibble: Judge Friedrich is a woman. I expect that this will get no play from the MSM, since Judge Friedrich was appointed by Trump, and "everyone" knows she's just covering up for him.

Larry Johnson -> Peter VE... , 12 July 2019 at 11:37 AM

Thanks. Never heard of a chick named, "Dabney." I was thinking Dabney Coleman. Dating myself.

Peter VE -> Larry Johnson ... , 12 July 2019 at 02:17 PM

Maybe her name is misspelled reference to Dagney Taggart...

Flavius , 12 July 2019 at 10:33 AM

Under the conditions and in the environment that it was returned, this indictment was Mueller and his partisan team throwing raw meat fo the media so as to prolong their mission, nothing more. Once filed, no one involved ever expected to appear in a courtroom to prosecute anyone, or defend any part of it. It was an abuse of process, pure and simple.

Consider it as a count against Mueller, his competence or his integrity, maybe both. He let himself become a tool.

pretzelattack -> Flavius... , 12 July 2019 at 07:27 PM

Johnson refers to "heartfelt beliefs" but i doubt Mueller believes his own bs. in this i guess he distinguishes himself from earlier witch-hunters, who apparently sincerely believed their targets were minions of satan.

blue peacock , 12 July 2019 at 11:33 AM

I think Mueller, Weissman, et al did not expect Concord to contest their indictment. They believed they could continue their PR effort that Russia changed the outcome of the election by sending out tweets and Facebook posts without anyone calling them out.

It seems on the current trajectory both the Trump colluded with Russia and our law enforcement & IC attempted a soft-coup will die on the vine. The latter because Trump is unwilling to declassify. It seems for him it was all just another reality TV show and him tweeting "witch hunt" constantly was what the script called for.

The next time the IC & law enforcement who now must believe that they are the real power behind the throne decide to exercise that power it will be a doozie.

The national security surveillance state is only going to get bigger and more powerful. I suppose that is the real competition between the CCP & the USA who can get more totalitarian sooner.

https://theintercept.com/2019/07/11/china-surveillance-google-ibm-semptian/

David Habakkuk , 12 July 2019 at 12:39 PM

Larry,

A fine piece.

I think a large question is raised as to how far the kind of sloppiness in the handling of evidence which Judge Friedrich identified in the Mueller report may have characterised a great deal of the treatment of matters to do with the post-Soviet space by the FBI and others – including almost all MSM journalists – for a very long time.

Unfortunately, one also finds this among some of the most useful critics of 'Russiagate'. So, for example, in a very valuable recent piece in the 'Epoch Times' about the questions that need to be put to Mueller, Jeff Carlson discusses some of the problems relating both to Christopher Steele's involvement with Oleg Deripaska, and the involvement of Fusion GPS with Natalia Veseltnitskaya which led to the Trump Tower meeting. (See https://www.theepochtimes.com/33-key-questions-for-robert-mueller_2988876.html .)

He then however goes on to write: 'In other words, not only was the firm that hired Steele, Fusion GPS, hired by the Russians, but Steele himself was hired directly by the Russians.'

And Andrew McCarthy, in the 'National Review', picks up one of the most interesting, and puzzling, moments in the fascinating notes by Kathy Kavalec of the conversation she had with Steele when Jonathan Winer brought him to see on her in October 2016. (See https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/07/oleg-deripaska-fbi-russia-collusion-theory/ )

Commenting on the fact that, in her scribbled notes, beside the names of Vladislav Surkov and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, who are indeed a top Putin adviser and a former SVR chief respectively, Kavalec writes 'source', McCarthy simply concludes that she meant that he had said that these were his – indirect – sources, and that this was accurate. And he goes on to write:

'Deripaska, Surkov, and Trubnikov were not informing on the Kremlin. These are Putin's guys. They were peddling what the Kremlin wanted the world to believe, and what the Kremlin shrewdly calculated would sow division in the American body politic. So, the question is: Did they find the perfect patsy in Christopher Steele?'

If you look at Kavalec's typing up of the notes, among a good deal of what looks to me like pure 'horse manure' – including the claim that 'Manafort has been the go-between with the campaign' – the single reference to Surkov and Trubnikov is that they are said to be 'also involved.'

As it happens, Surkov is a very complex figure indeed. His talents as a 'political technologist' were first identified by Khodorkovsky, before he subsequently played that role for Putin. It would obviously be possible that he and Steele still had common contacts.

The suggestion in Kavalec's notes that Sergei Millian 'may be involved in some way,' and also that, 'Per Steele, Millian is connected Simon Kukes (who took over management of Yukos when Khodorkovsky was arrested)' is interesting, but would seem to suggest that he would not have been cited to Kavalec as an intermediary.

All this is obviously worth putting together with claims made in the 'New York Times' follow-up on 9 July to the Reuters report on the same day breaking the story of the interviews carried out with Steele by the Inspector General's team in early June.

(See https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/ig-russia-investigation-steele.html?module=inline .)

According to this:

'Moreover, by January 2017, F.B.I. agents had tracked down and interviewed one of Mr. Steele's main sources, a Russian speaker from a former Soviet republic who had spent time in the West, according to a Justice Department document obtained by The New York Times and three people familiar with the events. After questioning him, F.B.I. officials came to suspect that the man might have added his own interpretations to reports from his own sources that he passed on to Mr. Steele, calling into question the reliability of the information.'

Some observations prompted by all this.

Without wanting to prejudge things, it seems to me quite likely that what Horowitz has been contemplating is a kind of 'limited hangout'. So, the idea could be to suggest that Steele did have sources, that however these were not as reliable as he thought they were, but everything was done in good faith etc etc. In the light of information coming out, including that in the Friedrich ruling, he may however have decided to 'hold his horses.'

In trying to put together the accumulating evidence, it is necessary to realise, as so many people seem to find it difficult to do, that in matters like these people commonly play double games – often for very good reasons.

To say as Carlson does that Fusion and Steele were hired by 'the Russians' implies that these are some kind of collective entity – and then, one is one step away from the assumption that Veselnitskaya and Deripaska, as well as 'Putin's Cook', are simply puppets controlled by the master manipulator in the Kremlin. (The fact that Friedrich applies serious standards for assessing evidence to Mueller's version of this is one of the reasons why her judgement is so important.)

As regards what McCarthy says, to lump Surkov and Deripaska together as 'Putin's guys' is unhelpful. Actually, it seems to me very unlikely, although perhaps not absolutely impossible, that, had he been implicated in any conspiracy to intervene in an American election, Surkov would have been talking candidly about his role to anyone liable to relay the information to Steele.

Likewise, however, the notion of a Machiachiavellian Surkov, feeding disinformation about a non-existent plot through an intermediary to Steele, who swallows it hook, line and sinker, does not seem particularly plausible.

A rather more obvious possibility is that the intermediaries who were supposed to have conveyed a whole lot of 'smoking gun' evidence to Steele were either 1. fabrications, 2. people whom without their knowledge he cast in this role, or 3. co-conspirators. It would, obviously, be possible that Millian, although one can say no more than that at this stage, was involved in either or both of roles 2. and 3.

It is important that the general pattern of assuming that Putin is some kind of omnipotent Sauron-figure, which has clearly left Mueller open to a counter-attack by Concord, was given a classic expression in the testimony which Glenn Simpson gave to the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017.

(See https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/House_Intelligence_Committee_Interview_of_Glenn_Simpson )

Providing his version of what was going on following his move from the Washington office of the 'Wall Street Journal' to its European headquarters in January 2005, Simpson told the Committee:

'And the oligarchs, during this period of consolidation of power by Vladimir Putin, when I was living in Brussels and doing all this work, was about him essentially taking control over both the oligarchs and the mafia groups. And so basically everyone in Russia works for Putin now. And that's true of the diaspora as well. So the Russian mafia in the United States is believed bylaw enforcement criminologists to have – to be under the influence of the Russian security services. And this is convenient for the security services because it gives them a level of deniability.'

A bit less than two years after Simpson's move to Brussels, a similar account featured in what appears to have been the first attempt by Christopher Steele and his confederates to provide a 'narrative' in terms of which could situate the supposed assassination by polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

This came in a BBC Radio 4 programme, entitled 'The Litvinenko Mystery', in which a veteran presenter with the Corporation, Tom Mangold, produced an account by the former KGB Major Yuri Shvets, supported by the former FBI Agent Robert Levinson, and an 'Unidentified Informer', who is told by Mangold that he cannot be identified 'reasons of your own personal security'.

(A full transcript is on the 'Evidence' archived website of the Litvinenko Inquiry – one needs to search for the reference HMG000513 – at https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

This figure, whose credentials we have no means of assessing, explains:

'Well it's not well known to Western leaders or Western people but it is pretty well known in Russia. Because essentially it is common knowledge in Russia that by the end of Nineties the so called Russian organised crime had been destroyed by the Government and then the Russian security agencies, primarily the law enforcement and primarily the FSB, essentially assumes the functions and methods of Russian organised crime. And they became one of the most dangerous organised crime group because they are protected by law. They're protected by all power of the State. They have essentially the free hand in the country and this shadow establishment essentially includes the entire structure of the FSB from the very top people in Moscow going down to the low offices.'

The story Mangold told was a pathetic tale of how Litvinenko and Shvets, trying to turn an honest penny from 'due diligence' work, identified damning evidence about the links of a figure close to Putin to organised crime, who in return sent Andrei Lugovoi to poison the former with polonium.

A few problems with this version have, however, subsequently, emerged. Among them is the fact that, at the time, Litvinenko himself, as well as having been a key member of the late Boris Berezovsky's 'information operations team', was an agent, as distinct from an informant, of MI6: accounts differ as to whether Steele was his personal 'handler' (John Sipher), or had never met him (Luke Harding).

Also relevant is the fact that Shvets, a fanatical Ukrainian nationalist, and an important figure in the original 'Orange Revolution', was also a key member of Berezovsky's 'information operations' team.

Perhaps most interesting is the fact that the disappearance of Levinson, on the Iranian island of Kish, the following March, was not as was claimed for years related to his private sector work. His entrapment and imprisonment – from which we now know Deripaska was later involved in attempting to rescue him – related to an undercover mission on behalf of elements in the CIA.

The account of his career by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier in his 2016 study 'Missing Man' is a tissue of sleazy evasions, not least in relation to the role of Levinson in 'investigating' the notorious mobster Semion Mogilevich, a key figure in 'information operations' against both Putin and Trump, and also the opponents of Yulia Tymoshenko.

A large question involved is how co-operation between not simply elements in MI6 and the CIA, but also in the FBI, with the oligarchs who refused to accept Putin's terms goes back a very long way.

And, among other things, that raises a whole range of questions about Mueller.

Dan -> David Habakkuk ... , 12 July 2019 at 04:36 PM

Great info, thanks. I admittedly don't watch the skeptics' comments closely enough, and can be susceptible to twisted observations from guys like Carlson and Solomon.

[Jul 13, 2019] Concord Management and the End of Russiagate by Daniel Lazare

Notable quotes:
"... Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court ..."
"... Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to great fanfare in July 2016. ..."
"... But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's dubious as well. [See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a timeline that doesn't make sense: ..."
"... why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source on June 22? ..."
"... How could that be enough time to review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still stands – which it plainly does. ..."
"... Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller seems to have finally come up dry. ..."
"... "Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument." ..."
"... Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. ..."
"... then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the astonishing ground," according to McCarthy , "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned." ..."
"... Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook. ..."
"... Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather? ..."
"... If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order ..."
"... As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic" conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime. ..."
"... Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day -- believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. ..."
"... Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat (Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants. Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare. ..."
"... The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre" by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. ..."
"... Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce. ..."
"... What do you do now Mr Mueller, now that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous, American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate! ..."
"... Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once, fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz. ..."
"... You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift. ..."
"... These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT. ..."
"... I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about how the People always are the essential losers. ..."
"... We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death, why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on the Real story leading up to this. ..."
"... What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist. ..."
"... This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always "men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored men ..."
"... It should be interesting to see how this plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks. ..."
Jul 13, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

CAMPAIGN 2016 , INTELLIGENCE , RUSSIA , RUSSIAGATE , TRUMP ADMINISTRATION , WIKILEAKS Concord Management and the End of Russiagate? July 12, 2019 • 23 Comments

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A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has just shut down half of Robert Mueller's Russian-interference case, writes Daniel Lazare.

By Daniel Lazare
Special to Consortium News

Don't look now, but a federal judge in Washington, D.C., has just shut down half of Robert Mueller's Russian-interference case.

In February 2018, the special prosecutor indicted a St. Petersburg troll farm called the Internet Research Agency along with two other companies, their owner, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, and 12 employees. The charge: fraud, traveling to the United States under false pretenses, and using social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter to "sow discord" and "interfere in US political and electoral processes without detection of their Russian affiliation."

The charge was both legally dubious and heavy-handed, a case of using a sledge hammer to swat a fly. But Mueller went even further in his report , an expurgated version of which was made public in April. No longer just a Russian company, the IRA was now an arm of the Russian government. "[T]he Special Counsel's investigation," it declared on page one, "established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election principally through two operations.

First, a Russian entity carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Second, a Russian intelligence service conducted computer-intrusion operations against entities, employees, and volunteers working in the Clinton campaign and then released stolen documents."

"Prigozhin," the report added, referring to the IRA owner, "is widely reported to have ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin." A few pages later, it said that the IRA's efforts "constituted 'active measures' a term that typically refers to operations conducted by Russian security services aimed at influencing the course of international affairs."

Thus, the IRA played a major role in the vast Kremlin conspiracy to alter the outcome of the 2016 election and install Donald Trump in office. But now Judge Dabney Friedrich has ordered Mueller to stop pushing such stories because they're unfair to Concord Management and Consulting, another Prigozhin company, which astonished the legal world in May 2018 by hiring an expensive Washington law firm and demanding its day in court.

Contrary to internet chatter , Friedrich did not offer an opinion as to whether the IRA-Kremlin connection is true or false. Rather, she told the special prosecutor to keep quiet because such statements go beyond the scope of the original indictment and are therefore prejudicial to the defendant. But it may be a distinction without a difference since the only evidence that Mueller puts forth in the public version of his report is a New York Times article from February 2018 entitled "Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian Oligarch Indicted by US, Is Known as 'Putin's Cook.'"

It's a case of trial by press clip that should have been laughed out of court – and now, more or less, it is. Without the IRA, the only argument left in Mueller's brief is that Russia stole some 28,000 emails and other electronic documents from Democratic National Committee computers and then passed them along to WikiLeaks , which published them to great fanfare in July 2016.

But as Consortium News pointed out the day the Mueller report came out, that's dubious as well. [See " The 'Guccifer 2.0' Gaps in Mueller's Full Report ," April 18.] The reason: it rests on a timeline that doesn't make sense:

But why would Assange announce the leaked emails on June 12 before hearing from the source on June 22? Was he clairvoyant? Why would he release a massive file just eight days after receiving it and as a little as four days after opening it up?

How could that be enough time to review the contents and ensure they were genuine? "If a single one of those emails had been shown to be maliciously altered," blogger Mark F. McCarty points out , "WikiLeaks's reputation would have been in tatters." Quite right. So if Mueller's chronology doesn't hold up, then Assange's original statement that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" still stands – which it plainly does.

Going Up in Smoke

Bottom line: Russiagate is going up in smoke. The claim that Russian military intelligence fed thousands of emails to WikiLeaks doesn't stand up to scrutiny while Mueller is not only unable to a prove a connection between the Internet Research Agency and the Kremlin but is barred from even discussing it, according to Friedrich's ruling, without risking a charge of contempt. After 22 months of investigating the ins and outs of Russian interference, Mueller seems to have finally come up dry.

"Revenge of the oligarchs" might be a good headline for this story. The IRA indictment initially seemed to be a no-lose proposition for Mueller. He got to look good in the press, the media got to indulge in yet another round of Russia-bashing, while, best of all, no one had to prove a thing. "Mueller's allegations will never be tested in court," noted Andrew C. McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor turned pundit for the rightwing National Review . "That makes his indictment more a political statement than a charging instrument."

Then came the unexpected. Concord Management hired Reed Smith, a top-flight law firm with offices around the world, and demanded to be heard. The move was "a real head-scratcher," one Washington attorney told Buzzfeed , because Concord was beyond the reach of U.S. law and therefore had nothing to fear from an indictment and nothing to gain, apparently, from going to court. But then the firm demanded to exercise its right of discovery, meaning that it wanted access to Mueller's immense investigative file. Blindsided, Mueller's requested a delay "on the astonishing ground," according to McCarthy , "that the defendant has not been properly served – notwithstanding that the defendant has shown up in court and asked to be arraigned."

Prigozhin was forcing the special prosecutor to show what he's got, McCarthy went on, at zero risk to himself since he was not on U.S. soil. What was once a no-lose proposition for Mueller was suddenly a no-lose proposition for Putin's unexpectedly clever cook.

Now Mueller is in an even worse pickle because he's barred from mentioning a major chunk of his report. What will he discuss if Democrats succeed in getting him to testify before the House intelligence and judiciary committees next week – the weather?

If his team goes forward with the Concord prosecution, he'll risk having to turn over sensitive information while involving himself in a legal tangle that could go on for years, all without any conceivable payoff. If he drops it, the upshot will be a public-relations disaster of the first order.

As skeptics have pointed out, the IRA's social-media campaign was both more modest and more ineffectual then the Mueller report's over-the-top language about a "sweeping and systematic" conspiracy would suggest. Yet after Facebook Vice President Rob Goldman tweeted that "the majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election," he was forced to beg for forgiveness like a defendant in a Moscow show trial for daring to play down the magnitude of the crime.

But it wasn't Goldman who shaved the truth. Rather, it was Mueller. Thanks to the unexpected appearance of Concord Management, he's now paying the price.

Daniel Lazare is the author of "The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy" (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at D aniellazare.com .

If you value this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.


David H , July 12, 2019 at 18:17

Does "prejudicial to the defendant" mean the same thing as prejudiced against the defendant?

Stan W. , July 12, 2019 at 13:55

The myth regarding Russian influence in the 2016 election that enabled Donald Trump to "steal" the presidency from Hillary Clinton would make a good sequel to a movie from 1966. Its title: "THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING! THE RUSSIANS ARE COMING!"

Jeff Harrison , July 12, 2019 at 12:33

The one thing I'd like to know is: did Mueller ever provide the requested discovery documents or not?

Ray McGovern , July 12, 2019 at 11:20

BRAVO, Dan. AND, as you aware, the "hacking half" of Mueller's magnum opus also cannot bear close scrutiny.

Remember where you heard this first, "Current and former intelligence officials" tell me that Mueller has asked his mother to write a note to be excused from the field trip to Congress next Thursday, the 17th.

In my view, the only sympathy Mueller should be able to elicit at this point is the cruel reality that he chose to perform one last job for the Deep State after he had reached the age of statutory senility. His handlers will try to prop him up to the extent possible, but the die is now cast. The whipping-up of Russia-gate can now be seen -- at least by consortium news readers -- as a "best-defense-is-a-good-offensive" operation to obfuscate the reality of Deep-State-gate.

Hard to believe, but it is possible that the dumb Dem leaders still -- to this day -- believe their story-line. How else to account for the incredible denseness of Pelosi and Nadler, both of whom should be down at the southern border rather than fiddling on a rusty Russia-gate Stradivarius -- fiddling while little kids burn. They ought to do their Constitutional duty to impeach -- not on the basis of evidence-less Russia-gate charges -- but because the President is treading heavily on KIDS, as well as the Constitution.

Let's hear more from Tulsi Gabbard.

Again, great job, Dan. I can almost see Bob Parry smiling.

Ray

Chet Roman , July 12, 2019 at 18:15

You've been right all along Ray. Appreciate all your accurate investigating and reporting.

However, I must disagree with your suggestion of impeachment on two phony issues: kids and the constitution. You should focus your wrath on the Democrats that will not correct our immigration laws. The only reason there is a surge of children and families is because the democrats and their radical liberals have made it clear to the world that if you bring children you are free to illegally cross the border. You may be stopped but the kids you bring with you (your own or rent-a-kiddie) are essentially a get out of jail card. We now have Africans from the Congo crossing over with luggage, the latest group are Haitians, WTF?

As an immigrant I support our immigrants that come here legally but not those that break the law. Diversity is not our strength but just adds to the division and conflict within our society. Trump may be vulgar and unorganized but his efforts to maintain our sovereign borders are welcomed and will secure his second term. 6 or 7 years ago, every senior Democrat (Biden, Hillary, Schumer, Pelosi, etc.) were against open borders and illegal immigrants. Their current stance is crass politics not concern for human welfare.

Mike from Jersey , July 12, 2019 at 10:20

The whole Mueller investigation was always "theatre" and not "law." And not just "theatre" by Mueller, but by the media and the Democratic Party as well. And the Republicans cannot rejoice in the result since – not only did Mueller baselessly refuse to concede "exoneration" – Mueller's report itself is a joke in the first place. This article points that out.

So what are we left with?

Only a few things were proven: Mueller has no credibility, the "Justice Department" is dysfunctional, the mainstream media is a joke and the the DNC was able to rig the primaries and effectively hide that fact using the fog of the Russiagate farce.

In short, America's political system is completely broken.

O Society , July 12, 2019 at 09:20

We have heard the name of Judge Dabney Freidrich before. She is a bit of a wildcard here, as she does not necessarily do what the powers that be expect of her. Here she pulls the rug out from under Mueller when he and the Scooby Doo gang was no doubt expecting never to actually have to go to court against the Russian meddling kids:

https://osociety.org/2018/10/21/judge-orders-mueller-to-prove-russian-company-meddled-in-election/

and here she has Kavanaugh's back during his Supreme Court nomination process as he screams about his entitlement to do whatever he damned well pleases because he's entitled rich folk who went to Yale part of the Club aristocracy:

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4946213-Judge-Dabney-Friedrich-s-Letter-to-the-Senate.html

Piotr Berman , July 12, 2019 at 09:19

About Prigozhin the oligarch, Wikipedia: "The Anti-Corruption Foundation accused Prigozhin of corrupt business practices. They estimated his illegal wealth to be worth more than one billion rubles.[11]" So the opposition outfit (and those exist in "dictatorial" Russia) accuses Prigozhin of amassing 16 million dollars of "illegal wealth". Poor Russia. In USA, a single doctor can get more by overbilling Medicare, Workers' Compensation etc.

KiwiAntz , July 12, 2019 at 09:16

Mueller, Mueller, Mueller- Class, anyone, anyone?? Ferris Mueller's Day Off is turning into a nightmare & his Report is crashing & burning, faster than a US Drone, shot down & blasted out of the Sky, by the IRG in the Sea of Homuz? It's all very well accusing people of crimes & slandering reputations knowing or hoping that under normal circumstances the accused wouldn't show up to defend the charges, but these accused Russians are prepared to challenge Mueller's fictitious findings? What do you do now Mr Mueller, now that your bluff has been called? Another one of many nails in the coffin of this ridiculous, American, Hallucination Hoax called Russiagate!

Realist , July 12, 2019 at 16:08

Mueller thought he was simply practicing the real government policy on fooling the public with endless iterations of horse hockey which Dubya tried to obscure with his "fool me once, fool me twice " razz-ma-tazz.

Mr. Mueller will take the "A" train to Davy Jones' locker trying to hoodwink the public on this fiasco, rather than getting religion and uttering the more appropriate "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:07

Nice, Mr Lazare, very, very nice. One can only hope that Mueller and the rest of the conspirators (for what else are they?) get their full comeuppance. However, I doubt that given past history and the ability of all those with and in power to escape full scrutiny and real punishment (a lengthy prison sentence).

Unfortunately and dishearteningly, I also doubt that the true believers, of which there are all too many and among whom all too many are highly and expensively educated, will let any of this alter by one iota their apparently adamantine position on "Russiagate," their anti-Putin Russophobia. Or their equally apparent adoration of HRC.

Rob , July 12, 2019 at 12:27

You can bet that the likes of Rachel Maddow will never change their tune on the subject of Russiagate. However, with the election season heating up, it might seem wise for them to start singing a different tune altogether, such as Sanders and Warren are too radical to have any chance of defeating Trump. The saddest thing of all is that the Dems' fixation on Russia and Putin is now coming back to bite them in the ass. Trump could not have asked for a better gift.

Antonio Costa , July 12, 2019 at 09:01

These indictments (including the 12 GRU) were all press releases to fuel the "I'm doing something" and "Russia's involved" noise. Not a lawyer but those who are commented that these Russian "indictments" were not only without evidence (which would have come out in a court had such been the intent) but they went way beyond a straightforward indictment to something approximating an OP ED for the WoPo or NYT.

The intel report ordered by Obama (2 of them) had no evidence, and the last one went on and on about RT as if RT has conspired to infiltrate the minds of US voters (huge laugh given their reach and those who watch, or listen generally don't need convincing of US government nefarious doings).

I did read both reports and indictments, and as a lay person it was clear there was no substance. In the case of the intel report even Obama concluded there was nothing.

Yet the 2+ year circus went on and on as a media ($$$) frenzy. No one really cared, nor do they to this day.

This is what the unraveling of an empire looks like. Let's hope there's a truly new and better day ahead after the collapse.

OlyaPola , July 12, 2019 at 08:58

When deflating a balloon care is required to ensure it doesn't shoot off in all directions exposing the skill levels of would-be performers.

Bob Van Noy , July 12, 2019 at 08:05

I watched the excellent movie "The Big Short" last night, it was my second viewing after seeing it at the theater. It was painful to watch because it's about the abject failure and corruption of Wall Street, but beyond that, it's about the failure of Our System and about how the People always are the essential losers.

We here at Consortiumnews have basically known these facts since Robert Parry's death, why?, because Robert was an extraordinary reporter who actually looked into the underlying dynamic of the subject he reported on. And, relying on his honesty, we were brought along on the Real story leading up to this.

Now, much like the movie I mentioned, we know we were right to trust CN, but there is little joy in watching the confirmation of a failed fourth estate and failed democratic experiment. Now we are left with the anxiety of how to repair this mess

Oh well, thanks Consortiumnews.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1596363/

Alfred di Genis , July 12, 2019 at 04:18

What's needed to convince Americans that "Russia" did not interfere in the election and did not hack the DNC is not a judge but an exorcist.

AnneR , July 12, 2019 at 09:13

Truly. This profound belief based on DNC, HRC confabulated and paid for evidence is in so many ways, if not totally, akin to the belief in UFOs and little green men (why is it always "men"?). Yet the same people who are "Russia and Putin did it" frenetic are those who denounce as insane nutters those who believe in the existence of UFOs and those grass colored men

Realist , July 12, 2019 at 04:17

Maybe Mueller should ask Putin for asylum before he concedes the truth and implicates Brennan, Clapper, Hillary and Obama as masterminds of Intelgate. I don't think he's getting a pardon from Trump.

That Hillary was so clever in her design to fatally slur both the Donald and the "New Hitler" in Moscow with one big lie, while deftly knifing Bernie in the back as attentions were directed at the bigger fish. Not!

It should be interesting to see how this plays out, if the judiciary has the fortitude to stand up to the Den of Spooks.

Ray McGovern , July 12, 2019 at 11:33

Realist,

You have that right, as usual. "If the judiciary ." A very BIG "If." How many judges like Dabney Friedrich, I wonder, are still on the bench? We may be about to see.

Ray

[Jun 27, 2019] The Myth of Russian Media Influence by Larry C Johnson

The accusation played important role in unleashing neo-McCartyism campaign in the USA. So "The Moor has done his duty. The Moor can go ...."
Notable quotes:
"... Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf. ..."
"... So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit. ..."
"... The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. ..."
"... the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other countries, such as China and Israel. ..."
"... I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction. ..."
"... The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. ..."
"... I think Iran/Contra was the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way. ..."
"... Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors. ..."
Jun 27, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Republicans and Democrats, along with almost all of the media, have accepted the lie that the Russians engaged in unprecedented "interference" in the 2016 Presidential election. It is a ridiculous proposition and is based on a presumption rather than actual evidence. The Intel Community said it is true so, by definition, it must be true.

Let's focus on the actual numbers. How much money did the Russians spend? According to Robert Mueller, $1.25 million per month . If you start that money clock in May of 2016, that means those pesky Rookies spent $8.75 million. But let us be generous and add on the previous four months, essentially starting the clock in January 2016 before the first primary votes. That brings the total to $13 million.

Hillary and Donald, by contrast, spent over $81 million on Facebook alone . According to TechCrunch:

Russian information troll farm the Internet Research Agency spent just 0.05 percent as much on Facebook ads as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump's campaigns combined in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election, yet still reached a massive audience. While there might have been other Russian disinformation groups, the IRA spent $46,000 on pre-election day Facebook ads compared to $81 million spent by Clinton and Trump together, discluding political action committees who could have spent even more than that on the campaigns' behalf.

Trump and Clinton, when you factor in their various political action committees, spent millions more.

A fuller analysis of the spending on the major social media platforms was provided by Medium.com :

Surprisingly, Clinton's campaign was overall more active on Twitter and on Facebook than Trump's , generating 19 percent more messages (11,475 messages by Clinton to 9,390 by Trump). On Facebook, Clinton generated 500 more messages than Trump. While Trump's tweets seemed to garner more news coverage, Clinton's campaign was actually substantially more active on social media, generating 25 messages a day on average to Trump's 20.

Yet, Trump's social media following was larger than Clinton's . In November 2015, Clinton had 1.7 million followers on Facebook. By Election Day that had grown to 8.4 million, a 394 percent increase. Trump had 4.2 million Followers on Facebook in November 2015. By Election Day, that number jumped to 12.35 million, a 194 percent increase. So, while Clinton saw a greater increase, Trump still had nearly 4 million more followers. . . .

All of this suggests that while Clinton's campaign was overall more active on its social media accounts, it did not receive the same amount of attention and support on social media as compared with Donald Trump. . . .

In the last months of the campaign, generally the focus shifted to voter registration and then get-out-the vote efforts. Social media can be a useful starting place for helping give supporters events and activities to do to be part of the campaign and to help with the effort of winning the election. Although both campaigns, indeed, increased their calls-to-action in the last two months of the campaign, Clinton beat Trump in volume of such messages on Facebook and Twitter, producing a third more call-to-action type messages (See Figure 17). If we only look at Facebook, however, Trump's campaign produced as many call-to-action type message as Clinton in October.

When it came to asking people to vote, the Clinton campaign produced more than twice as many messages asking for people to vote on election day on the two platforms (See Figure 18), but most of that was on Twitter. On Facebook, both campaigns urged people to vote at the same rate, but on Twitter, Clinton's campaign produces three times more appeals for votes than does Trump.

So, the Lilliputian Russians, spending a pittance compared to the Goliaths of the Clinton and Trump campaigns, was the deciding factor in 2016? Bullshit.

The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC) did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. Nor did the IC look back at the Russian and Soviet Union covert propaganda efforts over the previous 90 years. If you are going to do a comparison you need to have a benchmark. This is what we know for certain--Russia and its predecessor, the USSR, ran comprehensive and continuous information operations in the United States, including computer network operations.

No one can say with any degree of certainty that what Russia did in 2016 was qualitatively and quantitatively different. Also, the IC is completely silent on the efforts of other countries, such as China and Israel. Nope, just accept on faith that the Russians committed an attack worse than Pearl Harbor.

I had my own experience with Russian media influence, or the lack of such influence to be more precise. I was interviewed on Russia Today aka RT on March 4, 2017 to comment on Donald Trump's claim that the FBI had wiretapped Trump Towers. During that interview I noted that the Brits, not the FBI, were ones doing electronic surveillance of Trump. And how did the public and the media react to that bomb shell pronouncement by me? Crickets. No reaction.

The crazy insistence that Russia grossly interfered in our 2016 election is a canard. Too bad the vast majority of America has bought into this absurd nonsense. Yes, there were groups linked to the Russian government that were pushing stories on social media. The Chinese did the same thing. So did the Israelis and the Brits. I am sure there are other countries who were pushing their own agenda as well. But that is a truth American is too damn lazy to grasp.

Posted at 08:04 AM in Larry Johnson , Russiagate | Permalink


joanna , 27 June 2019 at 08:21 AM

The pathetic and laughable U.S. intelligence community (aka IC)

yes, when exactly did they get laughable? After you left with a solid pension, I would assume, or a long time before?

Larry Johnson , 27 June 2019 at 09:57 AM
Well, you're dead ass wrong. Shocker. I did not "leave" with a solid pension. I stayed four years. No pension. But I did maintain clearances and continued to work with CIA, DIA and NSA over the ensuing 25 years. My criticism is grounded in experience. I think Iran/Contra was the watershed moment. The CIA became very politicized and the quality of analysis and spy trade craft declined significantly. John Brennan turned the place into a freak show. When you have "Dykes on Bikes" day at CIA Headquarters you know you have lost your way.
Fred , 27 June 2019 at 09:57 AM
"...did not do a state-by-state breakdown of how these various social media campaigns operated in those states that swung the election to Trump. "
Hilary's campaign staff didn't do this level of work when directing their own media efforts either. At some point she, being the head of the campaign, should have been able to get answers to the questions "what is the return for each advertising effort" and "what does that do to the electoral vote count." Not only is the IC community discredited but so should most of the Democratic media operations and campaign advisors.

[Apr 24, 2019] Why then Mueller backed off (in panic) from the indicted' readiness to show up in court?

Apr 24, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: April 23, 2019 at 11:19 pm GMT

@Sean "Trump owes the Russians nothing, he was their way to stop Clinton."

-- Sean, you seem as taking really seriously the $4.700 spent by Russians on the Google ads as well as the indictment of Russian "hackers and trolls" (the alleged army of Kremlin) in absentia. Why then Mueller backed off (in panic) from the indicted' readiness to show up in court?

Your thinking is not original: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democratic-operatives-created-fake-russian-bots-in-alabama-race-designed-to-link-kremlin-to-republican-roy-moore

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-13/google-ceo-exposes-shocking-full-extent-russian-meddling-2016

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/04/mueller-russia-interference-election-case-delay-570627

You may have some special grievances against Russia and Russians, but why such obvious depreciation of your intelligence by repeating after Adam Schiff?

[Apr 21, 2019] The Internet Research Agency only spent, according to the report itself, only spent $100,000, actually, on their activity in terms of buying advertising in Facebook and Twitter

Apr 20, 2019 | therealnews.com

GREG WILPERT: Yeah. I mean, I think it's also important to note that the Internet Research Agency only spent, according to the report itself, only spent $100,000, actually, on their activity in terms of buying advertising in Facebook and Twitter.

And that's really absolutely nothing compared to what the campaigns more generally spend in those areas in terms of advertising.

And so the idea that they somehow influence the election just based on social media seems mind boggling to believe...

[Apr 18, 2019] This Deep State stooge Mueller now looks like a compete idiot

Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

somebody , Apr 18, 2019 1:18:58 PM | link

Barr says that the Mueller report insists that Russia attempted to interfere in U.S. elections:
First, the report details efforts by the Internet Research Agency, a Russian company with close ties to the Russian government, to sow social discord among American voters through disinformation and social media operations.

How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is there any IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA activities were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA personnel posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where the viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's activity. To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense.

The claims by social networks that "Russians" did this or that are dubious. Twitter for example recently revised its count of "Russian trolls":

On Feb. 8, Twitter removed 228 accounts from the Russian IRA dataset because the social-media company now believes these accounts were operated by a different trolling network located in Venezuela. "We initially misidentified 228 accounts as connected to Russia," Yoel Roth, Twitter's head of site integrity, wrote in an online post. "As our investigations into their activity continued, we uncovered additional information allowing us to more confidently associate them with Venezuela."
...
Twitter's change to its data undercuts all of these analyses of the troll farm's 2017 activity , Clemson researchers said. There was no surge in IRA Twitter activity in mid-2017, and the high-volume accounts that churned out links to ReportSecret were, in fact, being operated by a different, unknown group operating out of Venezuela, according to the updated data.

Twitter is reluctant to discuss how it connects accounts to trolling networks.

Twitter "is reluctant" because the company has simply no way to find that some real person driven account is a "troll". It is a completely subjective judgement.

How exactly was it established that the IRA intended to "sow social discord". Is there any IRA witness that said so? Any documents? No. It is a made up reasoning. The IRA activities were driven by commercial interests. To get as many page-views as possible IRA personnel posted memes on both sides of the political spectrum simply because that is where the viewership is. Just ask Foxnews or CNN. There was no political intent in the IRA's activity. To claim that it intended to "sow social discord" is baseless nonsense

That does not answer who paid for the clicks, and what was the information the clicks led to. Basically a foreign power is not supposed to run election adverts.

Memes on both sides of the political spectrum could very well have been anti-Hillary ads for Republicans, DNC leaks for Democrats, and pro Hillary/anti Sanders stuff for Sanders supporters, the idea being to motivate Republicans to vote and disgust Democrats to keep them from voting.

Facebook is THE tool you would use to create confusion and cause a break up of social relations, simply by its psychological user profiles and the ability to spread news to some groups but not to others unchecked from the outside.

Any professional in psychological warfare would have a go just for testing.
Cambridge Analytics was a British psychological warfare company - and they cooperated with Russia .

Either business is global or it is not, and if you privatise secret service it is global business :-))


james , Apr 18, 2019 1:21:25 PM | link

thanks b... i look forward to your comments after reading the full report...

"the IRA intended to "sow social discord""... it could be argued social networks - facebook, twitter, instagram and etc. etc. "sow social discord"... is that russias fault too?

obviously there is way too much subjectivity in all of this.. the fact they cia/fbi are unwilling, or unable to define how the clinton e mails came out is another way to add to the subjectivity here.. nothing concrete - just specualation.. russia released them and etc. etc. speculation... where is the proof as b asks? there is none, but there is plenty of subjective speculation and innuendo - all abusing a foreign country... how ethnocentric and convenient that is!

here is a subjective thought.. this is just what the usa deep state wants and just what the western msm is happy to fulfill..

Tobin Paz , Apr 18, 2019 1:31:51 PM | link
@1 Anunnaki

Judge rejects Mueller's request for delay in Russian troll farm case

A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller's request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

WHAT A DISGRACE! Special Counsel Mueller Charged Russian Company Not in Existence at Time of Charge!

What was not yet available until last night was the transcript of the hearing. The reason the Concord Management attorneys called the case a 'proverbial ham sandwich' was because one of the entities indicted by the Mueller team, Concord Catering, was not in existence at the time the crimes were alleged to have taken place.
chet380 , Apr 18, 2019 2:14:44 PM | link
One of the Russian companies charged by Mueller, Concord Management and Consulting LLC, hired American lawyers to defend it an American court -- the US prosecutors are fighting tooth and nail to to prevent the obtaining o pre-trial discovery of documents ... 3 million documents have been declared by the prosecutors as being "sensitive" and non-discoverable ... the battle continues.

[Mar 27, 2019] Russia is perforce the enemy that Washington needs in order to stay in the business of Empire by David Stockman

Notable quotes:
"... Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America. ..."
"... Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion. ..."
"... The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage the Trump presidency. ..."
"... William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police. ..."
"... So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site. That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7 megabytes per second. ..."
"... The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about $100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election. ..."
"... Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000 "impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to do it with their own dime, time and bile. ..."
Mar 27, 2019 | original.antiwar.com

Originally from: Not Mueller Time: Hey, MSM, This Dud's For You! ,

Now that the giant Mueller Nothingburger (with a side of crow-flavored fries, per Jim Kunstler) has been officially delivered unto the mainstream media's wailing and gnashing of teeth, the essence of the matter should be obvious: To wit, the RussiaGate Collusion story was always way above the pay grade of the legal sleuths and gunslingers who wasted $25 million on it – and notwithstanding 2,800 subpoenas, 500 witnesses, 40 FBI agents and 21 lawyers.

This prosecutorial blitzkrieg had no chance of discovering the nefarious facts of conspiracy, however, because there never were any worthy of adult consideration. To the contrary, from day #1 the whole cock-and-bull story was based on a syllogism which held that Trump's very election victory and support for rapprochement with Russia were in themselves proof of a conspiracy with the Kremlin to steal the election.

That is to say, by the lights of the Dems, official Washington and their mainstream media echo chamber, Hillary Clinton could not have lost the 2016 election to the worst GOP candidate in history including Barry Goldwater and Alf Landon (true) without the sinister intervention of a foreign power hostile to Hillary.

Therefore, Putin and the Russians elected Trump. Q.E.D.

Likewise, Russia is perforce the enemy that Washington needs in order to stay in the business of Empire. So advocacy of rapprochement with Moscow was per se evidence that the Kremlin had blackmail (kompromat for the RussiaGate cognoscenti) on Trump and his campaign.

Once these predicates were established, of course, any old dog-eared "facts" could be hung on the frame in order to establishment an air of verisimilitude.

But now we know. Strip away the false predicates and the flotsam and jetsam of the case fall flat on their face. Even 22 months of Mueller Time couldn't stich together a Humpty-Dumpty that never was.

As it happens, however, there has been all along a perfectly plausible alternative explanation for why Trump won and why repairing relations with Russia made eminent good sense.

Namely, that America is suffering Regime Failure. Thus, wrong-headed Washington policies have brought prosperity to Wall Street but not main street, which is what actually explains why Trump won the left-behind precincts of Flyover America.

Regime Failure has also fostered confrontation with Russia when it is no threat to homeland security at all, but so doing has vilified Putin and Russia to the point that random dots of RussiaGate got woven into a preposterous theory of collusion.

What is left without the syllogistic predicates, of course, are the ludicrous threadbare facts of the case.

After all, can there be anything more pitiful after 22 months of prosecutorial scorched earth on the Russian collusion file than Mueller's list of indictments. These include:

That's all she wrote and it's about as pathetic as it gets. Mueller should have been guffawed out of town on account of this tommyrot long before belatedly delivering a report that proved exactly that.

So it is perhaps a measure of the degree to which the Imperial City has fallen prey to the Trump Derangement Syndrome that the five core events of the case survived as long as they did. In fact, it has long been evident from public information that there was nothing nefarious about any of these ragged building blocks of the case:

The foundation document which turned these random developments into the Russia Collusion story, of course, was the January 6, 2017 report entitled, "Assessing Russian Activities And Intentions in Recent US Elections". The report was nothing of the kind, of course, and is now well-understood to have been written by outgoing CIA director John Brennan and a hand-picked posse of politicized analysts from the CIA, FBI and NSA. It was essentially a political screed thinly disguised as the product of the professional intelligence community and was designed to discredit and sabotage the Trump presidency.

And it was lied about over and over by the MSM who called it an assessment of the 17 US intelligence agencies when it was nothing of the kind, and said so right on the cover page.

In fact, when we first read this ballyhooed report our thought was that someone at the Onion had pilfered the CIA logo and published a sidesplitting satire.

The 9-pager on RT America, which is presented as evidence of "Kremlin messaging", is so sophomoric and hackneyed that it could have been written by a summer intern at the CIA. It consists entirely of a sloppy catalogue of leftist and libertarian based dissent from mainstream policy that has been aired on RT America on such subversive topics as Occupy Wall Street, anti-fracking, police brutality, foreign interventionism and civil liberties.

Actually, your editor has appeared dozens of times on RT America and advocated nearly every position cited by the CIA as evidence of nefarious Russian propaganda.

And we thought it up all by ourselves!

So, yes, we do think US intervention in Syria was wrong; that Georgia was the aggressor when it invaded South Ossetia; that the American people have been disenfranchised and need to "take this government back"; that Washington runs a "surveillance state" where civil liberties are being ridden roughshod upon; that Wall Street is riven with "greed" and the "US national debt" is out of control; that the two-party system is a "sham "and that it doesn't represent the views of "one-third of the population" (at least!); and that most especially after killing millions in unnecessary wars Washington has "no moral right to teach the rest of the world".

So there you have it: Policy views on various topics that are embraced in some instances by both your libertarian editor and the left-wing Nation magazine were held to be examples of Russian messaging, and alarming evidence of nefarious meddling in our electoral process at that.

In fact, the single proposition in the entire ten-pages of political opinionating that relates to an actual Russian intrusion (other than the hideous St. Petersburg troll farm which we debunk below) in the American electoral process is the completely discredited notion that the Russian GRU hacked the DNC emails and handed them off to WikiLeaks

No, not at all.

William Binney, who is the father of modern NSA internet spying technologies, says that the DNC emails were leaked on a thumb-drive and couldn't have been hacked as a technical matter; and equally competent analysts have shown that Guccifer 2.0 is almost surely a NSA contrived fiction based on the oldest trick in the police precinct station house – planting evidence, in this case telltale Cyrillic letters and the name of a notorious head of the Soviet secret police.

Indeed, if the Russians did it – from a troll farm in St. Petersburg or the Kremlin itself – the fingerprints from any remote hacking operation would be all over the computers involved. Moreover, the National Security Agency (NSA) would have a record of the breach stored at one of its server farms because it does capture and store everything that comes into the US over the internet.

Said record, of course, would amount to the Smoking Intercept. So the only thing Mueller really needed to do was to call the head of NSA and request the NSA intercept – something he obviously didn't do or it would have leaked long ago.

In the alternative, if NSA has no such record, he could have confiscated the DNC computers – which had never even been inspected by the FBI, let alone taken into custody – to determine whether William Binney is right.

That didn't happen, either, or it too would have leaked in a heartbeat.

So what we are left with is the fact that Binney, a NSA veteran and actually the father of much of today's NSA internet spying capability, says that the recorded download speed of the DNC emails could only have been done by plugging a thumb-drive into the machines on site. That is, nothing downloads across 5,000 miles of digital expanse at the recorded 22.7 megabytes per second.

In short, if the Russians hacked them, the evidence is all there in the hard drives; and if they didn't, the entire RussiaGate hoax should have been shutdown long ago.

That's because the only thing that remotely smacks of untoward meddling by the Kremlin is the DNC emails – and even then, they only concerned intra-party squabbles between the Clinton and the Sandernista factions of the Dem party that were already well advertised and known to the American electorate.

Cyber Garbage From the St. Petersburg Troll Farm

By contrast, another prime exhibit in the meddling narrative is the pitiful efforts of the Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency (IRA). This is was cited over and over by the RussiaGaters as evidence of Putin's nefarious hand at work, but did they ever investigate the matter?

The fact is, the IRA was such a belly-splitting joke that they only thing it proved is that prosecutor Mueller did actually indict 13 Russian-speaking ham sandwiches.

Indeed, the joker in the whole deck is that the nefarious"troll farm" in St. Petersburg was not even a Russian intelligence agency operation at all.

It was just "Russian" even by the careful terminology of Barr's summary. As it happened, the RussiaGate hysteria had reached such a point that any contact with any of Russia's 144 million citizens became inherently suspect, as if that beleaguered nation had become a race of evildoers.

Actually, the IRA was the relatively harmless Hobby Farm of a fanatical Russian oligarch and ultra-nationalist, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who has a great big beef against Imperial Washington's demonization of Russia and Vlad Putin. Apparently, the farm was (it's apparently being disbanded) the vehicle through which he gave Washington the middle finger and buttered up his patron.

Prigozhin is otherwise known as "Putin's Cook" because he made his fortune in St. Petersburg restaurants that Putin favored and via state funded food service operations at Russian schools and military installations.

Like most Russian oligarchs not in jail, he apparently tithes in gratitude to the Kremlin: In this case, by bankrolling the rinky-dink operation at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg that was the object of Mueller's pretentious foray into the flotsam and jetsam of social media low life.

Prigozhin's trolling farm was grandly called the Internet Research Agency (IRA), but what it actually did was hire (apparently) unemployed 20-somethings at $4-8 per hour to pound out ham-handed political messaging on social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, etc. They banged away twelve hours at a shift on a quota-driven paint-by-the-internet-numbers basis where their output was rated for engagements, likes, retweets etc.

Whatever these keyboard drones might have been, they were not professional Russian intel operators. And the collection of broken English postings strewn throughout Mueller's indictment were not one bit scary.

The pure grandstanding nature of this blow against the purported election meddling of the nefarious Russians is more than evident in the 3,000 ads IRA bought on Facebook for about $100,000 – more than half of which were posted after the election.

Yet here's a typical example of how the Russians stormed into America's sacred election space – even if according to Facebook this particular ad got less than 10,000 "impressions" and the mighty sum of 160 "shares" . For crying out loud, it didn't take any nefarious Russian intelligence agent to post this kind of cartoonish Islamophobia. There are millions of American xenophobes more than happy to do it with their own dime, time and bile.

[Jan 13, 2019] So even if the IRA didn't manage to make a profit, the net cost for them must have been much lower than $100,000

Notable quotes:
"... Does anyone know how much revenue it made from that operation? Facebook must know but they've kept quiet about it. Same with Mueller. ..."
Jan 13, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Brendan , Jan 13, 2019 5:12:30 PM | link

The Internet Research Agency (IRA) paid $100,000 for Facebook ads and then charged its customers for the clickbait service (between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content). So even if the IRA didn't manage to make a profit, the net cost for them must have been much lower than $100,000.

Does anyone know how much revenue it made from that operation? Facebook must know but they've kept quiet about it. Same with Mueller.

[Jan 04, 2019] Eric Dubelier emerges as Robert Mueller's top courtroom adversary by Rowan Scarborough

Notable quotes:
"... Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines. ..."
"... He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election. ..."
"... " Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller 's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of Justice Department scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective." ..."
"... The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord 's chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says. "When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing. ..."
"... "That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have," Mr. Dubelier said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years." ..."
"... But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord 's access to "sensitive" evidence that Mr. Mueller won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation. "This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate." ..."
"... On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery. Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence for its national security implications. ..."
"... In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti- Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians? ..."
"... Mr. Steele didn't register under the Justice Department 's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier 's argument of "selective prosecution." ..."
Jan 01, 2019 | www.washingtontimes.com

A former federal prosecutor has emerged as special counsel Robert Mueller 's most persistent courtroom critic. It's not Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney and now President Trump 's ubiquitous defender, or any of cable TV's prosecutors-turned-pundits. He is Eric A. Dubelier , a litigator for the Reed Smith law firm who knows international law and the D.C. playing field. He served eight years prosecuting cases as a Justice Department assistant U.S. attorney in Washington. He refers to his former employer as "the real Justice Department ," implying that Mr. Mueller 's team is something less. His biting remarks have come in months of court filings and oral arguments. Mr. Dubelier has depicted Mr. Mueller as a rogue prosecutor willfully ignoring Justice Department guidelines.

He has accused Mr. Mueller of creating a "make-believe crime" against his Russian client, Concord Management and Consulting, which is accused of funding a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election.

So far, the federal judge presiding over the case has sided with Mr. Mueller .

Mr. Dubelier charges that the Mueller team violated the confidentially of Concord 's counter evidence while hiding documents Concord needs for its defense. The prosecutor wants to "whisper secrets to the judge," Mr. Dubelier says, as Mr. Mueller is calculating the "short-term political value of a conviction" and not worrying about an appeals court defeat years later. An example: In a Dec. 20 motion, Mr. Dubelier resurrected a botched case spearheaded by Mr. Mueller 's top prosecutor, Andrew Weissmann.

Mr. Weissmann headed the Justice Department 's Enron task force nearly two decades ago. He won a conviction against the accounting firm Arthur Andersen for shredding the defunct energy firm's financial documents. Years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. The 2005 decision effectively said that Andersen, by then out of business and its 28,000 employees gone, hadn't committed a crime.

"Mr. Dubelier is exactly right on Mr. Mueller 's motives and tactics," said Sidney Powell, whose book "License to Lie" exposes years of Justice Department scandals. "His lieutenant Weissmann is the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct and has no regard for the facts or the law. He will make up whatever he wants to win, and the entire like-minded team views as an accomplishment everyone whose life they destroy in pursuit of their objective."

'Made up a crime to fit the facts'

Concord Management and Consulting is an unlikely client. Legal observers opined that when Mr. Mueller brought charges against various Russians who hacked computers and trolled the 2016 election, no defendant would travel the nearly 5,000 miles to show up for trial.

No defendant has personally arrived. But Concord did appear quickly after the February indictment. Of 28 Russian individuals and firms charged with election interference by Mr. Mueller , only Concord has appeared in U.S. District Court, in this instance in the person of the aggressive Mr. Dubelier .

The Washington defense attorney seemed to catch the Mueller team off guard by immediately demanding disclosure of evidence. Disclosure, Mr. Dubelier argues, is a sacred legal right in America, even for the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, Concord 's chief with close ties to Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Concord is accused of an elaborate conspiracy with another Russian operation, the Internet Research Agency. The indictment accuses Concord of providing the troll farm $1.2 million monthly to defraud the U.S. The two firms set up fake personas and false Twitter accounts, Facebook ads and other social media posts mostly to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump .

In a separate case, Mr. Mueller brought charges in July against 12 Russian intelligence officers for hacking Democratic computers, stealing emails and funneling them to three websites for distribution.

Mr. Dubelier argues that people are free to create fake accounts. It's done all the time, he says. "When it comes to political speech, one is free to pretend to be whomever he or she wants to be and to say whatever he or she wants to say," he said at an Oct. 15 hearing.

"That's why in this case this special counsel made up a crime to fit the facts that they have," Mr. Dubelier said. "And that's the fundamental danger with the entire special counsel concept: that they operate outside the parameters of the Department of Justice in a way that is absolutely inconsistent with the consistent behavior of the Department of Justice in these cases for the past 30 years."

Mr. Dubelier lost that argument with U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich, who rejected his bid to dismiss the case.

But he wasn't done. There is an ongoing battle over Concord 's access to "sensitive" evidence that Mr. Mueller won't let its officers see because they are Russians with ties to Mr. Putin. Mr. Dubelier has expressed exasperation. "This equates to the burden of preparing for trial without any ability to discuss the evidence with the client who is to be put on trial," he said. "This has never happened before in reported case law because the notion is too ludicrous to contemplate."

What Mr. Mueller has turned over is often irrelevant to mounting a defense, such as promotion emails for airlines and personal naked selfie photographs, Mr. Dubelier said in a December filing. The special counsel is keeping most relevant information between himself and Judge Friedrich, excluding Mr. Dubelier .

Why no probe of dossier writer?

Mr. Mueller won the argument over "sensitive" material. He now wants to hold closed sessions with the judge over classified information -- again, without Mr. Dubelier .

Mr. Dubelier responded in a Dec. 27 filing: "The Special Counsel has made up a crime that has never been prosecuted before in the history of the United States, and now seeks to make up secret procedures for communicating ex parte [meaning no defense counsel present] to the court which have never been employed in any reported criminal case not involving classified discovery."

The defense attorney admitted his motion is "likely fruitless" because Judge Friedrich previously has ruled against Concord . Many documents are in Russian, a culturally different language than English. One Russian word, Mr. Dubelier says, "can be translated into the English words 'chief,' 'boss' or 'chef' -- a distinction that is critically important since international media often refers to Mr. Prigozhin as 'Putin's chef.'"

On another matter, Mr. Dubelier is accusing the Mueller team of skullduggery. Judge Friedrich last summer approved the prosecutor's request for a "firewall counsel" to review evidence for its national security implications.

Mr. Dubelier said he submitted evidence to the firewall lawyer only to see it fall into the hands of Mr. Mueller 's team, who began using it to further investigate Concord . "Surely a remarkable coincidence," Mr. Dubelier said.

In another pre-trial argument, Mr. Dubelier is the first defense attorney to ask this question: Why isn't British ex-spy Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to obtain anti- Trump information from the Kremlin to influence 2016 voting, being investigated by the Justice Department for election interference just like the Russians?

Mr. Steele didn't register under the Justice Department 's Foreign Agent Registration Act, under which Mr. Mueller has brought charges against a number of defendants, including the Concord team. Judge Friedrich rejected Mr. Dubelier 's argument of "selective prosecution."

Mr. Mueller 's counter-motion boils down to this: Mr. Prigozhin is a criminal fugitive who blatantly interfered in the U.S. election and is not entitled to sensitive national security information he would share with the Kremlin intelligence. In a new battleground, the Mueller team wants to show the judge top secret material to persuade her to keep it from the defense. "Disclosure of such information could cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security," the Mueller filing stated. Judge Friedrich ruled in June that Mr. Prigozhin is prohibited from viewing non-classified sensitive information that details how the government obtained evidence.

The Mueller team argued: "Discovery in this case contains sensitive information about investigative techniques and cooperating witnesses that goes well beyond the information that will be disclosed at trial Information within this case's discovery identifies sources, methods, and techniques used to identify the foreign actors behind these interference operations the government has particularized concerns about discovery in this case being disclosed to Russian intelligence services."

Mr. Mueller says that as long as Mr. Prigozhin, whom the U.S. sanctioned and then indicted for election interference, remains in Russia, he isn't entitled to see sensitive evidence.

Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.

[Jan 02, 2019] Election tampering via false identity by Democratic operatives: The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.

Notable quotes:
"... a text book case of "projection" by demorats -their own crimes of sedition and treason projected onto trump via the russians. ..."
"... The thing that is most difficult for Americans to grasp is that they do not control their own government and have not for many decades. ..."
Jan 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Oldguy05 , 31 minutes ago link

George Carlin on some cultural issues.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLuZjpxmsZQ

vampirekiller , 35 minutes ago link

"The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Demorats Experts masquerading as progressive Republicans and Democrats"............FIFY

It's all they have left after being rendered politically irrelevant and statistically insignificant in November 2016 by the deplorables. ROFLMAO.........this civil war needs to die in federal government so we do not waste money in mass deportations to an established island nation surrounded by 1000 nautical miles of water.

Baron Samedi , 1 hour ago link

"Election tampering via false identity" sounds like the right kind of language for a federal law -- but I'm betting there is something already out there (at state/fed level), and am not wild about yet more laws (which [[[they]]] get to ignore anyway).

bh2 , 1 hour ago link

"tech specialists who lean Democratic," Tech specialists who lean criminal. A distinction without a difference, of course.

hooligan2009 , 2 hours ago link

a text book case of "projection" by demorats -their own crimes of sedition and treason projected onto trump via the russians.

one can only hope that Mueller has found the proof that DemoRats were responsible for attempts to rig the presidential elections - aided and abetted by criminal journalists also guilty of sedition and treason.

I Am Jack's Macroaggression , 2 hours ago link

The Moon of A on Hamilton 68: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/russian-bots-how-an-anti-russian-lobby-creates-fake-news.html

A new and improved version of H68 coming soon! https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/hamilton-68/

it's a bunch of Ultra-Zionist Jews, which is the only reason their ******** gets published all over the (((media))) as if at all credible.

https://securingdemocracy.gmfus.org/about-us/advisory-council/

I mean, ******* Chertoff and Kristol's involvement says it all.

OT : Trump Gives US Troops Four Months to Leave Syria – Report I would not be surprised if US troops in Manbij are attacked/killed soon and immediate blame put on the SAA.

lincolnsteffens , 1 hour ago link

Didn't look it up but someone told me that Kristol's parents were passionate Marxists.

dcmbuffy , 2 hours ago link

democrats are corrupt- plain and simple- shameful and with no regard to who knows that are corrupt- no shame- "I'm Gettn' mines!!!"

navy62802 , 2 hours ago link

As if it ******* matters at this point. Get real. We are watching a display of raw power right now. Well connected individuals are calling the shots right now, well outside of the legal system. If you haven't realized that over the past 2 years, you haven't been paying attention. Furthermore, no amount of factual proof is going to result in the actual criminals being held to account. The thing that is most difficult for Americans to grasp is that they do not control their own government and have not for many decades. They do not have an equal system of justice. Instead, the US is ruled by a secret oligarchy which exists above the US legal code. This is the harsh reality we are watching be revealed right now.

jughead , 2 hours ago link

We're watching an attempted display of raw power...that hasn't been going as planned. If it had, Trump would either be gone or automagically transformed into the next iteration of BushBama. We are fly in the ointment...buzz buzz

loveyajimbo , 2 hours ago link

No prosecution... our DOJ does not prosecute anything political... no matter how serious the felony. Just ask the ***-maggots Hillary, Brennan, Comey, Clapper and Lynch.

Lord Raglan , 2 hours ago link

Wow! What does Sherlock Holmes Mueller think of this? This story makes Mueller out to be the biggest fraud of all time and his attorneys tantamount to the Keystone Cops. Where are they on all this?

chunga , 2 hours ago link

It's too bad there isn't any opposition to these "Democrat Operatives".

SmackDaddy , 2 hours ago link

There was. We fire bombed the **** out of them in 1945.

philipat , 2 hours ago link

Strange that this story has not featured prominently on the front pages of NYT/WaPo or on CNN?

[Jan 02, 2019] Russian bots - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Atlantic Council ..."
"... Alliance for Securing Democracy. ..."
"... Alliance for Securing Democracy ..."
"... That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases. ..."
"... For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity. ..."
"... American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. ..."
"... In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public. ..."
"... The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. ..."
"... The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing. ..."
"... I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection. ..."
"... The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions. ..."
"... Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. ..."
"... The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend). ..."
"... Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with. ..."
"... Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all. ..."
"... That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media. ..."
"... Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one. ..."
"... War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality. ..."
"... The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on ..."
"... The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys." ..."
"... Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest). ..."
"... Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia. ..."
"... Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States. ..."
"... One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment. Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction ..."
"... The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid. ..."
"... Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play." ..."
Feb 20, 2018J | www.moonofalabama.org

The U.S. mainstream media are going nuts. They now make up and report stories based on the uncritical acceptance of an algorithm they do not want to understand and which is known to produce fake results.

See for example these three stories:

From the last link:

SAN FRANCISCO -- One hour after news broke about the school shooting in Florida last week, Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia released hundreds of posts taking up the gun control debate.

The accounts addressed the news with the speed of a cable news network. Some adopted the hashtag #guncontrolnow. Others used #gunreformnow and #Parklandshooting. Earlier on Wednesday, before the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., many of those accounts had been focused on the investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.

In other words - the "Twitter accounts suspected of having links to Russia" were following the current news just as cable news networks do. When a new sensational event happened they immediately jumped onto it. But the NYT authors go to length to claim that there is some nefarious Russian scheme behind this that uses automated accounts to spread divisive issues.

Those claims are based on this propaganda project:

Last year, the Alliance for Securing Democracy, in conjunction with the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, created a website that tracks hundreds of Twitter accounts of human users and suspected bots that they have linked to a Russian influence campaign.

The "Alliance for Securing Democracy" is run by military lobbyists, CIA minions and neo-conservative propagandists. Its claimed task is:

... to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe.

There is no evidence that Vladimir Putin ever made or makes such efforts.

The ASD "Hamilton 68" website shows graphics with rankings of "top items" and "trending items" allegedly used by Russian bots or influence agents. There is nothing complicate behind it. It simply tracks the tweets of 600 Twitter users and aggregates the hashtags they use. It does not say which Twitter accounts its algorithms follows. It claims that the 600 were selected by one of three criteria: 1. People who often tweet news that also appears on RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik News, two general news sites sponsored by the Russian government; 2. People who "openly profess to be pro-Russian"; 3. accounts that "appear to use automation" to boost the same themes that people in group 1 and 2 tweet about.

Nowhere does the group say how many of the 600 accounts it claims to track belong to which group. Are their 10 assumed bots or 590 in the surveyed 600 accounts? And how please does one "openly profess" to be pro-Russian? We don't know and the ASD won't say.

On December 25 2017 the "Russian influence" agents or bots who - according to NYT - want to sow divisiveness and subvert democracy, wished everyone a #MerryChristmas.


bigger

The real method the Hamilton 68 group used to select the 600 accounts it tracks is unknown. The group does not say or show how it made it up. Despite that the NYT reporters, Sheera Frenkel and Daisuke Wakabayashi, continue with the false assumptions that most or all of these accounts are automated, have something to do with Russia and are presumably nefarious:

Russian-linked bots have rallied around other divisive issues, often ones that President Trump has tweeted about. They promoted Twitter hashtags like #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem and #takeaknee after some National Football League players started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice.

The automated Twitter accounts helped popularize the #releasethememo hashtag , ...

The Daily Beast reported earlier that the last claim is definitely false :

Twitter's internal analysis has thus far found that authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots, are driving #ReleaseTheMemo . There are no preliminary indications that the Twitter activity either driving the hashtag or engaging with it is either predominantly Russian.

The same is presumably true for the other hashtags.

The Dutch IT expert and blogger Marcel van den Berg was wondering how Dutch keywords and hashtags showed up on the Hamilton 68 "Russian bots" dashboard. He found ( Dutch , English auto translation) that the dashboard is a total fraud:

In recent weeks, I have been keeping a close eye on Hamilton 68. Every time a Dutch hashtag was shown on the website, I made a screenshot. Then I noted what was playing at that moment and I watched the Tweets with this hashtag. Again I could not find any Tweet that seemed to be from a Russian troll.

In all cases, the hash tags that Hamilton 68 reported were trending topics in the Netherlands . In all cases there was much to do around the subject of the hashtag in the Netherlands. Many people were angry or shared their opinion on the subject on Twitter. And even if there were a few tweets with Russian connections between them, the effect is zero. Because they do not stand out among the many other, authentic Tweets.

Van den Berg lists a dozen examples he analyzed in depth.

The anti-Russian Bellingcat group around couch blogger Eliot Higgins is sponsored by the NATO propaganda shop Atlantic Council . It sniffs through open source stuff to blame Russia or Syria wherever possible. Bellingcat was recently a victim of the "Russian bots" - or rather of the ASD website. On February 10 the hashtag #bellingcat trended to rank 2 of the dashboard.


bigger

Bellingcat was thus, according to the Hamilton 68 claims, under assault by hordes of nefarious Russian government sponsored bots.

The Bellingcat folks looked into the issue and found that only six people on Twitter, none of them an automated account , had used the #bellingcat hashtag in the last 48 hours. Some of the six may have opinions that may be "pro-Russian", but as Higgins himself says :

[I]n my opinion, it's extremely unlikely the people listed are Russian agents

The pro-NATO propaganda shop Bellingcat thus debunked the pro-NATO propaganda shop Alliance for Securing Democracy.

The fraudsters who created the Hamilton 68 crap seem to have filled their database with rather normal people from all over the world who's opinions they personally dislike. Those then are the "Russian bots" who spread "Russian influence" and divisiveness.

Moreover - what is the value of its information when six normal people out of millions of active Twitter users can push a hashtag with a handful of tweets to the top of the dashboard?

But the U.S. media writes long gushing stories about the dashboard and how it somehow shows automated Russian propaganda. They go to length to explain that this shows "Russian influence" and a "Russian" attempt to sow "divisiveness" into people's minds.

This is nuts.

Last August, when the Hamilton 68 project was first released, the Nation was the only site critical of it. It predicted :

The import of GMF's project is clear: Reporting on anything that might put the US in a bad light is now tantamount to spreading Russian propaganda.

It is now even worse than that. The top ranking of the #merrychristmas hashtag shows that the algorithm does not even care about good or bad news. The tracked twitter accounts are normal people.

The whole project is just a means to push fake stories about alleged "Russian influence" into U.S. media. Whenever some issue creeps up on its dashboard that somehow fits its false "Russian bots" and "divisiveness" narrative the Alliance for Securing Democracy contacts the media to spread its poison. The U.S. media, - CNN, Wired, the New York Times - are by now obviously devoid of thinking journalists and fact checkers. They simple re-package the venom and spread it to the public.

How long will it take until people die from it?

Posted by b on February 20, 2018 at 03:15 PM | Permalink

Comments next page " It's all too reminiscent of Duck Soup:


Clueless Joe , Feb 20, 2018 3:45:14 PM | link

"to publicly document and expose Vladimir Putin's ongoing efforts to subvert democracy in the United States and Europe."

That's pretty rich, coming from a country and from people who actually genuinely, and in proven ways, have subverted democracy in Europe since the late 1940s - Italy being one of the clearest cases.

ken , Feb 20, 2018 3:46:05 PM | link
For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia. I can't believe it has to do with the economy. There's got to be a far better nefarious reason. Even during the real cold war we tried to avoid conflict. Absolute insanity.
xor , Feb 20, 2018 4:11:10 PM | link
The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.
karlof1 , Feb 20, 2018 4:30:11 PM | link
Gee, what could go wrong formulating policy founded upon a series of Big Lies? Kim Dotcom says he has important info the FBI refuses to hear. At the Munich Security Conference , neocon Nicholas Burns, former US Ambassador to NATO, details my assertion's factual basis that current policy is being formed on a series of Big Lies: "Will NATO strengthen itself to contain Russian power in Eastern Europe giving what Russian [sic] has done illegally in Crimea, in the Donbass, and in Georgia ?" [Bolded text are the Big Lies.]

Clearly, this entire psyop was premeditated and its design was hastily done contemporaneously with Russia's Syria intervention. NSA/CIA/FBI knew of HRC's security breeches and rightly assumed their contents would find their way into the election, so the general plan was ready to go prior to WikiLeaks publications. b has uncovered much, and I hope he's planning to publish a book about the entire affair.

Jen , Feb 20, 2018 4:54:59 PM | link
Ken @ 4: There doesn't necessarily need to be One Major Reason for going to war. There may be several reasons all feeding and reinforcing one another and creating a psychological climate in which Going To War is seen as the only solution and is inevitable. The reasons are not just economic and political but cultural and historical.

In some countries allied with the US, the politicians in power are the ideological descendants of those who collaborated with Nazi Germany - so in a sense they are committed to "correcting" what they see as wrong. In the case of current Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, he is the grandson of a former prime minister who once served in General Tojo's World War II cabinet.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WoyZCG9uaUk

That's why pinning down the reason for wanting a war against Russia is so difficult.

Partisan , Feb 20, 2018 5:06:58 PM | link
The whole piece is just hilarious and I laughed out loud all time while reading it.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/16/nyts-really-weird-russiagate-story/

Since the FBI never inspected the DNC's computers first-hand, the only evidence comes from an Irvine, California, cyber-security firm known as CrowdStrike whose chief technical officer, Dmitri Alperovitch, a well-known Putin-phobe, is a fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank that is also vehemently anti-Russian as well as a close Hillary Clinton ally.

Thus, Putin-basher Clinton hired Putin-basher Alperovitch to investigate an alleged electronic heist, and to absolutely no one's surprise, his company concluded that guilty party was Vladimir Putin. Amazing! Since then, a small army of internet critics has chipped away at CrowdStrike for praising the hackers as among the best in the business yet declaring in the same breath that they gave themselves away by uploading a document in the name of "Felix Edmundovich," i.e. Felix E. Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police.

As noted cyber-security expert Jeffrey Carr observed with regard to Russia's two main intelligence agencies: "Raise your hand if you think that a GRU or FSB officer would add Iron Felix's name to the metadata of a stolen document before he released it to the world while pretending to be a Romanian hacker. Someone clearly had a wicked sense of humor."

james , Feb 20, 2018 5:17:19 PM | link
thanks b!

muddy waters.. paid for propaganda.... look at all the russian bots, lol... cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 is in effect... the historic parallels are marked. thank you neo cons! it's working... the ordinary person in the usa can't be this stupid can they?

when does ww3 kick in? is that really what these idiots want? or is it just to prolong the huge defense budget?

Mike Maloney , Feb 20, 2018 5:24:03 PM | link
This is about conditioning voters in Europe and the United States for a long war with Russia and China. In other words, a return to the 1950s. It is not working and becoming increasingly hysterical because societies are not nearly as cohesive as they once were, and the mainstream political parties, while better funded and more top-down organized, are basically hollow. The collapse is coming. Four years or ten, take your pick.
dh , Feb 20, 2018 5:32:10 PM | link
@4 "For the life of me I cannot figure why Americans want a war/conflict with Russia."

Most Americans probably don't. Just the chosen few with the deepest fall-out shelters. The idea is to keep piling the pressure on to countries like Iran and Russia in the hope that their populations will rise up and demand the freedoms that we enjoy in the West....things like uncensored wardrobe malfunctions and transgender washrooms.

Partisan , Feb 20, 2018 6:02:58 PM | link
"Most Americans probably don't."

not true.

let's imagine that we have the pyramid of evilness, by which we measure bestiality of one regime and its constituency. my firm belief is that us would be on the top of that pyramid. Only dilemma would be between Zionist entity and the US.

"How could the masses be made to desire their own repression?" was the question Wilhelm Reich famously asked in the wake of the Reichstagsbrandverordnung (Reichstag Fire Decree, February 28, 1933), which suspended the civil rights protections afforded by the Weimar Republic's democratic constitution.

Hitler had been appointed chancellor on January 30, 1933 and Reich was trying to grapple with the fact that the German people had apparently chosen the authoritarian politics promoted by National Socialism against their own political interests.

Ever since, the question of fascism, or rather the question of why might people vote for their own oppression, has never ceased to haunt political philosophy.2 With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become a pressing one.

An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime.

CarlD , Feb 20, 2018 6:06:06 PM | link
Remember the "USS MAINE"! Media have long agitated for War in US History. Nothing sells newspapers like a good ole war! Demonizing is a way to achieve it. What is sure is that this is a one way street. Once over the cliff, there is no turning back.

How do you tell people that, at the flick of your magic switch, Putin is in fact a swell guy and wonderful human being? Once love is gone who goes back to the filthy, abhorrent and estranged spouse?

Surely the US establishment is playing with fire thinking they will successfully ride out any conflict and come out on top secure in their newly reestablished hegemony on the smoldering ruins of Humanity.

Make no mistake, we are all on the road to hell. Better enjoy todays peace as tomorrow word will be filled with the sweet music of cemeteries.

"Freedom of speech"...

dh , Feb 20, 2018 6:14:14 PM | link
@15 "An American people is in perfect harmony with its regime."

I'm not so sure. I think there are many Americans who deeply distrust their government. But of course they don't want to appear unpatriotic. There are also many who are apathetic and many simply don't know how to change things.

SteveK9 , Feb 20, 2018 6:35:58 PM | link
It's horrible I know to quote a Nazi, but Goring had this right:

Göring: Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.

Gilbert: There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars.

Göring: Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

WorldBLee , Feb 20, 2018 6:36:51 PM | link
American media has graduated from simply repeating the lies of "unnamed government sources" to repeating the lies of any organization unofficially blessed by the powers that be. The skills required to repeat the text verbatim serve them well in both cases. Skepticism is only reserved to anyone who tries to introduce logic or facts into the equation--such as when Jill Stein was interviewed on MSNBC recently. How dare Ms. Stein try to bring FACTS into the discussion!
chet380 , Feb 20, 2018 6:41:04 PM | link
In that The Narrative is tightly controlled in the corporate media, not matter how strong the proofs or arguments about the falsity of these propaganda campaigns are, little or no circulation of those proofs or arguments wlll reach the general public.
Sinc , Feb 20, 2018 6:41:57 PM | link
See info on US 'Twitter' manipulation campaign
Sinc , Feb 20, 2018 6:44:16 PM | link
Sorry, link here
ken , Feb 20, 2018 6:59:01 PM | link
Thanks Jen. It still makes no sense. As a veteran of the Vietnam fiasco, I was pretty much government oriented until McNamara outed the whole thing whining about haw sorry he was. 59,000 dead and he's sorry. They were able to hide the Gulf of Tonkin BS until then. After that I researched the reasons for each war/conflict the USA started and could find no logical reasons except hunger for power. But the little sandbox wars won't destroy the world like a major war/conflict with Russia and it goes nuclear. Almost every politician, and major news organizations are pushing for a war/conflict with Russia. This is insanity as no one will win a war like this and I am sure they know that,,, but they keep the war drums beating anyhow. It simply doesn't make sense. But Thanks again.

Same for dh, #14. Things are soooo stupid, your joking may be closer to the truth than you know. :-)

Skip , Feb 20, 2018 6:59:35 PM | link
@SteveK9 #19

Thank you for the post. I will save it and use it liberally, with proper attributions. When one challenges the tribe on places like Twitter, it is hard to tell who is a real idiot and who is a bot. How do you know? Maybe that the bots go away fairly quickly and the idiots hang around to argue ad infinitum.

oldenyoung , Feb 20, 2018 7:06:23 PM | link
The thing that bothers me, is the fact that the MIC Globalists don't care what we think or how poor their deceptions are. The public perception that "russia did it!!" continues to rise. I wonder what the public acceptance level needs to be for them to execute a MAJOR false flag event. They seem to think they are still on target, and its just a short matter or time...

They are going to do this when the perception management is complete... We really do not need another one of their disasters

Grieved , Feb 20, 2018 7:37:47 PM | link
The bully pushes and pushes until stopped by the first serious push back. The dynamic of the west and the neocon/Zionists at the core is essentially that of the bully. Nations like Venezuela and the Philippines have started to push back, and I hope and feel fairly confident that they will both survive the rage of the US. In some part, they have begun to show the actual powerlessness of the bully.

But the really killer nations - Russia and China - are holding their water as they strengthen their force. I believe that one very serious push back from either of them in the right circumstances will stop the bully. And yet, as they bide their time, we see a curious phenomenon wherein the US is destroying itself from the inside.

It's as if all of the forces that exist to control the country - the lockstep media, the fully rigged markets, the hysterical military, the bought legislature and the crooked courts - are all acting far more strongly than should be necessary. The entire system is over-reacting, over-reaching, over-boiling. And in the course of this, the US is actually shedding power, and at an amazing rate. But not from the action of Russia but from its non-action, the empty space that that allows the bully's dynamic to over-reach, all the way to complete failure.

Is it possible that deep in the security states of Russia and China there's even a study and a model for this? Is the collapse of the US actually being gamed by Russia and China - and through the totally counter-intuitive action of non-action?

Just a thought.

Ghost Ship , Feb 20, 2018 7:51:03 PM | link
>>>> xor | Feb 20, 2018 4:11:10 PM | 6
The cleverest trick used in propaganda against a specific country is to accuse it of what the accuser itself is doing.

I've always put it down to the Washington Establishment having a severe case of psychological projection.

WG , Feb 20, 2018 7:52:38 PM | link
Hey b,
Just wanted to let you know that Joe Lauria mentioned your blog and the article you wrote on the indictment of the 13 Russians. He was on Loud and Clear (Sputnik Radio, Washington DC) today and brought you up at the start of the program.
Glad to see you get some recognition for all the great work you've been doing :)
Mike , Feb 20, 2018 7:53:24 PM | link
Meanwhile, back in 2010:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/when-campaigns-manipulate-social-media/66351/
Jen , Feb 20, 2018 7:53:43 PM | link
Ken @ 24: The warmongering is not intended to make any sense - not many people are trained in critical thinking and logic, and even when they are, they can be swamped by their own emotions or other people's emotions.

Propaganda is intended to appeal to people's emotions and fears. You can try reading works by Edward Bernays - "Crystallizing Public Opinion" (1923) and "Propaganda" (1928) - to see how he uses his uncle Sigmund Freud's theories of the mind to create strategies for manipulating public opinion. https://archive.org/details/EdwardL.BernaysPropaganda

Bernays' books influenced Nazi and Soviet propaganda and Bernays himself was hired by the US government to justify in the public mind the 1954 US invasion of Guatemala.

You may be aware that Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corporation which owns the Wall Street Journal, FOX News and 20th Century Fox studios, is also on the Board of Directors of Genie Energy which owns a subsidiary firm that was granted a licence by an Israeli court to explore and drill for oil and natural gas in Syria's (and Israeli-occupied) Golan Heights.

simjam , Feb 20, 2018 7:59:21 PM | link
The national media speaks as one -with one consistent melody day after day. Who is the conductor? When will one representative of the mainstream media sing solo? There must be a Ray McGovern somewhere among the flock.
V. Arnold , Feb 20, 2018 8:05:33 PM | link
Grieved | Feb 20, 2018 7:37:47 PM | 27

Many of my thoughts as well. The U.S.'s greatest fault is its tacit misunderstanding of just what russia is in fact. They utterly fail to understand the Russian character; forged over 800 years culminating with the defeat of Nazi Germany, absorbing horrific losses; the U.S. fails to understand the effect upon the then Soviets, become todays Russians. Even the god's have abandoned the west...

Debsisdead , Feb 20, 2018 8:53:42 PM | link
I watched bbc news this am in the hope that I would get to see the most awful creature at the 2018 olympics cry her croc tears (long story - a speed skater who cuts off the opposition but has been found out so now when she swoops in front of the others they either skate over her leading to tearful whines from perp about having been 'pushed', or gets disqualified for barging. Last night she got disqualified so as part of my study on whether types like this believe their own bullshit I thought I'd tune in but didn't get that far into the beebs lies)

The bulk of the bulletin was devoted to a 'lets hate Russia' session which featured a quisling who works for the russian arm of BBC (prolly just like cold war days staffed exclusively by MI6/SIS types). This chap, using almost unintelligible english, claimed he had proof at least 50 Russian Mercenaries (question - why are amerikan guns for hire called contractors [remember the Fallujah massacre of 100,000 civilians because amerikan contractors were stupid] yet Russian contractors are called mercenaries by the media?) had been killed in Syria last week. The bloke had evidence of one contractor's death not 50 - the proof was a letter from the Russian government to the guy's mother telling her he didn't qualify for any honours because he wasn't in the Russian military.

The quisling (likely a Ukranian I would say) went on to rabbit about the bloke having also fought in Donbass under contract - to which the 'interviewer (don't ya love it when media 'interview' their own journos - a sure sign that a snippet of toxic nonsense is being delivered) led about how the deceitful Russians had claimed the only Russians fighting in Donbass were contractors - yeah well this bloke was a contractor surely that proves the Russians were telling the truth.

It's not what these propagandists say; they adopt a tone and the audience is meant to hate based on that even when the facts as stated conflict with the media outlet's point of view. Remember the childhood trick of saying "bad dog" ter yer mutt in loving tones - the dog comes to ya tail wagging & licks yer hand. This is that.

The next item was more Syria lies - white helmets footage (altho the beeb is now mostly giving them an alternative name to dodge the facts about white helmets) of bandaged children with flour tipped on their heads.

The evil Syrians and Russians are bombarding Gouta - nary a word about the continuous artillery barrage Gouta has subjected the citizens of Damascus to for the past 4 years, or that the Syrians have repeatedly offered truces and safe passage for civilians. Any injured children need to ask their parents why they weren't allowed to take advantage of the frequent offers of transport out. Maybe the parents are worried 'the resistance' will do its usual and blow up the busloads of children after luring them over with candy.

Anyway I switched off after that so never did learn if little miss cheat had a cry.

ben , Feb 20, 2018 9:17:54 PM | link
Reposting from TRNN: http://therealnews.com/t2/story:21178:Why-is-a-Russian-Troll-Farm-Being-Compared-to-911%3F
integer , Feb 20, 2018 9:23:42 PM | link
Thank you for reporting on this. The people behind the so-called Alliance for Securing Democracy need to be exposed for the warmongering frauds that they are. Regardless of what one thinks of him, Trump was correct when he said that NATO is obsolete.
Don Bacon , Feb 20, 2018 10:12:52 PM | link
The American Security State needs enemies to exist, otherwise there's no need for the "security" which translates into big bucks for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Media Complex. They can't agree on the ranking of the enemies: North Korea is a threat to the world! Iran is....! Russia is...! China is....! But the threats are there, and they are pure evil (TPTB contend).

So the whole scenario makes perfect sense from that standpoint.

Petri Krohn , Feb 20, 2018 10:17:36 PM | link
The news stories become far easier to understand if you replace the word " Russia " with the word " truth ".
bevin , Feb 20, 2018 11:45:45 PM | link
re Felix E. Dzerzhinsky: Ukrainian fascists have a particular hatred of Felix because he was both a Bolshevik and a Pole.

I hate to do this but I just posted this elsewhere, at Off Guardian, where the Guardian is back into its highest gears promoting war.

"The wardrums are beating in a way not heard since 1914-there is no reason for war except the best reason of all: an imperial ruling class sees its grip slipping and will chance everything rather than endure the humiliation of adjusting to reality.

"China is in the position that the US was in 1914-it can prevent the war or wait until the combatants are too exhausted to defend their paltry gains.

Given the realities of nuclear warfare-which seem not to have sunk in among the Americans, perhaps because they mistake a bubble for a bomb shelter- the wise option is to prevent war by publicly warning against it. In the hope that brought face to face with reality the masses will besiege their governments, as we can easily do, and prevent war.'

See also http://www.greanvillepost.com/2018/02/20/the-coming-wars-to-end-all-wars/

V. Arnold , Feb 21, 2018 12:32:43 AM | link
Debsisdead | Feb 20, 2018 8:53:42 PM | 35

I have no idea who you are talking about; care to say?

Jeff Kaye , Feb 21, 2018 12:36:59 AM | link
Great analysis! Can't imagine how you continue to put out quality work day after day! Your question at the close speaks to stakes involved in this.
foo , Feb 21, 2018 1:53:45 AM | link
@ 10 - 4

Resources boils down to money. Of course. I don't think any power would lose from tapping a source of resource.

DidierF , Feb 21, 2018 2:03:08 AM | link
Sad but definitely correct. The first casualty of war is the truth. It's dead in the USA and allies. Therefore, they're at war with Russia and China. If Russia is down, China will be dealt with.

The horrible thing with the US attitude is that you do a white thing, you're attacking them and if you do a black thing, you're attacking them too. This attitude is building hostility against Russia. It's like programming a pet to be afraid of something. The western people are being programmed into hating Russia, dehumanizing her people, cutting every tie with Russia and transforming any information from Russia into life threatening propaganda. A war for our hearts is running. The US population is being coerced into believing that war against Russia is a vital necessity.

It will be a war of choice from the US "elites". Clinton announced it and the population had chosen Trump for that reason.

You're wondering why they're doing it. I suppose that their narrative is losing its grip on the western populations. They're also conscious of it. If they lose it, they'll have to face very angry mobs and face the void of their lives. Everything they did was either useless or poisonous. It means to be in a very bad spot. They're are therefore under an existential threat.

Russia proved time and again that it's possible to get out of their narrative. Remember their situation when Eltsin was reelected with the western help.

The Chicago boys were telling the Russian authorities how to run the economy and they made out of the word democrat a synonym of thief. They were in the narrative and the result was a disaster. Then, they woke up and started to clean the house. I remember the "hero" of democracy whose name was "Khodorovsky (?)". In the west he was a freedom fighter and in Russia he stole something like Rosneft. This guy and others of the same sort were described in the west as heroes, pionniers and so on. They were put back into submission to the law. The western silence about their stealings, lies and cheating is still deafening me.

It was the first Russian crime. The second one was to survive the first batch of sanctions against them (I forgot the reason of the sanctions). They not only survived they thrived. It was against the western leading economic ideology. A third crime was to push back Saakachvili and his troops with success.

The fourth was to put back into order the Tchechen. Russia was back into the world politics and history. They were not following the script written for them in Washington and Brussels. They were having a political system putting limits to the big companies. And, worst of it, it works.
Everybody in the west who can read and listen would have noticed that they are making it.

More, with RT and Sputnik giving info outside the allowed ones or asking annoying questions (western journalists lost that habit with their new formation in the schools of journalism - remember the revolution in their education was criticised and I missed why - very curious to discover why), they were exposing weaknesses of the western narrative. On the other side their narrative became so poor and so limited that any regular reader would feel bored reading the same things time and again and being asked to pay for it at a time his salary was decreased in the name of competitivity. The threat to their narrative was ready. They had to fight it.

It's becoming a crime to think outside their marks. It's becoming a crime to read outside their marks. I don't even talk about any act outside their marks. Now, it's going to be a crime of treason to them in war time.

I do feel sadness because many will die from their fear of losing their grip on our minds. I do feel sadness because they have lost and are in denial about it. I do feel sadness because those death aren't necessary. I do feel sadness because those people can't face the consequences of their actions. They don't have the necessary spine. Their lives were useless and even toxic. They could start repairing or mitigating their damages but it would need a very different worldview, a complete conversion to another meaning of life outside the immediate and maximal profit.

V. Arnold , Feb 21, 2018 2:13:54 AM | link
DidierF | Feb 21, 2018 2:03:08 AM | 46

You have aptly described the most dangerous country on this planet. That country must not be appeased, at any cost, because it would surely end us forever...

Fran , Feb 21, 2018 2:53:24 AM | link
I wonder if this is true: STUNNING: Mueller Patched Together Much of His Indictment from 2015 Radio Free Europe Article I wouldn't be surprised if it is true. It would give the entire story a whole new touch. I wanted to write a new smell, but it would be rather stink.
Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 3:38:27 AM | link
https://www.wordfence.com/blog/2016/12/russia-malware-ip-hack/

Conclusion regarding IP address data: What we're seeing in this IP data is a wide range of countries and hosting providers. 15% of the IP addresses are Tor exit nodes. These exit nodes are used by anyone who wants to be anonymous online, including malicious actors.

Overall Conclusion: The IP addresses that DHS provided may have been used for an attack by a state actor like Russia. But they don't appear to provide any association with Russia. They are probably used by a wide range of other malicious actors, especially the 15% of IP addresses that are Tor exit nodes.

The malware sample is old, widely used and appears to be Ukrainian. It has no apparent relationship with Russian intelligence and it would be an indicator of compromise for any website.

fairleft , Feb 21, 2018 5:28:09 AM | link
Partisan @15: "With Trump openly campaigning for less democracy in America -- and with the continued electoral success of far-right antiliberal movements across Europe -- this question has again become a pressing one."

The above is entirely backwards. The bottom 2/3rds is frustrated by the LACK of democracy in the US and that's a major reason many voted against the (in fact anti-democratic) elite's desired candidate, Hillary.

70% of the voting age public was dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with both candidates, and 40% of Americans didn't vote, so that means whichever of Clinton/Trump won, she/he would win with approval of only 10% of the electorate. That's the best example possible of our anti-democratic reality (it's not a worry or a threat, it's already here).

In the case of both Europe and the US, many people are generally very dissatisfied with the anti-democratic response by the elite to 'the will of the people' that there be much less immigration into countries with high unemployment and 'race to the bottom' labor conditions. That's nearly the entire basis of what the corporate media calls 'the move right'... When in fact restricting immigration is a pro-labor and therefore 'left' policy ... Except in the confused and deliberately stupid political discourse the elite media pushes so hard.

Lea , Feb 21, 2018 6:16:53 AM | link
Some years ago, I noticed the American media and politicians were sort of going soft (actually mushy) in the brain department, but I was told not to be so judgemental. As the months went by, I saw more and more people saying "they have gone nuts". So, it turns out I am not alone after all.

That madness comes from having no behavioural limits, no references outside of your own opinion but groupthink, and manipulating the language to suit your ambitions (the Orwellism of the US media has been repeatedly pointed at). Simply put, you don't know anymore what's what outside of the narrative your group pushes, you go nuts. The manipulators ends up caught in their lies. All the more when they makes money out of it, which would be the case of all those think tanks and media.

One could argue that they are not going mad, that they know full well they are lying, but I beg to differ: they don't see anymore how ridiculous or how dumb or smart their arguments are. That would be congruent with a real loss of touch with reality. One wonders what they see when they look at themselves in a mirror, a garden variety propagandist or a fearless anti-Putin crusader?

Another example of the narrative gone mad: they are sending CNN journos to meet pro-Trump folks who "have been influenced by Russian trolls on social media". https://twitter.com/yashalevine/status/966177091875168256

Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 6:20:19 AM | link
"The above is entirely backwards."

Well, it is not...if you are believer in "democracy". Honestly, the story of democracy (by capitalist/liberal class) is a grand BS, to be modest. The only thing what was truthful, paradoxically, is who is "lesser evil" of two. Or the Bigger one in unrestrained capitalism, savage and monopoly, predatory and a fascists one.

One way or other result is the same, it is: Barbarism.

ralphieboy , Feb 21, 2018 6:27:23 AM | link
When "trending on Twitter" became a news item in and of itself, I began to despair for the future of reporting, political discourse and ultimately, democracy in America. Twitter and FB are at best a source of information for news reporting, but not a source of news in themselves.

We made ourselves vulnerable to any and every sort of pernicious manipulation and in the end, we just about deserve everything we get.

WJ , Feb 21, 2018 6:38:11 AM | link
War or the threat of war is needed to distract attention from rapidly devolving societal bonds and immense economic inequality.
Partisan , Feb 21, 2018 6:41:09 AM | link
there is something illogical in your comment.

but one should never forget:

The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.

Karl Marx

Ger , Feb 21, 2018 7:52:44 AM | link
Dan @ 4

It is partially tied direct to the economy of the warmongers as trillions of dollars of new cold war slop is laying on the ground awaiting the MICC hogs. American hegemony is primarily about stealing the natural resources of helpless countries. Now in control of all the weak ones, it is time to move to the really big prize: The massive resources of Russia. They (US and their European Lackeys) thought this was a slam dunk when Yeltsin, in his drunken stupors, was literally giving Russia to invading capitalist. Enter Putin, stopped the looting .........connect the dots.

Anon , Feb 21, 2018 8:08:35 AM | link
Media and its politicians have lost it completely, and if you criticize them, well then of course you are a... "russian bot". Unfortunately 90% of westerners buy this western MSM influence propaganda campaign, WW3 with Russia will come easy.
Florin , Feb 21, 2018 9:00:03 AM | link
News "Meet The Cabal That Are Framing Domestic American Activism As "Russian Influence" and "Fake News"
https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/01/meet-the-cabal-that-are-framing-domestic-american-activism-as-russian-influence-and-fake-news/

At risk of being censored and/or convicted of Thought Crime - it is *remarkable* how very highly disproportionate the number of Jewish Zionists is who are in the media and in Congress and in ThinkTankistan and shouting about Russian meddling, 'aggression,' and the like.

It's too bad it is forbidden to examine this phenomena as one part of the matrix of power and lies leading the US into conflict with Russia, no?

I don't think Bill Kristol and David Frum and Jeff Goldberg are either honest nor primarily concerned with American national security, nor the lives of MENA civilians. I think they care only about using American blood and treasure to facilitate Israeli lebensraum, however bloody and expensive.

Trump survives only if he dances for the Deep State *and* Likud.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/12/us-caught-faking-it-in-syria/

ex-SA , Feb 21, 2018 9:17:53 AM | link
Chris Hedges has an article on the similar situation in Germany almost 100 years ago. "In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. ...." https://www.truthdig.com/articles/how-we-fight-fascism/
fairleft , Feb 21, 2018 10:26:45 AM | link
Partisan @54: The facts contradict the statement in the quote that Trump was "openly campaigning for less democracy." He wasn't. He in fact campaigned in part as a populist who would oust (or at least repeatedly ridicule) an anti-democratic elite. If you've overlooked that and believe more or less the opposite, you can't understand the 2016 election or the elite's virulently anti-democratic reaction to it.
Oui , Feb 21, 2018 11:18:34 AM | link
NEW CENSORSHIP - HAMILTON68 DASHBOARD

From the website of Hamilton68 :: Tracking Russian influence operations on Twitter

So easy to signal this group as a fraud, I wrote an article recently

G W F and McCarthyism In A Digital Age - Part 2

[G W F – German Marshall Fund]

Earlier I wrote about the following relationship: Khodorkovsky - The Interpreter - Henry Jackson Society (UK) .

With Bush and the Iraq War, Dutch PM Balkenende and FM de Hoop Scheffer were seen as the poodle of the White House. In recent years PM Mark Rutte [of MH-17 crash fame] can be considered its puppy. Perhaps a parrot would suit better.

I noticed a former journalist Hubert Smeets hs partnered with some people to found a "knowledge center" Window on Russia [Raam op Rusland]. Laughable, funded by the Dutch Foreign Ministry and a Dutch-Russia cultural exchange Fund. Preposturous in its simplicity and harm for honest reporting.

Noirette , Feb 21, 2018 11:38:52 AM | link
US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)

Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses (neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.

The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for 'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.

Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc. having any clue.

james , Feb 21, 2018 1:03:45 PM | link
i got a kick out of cluborlov's post from yesterday.. -
http://cluborlov.blogspot.ca/2018/02/make-russia-great-again-through.html

The accusation is a lot like accusing somebody of despoiling an outhouse by crapping in it, along with everyone else, but the outhouse in question had a sign on its door that read "No Russians!" and the 13 Russians just ignored it and crapped in it anyway.

The reason the Outhouse of American Democracy is posted "No Russians!" is because Russia is the enemy. There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy, and treating it as such is incredibly foolish and dangerous, but that's beside the point. Painting Russia as the enemy serves a psychological need rather than a rational one: Americans desperately need some entity onto which they can project their own faults.

The US is progressing toward a fascist police state; therefore, Russia is said to be a horrible dictatorship run by Putin. The US traditionally meddles in elections around the world, including Russia; therefore, the Russians are said to meddle in US elections. The US is the most aggressive country on the planet, occupying and bombing dozens of countries; therefore, the Russians are accused of "aggression." And so on

Don Bacon , Feb 21, 2018 6:35:10 PM | link
@Noirette 70
Yes, claiming that Russians are promoting polical division is silly -- the divisions were already there.
gizmodo , Jun 12, 2014:
It's Been 150 Years Since the U.S. Was This Politically Polarized

Nevertheless, now in WIRED magazine: Their [Agency] goal was to enflame "political intensity through supporting radical groups, users dissatisfied with [the] social and economic situation, and oppositional social movements."

OJS , Feb 21, 2018 8:27:10 PM | link

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-21/they-had-more-information-us-sanders-blames-clinton-not-exposing-russian-meddling

"They Had More Information Than Us" - Sanders Blames Clinton For Not Exposing Russian Meddling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=WRnBPKFcAKo

Bernie Sanders said he on Wednesday, "felt compelled to address Russian interference during the US election. Sunday.... he was not aware and believes Russian bot promoting him and went as far to said WikiLeaks published Hillary's email stolen by the Russia....."

Can you really trust that lying basted? I'm probably one of the few MoA refused to believe and trust Bernie Sanders and the fuckup Democrats .

ben , Feb 21, 2018 9:24:01 PM | link
Anti-Russia Think Tanks in US: Who Funds Them? By Bryan MacDonald http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48755.htm
daffyDuct , Feb 21, 2018 9:46:49 PM | link
Excellent article summarizing much of what B has posted and more.

"Finally, and as long was we are on the topic, here is what a real troll farm looks like. [Picture of NSA] Yet this vast suite of offices in Fort Meade, Maryland, where 20,000 SIGINT spies and technicians work for the NSA, is only the tip of the iceberg.

The US actually spends $75 billion per year---more than Russia's entire $69 billion defense budget---spying on and meddling in the politics of virtually every nation on earth. An outfit within NSA called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) has a multi-billion annual budget and does nothing put troll the global internet and does so with highly educated, highly paid professionals, not $4 per hour keyboard jockeys."

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/muellers-comic-book-indictment-how-to-prosecute-a-great-big-nothingburger/

Daniel , Feb 22, 2018 12:47:29 AM | link
Great article. Great comments. I LOVE MoA! And it's great to see b getting recognition.

james wrote: "There aren't any compelling reasons why it should be the enemy"

You know the following; I think you're just too decent a human being to understand how psychopaths operate. Russia is a huge area with enormous natural resources as well as a large, educated populace. Zbignew Brzezenski explained in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard" why global hegemony required taking control over Russia (and how to do it, which boils down to taking the other chess pieces off the board (Iraq/Ukraine/etc. and then pulling off a "color revolution," coup or military conquest).

Ziggy also noted that once Russia was incorporated, China is the next, and largely last target.

Jen: NICE JOB putting together a big picture, from Bernays' control of the masses all the way to Genie Energy. Add in Oded Yinon and PNAC and the "foreign policy blunders" that led to the present situation in MENA look like a carefully-constructed, long-game being played "by the book."

Fairleft. Any leftist/socialist movement which is not global is doomed to failure. This has always been true, but with "offshoring" of manufacturing jobs and the internet untethering many "white collar" jobs from any given geological location(s), workers must see ourselves as a global entity rather than national or regional players - because that is certainly how the 0.01% see us (and themselves).

"Workers of the world UNITE" is more true today than a century and a half ago.

Ghost Ship , Feb 22, 2018 5:28:36 AM | link
Did the Titanic just sink Bild ?
Partisan , Feb 22, 2018 6:20:18 AM | link
https://youtu.be/GN-tf3HM9ao New Yorker Reporter Debunks Russia Twitter Panic
ralphieboy , Feb 22, 2018 7:31:36 AM | link
@fairleft 85

nations that do not have to face costs arising from environmental, health or safety legislation will almost always prevail in the world market over those that have some concern for the environment and the workers.

That is the main issue I have with globalization.

Competing on wages is one thing; that can be a great impetus to become more efficient and productive, but if we do nothing to force other countries to clean up their act, they will have no impetus to do so and we will continue to lose jobs to the international competition, no matter how efficiently we work.

test , Feb 22, 2018 7:32:53 AM | link
Msm, bellingcat and other think tanks - they push their anti Russian racism too far making a large section of westerners just tired of their hysteria. Exposing their own racism and paranoia.
Partisan , Feb 22, 2018 9:02:22 AM | link
"....borderless globalization has been a catastrophe for most of the underdeveloped world's businesses and workers."

it is always annoying when I see the 'globalization" argument is used whether from the right or left. The globalization has started by the moment when us humans begin to roaming on this planet. there are millions of examples yet somehow globalization is of recent phenomenon. Lapis Lazuli mineral used in making blue color and paint is found on clay pottery in Mesopotamia's ancient city of Ur. That city is also place where many legend originated which were taken by major religion and can be found in their holy books. See even the myth are globalizied from very early on.

Most of the people do not even know what it is, not those who are writing about it.

Globalization . . . is a program to create private corporate rights to trade, invest, lend or borrow money and buy and own property anywhere in the world without much hindrance by national governments. It would bar governments from most of the common methods of helping or protecting their national industries and employment. It is a winners' program promoted chiefly by some business interests, governments and neoclassical economists in Europe and the United States.

One of its purposes is to intensify international competition for jobs. Together with other Right policies it is likely to maintain some unemployment in the rich countries and reduce the wage rates of their lower-paid workers, and reduce the proportion of secure employment.

Hugh Stretton, Economics: A New Introduction

test , Feb 22, 2018 10:02:35 AM | link
The anti-russian think tanks, msm, bellingcat etc push this too much, making them look stupid.
john , Feb 22, 2018 10:30:32 AM | link
Tannenhouser

the observable and demonstrable attempts are clearly futile, and have been pretty much reduced to spasms and tantrums, largely devoid of cognizance, not to mention legality, but certainly dangerous nonetheless.

no sir ree bob, we get our multipolar world or we scavenge a dead landscape of Alamogordo glass .

Tannenhouser , Feb 22, 2018 11:23:44 AM | link
John@96. We are on the same page then. I see it more like this. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1991370.The_Cool_War
karlof1 , Feb 22, 2018 4:18:56 PM | link
Really enjoyed Julian Assange's explanation of Mueller's nothingburger.

Assange: "Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play."

[Jan 02, 2019] The Only Meddling "Russian Bots" Were Actually Democrat-Led "Experts" by Mac Slavo

Highly recommended!
Jan 02, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

Cybersecurity "experts" in the United States have long alleged that "Russian bots" were used to meddle in the 2016 elections.

But, as it turns out, the authors of a Senate report on "Russian election meddling" actually ran the false flag meddling operation themselves.

A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors , New Knowledge , quickly became a household name. Described by the New York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the U.S. military and the intelligence agencies.

The CEO and co-founder of New Knowledge, Jonathon Morgan, had previously worked for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) , the U.S. military's advanced research agency known for horrific ideas on how to control humanity . Morgan's partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the NSA (National Security Agency) who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of authoritarian investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone, according to a report by RT .

Morgan and Fox have both struck gold in the " Russiagate " scheme, which sprung into being after Hillary Clinton blamed Moscow for Donald Trump's presidential victory in 2016. Morgan, for example, is one of the developers of the Hamilton 68 Dashboard, the online tool that purports to monitor and expose narratives being pushed by the Kremlin on Twitter. And also worth mentioning, that dashboard is bankrolled by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy – a collection of Democrats and neoconservatives funded in part by NATO (North AtTreaty Tready Organization) and USAID (United States Agency for International Development).

It is worth noting that the 600 " Russia-linked " Twitter accounts monitored by the dashboard is not disclosed to the public either, making it impossible to verify these claims. This inconvenience has not stopped Hamilton 68 from becoming a go-to source for hysteria-hungry journalists, however. Yet on December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created the fake army of Russian bots, as well as several fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the U.S. Senate.

Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead . In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had " orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet ." – RT

This scandal is being perpetrated by the United States media and has so far deceived millions, if not more. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones , which based its story on "expert opinion" from Morgan's dubious creation, Hamilton 68.

Things got even weirder when it turned out that Scott Shane, the author of the Tim es piece, had known about the meddling for months because he spoke at an event where the organizers boasted about it!

Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican votes, "enrage " Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a " false flag " to hurt Moore. He dubbed it " Project Birmingham ." -RT

There really was meddling in American democracy by " Russian bots. " Except those bots weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the " Russiagate " hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection , brainwashing, and Nazi-style propaganda campaigns.

[Dec 29, 2018] -Election Meddling- Enters Bizarro World As MSM Ignores Democrat-Linked -Russian Bot- Scheme -

Highly recommended!
Is this shadow of Integrity Initiative in the USA ? This false flag open the possibility that other similar events like DNC (with very questionable investigation by Crowdstrike, which was a perfect venue to implement a false flag; cybersecurity area is the perfect environment for planting false flags), MH17 (might be an incident but later it definitely was played as a false flag), Skripals (Was Skripals poisoning a false flag decided to hide the fact that Sergey Skripal was involved in writing Steele dossier?) and Litvinenko (probably connected with lack of safety measures in the process of smuggling of Plutonium by Litvinenko himself, but later played a a false flag). All of those now should be re-assessed from the their potential of being yet another flag flag operation against Russia. While Browder was a MI6 operation from the very beginning (and that explains why he abdicated the US citizenship more convincingly that the desire to avoid taxes) .
Notable quotes:
"... Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior. ..."
"... Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign). ..."
"... By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling." ..."
"... The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true). ..."
Dec 29, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

For over two years now, the concepts of "Russian collusion" and "Russian election meddling" have been shoved down our throats by the mainstream media (MSM) under the guise of legitimate concern that the Kremlin may have installed a puppet president in Donald Trump.

Having no evidence of collusion aside from a largely unverified opposition-research dossier fabricated by a former British spy, the focus shifted from "collusion" to "meddling" and "influence." In other words, maybe Trump didn't actually collude with Putin, but the Kremlin used Russian tricks to influence the election in Trump's favor. To some, this looked like nothing more than an establishment scheme to cast a permanent spectre of doubt over the legitimacy of President Donald J. Trump.

Election meddling "Russian bots" and "troll farms" became the central focus - as claims were levied of social media operations conducted by Kremlin-linked organizations which sought to influence and divide certain segments of America.

And while scant evidence of a Russian influence operation exists outside of a handful of indictments connected to a St. Petersburg "Troll farm" (which a liberal journalist cast serious doubt ov er), the MSM - with all of their proselytizing over the "threat to democracy" that election meddling poses, has largely decided to ignore actual evidence of "Russian bots" created by Democrat IT experts, used against a GOP candidate in the Alabama special election, and amplified through the Russian bot-detecting "Hamilton 68" dashboard developed by the same IT experts.

Jonathon Morgan ✔ @jonathonmorgan

Russian trolls tracked by # Hamilton68 are taking an interest in the AL Senate race. What a surprise.

298 4:02 PM - Nov 10, 2017

Democratic operative Jonathon Morgan - bankrolled by LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, pulled a Russian bot "false flag" operation against GOP candidate Roy Moore in the Alabama special election last year - creating thousands of fake social media accounts designed to influence voters . Hoffman has since apologized, while Morgan was suspended by Facebook for "coordinated inauthentic" behavior.

As Russian state-owned RT puts it - and who could blame them for being a bit pissed over the whole thing, "it turns out there really was meddling in American democracy by "Russian bots." Except they weren't run from Moscow or St. Petersburg, but from the offices of Democrat operatives chiefly responsible for creating and amplifying the "Russiagate" hysteria over the past two years in a textbook case of psychological projection. "

A week before Christmas, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout by targeting African-Americans on social media. Its authors, New Knowledge, quickly became a household name.

Described by the New York Times as a group of "tech specialists who lean Democratic," New Knowledge has ties to both the US military and intelligence agencies. Its CEO and co-founder Jonathon Morgan previously worked for DARPA, the US military's advanced research agenc y. His partner, Ryan Fox, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency who also worked as a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Their unique skill sets have managed to attract the eye of investors, who pumped $11 million into the company in 2018 alone.

...

On December 19, a New York Times story revealed that Morgan and his crew had created a fake army of Russian bots, as well as fake Facebook groups, in order to discredit Republican candidate Roy Moore in Alabama's 2017 special election for the US Senate.

Working on behalf of the Democrats, Morgan and his crew created an estimated 1,000 fake Twitter accounts with Russian names, and had them follow Moore. They also operated several Facebook pages where they posed as Alabama conservatives who wanted like-minded voters to support a write-in candidate instead.

In an internal memo, New Knowledge boasted that it had "orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet."

It worked. The botnet claim made a splash on social media and was further amplified by Mother Jones, which based its story on expert opinion from Morgan's other dubious creation, Hamilton 68. - RT

Moore ended up losing the Alabama special election by a slim margin of just

In other words: In November 2017 – when Moore and his Democratic opponent were in a bitter fight to win over voters – Morgan openly promoted the theory that Russian bots were supporting Moore's campaign . A year later – after being caught red-handed orchestrating a self-described "false flag" operation – Morgan now says that his team never thought that the bots were Russian and have no idea what their purpose was . Did he think no one would notice? - RT

Dan Cohen ✔ @dancohen3000 Replying to @dancohen3000

Disinformation warrior @ jonathonmorgan attempts to control damage by lying. He now claims the "false flag operation" never took place and the botnet he promoted as Russian-linked (based on phony Hamilton68 Russian troll tracker he developed) wasn't Russian https://www. newknowledge.com/blog/about-ala bama

89 2:23 AM - Dec 29, 2018

Even more strange is that Scott Shane - the journalist who wrote the New York Times piece exposing the Alabama "Russian bot" scheme, knew about it for months after speaking at an event where the organizers bragged about the false flag on Moore .

Shane was one of the speakers at a meeting in September, organized by American Engagement Technologies, a group run by Mikey Dickerson, President Barack Obama's former tech czar. Dickerson explained how AET spent $100,000 on New Knowledge's campaign to suppress Republican votes, " enrage" Democrats to boost turnout, and execute a "false flag" to hrt Moore. He dubbed it "Project Birmingham." - RT

Dan Cohen ✔ @dancohen3000 · Dec 28, 2018 Replying to @dancohen3000

This gets even weirder: NYT reporter @ ScottShaneNYT , who broke the Alabama disinfo op story, learned of it in early September when he spoke at an off-the-record event organized by one of the firms that perpetrated the deception https://www. buzzfeednews.com/article/craigs ilverman/alabama-dirty-tricksters-invited-a-new-york-times-reporter

NY Times Reporter Briefed Alabama Special Election Dirty Tricksters

New York Times reporter Scott Shane spoke at an event organized by the group who ran a disinformation op aimed at helping defeat Roy Moore in Alabama.

A lightly-redacted copy of the internal @ NewKnowledgeAI report has been leaked and claims at least partial credit for Doug Jones' victory. Details follow https:// medium.com/@jeffgiesea/br eaking-heres-the-after-action-report-from-the-alabama-senate-disinformation

10 12:09 PM - Dec 28, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy

Shane told BuzzFeed that he was "shocked" by the revelations, though hid behind a nondisclosure agreement at the request of American Engagement Technologies (AET). He instead chose to spin the New Knowledge "false flag" operation on Moore as "limited Russian tactics" which were part of an "experiment" that had a budget of "only" $100,000 - and which had no effect on the election.

New Knowledge suggested that the false flag operation was simply a "research project," which Morgan suggested was designed "to better understand and report on the tactics and effects of social media disinformation."

View image on Twitter
Jonathon Morgan ✔ @jonathonmorgan

My statement on this evening's NYT article.

94 9:17 PM - Dec 19, 2018
465 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

While the New York Times seemed satisfied with his explanation, others pointed out that Morgan had used the Hamilton 68 dashboard to give his "false flag" more credibility – misleading the public about a "Russian" influence campaign that he knew was fake.

New Knowledge's protestations apparently didn't convince Facebook, which announced last week that five accounts linked to New Knowledge – including Morgan's – had been suspended for engaging in "coordinated inauthentic behavior." - RT

They knew exactly what they were doing

While Morgan and New Knowledge sought to frame the "Project Birmingham" as a simple research project, a leaked copy of the operation's after-action report reveals that they knew exactly what they were doing .

"We targeted 650,000 like AL voters, with a combination of persona accounts, astroturfing, automated social media amplification and targeted advertising," reads the report published by entrepreneur and executive coach Jeff Giesea.

Jeff Giesea ✔ @jeffgiesea

BREAKING: Here's the after-action report from the AL Senate disinfo campaign.

**an exclusive release by @ JeffGiesea https:// medium.com/@jeffgiesea/br eaking-heres-the-after-action-report-from-the-alabama-senate-disinformation-campaign-e3edd854f17d

1,658 8:49 PM - Dec 27, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy BREAKING: Here's The After-Action Report From the Alabama Senate Disinformation Campaign

EXCLUSIVE RELEASE FROM JEFF GIESEA

medium.com
1,381 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

The rhetorical question remains, why did the MSM drop this election meddling story like a hot rock after the initial headlines faded away?

criminal election meddling, but then who the **** is going to click on some morons tactic and switch votes?

anyone basing any funding, whether it is number of facebook hits or attempted mind games by egotistical cuck soyboys needs a serious psychological examination. fake news is fake BECAUSE IT ISNT REAL AND DOES NOT MATTER TO ANYONE but those living in the excited misery of their tiny bubble world safe spaces. SOCIAL MEDIA IS A CON AND IS NOT IMPORTANT OR RELEVANT TO ANYONE.

far more serious is destroying ballots, writing in ballots without consent, bussing voters around to vote multiple times in different districts, registering dead voters and imperosnating the corpses, withholding votes until deadlines pass - making them invalid.


Herdee , 10 minutes ago

NATO on behalf of the Washington politicians uses the same bullsh*t propaganda for continual war.

Mugabe , 20 minutes ago

Yup "PROJECTION"...

Yippie21 , 21 minutes ago

None of this even touches on the 501c3 or whatever that was set up , concerned Alabama voters or somesuch, and was funneled a **** load of money to be found to be in violation of the law AFTER the election and then it all just disappeared. Nothing to see here folks, Democrat won, let's move on. There was a LOT of " tests " for the smart-set in that election and it all worked. We saw a bunch of it used in 2018, especially in Texas with Beto and down-ballot races. Democrats cleaned up like crazy in Texas, especially in Houston.

2020 is going to be a hot mess. And the press is in on it, and even if illegal or unseemly things are done, as long as Democrats win, all good... let's move on. Crazy.

LetThemEatRand , 21 minutes ago

The fact that MSM is not covering this story -- which is so big it truly raises major questions about the entire Russiagate conspiracy including why Mueller was appointed in the first place -- is proof that they have no interest in journalism or the truth and that they are 100% agenda driven liars. Not that we needed more proof, but there it is anyway.

Oldguy05 , 19 minutes ago

Dimz corruption is a nogo. Now if it were conservatives.......

CosineCosineCosine , 23 minutes ago

I'm not a huge fan, but Jimmy Dore has a cathartic and entertaining 30 minutes on this farce. Well worth the watch:

h https://youtu.be/hqLIJznUNVw

LetThemEatRand , 27 minutes ago

Really the bigger story is here is that these guys convincingly pretended to be Russian Bots in order to influence an election (not with the message being put forth by the bots, but by their sheer existence as apparent supporters of the Moore campaign).

By all appearances, they were Russian bots trying to influence the election. Now we know it was DNC operatives. Yet we are supposed to believe without any proof that the "Russian bots" that supposedly influenced the 2016 Presidential election were, actually, Russian bots, and worthy of a two year long probe about "Russian collusion" and "Russian meddling."

The whole thing is probably a farce, not only in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia had any influence at all on a single voter, but also in the sense that there is no evidence that Russia even tried (just claims and allegations by people who have a vested interest in convincing us its true).

dead hobo , 30 minutes ago

I've been watching Scandal on Netflix. Still only in season 2. Amazing how nothing changes.They nailed it and memorialized it. The MSM are useful idiots who are happy to make money publicizing what will sell the best.

chunga , 30 minutes ago

The media is biased and sucks, yup.

The reason the reds lost the house is because they went along with this nonsense and did nothing about it, like frightened baby chipmunks.

JRobby , 33 minutes ago

Only when "the opposition" does it is it illegal. Total totalitarian state wannabe stuff.

divingengineer , 22 minutes ago

Amazing how people can contort reality to justify their own righteous cause, but decry their opposition for the EXACT same thing. See trump visit to troops signing hats as most recent proof. If DJT takes a piss and sprinkles the seat, it's a crime.

DarkPurpleHaze , 33 minutes ago

They're afraid to expose themselves...unlike Kevin Spacey. Trump or Whitaker will expose this with one signature. It's coming.

divingengineer , 20 minutes ago

Spacey has totally lost it. See his latest video, it will be a powerful piece of evidence for an insanity plea.

CosineCosineCosine , 10 minutes ago

Disagree strongly. I think it was excellent - perhaps you misunderstood the point? 6 minutes Diana Davidson look at it clarifies

https://youtu.be/_il_NBq0Ec8

[Dec 27, 2018] Senate Report on Russian Interference Was Written By Disinformation Warriors Behind Alabama 'False Flag Operation'

Anybody who believe that hillary was derailed by Russians is iether idiot or neocon or both.
Notable quotes:
"... Since receiving an $11 million investment from venture capital firm, GGV Capital, in August 2017, New Knowledge has positioned itself as one of the leading private intelligence firms taking on the scourge of Russian disinformation. The outfit made its biggest splash on December 17th when it published one of the two Senate Intelligence Committee-commissioned reports. ..."
"... Of the dozens of conservative Alabamian Facebook pages the Watson campaign messaged, the New Knowledge-run page was the only one that responded to it. "You are in a particularly interesting position and from what we have read of your politics, we would be inclined to endorse you", they wrote. New Knowledge then "asked Mr. Watson whether he trusted anyone to set up a super PAC that could receive funding and offered advice on how to sharpen his appeal to disenchanted Republican voters." While Watson communicated with the deceptive Facebook page, the New Knowledge operators never revealed their identity, and the page disappeared the day after the vote. "It was weird," Watson commented to the New York Times. "The whole thing was weird." ..."
"... New Knowledge then sought to manufacture a link between Roy Moore's campaign and the Kremlin by claiming thousands of his Twitter followers were Russian bots. Mainstream media outlets credulously ran with the narrative, insinuating that the Christian theocrat Moore was secretly backed by Russia. ..."
"... While the impact of the disinformation campaign on the Alabama senate race may never be quantified, the cynicism behind it is hard to understate. A group of Democratic Party operatives with close ties to the national security state waged a cynical campaign of online deception against the American public while marketing themselves as the guardians against foreign interference. Few, if any, Russian hackers could have done as much damage to the already worn fabric of American democracy as they have. ..."
Dec 27, 2018 | grayzoneproject.com

Grayzone Project -- On December 17, two reports detailing ongoing Russian interference operations commissioned by the Senate Intelligence Committee were made public. They generated a week's worth of headlines and sent members of Congress and cable news pundits into a Cold War frenzy. According to the report, everything from the Green Party's Jill Stein to I nstagram to Pokemon Go to the African American population had been used and confused by the deceptive Facebook pages of a private Russian troll farm called the Internet Research Agency.

Nevermind that 56% of the troll farm's pages appeared after the election , that 25% of them were seen by no one, or that their miniscule online presence paled in comparison to the millions of dollars spent on social media by the two major presidential campaigns and their supporters to sway voters. This was an act of war that demanded immediate government action.

According to Sen. Mark Warner, the Democratic chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the reports were "a wake up call" and a "bombshell" that was certain to bring "long-overdue guardrails when it comes to social media". His Republican counterpart on the committee, North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, hailed the research papers as "proof positive that one of the most important things we can do is increase information sharing between the social media companies who can identify disinformation campaigns and the third-party experts who can analyze them."

Mark Warner @MarkWarner

Incredible. These bombshell reports demonstrate just how far Russia went to exploit the fault lines of our society and divide Americans, in an attempt to undermine and manipulate our democracy. Here's what we've learned: https://www. nbcnews.com/politics/polit ics-news/russia-favored-trump-targeted-african-americans-election-meddling-reports-say-n948731

But the authors of one of the reports soon suffered a major blow to their credibility when it was revealed that they had engaged in what they called a "Russian style" online disinformation operation aimed to swing a hotly contested special senate election. The embarrassing revelation has already resulted in one of the authors having his Facebook page suspended .

The well-funded deception was carried out by New Knowledge, a private cyber intelligence firm founded by two self-styled disinformation experts who are veterans of the Obama administration: Jonathon Morgan and Ryan Fox.

'It may be designed to manipulate you'

Morgan began his career as a product manager at AOL before founding a series of start ups, some with funding from the United States Agency for International Development and Silicon Valley billionaire Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network. Once a Brookings Institution researcher and special advisor to the Obama White House and State Department, Morgan founded Data for Democracy, a volunteer organization said to use "public data to monitor the election system for signs of fraud." Morgan also developed technology for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the arm of the Department of Defense created for basic, applied technological research, and futuristic war toys.

Rising through the ranks of the national security apparatus, Morgan ultimately emerged as a go-to source for credulous reporters seeking to blame Hillary Clinton's loss to Donald Trump on Russian disinformation.

In an interview with the local CBS affiliate in Austin, Texas, Morgan told viewers that feelings of discontent were telltale signs that they had been duped by Russian disinformation.

"If it makes you feel too angry or really provokes that type of almost tribal response, then it may be designed to manipulate you. People should be concerned about things that encourage them to change their behavior," he warned.

View image on Twitter View image on Twitter
Max Blumenthal @MaxBlumenthal

. @ jonathonmorgan suggests Russia deceives Muslims into believing that Obama oversaw a drone assassination program https:// medium.com/data-for-democ racy/crafting-projects-islam-and-russian-propaganda-ccba9a409fb5

69 6:32 PM - Oct 14, 2017

Fox, for his part, is a 15-year veteran of the National Security Agency and was a computer analyst for the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) military unit. JSOC is notorious for its spree of atrocities across the Middle East including digging their bullets out of dead pregnant women's bodies in Afghanistan. Comparatively little information is available about Fox's background.

Since receiving an $11 million investment from venture capital firm, GGV Capital, in August 2017, New Knowledge has positioned itself as one of the leading private intelligence firms taking on the scourge of Russian disinformation. The outfit made its biggest splash on December 17th when it published one of the two Senate Intelligence Committee-commissioned reports.

The report, titled "The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency," was oversseen by Renee DiResta, a former Wall Street trader and tech specialist who was recruited by Obama's State Department to devise strategies for combating online ISIS propaganda. The New York Times described DiResta as one among a small group of "hobbyists" who "meticulously logged data and published reports on how easy it was to manipulate social media platforms."

The hobby lobby of online obsessives converged at New Knowledge this year to sound the alarm on supposed Russian disinformation. In a New York Times op-ed published as Americans went to cast their votes in the midterm elections, Morgan and Fox alleged that the Kremlin was secretly running hundreds of propaganda websites in an effort to swing the outcomes. That assertion ran counter to the narrative the two operatives had been spinning out just months before.

In an interview earlier in the year, Ryan Fox suggested that despite the Trump administration's multiple rounds of sanctions against Russia, Vladimir Putin was so satisfied with the state of U.S. affairs that the Kremlin had actually cut back on its supposed interference. "Strategically, are they content with the way things are? Does it play in their favor to do anything right now? That's a valid question," Fox said. "Keep up the momentum, keep poking away. But do they have to implement drastic measures like hacking the DNC and exposing thousands of emails? Probably not."

More recently, Fox claimed to have identified hundreds of Russian-controlled Facebook and Twitter accounts active in France's Yellow Vest movement, which has raged against the country's neoliberal leadership and sparked anxiety among centrist elites across the Atlantic.

The Wall Street Journal @WSJ

"There has been some suspect activity," a French cybersecurity official said. "We are in the process of looking at its impact." https:// on.wsj.com/2EzeS5c

225 1:00 AM - Dec 15, 2018 Twitter Ads info and privacy France probes any Moscow role in yellow-vest movement that is challenging President Macron France Probes Any Moscow Role in Yellow-Vest Movement

French security services are investigating if the Kremlin had a role in social media activity that has spread misinformation about the protest movement that has become the most serious threat to...

wsj.com
205 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

However, Fox produced no evidence to support his incendiary accusation, prompting reporters to qualify his assertions as " very likely " and write that he merely " believes " Russian interference took place.

Drafting the dubious bot dashboard

Morgan is also one the developers of the Hamilton 68 dashboard , an online project dedicated to inflaming public outrage over online Russian bots. Funded by the German Marshall Fund's Alliance for Securing Democracy – which is itself backed by NATO and USAID – Hamilton 68 claims to track hundreds of accounts supposedly linked to Russian influence operations. The effort has largely succeeded in drawing positive media attention despite one of its founders, Clint Watts, admitting that the Twitter accounts it follows may actually be real people who are not Russian at all.

When Morgan was asked what techniques Hamilton 68 uses to identify Russian influence operations, he offered a confident-sounding but ultimately empty answer: "We developed some techniques for determining who matters in a conversation Using some of those techniques, we've identified a subset of accounts that we're very confident are core to furthering the Russian narrative in response to mainstream events."

Because Morgan and his colleagues have explicitly refused to name the accounts monitored by Hamilton 68, his claims can never be proven.

In a lengthy profile of the musicologist-turned-New Knowledge "online detective" Kris Shaffer, Foreign Policy described the supposed methodology he employed to identify Russian disinfo operations: "By working with massive datasets of tweets, Facebook posts, and online articles, he is able to map links between accounts, similarities in the messages they post, and shared computer infrastructure."

The article added an extraordinarily revealing disclaimer: "This method of analysis is in its infancy, remains a fairly blunt instrument, and still requires human intervention. It sometimes mistakes real people who post anti-imperialist arguments about U.S. foreign policy for Kremlin trolls, for example."

It may have been that New Knowledge had no knowledge at all of Kremlin botnets, but their reports were nonetheless treated as gospel by droves of credulous reporters eager to make their name in the frenzied atmosphere of Russiagate.

"We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation"

According to an internal New Knowledge report first seen by the New York Times , the firm carried out a multi-faceted influence operation designed to undermine a 2017 bid by right-wing Republican former state supreme court judge Roy Moore for an open Alabama senate seat. By its own admission, New Knowledge's campaign capitalized on the the sexual assault allegations against Moore to "enrage and energize Democrats" and "depress turnout" among Republicans.

To accomplish this, the New Knowledge team created a Facebook page aimed at appealing to conservative Alabamians by encouraging them to endorse an obscure patio supply salesman-turned-write-in candidate named Mac Watson. They hoped the subterfuge would peel votes away from Moore. It was precisely the kind of tactic that New Knowledge claims Russian troll farms carry out to sow divisions among the American electorate.

Morgan told the New York Times the effort stopped there. But the New Knowledge report says the Facebook page "boosted" Watson's campaign and even arranged interviews for him with The Montgomery Advertiser and the Washington Post . At the same time, Watson's Twitter following mysteriously jumped from 100 to about 10,000.

Russia | disinformation campaign

One of the articles New Knowledge took credit for during its disinformation campaign.

Of the dozens of conservative Alabamian Facebook pages the Watson campaign messaged, the New Knowledge-run page was the only one that responded to it. "You are in a particularly interesting position and from what we have read of your politics, we would be inclined to endorse you", they wrote. New Knowledge then "asked Mr. Watson whether he trusted anyone to set up a super PAC that could receive funding and offered advice on how to sharpen his appeal to disenchanted Republican voters." While Watson communicated with the deceptive Facebook page, the New Knowledge operators never revealed their identity, and the page disappeared the day after the vote. "It was weird," Watson commented to the New York Times. "The whole thing was weird."

New Knowledge then sought to manufacture a link between Roy Moore's campaign and the Kremlin by claiming thousands of his Twitter followers were Russian bots. Mainstream media outlets credulously ran with the narrative, insinuating that the Christian theocrat Moore was secretly backed by Russia.

The Montgomery Observer first reported the alleged link: Russian invasion? Roy Moore sees spike in Twitter followers from land of Putin . From there, it was picked up by Mother Jones, whose headline read: Russian Propagandists Are Pushing for Roy Moore to Win . But there was no proof of any Russian connection to the accounts. To bolster its evidence-free claim, Mother Jones simply turned to Hamilton 68, the highly suspect Russian influence monitoring system that Morgan helped design.

Today, as can be seen below, Mother Jones is using a bogus story generated by a disinformation campaign to raise funds for more Russiagate coverage.

Mother Jones Russiagate Fundraising

As the Russian bot narrative peaked, Moore blamed the Jones campaign for manufacturing the scare. "It's not surprising that they'd choose the favorite topic of MSNBC and the Fake News outlets -- the Russia conspiracy. Democrats can't win this election on the issues and their desperation is on full display."

Moore's opponent, Jones, said he had no knowledge of the operation.

Moore was roundly mocked in liberal circles as a conspiratorial crank, but New Knowledge's internal report contained a stunning admission: "We orchestrated an elaborate 'false flag' operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet," its authors revealed.

While the New York Times says the internal report does not confirm that New Knowledge purchased the bot account themselves, the accounts' flagrant use of Cyrillic language and profile pictures of famous singers including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Avril Lavigne strongly suggest that whoever bought them went to extreme lengths to leave the appearance of a Russian hand.

View image on Twitter View image on Twitter View image on Twitter View image on Twitter
The Ostrich @ALostrich

Roy Moore just picked up a whole bunch of twitter followers. But they ain't from around here, comrade.

7,699 8:02 AM - Oct 16, 2017
5,467 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy
Disinfo ops to "strengthen American democracy"

The Alabama disinformation campaign was carried out through a network of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs and former Obama administration officials who have joined the private sector to leverage liberal anti-Trump outrage into profits.

Billionaire Reid Hoffman, who co-founded the employment networking site LinkedIn, provided $100,000 for the black ops campaign. The money was then pipelined through American Engagement Technologies, which is headed by Mikey Dickerson, a former Google engineer who founded the United State Digital Service. Dickerson is also Executive Director of the New Data Project, an organization dedicated to "testing new approaches" and "serving as an advanced technology research lab for progressives."

A colleague of Hoffman's claimed the purpose of his investments was to "strengthen American democracy."

Since the New York Times' exposé, Facebook released a statement announcing its suspension of "five accounts run by a multiple individuals for engaging in coordinated inauthentic behavior," including Morgan's account. The social media platform has opened an investigation, though it has not revealed what the other pages are or who operated them.

The headline of the New York Times story about the Facebook suspensions appeared to have been crafted to keep the focus on Russia while deflecting scrutiny from the group of Democratic Party-linked hustlers that orchestrated the disinformation operation. It read: "Facebook Closes 5 Accounts Tied to Russia-Like Tactics in Alabama Senate Race."

For his part, Sen. Jones has demanded an investigation. "I think we've all focused too much on just the Russians and not picked up on the fact that some nefarious groups, whether they're right or left, could take those same playbooks and start interfering with the elections for their own benefit," he said. "I'd like to see the Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department look at this to see if there were any laws being violated and, if there were, prosecute those responsible."

Facing an inquiry for possible violations of election laws, Morgan issued a mealy-mouthed statement claiming he "did not participate in any campaign to influence the public and any characterization to the contrary misrepresents the research goals, methods and outcome of the project."

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Jonathon Morgan @jonathonmorgan

My statement on this evening's NYT article.

90 9:17 PM - Dec 19, 2018

While the impact of the disinformation campaign on the Alabama senate race may never be quantified, the cynicism behind it is hard to understate. A group of Democratic Party operatives with close ties to the national security state waged a cynical campaign of online deception against the American public while marketing themselves as the guardians against foreign interference. Few, if any, Russian hackers could have done as much damage to the already worn fabric of American democracy as they have.

Top Photo | Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., right, with Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., left, updates reporters on the status of their inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections, at the Capitol in Washington, Oct. 4, 2017. J. Scott Applewhite | AP

Dan Cohen is a journalist and filmmaker. He has produced widely distributed video reports and print dispatches from across Israel-Palestine. Dan is a correspondent at RT America and tweets at @ DanCohen3000 .

Source | Grayzone Project

[Dec 21, 2018] What the use of Facebook accounts attributed to Russians a false flag operation ?

Dec 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

librul , Dec 20, 2018 5:26:57 PM | link

Off topic, but important. Tell me if this is too out of place. The topic was covered a few days ago in a different article by b.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-20/democrats-orchestrated-elaborate-false-flag-operation-posing-russian-bots-during

One of the participants in the scheme, Jonathan Morgan, is the CEO of cybersecurity firm New Knowledge. Morgan wrote a blistering account of Russian social media operations during the 2016 election released this week by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Another angle to this big @nytimes story... Guess who participated in using a Russian style disinformation campaign to influence the Alabama Senate election AND hoped to frame Russia for it? The CEO of the company that wrote the Senate Intel report on 2016 election meddling. https://t.co/uSu8HYCl15
-- Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) December 20, 2018

[Nov 12, 2018] Protecting Americans from foreign influence, smells with COINTELPRO. Structural witch-hunt effect like during the McCarthy era is designed to supress decent to neoliberal oligarcy by Andre Damon and Joseph Kishore

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress. ..."
"... Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary. ..."
"... "Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it." ..."
"... "While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women ..."
"... The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it. ..."
"... While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE. ..."
"... Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony." ..."
"... In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage] ..."
"... The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945 ..."
"... I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism ..."
"... What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to! ..."
"... Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned. ..."
"... Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded! ..."
"... Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire" ..."
"... While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned. ..."
"... As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood. ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Wnt1a month ago

This is one of the most sensible editorials on the Russia issue I've seen, and it is true, insofar as it goes. There is something very, very COINTELPRO about the idea of "protecting" Americans from "foreign influence", and that should give liberals the heebie-jeebies. There is also an ongoing structural witch-hunt effect, unchanged from the McCarthy era, when internet firm heads are called to testify before congress.

That said, I wouldn't dismiss the effect of the Russian involvement, or the relevance of the charges against Trump and his people. Bear in mind that the Party of McCarthy has been all about spying on its opponents from the days of HUAC. Nixon's break-in at the Watergate Hotel didn't singlehandedly decide the election ... but who would believe that was the only underhanded tactic he used? Republicans believe that if you're not cheating, you're not trying -- holding out for any ethical standard makes you inherently disloyal and unworthy of support. Something like Kavanaugh's involvement in the hacking of Democrats in 2003 ( http://www.foxnews.com/poli... ) should be no surprise; neither should the "Guccifer" hack that put the Democrats' data in the hands of Wikileaks. (Their subsequent attempts to demand Wikileaks not publish such a newsworthy leak, of course, is the sort of thing that undermines their position with me!)

Bottom line - the Russians may have had no more effect on the election than the loose change in your house has on your salary.

But if you go back in your house after the Republicans were minding it, don't be surprised if together with the missing couch change you notice some missing silverware, your kitchen tap has been sawed off, and the laptop is short half its RAM. By the time you've catalogued everything missing, the stolen brass part from the gas main downstairs might have blown you to smithereens.

Greg8 months ago
"Even more extreme measures are being planned and implemented, motivated by the basic principle that the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it."

There are many reasons the bourgeoisie is unfit to rule. Each one of them is bound up with the lies required to enforce its rule. The greater its unfitness, "the greater the lie, the more aggressive the methods required to enforce it.

"While the extortionate salaries commanded by the BBC's biggest stars are justified by "market rates," this underlying premise is never challenged by the women who are leading the gender pay fight. They don't oppose the capitalist market; they just want a bigger slice of the pie, with the working class footing the bill via contributions to the £4 billion annual license fee." - BBC gender pay row: Selective outrage of wealthy women

The greater the inequality, the greater the lie to enforce it.

Alan MacDonald8 months ago
While WSWS was uniquely correct in exposing Bush, Powell, and the ruling-elite structure of the U.S. as using deceit and lies to start an 'aggressive war' (the ultimate war crime), your description of this corrupt system of global power headquartered in the U.S. did not fully diagnose and expose it for what it was; a disguised global capitalist EMPIRE.

Your description could have more effectively warned American citizen/'subjects' and the world that "Rather, it is a war of colonial (Empire) conquest, driven by a series of economic and geo-political aims that center on the seizure of Iraq's oil resources and the assertion of US global (Empire, not merely) hegemony."

In any case, Andre and Joseph, thanks for reminding readers of this dark and deceitful moment of U.S. history in starting another 'aggressive war' almost two decades ago --- which wars will unfortunately continue until Americans themselves expose and ignite an essential Second America "Revolution Against Empire" [Justin duRivage]

Ambricourt -> Alan MacDonald8 months ago
The Anglo-American-Israelite Empire is globally entrenched and enjoying expansion since 1945. It is time radical critiques of its values, power and methods should call it by its right name.
Bob Marley8 months ago
I must admit myself I am disturbed by the sheer volume of unchallenged propaganda regarding these claims in the past few months. The media talking heads and various analysts don't ever really say what the implication of what their claims really mean-war. We are in an age of new mccarthyism
michaelroloff8 months ago
What was amazing about Powell's charade was that even if Old Bad Ass as I call Saddam had had some Wombars of Mass Destruction they posed no danger whatsoever! It was obvious 9/11 had put the masses into a tizzy and they would have attacked Mars if told to!
Terry Lawrence -> michaelroloff8 months ago
Yes, the "New Pearl Harbour" called for and carried out by the authors of the "Project for a New American Century" worked as planned.
michaelroloff -> Terry Lawrence8 months ago
don't tell me that you think that the blow-back that was 9/11 is a conspiracy - if you do, be so kind as to mention specific conspirators!
Terry Lawrence -> michaelroloff8 months ago
Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, are a few obvious ones, . . . and that famous CIA asset, Bin Laden, to recruit the expendable hijackers.
michaelroloff -> Terry Lawrence8 months ago
just because it was a convenient act for them to do what they wanted in conquering iraq is not reason that idiots like that are capable of planning and concealing the numerous co-conspirators to arrange something like 9..11. imperialism can always count on blowback to have occasion for further crimes. there is the slim chance that they knew what was being planned and that they let it happen - except that none of those folks is evil enough for that. not even dick cheney. what i love about all conspiracy theories of the american kind is that they never nam or show an actual conspirator conspiring. look at one of the truly great failed conspiracy, that of the 20th july 1944 in germany that was meant to kill hitler and how many people were arrested in no time at all and executed..
Terry Lawrence michaelroloff8 months ago
A "conspiracy" is just any two or more people getting together to discuss something affecting one or more other people without them being party to the discussion. Like a surprise birthday party, for instance. Obviously the "official" version of the 9/11 events is also a "conspiracy theory" that 19 mostly Saudi Arabians led by a guy hiding in a cave in Afghanistan conspired to carry out co-ordinated attacks that just happened to coincide with most of the USAF being conveniently off in Alaska and northern Canada on an exercise that day, and another "coinciding exercise" simulating a multiple hijacking being carried out in the northeast US thereby confusing the Air Traffic Controllers as to whether the hijackings were "real world or exercise", significantly delaying the response, among other things.

Do you really believe that WTC 7, a steel frame building which was not adjacent to WTC 1 & 2, and was NOT hit by any airplanes, coincidentally collapsed due to low temperature paper and furniture office fires? Something that has never happened before or since? Or that such low temperature fires would cause the massive heavily reinforced concrete central core/elevator shaft to collapse first, pulling the rest of the building inward onto it in classic controlled demolition technique?

It is getting more difficult to find the videos showing that now as Google, as with WSWS articles, is pushing them off the front pages of results, while Snopes has put out a some very misleading reports that set up false "straw man" claims and then "disprove" them. Even the "disproofs" are false.

For instance, a Snopes report on the WTC 7 collapse states: "relied heavily on discredited claims, none of which were new, including:

Jet fuel cannot melt steel beams (This claim is misleading, as steel beams do to not need to melt completely to be compromised structurally).

A sprinkler system would have prevented temperatures from rising high enough to cause to cause structural damage. (This claim ignores the fact that a crash from a 767 jet would likely destroy such a system.)

The structural system would have been protected by fireproofing material (similarly, such a system would have been damaged in a 767 crash). "

Jet fuel, which is Kerosene, burns at around 575º in open air, which was the case in WTC buildings 1 & 2. Most of it was vaporized by the impact with the buildings and burned of within minutes. At any rate, 575º is far below the point at which structural steel specifically designed to withstand high temperature fires like that used in the World Trade Centre buildings is weakened.

All of which is irrelevant, as are the other "points" made by Snopes, because Building 7 was not hit by an airplane and there was no jet fuel involved. Something conveniently "overlooked" by Snopes and other similar misleading "disproofs". Not to mention that the Intelligence establishment is busy putting out false trails constantly which use, for instance, obviously faked photos or videos of the three WTC buildings collapsing to discredit the real videos and photos by setting up "straw men" they can then "disprove" and point to as "evidence" that people who don't believe the official version are "creating fake news".

liz_imp Terry Lawrence8 months ago
Brilliant points!! :)
Carolyn Zaremba Terry Lawrence8 months ago
Quite right. My late father was a structural design engineer, specializing in large steel structures like the WTC and he called it as soon as the buildings imploded!
Terry Lawrence michaelroloff8 months ago
"The perpetrators and their conspiracy is not a theory since it has been proved."

By "proved" I assume you are referring to "proofs" such as the fantastical claim that Mohammed Atta's passport was allegedly and fortuitously "found" when it supposedly survived the 600 mph impact of the 767 he was supposedly piloting with a huge steel and concrete building, survived the huge fireball it was supposedly in the middle of unscorched, and conveniently fluttered to the ground intact to land at the feet of an FBI agent who immediately realized it must have belonged to one of the hijackers!

Even Hans Christian Andersen couldn't invent Fairy Tales like that.

Carolyn Zaremba michaelroloff8 months ago
See my comment above. It is the "official" explanation that is a fantasy.
michaelroloff Carolyn Zaremba8 months ago
the best that conspiracy theorist can do is, invariably, to call proven facts "just another theory " which only proves that they are actually aware that they are full of hot air! zarembas father as a structural engineer unless a fantasy is certainly better off among the dead than among the living and perpetrating his ignorance of steel and weight and fire onto the world!
clubmarkgirard michaelroloff8 months ago
Just because all the details aren't known as to who conspired and why there's enough holes in the "official conspiracy theory" of 19 hijackers to conclude that this could not have been pulled off without some conspiring on the American side. Certainly the the neocons benefited greatly from these attacks. So motive is there for sure.
Alan MacDonald michaelroloff8 months ago
Yes, Michael, the 'media/propaganda-sector' of this seven-sectored Disguised Global Capitalist EMPIRE is currently the most effective sector --- but the other six; corporate, financial, militarist, extra-legal, CFR 'Plot-Tanks', and of course the dual-party Vichy-political facade of the 'rougher-talking' neocon 'R' Vichy Party and the 'smoother-lying' neoliberal-con 'D' Vichy Party are all helping to keep the Empire sound, hidden, and empowered over the only American citizen/'subjects' who could possibly form a "Political Revolution against Empire"
Kalen8 months ago
While it is true that D.C. is run by delusional psychotics that does not mean they are irrational as far as their greed is concerned.

There is nothing to win in global nuke war, all know it while the outcome would be surely the current global oligarchy loosing grip on population destroying the system that works for them so well giving chance to what they dread socialist revolution they would have been much weaker to counter.

Regional conflicts are just positioning of oligarchy for management of global oligarchic country club while strict class morality is maintained.

What I do not we are conditions for war (split of global ruling elites) while what I see is broad propaganda of war as a excuse to clamp down on fake enemy in order to control respective populations while there is factual unity among world oligarchy.

As R. Luxemburg pleaded that WWI was not "our" war but war of bunch of aristocrats wanting to divide colonies and bunch of bankers wanted their bad speculative loans repaid, using working class flesh and blood.

She died abandoned by those on the left who embraced the war for their political aspirations, she was murdered for her true internationalism i.e. No war fought between working people of one country and working people of another country.

Alan MacDonald Kalen8 months ago
Kalen, it's only effective to use the correct and understandable term 'Empire' in exposing, warning, and motivating average Americans --- since very few even know what words like; oligarchy, plutocracy, fascism, authoritarianism, corporate-state, or Wolin's 'inverted totalitarianism' mean --- let alone could ever serve as rallying cries for the coming essential Second American Revolution against EMPIRE.

As Pat would have shouted if Tom had taken the Paine to edit his call, "Give me Liberty over EMPIRE, or Give me Death!"

Carolyn Zaremba Alan MacDonald8 months ago
Do you really believe that average Americans are that stupid? Shame on you!
Alan MacDonald Carolyn Zaremba8 months ago
"Sweet Carolyn" OH OH OH --- Yes, only a very small percentage of Americans understand that our former country, the U.S. of America, is categorically, provably, and absolutely a new form of Empire, and is inexorably the first in world history an; 'effectively-disguised', 'truly-global', 'dual-party Vichy', and 'capitalist-fueled' EMPIRE --- an EMPIRE, really just an EMPIRE!

Just do an honest survey, "Sweet Carolyn", yourself, and if you're not a "Sweet Liarlyn", you will have to admit that essentially ZERO of the first 1000 people you ask, will say --- "Oh ya, Carolyn, of course I know that this whole effin 'system' that others less informed may still be so stupid that they think they live in a real country, when I (enter their name) do solemnly swear is just an effin EMPIRE, which is so well disguised, that these few idiots who don't understand that they are just citizen/'subjects' of this monsterous EMPIRE."

Do the survey, "Sweet Carolyn" and if you don't lie to yourself --- which maybe you do, because HELL, your job is to lie to others (so it's quite likely that you'll lie about anything) --- you'll find that exactly zero average Americans have the effin slightest idea in the world that their great 'country' is actually an effin EMPIRE.

HELL, Carolyn, almost half the Americans repeatedly yell, "We're number ONE", "We're number ONE", that their brains would rather rattle themselves to death than even let logic, history, knowledge, or anything into their addled and propaganda filled heads!

liz_imp Alan MacDonald8 months ago
Personal attacks are not allowed on this site.
Alan MacDonald liz_imp8 months ago
Sorry, Liz-imp, are you a friend of "Sweet Carolyn" --- or some other relation? Perhaps working together?
dmorista8 months ago
Excellent article, and it did a particularly good job of tying together the foreign policy and domestic policy stratagems of a major faction of the U.S. ruling class. I, for one, do not doubt that the Russians conduct some sort of cyber warfare against the U.S.; but that must be understood by considering the fact that every major governmental, political, military, and business organization on the face of the Earth must now operate in this manner. A friend of mine's son, who was in the Army, pointed out that the big players, by a wide margin, in spying on and to some degree interfering in the U.S. domestic scene are China and Israel. Kevin Barrett has written and said on various radio shows that much of what is attributed to the "Russians" are actually the actions of Russian/Israeli dual citizens, many of whom move freely between the U.S., Russia, and Israel. And, of course, the U.S. runs major spy and manipulation operations in more countries than any other nation of Earth, and U.S. based corporations are busy both inside the U.S. and in foreign places in similar activities.

It is clearly a desire of significant sectors, of the Capitalist rulers of the U.S., to repress dissent and political activities that oppose their agendas. It took them a few years to realize that their old methods using TV, hate radio, magazines, direct mail, and newspapers were losing their effectiveness. They have been increasing their attacks on leftist websites, hacking into websites, closing websites using phonied-up "national security" justifications, employing numerous trolls, and establishing and funding more far right websites, such as Breitbart and Infowars. These efforts are most effective when they are not overpowering and heavy handed.

The classic book on this was the 1988 book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Noam Chomsky and Edward Hermann. Rob Williams has updated the concept for the internet age in
<http: www.vermontindependent.org ="" the-post-truth-world-reviving-the-propaganda-model-of-news-for-our-digital-age=""/>.

The strategy is nothing new, the methods are merely updated and use the latest technologies.

Maxwell dmorista8 months ago
Superb post.

I guess the lesson to be learned here is that rigging elections through byzantine electoral laws and billion dollar corporate slush funds is a thing of the past. All you need now is 13 amateur IT goomba's with a marketing scheme and twitter accounts. Well, sure is a fragile "World's Sole Superpower" we got here. Go Team?

[Nov 05, 2018] 33 Trillion Reasons Why The New York Times Gets It Wrong on Russia-gate - Antiwar.com Original

Nov 05, 2018 | original.antiwar.com

33 Trillion Reasons Why The New York Times Gets It Wrong on Russia-gate

Facebook Said 80,000 Russian Posts Were Buried in 33 Trillion Facebook Offerings Over Two-Year Period Further Undermining NYT ·s Case

by Gareth Porter Posted on November 05, 2018 November 3, 2018 Even more damning evidence has come to light undermining The New York Times ' assertion in September that Russia used social media to steal the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

The Times ' claim last month that Russian Facebook posts reached nearly as many Americans as actually voted in the 2016 election exaggerated the significance of those numbers by a factor of hundreds of millions, as revealed by further evidence from Facebook's own Congressional testimony.

Further research into an earlier Consortium News article shows that a relatively paltry 80,000 posts from the private Russian company Internet Research Agency (IRA) were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over a two-year period before and after the 2016 vote.

That was supposed to have thrown the election, according to the paper of record. In its 10,000-word article on Sept. 20, the Times reported that 126 million out of 137 million American voters were exposed to social media posts on Facebook from IRA that somehow had a hand in delivering Trump the presidency.

The newspaper said: "Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone." The paper argued that 126 million was "not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election."

But Consortium News , on Oct. 10, debunked that story, pointing out that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti failed to report several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook officers themselves, whose statements make the Times' claim that Russian election propaganda "reached" 126 million Americans an exercise in misinformation.

The newspaper failed to tell their readers that Facebook account holders in the United States had been "served" 33 trillion Facebook posts during that same period -- 413 million times more than the 80,000 posts from the Russian company.

What Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2017 is a far cry from what the Times claims. "Our best estimate is that approximately 126,000 million people may have been served one of these [IRA-generated] stories at some time during the two year period," Stretch said.

Stretch was expressing a theoretical possibility rather than an established fact. He said an estimated 126 million Facebook members might have gotten at least one story from the IRA –- not over the ten week election period, but over 194 weeks during the two years 2015 through 2017 – including a full year after the election.

That means only an estimated 29 million FB users may have gotten at least one story in their feed in two years. The 126 million figure is based only on an assumption that they shared it with others, according to Stretch.

Facebook didn't even claim most of those 80,000 IRA posts were election–related. It offered no data on what proportion of the feeds to those 29 million people were.

In addition, Facebook's Vice President for News Feed, Adam Moseri, acknowledged in 2016 that FB subscribers actually read only about 10 percent of the stories Facebook puts in their News Feed every day. The means that very few of the IRA stories that actually make it into a subscriber's news feed on any given day are actually read.

And now, according to the further research, the odds that Americans saw any of these IRA ads – let alone were influenced by them – are even more astronomical. In his Oct. 2017 testimony, Stretch said that from 2015 to 2017, "Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or 'served,' a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds."

To put the 33 trillion figure over two years in perspective, the 80,000 Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just .0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time.

Shane and Mazzetti did not report the 33 trillion number even though The New York Times ' own coverage of that 2017 Stretch testimony explicitly stated , "Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users' News Feeds everyday."

The Times ' touting of the bogus 126 million out 137 million voters, while not reporting the 33 trillion figure, should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at [email protected] .

Reprinted from Consortium News with the author's permission.

[Oct 21, 2018] What this accusation boils down to is saying that the Russian firm's deception is "proof" that they thought they were violating US law, and that this intention to break a non-existent law constitutes a framework under which they can be convicted of breaking a non-existent law. The crazy never stops.

Oct 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Old Poor Richard , 1 hour ago link

"Made up a crime to fit the facts they have" is a normal mode of operation for federal prosecutors. Hopefully the judge throws out all charges, but unlikely to have a broader impact on non-stop fabrications by US attorneys.

What this accusation boils down to is saying that the Russian firm's deception is "proof" that they thought they were violating US law, and that this intention to break a non-existent law constitutes a framework under which they can be convicted of breaking a non-existent law. The crazy never stops. Mueller and his minions should be disbarred.

Reaper , 2 hours ago link

Neo-American Law Rules: You're guilty of intent to commit the crime, rather than committing the crime.

KJWqonfo7 , 42 minutes ago link

It's called a thought crime, it's been around liberal circuits for years.

SirBarksAlot , 3 hours ago link

Wouldn't this set a dangerous precedent, if the judge ruled in favor of the government?

How many people have websites under fake names?

I guess they couldn't prove that they affected the outcome of the election, so they went for conspiracy instead.

DjangoCat , 1 hour ago link

Why is there any requirement to identify oneself beyond an alias, unless there are obligations of debt involved. Even there, the LLC places a barrier between an individual and the creditor.

I post with a pseudonym. My pseudonymous identity bears responsibility for its own reputation.

Algo Rhythm , 4 hours ago link

All of the clandestine branches of the Administrative State suck and need to be ended.

pparalegal , 4 hours ago link

ELECTION MEDDLING (as defined by Mueller and Kravis): every VPN blogger and/or user with more than one GMail account.

But NOT multi-million dollar foreign "contributions" to the Clinton Foundation. That have dried up since November of 2016. Oh no, nothing meddling about over there.

Scipio Africanuz , 5 hours ago link

By participation, do they mean like polls that consistently show the USA as the greatest impediment to global peace and tranquility? Or the numerous opinion sharers that the US government is depraved? Or like the kind of participation of Victoria "**** the EU" Nuland? Or like the Western sponsored Jihadi headchoppers hired to interfere in Syrian elections? Or like the US military fueled aggression against Yemeni sovereignty? Or like the US/Clinton sponsored destabilization of Libyan democracy? Or like the Obama/US sponsored destabilization of Egypt? Or like the US/Western sponsored failed coup in Turkey?

Or most crucially, the US/neoconservative never ending direct interference in internal Russian affairs?

These need to be clarified so folks can understand what meddling/interference/intervention means. It's not enough to point fingers, when worse activities have been, are being carried out by the pointers. Any society that abandons basic ethics, is one destined for the scrap heap of history.

Americans have forgotten what it means to be Americans, and this desperate gambit by the DOJ highlights viscerally, that the American system of government, one based on ethical values, is no more! It demonstrates the fragility of the system.

God alone knows if salvage is possible now, the USA has in the blink of an eye, become the erstwhile USSR, overly sensitive to the unworkability of its sociopolitical system. It is the end game of unsustainable imperium.

Live and learn folks, live and learn!...

hooligan2009 , 5 hours ago link

the law is straightforward.

a crime is committed. you define the crime, outline the harm and damage and seek out those that have perpetrated the crime.

you disclose your evidence, the accused is allowed to present an alibi.

a jury works out if the accused is guilty. a judge determines a sentence if guilt for a crime is proven.. based on evidence and argument.

in this case, no crime has been committed, no evidence of a crime has been presented and no trial can move forward.

those fabricating evidence and a crime are guilty of that.

**** or get off the pot!

PeterLong , 6 hours ago link

"Rather, the allegation is that the company knowingly engaged in deceptive acts that precluded the FEC, or the Justice Department, from ascertaining whether they had broken the law. - Bloomberg " I didn't know Prof. Irwin Corey worked for the US Attorney's office. By this explanation whether you break a law or not you can be guilty of precluding these agencies from determining that you did not break a law, even if whatever you did to prevent such determination was not illegal.

TGF Texas , 6 hours ago link

I hate to be cynical, but...

didn't the Judge in Manaforts trial do something similar when he called out the Mueller team on their motivation's for bringing Manafort up on old charges the DOJ had previously declined to prosecute him on?

Joshua2415 , 2 hours ago link

The difference is that Manafort actually did break a genuine law.

Moribundus , 7 hours ago link

Amerika is 180 degree turn from my logic. Mueler presented fake evidence and fabricated Lockerbie trial. He was working with Steele.

So this is great guy to head FBI and bull sheet Russia medling. In normal country, guy like Mueler is so discredired that can be hapi to have county investigator job, not government job

G-R-U-N-T , 8 hours ago link

LOL, Mueller's investigation is fucked. Indeed, they are going to have to bring forth the evidence via discovery.

It will come to light they manufactured a crime without the evidence. Also, if they don't drop the case they're running the risk of exposing even more crimes they committed.

This is where the American people should rise up and repeal prosecutorial immunity and make the real criminal's pay the price for manufacturing crime's! Care to speculate how many prosecutor's wouldn't even touch a potential criminal with doubt of innocence, if indeed prosecutors were held accountable for their own crimes???

Like I've said, people have NO idea how raunchy and corrupt this manufactured Mueller investigation is, once the unredacted FISA warrant and 302's are released, the people will realize both the seditious and traitorous behavior that went on in the ObamaSpy ring to frame Trump!

[Oct 21, 2018] Judge Orders Mueller To Prove Russian Company Meddled In Election

Oct 20, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
A Washington federal judge on Thursday ordered special counsel Robert Mueller's team to clarify election meddling claims lodged against a Russian company operated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Bloomberg .

Concord Management and Consulting, LLC. - one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling, surprised the special counsel in April when they actually showed up in court to fight the charges. Mueller's team tried to delay Concord from entering the case, arguing that thee Russian company not been properly served, however Judge Dabney Friedrich denied the request - effectively telling prosecutors ' well, they're here .'

Concord was accused in the indictment of supporting the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian 'troll farm' accused of trying to influence the 2016 US election.

On Thursday, Judge Freidrich asked Mueller's prosecutors if she should assume they aren't accusing Concord of violating US laws applicable to election expenditures and failure to register as a foreign agent.

Concord has asked Dabney to throw out the charges - claiming that Mueller's office fabricated a crime, and that there is no law against interfering in elections.

According to the judge's request for clarification, the Justice Department has argued that it doesn't have to show that Concord had a legal duty to report its expenditures to the Federal Election Commission . Rather, the allegation is that the company knowingly engaged in deceptive acts that precluded the FEC, or the Justice Department, from ascertaining whether they had broken the law. - Bloomberg

On Monday, Friedrich raised questions over whether the special counsel's office could prove a key element of their case - saying that it was "hard to see" how allegations of Russian influence were intended to interfere with US government operations vs. simply "confusing voters," reports law.com .

During a 90-minute hearing, Friedrich questioned prosecutor Jonathan Kravis about how the government would be able to show the Russian defendants were aware of the Justice Department and FEC's functions and then deliberately sought to skirt them.

" You still have to show knowledge of the agencies and what they do. How do you do that? " Friedrich asked.

Kravis, a prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia, argued that the government needed only to show that Concord Management and the other defendants were generally aware that the U.S. government "regulates and monitors" foreign participation in American politics . That awareness, Kravis said, could be inferred from the Russians' alleged creation of fake social media accounts that appeared to be run by U.S. citizens and "computer infrastructure" intended to mask the Russian origin of the influence operation.

" That is deception that is directed at a higher level ," Kravis said. Kravis appeared in court with Michael Dreeben , a top Justice Department appellate lawyer on detail to the special counsel's office. - law.com

Concord pleaded not guilty in May. Their attorney, Eric Dubelier - a partner at Reed Smith, has described the election meddling charges as "make believe," arguing on Monday that Mueller's indictment against Concord "doesn't charge a crime."

"There is no statute of interfering with an election. There just isn't," said Dubelier, who added that Mueller's office alleged a "made-up crime to fit the facts they have."

Dubelier added that the case against Concord Management is the first in US history "where anyone has ever been charged with defrauding the Justice Department" through their failure to register under FARA .

[Oct 12, 2018] The Shaky Case That Russia Manipulated Social Media to Tip the 2016 Election by Gareth Porter

Russians under each Facebook account
Oct 12, 2018 | original.antiwar.com
adopted false US personas online to get people to attend rallies and conduct other political activities. (An alternative explanation is that IRA is a purely commercial, and not political, operation.)

Whether those efforts even came close to swaying US voters in the 2016 presidential election, as Shane and Mazzetti claimed, is another matter.

Shane and Mazzetti might argue that they are merely citing figures published by the social media giants Facebook and Twitter, but they systematically failed to report the detailed explanations behind the gross figures used in each case, which falsified their significance.

Their most dramatic assertions came in reporting the alleged results of the IRA's efforts on Facebook. "Even by the vertiginous standards of social media," they wrote, "the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone."

Then, to dramatize that "eventual audience" figure, they observed, "That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential elections."

But as impressive as these figures may appear at first glance, they don't really indicate an effective attack on the US election process at all. In fact, without deeper inquiry into their meaning, those figures were grossly misleading.

A Theoretical Possibility

What Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch actually said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last October was quite different from what the Times reporters claimed. "Our best estimate is that approximately 126,000 million people may have been served one of these [IRA-generated] stories at some time during the two year period," Stretch said.

Stretch was expressing a theoretical possibility rather than an established accomplishment. Facebook was saying that it estimated 126 million Facebook members might have gotten at least one story from the IRA –- not over the ten week election period but over 194 weeks during the two years 2015 through 2017. That, figure, in turn, was based on the estimate that 29 million people might have gotten at least one story in their Facebook feed over that same two-year period and on the assumption that they shared it with others at a particular rate.

The first problem with citing those figures as evidence of impact on the 2016 election is that Facebook did not claim that all or even most of those 80,000 IRA posts were election–related. It offered no data on what proportion of the feeds to those 29 million people was, in fact, election-related. But Stretch did testify that IRA content over that two–year period represented just four thousandths (.0004) of the total content of Facebook newsfeeds.

Thus each piece of IRA content in a twitter feed was engulfed in 23,000 pieces of non-IRA content.

That is an extremely important finding, because, as Facebook's Vice President for News Feed, Adam Moseri, acknowledged in 2016 , Facebook subscribers actually read only about 10 percent of the stories Facebook puts in their News Feed every day. The means that very few of the IRA stories that actually make it into a subscriber's news feed on any given day are actually read.

Facebook did conduct research on what it calls "civic engagement" during the election period, and the researchers concluded that the "reach" of the content shared by what they called "fake amplifiers" was "marginal compared to the volume of civic content shared during the US elections." That reach, they said, was "statistically very small" in relation to "overall engagement on political issues."

Shane and Mazzaetti thus failed to report any of the several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook itself that make their claim that Russian election propaganda "reached" 126 million Americans extremely misleading.

Tiny IRA Twitter Footprint

Shane and Mazzetti's treatment of the role of Twitter in the alleged Russian involvement in the election focuses on 3,814 Twitter accounts said to be associated with the IRA, which supposedly "interacted with 1.4 million Americans." Although that number looks impressive without any further explanation, more disaggregated data provide a different picture: more than 90 percent of the Tweets from the IRA had nothing to do with the election, and those that did were infinitesimally few in relation to the entire Twitter stream relating to the 2016 campaign.

Twitter's own figures show that those 3,814 IRA-linked accounts posted 175,993 Tweets during the ten weeks of the election campaign, but that only 8.4 percent of the total number of IRA-generated Tweets were election-related.

Twitter estimated that those 15,000 IRA-related tweets represented less than .00008 (eight one hundred thousandths) of the estimated total of 189 million tweets that Twitter identified as election-related during the ten-week election campaign. Twitter has offered no estimate of how many Tweets, on average were in the daily twitter stream of those people notified by Twitter and what percentage of them were election-related Tweets from the IRA. Any such notification would certainly show, however, that the percentage was extremely small and that very few would have been read.

Research by Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren of Clemson University on 2.9 million Tweets from those same 3,814 IRA accounts over a two year period has revealed that nearly a third of its Tweets had normal commercial content or were not in English; another third were straight local newsfeeds from US localities or mostly non-political "hashtag games", and the final third were on "right" or "left" populist themes in US society.

Furthermore, there were more IRA Tweets on political themes in 2017 than there had been during the election year. As a graph of those tweets over time shows, those "right" and "left" Tweets peaked not during the election but during the summer of 2017.

The Mysterious 50,000 'Russia-Linked' Accounts

Twitter also determined that another 50,258 automated Twitter accounts that tweeted about the election were associated with Russia and that they have generated a total to 2.1 million Tweets – about one percent of the total number election-related tweets of during the period.

But despite media coverage of those Tweets suggesting that they originated with the Russian government, the evidence doesn't indicate that at all. Twitter's Sean Edgett told the Senate Intelligence Committee last November that Twitter had used an "expansive approach to defining what qualifies as a Russian-linked account". Twitter considered an account to be "Russian" if any of the following was found: it was created in Russia or if the user registered the account with a Russian phone carrier or a Russian email; the user's display name contains Cyrillic characters; the user frequently Tweets in Russian, or the user has logged in from any Russian IP address.

Edgett admitted in a statement in January, however, that there were limitations on its ability to determine the origins of the users of these accounts. And a past log-in from a Russian IP address does not mean the Russian government controls an account. Automated accounts have bought and sold for many years on a huge market, some of which is located in Russia. As Scott Shane reported in September 2017, a Russian website BuyAccs.com offers tens and even hundreds of thousands of Twitter accounts for bulk purchase.

Twitter also observed that "a high concentration of automated engagement and content originated from data centers and users accessing Twitter via Virtual Private Networks ("VPNs") and proxy servers," which served to mask the geographical origin of the tweet. And that practice was not limited to the 50,000 accounts in question. Twitter found that locations of nearly 12 percent of the Tweets generated during the election period were masked because of use of such networks and servers.

Twitter identified over half of the Tweets, coming from about half of the 50,000 accounts as being automated, and the data reported on activity on those 50,000 accounts in question indicates that both the Trump and Clinton campaigns were using the automated accounts in question. The roughly 23,000 automated accounts were the source of 1.34 million Tweets, which represented .63 percent of the total election-related Tweets. But the entire 50,000 accounts produced about 1 percent of total election-related tweets.

Hillary Clinton got .55 percent of her total retweets from the 50,000 automated accounts Twitter calls "Russia-linked" and .62 percent of her "likes" from them. Those percentages are close to the percentage of total election-related Tweets generated by those same automated accounts. That suggests that her campaign had roughly the same proportion of automated accounts among the 50,000 accounts as it did in the rest of the accounts during the campaign.

Trump, on the other hand, got 1.8 percent of this total "likes" and 4.25 percent of his total Retweets for the whole election period from those accounts, indicating his campaign was more invested in the automated accounts that were the source of two-thirds of the Tweets in those 50,000 "Russia-linked" accounts.

The idea promoted by Shane and Mazzetti that the Russian government seriously threatened to determine the winner of the election does not hold up when the larger social media context is examined more closely. Contrary to what the Times' reporters and the corporate media in general would have us believe, the Russian private sector effort accounted for a minuscule proportion of the election-related output of social media. The threat to the US political system in general and its electoral system in particular is not Russian influence; it's in part a mainstream news media that has lost perspective on the truth.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national security policy, received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare . He can be contacted at [email protected] . Reprinted from Consortium News with the author's permission.

[Jul 10, 2018] The Mueller Indictments Still Don t Add Up to Collusion by Aaron Maté

Mifsud was most probably MI5 asset. So we can speak about entrapment of people connected to Trump campaign.
The same probably is true for Goldstone.
Notable quotes:
"... The most high-level Trump campaign official to be indicted is Paul Manafort, as well as his former business partner and Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates. The charges, as a Virginia judge observed last month , "manifestly don't have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion." ..."
"... There is widespread supposition that Manafort's dealings in Ukraine make him a prime candidate for collusion with Moscow. But that stems from the mistaken belief that Manafort promoted Kremlin interests during his time in Kiev. The opposite appears to be the case. The New York Times ..."
"... According to his charge sheet , Flynn falsely told agents that he did not request that Russia respond to new US sanctions "in a reciprocal manner" because the incoming Trump team "did not want Russia to escalate the situation." Flynn also hid from FBI agents that, days before that call, he first asked Kislyak to veto a UN Security Council measure condemning Israeli settlement building, which the outgoing Obama administration had decided to let pass (Russia ultimately rebuffed Flynn and supported the measure). ..."
"... The FBI was able to charge Flynn because it had concrete evidence that his statements to them were false: wiretaps of his conversations with Kislyak. But these calls offer nothing on collusion. As The Washington Post ..."
"... Donald Trump Jr. is often faulted for accepting Goldstone's overture to begin with, since it floated damaging information from a foreign power. He is also faulted for initially providing a misleading statement about the meeting to the media. But lying to reporters is not an indictable offense, and neither is showing a willingness to obtain foreign dirt. During the 2016 contest, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign accepted help from Ukraine and paid for the salacious and outlandish Steele "dossier" from across the pond. ..."
"... By now the details are well known: About $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads, more than half of that after ..."
"... Yet prominent media and political voices have portrayed the ads as a major component of a "sophisticated" Russian interference campaign akin to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. On his current book tour, former national-intelligence director James Clapper has declared that, taken together, the Russian ads and stolen Democratic e-mails handed Trump the presidency . ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Mueller's indictment reinforces Facebook's initial conclusion. The defendants "used the accounts to receive money from real US persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements" on their social-media pages, for a fee of "between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post." And not only does Mueller say that the troll farm had no ties to the Trump campaign, he doesn't even allege that it worked with the Russian government ..."
"... One of the indicted firms is challenging the case in court, accusing Mueller of inventing "a make-believe crime" in order to "justify his own existence" and "indict a Russian -- any Russian." Whether the troll farm's indictment is make-believe or not, Mueller has yet to indict anyone -- let alone any Russian -- for Russiagate's underlying crime: the theft of Democratic Party e-mails. And more than a year after they accused the Russian government of carrying it out, intelligence officials have yet to produce a shred of proof. ..."
"... The January 2017 intelligence report begat an endless cycle of innuendo and unverified claims, inculcating the public with fears of a massive Russian interference operation and suspicions of the Trump campaign's complicity. The evidence to date casts doubt on the merits of this national preoccupation, and with it, the judgment of the intelligence, political, and media figures who have elevated it to such prominence. ..."
Jun 13, 2018 | www.thenation.com

A year of investigations has led to several guilty pleas, but none of them go to the core of the special counsel's mandate.

The Mueller Indictments Still Don't Add Up to Collusion | The Nation n just over one year, special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump campaign and Russia has generated five guilty pleas, 20 indictments, and more than 100 charges. None of these have anything to do with Mueller's chief focus: the Russian government's alleged meddling in the 2016 election and the Trump campaign's suspected involvement.

While it's certainly possible that Mueller will make new indictments that go to the core of his case, what's been revealed so far does not make a compelling brief for collusion.

The most high-level Trump campaign official to be indicted is Paul Manafort, as well as his former business partner and Trump campaign deputy Rick Gates. The charges, as a Virginia judge observed last month , "manifestly don't have anything to do with the campaign or with Russian collusion." Instead, Manafort and Gates are accused of financial crimes beginning in 2008, when they worked as political operatives for a Russia-leaning party in Ukraine (and for which Manafort was previously investigated, but not indicted).

There is widespread supposition that Manafort's dealings in Ukraine make him a prime candidate for collusion with Moscow. But that stems from the mistaken belief that Manafort promoted Kremlin interests during his time in Kiev. The opposite appears to be the case. The New York Times recounts that Manafort "pressed [then–Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor] Yanukovych to sign an agreement with the European Union that would link the country closer to the West -- and lobbied for the Americans to support Ukraine's membership." If that picture is accurate, then Manafort's activities in Ukraine during the period for which he has been indicted were diametrically opposed to the Kremlin's agenda.

Manafort's employment of Konstantin Kilimnik, who was indicted last week on obstruction charges in Manafort's case, is seen as another Kremlin link. Kilimnik studied as a linguist at a Soviet-era military school and went on to become Manafort's translator and fixer in Ukraine. According to Mueller, Kilimnik has "ties to Russian intelligence" that were active during the 2016 campaign. The evidence to support that assertion is sealed. For his part, Kilimnik denies being a Russian agent . Ukrainian authorities investigated him in August 2016 but did not bring charges. According to The Atlantic , "insinuations" that Kilimnik worked for Russian intelligence then "were never backed by more than a smattering of circumstantial evidence."

While Manafort's alleged offenses (aside from the new obstruction charges) occurred well before the 2016 campaign, those of former national security adviser Michael Flynn came after. Flynn admitted to making "false statements and omissions" about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition in December 2016. According to his charge sheet , Flynn falsely told agents that he did not request that Russia respond to new US sanctions "in a reciprocal manner" because the incoming Trump team "did not want Russia to escalate the situation." Flynn also hid from FBI agents that, days before that call, he first asked Kislyak to veto a UN Security Council measure condemning Israeli settlement building, which the outgoing Obama administration had decided to let pass (Russia ultimately rebuffed Flynn and supported the measure).

The FBI was able to charge Flynn because it had concrete evidence that his statements to them were false: wiretaps of his conversations with Kislyak. But these calls offer nothing on collusion. As The Washington Post reported , FBI agents who "reviewed" the calls with Kislyak had "not found any evidence of wrongdoing or illicit ties to the Russian government."

Like Flynn, George Papadopoulos has also pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI after the election. Although he is the lowest-level member of the Trump campaign to be charged, his case has emerged front and center. In the months since Papadopoulos's October indictment, we have been told that the FBI launched an investigation , code named " Crossfire Hurricane ," because of him. We also recently learned that the FBI enlisted an informant , Cambridge Professor Stefan Halper , to make contact with Papadopoulos and two other campaign officials, Carter Page and Sam Clovis, in a bid to pry loose information on potential campaign ties to Russia.

In charging Papadopoulos, Mueller's team raised the prospect that Papadopoulos was told about stolen Democratic e-mails before the theft of DNC e-mails was publicly known. According to the Statement of Offense, Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud informed Papadopoulos that "the Russians" had obtained "thousands of emails" containing "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. The two spoke in April 2016, before the first DNC e-mails were released. Papadopoulos volunteered to agents his information on Mifsud's offer; he pleaded guilty to misrepresenting the timing of when he spoke to Mifsud. All of this would be more explosive if, as the Mueller team suggested, Mifsud actually "had substantial connections to Russian government officials," and recently "met with some of those officials in Moscow."

And yet there were ample reasons to question whether Papadopoulos was a plausible conduit for Trump-Kremlin collusion. He was an unpaid volunteer known for embellishing credentials ; who not only didn't land a job in the Trump administration post-election but couldn't even get his travel expenses reimbursed during the campaign.

It is also quite possible that Mifsud was referring to the 30,000 State Department e-mails deleted from Hillary Clinton's private server, by that point a well-publicized controversy. Papadopoulos's wife, Simona Mangiante, now says that Papadopoulos believes that to be the case. She also says that Papadopoulos has no knowledge of collusion and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI only because Mueller threatened to charge him for having been an unregistered foreign agent of Israel.

If Papadopoulos offers Mueller nothing on collusion, the other main staple of collusion allegations -- the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower -- is an unlikely alternative. The music publicist who set up the meeting, Rob Goldstone, e-mailed Donald Trump Jr. with an offer of "official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia," -- not, it should be noted, stolen e-mails. But because Goldstone also wrote of "very high level and sensitive information," as "part of Russia and its government's support for Mr. Trump," his message has been quoted endlessly as Exhibit A for a Trump-Russia plot. There were already reasons to question whether an e-mail sent by a kooky publicist is plausible groundwork for such a high-level conspiracy. The recently released transcripts of Goldstone's congressional testimony give us more. Goldstone explains that he set up the meeting on behalf of Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop singer who employed Goldstone as a publicist, and whose father, Aras Agalarov, is a billionaire who partnered with Trump on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

Goldstone recounts that Emin gave him "limited information" -- and that was a problem. Emin had told him that a "well-connected Russian attorney," Natalia Veselnitskaya, had met with his father and "told him that they had some interesting information that could potentially be damaging regarding funding by Russians to the Democrats and to its candidate, Hillary Clinton." Goldstone's follow-up attempts to get "more information" from Emin yielded nothing more. So Goldstone drew upon his professional tools. As he told the Senate Judiciary Committee: "I had puffed it and used some keywords that I thought would attract Don Jr.'s attention." In his field, he explained, "publicist puff is how they get meetings."

By his telling, Goldstone was not being a Kremlin intermediary; he was being a good publicist. His Russian pop-star client had passed on vague information based on what his father had told him about what a Russian lawyer said. His "publicist puff" secured the meeting. All parties contend that the meeting ended quickly after the assembled Trump representatives struggled to understand what Veselnitskaya was talking about, which included none of the advertised incriminating information. Veselnitskaya says she tried to discuss repealing the Magnitsky Act sanctions on Russia, which is not hard to believe given that Veselnitskaya and her client, Prevazon Holdings, have fought those sanctions for years.

Donald Trump Jr. is often faulted for accepting Goldstone's overture to begin with, since it floated damaging information from a foreign power. He is also faulted for initially providing a misleading statement about the meeting to the media. But lying to reporters is not an indictable offense, and neither is showing a willingness to obtain foreign dirt. During the 2016 contest, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign accepted help from Ukraine and paid for the salacious and outlandish Steele "dossier" from across the pond.

This brings us to the last major indictment, and the first one to include Russian nationals: 13 Russians and three companies accused of running a US-aimed social media campaign out of the St. Petersburg–based Internet Research Agency (IRA). By now the details are well known: About $100,000 was spent on Facebook ads, more than half of that after the November 2016 vote. The bulk of the remaining $46,000 in ads ran during the primaries. The majority of the ads did not even reference the election and got little traction.

Yet prominent media and political voices have portrayed the ads as a major component of a "sophisticated" Russian interference campaign akin to Pearl Harbor and 9/11. On his current book tour, former national-intelligence director James Clapper has declared that, taken together, the Russian ads and stolen Democratic e-mails handed Trump the presidency .

Now that we can see all of the ads for ourselves , it is difficult to argue with Facebook executive Rob Goldman , who said that "swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal." The main goal, in fact, appears to be exactly what Facebook initially found, according to The Washington Post , before the social-media giant came under pressure from congressional Democrats: "A review by the company found that most of the groups behind the problematic pages had clear financial motives, which suggested that they weren't working for a foreign government."

Mueller's indictment reinforces Facebook's initial conclusion. The defendants "used the accounts to receive money from real US persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements" on their social-media pages, for a fee of "between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post." And not only does Mueller say that the troll farm had no ties to the Trump campaign, he doesn't even allege that it worked with the Russian government. The IRA's owner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is said to be close to Putin. But even if the ads came right from the Kremlin, does anyone think that the bizarre offerings -- from Buff Bernie to pro-Beyoncé and anti-Beyoncé to the juvenile attacks on Hillary Clinton -- impacted the US voters who saw them?

One of the indicted firms is challenging the case in court, accusing Mueller of inventing "a make-believe crime" in order to "justify his own existence" and "indict a Russian -- any Russian." Whether the troll farm's indictment is make-believe or not, Mueller has yet to indict anyone -- let alone any Russian -- for Russiagate's underlying crime: the theft of Democratic Party e-mails. And more than a year after they accused the Russian government of carrying it out, intelligence officials have yet to produce a shred of proof.

The January 2017 intelligence report begat an endless cycle of innuendo and unverified claims, inculcating the public with fears of a massive Russian interference operation and suspicions of the Trump campaign's complicity. The evidence to date casts doubt on the merits of this national preoccupation, and with it, the judgment of the intelligence, political, and media figures who have elevated it to such prominence.

[Jun 18, 2018] There was a strong commercial component in the sense that the accounts that the Russians are accused of creating were used to essentially, as a scheme in which vendors would pay them money for retweets at sometimes $25 to $50 a pop. It seems to me that there is both a commercial motive here as well as a political

Jun 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

UserFriendly | Jun 17, 2018 10:52:26 PM | 18

Re Aaron Mate
It's entirely possible he reads you regularly and saw your post when you first published, but on 2/20/18 :

AARON MATÉ: Let's talk about the indictment, Max. Reading through it, the prosecution alleges some clear political motives, a preference, basically, for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and a strong distaste for Hillary Clinton, also support for some, also, the encouragement of Russian trolls to disparage Republicans like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.

There does appear to be some political motives there in whatever the Russians, whatever these alleged suspects were doing. But also, there's a strong commercial component in the sense that the accounts that the Russians are accused of creating were used to essentially, as a scheme in which vendors would pay them money for retweets at sometimes $25 to $50 a pop.

It seems to me that there is both a commercial motive here as well as a political imperative, as well. I'm wondering your thoughts on what this indictment tells us.

So your Tweet on 6/5/18 wasn't telling him anything he hadn't already said publicly.

[Jun 13, 2018] The trial was postponed because the defendant planed to show up to his own trial

I can't believe in the USA the prosecutor is asking the judge not to let the defendant see the evidence against them .
From comments: "Mueller's face [on the photo] looks like he is out on a limb and badly needs to take a restroom break."
Jun 13, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

are we there yet -> chunga Tue, 06/12/2018 - 18:22 Permalink

The trial was postponed because the defendant planed to show up to his own trial. That just sounds wrong.

ebear -> chunga Tue, 06/12/2018 - 21:12 Permalink

"In this case it's a euphemism for sleaze."

Oh it's way more than that. That is the kind of language Oliver Wendell Holmes would have used back in the day. It also brings to mind Samuel Clemens. This is a very sharp team indeed.

Ristretto X4 -> stacking12321 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:32 Permalink

*Definition of pettifogger. 1 : a lawyer whose methods are petty, underhanded, or disreputable : shyster. 2 : one given to quibbling over trifles.

So, pretty much every bar member?

OverTheHedge -> apocalypticbrother Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:48 Permalink

To quote the immortal Derek and Clive:

"Laugh? I nearly shat!"

...and that is all the comment necessary on tnis.

The Man from Uncle -> y3maxx Tue, 06/12/2018 - 20:59 Permalink

Mule-er basically drew to an inside straight, and got busted. The Russkies called his bluff, and his hand is 7-8-10-Jack-four. Sorry, Ereberto, no nine, just a "nein." Discovery is a bitch! I suspect that further developments are going to be highly entertaining. Judge: "can we see your evidence of wrongdoing." Mule-er: "That's highly classified."

IOW, "We got nuthin'."

platyops -> stacking12321 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:55 Permalink

In its earliest English uses, "pettifogger" was two separate words: "pettie fogger." "Pettie" was a variant spelling of "petty," a reasonable inclusion in a word for someone who is disreputable and small-minded.

That is Meuller!

Keep Stacking

Versengetorix -> stacking12321 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 22:06 Permalink

Actually this is the third time a Federal Judge has used the term against the Mueller team. It's accurate and it is beginning to stick.

ironmace -> stacking12321 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 22:28 Permalink

pettifog:

  1. to bicker or quibble over trifles or unimportant matters.
  2. to carry on a petty, shifty, or unethical law business.
  3. to practice chicanery of any sort.

I had to look it up.

archaic: to practice legal deception.

good word.

Gaius Frakkin' -> Zip_the_Zap Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:26 Permalink

Maybe if Mueller resigned and spent some time away from DC to travel the country he'd realize the division in America is real and not a Russian ploy.

He's either incompetent for not knowing or a complete shill for pushing a narrative he knows is false. Pick one.

nidaar -> Gaius Frakkin' Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:30 Permalink

"After indicted Russians actually show up in court"

Puhahahaha

No one could see that comin' right Mueller?

Shift For Brains -> BarkingCat Tue, 06/12/2018 - 19:25 Permalink

Who would have believed decent Americans would ever applaud Russians kicking the shit out of federal law enforcement? Do I hear "The World Turned Upside Down" in the distance? Should Mueller change his name to Cornwallis?

aelfheld -> Gaius Frakkin' Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:37 Permalink

Why can't he be a complete, incompetent, shill?

i poop pink ic -> Gaius Frakkin' Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:52 Permalink

How about "corrupt" shill? Remember, Mueller headed the FBI before and after the 9/11 attacks. Did Mueller's FBI investigate? No; they covered up for 9/11 perpetrators. Thanks a lot Mueller.

I Am Jack's Ma -> Bastiat Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:26 Permalink

but what's the crime?

political speech? conspiring to engage in political speech?

clickbait ads on the internet?

Being Russian?

Being against Hillary Clinton?

I'm waiting for someone to explain what the alleged actual crime is - and why Mueller isn't prosecuting the 1st Amendment?

jin187 -> Bastiat Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:56 Permalink

If I were the judge, I would refuse any motion Mueller makes to avoid releasing evidence, and if he doesn't do it within a matter of hours, his entire staff would be getting perp walked for contempt. Let Mueller manage his investigation from a prison cell, like some drug kingpin.

shortonoil -> jin187 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:59 Permalink

The US government has already wasted $200 million on this stupid "pettifoggery". Some one, any one, put an end to this ridiculous dog and pony show. Mueller, and the Justice Dept. are now the laughing stock of the world. We need to save a little face, and have this SOB shot for the good of the nation. This Prick doesn't give two shits for the American people, or the nation that he is paid to serve.

The_Dude -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:14 Permalink

These guys were likely just pushing click-bait on Facebook. And since it is election season, it is easy for them to riff off the candidates.

Mueller giving it any legitimacy shows he is either out of touch with how the internet works or has his own special case of Trump derangement syndrome.

Rufus Temblor -> MoreFreedom Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:27 Permalink

If producing propaganda to change the outcome of an election is a crime, then the entire democrat party should be put in jail.

ChargingHandle -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 06/12/2018 - 20:49 Permalink

Accuse others for which you are guilty is in the dnc handbook. The only illegal activity involved the DNC, team Hillary, and operatives in the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and the IRS.

Unknown User -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 06/12/2018 - 22:28 Permalink

Apparently Mueller has a novel legal theory that Russians are not protected under the 1st Amendment in US.

are we there yet -> gmrpeabody Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:19 Permalink

Mueller's face looks like he is out on a limb and badly needs to take a restroom break.

Rufus Temblor -> vato poco Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:24 Permalink

This indictment is a total fujkin joke. In Mueller's world he can charge you with a crime but refuse to show the evidence. Proves that he has no interest in serving justice. His goals are to defame and bankrupt enemies of the deep swamp.

Thordoom -> vato poco Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:56 Permalink

When the truth comes out and i was Russian company or individual affected by this assholes i would sue US for lost business and for defamation and demand reparations and let THe black Jesus and Clinton Killer Gang and their lackies pay for it.

PlayMoney -> vato poco Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:56 Permalink

Last thing in the world ole Bobby wants is to go to trial. This is going to be quite entertaining.

Buster Cherry -> vato poco Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:57 Permalink

A summons is a summons. It is an ORDER by a court to be present.

Since when does a court need to have a summons be " formally accepted???"

This shit needs to seriously blow up in Mueller's face, hopefully decapitating him in the process.

Scipio Africanuz -> vato poco Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:05 Permalink

Is this how the Republic dies? Via strangulation of the First Amendment?

When JFK called himself a Berliner, was he a German citizen?...

When Reagan interfered in German affairs, by proclaiming "Mr Gorbachev, tear down this wall!", was he a German citizen?

When Obama advised Britain not to exit the EU, was he a British citizen?

Folks, what's sauce for the goose, is same for the gander!...

I Am Jack's Ma -> nmewn Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:39 Permalink

malicious prosecution?

malicious prosecution - SCOTUSblog

http://www.virginialawreview.org/sites/virginialawreview.org/files/Kossis_Book.pdf

nmewn -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 06/12/2018 - 19:44 Permalink

Yes, very good links but, this is different in my opinion.

Mueller attempted to bring a criminal domestic case against international personas that he is now unwilling to go through the discovery process with (his claim) because of...wait for it...national security.

He never intended or wanted for this case to go to trial (but he had to show "something" for his efforts) it is malpractice (at the American bar level) and he knew it when he filed it.

When a prosecutor files charges against anyone (here) he is in essence saying "We have the evidence to prosecute your honor and we are going to show it to you." now he is saying he can't or will not produce that evidence in the venue he chose to prosecute in.

Probably because he (and his crack Hillary lawyers) didn't do the homework required until after filing charges (idiot fucktard that he and they are...lol) as Concord's new CEO is none other than one Dimitry Utkin, founder of the Wagner Group, a Rodnover, for whatever thats worth ;-)

whosyerdaddy -> Countrybunkererd Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:03 Permalink

It's not just embarrassing it's criminal. He wants unlimited scope to find "something". He indicts Russians knowing they won't show up for court or so he thought and now he wants to limit the evidence because he has no hand. Don't interfere with your enemy when he's mucking it up. Mueller is going to be indicted for all of this, Uranium One being the least of his problems. If Mr. Mueller wants to question me the first thing I say is how much money did you give Whitey Bulger?

currency Tue, 06/12/2018 - 15:58 Permalink

Muller got caught, tried to make headlines with Real Russians thinking they would not show up and one did he is now in a PANIC - Muller needs to produce the evidence or shut up and go away with his band of 13 anti Trump staff.

Do us a favor Muller RESIGN

SmittyinLA Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:00 Permalink

"The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters."

Cough cough, none of that is illegal, 1st Amendment, even for Russians

[Jun 13, 2018] Mueller Scrambles To Limit Evidence After Indicted Russians Actually Show Up In Court Zero Hedge

Jun 13, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is scrambling to limit pretrial evidence handed over to a Russian company he indicted in February over alleged meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, according to Bloomberg .

Mueller asked a Washington federal Judge for a protective order that would prevent the delivery of copious evidence to lawyers for Concord Management and Consulting, LLC, one of three Russian firms and 13 Russian nationals. The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters .

The special counsel's office argues that the risk of the evidence leaking or falling into the hands of foreign intelligence services, especially Russia, would assist the Kremlin's active "interference operations" against the United States.

"The substance of the government's evidence identifies uncharged individuals and entities that the government believes are continuing to engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment," prosecutors wrote.

Improper disclosure would tip foreign intelligence services about how the U.S. operates, which would "allow foreign actors to learn of those techniques and adjust their conduct, thus undermining ongoing and future national security operations ," according to the filing.

The evidence includes thousands of documents involving U.S. residents not charged with crimes who prosecutors say were unwittingly recruited by Russian defendants and co-conspirators to engage in political activity in the U.S., prosecutors wrote. - Bloomberg

Mueller also accused Concord of "knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

And Concord Management decided to fight it...

As Powerline notes, Mueller probably didn't see that coming - and the indictment itself was perhaps nothing more than a PR stunt to bolster the Russian interference narrative.

I don't think anyone (including Mueller) anticipated that any of the defendants would appear in court to defend against the charges. Rather, the Mueller prosecutors seem to have obtained the indictment to serve a public relations purpose, laying out the case for interference as understood by the government and lending a veneer of respectability to the Mueller Switch Project.

One of the Russian corporate defendants nevertheless hired counsel to contest the charges. In April two Washington-area attorneys -- Eric Dubelier and Kate Seikaly of the Reed Smith firm -- filed appearances in court on behalf of Concord Management and Consulting . Josh Gerstein covered that turn of events for Politico here . - Powerline Blog

Politico' s Gerstein notes that by defending against the charges, " Concord could force prosecutors to turn over discovery about how the case was assembled as well as evidence that might undermine the prosecution's theories ."

In a mad scramble to put the brakes on the case, Mueller's team tried to delay the trial - saying that Concord never formally accepted the court summons related to the case , wrapping themselves in a "cloud of confusion" as Powerline puts it. "Until the Court has an opportunity to determine if Concord was properly served, it would be inadvisable to conduct an initial appearance and arraignment at which important rights will be communicated and a plea entertained."

The Judge, Dabney Friedrich - a Trump appointee, didn't buy it - denying Mueller a delay in the high-profile trial.

The Russians hit back - filing a response to let the court know that " [Concord] voluntarily appeared through counsel as provided for in [the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure], and further intends to enter a plea of not guilty . [Concord] has not sought a limited appearance nor has it moved to quash the summons. As such, the briefing sought by the Special Counsel's motion is pettifoggery. "

And the Judge agreed ...

A federal judge has rejected special counsel Robert Mueller's request to delay the first court hearing in a criminal case charging three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens with using social media and other means to foment strife among Americans in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

In a brief order Saturday evening, U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich offered no explanation for her decision to deny a request prosecutors made Friday to put off the scheduled Wednesday arraignment for Concord Management and Consulting, one of the three firms charged in the case . - Politico

In other words, Mueller was denied the opportunity to kick the can down the road, forcing him to produce the requested evidence or withdraw the indictment , potentially jeopardizing the PR aspect of the entire "Trump collusion" probe.

And now Mueller is pointing to Russian "interference operations" in a last-ditch effort .

Of note, Facebook VP of advertising, Rob Goldman, tossed a major hand grenade in the "pro-Trump" Russian meddling narrative in February when he fired off a series of tweets the day of the Russian indictments. Most notably, Goldman pointed out that the majority of advertising purchased by Russians on Facebook occurred after the election, were hardly pro-Trump, and they was designed to "sow discord and divide Americans", something which Americans have been quite adept at doing on their own ever since the Fed decided to unleash a record class, wealth, income divide by keeping capital markets artificially afloat at any cost.

me title=


gmrpeabody -> Arnold Tue, 06/12/2018 - 15:58 Permalink

The charges are redacted, your Honor.., but he sure is guilty just the same.

I Am Jack's Ma -> gmrpeabody Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:05 Permalink

The indictment accuses the firm of producing propaganda, pretending to be U.S. activists online and posting political content on social media in order to sow discord among American voters .

...

"knowingly and intentionally" conspiring to interfere with the election by using social media to disparage Hillary Clinton and support Donald Trump.

Wait a minute, hold on - what exactly is the 'crime' here? Facebook ads that said Clinton sucks? That's a crime now? I'm missing something obviously - I just don't know what. Anyone willing and able to shed light on the crime alleged here?

How about CNN and NYT absolutely slanted and biased coverage? [And no - 'the press' in the 1st Amendment meant and means still the written word, not news corporations].

So far as I know "meddling" isn't a crime outside of Scooby Doo cartoons and MSNBC

Bastiat -> I Am Jack's Ma Tue, 06/12/2018 - 16:12 Permalink

The nerve of them to: a) show up; and b) demand to see the evidence against them. What they hell to those damn Russians think this is?

philipat -> Oliver Klozoff Tue, 06/12/2018 - 22:27 Permalink

I believe that Mueller is, rightly, being told to "Put up or shut up"? The discovery phase should be very interesting and the only way to avoid that is to drop the charges, which will indeed completely destroy Mueller's PR strategy. And with it, what remains of his credibility...

Mr. Universe -> Leakanthrophy Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:11 Permalink

I can picture Mueller sitting at the poker table with a huge stack. As he looks over his hand, with a sly look on his face and a wink, he goes all in. Surprise suprise, they call his bet. Now we wait for the reveal except that Bobby is screaming, wait, no fair, it was an accident, I didn't mean to go all in. Turn those machines back on! The dealer then looks him dead in the eye and says "Tough shit" as he turns over Mueller's losing hand.

JRobby -> Mr. Universe Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:15 Permalink

"Laugh Track Deafening !!!!!"

Called Mueller's bluff. Discovery could be a "back breaker".

janus -> JRobby Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:37 Permalink

mueller, you are so screwed. so supremely and royally screwed. now your investigation is coming to a crashing halt without POTUS having to step in. all that was ever needed is transparency. and now the good guys will have the IG report, Session's investigation, the declassification of spy-gate materials and discovery from your Keystone cop operation all at once.

best timeline ever.

take it from janus, extracting a troll from the interwebs and thinking you can crush him IRL ALWAYS blows up in your face.

the only way you can win the game is with the deck stacked like a tower in your favor and warping the rules to effect a desired outcome. tptb, you are up against superior people with superior minds animated by an indomitable will. devastating defeat is inevitable.

surrender now,

janus

monkeyshine -> janus Tue, 06/12/2018 - 18:12 Permalink

They have a right to a speedy trial. They have a right to see the evidence against them. They have a right to interview witnesses.

Pettifoggers will pettifogger, but they will be pasquinaded by the defense and the court will show its disapprobation.

bh2 -> monkeyshine Tue, 06/12/2018 - 18:29 Permalink

"the government believes"

Whatever happened to "the government will prove " as a basis of conviction?

The government "believes". But we don't have any actual evidence we can provide the court. You'll just have to take our word for it.

Good grief. How perfectly Star Chamber.

These people should be embarrassed to even show up before an honest judge.

monkeyshine -> bh2 Tue, 06/12/2018 - 19:04 Permalink

That is part of the defense's argument. Many are asking "what is the actual crime" being charged. Mueller charged them with campaign finance violations and failing to register as a foreign agent. These crimes have a high burden of proof in that they require the state to prove that the defendant knowingly broke the laws. No foreign corporation has ever been charged with these crimes before. And the defense argues that there is nothing in the indictment to show that they knew they were breaking these laws - hence no way to prove the case against them. They also raise the 1st Amendment as defense saying political speech is protected.

SybilDefense -> monkeyshine Tue, 06/12/2018 - 23:06 Permalink

Did/do these companies have any other function besides buying $500 worth of "I Like Trump" ads like selling something? So only Americans can have free speech in America, unless you identify you and your coworkers as foreign free speech speaker-people? It sounds too tricky. Only a progressive could figure out the legalities involved, as they are the free speech professionals. The rest of us must get permission first, and then it will only be grafted IF we say things that are officially approved by the free speech Nazi party.

Just think if these Ruskies could have voted! It would have been 30-40 more Trump votes and he would have really really won bigly.

Can't Mueller be prosecuted himself if he knows there is no collusion or whatever... No Russian anything, yet he continues to steal tax payer monies to fabricate false leads? He has no incentive to be honest or to limit the investigation and if having the case remain open benefits his party affiliates and he himself financially. If I got hired to do a one day job and lied to make it a one year job, wouldn't that be theft of services?? The cuss must show or he must go!

The pettifoggin dickbrain bitchfuck!

are we there yet -> chunga Tue, 06/12/2018 - 17:09 Permalink

Kangaroo...Mueller...Kangaroo...
Kangaroo Mueller is a good nickname....surprised Trump has not used it.

[Apr 01, 2018] Does the average user care if s/he is micro-targetted by political advertisements based on what they already believe?

Highly recommended!
Apr 01, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

BigJim -> MusicIsYou Sat, 03/31/2018 - 10:20 Permalink

The furor is all about the "illegitimate" victories of Brexit and Trump's campaign. Does the average user care if s/he is micro-targetted by political advertisements based on what they already believe?

No, because they already believe they're right, so what's wrong with a little confirmation bias? Most of us spend significant amounts of energy seeking out sources of information confirming what we already believe; micro-targetting just makes our lives that little bit less effortful.

[Mar 24, 2018] Did Trump cut a deal on the collusion charge by Mike Whitney

Highly recommended!
The idea the Russians " "had the strategic purpose of sowing political discord in the United States" which in reality in the result of deep crisis on neoliberalism, which started in 2008 is a typical scapegoating. The essence of neo-McCarthyism if you wish.
"... But the indictments themselves suggest that Mueller's narrative is wrong. The objective was not to influence the election, but make money by getting viewers to "click on" advertisements. Check it out: ..."
"... It's worth noting, that if Mueller really wanted to get to the bottom of the Russia-gate allegations, he would interview the people who have first-hand knowledge what actually happened. He would question Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) and Craig Murray, both of whom have stated publicly that they know who stole the Podesta emails. ..."
"... Mueller hasn't done that, nor has he contacted the VIPs (Ray McGovern, William Binney, Skip Folden, etc) who did extensive forensic investigation of the "hacking" allegations and proved that the emails were not hacked but leaked. Mueller has not pursued that line of inquiry either. ..."
"... The above statement helps to prove my point that the indictments are not a vehicle for criminal prosecution, but part of a politically-motivated information campaign to damage Trump and vilify Russia. No one seriously believes that Mueller would ever try to prosecute this case based on the spurious and looney claims of a criminal conspiracy. The whole idea is laughable. ..."
"... We found it interesting that Rob Goldman, who is the Vice President of Facebook Ads, tweeted this revealing disclaimer on Monday which Trump posted on Twitter: ..."
"... Bottom line: The indictments were very good news for Donald Trump, but very bad news for Robert Mueller who appears to have run into a brick wall. But has he? Has Mueller abandoned the attacks on Trump or is there something else going on just below the surface? ..."
"... I can only guess at the answer, but it looks to me like Trump may have made a deal to support the attacks on Russia provided he is acquitted on charges of collusion. That's what he's wanted from the beginning, so, maybe he won this round? Here's one of his recent tweets that helps to support my theory: ..."
"... What's wrong with that? If Trump's enemies want to provide him with a Get-Outta-Jail-Free card, then why shouldn't he snatch it up and put this whole goofy probe behind him? That's what most people would do. ..."
"... The problem is that Trump's biggest supporters want him to continue struggle against "The Swamp". They want him to fight for their interests and expose the crooked goings-on behind the Russiagate scandal. They want him to lift up the rock that conceals the activities of the National Security State so everyone can see the maggots squirming below. That's what they want, a modern-day Samson who shakes the temple's pillars and brings the whole crooked system crashing down around him. ..."
"... These same people are hopeful that the Nunes memo and the Grassley-Graham "criminal referral" are just the tip of the iceberg that will inevitably lead to the bigger fish involved in this deep-state conspiracy, namely former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Former FBI Director James Comey, and very likely, Barack Hussein Obama himself. What role did these men play in spying on the Trump campaign? Were they actively trying to sabotage the elections by giving Hillary an edge? Should a second Special Counsel be appointed to investigate whether crimes were committed in their targeting of the Trump team? ..."
"... There is no crime called "collusion". So Trump cannot be "acquitted", let alone be charged with something that is not a crime. Apparently the deep state and media's repetition of "collusion" has duped not just the public, but this author with thinking it is some kind of crime. ..."
"... Trump needs the swamp to produce politicized intel for his campaigns against Iran and Venezuela (plus a dozen other countries which don't threaten the US). He needs the hated MSM (not much more than the swamp's media branch) to sell the Iran war to his voters, who are supposed to pay for it. He needs his shady relatives to stay OUT of prison, where several of them seem to belong (of course, papa Kushner has already spent time inside). So appeasement it is. ..."
"... Sorry, but on the whole Trump voters are too dumb to pose much of an obstacle. They like the campaigns against Iran because of religion, and against Venezuela because of "socialism". They didn't raise a peep when it became clear that THEIR money would all go to the Armies of Mordor. That this is "Saddam-WMD-9/11″ all over again just hasn't registered with them, and never will. Just like Trump winning his primary running against outside money, and immediately afterwards selling out for Adelson's shekels–it exceeds the deplorables' attention span, so it never happened. Keep harping on immigrants and it's all good; razzle-dazzle them, as it was called in the Chicago movie. ..."
"... So on the whole, yes, already since his inauguration it has been clear that The Donald is mostly playing along, as long as he'll be allowed to stay president ..."
"... So Trump is not opposed to demonizing Russia, he's just opposed to demonizing Donald John Trump. That's where he draws the line. ..."
"... Well guys, if there's anyone here who still abides by the '5-D chess' theory, I think it's time to face facts: Trump has thrown us all under the bust to save himself. Expect a war in Syria, or Ukraine, or maybe both. ..."
"... The indictments have no legal merit, they are a form of domestic propaganda and disinformation. The real target is the American people. ..."
"... That's pretty much what this banana republic's government is all about. One way or another, everything they do is designed to ultimately squeeze something out of us dumb 'Merkin proles and peasants ..."
"... I was expecting more of a profile in courage under the tutelage of someone smarter than Trump; instead we are seeing another profile in venality and stupidity. ..."
"... US has too many laws that are ambiguous beyond belief, almost anything can be declared a 'crime'. Plus you have limited disclosure due to national security ('methods and sources subterfuge always works). Volunteering for a political show trial doesn't work. ..."
"... Pentagon vs neoliberal CIA for upper hand at the White House with Bibi (via AIPAC) solidly on the side of Pence, probably not if, but much more likely when, Trump is taken down. ..."
"... The RussiaGate affairs and collusion charge are the obvious "Banksters United" coup run with a stunning degree of incompetence. Russia must be demonized because of her mineral resources, which are still not available for free, and because of her "wrong" behavior in Syria. Bansksters need this war. Arm producers and dealers need this war. Only the apparent danger of suicide by nuclear answer stops the banksters and other war profiteers from an immediate attack against Russian Federation. ..."
"... The FBI and the CIA are the hired gangster organizations for the banksters. If the FBI and the CIA cared about national security, the US would not suffer the infamy of Awan affair, CrowdStrike "conclusions," and the US support for Daesh/ISIS/Al Qaida in the Middle East, as well as the US support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The US taxpayers have been financing both ISIS and neo-Nazis because banksters decided so. ..."
Notable quotes:
"... But the indictments themselves suggest that Mueller's narrative is wrong. The objective was not to influence the election, but make money by getting viewers to "click on" advertisements. Check it out: ..."
"... It's worth noting, that if Mueller really wanted to get to the bottom of the Russia-gate allegations, he would interview the people who have first-hand knowledge what actually happened. He would question Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) and Craig Murray, both of whom have stated publicly that they know who stole the Podesta emails. ..."
"... Mueller hasn't done that, nor has he contacted the VIPs (Ray McGovern, William Binney, Skip Folden, etc) who did extensive forensic investigation of the "hacking" allegations and proved that the emails were not hacked but leaked. Mueller has not pursued that line of inquiry either. ..."
"... The indictment states that the organization that employed the trolls "had the strategic purpose of sowing political discord in the United States." This seems to be a recurrent theme that has popped up frequently in the media as well. The implication is that the Russians are the source of the widening divisions in the US that are actually the result of growing public angst over the lopsided distribution of wealth that naturally emerges in late-stage capitalism. ..."
"... The above statement helps to prove my point that the indictments are not a vehicle for criminal prosecution, but part of a politically-motivated information campaign to damage Trump and vilify Russia. No one seriously believes that Mueller would ever try to prosecute this case based on the spurious and looney claims of a criminal conspiracy. The whole idea is laughable. ..."
"... We found it interesting that Rob Goldman, who is the Vice President of Facebook Ads, tweeted this revealing disclaimer on Monday which Trump posted on Twitter: ..."
"... Bottom line: The indictments were very good news for Donald Trump, but very bad news for Robert Mueller who appears to have run into a brick wall. But has he? Has Mueller abandoned the attacks on Trump or is there something else going on just below the surface? ..."
"... I can only guess at the answer, but it looks to me like Trump may have made a deal to support the attacks on Russia provided he is acquitted on charges of collusion. That's what he's wanted from the beginning, so, maybe he won this round? Here's one of his recent tweets that helps to support my theory: ..."
"... Hmmm? So Trump now Trump is okay with blaming Russia as long as he's not included too? Is that what he's saying? ..."
"... Okay, so now Trump is turning the tables and saying, 'Yeah, maybe Russia has been 'sowing discord', but the Democrats are the ones you should be blaming not me.'So Trump is not opposed to demonizing Russia, he's just opposed to demonizing Donald John Trump. That's where he draws the line. ..."
"... The problem is that Trump's biggest supporters want him to continue struggle against "The Swamp". They want him to fight for their interests and expose the crooked goings-on behind the Russiagate scandal. They want him to lift up the rock that conceals the activities of the National Security State so everyone can see the maggots squirming below. That's what they want, a modern-day Samson who shakes the temple's pillars and brings the whole crooked system crashing down around him. ..."
"... These same people are hopeful that the Nunes memo and the Grassley-Graham "criminal referral" are just the tip of the iceberg that will inevitably lead to the bigger fish involved in this deep-state conspiracy, namely former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Former FBI Director James Comey, and very likely, Barack Hussein Obama himself. What role did these men play in spying on the Trump campaign? Were they actively trying to sabotage the elections by giving Hillary an edge? Should a second Special Counsel be appointed to investigate whether crimes were committed in their targeting of the Trump team? ..."
"... Trump's backers hope that he is principled and pugnacious enough to go nose-to-nose with these Intel agency serpents and give them the bloody whooping they so richly deserve. Unfortunately, I don't see any evidence that that's what he has in mind ..."
"... Goldman, an executive at Zucc's Book, displayed evidence at a House Committee hearing of Russian bots trolling the US by portraying Sanders as 'sexy' and Trump as a hero. These memes were generally amusing but largely ineffectual. The idea of election meddling by Russia to elect Trump has largely been debunked, and both the Left and the Right now see it as a distraction to the real issue: Deep State malfeasance. ..."
"... Trump has to realize that he would be neutered by the continuance of the Mueller witchhunt, so I think that if it is a deal, it is tactical for the present. ..."
"... in my view, the Democrats overplayed their hand by calling this clickbait scam the "equivalent of Pearl Harbor" and make pushback more likely. ..."
"... Whitney can't bring himself to say Mueller has been, for decades, 'historically, criminally corrupt with longtime habit of maintaining a DoJ cover for CIA.' As well, why does Mike exclude mentioning Seymour Hersh and Kim Dotcom concerning the proposed fact Seth Rich leaked the DNC mails? He sticks with a weak 'we really don't know' line of bs. ..."
"... Grassley wants the DoJ personalities to fall on their swords while Feinstein is besides herself, going crazy, as the investigation into President Skunk implodes around the Steele Dossier. It's like an exclusive 'serial-killers only' swingers' club where everybody is tired of the limited opportunity at couplings, yet their sex addiction requires everyone screwing everyone out of habit and everyone hates everyone's guts. At some point, the entire crew will resort to some new mass murder, like allowing war in Korea, to get it all back on track ..."
"... There is no crime called "collusion". So Trump cannot be "acquitted", let alone be charged with something that is not a crime. Apparently the deep state and media's repetition of "collusion" has duped not just the public, but this author with thinking it is some kind of crime. ..."
"... Trump needs the swamp to produce politicized intel for his campaigns against Iran and Venezuela (plus a dozen other countries which don't threaten the US). He needs the hated MSM (not much more than the swamp's media branch) to sell the Iran war to his voters, who are supposed to pay for it. He needs his shady relatives to stay OUT of prison, where several of them seem to belong (of course, papa Kushner has already spent time inside). So appeasement it is. ..."
"... Sorry, but on the whole Trump voters are too dumb to pose much of an obstacle. They like the campaigns against Iran because of religion, and against Venezuela because of "socialism". They didn't raise a peep when it became clear that THEIR money would all go to the Armies of Mordor. That this is "Saddam-WMD-9/11″ all over again just hasn't registered with them, and never will. Just like Trump winning his primary running against outside money, and immediately afterwards selling out for Adelson's shekels–it exceeds the deplorables' attention span, so it never happened. Keep harping on immigrants and it's all good; razzle-dazzle them, as it was called in the Chicago movie. ..."
"... So on the whole, yes, already since his inauguration it has been clear that The Donald is mostly playing along, as long as he'll be allowed to stay president ..."
"... So Trump is not opposed to demonizing Russia, he's just opposed to demonizing Donald John Trump. That's where he draws the line. ..."
"... Well guys, if there's anyone here who still abides by the '5-D chess' theory, I think it's time to face facts: Trump has thrown us all under the bust to save himself. Expect a war in Syria, or Ukraine, or maybe both. ..."
"... The indictments have no legal merit, they are a form of domestic propaganda and disinformation. The real target is the American people. ..."
"... That's pretty much what this banana republic's government is all about. One way or another, everything they do is designed to ultimately squeeze something out of us dumb 'Merkin proles and peasants ..."
"... I was expecting more of a profile in courage under the tutelage of someone smarter than Trump; instead we are seeing another profile in venality and stupidity. ..."
"... US has too many laws that are ambiguous beyond belief, almost anything can be declared a 'crime'. Plus you have limited disclosure due to national security ('methods and sources subterfuge always works). Volunteering for a political show trial doesn't work. ..."
"... Pentagon vs neoliberal CIA for upper hand at the White House with Bibi (via AIPAC) solidly on the side of Pence, probably not if, but much more likely when, Trump is taken down. ..."
"... The RussiaGate affairs and collusion charge are the obvious "Banksters United" coup run with a stunning degree of incompetence. Russia must be demonized because of her mineral resources, which are still not available for free, and because of her "wrong" behavior in Syria. Bansksters need this war. Arm producers and dealers need this war. Only the apparent danger of suicide by nuclear answer stops the banksters and other war profiteers from an immediate attack against Russian Federation. ..."
"... The FBI and the CIA are the hired gangster organizations for the banksters. If the FBI and the CIA cared about national security, the US would not suffer the infamy of Awan affair, CrowdStrike "conclusions," and the US support for Daesh/ISIS/Al Qaida in the Middle East, as well as the US support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The US taxpayers have been financing both ISIS and neo-Nazis because banksters decided so. ..."
Feb 22, 2018 | www.unz.com

Here's your legal koan for the day: When is an indictment not an indictment?

Answer– When there is no intention of initiating a criminal case against the accused. In the case of the 13 Russian trolls who have just been indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, there is neither the intention nor the ability to prosecute a case against them. (They are all foreign nationals who will not face extradition.)

But, if that's the case, than why would Mueller waste time and money compiling a 37-page document alleging all-manner of nefarious conduct when he knew for certain that the alleged perpetrators would never be prosecuted? Why?

Isn't is because the indictments are not really a vehicle for criminal prosecution, but a vehicle for political grandstanding? Isn't that the real purpose of the indictments, to add another layer of dirt to the mountain of unreliable, uncorroborated, unproven allegations of Russian meddling. Mueller is not acting in his capacity as Special Counsel, he is acting in his role of deep state hatchet-man whose job is to gather scalps by any means necessary.

Keep in mind, the subjects of the indictment will never be apprehended, never hire an attorney, never be in a position to defend themselves or refute the charges, and never have their case presented before and judge or a jury. They will be denied due process of law and the presumption of innocence. Mueller's ominous-sounding claims, which were the centerpiece of his obscene media extravaganza, made sure of that. In most people's minds, the trolls are guilty of foreign espionage and that's all there is to it. Case closed.

But the indictments themselves suggest that Mueller's narrative is wrong. The objective was not to influence the election, but make money by getting viewers to "click on" advertisements. Check it out:

"Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist."

That sounds like a money-making scheme to me not an attempt to subvert US democracy. So why is Mueller in such a lather? Isn't this all just an attempt to divert attention from the fact that the Nunes' investigation has produced proof that senior-level officials at the FBI and DOJ were "improperly obtaining" FISA warrants to spy on members of the Trump Campaign? Isn't that what's really going on?

If we can agree that the indictments were not intended to bring the "accused" to justice, then don't we also have to agree that there must have been an ulterior motive for issuing them? And what might that ulterior motive be? What are the real objectives of the investigation, to cast a shadow on an election that did not produce the results that powerful members of the entrenched bureaucracy wanted, to make it look like Donald Trump did not beat Hillary Clinton fair and square, and to further demonize a geopolitical rival that has blocked Washington's imperial ambitions in Syria and Ukraine? Which of these is the real driving force behind Russiagate or is it 'all of the above?'

Nothing will come of the indictments because the indictments were not designed reveal the truth or bring the accused to justice. They were written to shape public perceptions and to persuade the American people that Trump cheated in the elections and that Russia poses a serious threat to US national security. The indictments have no legal merit, they are a form of domestic propaganda and disinformation. The real target is the American people.

It's worth noting, that if Mueller really wanted to get to the bottom of the Russia-gate allegations, he would interview the people who have first-hand knowledge what actually happened. He would question Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) and Craig Murray, both of whom have stated publicly that they know who stole the Podesta emails.

Mueller hasn't done that, nor has he contacted the VIPs (Ray McGovern, William Binney, Skip Folden, etc) who did extensive forensic investigation of the "hacking" allegations and proved that the emails were not hacked but leaked. Mueller has not pursued that line of inquiry either. Nor has he interviewed California Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, who met with Assange personally and who has suggested that Assange may reveal the name (of the DNC "leaker") under the right conditions. Instead of questioning witnesses, Mueller has spent a great deal of time probing the online activities Russian trolls who were engaged in a money-making scheme that was in no way connected to the Russian government, in no way connected to the Trump campaign, and in no way supportive of the claims of hacking or collusion. None of this reflects well on Mueller who, by any stretch, appears to be either woefully incompetent or irredeemably biased.

The indictment states that the organization that employed the trolls "had the strategic purpose of sowing political discord in the United States." This seems to be a recurrent theme that has popped up frequently in the media as well. The implication is that the Russians are the source of the widening divisions in the US that are actually the result of growing public angst over the lopsided distribution of wealth that naturally emerges in late-stage capitalism. Moscow has become the convenient scapegoat for the accelerated parasitism that has seen 95% of the nation's wealth go to a sliver of people at the top of the foodchain, the 1 percent. (But that's another story altogether.) Here's a brief clip from the portentous-sounding indictment:

"The general conspiracy statute creates an offense "[i]f two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose .

The intent required for a conspiracy to defraud the government is that the defendant possessed the intent (a) to defraud, (b) to make false statements or representations to the government or its agencies in order to obtain property of the government, or that the defendant performed acts or made statements that he/she knew to be false, fraudulent or deceitful to a government agency, which disrupted the functions of the agency or of the government. It is sufficient for the government to prove that the defendant knew the statements were false or fraudulent when made."

The above statement helps to prove my point that the indictments are not a vehicle for criminal prosecution, but part of a politically-motivated information campaign to damage Trump and vilify Russia. No one seriously believes that Mueller would ever try to prosecute this case based on the spurious and looney claims of a criminal conspiracy. The whole idea is laughable.

There are a couple interesting twists and turns regarding the indictments that could be significant, but, then again, maybe not. We found it interesting that Rob Goldman, who is the Vice President of Facebook Ads, tweeted this revealing disclaimer on Monday which Trump posted on Twitter:

"I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was *NOT* the main goal."

Then there are the puzzling comments by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein who said on Friday:

"There's no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge. And the nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists, even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network here in the United States so, if anybody traced it back to that first jump, they appeared to be Americans ."

Do you notice anything unusual about Rosenstein's remarks? There's no mention of Trump at all, which is a striking omission since all of previous public announcements have been used to strengthen the case against Trump. Now that's changed. Why? Naturally, Trump picked up on Rosenstein's omission and blasted this triumphant message on Twitter:

"Deputy A.G. Rod Rosenstein stated at the News Conference: "There is no allegation in the indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election." Donald Trump

So, what's going on here? Mueller and Rosenstein are smart guys. They must have known that Trump would use the dates and the absence of anything remotely suggesting collusion as vindication. Was that the purpose, to let Trump off the hook while the broader propaganda campaign on Russia continues?

This is the great mystery surrounding the indictments, far from helping to establish Trump's culpability, they appear to imply his innocence. Why would Mueller and his allies want to do that? Are the Intel agencies and the FBI looking for a way to end this political cage-match before a second Special Counsel is appointed and he starts digging up embarrassing information about the involvement of other agencies (and perhaps, the White House) in the Russiagate fiasco?
Just think about it for a minute: There is nothing in the indictments that suggests that Trump or anyone in his campaign was involved with the Russian trolls. There is nothing in the indictments that suggests Trump was acting as a Russian agent. And there's nothing in the indictments that suggests the Russian government helped Trump win the election. Also, the timeline of events seems to favor Trump as does Rosenstein's claim that the online activity did not have "any effect on the outcome of the election."

Bottom line: The indictments were very good news for Donald Trump, but very bad news for Robert Mueller who appears to have run into a brick wall. But has he? Has Mueller abandoned the attacks on Trump or is there something else going on just below the surface?

I can only guess at the answer, but it looks to me like Trump may have made a deal to support the attacks on Russia provided he is acquitted on charges of collusion. That's what he's wanted from the beginning, so, maybe he won this round? Here's one of his recent tweets that helps to support my theory:

"I never said Russia did not meddle in the election, I said "it may be Russia, or China or another country or group, or it may be a 400 pound genius sitting in bed and playing with his computer." The Russian "hoax" was that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia – it never did!" Donald Trump

Hmmm? So Trump now Trump is okay with blaming Russia as long as he's not included too? Is that what he's saying? Here's more in the same vein:

"If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!" Donald Trump

Okay, so now Trump is turning the tables and saying, 'Yeah, maybe Russia has been 'sowing discord', but the Democrats are the ones you should be blaming not me.'So Trump is not opposed to demonizing Russia, he's just opposed to demonizing Donald John Trump. That's where he draws the line.

What's wrong with that? If Trump's enemies want to provide him with a Get-Outta-Jail-Free card, then why shouldn't he snatch it up and put this whole goofy probe behind him? That's what most people would do.

The problem is that Trump's biggest supporters want him to continue struggle against "The Swamp". They want him to fight for their interests and expose the crooked goings-on behind the Russiagate scandal. They want him to lift up the rock that conceals the activities of the National Security State so everyone can see the maggots squirming below. That's what they want, a modern-day Samson who shakes the temple's pillars and brings the whole crooked system crashing down around him.

These same people are hopeful that the Nunes memo and the Grassley-Graham "criminal referral" are just the tip of the iceberg that will inevitably lead to the bigger fish involved in this deep-state conspiracy, namely former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Former FBI Director James Comey, and very likely, Barack Hussein Obama himself. What role did these men play in spying on the Trump campaign? Were they actively trying to sabotage the elections by giving Hillary an edge? Should a second Special Counsel be appointed to investigate whether crimes were committed in their targeting of the Trump team?

All of these questions need to be answered in order to clear the air, hold the guilty parties accountable and restore confidence in the government. Trump's backers hope that he is principled and pugnacious enough to go nose-to-nose with these Intel agency serpents and give them the bloody whooping they so richly deserve. Unfortunately, I don't see any evidence that that's what he has in mind . We'll see.


ChrisD , February 22, 2018 at 5:48 am GMT

Goldman, an executive at Zucc's Book, displayed evidence at a House Committee hearing of Russian bots trolling the US by portraying Sanders as 'sexy' and Trump as a hero. These memes were generally amusing but largely ineffectual. The idea of election meddling by Russia to elect Trump has largely been debunked, and both the Left and the Right now see it as a distraction to the real issue: Deep State malfeasance.

Those Never Trumpers in the Dems and McCain camps are now left disgraced and humiliated and their only allies are WaPo, NYT, CNN and a few other fake news outlets. The test for Trump will be whether he can take a wrecking ball to the FBI and Department of State and to truly cleanse the bureaucracy of ne'er-do-wells who have constantly been undermining him from the beginning.

exiled off mainstreet , February 22, 2018 at 6:25 am GMT
I think the author is correct in his assumptions. One area of hope, though, is that the allegations are so ridiculous and others have pointed out, for instance, that the Australian Labor party sent operatives to the US to help defeat Trump, and Trump has to realize that he would be neutered by the continuance of the Mueller witchhunt, so I think that if it is a deal, it is tactical for the present.

As the article indicates, Trump would lose a lot of his support if he follows through on the deal. Also, pro-Trump websites are continuing on with the drumbeat against Mueller, and in my view, the Democrats overplayed their hand by calling this clickbait scam the "equivalent of Pearl Harbor" and make pushback more likely.

I think that one thing the indictment has accomplished is to reveal to anybody not paid to think otherwise that the yankee imperium entered the post-legal era years ago, and that the legitimacy of the yankee state has totally evaporated.

Ronald Thomas West , February 22, 2018 at 7:17 am GMT

Isn't is because the indictments are not really a vehicle for criminal prosecution, but a vehicle for political grandstanding? Isn't that the real purpose of the indictments, to add another layer of dirt to the mountain of unreliable, uncorroborated, unproven allegations of Russian meddling. Mueller is not acting in his capacity as Special Counsel, he is acting in his role of deep state hatchet-man whose job is to gather scalps by any means necessary [...] It's worth noting, that if Mueller really wanted to get to the bottom of the Russia-gate allegations, he would interview the people who have first-hand knowledge what actually happened. He would question Julian Assange (WikiLeaks) and Craig Murray, both of whom have stated publicly that they know who stole the Podesta emails.[sic][...] None of this reflects well on Mueller who, by any stretch, appears to be either woefully incompetent or irredeemably biased

Misdirection here by Mike Whitney. Whitney can't bring himself to say Mueller has been, for decades, 'historically, criminally corrupt with longtime habit of maintaining a DoJ cover for CIA.' As well, why does Mike exclude mentioning Seymour Hersh and Kim Dotcom concerning the proposed fact Seth Rich leaked the DNC mails? He sticks with a weak 'we really don't know' line of bs.

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2017/09/16/incompetent-espionage-wikileaks-iii/ https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2018/02/07/bob-manson-charlie-mueller/

These same people are hopeful that the Nunes memo and the Grassley-Graham "criminal referral" are just the tip of the iceberg that will inevitably lead to the bigger fish involved in this deep-state conspiracy, namely former CIA Director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Former FBI Director James Comey, and very likely, Barack Hussein Obama himself. What role did these men play in spying on the Trump campaign? Were they actively trying to sabotage the elections by giving Hillary an edge? Should a second Special Counsel be appointed to investigate whether crimes were committed in their targeting of the Trump team?

Yeah, well Mike, 'hope springs eternal' is the apropos folk wisdom. Why not look at this instead:

"Of course, none of this will be brought out by the Congressional intelligence committees, to collapse the credibility of 'three amigos' Special Counsel Mueller, fired Director Comey & present FBI boss Wray to help kill the 'Russia collusion' farce; because all parties are complicit and tainted in the cover-up. Grassley wants the DoJ personalities to fall on their swords while Feinstein is besides herself, going crazy, as the investigation into President Skunk implodes around the Steele Dossier. It's like an exclusive 'serial-killers only' swingers' club where everybody is tired of the limited opportunity at couplings, yet their sex addiction requires everyone screwing everyone out of habit and everyone hates everyone's guts. At some point, the entire crew will resort to some new mass murder, like allowing war in Korea, to get it all back on track " (See second link, preceding.)

Ron West

Backwoods Bob , February 22, 2018 at 7:32 am GMT
There is no crime called "collusion". So Trump cannot be "acquitted", let alone be charged with something that is not a crime. Apparently the deep state and media's repetition of "collusion" has duped not just the public, but this author with thinking it is some kind of crime.

That's the purpose of endlessly repeating this vague term in pejorative rhetoric, without ever referencing a criminal statute like the Foreign Agent Registration Act or whatever.

This gigantic diversionary twaddle has worked because the seditionists have still not been stopped. I'm not real optimistic about it, but there are some positive developments. There is a big disappointment in the offing with the Inspector General report coming out soon. Horowitz is a deep state operative who has covered for the Clintons in the past. They have to do something, so expect a limited hangout or partial whitewash. That way the drug and weapons ratlines can continue to fund our unconscionable acts across the globe.

Ma Laoshi , February 22, 2018 at 9:42 am GMT
Trump needs the swamp to produce politicized intel for his campaigns against Iran and Venezuela (plus a dozen other countries which don't threaten the US). He needs the hated MSM (not much more than the swamp's media branch) to sell the Iran war to his voters, who are supposed to pay for it. He needs his shady relatives to stay OUT of prison, where several of them seem to belong (of course, papa Kushner has already spent time inside). So appeasement it is.

Sorry, but on the whole Trump voters are too dumb to pose much of an obstacle. They like the campaigns against Iran because of religion, and against Venezuela because of "socialism". They didn't raise a peep when it became clear that THEIR money would all go to the Armies of Mordor. That this is "Saddam-WMD-9/11″ all over again just hasn't registered with them, and never will. Just like Trump winning his primary running against outside money, and immediately afterwards selling out for Adelson's shekels–it exceeds the deplorables' attention span, so it never happened. Keep harping on immigrants and it's all good; razzle-dazzle them, as it was called in the Chicago movie.

So on the whole, yes, already since his inauguration it has been clear that The Donald is mostly playing along, as long as he'll be allowed to stay president . The question remains if (just like Putin in Syria) he isn't trying to appease something which won't be appeased–maybe Trump thinks he has a deal, but his enemies, while technically backing off from the collusion claim, will still squeeze his relatives so hard on their finances and other shenanigans that something breaks. I say: would serve Trump right for sleeping with the dogs.

Jim Christian , February 22, 2018 at 10:03 am GMT
Intriguing if these 13 Russians turned up at US District Court for a chat with a Federal Prosecutor with the International press in tow. It would be lovely to have Vlad present his people for investigation and trial. Mueller set these 13 up, again, 'knowing' he would never have to prove a damned thing and so, there are many embellishments. Mueller 'knows' he'll never try them, but he also 'knew', as they ALL did, that Hillary was getting in and so these crimes would never come to light.

Love to have Putin blow up yet another thing these folks thought they 'knew'. I'd contribute to the GoFundMe for the best lawyers there are..

Seamus Padraig , February 22, 2018 at 10:32 am GMT

So Trump is not opposed to demonizing Russia, he's just opposed to demonizing Donald John Trump. That's where he draws the line.

Bingo. Well guys, if there's anyone here who still abides by the '5-D chess' theory, I think it's time to face facts: Trump has thrown us all under the bust to save himself. Expect a war in Syria, or Ukraine, or maybe both.

It's all up to Nunes now. Let's hope he doesn't sell us out, too:

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/19/nunes-fbi-and-doj-perps-could-be-put-on-trial/

jacques sheete , February 22, 2018 at 11:20 am GMT

The indictments have no legal merit, they are a form of domestic propaganda and disinformation. The real target is the American people.

That's pretty much what this banana republic's government is all about. One way or another, everything they do is designed to ultimately squeeze something out of us dumb 'Merkin proles and peasants , especially us stupid goyim.

The rest is mere detail. Understanding that saves a lot of time and energy.

Twodees Partain , February 22, 2018 at 1:38 pm GMT
@ChrisD

"The test for Trump will be whether he can take a wrecking ball to the FBI and Department of State "

He could have done that a year ago. Trump has left more people loyal to Obama in their jobs than would have thought possible. His advisors are all seemingly pushing their own agendas and haven't clued him in on the fact that he has Obama's bureaucracy snapping at his ankles and he needs to go on a firing rampage.

I doubt that he even knows who he can fire outright and who would have to be moved into another department.

Twodees Partain , February 22, 2018 at 1:59 pm GMT
The Duran has another article that busts Mueller's game:

http://theduran.com/13-russian-trolls-indictment-debunked-by-journalist-profiled-the-operation-in-2015/

According to the author, this troll farm had 90 employees assigned to the American market who designed clickbait ads using titles that would attract doofuses wanting to read articles on their favorite subjects related to the election.

If you surf the net without a good adblocker, you'll see all these clickbait ads with titles like "Defeat Trump with one weird trick", or "What Trump said to Hillary off stage will astonish you" in an attempt to get the reader to go to their site and buy something.

That's what these trolls were doing, and it had nothing to do with influencing voters.

lavoisier , Website February 22, 2018 at 2:06 pm GMT
@Seamus Padraig

Bingo. Well guys, if there's anyone here who still abides by the '5-D chess' theory, I think it's time to face facts: Trump has thrown us all under the bust to save himself. Expect a war in Syria, or Ukraine, or maybe both.

It does really look like this is true. I was expecting more of a profile in courage under the tutelage of someone smarter than Trump; instead we are seeing another profile in venality and stupidity.

ante , February 22, 2018 at 2:20 pm GMT
there have been thousands of such people in Balkans, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, who set up web pages and made money on advertising, who used the presidential election, as honey pot. Mueller is such an idiot, that he does not know it. Sorry, he is so clever, to go only after russian trace. you can start here:

https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/

Beckow , February 22, 2018 at 2:55 pm GMT
@The Alarmist

send a couple of the indictees over to stand trial, and hire some lefty-lawyer like Dershowitz to defend them

That was my initial reaction. But that assumes that a Washington court would not be a show trial with emphasis on process minutia, e.g. 'identity theft' and some financial violations. With media in overdrive proving their hyper-patriotism.

US has too many laws that are ambiguous beyond belief, almost anything can be declared a 'crime'. Plus you have limited disclosure due to national security ('methods and sources subterfuge always works). Volunteering for a political show trial doesn't work.

We just have to let it go, it is now a 'crime' for foreigners to criticise US politicians without first registering with Washington. Quite a beacon of freedom for the world.

Jingo Starr , February 22, 2018 at 3:03 pm GMT
Indicting foreign election interference trolls sets a precedent for prosecuting domestic election interference trolls. The domestic election interference trolls spent hundreds of millions and left very prolific financial and digital footprints. Jim Messina shouldn't be sleeping easy.
Bill , February 22, 2018 at 3:19 pm GMT
@Twodees Partain

Trump's failure to fire people by the truckload during the first week of his presidency is a topic worth exploring. Probably we won't know why he failed to do this until after his presidency sometime, but it is a curious choice given how widespread and intense was the hatred of him.

Ronald Thomas West , Website February 22, 2018 at 3:56 pm GMT
@Bill

We can know why now. Trump was kneecapped from day one in the Oval Office and he's surrounded by treasonous people who'll either keep him in line or step out of the way of Trump's political enemies. Pence and his ideologically (theologically, actually) aligned Christian Zionist generals have it under control:

https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/02/11/president-held-hostage/

Meanwhile Trump is the perfect idiot to take the heat and end up holding the bag. The momentary big, inside fight, is fundamentalist Christian Pentagon vs neoliberal CIA for upper hand at the White House with Bibi (via AIPAC) solidly on the side of Pence, probably not if, but much more likely when, Trump is taken down.

That fool actually believed he would be allowed to become President. Well, he was wrong. He got the title, he gets the heat, but he'll never be allowed to exercise the power.

Anonymous Disclaimer , February 22, 2018 at 4:00 pm GMT
@Bill

Trump belongs to the Ruling Class. If he didn't, the rulers never would have selected him as president. I thought the producers had brought in the Trump character to change the direction of the play. But no, still the same old Empire first, the rich second, and everything else later. How much did the Trump family save from the new tax law? That's another story all together.

edNels , February 22, 2018 at 4:07 pm GMT
Back in the day, when knights were bold, prosecutors for real, laws were understood by all , they laid their turds beside the road, and walked away contented!

Sheesh anyhow, This Comey, and his side kick Mueller are doing pretty good job of what they are charged with, (to do that is charged with a task.) of charging Russians, those dirty Boris's and Natashia's over there in the dark forrest somewhere.

A ticket a tasket, the case is in a basket, (basket case, of course) and Comey and Mueller are excellent in their roles, playing to a tough crowd, masterful impressions of Lerch and Herman Munster.

What is the real job? could it be to extend childhood and adelescence (strike that) wrong thought . dupdada here it is: could it be that the real job is to extend the election process FOOD FIGHT, indeterminately, thus displacing the expectations normally accruing to a change of administrations. That is a serious sounding term for adults, not for the kids. ADMINISTRATION suit wearing mthfrkrs all around, all dry fake talk masking every possible meaning and to what end?

That boat left the pier now the population is only to be amused, more of the same Food Fight please!

You have an evolution of pollution of the process of regress into the abstraction/distraction. Mad Hatter's Tea Party, now the new norm, and it seems to work,

We've grown too cynical for the likes of Columbo, or Perry Mason, etc.

EliteCommInc. , February 22, 2018 at 6:44 pm GMT
The investigation like the Sword of Damocles may indeed get Pres Trump to further compromise his agenda as per the campaign. However, those who lost the election have no intention of of giving an inch. if at all possible, they intend to get rid of Pres Trump because he waylaid there plans. Unfortunately they are incorrect, it was Pres Trump, it was their agenda and and a solid opposition to it that defeated them during the election.

Since the attempt to remove him includes the Russia investigation and it various tentacles I intend to defend the current President as much possible.

Major Sjursen and Dr. Bacivich – ya ya ya I know . . . he's a this and a that . . . ) seem to have reached the same conclusion – once in it's "heck to fight" the preordained agenda.

annamaria , February 22, 2018 at 7:40 pm GMT
@exiled off mainstreet

The RussiaGate affairs and collusion charge are the obvious "Banksters United" coup run with a stunning degree of incompetence. Russia must be demonized because of her mineral resources, which are still not available for free, and because of her "wrong" behavior in Syria. Bansksters need this war. Arm producers and dealers need this war. Only the apparent danger of suicide by nuclear answer stops the banksters and other war profiteers from an immediate attack against Russian Federation.

The moneyed and powerful psychopaths-in-charge are enraged that the wealth of other nations is still outside their reach becasue of Russian "stubborness." The US/UK banking section is the main engine behind the supreme crimes of aggression in the Middle East and Ukraine (the ongoing civil war there had been initiated on the CIA instructions in 2014; see Brennan "secret" visit to Kiev on the eve of military actions against the civilian populations of Eastern Ukraine: https://themoscowtimes.com/news/russian-media-report-cia-director-held-secret-consultations-in-kiev-33897 ).

The FBI and the CIA are the hired gangster organizations for the banksters. If the FBI and the CIA cared about national security, the US would not suffer the infamy of Awan affair, CrowdStrike "conclusions," and the US support for Daesh/ISIS/Al Qaida in the Middle East, as well as the US support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine. The US taxpayers have been financing both ISIS and neo-Nazis because banksters decided so.

annamaria , February 22, 2018 at 7:48 pm GMT
"Banksters United" conference in Munich: http://www.voltairenet.org/article199781.html

"The Middle East as seen by Berlin

Germany invested a lot in the US project for the Middle East (the strategy of the destruction of societies and states, conceived by Admiral Arthur Cebrowski, but noticeably less in the British-US project for the " Arab Springs ". Since the Cold War, it has housed and supported several headquarters for the Muslim Brotherhood, including that of the Syrians in Aix-la-Chapelle. Germany took a part in the assassination of ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafic Hariri. In 2012, it co-wrote the Feltman plan for the total and unconditional capitulation of Syria. At present, Volker Perthes, director of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, the state think-tank, is advisor to Jeffrey Feltman at the UNO. [Jeffrey David Feltman is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs. Feltman was born to Jewish parents in the US he speaks Hebrew, English, Arabic, French, and Hungarian.]

For several years, the internal documents of the European External Action Service (EEAS) are copied and pasted from Volker Perthes' notes for the German government. Volker Perthes was at Munich with Jeffrey Feltman and their friends, Lakdhar Brahimi, Ramzi Ramzi, Steffan de Mistura, Generals David Petraeus (the KKR was also represented by Christian Ollig) and John Allen (Brookings Institution), as well as Nasser al-Hariri, the President of the High Authority for Negotiations (pro-Saudi Syrian opposition), Raed al-Saleh, director of the White Helmets (Al-Qaïda) and their Qatari sponsors, including Emir Thamim."

There were also "three bosses – German BND (Bruno Kahl), British MI6 (Alex Younger) and the French DGSE (Bernard Emié), who explained in a private room, in front of an audience chosen for their naïveté, how nervous they were about the Turkish operation in Syria. The three men pretended to believe that the combatants of the YPG constitute the safest barrier against Daesh. Yet they were supposed to create the Frontier Security Force with certain ex-members of Daesh . It's clear that the job of these three super-spies is to know to whom they owe the truth, and to whom they can lie. Sustaining their momentum, they hinted that the Syrian Arab Army uses chemical weapons – profiting from the absence in the room of the US Secretary for Defence, Jim Mattis, who had testified a few days earlier that proof of this claim is inexistent."

-- Lies, obfuscations, and crimes. The "three bosses" [of national security services] are in service to Banksters, corporations, and arm dealers and producers. On the public dime, of course And is not it touching that Jeffrey Feltman [a veritable Israel-firster] designs the US military support for ISIS/Daesh in Syria?

Anonymous Disclaimer , February 22, 2018 at 8:04 pm GMT
@EliteCommInc.

The Government exists for the rich to control the slaves. The rich choose one of their own to be President. The patriotic slaves, aka zombie morons left and right, vote for the slave masters every four years. And argue over their merits. Oh, the Trump has a much nicer touch with the lash than Obama.

SunBakedSuburb , February 22, 2018 at 8:43 pm GMT
The DNC data was leaked by an insider -- some say by the murdered Seth Rich. The Podesta emails were hacked. And what that hack revealed was a network of wealthy pedophiles that included both Podesta brothers, John and Tony, and other D.C. notables like Maeve Luzzatto and James Alefantis. It's true that the PizzaGate conspiracy theory has been promoted by Twitter nutcases, but that doesn't mean there isn't truth in it.

Obama CIA Director James Brennan's heavy involvement in the Russia/election conspiracy theory might be a clue that the D.C. pedophile network might be a CIA blackmail operation, much as Jeffrey Epstein's private Caribbean island was used as a Mossad honey trap.

SunBakedSuburb , February 22, 2018 at 9:18 pm GMT
@lavoisier

"No greater friend of the Zionists than the fundamentalist Christians."

True. And thanks for using the term "Zionist" because not all Jews are Zionists and not all Zionists are Jews. Most American Jews, while supportive of Israel, are not Zionists. Most American Jews are a benefit to the communities they call home. Zionism is a globalist cult that must be unmasked and destroyed.

[Mar 23, 2018] It's amazing what obomber left around for the trumpster to use.

Mar 23, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: jo6pac | Mar 22, 2018 5:55:35 PM | 21

jo6pac , Mar 22, 2018 5:55:35 PM | 21
#4
It's amazing what obomber left around for the trumpster to use.

http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-for-obama-is-scandal-when-it-comes-to-trump

[Mar 22, 2018] Trump's National Security Chief Calls Russian Interference 'Incontrovertible'

Mar 22, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

MUNICH -- Just hours after the Justice Department indicted 13 Russians in what it charged was a broad conspiracy to alter the 2016 election, President Trump's national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, accused Moscow of engaging in a campaign of "disinformation, subversion and espionage" that he said Washington would continue to expose.

The evidence of a Russian effort to interfere in the election "is now incontrovertible," General McMaster said at the Munich Security Conference, an annual meeting of European and American diplomats and security experts, including several senior Russian officials. On Friday, just hours before the indictment, the top White House official for cyberissues accused Russia of "the most destructive cyberattack in human history," against Ukraine last summer.

Taken together, the statements appeared to mark a major turn in the administration's willingness to directly confront the government of President Vladimir V. Putin. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and C.I.A. Director Mike Pompeo also attended the Munich conference, and while they did not speak publicly, in private meetings with others here they reiterated similar statements.

The comments highlighted a sharp division inside the administration about how to talk about the Russian covert efforts, with only Mr. Trump and a few of his close advisers holding back from acknowledging the Russian role or talking about a larger strategy to deter future attacks.

The indictment characterized the cyberattacks and social media fraud as part of a larger effort by Russia to undermine the United States. A senior administration official called the effort to confront Russia "a significant point of contention" within the administration.

After the indictment on Friday Mr. Trump declared in a Twitter post that "the results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong -- no collusion!" He made no mention of Russia as a "revisionist power," the description used in his own National Security Strategy, or of the elaborate $1.2 million-a-month effort that the indictment indicated Russia's Internet Research Agency spent in an effort to discredit the election system and ultimately to support his candidacy.

Vice President Mike Pence, speaking this past week in Washington, misstated American intelligence conclusions about the election hacking, arguing "it is the universal conclusion of our intelligence communities that none of those efforts had any effect on the outcome of the 2016 election." The intelligence chiefs have said they have not, and cannot, reach such a conclusion.

Sergey V. Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, cited Mr. Pence's comments during the session here Saturday to make the case that Russia did nothing wrong. "So until we see the facts, everything else is just blabber," he said.

The man who served as the Russian ambassador to the United States during the period covered by the indictments, Sergey I. Kislyak, picked up on a favorite theme of Mr. Trump's: questioning the credibility of the F.B.I. and intelligence agency assessments.

"I have seen so many indictments and accusations against Russians," Mr. Kislyak said on Saturday afternoon. "I am not sure I can trust American law enforcement to be the most truthful source against Russians." He added, "The allegations being mounted against us are simply fantasies."

Mr. Kislyak, who has been caught up in the investigation because of meetings with Trump campaign officials during his time as ambassador, went on to cite a study, which he said he was keeping in his briefcase, that proved the "main source of computer attacks in the world is not Russia. It is the United States."

[Mar 03, 2018] Leaked: Secret Documents From Russia s Election Trolls

Those are Clinton stooges who published Steele dossier.
Mar 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

falconflight Fri, 03/02/2018 - 19:56 Permalink

Leaked: Secret Documents From Russia's Election Trolls

An online auction gone awry reveals substantial new details on Kremlin-backed troll farm efforts to stir up real protests and target specific Americans to push their propaganda.

The Kremlin-backed troll farm at the center of Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election has quietly suffered a catastrophic security breach, The Daily Beast has confirmed, in a leak that spilled new details of its operations onto obscure corners of the internet.

The Russian "information exchange" Joker.Buzz, which auctions off often stolen or confidential information, advertised a leak for a large cache of the Internet Research Agency's (IRA) internal documents. It includes names of Americans, activists in particular, whom the organization specifically targeted; American-based proxies used to access Reddit and the viral meme site 9Gag; and login information for troll farm accounts.

Even the advertisement for the document dump provides a trove of previously unknown information about the breadth of Russia's disinformation effort in the United States, including rallies pushed by IRA social media accounts that turned violent.

While special counsel Robert Mueller's recent conspiracy indictment against the IRA showed a sophisticated organization aimed at targeting U.S. voters with disinformation, the seller appears not to have understood the implications of the auction.

The listing was titled " Savushkina 55 ," the physical address in St. Petersburg from which the troll farm used to operate. The date on the auction is listed as Feb. 10, 2017 -- seven months before Facebook and Twitter identified and pulled down Internet Research Agency accounts from Twitter. It received no bids. The seller, "AlexDA," has not posted any other listings, and was unable to be reached. In Russian, the listing promised "working data from the department focused on the United States."

"The leaks show that Russian imposter accounts targeted activists for specific causes the Kremlin-backed troll farm wanted promoted. On the target list: the daughter of one of Martin Luther King's lieutenants."

While the date of the auction could not be independently confirmed, the authenticity of the leak can. The leaked documents list screen names connected to a number of American citizens who were used as unwitting proxies by the Russians. The Daily Beast was able to track down four of those citizens, whose names have not been previously revealed. The leak contains precise dates in 2016 in which the IRA-created account Blacktivist reached out to those U.S. citizens, plus a short description of the conversations. The Daily Beast spoke to those citizens, and confirmed they interacted with the Blacktivist account in the ways described by the IRA in the document. In one case, the American even provided screenshots of his interactions with the Russian troll trying to dupe him.

In short, the leaked document contains details of the Russian disinformation campaign that have not been previously made public -- details which The Daily Beast was able to confirm. .....

https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-secret-documents-from-russias-e

[Feb 26, 2018] State Department Troll Farm Receives Huge Cash Infusion

Notable quotes:
"... "This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight," said Under Secretary Goldstein. "It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive. ..."
"... Israel is long known for such information operations in which its paid trolls not only comment on issues on social media but actively manipulate Wikipedia entries. Such astroturfing has since become a common tool in commercial marketing campaigns. ..."
"... With regard to the larger issue, it seems that the US is getting more and more like its allies Ukraine (drives out any press concerned with printing the truth, relies on a bombastic and entirely false narrative to try and convince its hapless citizens that all is great and everything is Russia's fault) and Israel (an early leader in manipulating online info as b states). ..."
"... If it sounds like a PR monkey banging away on a regurgitated theme, it probably is. For example, the endless repetition in US media about "Syrian chemical weapons attacks" with no on-the-ground supporting evidence is typical of a Rendon Group disinformation campaign; so then they hire a hundred trolls to post outraged comments about 'Syrian chemical weapons use' in comment sections and on twitter; then they hire some State Department intern to write a book about the horrors of the Assad regime, and at the end they collect their $10 million paycheck. ..."
"... The hypocrisy of the U$A continues to be staggering.. If the collective IQ's of the general public approached double digits, the disinformation and propaganda afoot, couldn't gain much traction. As comedian Richard Pryor once said, " Who you gonna' believe, the propagandists, or your lying eyes." ..."
"... money for propaganda... that was back in 1984 - we have progressed from Orwell's version of reality to a new one where reality is what you make of it... meanwhile there will be more dead people that the sponsors of these troll farms, could care less about... although they will frame it - 180% of that... ..."
Feb 26, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

The U.S. State Department will increase its online trolling capabilities and up its support for meddling in other countries. The Hill reports :

The State Department is launching a $40 million initiative to crack down on foreign propaganda and disinformation amid widespread concerns about future Russian efforts to interfere in elections.

The department announced Monday that it signed a deal with the Pentagon to transfer $40 million from the Defense Department's coffers to bolster the Global Engagement Center, an office set up at State during the Obama years to expose and counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.

The professed reason for the new funding is the alleged but unproven "Russian meddling" in the U.S. election campaign. U.S. Special Counsel Mueller indicted 13 Russians for what is claimed to be interference but which is likely mere commercial activity.

The announcement by the State Department explains that this new money will not only be used for measures against foreign trolling but to actively meddle in countries abroad:

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Steve Goldstein said the transfer of funds announced today reiterates the United States' commitment to the fight.

"This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight," said Under Secretary Goldstein. "It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive. "

The mentioning of Silicon Valley is of interest. The big Silicon Valley companies Google, Facebook and Twitter were heavily involved in the U.S. election campaign. The companies embedded people within the campaigns to advise them how to reach a maximum trolling effect:

While the companies call it standard practice to work hand-in-hand with high-spending advertisers like political campaigns, the new research details how the staffers assigned to the 2016 candidates frequently acted more like political operatives, doing things like suggesting methods to target difficult-to-reach voters online, helping to tee up responses to likely lines of attack during debates, and scanning candidate calendars to recommend ad pushes around upcoming speeches.

In May 2016 the Hillary Clinton campaign even set up her own troll farm :

Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner.

In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online.

Clinton is quite experienced in such issues. In 2009, during protests in Iran, then Secretary of State Clinton pushed Twitter to defer maintenance of its system to "help" the protesters. In 2010 USAid, under the State Department set up a Twitter-like service to meddle in Cuba.

The foreign policy advisor of Hillery Clinton's campaign, Laura Rosenberger, initiated and runs the Hamilton68 project which falsely explains any mentioning of issues disliked by its neo-conservative backers as the result of nefarious "Russian meddling".

The State Department can build on that and other experience.

Since at least 2011 the U.S. military is manipulating social media via sock puppets and trolls:

A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an "online persona management service" that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
...
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations "without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries".

It was then wisely predicted that other countries would follow up:

The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as "sock puppets" – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.

Israel is long known for such information operations in which its paid trolls not only comment on issues on social media but actively manipulate Wikipedia entries. Such astroturfing has since become a common tool in commercial marketing campaigns.

With the new money the State Department will expand its Global Engagement Center (GEC) which is running "public diplomacy", aka propaganda, abroad:

The Fund will be a key part of the GEC's partnerships with local civil society organizations, NGOs, media providers, and content creators to counter propaganda and disinformation. The Fund will also drive the use of innovative messaging and data science techniques.

Separately, the GEC will initiate a series of pilot projects developed with the Department of Defense that are designed to counter propaganda and disinformation. Those projects will be supported by Department of Defense funding.

This money will be in addition to the large funds the CIA traditionally spends on manipulating foreign media:

"We've been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947," said Mr. Johnson, now at the University of Georgia. "We've used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners -- you name it. We've planted false information in foreign newspapers. We've used what the British call 'King George's cavalry': suitcases of cash."
...
C.I.A. officials told Mr. Johnson in the late 1980s that "insertions" of information into foreign news media, mostly accurate but sometimes false, were running at 70 to 80 a day.

Part of the new State Department money will be used to provide grants. If online trolling or sock puppetry is your thing, you may want to apply now.

Posted by b on February 26, 2018 at 02:02 PM | Permalink

Comments


nhs , Feb 26, 2018 2:34:39 PM | 1

The US propaganda machine has just confirmed what establishment's worst nightmare would be
Peter AU 1 , Feb 26, 2018 2:40:29 PM | 2
"to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner"

I call these social media watchers rather than trolls. Rather than simply trying to disrupt any and all social media threads they don't like, social media watchers look for comments or comment threads that are disparaging or damaging to their employer.

WorldBLee , Feb 26, 2018 2:49:32 PM | 3
#2 @Peter AU 1 - I would say the language "to find and CONFRONT" sounds pretty much like troll behavior.

With regard to the larger issue, it seems that the US is getting more and more like its allies Ukraine (drives out any press concerned with printing the truth, relies on a bombastic and entirely false narrative to try and convince its hapless citizens that all is great and everything is Russia's fault) and Israel (an early leader in manipulating online info as b states).

Don Bacon , Feb 26, 2018 2:51:50 PM | 4
That $40 million will probably be pissed away on a couple sweetheart contracts to Tillerson friends and nobody will see a difference. US State Department propaganda programs, labeled as "public diplomacy" and other monikers, have been around for a long time but haven't been executed very well.

From the State Dept. historian office, 2013: . .(excerpt):

Public Diplomacy Is Still in Its Adolescent Stage in the State Department , etc.

. . . The process of convergence has been evolutionary. Secretary Powell grasped the power of the information revolution, reallocated positions and resources from traditional diplomatic posting to new areas and recognized the power of satellite television to move publics and constrain governments even in authoritarian regimes. Secretary Rice forwarded this reconceptualization under the rubric of "Transformational Diplomacy," which sought to help people transform their own lives and the relationship between state and society. Secretary Clinton continued the theme under the concept of "Smart Power." "Person-to-person diplomacy in today's work is as important as what we do in official meetings in national capitals across the globe," Clinton said in 2010.The work done by PD officials in Arab Spring countries beginning in 2011 was as much about capacity-building as advocating U.S. policies or directly trying to explain American culture. . . here

notlurking , Feb 26, 2018 2:55:14 PM | 5
I am retired and can use some extra change....just kidding!!!....
nonsense factory , Feb 26, 2018 3:18:15 PM | 6
Prior efforts were targeted more at traditional news outlets, this is just an expansion into social media along the lines of previous work, example A being the Rendon Group in Iraq, etc. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Rendon_Group

If it sounds like a PR monkey banging away on a regurgitated theme, it probably is. For example, the endless repetition in US media about "Syrian chemical weapons attacks" with no on-the-ground supporting evidence is typical of a Rendon Group disinformation campaign; so then they hire a hundred trolls to post outraged comments about 'Syrian chemical weapons use' in comment sections and on twitter; then they hire some State Department intern to write a book about the horrors of the Assad regime, and at the end they collect their $10 million paycheck.

Tediousness, defined.

Peter AU 1 , Feb 26, 2018 3:19:30 PM | 7
WorldBLee 2

Media watchers target specific comments or comment threads, in the case stated by b, those disparaging or damaging to Clinton.

What I term trolls target blogs or social media accounts that are considered targets, no matter the content of a particular article or comment thread. Social media media watchers are a little more specialized than trolls and look for specific content.

nonsense factory , Feb 26, 2018 3:23:52 PM | 8
P.S. it's funny that you can find out what these clowns are up to by looking for job listings and salary reports:

The Rendon Group Social Media Specialist Salary | Glassdoor

Average [monthly] salaries for The Rendon Group Social Media Specialist: $2,520. The Rendon Group salary trends based on salaries posted anonymously by The Rendon Group employees.

Talk about a soul-destroying job. Right up there with Wikipedia page editor.

Peter AU 1 , Feb 26, 2018 3:27:48 PM | 9
nonsense factory 8. Money looks good. Plenty of people that dont give a shit about their soul will take it up.
la Cariatide , Feb 26, 2018 3:40:19 PM | 11
http://www.voltairenet.org/article194715.html
NemesisCalling , Feb 26, 2018 4:08:38 PM | 12
@7 peter

I see what you are alluding to, but the only problem with it is that, irrespective of the differing definitions, at heart, these infiltrators are a disrupting force on the message boards, whether paid to be or not. Their medium is disruption and obfuscation. I tried to wade into the neoliberal viper's den at slate.com un the past to post "alt-right" stuff and was quickly attacked by multiple avatars.

In essence, one troll disrupts because he has a need for recognition, and the latter disrupts for money. Both are netgain for the troll and loss for the rest of us.

ben , Feb 26, 2018 4:09:30 PM | 13
The hypocrisy of the U$A continues to be staggering.. If the collective IQ's of the general public approached double digits, the disinformation and propaganda afoot, couldn't gain much traction. As comedian Richard Pryor once said, " Who you gonna' believe, the propagandists, or your lying eyes."

Turn off your I phones, and think a little.

james , Feb 26, 2018 4:19:32 PM | 14
thanks b... troll farms looks like a good name for it... farming for the empire.. they could call it that too.. russia as trend setter, lol.. i don't think so!

speaking of troll farms, i see max Blumenthal came out with some 'about time' comments on the sad kettle of fish called 'democracy now'... here is his tweet - "If @democracynow is going to push the neocon project of regime change in Syria so relentlessly and without debate, it should drop the high minded literary NPR aesthetic and just host Nikki Haley for a friendly one-on-one #EstablishmentNow https://twitter.com/democracynow/status/967123918237655041
7:07 AM - Feb 25, 2018 "

money for propaganda... that was back in 1984 - we have progressed from Orwell's version of reality to a new one where reality is what you make of it... meanwhile there will be more dead people that the sponsors of these troll farms, could care less about... although they will frame it - 180% of that...

NemesisCalling , Feb 26, 2018 4:19:33 PM | 15
The silver lining here is that the state dept. is in a sense admitting that there is nothing "in the pipe" relating to outright censorship whether through nefarious agreements between ISP providers and the IC via the repeal of net neutrality.

$40 mil is a lot for liberal college graduates however.

Jen , Feb 26, 2018 4:20:59 PM | 16
Nonsense Factory @ 8, Peter AU 1 @ 9: There are plenty of communities in rural Australia who'd be glad to have troll farms paying that sort of money (even as Australian dollars - 1 Australian dollar being worth about US$0.76 at this time of posting) a month. Real farmers could do trolling on the side during slow seasons of the year and make some money.
karlof1 , Feb 26, 2018 4:26:45 PM | 17
What we need are some Mole Trolls, or maybe that's Troll Moles--double agents if you will that work for 6-12 months recording 100% of all they do then reveal it all in an expose.
Ian , Feb 26, 2018 5:21:58 PM | 18
Getting ready for mid-terms. It's going to be interesting to see if the Democrats get wiped off the map. They should be able to hire quite a few people for $40 million. Don't be surprised if they deploy AI in the first wave, then follow up with a real person.

ben @13:

Turn off your I phones, and think a little.

ROFL After wandering aimlessly in the mall with Her Majesty over the weekend, I'm not sure if that's even possible now.

Piotr Berman , Feb 26, 2018 5:23:20 PM | 19
Hillary Clinton sat on a wall,
Hillary Clinton had a great fall;
All the DNC stooges and all her trolls
Couldn't put her campaign again on the roll.

[department of lame rhymes]

Piotr Berman , Feb 26, 2018 5:29:18 PM | 20
I am retired and can use some extra change....just kidding!!!....

Posted by: notlurking | Feb 26, 2018 2:55:14 PM | 5

Foolish human, who needs the likes of you! Regards, Chief Bot

pantaraxia , Feb 26, 2018 6:42:36 PM | 21
"The big Silicon Valley companies Google, Facebook and Twitter were heavily involved in the U.S. election campaign. The companies embedded people within the campaigns to advise them how to reach a maximum trolling effect:"

It went much further than that . Google actually tweaked its algorithms to alter search recommendations in favor of the Clinton campaign. A comparative analysis of search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo showed that Google differed significantly from the other two in producing search recommendations relevant to Clinton.

Google Manipulates Search Results To Favor Hillary Clinton - Jimmy Dore
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MICXf6viakc

But , but, but...Russia!!!

Nothing to see her folks. Carry on.

che , Feb 26, 2018 6:47:53 PM | 22
The entire U.S. MSM is a F'ing troll farm, disinformation, Orwellian world on steroids. The U.S. public is fed a constant never ending stream of complete Bull sh**, self serving crap. How to stop it is the only question, to stop the impunity with which these criminals like Bush and Trump and Obama and Mattis et.al. lie with their pants on fire and .....they all suck .01% dick.
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 8:19:04 PM | 23
@8 Nonsense Factory

Ahmed Nafeez exposed The Rendon Group and the Pentagon's Highlands Forum a few years ago.

And then there's today's nonsense.

Are You a Russian Troll?

Curtis , Feb 26, 2018 8:44:21 PM | 24
It's surprising to see the NYT admit the US does it, too. The alt media has been all over this including Corbett's recent video with the Woolsey interview with Fox News where he laughs it off and then says it was for a good cause.
Curtis , Feb 26, 2018 8:47:09 PM | 25
Hillary's Troll Farm = Lipstick on a pig.
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 8:51:55 PM | 26
From Nafeez Ahmed :
Two days before 9/11, Condoleeza Rice received the draft of a formal National Security Presidential Directive that Bush was expected to sign immediately. The directive contained a comprehensive plan to launch a global war on al-Qaeda , including an "imminent" invasion of Afghanistan to topple the Taliban. The directive was approved by the highest levels of the White House and officials of the National Security Council, including of course Rice and Rumsfeld. The same NSC officials were simultaneously running the Dhabol Working Group to secure the Indian power plant deal for Enron's Trans-Afghan pipeline project. The next day, one day before 9/11, the Bush administration formally agreed on the plan to attack the Taliban.
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 9:01:10 PM | 27
From Nafeez Ahmed :

The Highlands Forum has thus played a leading role in defining the Pentagon's entire conceptualization of the 'war on terror.' Irving Wladawsky-Berger, a retired IMB vice president who co-chaired the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee from 1997 to 2001, described his experience of one 2007 Forum meeting in telling terms:

"Then there is the War on Terror, which DoD has started to refer to as the Long War, a term that I first heard at the Forum. It seems very appropriate to describe the overall conflict in which we now find ourselves. This is a truly global conflict the conflicts we are now in have much more of the feel of a battle of civilizations or cultures trying to destroy our very way of life and impose their own."
Debsisdead , Feb 26, 2018 9:01:42 PM | 28
Posted by: Fec | Feb 26, 2018 8:19:04 PM | 23

Yeah well since the writer of the 'quiz' exposes themself as bein a troll of the worst sort there is nothing to be said. I'm currently attempting to ingest only those newstories where the publisher provides space for feedback from readers since if a story is truthful it should be able to withstand challenge. yeah riight cos that means there's bugger all out there anymore. The biggest 'win' populism has had this far is in driving all feedback off all sites with a readership of more than a few hundred. Many of those that do allow feedback only permit humans with credentialed facebook or google accounts to indulge and the comments are only visible to similarly logged in types. That tells us a lot about the lack of faith the corporate media actually have in the nonsense they publish.

Of course 'trolls' are the ones held to be the guilty for causing this but if you actually watch what happens in a feedback column such as the rare occasions when the graun still permits CIF comments it isn't the deliberately offensive arseholes spouting the usual cliches who get deleted, it is those who put forward a considered argument which details why the original writer has reached a faulty conclusion.

We all know this yet it seems as though none of us are prepared to confront it properly as the censorship it is.
IMO media outlets which continually lie or at least distort the truth to advance a particular agenda need to be called to account.
Massed pickets outside newsrooms would be a good way cos as much as media hate us loudmouths who won't swallow their bromides, they like their competition even less. A decently organised picket of NYT, WaPo or the Graun would be news in every other spineless, propagandising & slug-featured media entity.

Lozion , Feb 26, 2018 9:09:10 PM | 29
Cant wait to see the big new shiny gold GEC logo, AMC & GMC anyone? ;)
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 9:17:57 PM | 30
@ 28 Debsisdead

Said troll was published in Richmond and God only knows who else picked it up. I refuted it in the comments as best I could, also excerpting MOA. Regardless:

From Ahmed Nafeez :

Among Rendon's activities was the creation of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC) on behalf of the CIA, a group of Iraqi exiles tasked with disseminating propaganda, including much of the false intelligence about WMD . That process had begun concertedly under the administration of George H W. Bush, then rumbled along under Clinton with little fanfare, before escalating after 9/11 under George W. Bush. Rendon thus played a large role in the manufacture of inaccurate and false news stories relating to Iraq under lucrative CIA and Pentagon contracts  --  and he did so in the period running up to the 2003 invasion as an advisor to Bush's National Security Council: the same NSC, of course, that planned the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, achieved with input from Enron executives who were simultaneously engaging the Pentagon Highlands Forum.

https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 9:26:22 PM | 31
From Ahmed Nafeez :
Mass surveillance and data-mining also now has a distinctive operational purpose in assisting with the lethal execution of special operations, selecting targets for the CIA's drone strike kill lists via dubious algorithms, for instance, along with providing geospatial and other information for combatant commanders on land, air and sea, among many other functions. A single social media post on Twitter or Facebook is enough to trigger being placed on secret terrorism watch-lists solely due to a vaguely defined hunch or suspicion; and can potentially even land a suspect on a kill list.
Fec , Feb 26, 2018 9:40:37 PM | 32
From Ahmed Nafeez :
In 2011, the Forum hosted two DARPA-funded scientists, Antonio and Hanna Damasio, who are principal investigators in the 'Neurobiology of Narrative Framing' project at the University of Southern California. Evoking Zalman's emphasis on the need for Pentagon psychological operations to deploy "empathetic influence," the new DARPA-backed project aims to investigate how narratives often appeal "to strong, sacred values in order to evoke an emotional response," but in different ways across different cultures

This goes a long way toward explaining what is occurring in Hollywood and Nashville.

[Feb 25, 2018] Looks like FBI or CIA has an insider in Internet Research Agency Agata Burdonova, who has recently moved with her husband to the United States. She run translator project and is missing from Mueller indictment

Notable quotes:
"... The Russian independent TV Rain, also known as Dozhd, found (Russian, machine translation ) that one management person of the IRA was missing in the Mueller indictment. That women, Agata Burdonova, has recently moved with her husband to the United States. She had run the "translator" department of the IRA that created English language social marketing campaigns. She has now applied for a U.S. Social Security number. ..."
"... On June 15, 2017, Dmitry Fyodorov says he received an employment offer from Facebook. On August 8, 2017 Fyodorov marries Burdonova. Employer (presumably, Facebook) sponsors both of their visas -- prob. H1B. ..."
"... On December 7 2017 both moved to Bellevue, Washington. Two month later Mueller indicts the alleged IRA owner and management, but not Burdonova. This smells of a deal made by some US agency to get insight into the IRA. In return, an opportunity to move to the US was offered. ..."
Feb 25, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Feb 19 - Internet Marketing - Why Is This Smelly Fish Priceless?

Automated Twitter accounts, or trolls, repeated a tweet about a MoA piece on Muller's indictment of "Russian trolls" . Funny but not really important. There is interesting news though related to the original Muller indictment. Mueller accused with little evidence 13 persons involved in the private Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) of meddling with the U.S. election campaign.

The Russian independent TV Rain, also known as Dozhd, found (Russian, machine translation ) that one management person of the IRA was missing in the Mueller indictment. That women, Agata Burdonova, has recently moved with her husband to the United States. She had run the "translator" department of the IRA that created English language social marketing campaigns. She has now applied for a U.S. Social Security number.

According to a follow up :

On June 15, 2017, Dmitry Fyodorov says he received an employment offer from Facebook. On August 8, 2017 Fyodorov marries Burdonova. Employer (presumably, Facebook) sponsors both of their visas -- prob. H1B.

On December 7 2017 both moved to Bellevue, Washington. Two month later Mueller indicts the alleged IRA owner and management, but not Burdonova. This smells of a deal made by some US agency to get insight into the IRA. In return, an opportunity to move to the US was offered.

Feb 20 - "Russian bots" - How An Anti-Russian Lobby Creates Fake News

On the farce of the "Hamilton 68" dashboard and how the media fall for it.

[Feb 24, 2018] Masha Gessen Did a Russian Troll Farm's Inflammatory Posts Really Sway the 2016 Election for Trump

Mash Gessen is a well know Russophob. That's they way she earns living.
Feb 24, 2018 | www.truth-out.org

MASHA GESSEN: So, I am really fascinated with what it tells us about our imagination about the Russian imagination. So, Russia imagines America and the American political system as like this unassailable monolith that they are throwing stuff at just to try to make a dent, whereas the United States is starting increasingly to imagine Russia as all-powerful, as incredibly sophisticated, as capable of, you know, sending out some really absurd tweets, in sub-literate English, and somehow changing the outcome of the election. And that projects such a belief in the fragility of the system and the basic instability of it and in the gullibility of voters who read something that's not even comprehensible English and suddenly change their vote. I mean, the working theory of the investigation -- right? -- is that Russians influenced the election by influencing American public opinion. And so, we're asked to believe that a significant impact on American public opinion could be produced by, you know, the Bernie the Superman coloring book tweet.

[Feb 24, 2018] Looks like color revolution plotter offered Trump a deal: switching to anti-Russia platform in exchange of stopping personal witch hunt against him. W>ell this was always the ultimate point. Not getting Trump, but making sure Trump falls in line with the insane plan to get Russia

Notable quotes:
"... The sad thing is, by admitting that Trump had no connection to the 13 accused 'election hackers,' his accusers are offering him an easy out–with the expectation that he will pay them back by turning against Russia. ..."
"... Trump has already acquiesced in new arms shipments to Ukraine, and he doesn't seem to have any problem with the Pentagon randomly attacking (among others) Russian soldiers and contractors in Syria ..."
"... Well this was always the ultimate point. Not getting Trump, but making sure Trump falls in line with the insane plan to get Russia. ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Seamus Padraig says February 18, 2018

The sad thing is, by admitting that Trump had no connection to the 13 accused 'election hackers,' his accusers are offering him an easy out–with the expectation that he will pay them back by turning against Russia.

Trump has already acquiesced in new arms shipments to Ukraine, and he doesn't seem to have any problem with the Pentagon randomly attacking (among others) Russian soldiers and contractors in Syria. If there were ever any doubt, it now seems obvious that "the swamp" has successfully drained Trump. Start digging your bomb shelters, people

MLS says February 19, 2018

Well this was always the ultimate point. Not getting Trump, but making sure Trump falls in line with the insane plan to get Russia.

It's hard to see how this ends. Like the Terminator they absolutely will not stop. Ever. Until they are physically incapable of moving another step. But will the world survive long enough for that to happen? Or will Russia cave rather than risk war? Without Putin at the helm I think 'compromises' will start and then pretty soon Russia is back in the fold with a token president and the IMF running the show. Like the rest of us.

[Feb 24, 2018] The Tragicomedy of Russiagate by Sheldon Richman

Notable quotes:
"... Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq ..."
"... The Myth of the Rational Voter ..."
"... America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | original.antiwar.com

The whole election-meddling distraction is remarkable in both comic and tragic ways. The tragedy can be summed up in three words: New Cold War. At a time when the U.S. and Russian governments ought to be working toward nuclear disarmament, relations are deteriorating dangerously. As the estimable Australian writer Caitlin Johnstone, notes , despite Donald Trump's campaign promise of détente with Russia,

This administration has already killed Russians in Syria , greatly escalated nuclear tensions with Russia, allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine (a move Obama refused for fear of angering Moscow), established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanded NATO with the addition of Montenegro, assigned Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shut down a Russian consulat e in San Francisco and expelled Russian diplomats as part of continued back-and-forth hostile diplomatic exchanges.

We are already at an extremely dangerous point in the ongoing trend of continuous escalations with a country that is armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. [Johnstone's links.]

Would Trump have done these things without the pressure of Russiagate? I don't know, but Russiagate hasn't helped. And what more would Hillary Clinton have done by this point? Johnstone argues that Russiagate is all about putting Russia in its place and securing the American ruling elite's geopolitical and economic interests -- not about getting Trump:

America's unelected power establishment doesn't care about impeaching Trump, it cares about hobbling Russia in order to prevent the rise of a potential rival superpower in its ally China. All this lunacy makes perfect sense when you realize this. The US deep state is using the hysterical cult of anti-Trumpism to manufacture support for increasing escalations with Russia, and the anti-Trumpists are playing right along under the delusion that pushing for moves against Russia will hurt Trump.

Of course, removing Trump from office would be a cherry on top. If the drivers of Russiagate can't have that, at least they can leave the impression that Hillary Clinton would be president today were it not for the diabolically cunning Vladimir Putin and the inherently depraved Russia in cahoots with their tool, Donald Trump. ( Putin's opponents in Russia are irritated that Americans portray Putin as virtually omnipotent.) Russiagate promoters in the Democratic Party deny they intend to right the wrong of 2016, but I don't believe them. Surely they are trying to delegitimate the election on the grounds that Trump and Putin stole it from its rightful owner. (For the record, I think all elections are illegitimate but not because of foreign involvement.)

The anti-Russia campaign has certainly gone well beyond overboard. Former Director of National Intelligence James (Yeah, I lied . What you gonna do about?) Clapper, on "Meet the Press," said the Russians "are "typically, almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique." (Beg your pardon, I linked to RT. Here's an American site for anyone concerned about having RT in their browser history.) Johnstone points out that Clapper has said such things before, including: "But as far as our being intimate allies, trusting buds with the Russians that is just not going to happen. It is in their genes to be opposed, diametrically opposed to the United States and to Western democracies." As I recall, former CIA Director John Brennan said something similar.

On the comic side, Russiagate is a new theater of the absurd, featuring Americans running around with their hair on fire over alleged official Russian actions that amount to nothing significant: it was an act of war -- another Pearl Harbor -- no wait, another 9/11!

Let's assume -- purely for the sake of discussion since no evidence has been made public -- that the Russians did it. Note, first, that the "it" looks like the product of the gang that couldn't shoot straight. I'm not going to do what Johnstone, Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, and the late Robert Parry have done so well so many times, namely, catalog all the inane acts the Putin-guided Russian intel agencies are said to have committed in order to bring down America. (Start here .) Suffice it to say that if that's the best Putin can come up with, we have little to worry about. Of course, the very inanity of this so-called campaign to destroy America -- the ridiculous discrepancy between means and alleged end, the sheer clownish ineptitude -- furnishes sufficient grounds for skepticism, at least, about the Russiagate narrative. (See David Stockman's explanation of the ineptitude. SPOILER ALERT: It wasn't a Russian Intel operation. The man who we are to believe sought to subvert America's democracy is a freelance pro-Putin Russian food-industry oligarch employing a bunch of minimum-wage keyboard jockeys who didn't pay attention to the United States until the 2014 U.S.-sponsored coup in Ukraine, i.e., before there was a Trump campaign.)

Another comic aspect is the national arrogance of it all. How dare anyone interfere with our election! What's so funny is that some people who express such outrage really have no idea how many times the US government has interfered in other countries' elections ( including Russia's ), not to mention far worse things, like perpetrating assassinations, coups, and invasions. (See Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq . This sordid history is summarized here .)

Americans generally do not know the nefarious things "their" government has done over many, many years. This is partly due to what Bryan Caplan in The Myth of the Rational Voter calls "rational irrationalism." Americans embrace a nationalism that is impervious to facts. Even vivid accounts of the systematic wholesale slaughter of the Indians wouldn't shake it. People generally don't like to venture outside their comfort zones to shake up their worldview, and even if they did so, what would change? Each person has only one vote, and the chance that one vote will make a difference is close to zero. So why not indulge one's nationalist biases? It's not as though there's an opportunity cost to doing so.

On the other hand, politicians and pundits do have some idea of America's long record of intervening in other countries. (Maybe I'm being too charitable.) What's their excuse for being so offended by even the possibility of meddling in an U.S. election? One explanation is the "exceptional nation" dogma of the American creed, or what I call the American chosen-people complex. Even secular American nationalists believe America has been anointed -- by history if not by a deity -- to lead the world. (This goes back to the founding generation, by the way. It's no post-World War II phenomenon. See America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited .)

Thus, we have a moral inequivalence on our hands. It's okay if we do it to "them" (whoever), but it's not okay if "they" do it to us. Moreover, we can do it to ourselves , but if anyone else tries it, there'll be hell to pay.

Any way you look at it, Russiagate is ridiculous. Of course it serves some people's interests. But it harms the rest of us, most of all by bringing us closer to conflict with Russia, perhaps even to nuclear war.

Sheldon Richman is the executive editor of The Libertarian Institute , senior fellow and chair of the trustees of the Center for a Stateless Society , and a contributing editor at Antiwar.com . He is the former senior editor at the Cato Institute and Institute for Humane Studies, former editor of The Freeman , published by the Foundation for Economic Education , and former vice president at the Future of Freedom Foundation . His latest book is America's Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited .

Read more by Sheldon Richman

[Feb 24, 2018] Russian Espionage, or Clickbait (1-2)

The reality of Russiagate is that the corrupt neoliberal system and its institutions were laid bare in an unprecedented way. The Democratic Party is toast. The Republican Party is a vile sham. And the MSM has exposed itself as attack dogs of intelligence agencies like never before. People are waking up to the corrupt and useless system in place. The reality of the system was exposed in magnifying Russiagate lens. That's probably the only good thing about it
Notable quotes:
"... John Sipher (ha ha) starts out by re-asserting the lie that Russians "hacked" the DNC ..."
"... Why are the people who work for this guy trying to sell opinions being called trolls? This is just another way to give credence to the FBI narrative that trolls tried to sway the election. If anyone was a troll, ..."
"... And Rachel? Quit lying to yourself and others. My gawd! You have come a long way from your time at Air America that I don't even recognize you anymore. You are creating hysteria and you have become a raving lunatic. Enjoy your $30,000/day, $7 million a month salary for selling out to the people who you used to despise. I despise you! ..."
"... He retorts that 'there's enough hot spots -- Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, China' -- but fails to acknowledge that for example, the Iraq invasion and subsequent insurgency/civil war/rise-of-ISIS is all about what Aaron pointed to, the ginning up intelligence to create the Iraq invasion - which then spilled over into Syria. The role that the US is playing in all the other place he mentions, they have constantly resorted to lethal force and refused negotiation. ..."
"... The establishment media leaves out the essential context: The US is on a single superpower, Pax Americana global empire gambit; with everyone else playing for time while building their defences. ..."
"... And 'Russian Doctrine' is just recycled Soviet Doctrine - but the US always lead arms escalations during the old cold war - the so called soviet doctrine was in fact defence against US pressure and aggression. ..."
"... The Democratic Party is toast. The Republican Party is a vile sham. And the main stream media has exposed itself like never before. People are waking up to the corrupt and useless system in place. The reality of the system is being laid bare in an unprecedented way. As bad as things seem, this is a good thing, if we can keep those in power from destroying the earth before we can recover it. ..."
"... Unless something more comes of this, the Dems and their media cohorts will do a repeat of the Repubs and that same media when the WMD failed to materialize in Iraq. The wonderful thing about The Homeland, though, is that being wrong, all the time, in no way disqualifies you for remaining an important and serious person. ..."
"... Black Lives Matter ..."
"... Bernie Sanders ..."
"... Yeah, I think the point of this is not to change opinions, the point was to try to either suppress voters on one side, or to get people to hardened opinions, and get people to come out to vote, and we've even seen the same troll farm, looks like they're doing this now around the Parkland shooting in Florida. They were going around Black Lives Matter, they're trying to spin up divisions to get us working against each other, as much as electing Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders. ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | therealnews.com

AARON MATÉ: Now, Maddow makes at least one error here. The indictment does say that the operation had a monthly budget of $1.25 million dollars, but that was for its entire global operations, of which the U.S. was only a part. And more importantly, can we say conclusively that this was the work of Russian intelligence? Well, joining me is John Sipher, national security analyst with Cipher Brief, and a former member of the CIA's clandestine service.

John Sipher (@john_sipher) is a former Chief of Station for the C.I.A. He worked for over 27 years in Russia, Europe and Asia and now writes for various publications and works as a consultant with CrossLead and New Media Frontier.


Nixak*77*, February 24, 2018 2:04 AM

Here's what Mr CIA guy 'Sipher' is selling: The indicted 13 Russian trollers interfered w the 2016 POTUS election- NOT by hacking US voting machines & flipping votes to Repug Trump, but by sowing discord among the US electorate which even 'Sipher' admits already existed. Most of the Face-Book posts by these alleged Russian trollers were either posted AFTER Nov 8, 2016 &/or were seen by virtually NO-One, thus 'Sipher' effectively admits he now ilk in the US intel biz can even assess how much alleged impact these alleged Russian trollers had on the 2016 POTUS election -But- I can: Virtually ZERO!!

Now compare that to the US' notorious track-record of nefariously 'meddling' in other countries' political processes- Mainly by Mr CIA guy 'Sipher's' so-called 'ex' employer:

- In 1996 the US actively & blatantly interfered in Russia's presidential election to get Slick Willy's pal & chum(p) that drunk Boris Yeltsin guy elected, & even openly bragged about it. And then orchestrated a fire-sale of Russia's resources, that resulted in great hardship to the Russian people.

In 2014 while Putin's attention was on the Winter-Olympics in Sochi, Killary Clinton's protege' Vikky Nuland actively stoked a Neo-NAZI coup vs Ukraine's democratically elected president -- In an blatant attempt to push NATO right up into Russia's face / west-flank & to try to grab Russia's naval base in Crimea [which up till the 1950s was actually officially Russian territory].

  • In 1953 the CIA in tandem w MI6 actively worked to overthrow Iran's democratically selected leader Mosadeq, in an out-right COUP, that brought that notorious dictator the Shah of Iran to power!
  • In 1954 the CIA actively worked to overthrow Guatemala's democratically elected leader Arbenz, in an out-right COUP!
  • In 1960-61 the CIA in tandem w the Belgiums [& even the UN] actively worked to overthrow Congo's democratically elected leader Patrice Lumuba, in an out-right COUP the resulted in Lumumba's DEATH [w the OK of Ike Eisenhower's & Alan Dulles' CIA]! A coup that brought the notorious despot Mobutu to power.
  • In 1961 Dulles' & 'Tricky Dick' Nixon's CIA talked JFK into allowing the CIA to try to over-throw Castro in Cuba, in the 'Bay of Pigs' fiasco.
  • In 1966 LBJ's CIA helped to overthrow Ghanaian leader Kwame' Nkruma in a military coup.
  • In 1973 Nixon's & Kissinger's CIA helped to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Chile' Allende' in an out-Right coup, the resulted in Allende's DEATH! And brought the notoriously murderous military regime of Pinochet to power!!
  • In 1991 Mr CIA POTUS Bush Sr OKed an out-right Coup vs the democratically elected leader of Haiti Aristide. And Bush Sr's son, Bush Jr would do a repeat vs Aristide yet again in 2004- Which was Haiti's bicentennial anniversary of its independence from Napoleon's France [in 1804] as France's notorious [ex] slave-colony. The US & France have been causing misery in Haiti ever since!!
  • In 2002 the US [likely spear-headed by the CIA] tried to pull a coup vs Venezuela's democratically elected leader Hugo Chavez, which failed. But the US has been actively meddling in Venezuela ever since, & is apparently plotting a coup vs Chavez' democratically elected successor Maduro.
  • In 2003 the Bush-Cheney-Bliar nexus used false intel from Mr 'Sipher's' CIA, launched that disastrous Iraq Attack Pt2 based on LIES, which resulted in over 1 Million Iraqis' death, in an nefarious Neo-CONian / Neo-Liberal regime-change scheme!! This CIA backed disaster directly resulted in the rise of AL-CIAeda in Iraq & then ISIS!!
  • In 2009 under Dim Obama & Billary HRC as his Sec of State, the US OKed a coup vs Honduras' democratically elected leader Zelaya. And Honduras remains in turmoil to this day!
  • In 2011 Dim OBomber & Killary [I came,. I saw, He died, Ha, ha, ha- Yes!] Clinton in combo w France's Sarkozy, the UK's Cameron & those 'bastions of democracy' the Saudi-GCC oil monarchs- actively overthrew Libya's leader Col Khadaffi via FUK-US NATO's relentless 9 month 'R2P' bombing assault in yet another notorious Neo-CONian / NeoLiberal regime-change scheme [based on LIES yet again]- Resulting in Khadaffi's brutal murder [that KIllary openly called for just a few days before & then hideously cackled over afterwards] mass chaos in what was Africa's most prosperous country, & brought to power a regime that's directly linked to AL-CIAeda & even ISIS, & who are now openly selling Black Libyans & African immigrants on Libyan SLAVE-Markets!!
  • In 2012 the US under then Sec of State Billary HRC tried to interfere in Russia's elections [yet again] to block Putin's regaining Russia's presidency.
  • In 2011 the US under Slick Willy Clinton [as the UN's Gov of Haiti] & wife Billary HRC as Sec of State, actively interfered in Haiti's elections yet again to bring that neo-Duvalier guy Martelli to power, while outlawing Aristide's political party which is the most popular party in Haiti.
  • In 2015 the US covertly backed a 'parliamentary coup' vs Brazil's democratically elected leader Delma Roussef!

And oh let's NOT forget the US' & it allies [UK, the Saudis, the Turks, the IAF, etc] actively involvement in the on-going Syrian disaster- In yet another Neo-CONian / Neo-Liberal nefarious regime-change scheme!! And how Mr CIA guy Sipher's CIA & other intel' agencies have been trying to bait first Dim OBomber & now Repug Trump into an all out attack on Syria to accomplish it, using dubious 'intel' ala 'WMD redux'!!

I mean seriously Mr CIA guy 'Sipher' & all you other Russia-Gaters [IE: Rachael Mad-cow & even Bernie]?? All this BS hype over 13 Russians trolling click-bait on Face-Book, vs all that I've outlined above [just a short-list] that the CIA & even so-called 'liberal' Dims have actively supported, w DISASTROUS results- Literally destroying MILLIONS of lives in the process!! PLEASE!!

gregorylkruse , February 23, 2018 5:27 PM

"I tend to believe them". That's the problem.

Robert Johnson , February 23, 2018 1:08 PM

John Sipher (ha ha) starts out by re-asserting the lie that Russians "hacked" the DNC. Everything that follows is just blah, blah,blah....Why is TRN interviewing this buffoon?

Robert Johnson gregorylkruse , February 23, 2018 11:37 PM

No, sorry. I have great respect for Aaron, but TRN is not doing us any favors by helping spread this noxious propaganda. They legitimize it by acknowledging it. Meanwhile, there is other news they could be giving us.Check this out: http://bit.ly/2EMOl4S Sad we have to depend upon comedians to give us the news....

Robert Johnson , February 23, 2018 1:06 PM

Rachel Maddow is American "intelligence" at its least ambitious....

Richard Burt Robert Johnson , February 23, 2018 5:50 PM

LOL

beaglebailey , February 23, 2018 1:28 AM

BTW. Why are the people who work for this guy trying to sell opinions being called trolls? This is just another way to give credence to the FBI narrative that trolls tried to sway the election. If anyone was a troll,

I'd say it was the Correct the Record folks who were the trolls. Hillary's campaign paid over a million dollars for people to go into websites and if anyone was being critical of Hillary, they tried to get them to change their minds. How is that not election interference? And was that even legal? It was unethical if not against campaign finance laws.

Jay Hansen beaglebailey , February 23, 2018 1:47 AM

It arose inside the country, though Hillary is, without a doubt, scum. Hillbots were actual 'Murkins, a lot of them still suffering from Hillbotulism. Elections featuring two absolutely unacceptable candidates are a real drag, and, unfortunately, probably the OFFICIAL end of the United States (though in reality, the US died in March 2003).

beaglebailey , February 23, 2018 1:19 AM

Unbelievable. Aaron: I don't believe that the Mueller investigation has delivered solid proof that Russia did anything against the country.

Sipher:

Well I think that he and the FBI are reputable sources and I'm going to believe them and what they tell me. Even if they haven't proven anything, we know that Putin is a bad man and he wants to sow divisions here and besides he's using chemical weapons in Syria (even though that's so totally off topic) and when I go to bed at night I see Putin in my dreams and yackity, yack, yack! So there. I'm a poopy head and you're not.

Good grief, how can people believe anything by this time? And Rachel? Quit lying to yourself and others. My gawd! You have come a long way from your time at Air America that I don't even recognize you anymore. You are creating hysteria and you have become a raving lunatic. Enjoy your $30,000/day, $7 million a month salary for selling out to the people who you used to despise. I despise you!

Michael Holloway , February 22, 2018 10:37 PM

This guys arguments are so weak he must be interacting the very ignorant audience most of the time (I think the great majority of Americans don't pay attention to what their own foreign policy is -- and MSM the vast majority of the time offers nothing but safe softball foreign policy questions).

He retorts that 'there's enough hot spots -- Syria, Iran, Afghanistan, China' -- but fails to acknowledge that for example, the Iraq invasion and subsequent insurgency/civil war/rise-of-ISIS is all about what Aaron pointed to, the ginning up intelligence to create the Iraq invasion - which then spilled over into Syria. The role that the US is playing in all the other place he mentions, they have constantly resorted to lethal force and refused negotiation.

The establishment media leaves out the essential context: The US is on a single superpower, Pax Americana global empire gambit; with everyone else playing for time while building their defences.

And 'Russian Doctrine' is just recycled Soviet Doctrine - but the US always lead arms escalations during the old cold war - the so called soviet doctrine was in fact defence against US pressure and aggression.

Vincent Berg , February 22, 2018 6:50 PM

MoonofAlabama gives a good analysis of the marketing scheme aspect of these "meddlings". Max Blumenthal mentions it in his discussion with Mate from earlier in the week, but this is a very detailed look into the matter: http://www.moonofalabama.or...

Bill Conklin , February 22, 2018 6:40 PM

I suppose it is ok for Aaron to interview guys like this CIA agent but the agent clearly doesn't understand the validity of an indictment. An indictment doesn't prove anything; If it did, we wouldn't need trial courts.

The Department of Justice could indict a ham sandwich if they wanted.

The DOJ knows that this case will never go to trial and they will never have to prove anything. It is depressing that the Democrats and MSNBC have lost all credibility. We are very lucky to have Aaron and Max looking at this sutff.

beaglebailey Bill Conklin , February 23, 2018 1:20 AM

Not according to Rachel. She's seeing Russian bots in her dreams. Just like Sipher.

Sillyputta , February 22, 2018 4:25 PM

The Democratic Party is toast. The Republican Party is a vile sham. And the main stream media has exposed itself like never before. People are waking up to the corrupt and useless system in place. The reality of the system is being laid bare in an unprecedented way. As bad as things seem, this is a good thing, if we can keep those in power from destroying the earth before we can recover it.

michael nola Sillyputta , February 22, 2018 5:47 PM

I just got done reading the Mueller indictment. For the MSM and the Dems to continue their pathetic witch hunt is a true indictment of the corruption at the heart of this country's political and media elites. No doubt there was an attempt, weak as it was, to influence Americans, but for anyone to think this is the smoking gun that proves it was decisive in determining the 2016 election, or that the Russian government definitely orchestrated it, or that Trump, whom I despise as much as anyone else, colluded with them, reveals a startling lack of intellectual honesty.

The effort put forth by the Russians involved seemed to have two objectives; first to take advantage of the tribalization of American society to advance the Trump campaign, and secondly, to make money off it.

Worst of all, if nothing more comes out of this, then the Dems, as corrupt as they are incompetent, will have added more fuel to the Trump charges of fake news and will have served only to weaken any resistance they claim to represent as this clown leads this country on an ever accelerating demise.

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) michael nola , February 22, 2018 6:15 PM

I take issue with advancing the Trump campaign as an objective. Some ads, etc., were anti-Trump and some were about kittens. I haven't seen any predominant political message, at all, in that "effort". Also, it was so paltry that they had to know that it would have no effect, at all, and never could have any effect. Implying otherwise is part of what makes the whole story look like a bumbling, comedic farce to most thinking people.

michael nola Saint Jimmy (Russian American) , February 22, 2018 7:52 PM

If you read the Mueller indictment, it's clearly stated that they did contact various American groups working for Trump, locally, that is, and arranged events, paid for various materials, even someone to dress up as HRC and be in a jail, and also travel to the states to do some first hand research, but as you say, the effort was minor, at best, and was no factor in Trump winning, especially compared to the billions of $ of free air time he got when running in the Repub primary, he was a cash cow for the networks, after all, and the DNC advancing his cause during those same primaries, thinking he was an easier opponent than Cruz or Rubio.

Unless something more comes of this, the Dems and their media cohorts will do a repeat of the Repubs and that same media when the WMD failed to materialize in Iraq. The wonderful thing about The Homeland, though, is that being wrong, all the time, in no way disqualifies you for remaining an important and serious person.

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) michael nola , February 22, 2018 8:16 PM

I haven't seen ANY evidence of traveling to the US for "first hand research". WHERE does this crap come from? It comes from people desperate to keep the war budget higher than any war budget in the history of planet earth. I still see nothing in that "indictment" that serves as any real evidence that Trump colluded with any Russians, much less any Russians definitively working for the Government of Russia, or any evidence that the campaign was affected or that Russians were trying to create "discord" in the US.

If they bothered to look at the same types of activities and even direct money given to candidates by Israeli, Saudi, UK, and other nationals, I think it would dwarf anything Russian citizens used to fund or further any campaign. They won't look elsewhere, though, because nothing perpetrates the fraud on the American people that is the Defense budget like the word "Russians" and most of the "defense" (i.e., war) budget is completely unnecessary. They should be cut by a third right now, with further cuts pending.

michael nola Saint Jimmy (Russian American) , February 23, 2018 6:28 PM

The indictment gives the names and dates of two Russians who made it here for a few days; a third was unable to secure a visa. There are dates and places named in the indictment, but nothing that could of had any influence on the election. If the Dems are so worked up over having lost two elections this century even though their candidate had more popular votes, you'd think they'd be screaming for a change in determining the presidential election. We all know the Repubs would.

We are in total agreement as to what really mattered and matters regarding this issue and the reasons behind the Dems sudden embrace of McCarthyism and their overall need to point to Russia or anyone else to maintain the unmaintainable American empire. If you haven't read the indictment, it's not that long, 37 short pages, several of which can be skipped because they simply list names or laws broken.

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) michael nola , February 23, 2018 6:41 PM

If the dems really cared, they would be calling for publicly funded elections, cuts of a quarter or more of the war budget (i.e., "defense"), and public health care and education, and jobs programs with benefits. They care about nothing but their own butts.

Sillyputta , February 22, 2018 4:21 PM

Aaron Mate is an excellent, intelligent, sincere, and questioning journalist--in short, what everything one would expect from a real journalist. So, what is it the naysayers don't like about him? Is it because he does not support their narrative. Is it his laid back style? What in particular?

Vern La Vernon Sillyputta , February 23, 2018 1:49 AM

this site is controlled by quitiplas.

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) , February 22, 2018 3:28 PM

This guy gets it. As a Russian American, it looks as though I'll have company in the coming American political gulags.

https://blackagendareport.c...

bacvlvs Saint Jimmy (Russian American) , February 23, 2018 10:09 PM

Yes, Glen Ford is outstanding.

michael nola Saint Jimmy (Russian American) , February 22, 2018 6:03 PM

Glen Ford penetrates all the BS and gets right down to the real agenda, Black or otherwise. He called out Obama back in 2007, when nearly everyone else on the so called left were coming in their pants over that fake.

bacvlvs michael nola , February 23, 2018 10:08 PM

"The more effective evil."

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) michael nola , February 22, 2018 6:07 PM

Yeah. I noticed.

Palimpsestuous , February 22, 2018 2:19 PM

CIA staff exhibit two qualities in abundance: 1) Suspicious incredulity regarding all apparent statements, actions and motivations of subjects in the field, and 2) Studied, refined, and highly purposeful public mendacity regarding their and their government's apparent statements, actions and motivations.

Mr Sipher is lying and the tell is his amazing degree of credulity regarding numerous US entities paired with across the board mistrust and outright defamation of numerous non-US entities. Virtually every accusation Sipher made against Russia, Putin and the indicted, is a menu item on standard CIA operational plans for disrupting the elections of foreign nations and has been practiced continuously for several decades, technology permitting.

As a companion to this interview it might be nice to solicit an interview with a CIA antagonist who knows how to expose--point by point, in policy, practice and tradition--one of the most destructive covert entities in world history.

p.munkey Palimpsestuous , February 22, 2018 9:57 PM

Hi Palimpsestuous, your assessment is spot on!

Mr. Sipher is throwing everything at the wall to see what might stick, attempting to conflate what he laughably refers to as the "Russian Black Arts" with the Parkland shooting. He talks in circles; on one hand acknowledging pre-existing social "hyperpartisan", "tribal", divisions", while on the other hand dismissing genuine political movements Black Lives Matter , Democratic Socialism ( Bernie Sanders ), and the Environmental Movement ( Jill Stein ) as products of Russian propaganda that is at once both sophisticated and simple.

JOHN SIPHER: Yeah, I think the point of this is not to change opinions, the point was to try to either suppress voters on one side, or to get people to hardened opinions, and get people to come out to vote, and we've even seen the same troll farm, looks like they're doing this now around the Parkland shooting in Florida. They were going around Black Lives Matter, they're trying to spin up divisions to get us working against each other, as much as electing Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders.

His assessment lacks any measure of self/social-awareness or self/social-consciousness that should be a pre-requisite before laying out criticism of another. It seems to me Mr. Sipher might be protecting his CIA pension.

Palimpsestuous p.munkey , February 22, 2018 10:35 PM

Hey there Munk! True believers will lay down their lives for their preferred criminal syndicate because they are of one body; pensions are just icing. Your observations among others are exactly why I said Sipher is lying.

Vincent Berg Palimpsestuous , February 22, 2018 6:03 PM

Bill Binney, Ray McGovern and John Kiriakou are the first three that come to mind as potential contrarians, although I am sure there are others as well. Perhaps the Clapper lyings will come up in part two?

Saint Jimmy (Russian American) Palimpsestuous , February 22, 2018 3:11 PM

He even looks like a square headed, red neck Nazi.

Pacemaker4 Palimpsestuous , February 22, 2018 2:34 PM

Shouldve asked him about Clapper lying to congress. That wouldve been a lot of fun.

michael nola Pacemaker4 , February 22, 2018 6:04 PM

That 's not called lying anymore; just being parsimonious with the truth, a very precious commodity, not to be over used.

Pacemaker4 michael nola , February 22, 2018 6:23 PM

hehe I hope youre being facetious, But In case youre not]
Lying James Clapper
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

michael nola Pacemaker4 , February 22, 2018 7:54 PM

A few months ago, while waiting for wifey to come out of Target, I saw a preteen kid wearing a T shirt that said, "I speak fluent sarcasm." I want one of those.

Seedee Vee , February 22, 2018 2:16 PM

I am glad you gave John Sipher enough rope.

Southern , February 22, 2018 2:11 PM

It's a sad day for TRRN now that it's been confirmed that Aaron Mate takes this cue from the CIA.

gustave courbet Southern , February 22, 2018 3:51 PM

Takes a cue by prosecuting a hostile interview? I'd rather say the opposite.

Southern gustave courbet , February 23, 2018 2:44 AM

Russians are being accused of involvement in activity that Israel engages in openly.

https://disqus.com/home/dis...

Parvin , February 22, 2018 1:59 PM

This guy is full of it. Come on Real News, please don't waste our time with this nonsense. We, the people are intelligent unlike our media.

Pacemaker4 Parvin , February 22, 2018 2:06 PM

disagree...I like to see schills like Sipher go on the record, and lose the debate, and lose their credibility.

Basle , February 22, 2018 1:45 PM

Whose idea what is to invite this nut on the show?

stan van houcke , February 22, 2018 1:41 PM

is this 'interview' a joke? if not, what is it?

Southern stan van houcke , February 22, 2018 2:15 PM

Propaganda.

Aaron Mate appears to be another gekaufte Journalist.

michael nola Southern , February 22, 2018 7:57 PM

Muhammad Ali used rope a dope to defeat George Foreman; Mate let's these idiots expose themselves with their own words; nothing is more effective than letting a fool speak.

[Feb 24, 2018] The Mueller Indictments The Day the Music Died by Daniel Lazare

The size of funds that Democrats and Republicans operated were in billions. And , IRA staffers purchased just $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56% of which ran after Election Day. So only $44K was spent during election campaign.
There author is wrong about color revolution against Trump. It is progressing.
One interesting side effect will be ruthless suppression of the US influence in Russian elections. Bismark famously remarked that "the Russians are slow to saddle up, but ride fast." Here media dogs also are off leash and there will be innocent victims, blamed in treason and other nefarious activities just to voicing dissent. Russiagate discredited neoliberal fifth column in Russia, making them all "enemies of the people".
Notable quotes:
"... After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new. ..."
"... Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact. ..."
"... Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor." ..."
"... This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working: ..."
"... No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more. ..."
"... " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are. ..."
"... But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians? ..."
"... "I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead. ..."
"... But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees. ..."
"... Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed. ..."
"... The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon. ..."
"... The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy ..."
"... A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock. ..."
"... As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts ..."
"... That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election. ..."
"... The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that. ..."
"... This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War. ..."
"... Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens. ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Fads and scandals often follow a set trajectory. They grow big, bigger, and then, finally, too big, at which point they topple over and collapse under the weight of their own internal contradictions. This was the fate of the "Me too" campaign, which started out as an exposé of serial abuser Harvey Weinstein but then went too far when Babe.net published a story about one woman's bad date with comedian Aziz Ansari. Suddenly, it became clear that different types of behavior were being lumped together in a dangerous way, and a once-explosive movement began to fizzle.

So, too, with Russiagate. After dominating the news for more than a year, the scandal may have at last reached a tipping point with last week's indictment of thirteen Russian individuals and three Russian corporations on charges of illegal interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the indictment landed with a decided thud for three reasons:

It failed to connect the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the alleged St. Petersburg troll factory accused of political meddling, with Vladimir Putin, the all-purpose evil-doer who the corporate media say is out to destroy American democracy. It similarly failed to establish a connection with the Trump campaign and indeed went out of its way to describe contacts with the Russians as "unwitting." It described the meddling itself as even more inept and amateurish than many had suspected.

After nine months of labor, Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller thus brought forth a mouse. Even if all the charges are true – something we'll probably never know since it's unlikely that any of the accused will be brought to trial -- the indictment tells us virtually nothing that's new.

Yes, IRA staffers purchased $100,000 worth of Facebook ads, 56 percent of which ran after Election Day. Yes, they persuaded someone in Florida to dress up as Hillary Clinton in a prison uniform and stand inside a cage mounted on a flatbed truck. And, yes, they also got another "real U.S. person," as the indictment terms it, to stand in front of the White House with a sign saying, "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss," a tribute, apparently, to IRA founder Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the convicted robber turned caterer whose birthday was three days away. Instead of a super-sophisticated spying operation, the indictment depicts a bumbling freelance operation that is still giving Putin heartburn months after the fact.

Not that this has stopped the media from whipping itself into a frenzy. "Russia is at war with our democracy," screamed a headline in the Washington Post. "Trump is ignoring the worst attack on America since 9/11," blared another. " Russia is engaged in a virtual war against the United States through 21st-century tools of disinformation and propaganda," declared the New York Times, while Daily Beast columnist Jonathan Alter tweeted that the IRA's activities amounted to nothing less than a "tech Pearl Harbor."

All of which merely demonstrates, in proper backhanded fashion, how grievously Mueller has fallen short. Proof that the scandal had at last overstayed its welcome came five days later when the Guardian, a website that had previously flogged Russiagate even more vigorously than the Post, the Times, or CNN, published a news analysis by Cas Mudde, an associate professor at the University of Georgia, admitting that it was all a farce – and a particularly self-defeating one at that.

Mudde's article made short work of hollow pieties about a neutral and objective investigation. Rather than an effort to get at the truth, Russiagate was a thinly-veiled effort at regime change. "[I]n the end," he wrote, "the only question everyone really seems to care about is whether Donald Trump was involved – and can therefore be impeached for treason.

With last week's indictment, the article went on, "Democratic party leaders once again reassured their followers that this was the next logical step in the inevitable downfall of Trump." The more Democrats play the Russiagate card, in other words, the nearer they will come to their goal of riding the Orange-Haired One out of town on a rail.

This makes the Dems seem crass, unscrupulous, and none too democratic. But then Mudde gave the knife a twist. The real trouble with the strategy, he said, is that it isn't working:

"While there is no doubt that the Trump camp was, and still is, filled with amoral and fraudulent people, and was very happy to take the Russians help during the elections, even encouraging it on the campaign, I do not think Mueller will be able to find conclusive evidence that Donald Trump himself colluded with Putin's Russia to win the elections. And that is the only thing that will lead to his impeachment as the Republican party is not risking political suicide for anything less."

Other Objectives of "Russiagate"

No collusion means no impeachment and hence no anti-Trump "color revolution" of the sort that was so effective in Georgia or the Ukraine. Moreover, while 53 percent of Americans believe that investigating Russiagate should be a top or at least an important priority according to a recent poll , figures for a half-dozen other issues ranging from Medicare and Social Security reform to tax policy, healthcare, infrastructure, and immigration are actually a good deal higher – 67 percent, 72 percent, or even more.

Summed up Mudde: " the Russia-Trump collusion story might be the talk of the town in Washington, but this is not the case in much of the rest of the country." Out in flyover country, rather, Americans can't figure out why the political elite is more concerned with a nonexistent scandal than with things that really count, i.e. de-industrialization, infrastructure decay, the opioid epidemic, and school shootings. As society disintegrates, the only thing Democrats have accomplished with all their blathering about Russkis under the bed is to demonstrate just how cut off from the real world they are.

But Russiagate is not just about regime change, but other things as well. One is repression. Where once Democrats would have laughed off Russian trolls and the like, they're now obsessed with making a mountain out of a molehill in order to enforce mainstream opinion and marginalize ideas and opinions suspected of being un-American and hence pro-Russian. If the RT (Russia Today) news network is now suspect -- the Times described it not long ago as "the slickly produced heart of a broad, often covert disinformation campaign designed to sow doubt about democratic institutions and destabilize the West" – then why not the BBC or Agence France-Presse? How long until foreign books are banned or foreign musicians?

"I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted," tweets Bloomberg columnist Leonid Bershidsky. "I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent." When the Times complains that Facebook "still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck," then it's clear that the goal is to force Facebook to rein in its activities or stand by and watch as others do so instead.

Add to this the classic moral panic promoted by #MeToo – to believe charges of sexual harassment and assault without first demanding evidence "is to disbelieve, and deny due process to, the accused," notes Judith Levine in the Boston Review – and it's clear that a powerful wave of cultural conservatism is crashing down on the United States, much of it originating in a classic neoliberal-Hillaryite milieu. Formerly the liberal alternative, the Democratic Party is now passing the Republicans on the right.

But Russiagate is about something else as well: war. As National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster warns that the "time is now" to act against Iran, the New York Times slams Trump for not imposing sanctions on Moscow, and a spooky "Nuclear Posture Review" suggests that the US might someday respond to a cyber attack with atomic weapons, it's plain that Washington is itching for a showdown that will somehow undo the mistakes of the previous administration. The more Trump drags his feet, the more Democrats conclude that a war drive is the best way to bring him to his knees.

Thus, low-grade political interference is elevated into a casus belli while Vladimir Putin is portrayed as a supernatural villain straight out of Harry Potter. But where does it stop? Libya has been set back decades, Syria, the subject of yet another US regime-change effort, has been all but destroyed, while Yemen – which America helps Saudi Arabia bomb virtually around the clock – is now a disaster area with some 9,000 people killed, 50,000 injured, a million-plus cholera cases, and more than half of all hospitals and clinics destroyed.

The more Democrats pound the war drums, the more death and destruction will ensue. The process is well underway in Syria, the victim of Israeli bombings and a US-Turkish invasion, and it will undoubtedly spread as Dems turn up the heat. If the pathetic pseudo-scandal known as Russiagate really is collapsing under its own weight, then it's not a moment too soon.

Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).


Zachary Smith , February 24, 2018 at 1:25 pm

First thing I checked before reading this was to check for instances of misuse of the term "liberal". When I found none at all, the piece suddenly looked very promising. And it was a fine essay!

A minor quibble was how at the end the author kept referring to how the "U.S" or "Washington" were the forces for the regime changes or flat-out destruction of nations Israel wants destroyed. The crappy little pesthole has been the barely-concealed mastermind of all the "Wars For Israel" which have turned the US of A into a bankrupt laughingstock.

With that small objection on record, I will declare this was great.

BobH , February 24, 2018 at 2:05 pm

Zachary, I wouldn't get too hung up on words like "liberal" which have been used and abused to become almost meaningless but yes, "the Democratic Party is now passing the Republicans on the right." Somehow I think they believe they can pick up enough "moderate" Republicans in the midterms to make up for the "angry white males"(& intellectuals) they lost in the last election the same losing strategy.

mike k , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm

As ludicrous as Russiagate became, it was no joke, and became a real amplifier of the threat of nuclear war, and the relentlessly increasing militarization of America. Without the enthusiastic help of the corporate media, the whole phony narrative would never have got off the ground. Of course the criminals we call the intelligence community did all they could to give it legs, as well. We can only pray that it fades away now, and is not replaced with something else like a shooting war. But that hope is fading now on several fronts

Mark Thomason , February 24, 2018 at 1:41 pm

From its first moment, this was a Team Hillary exercise, decided on by her in the days right after the election and promoted through her media contracts that had been an extension of her campaign.

Why? At first they seemed to imagine it possible to reverse the election outcome.

Then it shifted to Trump hate. Why?

That was NOT to remove Trump, which was always a long shot and would only produce Pence and angry motivated Trump voters in the next election.

The Trump derangement syndrome had a calculated purpose to keep donors giving after they were outraged by the waste of their donations. They'd been acting like a donor-strike was in progress. This cured that.

This fed off the Stages of Grief reactions of those who'd so confidently expected a Hillary win. That helped do it, but was not the real motive. Those who initiated and shaped it were more directed, and aimed at the money. That is why the more likely things to blame, like Comey, were set aside in favor of the easy target of a foreign enemy which was familiar from recent Cold War.

It was completely cynical, guided by the same greed that had produced the candidacy of Hillary and run it the whole time, doing fund raising in friendly places instead of campaigning in swing states.

JDQ , February 24, 2018 at 2:00 pm

..please do read this. It gives Liberals more a bashing than Conservatives

Joe Tedesky , February 24, 2018 at 2:40 pm

Having only as reference my own personal take on our news media the infamous MSM, is that these journalistic bandits are only in the game of twisting the news for the ratings, and to promote their own opportunistic careers. The corporate owned media has replaced responsible reporting with salaisuus promotions of often tragic events in a way that tends to in my eyes be a mere exploitation of these tragedies, as we viewers become glued to our TV screens.

This is the way the MSM sell too many needless pharmaceutical products, and their drugs are products, to insurance ad's and somehow make commercial space for the MIC defense contractors. This is how the MSM makes real money, as they forfeited our learning of anything worthwhile, as to pave the way for more exploitation of our country's struggles with everything and anything, but all forfeited simply to make the MSM more money.

It goes without saying that we the American public aren't necessarily as fooled, and tricked, as our masters would like to believe we are. So to explain away the Empire's failings certain forces from within our nation's Beltway are hard at work trying to blame all of their misgivings on another, and that another is Vladimir Putin and his American engineered misunderstood Russians. For this reason our MSM hardly ever put the real Putin on our television screens. No never, these American media producers always when describing Putin, use a prop, or a slimy squinty eyed shirtless Russian stereotype instead. For our MSM ever to air a speech of Putin, or do as Oliver Stone did, is beyond question, so don't wait up kids to see ever steady Vladimir on our American TV sets because it just isn't going to happen.

So now our MSM is exploiting the Florida mass shooting, and it is with their slants and predisposed opinions where I lose faith in anything our media does. Even as terrible as this Florida school shooting was, our MSM must politicize and adhere left right slants to this story as in their daff journalistic heads this is what they must do. Like I said this is my opinion taken from my own experiences, so take my comment for what it is, and not from any references I happened upon.

[Feb 24, 2018] Mueller in Hot Pursuit by Andrew Napolitano

That's a good question: why now. Where was all those immense power of NSA, CIA and FBI during election. Why that calmly observed that Russian are destroying American democracy :-). Something is really fishy here.
Another interesting tidbit is connection of Mr. Mueller to 911 cover-up.
Yet another interesting tidbit is the story of the USA interference in the Russian election s of 2011-2012. As Caitlin Johnstone observes the US's long history in meddling in other countries' elections is not "whataboutism," but rather a highly germane point to understanding the context for the allegations of Russian meddling
Notable quotes:
"... f the purpose of all the warrantless spying -- in direct contravention of the Constitution, no less -- is to keep the country safe from foreign assault, whether by bombs in a subway or by guns in an office building or by hacking into computers, why didn't our 60,000 domestic, and God only knows how many foreign, spies catch this Russian interference? ..."
"... "the Russians ran unchecked through our computer systems and the American marketplaces of ideas." You see, kids, the First Amendment is no longer prophylactic, something to prevent government from violating your natural rights to speak, hear, and think. Instead, things such as what I'm doing right now are like food stamps, political privileges redeemable only at Uncle Sam's Club. ..."
"... Muller indicted foreigners knowing they could not be extradicted to stand trial in the US. These indictments are "guerrilla theater" designed to justify Mueller's investigation. ..."
"... Why are so few people laughing at the microminiature level of this so-called meddling? These guys were run-of-the-mill internet trolls, engaging people in idiotic quarrels like trolls everywhere do. ..."
"... Meanwhile, how many American military bases sit on foreign soil where our people with guns and jets meddle for a living? How many countries get our ridiculously misnamed "foreign aid" where we tax America's middle class to bribe foreigners' rich people to do our bidding? ..."
"... All of MSM is owned by one foreign entity with one anti-American agenda. They interfere in every election, hell they hand pick the candidates, make em sign a pledge/oath to the foreign nation. Will Mueller be going after any of these traitors? Why isn't Mueller in prison for 9/11 cover up Mr. Sessions? ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | www.unz.com

Why didn't the CIA or the NSA or the FBI pick this up?

That is the $64,000 question that the indictment does not address, and we may never know the answer to it. If the purpose of all the warrantless spying -- in direct contravention of the Constitution, no less -- is to keep the country safe from foreign assault, whether by bombs in a subway or by guns in an office building or by hacking into computers, why didn't our 60,000 domestic, and God only knows how many foreign, spies catch this Russian interference?

One answer is information overload. By spying on everyone all the time, the spies have too much data through which to sift, and they miss the evidence of coming terror -- just as they did with the killings in Orlando, in San Bernardino, at the Boston Marathon, on a New York bike path and even recently at a school in Florida, all of which were preceded by internet chatter that would have tipped off a trained listener to the plans of the killers.


anonymous Disclaimer , February 22, 2018 at 8:55 am GMT

Well, shucks. No Russophobic dirk to look for this week in the folds of his robe -- Mr. Napolitano is finally full on, swinging the Establishment sword at "the Kremlin" and "its indicted spies." And he's doing it to scare the American people.

"It is a felony for foreign nationals to participate in American federal elections, and it is a felony for any Americans knowingly to assist them." No citation of the statute(s), or of the particular acts among all "Judge" has mentioned within the scope of the subject indictment. He is endorsing the notion that, under the Constitution he pretends to cherish, a non-US citizen and any American "assistant" can be criminally convicted for "phony web posts" or "aggressively revealing embarrassing data about Clinton," i.e., publishing anything deemed relevant to a federal election on the internet. If you suggested after Sunday School there in Nebraska that your friend check out those documents at Wikileaks, then will Mr. Mueller come for you? Well, that depends:

"The other reason for the indictment is to smoke out any American collaborators. He has identified American collaborators, but not by proper name, and the Department of Justice has said -- not in the indictment, in which case it would be bound by what it says, but in a press statement, which binds no one -- that the American collaborators were unwitting dupes of the Russians. My guess is that Mueller's American targets are under electronic and visual surveillance and that he is listening to their (premature) sighs of relief."

So don't worry, Big Brother most likely still loves you, or at least won't send you to your room. As long as you were only an "unwitting dupe," and have stopped playing with the bad kids.

Until Mr. Mueller could get here on his white horse, "the Russians ran unchecked through our computer systems and the American marketplaces of ideas." You see, kids, the First Amendment is no longer prophylactic, something to prevent government from violating your natural rights to speak, hear, and think. Instead, things such as what I'm doing right now are like food stamps, political privileges redeemable only at Uncle Sam's Club.

I hope there's no gentlemen's agreement that precludes some of the other writers published on this website from confronting Mr. Napolitano on this vile column.

George Weinbaum , February 22, 2018 at 5:18 pm GMT
Muller indicted foreigners knowing they could not be extradicted to stand trial in the US. These indictments are "guerrilla theater" designed to justify Mueller's investigation.

What would Mueller do if Putin gets tough and: sends one Russian to the US; with say $100 million for his legal defense?

Or if Putin offers to try the Russians in Moscow, in a Russian court, with Mueller prosecuting them?

Fran Macadam , February 22, 2018 at 11:16 pm GMT
What if even Andrew Napolitano succumbed to Big Lie techniques?
WorkingClass , February 23, 2018 at 5:39 am GMT

Though an indictment is a charge only, it presumably relies on hard evidence of a wide and deep Russian project -- so wide and so deep that it could only have been approved and paid for by the Kremlin.

The operative word here is "presumably".

The Grate Deign , February 23, 2018 at 1:37 pm GMT
Why are so few people laughing at the microminiature level of this so-called meddling? These guys were run-of-the-mill internet trolls, engaging people in idiotic quarrels like trolls everywhere do.

Meanwhile, how many American military bases sit on foreign soil where our people with guns and jets meddle for a living? How many countries get our ridiculously misnamed "foreign aid" where we tax America's middle class to bribe foreigners' rich people to do our bidding?

To call this flapdoodle about Russian net trolling a joke is far too kind.

redmudhooch , February 24, 2018 at 1:56 am GMT
All of MSM is owned by one foreign entity with one anti-American agenda. They interfere in every election, hell they hand pick the candidates, make em sign a pledge/oath to the foreign nation. Will Mueller be going after any of these traitors? Why isn't Mueller in prison for 9/11 cover up Mr. Sessions?

We all know it wasn't Muslims caught celebrating the attack, or busted with explosives inside of a van leaving New York. Why act like it isn't common knowledge, you're making the FBI look pretty stoopid Mr. Mueller .look even Faux News messed up and reported it

[Feb 24, 2018] American Media s Big Bot Conspiracy Exposed: The bot paranoia is being used to delegitimize real stories and candidates.

Notable quotes:
"... Rachel Maddow feeds the left's appetite for bot conspiracy nonsense. But in 2013, MSNBC personalities, including Maddow, were being promoted by Chinese bots. Does that mean Maddow is a Chinese spy? Bots are ads that pretend to be people. Tracking how they're deployed can be interesting, but it's dangerous to read too much into that. ..."
"... The bot paranoia is being used to delegitimize real stories and candidates. If you can connect bots to a point of view you don't like, then no one really believes it. Link it to a candidate you don't like and he was never really elected. Hook it up to a serial predator in the Senate and you can ignore his victims. ..."
"... But if you believe that, then MSNBC must be a Chinese informational warfare operations. ..."
"... Mad Cow disease. ..."
"... Give me a fucking break, they think bots are going to swing big things. Bots are not very advanced, only annoying. They cannot craft intelligent or persuasive arguments. Yet the establishment is freaking out about them. It goes to show how far down the drain things stand if such lowly, unpersuasive, spamming shittery is deemed a threat to the narrative. ..."
"... That's what democracy is all about - steering the public discourse and manipulating the lowest common denominator, which isn't that hard to do if you own big media. The challenge is in deprogramming all the lies and deceptions, which takes effort initially, after which it just becomes a never ending tragicomic episode. ..."
"... Who the fuck needs bots in North America, U.K. and EU when you have bull dyke's like Rachel "Mad Cow" that still have viewers that actually listen to "him" ..."
Feb 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

The Internet Research Agency indictment accuses a troll bot farm of trying to influence the election in what the media claims is the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. 9/11 need not apply.

Bots are everywhere.

"Bots Are Trying to Help Populists Win Italy's Election," claims Bloomberg. "Russian Bots Are Using 2016 Tactics to Hijack the Gun Debate," shrieks Vanity Fair. ABC spins that bots are trying to make Black Panther look bad. "Rampaging Twitter 'bots' bred in Suffolk farmhouse," the London Times asserts.

This media madness might make you think that bots are some sort of new and advanced technology. But you can see them in the comments and they've been around forever. Automated programs that log into social media accounts are not a new technology. Internet users of a bygone era remember seeing them in chat rooms and on bulletin boards without ever rampaging around Suffolk farmhouses.

Bots have become a convenient media scapegoat. The new formula is "Bots + Thing We Disagree With = Proof We're Right". That's why there are stories claiming that Russian bots are tweeting against gun control or Islamic migration. And it explains the "Russian Bots Rigged the Election for Trump" meme.

Bots are an informational technique. Media spin reverse engineers the technique to discredit the idea. Not only is that a fallacy, but bots just piggyback on popular trends to gain influence. Russian bots don't tweet about gun control because they care about guns, but because they get retweeted. The same was true of the bots promoting Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. There are a million brands doing the same thing with bots and influencers. But that's okay because they push politically correct messages.

And that's the bot double standard. When Russian bots and trolls push Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders or Dakota Access Pipeline protests, their programmed actions don't reflect on leftist causes, organizations and politicians. But the revelation that Russian bots and trolls tweeted about the Bill of Rights, Islamic migration or Trump is spun by the media into a conspiracy that indicts the ideas and discredits the previous election.

The latest example of the Big Bot Conspiracy is a bizarre Newsweek article by Nina Burleigh blaming Senator Franken's problems on bots. Some might have thought that Franken had been forced to resign for groping women across America. But according to Burleigh, it was the fault of the Japanese bots.

The feminist activist was already infamous for putting her allegiance to Democrats ahead of sisterhood.

"I would be happy to give him a b_____ just to thank him for keeping abortion legal," Nina Burleigh had said of Bill Clinton. "I think American women should be lining up with their Presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude." Now Burleigh has brought her kneepads to the raided offices of Newsweek.

Nina Burleigh's article blames Franken's problems on "fake news sites, an army of Twitter bots and other cyber tricks". The Democrat Senator's original accuser is dismissed as a "Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model". So there was either nothing wrong with groping her or no reason to believe her.

That's what leftists denounce as 'slut-shaming', but, as with Bill Clinton, it's okay when Democrats do it.

Burleigh mentions the "release of a picture of a Tweeden and Franken" (editors are one of the casualties of Newsweek's troubles), but neglects to mention that it's a picture of Franken groping Tweeden. None of the other many accusers rate a mention from this feminist Franken activist.

There was the feminist choir member and book editor who accused Franken of groping her at the Women's Political Caucus. It's really hard to write her off as a "right-wing plant" or a "lad-mag model".

Especially since she then voted for Senator Franken.

Another accuser was groped at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis and claimed that Franken wanted to join her in the bathroom. Nina Burleigh would have probably told her to go along and bring her senatorial kneepads in gratitude for his support of Planned Parenthood.

A Democrat congressional aide remembers Franken trying to give her an open mouth kiss while he was still a radio host with Air America. "It's my right as an entertainer," she recalls Franken telling her.

An Army vet on a USO tour described being groped by Franken during the Iraq War. "When he put his arm around me, he groped my right breast. He kept his hand all the way over on my breast."

Jezebel, a hard left feminist site, offered an account from a liberal "former elected official in New England" who remembers Franken trying to plant a "wet, open-mouthed kiss" on her, on stage.

Instead of addressing the many accounts of Franken's liberal accusers who supported him and, many of whom indicated they didn't want him to quit, Burleigh, like most Frankentruthers from Tom Arnold to Richard Silverstein, smears Leeann Tweeden while ignoring Franken's numerous other accusers.

After silencing the women who came out against Franken, Nina Burleigh surreally claims that the Franken accusations had served to "silence the testimonies of eight former female staffers who defended the Minnesota Democrat".

Presenting testimonies from the few women you didn't grope is not considered a compelling argument.

But instead of talking about any of this, Burleigh talks about bots. A "bot army" made the Franken accusations go viral. And then there was "a developer named Atsufumi Otsuka" who "registered a web domain in Japan" that hosted "Japanese-registered fake-news sites". But, "by November 17, the trending of 'Al Franken' was officially also a Russian intelligence operation."

The Japanese and the Russians had teamed up against the Minnesota groper. This wasn't just worse than Pearl Harbor. It was WW2 and the Cold War combined in one hashtag.

"Researchers have found that each bot account had 30 to 60 followers, all Japanese. The first follower for each account was either Japanese or Russian," Burleigh breathlessly relates.

Now that the Russian and Japanese bots had teamed up, all hope for humanity was lost.

Burleigh's article has more international locations than a Tom Clancy novel. It also completely ignores the question of whether Franken groped his victims to discuss the bots who tweeted about it.

That's not accidental. Burleigh doesn't want to talk about whether Franken is guilty; she wants to write a progressive thriller in which international bots caused the problem by talking about it. And if it can be shown that bots amplified a scandal, then the facts somehow no longer matter. In the same way that if it can be shown that bots amplified Trump's message, the 2016 election results were illegitimate.

But shooting the messenger bot doesn't tell us anything the truth of the inconvenient message.

Since the election, these types of articles are everywhere. They rely on the work of "researchers" who are usually partisan activists, often amateurs with no actual technical training, to spread conspiracy theories. These conspiracy theories confuse correlation and causation. If a foreign bot retweets Trump, he works for the bot's masters. If a bot tweets any conservative story, it's a right-wing global bot plot.

Anyone who knows anything about how the internet works knows that this is nonsense.

Bots imitate to amplify. In this comments section, a bot will show up sooner or later, it will copy a comment that someone else made and post it in order to get likes so that it resembles a real account. For every stupid bot telling you how much it makes by working online, there's a smarter bot leaving legitimate comments to blend in. And so bots tweet, comment and chat about everything popular.

If there's a trending topic, the bots will quickly show up. And everyone uses them.

Rachel Maddow feeds the left's appetite for bot conspiracy nonsense. But in 2013, MSNBC personalities, including Maddow, were being promoted by Chinese bots. Does that mean Maddow is a Chinese spy? Bots are ads that pretend to be people. Tracking how they're deployed can be interesting, but it's dangerous to read too much into that.

Correlating bots with narratives isn't actually causation.

The bot paranoia is being used to delegitimize real stories and candidates. If you can connect bots to a point of view you don't like, then no one really believes it. Link it to a candidate you don't like and he was never really elected. Hook it up to a serial predator in the Senate and you can ignore his victims.

But if you believe that, then MSNBC must be a Chinese informational warfare operations.


Brazen Heist Fri, 02/23/2018 - 21:03 Permalink

Mad Cow disease.

stizazz -> pier Fri, 02/23/2018 - 21:09 Permalink

Divide Et Impera.

Brazen Heist -> khnum Fri, 02/23/2018 - 21:17 Permalink

Give me a fucking break, they think bots are going to swing big things. Bots are not very advanced, only annoying. They cannot craft intelligent or persuasive arguments. Yet the establishment is freaking out about them. It goes to show how far down the drain things stand if such lowly, unpersuasive, spamming shittery is deemed a threat to the narrative.

What a fragile society it all is.

Brazen Heist -> khnum Fri, 02/23/2018 - 21:27 Permalink

Bots are low level AI.

Yeah, I can't imagine reading CNN balls deep or other garbage groupthink mouthpieces that apparently alot of zombies take as gospel. I go to CNN only to dip my feet in the water and see how fucking stupid its all becoming. Other than that, its a brain killer.

That's what democracy is all about - steering the public discourse and manipulating the lowest common denominator, which isn't that hard to do if you own big media. The challenge is in deprogramming all the lies and deceptions, which takes effort initially, after which it just becomes a never ending tragicomic episode.

Son of Captain Nemo Fri, 02/23/2018 - 21:06 Permalink

Who the fuck needs bots in North America, U.K. and EU when you have bull dyke's like Rachel "Mad Cow" that still have viewers that actually listen to "him"?!!!

I rest my case! ( https://www.rt.com/news/419510-bild-fake-russia-emails-spd/ )

[Feb 23, 2018] Julian Assange explains how troll farm in St. Petersburg was nothing more than social media spam business (Video) by Alex Christoforou

Feb 22, 2018 | theduran.com

The "Russian troll" farm was a marketing/spam business.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange weighed in on Special Counsel Robert Mueller's "13 Russian troll" indictment noting that the Russians bots from The Internet Research Agency, spent thousands of dollars on Facebook ads to grow their audiences something that is very common and encouraged by Facebook.

This is how Facebook makes money, and how groups build an audience, which can then be sold to advertisers who wish to target such groups.

In other words, the IRA was and is operating a run-of-the-mill marketing and social media spam business, not a "sow American discord" operation.

Via The Gateway Pundit

The Russian ads mentioned in Mueller's indictment were already released by the House Intelligence Committee in November 2017.

Facebook previously announced the Russian ads comprised .004% of their advertising during the election.

Assange tweeted all this out on Friday, but of course the mainstream media failed to note any of this while reporting its propaganda to those who naively listen and believe in the nonsense (courtesy The Gateway Pundit)

Julian Assange: Buried in the Mueller astro-turfing indictment is something that we have long suspected. The Internet Research Agency's "troll farm" is geared to develop audience in socially active communities (e.g through aligned memes), in order to spam them on behalf of anyone willing to pay.

Julian Assange: Before advertising networks can advertise they must build audience. How much of IRA's activities were simply trying to build audience by gaining followers using tweets and memes likely to be shared in those communities?

Julian Assange: IRA allegedly also ran kitten appreciation groups. Are we also to believe that these kittens were also a plot to divide America? To not distinguish between audience building and customer advertising payload is sketchy.

Julian Assange: The US has 320 million people with a trillion dollar media and cultural sector that employees over a million people. I do not assess that it is possible whatsoever to divide America by trying to "heighten the differences" with a hundred trolls.

Julian Assange: Re-enforcing audience bias is exactly what Facebook & Google have been doing at a vast scale by algorithmically preying on people's existing biases to increase engagement. In a more traditional manner, FOX, MSNBC, CNN, NYTimes, WaPO etc, are doing the same thing.

Julian Assange: Regardless of whether IRA's activities were audience building through pandering to communities or whether a hare-brained Russian government plan to "heighten the differences" existed, its activities are clearly strategically insignificant compared to the other forces at play.

Jimmy Dore did catch on to Assange's explanation as to what exactly was happening at IRA's HQ in St, Petersburg, which can be summed up as just another social media spam business, which had the misfortune of operating in Russia at a time when American swamp creatures are trying to find any scintilla of evidence to demonize Russia, and drag on a falling apart "Trump-Russia" collusion investigation.

[Feb 23, 2018] Something for everyone Mueller indictment a boon for partisan status quo by Whitney Webb

Notable quotes:
"... The bipartisan support Mueller's appointment received is even more telling given that he is the definition of a Washington insider. The power elites across the political spectrum seemed to trust him to, above all, protect their position at the head of the table. ..."
"... McAdams noted that the indictment was especially helpful to the " entire political class in Washington, " which may now " continue with its Cold War 2.0 project " without interference from anyone in favor of normalizing U.S.-Russian relations. In addition, McAdams warned that the recent indictment is likely to have a " chilling effect on the First Amendment, " also a boon to those elements of the political elite that seek to limit the acceptable range of debate on U.S. foreign policy. ..."
Feb 23, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

Something for everyone: Mueller indictment a boon for partisan status quo

The bipartisan support Mueller's appointment received is even more telling given that he is the definition of a Washington insider. The power elites across the political spectrum seemed to trust him to, above all, protect their position at the head of the table.

Part 1

Last Friday, depending on which side of the partisan divide one was watching from, President Trump was either vindicated or his treachery was confirmed. The impetus for these seemingly disparate reactions was Robert Mueller's indictment against 13 Russian nationals, the latest and largest indictment to result from his investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

However, over the nine months that Mueller's investigation has been active, it has continuously grown from its original purpose of investigating Russian collusion, expanding to include the business dealings of Trump and his inner circle with countries ranging from Qatar to China, meaning that the probe is no longer expressly about Russian collusion.

The drift of focus from its original purpose -- as well as its failure to produce any connection between the Trump campaign, the Russian government, and the leaks of DNC and John Podesta's emails -- has led critics who place themselves outside of the left-right paradigm to treat this latest indictment with skepticism. Not only that, but concerns have been raised that the real purpose of Mueller's probe is much more subtle and nefarious than publicly admitted and that it may itself be a threat to American democracy.

One such critic is Daniel McAdams, political analyst and executive director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. McAdams, in an interview with MintPress News, stated that the Mueller indictment " has something for everybody, " explaining the strikingly different reactions from the establishment left and right.

However, McAdams noted that the indictment was especially helpful to the " entire political class in Washington, " which may now " continue with its Cold War 2.0 project " without interference from anyone in favor of normalizing U.S.-Russian relations. In addition, McAdams warned that the recent indictment is likely to have a " chilling effect on the First Amendment, " also a boon to those elements of the political elite that seek to limit the acceptable range of debate on U.S. foreign policy.

Source, links:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/something-for-everyone-mueller-indictment-a-boon-for-partisan-status-quo/237970/

Related:
The US propaganda machine has just confirmed what establishment's worst nightmare would be: a great coalition of Bernie Sanders with the Greens
The truth about 'Russiagate'

[Feb 23, 2018] America's Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind

Feb 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Like every single hotly publicized Russiagate "bombshell" that has broken since this nonsense began, Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian social media trolls was paraded around as proof of something hugely significant ( an "act of war" in this case), but on closer examination turns out to be empty. The always excellent 'Moon of Alabama' recently made a solid argument that has also been advanced by Russiagate skeptics like TYT's Michael Tracey and Max Blumenthal of The Real News, pointing out that there is in fact no evidence that the troll farming operation was an attempt to manipulate the US election, nor indeed that it had any ties to the Russian government at all, nor indeed that it was anything other than a crafty Russian civilian's money making scheme.

The notion that a few Russian trolls committed a "conspiracy to defraud the United States" by "sowing discord" with a bunch of wildly contradictory posts endorsing all different ideologies sounds completely ridiculous in a country whose mainstream media spends all its time actively creating political division anyway, but when you look at it as a civilian operation to attract social media followers to sock puppet accounts with the goal of selling promoted posts for profit, it makes perfect sense. James Corbett of The Corbett Report has a great video about how absolutely bizarre it is that public dialogue is ignoring the fact that these trolls overwhelmingly used mainstream media like the Washington Post in their shares instead of outlets like RT and Infowars. As a scheme to acquire followers, it makes perfect sense. As a scheme to subvert America, it's nonsensical.

There is currently no evidence that the Russian government interfered in the US election. But it is worth pointing out that if they did they had every right to.

"Whataboutism" is the word of the day . At some point it was decreed by the internet forum gods that adding "-ism" to a description of something that someone is doing makes for a devastating argument in and of itself, and people have hastened to use this tactic as a bludgeon to silence anyone who points out the extremely obvious and significant fact that America interferes in elections more than any other government on earth.

"Okay, so America isn't perfect and we've meddled a few times," the argument goes. "So what? You're saying just because we've done it that makes it okay for Russia to do it?"

Actually, yes. Of course it does. Clearly. That isn't a "whataboutism", it's an observation that is completely devastating to the mainstream Russia narrative. If it's okay for the CIA to continuously interfere in the elections of other countries up to and including modern times, it is okay for other countries to interfere in theirs. Only in the most warped American supremacist reality tunnel is that not abundantly obvious.

Every country on earth is absolutely entitled to interfere in America's elections. America is responsible for the overwhelming majority of election interferences around the world in modern times, including an interference in Russia's elections in the nineties that was so brazen they made a Hollywood movie about it , so clearly an environment has been created wherein the United States has declared that this is acceptable.

It amazes me that more people aren't willing to call this like it is. No, it would not be wrong for Russia to interfere in America's elections. Yes, what America did to Russia absolutely would make a proportionate retaliation okay. Of course it would.

Imagine this:

A guy in a cowboy hat runs into a bar and starts punching people. Most of them just rub their sore jaws and hunch over their drinks hoping to avoid any trouble, but one guy in a fur cap sets down his vodka and shoves the man in the cowboy hat.

The man in the cowboy hat begins shrieking like a little girl. All his friends rush to his side to comfort him and begin angrily shaking their fists at the man in the fur cap.

"Hey, he punched me!" says the man in the fur cap.

"That's a whataboutism!" sobs the man in the cowboy hat.

Can you imagine anything more ridiculous?

Seriously, how do people think this is a thing? How does anyone think it's legitimate to respond to my article about a former CIA Director openly admitting that the US still to this day interferes with elections around the world babbling about "whataboutisms" ? What a doofy, indefensible monkey wrench to throw into the gears of political discourse.

Yes, obviously by asserting that it is acceptable for the CIA to meddle in other countries' elections, the US has created an environment where that sort of thing is acceptable. If Americans just want to embrace their American supremacist bigotry and say "Yeah we can do that to you but you can't do it to us cuz we have big guns and we said so," that's at least a logically consistent position. Crying like little bitches and behaving as though they've been victimized by some egregious immorality is not.

Channel 4 News reported on the research of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University's Don Levin back in November, writing the following:

Dov Levin, an academic from the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University, has calculated the vast scale of election interventions by both the US and Russia.

According to his research , there were 117 "partisan electoral interventions" between 1946 and 2000. That's around one of every nine competitive elections held since Second World War.

The majority of these – almost 70 per cent – were cases of US interference. And these are not all from the Cold War era; 21 such interventions took place between 1990 and 2000, of which 18 were by the US.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-4Y54-8RR-k

If Americans don't like election meddling, they need to demand that their government stops doing it. As long as it remains the very worst offender in that department, the US is entitled to nothing other than the entire world meddling in its elections.

I shouldn't even have to say this. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Don't dish it out if you can't take it.

Duh.

[Feb 22, 2018] A Lesson in Political Sociology for Robert Mueller - A Lesson in Warfare for Dmitry Peskov by John Helmer

This is a very weak argumentation which is based of very questionable sources (such as Fontanka rag).
Notable quotes:
"... For the evidence Mueller has revealed of incompetence in the Russian campaign, the waste of money expended, and the failure of the campaign's objectives, there are calls in Moscow for Peskov to be sacked. ..."
"... The Christopher Steele dossier accused Peskov of arranging negative media against Hillary Clinton during 2016; for an analysis of the veracity of that claim, read this . For a painstaking analysis of how the Mueller indictment discredits the Steele dossier, read Alexander Mercouris's account . ..."
Feb 18, 2018

The three types of power which decide the fate of regimes are force, fraud and subversion; that's to say, arms, money, media.

The Roman Empire was good at using small armies to take on much bigger ones; by adeptly concentrating their force they managed to rule much larger large territories than the legions could cover.

The Byzantine Empire excelled at using bribery of locals to stay loyal; the pre-requisite for that was the intelligence to identify who to pay, how much, and how often. The British Empire used subversion to divide and rule most of their colonial targets, but if the British were matched for firepower and intelligence, they failed and were defeated – by the American colonists, the Maoris, the Boers, the Germans, the Japanese.

The American Empire excels at subversion on the home front. But abroad it usually combines fraud with subversion. When these two fail to preserve or topple regimes, US-made wars have been a consistent failure. The Russians are better than Americans at force and fraud. Schemes of subversion like the US plots to promote Boris Yeltsin, Anatoly Chubais, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexei Navalny to rule the Kremlin, are not winners with Russians; they are judged successful only by foreigners who read the Washington Post and London Times.

The Kremlin official responsible for Russian media involvement in the US presidential election of 2016 was Dmitry Peskov (2nd image, left); he doubles as spokesman for President Vladimir Putin. For Peskov's intention to employ social media he has not been indicted nor identified as a co-conspirator by Special Prosecutor Robert S. Mueller III ( right). For the evidence Mueller has revealed of incompetence in the Russian campaign, the waste of money expended, and the failure of the campaign's objectives, there are calls in Moscow for Peskov to be sacked.

He has so far avoided responding. "We have not yet familiarized ourselves [with the Mueller indictment], " he told Reuters.

The 37-page indictment, dated February 16 and signed personally by Mueller, can be read in full here .

Mueller's indictment reveals how much evidence was gathered from the internet server companies and social media platforms, Facebook, YouTube-Google, Twitter and Instagram, together with their banks and the PayPal payment service. But this is circumstantial evidence; the corpus delicti is absent.

Missing from the charge sheet is identification of the victims of the crime alleged, the numbers of victims, and the money spent to subvert or defraud them, as Mueller charges. The indictment alleges that "significant numbers of Americans" were targeted, "significant funds spent", and "thousands of US dollars [paid for advertising] every month"; but no evidence is presented of these numbers. No witness has come forward to testify to having suffered; no alleged perpetrator or conspirator to substantiate criminal intention. Also, these aren't the crimes formally charged against the accused Russians.

THE FIVE-CHARGE ALLEGATION, BUT ONLY TWO CRIMINAL COUNTS CHARGED

In short, the Russians are accused of violating the US law on registering as foreign agents, as well as the crimes of stealing identity data from real Americans and fabricating false identities to open and operate US bank accounts, credit cards and the PayPal system. Although "interfer[ence] in US political and electoral processes" is alleged, it's an orphan -- no such crime is charged in the indictment.

Another orphan is the charge of obtaining visas "through false and fraudulent statements" and "false pretenses in order to collect intelligence for their interference operations". Mueller alleges this offence was committed in 2014, when three of the thirteen Russians named in the indictment visited the US briefly. However, the "intelligence" they are alleged to have gathered at the time wasn't used, according to the indictment, until two years later. What this "intelligence" by "false pretenses" might have been isn't provided in the evidence because Muller and his grand jury don't charge anyone with visa fraud.

Fourteen weeks before last Friday's indictment, executives of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google testified in open congressional hearings on the same set of allegations as Mueller presented to his grand jury behind closed doors.

The media company witnesses started by identifying very small numbers of accounts, advertising messages, reader clicks, and bots (automated relayed messages). Subsequently, these numbers have been multiplied in US media commentaries by estimates of audience reach, although reach is not a measure of actual exposure. Still, compared with the aggregate volumes of internet traffic associated with the presidential election but unconnected to Russian sources, the numbers for Russian-source material amounted to minuscule fractions of one percent. The media companies weren't asked for, and volunteered no report of how much money they had received from their Russian content sources .

In his indictment Mueller provided less precision than the rules of evidence and the defendants' rights require under the US Constitution; Mueller is not expecting to try the thirteen named defendants in a court of law. In one example of an "overt act" of the alleged Russian crime (Par. 71), Facebook is reported as publishing an advertisement on August 4, 2016, for a "Florida Goes Trump" rally. Facebook charged the Russians for audience reach of 53,000, according to Mueller. But only 8,300 clicked on the ad (14%). Although the allegation is that this audience was then "routed to the ORGANIZATION's 'Being Patriotic' page", Mueller withholds his count of how many – more likely, how few readers followed the route. The Russians were still paying to advertise the same rally on Instagram two weeks later, on August 16, but no evidence is presented by Mueller that it happened at all. No route, no rally, no American victims, no evidence of Russian intention to commit a crime of election interference.

Four bank accounts have been identified at six banks "in order to receive and send money into and out [sic] of the United States to support the ORGANIZATION's operations in the United States and for self-enrichment". These banks, as well as the US dollar-clearing banks in New York, have provided Mueller with details of the originating banks for the transactions. The indictment identifies fourteen Russian company names as holding these bank accounts. The Russian company names are mentioned in evidence, but not the originating banks. If they were Russian state banks under US and European Union sanctions since 2014 (Gazprombank, for example), Mueller's indictment doesn't say so; noone has intimated that the Russian money was anything but lawfully earned and then legally transferred from source.

Details of fake or stolen names, driver's licences or social security numbers have been reported by Mueller to substantiate the count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. But this was a fraud with a twist. No sum of money is identified in the evidence as having been taken from an unwitting victim; all of it, however much or little, was sent to the US bank accounts from the alleged Russian conspirators and their companies, and spent on social media placements. As for enrichment – again, no sum reported in the indictment – this appears to have been earned by the US media companies and the US banks. Lawfully, according to Mueller. The only losers were the Russians, but the accused haven't been complaining of not getting their money's worth.

The criminal counts set out in the indictment turn out to be crimes without victims – that's to say, no American victim, according to the charge sheet.

Mueller's indictment is precise about the names of the Russian companies established by the principal defendant Yevgeny Prigozhin, allegedly "for operations to interfere with elections and political processes". Mueller also claims that the only link he could find to the Russian government was the official registration of the "ORGANIZATION [Internet Research Agency] as a Russian corporate entity" "in or around July 2013." Although the allegation is that Prigozhin's organization had an "annual budget [of] the equivalent of millions of US dollars", there is no evidence, nor even an allegation that this money came from a Russian government source. Instead, other companies operated by Prigozhin are reported to have had "various Russian government contracts".

Prigozhin's parent company called Concord is alleged to have funded "the ORGANIZATION as part of a larger CONCORD-funded interference operation it referred to as 'Project Lakhta'."

... ... ...

Mueller noted in passing that Project Lakhta wasn't targeted only in the US. The indictment alleges that by September 2016 it was working on a budget exceeding Rb73 million ($1.25 million) per month, with bonus payments to its Russian employees of Rb1 million (1.4%). The money was being spent, according to Mueller, on "multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation, and others targeting foreign audiences in various countries, including the United States".

This is another clue to Prigozhin's real line of business, and the reason for the multiplicity of company names and functional departments through which he operated; and for an employment roll Mueller counted as "more than eighty" in Project Lakta alone. Russian sources believe Prigozhin's organization has contracted for domestic Russian operations paid for by Russian corporations and local politicians. Some of the operations are believed to be conventional positive advertising of events, products, campaigns, and ideas. Some reportedly involve the circulation of kompromat against business and election rivals; some to defend against botnet and denial of service attacks on corporate websites and communication systems; some to attack the websites of business adversaries or investigative journalists, Russia-based or Russia-related.

Investigations by Russian media and government regulators have been reporting for some time allegations that Prigozhin has been diverting money from state procurement contracts for himself, and for clandestine purposes approved by state officials and state company executives. For a sample of the details, start in 2014 with the St. Petersburg website Fontanka's investigation of Mikhail Bystrov and Mikhail Burchik, the second and third defendants in the Mueller indictment. Fontanka said it had uncovered evidence that paying clients of the Prigozhin, Bystrov and Burchik organization included a youth group of the Russian Orthodox Church, the St. Petersburg municipal authorities, and a Gazprom media promotion company. The payroll of the organization was reported in mid-2014 to be Rb180,000 per month (about $5,500).

Source: https://www.fontanka.ru/2014/06/03/182/
For a more recent sample of the Russian allegations against Prigozhin, read and this .

In December 2016 Prigozhin was listed on the US Treasury's sanctions list, the evidence for which appears to have been cribbed from Fontanka and other Russian press reports . Prigozhin was accused of,

"having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, senior officials of the Russian Federation. Prigozhin has extensive business dealings with the Russian Federation Ministry of Defense, and a company with significant ties to him holds a contract to build a military base near the Russian Federation border with Ukraine. Russia has been building additional military bases near the Ukrainian border and has used these bases as staging points for deploying soldiers into Ukraine."

Mueller's indictment fails to mention this Treasury charge or its Russian media sources. Mueller claims the reason for the multitude of Russian corporate names used by Prigozhin in Project Lakhta was to "obscure its conduct" and conceal the Russian source of funds from the US media and US regulators. For much longer, however, Russian investigators have been reporting that Prigozhin has created corporate chains of this type to conceal personal enrichment schemes from Russian regulators and commercial competitors.

Prigozhin has replied publicly to the US prosecutor's charges, not to the Russian ones. "The Americans are very impressionable people; they see what they want to see," he is quoted by a state news agency as saying last Friday. "I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

Russian sources believe Prigozhin's Project Lakhta was ordered by someone in a position to exercise a call on Prigozhin's cashflow. They exclude Russian officials on the Kremlin Security Council -- Sergei Ivanov, Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Shoigu, Anton Vaino, Nikolai Patrushev, Sergei Naryshkin – and dismiss the possibility that Project Lakhta had either President Putin's or Russian intelligence service support.

The suspicion of Russian sources is that the American campaign element in Project Lakhta was "so hare-brained there is only one official who could have considered Prigozhin's project worth the money and the attempt – Dmitry Peskov". Peskov is officially titled Deputy Chief of the Presidential Executive Office and Presidential Press Secretary. From the Kremlin he supervises the budgets for the state television broadcaster RT, the state news agency Sputnik, and special US-targeted propaganda programmes, such as the Valdai Discussion Club for academics and the Oliver Stone films.

The Christopher Steele dossier accused Peskov of arranging negative media against Hillary Clinton during 2016; for an analysis of the veracity of that claim, read this . For a painstaking analysis of how the Mueller indictment discredits the Steele dossier, read Alexander Mercouris's account .

Russian experts charge that the Russian targeting of Americans through social media, as described by Mueller, was a colossal mistake because the US audience for social media was young and overwhelmingly committed to Clinton. Between their intention to vote and the vote they cast, the social media made next to no difference.

... ... ...

Brookings , the Washington think-tank most supportive of Clinton, reached the conclusion that her defeat was caused by "blowback" among older voters. In other words, Clinton's defeat, Trump's victory came from voting by older Americans. They were not the ones targeted by the Russian social media campaign; they didn't see the advertisements and tweets the Mueller indictment is now reporting as a criminal conspiracy to "defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of the government."

Official Russian reaction to the indictment has been to ridicule the election interference allegation but avoid addressing the foreign registration and false identity charges. "Thirteen people interfered in the US elections?!" responded the Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova.

"13 against an intelligence services budget of billions? Against intelligence and counterintelligence, against the latest developments and technologies? Absurd? Yes."

Her minister Sergei Lavrov claimed : "unless we see the facts, all the rest will be just twaddle, I am sorry for my not so diplomatic expression."

The unofficial Russian reaction towards Prigozhin's activities in the US is more quizzical, and under the American pressure, more private. It acknowledges that Prigozhin is a commercial operator, and for every outlay he has a paying client. Who that client was for Project Lakhta is the object of speculation so far unreported in the Russian press.

To Russian lawyers the facts presented in the Mueller indictment suggest the big crime in the affair may have been a Russian one. If Mueller's small numbers are correct, then Prigozhin may have spent much less money, and to lesser effect and purpose than he had led his client to believe and pay for. If there's a difference between what Prigozhin was paid and what the Mueller indictment suggests he spent, Prigozhin may have a case for fraud to answer to Russian prosecutors – and his client, the charge of abuse of authority.

"If the US prosecutor makes it a crime for a Russian to pretend to be an American," commented a Moscow lawyer, "will the [Russian] General Prosecutor investigate Prigozhin for the crime of spending such money with the pretence of having brains?"

[Feb 22, 2018] Pat Lang -- Project Lakhta - What was the goal?

Notable quotes:
"... Since the end of the first Cold War and the collapse of the USSR the US has treated Russia with overbearing contempt and hostility. The Russians appealed to the US to be allowed a more open role in European affairs. The response was to drive the borders of NATO far to the east, to the borders of what is but a rump of the Russian Empire before WW1. ..."
Feb 22, 2018 | mikenormaneconomics.blogspot.com

Since the end of the first Cold War and the collapse of the USSR the US has treated Russia with overbearing contempt and hostility. The Russians appealed to the US to be allowed a more open role in European affairs. The response was to drive the borders of NATO far to the east, to the borders of what is but a rump of the Russian Empire before WW1.

The Russian response is to use what they see as a legitimate instrument of statecraft against us. This instrument seeks the weakening of enemies through exploitation of their own defects.

Our response to this is to adopt a high handed attitude that speaks volumes about us. We admit that we do the same things to others even as we claim an absolute right to do this because we are the future of humanity, the dwellers in the "city on the hill."...

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Project Lakhta - What was the goal?
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.)
At the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lang was the Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Middle East, South Asia and counter-terrorism, and later, the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. At the DIA, he was a member of the Defense Senior Executive Service. He participated in the drafting of National Intelligence Estimates. From 1992 to 1994, all the U.S. military attachés worldwide reported to him. During that period, he also briefed President George H. W. Bush at the White House, as he had during Operation Desert Storm.
He was also the head of intelligence analysis for the Middle East for seven or eight years at that institution. He was the head of all the Middle East and South Asia analysis in DIA for counter-terrorism for seven years. For his service in the DIA, Lang received the Presidential Rank Award of Distinguished Executive. -- Wikipedia

... ... ...

[Feb 22, 2018] Act of war? Dangerous balderdash! Most of the information available to voters is always a mish-mash of lies, myth and spin. It's the voters' responsibility, as in all areas of life, to assess incoming info with skepticism and individual research.

Notable quotes:
"... I don't care about USA hypocrisy, I care about the stupidity of thinking that elections are somehow tainted for no other reason than that spurious points of view were expressed by somebody somewhere. ..."
"... Looking at the lefty dupes who actually fell for this trolling, I surmise that (1) the disinformation only confirmed the choices they already made, and (2) the stupidity of those sky-screaming dupes will never be good for success of a democracy, whether they are trolled or not. ..."
Feb 22, 2018 | www.unz.com

gp , February 21, 2018 at 1:42 am GMT

I don't care about USA hypocrisy, I care about the stupidity of thinking that elections are somehow tainted for no other reason than that spurious points of view were expressed by somebody somewhere.

Act of war? Dangerous balderdash! Most of the information available to voters is always a mish-mash of lies, myth and spin. It's the voters' responsibility, as in all areas of life, to assess incoming info with skepticism and individual research. You can not hold an election if you insist on invalidating it afterwards whenever a lie is discovered in the petabytes of hype that support it.

Looking at the lefty dupes who actually fell for this trolling, I surmise that (1) the disinformation only confirmed the choices they already made, and (2) the stupidity of those sky-screaming dupes will never be good for success of a democracy, whether they are trolled or not.

[Feb 22, 2018] Project Lakhta - What was the goal?

Looks like securityboulevard.com is peddling disinformation. But like in all such cases you never know... Colonel Lang is a very respectable blogger and if he quoted this garbage there might something behind it.
My impression is that if Russians wanted to disrupt the US elections (the good question is why, because the consensus in Russia is that it is just a political show that does not affect the US foreign policy one bit; in other words Russians as believers in "deep stat" hypothesis) they would use much more sophisticated approaches. Those internet trolls are far from the the level of Russian professionals in the area of "active measures" ;-)
BTW commenters trashed his post mercilessly.
Notable quotes:
"... Since the end of the first Cold War and the collapse of the USSR the US has treated Russia with overbearing contempt and hostility. The Russians appealed to the US to be allowed a more open role in European affairs. The response was to drive the borders of NATO far to the east, to the borders of what is but a rump of the Russian Empire before WW1. ..."
"... The Russian response is to use what they see as a legitimate instrument of statecraft against us. This instrument seeks the weakening of enemies through exploitation of their own defects. ..."
"... Our response to this is to adopt a high handed attitude that speaks volumes about us. We admit that we do the same things to others even as we claim an absolute right to do this because we are the future of humanity, the dwellers in the "city on the hill." ..."
"... Our political parties far surpass any Russian effort "to create, publish and repeat divisive messages." Proof? Just look at all the attack ads aired in before any important election. Lots of the ads come from dark money sources, so who can tell who's behind them. Maybe Mueller should be investigating that, too...if the integrity of US elections is really the goal, not just opportunistic Russia-bashing. ..."
"... Was the Organization (Internet Research Agency) acting on behalf of the Russian government, or was it a commercial marketing operation with no operational ties to the Russian government? ..."
"... It seems the notion of "sowing discord" or creating chaos within the American body politic is arrived as a means of explaining the lack of internal consistency in the Organization's methods, but such analysis is predicated on the assumption this was a Russian government operation. ..."
"... Evidence for that assumption is obviously lacking, although that has not prevented such assumption from being presented as flat fact by many. ..."
"... It's a circus, a distraction against the Nunes Memo and investigation by Mueller, a compromised individual, if every there was one. ..."
"... Mueller is in it for the $$$millions in fees he gets for his office. Period. ..."
"... No one who actually tried to skew the election will ever be indicted. That includes, Clinton herself, and her husband, the DNC, and the media. ..."
"... Never mind the same Obama administration brought down the Brazilian President through leaking "Panama Papers". Unfortunately a clean politician was replaced by a corrupt politician in that country. Thanks ..."
"... When we compare these trolls to the New York Times, which admitted it intentionally kept news of Bush's illegal electronic spying from the American people during the Bush/Kerry election, specifically so it would not be an election issue, the trolls were doing exactly what our founding fathers wanted the press to do, while the NYT was not. ..."
"... I believe that these Russian trolls were merely parts of a private profit making Internet advertising firm that had zero to do with election interference and everything to do with generating the most eyeballs for its customers' advertisements, However, the claim that these trolls were a Russian government operation intended to create "divisiveness" is based on the assumption that opposing Hillary Clinton was somehow divisive. Since when did criticism of a US politician become devisive? ..."
"... We don't need the Russians to "sow discord" among our polity. We do it rather well ourselves. TDS, Birtherism, BLM, #MeToo, pro-choice/pro-life, safe spaces, and all the PCness and identity politics is just that, more grist for the discord mill. ..."
"... The hysteria over the Russian trolling shows how far into madness we've fallen. My personal hunch however is that Russiagate is a giant smokescreen to obfuscate a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Obama administration to interfere in the elections in a partisan manner and when the electorate chose otherwise to discredit a duly elected POTUS. Russia just happened to be roadkill in that plot. ..."
"... It shouldn't take long before Russian are blamed for 9-11 and Great Depression. A complete dehumanization of Russia and Russians is gaining a full steam. ..."
"... And while the outcome, regardless of who funded this operation, has contributed to US political disarray, it seems this outcome has primarily been driven by HRL's loss, plausible (but not yet proven) DOJ, FBI and White House illegal election and post-election interventions and the desperate efforts by Democratic party types and their tribal supporters to believe that HRC was robbed of her rightful Presidency. ..."
"... How do we know this wasn't some cockamamie propaganda exercise drawn up in some CIA office? the whole thing is small potatoes.. Mueller has nothing of relevance here, other catching some advertising agency trying to make a buck off social networks... and it was chump change in terms of $... if 100, grand a month could affect the direction of an election - i am sure many others would happily pay some troll farm based in st. petersburg for that kind of success.. ..."
"... This organisation has been well known and received coverage in the western press for years so I assume the relevant people have poked around their, likely poorly protected, systems. Two things to remember is Russia is a pretty anarchic place with different factions and people doing their own thing. ..."
"... Others would be a better judge of whether this smacks of an organised Russian intelligence operation, or just one of Russia's many incompetent private companies ..."
Feb 21, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

https://securityboulevard.com/2018/02/project-lakhta-russian-meddling-gets-russians-indicted/ by Christopher Burgess

"We will use the key performance indicators (KPIs) we created in November to measure the level of success enjoyed by the Russian intelligence active measures campaign. The plethora of examples within the indictment serves to confirm much of our analysis, but also shows their successes were more robust than previous analysis had concluded.

KPI 1Shape the U.S. election discourse and feed divisiveness into the United States. The efforts in the creation of thousands of online accounts to create, publish and repeat divisive messages, creating slightly nuanced content and otherwise pushing themes that would be most inflammatory has now been documented in the indictment. The DoJ shared an example: "The Russians organized one rally in support of the President-elect and another rally to oppose him, both in New York, and on the same day."

KPI 2Framing the dialogue via ads and fictitious persons. This is where the Russians invested heavily -- not only millions in funds which they funneled to social media accounts including Twitter and Facebook, but also in online search ads with Google and Bing. Additionally, their use of email and assuming the identities of real U.S. citizens to infiltrate and provide direct support to various political entities is now well-documented." securituboulevard.com

-------------

I have no idea what or who "Security Boulevard" may be but I needed a mission statement for Project Lakhta. A number of people are saying that Lakhta just wasn't professional enough for them to give it much credit. I disagree. the program may have been run by Putin's Caterer billionaire friend with a few ex-SVR as cadre and the rest enthusiastic geeks, but IMO the results speak for themselves. If the goal was to further aggravate divisiveness in the US, this project certainly contributed to US political disarray.

The image of Michael Moore marching in a Project Lakhta anti-Trumo demonstration is just too, too delicious.

The question arises of actual motive on the part of the Russians. Much of the usual drivel is circulating about Russian hatred of democracy as a commodity.

IMO that is not the root of their behavior in this matter and in all the other IO operations that they seem to be continuing against the US. No, I think the objective is simply to weaken the US as a self-declared adversary that wishes to see Russia reduced to the status of a mid-sized regional player subject to US oversight and control.

Since the end of the first Cold War and the collapse of the USSR the US has treated Russia with overbearing contempt and hostility. The Russians appealed to the US to be allowed a more open role in European affairs. The response was to drive the borders of NATO far to the east, to the borders of what is but a rump of the Russian Empire before WW1.

The Russian response is to use what they see as a legitimate instrument of statecraft against us. This instrument seeks the weakening of enemies through exploitation of their own defects.

Our response to this is to adopt a high handed attitude that speaks volumes about us. We admit that we do the same things to others even as we claim an absolute right to do this because we are the future of humanity, the dwellers in the "city on the hill."

How childish and self absorbed we are! pl


JohnH , 21 February 2018 at 12:25 PM

Our political parties far surpass any Russian effort "to create, publish and repeat divisive messages." Proof? Just look at all the attack ads aired in before any important election. Lots of the ads come from dark money sources, so who can tell who's behind them. Maybe Mueller should be investigating that, too...if the integrity of US elections is really the goal, not just opportunistic Russia-bashing.
jjc , 21 February 2018 at 01:24 PM
Was the Organization (Internet Research Agency) acting on behalf of the Russian government, or was it a commercial marketing operation with no operational ties to the Russian government?

It seems the notion of "sowing discord" or creating chaos within the American body politic is arrived as a means of explaining the lack of internal consistency in the Organization's methods, but such analysis is predicated on the assumption this was a Russian government operation.

Evidence for that assumption is obviously lacking, although that has not prevented such assumption from being presented as flat fact by many.

Dr. George W. Oprisko , 21 February 2018 at 01:36 PM
"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much"

The Story was broken and published in 2015. It found the perps were using bots to get advert revenues........ period. The indictments are of Russian Nationals for activities and actions taken within Russia. Neither Mueller nor the US have jurisdiction.

It's a circus, a distraction against the Nunes Memo and investigation by Mueller, a compromised individual, if every there was one.

Mueller is in it for the $$$millions in fees he gets for his office. Period.

No one who actually tried to skew the election will ever be indicted. That includes, Clinton herself, and her husband, the DNC, and the media.

INDY

Murali Penumarth , 21 February 2018 at 01:37 PM
Colonel I totally agree with your analysis, we seem to forget about our adventures in promoting democracy else where. What I think is that the Russians exposed our own corrupt politicians (I can still hear Obama's preaching about wikileaks and Clinton emails "Never mind the content of those emails, it is a fact they stole our documents, and attacked our democracy). Never mind the same Obama administration brought down the Brazilian President through leaking "Panama Papers". Unfortunately a clean politician was replaced by a corrupt politician in that country. Thanks
TimmyB , 21 February 2018 at 01:51 PM
The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to allow for a vigorous public debate. The flaw in the above reasoning is that if the alleged goal of the supposed Russian "interference" was to "aggravate divisiveness" then that Russian troll farm was doing exactly what our founding fathers wanted the press to do, provoke a public debate about issues during an election.

When we compare these trolls to the New York Times, which admitted it intentionally kept news of Bush's illegal electronic spying from the American people during the Bush/Kerry election, specifically so it would not be an election issue, the trolls were doing exactly what our founding fathers wanted the press to do, while the NYT was not.

I believe that these Russian trolls were merely parts of a private profit making Internet advertising firm that had zero to do with election interference and everything to do with generating the most eyeballs for its customers' advertisements, However, the claim that these trolls were a Russian government operation intended to create "divisiveness" is based on the assumption that opposing Hillary Clinton was somehow divisive. Since when did criticism of a US politician become devisive?

This is the part I don't understand. The devisiveness stick can be swung against anyone and anything. My comments here can be seen by some as devisive. Same with the post I'm commenting on, this entire blog and every other person or group exercising their First Amendment rights by debating an issue. So while I believe the whole Russian thing is complete bullshit, the thing I worry about most is that it is being used to demand conformity and squelch our First Amendment rights. Vigorous debate, no matter who or what is sponsoring that debate, doesn't weaken our country. It only makes it stronger. What is really weakening our country is the current demonizing of free speech via evidence free claims that such speech is hurting the US and helping a supposed enemy country.

Richardstevenhack , 21 February 2018 at 02:02 PM
"If the goal was to further aggravate divisiveness in the US, this project certainly contributed to US political disarray."

So you're saying that because a commercial fake ad campaign was seized upon by a US government Russian witch-hunt that therefore the fake ad campaign contributed to US political disarray? As opposed to the witch-hunt itself?

I believe that's putting the cart before the horse.

We have Facebook's head of ads explicitly saying that he's seen all the ads and they definitely had nothing to do with swaying the election - before he's forced to recant that statement by Facebook management on the excuse that it insults Mueller.

Facebook executive apologizes to social media mob after pointing out that Russian ads did "NOT sway" election
http://theduran.com/facebook-executive-apologizes-to-social-media-mob-after-pointing-out-that-russian-ads-did-not-sway-election/

Then we have the journalist who covered the operation back in 2015 debunking the importance:

"13 Russian trolls" indictment debunked by journalist who profiled the operation in 2015
http://theduran.com/13-russian-trolls-indictment-debunked-by-journalist-profiled-the-operation-in-2015/

Then we have the *Russian* journalist who covered the operation back in 2013 debunking it:

The Russian journalist who helped uncover election interference is confounded by the Mueller indictments
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/18/the-russian-journalist-who-helped-uncover-election-meddling-is-confounded-by-the-mueller-indictments/?utm_term=.1b99ad01b60b

In other words, everyone views this as a commercial marketing operation which used the US elections as a vehicle to make money by supporting and denouncing both Trump and Clinton, but you're convinced it was a real Russian government disinformation operation.

Based on what? The fact that it had zero impact on the election? Or the fact that by definition it couldn't possibly have had any significant impact on US divisiveness by comparison with the US media and social media themselves - other than by having been put up by Mueller's witch hunt as significant? The fact that this operation has zero connections to the Russian government except for this "chef" having some vague connections with Putin?

Not buying it. This operation in my view had zilch to do with weakening the US in any way, shape or form - except to extract some money from it.

Don , 21 February 2018 at 02:03 PM
Scott Adams
does a white board presentation where he compares the theory of Russians helping Trump with the theory of Russians as someone else who wanted anybody but Hillary.

https://www.pscp.tv/w/bVxlNjFYSlFra05sQk9YUUx8MU1ZR05wUkJvcE54dxGY6BnkkEtvqffzkIpuPI-mekfG8QawYa1_Advd4px-

Scott has been right about quite a few things before and has written the book "How to win biggly in a world where facts don't matter" explaining trumps style and persuasion methods.

blue peacock , 21 February 2018 at 02:29 PM
Col. Lang

We don't need the Russians to "sow discord" among our polity. We do it rather well ourselves. TDS, Birtherism, BLM, #MeToo, pro-choice/pro-life, safe spaces, and all the PCness and identity politics is just that, more grist for the discord mill.

The hysteria over the Russian trolling shows how far into madness we've fallen. My personal hunch however is that Russiagate is a giant smokescreen to obfuscate a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Obama administration to interfere in the elections in a partisan manner and when the electorate chose otherwise to discredit a duly elected POTUS. Russia just happened to be roadkill in that plot.

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 02:49 PM
All

A lot of you armchair sleuths are creating your own reality on an unwarranted basis proceeding from a desire to think that because Mueller is embarked on a voyage to Gulliver's various lands, all his results are false. This is a fallacy. The first amendment? The framers never intended that it should protect people acting either directly or indirectly on behalf of a foreign power. Their reaction to the Citizen Genet case shows that clearly. The British did things like this on a sustained basis for the purpose of luring the US into WW2. Why do you think they made that effort a covert campaign?

A covert political action on behalf of a foreign power would never have been thought by the framers to deserve first amendment protection.

A commercial venture? Once again, you don't know what you are talking about. If you had ever written a business plan for a new venture you would know that a competent entrepreneur would have looked at the "pro forma" financial projections in the plan and decided that the trivial possible revenues would never recover the capital invested in the scheme and would have decided against proceeding. Have you never watched "Shark Tank?"

Some of the operatives involved did travel to the US to work some of the street demonstration capers. The indictment says that in September of last year, they concluded that the FBI was closing in on them and left the country rather than be apprehended. pl

Joe100 , 21 February 2018 at 02:54 PM
jjc -

With Col Lang's forbearance on posting an except in this case, the following excerpt from John Helmer's current blog post (johnhelmer.net) provides some insight into that has been driving the "Organizations" activities:

"Russian sources believe Prigozhin's organization has contracted for domestic Russian operations paid for by Russian corporations and local politicians. Some of the operations are believed to be conventional positive advertising of events, products, campaigns, and ideas. Some reportedly involve the circulation of kompromat against business and election rivals; some to defend against botnet and denial of service attacks on corporate websites and communication systems; some to attack the websites of business adversaries or investigative journalists, Russia-based or Russia-related.

Investigations by Russian media and government regulators have been reporting for some time allegations that Prigozhin has been diverting money from state procurement contracts for himself, and for clandestine purposes approved by state officials and state company executives. For a sample of the details, start in 2014 with the St. Petersburg website Fontanka's investigation of Mikhail Bystrov and Mikhail Burchik, the second and third defendants in the Mueller indictment. Fontanka said it had uncovered evidence that paying clients of the Prigozhin, Bystrov and Burchik organization included a youth group of the Russian Orthodox Church, the St. Petersburg municipal authorities, and a Gazprom media promotion company. The payroll of the organization was reported in mid-2014 to be Rb180,000 per month (about $5,500).

Russian sources believe Prigozhin's Project Lakhta was ordered by someone in a position to exercise a call on Prigozhin's cashflow. They exclude Russian officials on the Kremlin Security Council -- Sergei Ivanov, Sergei Lavrov, Sergei Shoigu, Anton Vaino, Nikolai Patrushev, Sergei Naryshkin – and dismiss the possibility that Project Lakhta had either President Putin's or Russian intelligence service support.

The suspicion of Russian sources is that the American campaign element in Project Lakhta was "so hare-brained there is only one official who could have considered Prigozhin's project worth the money and the attempt – Dmitry Peskov". Peskov is officially titled Deputy Chief of the Presidential Executive Office and Presidential Press Secretary. From the Kremlin he supervises the budgets for the state television broadcaster RT, the state news agency Sputnik, and special US-targeted propaganda programmes, such as the Valdai Discussion Club for academics and the Oliver Stone films"

So this appears to me to be primarily a "commercial for hire to make something happen through the web" model for arrange of potential corporation and political clients. I find it interesting that the one possible "sufficiently hare-brained" suspect is Peskov who oversees the budgets of Russia's state owned "open" US-targeted information programs..

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 02:54 PM
joe100

You want the mastermind to be Peskov? Fine. It matters not in the context of my argument. pl

SmoothieX12 , 21 February 2018 at 03:41 PM
The piece in NYT certainly broke through the bottom. But then again, I learned today from Adam Schiff that Russians love 2nd Amendment because they love nothing more than Americans killing each-other. It shouldn't take long before Russian are blamed for 9-11 and Great Depression. A complete dehumanization of Russia and Russians is gaining a full steam.
steve , 21 February 2018 at 03:44 PM
"The Russian response is to use what they see as a legitimate instrument of statecraft against us. This instrument seeks the weakening of enemies through exploitation of their own defects. "

I have always thought that this makes sense. It would have been incredibly passive and an abdication of responsibility for the Russians to not respond. You can argue about the particulars on exactly what they did or did not do, but it never made sense to think that they were not acting in their own best self-interests in response to provocation.

Steve

Barbara Ann -> Joe100... , 21 February 2018 at 04:00 PM
I think the following excerpt from Helmer's piece is more relevant here:
The unofficial Russian reaction towards Prigozhin's activities in the US is more quizzical, and under the American pressure, more private. It acknowledges that Prigozhin is a commercial operator, and for every outlay he has a paying client. Who that client was for Project Lakhta is the object of speculation so far unreported in the Russian press.
So finding the client would seem to be critical to both the 'Russian government involvement' and 'Trump team colluded' allegations.
Grazhdanochka , 21 February 2018 at 04:03 PM
Just to add one more Aspect that should be considered...

Russian Press has repeatedly covered the Topic of Troll Farm, RBK/RBC late last Year again covered it last Year - https://www.rbc.ru/magazine/2017/04/58d106b09a794710fa8934ac

In other Article - https://www.rbc.ru/business/30/12/2017/5a465d969a79472a87a3c920

It is noted that Prigozhin had previously tried to take another Russian Company - Yandex (Equivalent of Google for Russia) to Court to have his Name removed from Search Results that connected his Name with [this] Search Query, before eventually backing down....

This points out an obvious Dilemma to many Critiques of Russia, the all Powerful Russian Government whom between apparently personally controlling all Business, nor does it allow a free Press neither forced Yandexs Hand in having those results Removed, nor did it prevent RBC/RBK from publishing their Report on the 'Troll Farm' which if to be believed was a vital Part of their Political Interference...
Which way does it go? Do they suddenly have to admit that Press is maybe the more Free than imagined? Or does the Government simply not extend any interest in hiding its 'Operation and Assets'... Or is it that simply - It has no Hand in this and thus no interest?

All of this goes back to the Points others have clearly made very well above - That of this being about Commercial Interests and Motivations not a super Secret Plot that clearly is not being hidden..

Grazhdanochka , 21 February 2018 at 04:08 PM
To add one more Aspect to what I mean by 'Commercial Interests' - This does not have to mean Directly... Favorable Patronage if the right People are pleased with you can leverage Profits through further Contracts and Opportunities..

The Trick is gaining said Patronage

Joe100 , 21 February 2018 at 04:10 PM
Col Lang -

I am not pushing Peskov and basically agreeing with jjc's post that evidence that this was a Russian government is lacking (at least so far).

And while the outcome, regardless of who funded this operation, has contributed to US political disarray, it seems this outcome has primarily been driven by HRL's loss, plausible (but not yet proven) DOJ, FBI and White House illegal election and post-election interventions and the desperate efforts by Democratic party types and their tribal supporters to believe that HRC was robbed of her rightful Presidency. Absent this context - which was clearly not created by the IRA operation - it is hard to see that this operation would be getting any attention.

Norbert M Salamon , 21 February 2018 at 04:11 PM
Sir:
An Alternate to your thesis is that the object of Lakhta is to make Russia Great Again. It appears with every US inspired sanction Russia recovers after a brief pause, and advances her economy far beyond what was foreseen but a few years ago:
1., agriculture -greatest wheat exporter in 2017, rather than importer.
2., replacing slowly all the software from the west with either homegrown product or Chinese goods
3., the famous Kremlin List might force lot of offshore Russian wealth to go home, lest it be expropriated by the US Treasury.
4., you, Sir, can add other observations based on facts of Russia's recovery since the sanctions started.
james -> turcopolier ... , 21 February 2018 at 04:20 PM
How do we know this wasn't some cockamamie propaganda exercise drawn up in some CIA office? the whole thing is small potatoes.. Mueller has nothing of relevance here, other catching some advertising agency trying to make a buck off social networks... and it was chump change in terms of $... if 100, grand a month could affect the direction of an election - i am sure many others would happily pay some troll farm based in st. petersburg for that kind of success..

sorry - cold war 2 / mccarthyism 2 - all on tap and who benefits from that? that is the question i would like to hear an answer to.. thanks..

Barbara Ann , 21 February 2018 at 04:22 PM
Colonel

Re the KPI's to "measure the level of success enjoyed by the Russian intelligence active measures campaign":

I was taught that performance measures are meaningless unless they can quantify a commodity which equates to 'success'. The examples given here seem to fall well within that category IMHO. Discord and divisiveness may be a valid goal, but how much was sown? There was plenty around, but it is surely next to impossible to assess the impact of Lakhta in a meaningful way. So Moore went to a Lakhta rally, rather than what, perhaps a different anti Trump rally? Is the net effect better or worse and by how much?

The second KPI is not even a KPI - how is dialog framing a valid goal? The text describes the significant investment made (the other side of the equation) and the methods used - this is meaningless re any assessment of supposed 'success'.

LondonBob -> turcopolier ... , 21 February 2018 at 04:36 PM
Average salary in St Pete would be around USD1000 a month so the costs are not much, maybe more if they had English language skills. Wouldn't be many fixed/startup costs at all. Also not just click bait advertising but the opportunity to take a contract to run a PR campaign.

I am still undecided. This organisation has been well known and received coverage in the western press for years so I assume the relevant people have poked around their, likely poorly protected, systems. Two things to remember is Russia is a pretty anarchic place with different factions and people doing their own thing.

Generally Russians can still be pretty incompetent at things, these guys seem to be a good example of that. Others would be a better judge of whether this smacks of an organised Russian intelligence operation, or just one of Russia's many incompetent private companies. Creating a little mischief can be fun as well. I can't be bothered to look fully in to everything but actual real examples of attempts to cause mischief are too few, and the evidence sufficient to convict has not been presented.

As for British activities before WWII, I have always been of the opinion the success of that was due to important power centres, the people Lindbergh listed in his Des Moines speech, although I would include white Southerners, in the US consciously turning a blind eye. The inference would be that this was so insignificant and ineffectual that it wasn't picked up, or dismissed if it was.

The Twisted Genius , 21 February 2018 at 04:41 PM
Security Boulevard is an aggregation of cyber-security bloggers. Christopher Burgess, the author of this article, retired from the CIA in 2005 with 30+ years. He worked as a security advisor for Cisco and in several other security related companies. I don't remember ever hearing about him. I looked at some of his writing about the Russia thing going back to before the election. Our views largely coincide and I recognize the terminology he uses. I chalk that up to his background. He certainly was aware of some of the same experiences in foreign cyber-espionage and IO that I dealt with. These key performance indicators are from an article he did back in November 2017.

https://securityboulevard.com/2017/11/russia-expert-active-measures-including-cyber-meddling/

jonst , 21 February 2018 at 04:52 PM
It is not in the interests, to say the least, of Russia to weaken the US. And Putin, above most, knows this. Maybe tweak us a bit...but weaken us? Why? He is going to need us against China. We have no natural geopolitical antipathy (hostility) with Russia. We may thrust ourselves into that position, at times, in Eastern Europe or the Middle East. However it is not organic to our relationship. On the other hand, such antipathy (hostility) does exist between China and Russia. And it is not just , organic, geopolitical, but racial was well. Although we're not supposed to talk like that anymore. Putin might not talk it...but he is thinking it.
turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 04:56 PM
jonst

YOU may not have any antipathy toward Russia but Washington and New York and the media drip with it and our actions since the fall of the USSR would not look like friendship to any neutral observer. pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:01 PM
LondonBob

The thing about British activities in the US before WW2 is laughable and rather self-serving. So, you think that 1.25 million US a month was trivial, eh? Have you ever funded a business? pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:08 PM
Barbara Ann

"I was taught that performance measures are meaningless unless they can quantify a commodity which equates to 'success'. " You were taught poorly. Nothing in international policy operations can be meaningfully quantified. Only social science idiots thank that this is possible. pl

LondonBob -> turcopolier ... , 21 February 2018 at 05:08 PM
Wasn't the USD1.25m a month the budget for the whole organisation, including Russian activities? I haven't looked in to it in enough detail.

Self serving but true.

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:11 PM
james

You have CIA on the brain, something like water on the knew and have seen too many movies. you have no idea how difficult it would be to construct an operation like this in a police state like Russia if you were foreign. pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:13 PM
LondonBob

And then there were a few British capers like the Zimmerman telegram and the BS about German atrocities in Belgium in WW1. Oh, yes and the lies told about the Boers in the S. Africa War. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Security_Co-ordination
pl

shepherd -> Barbara Ann ... , 21 February 2018 at 05:19 PM
Barbara Ann,

He seems not to be using KPI in the traditional way, but it could be a terminology difference between intelligence and business uses. Substitute the word "goal" and you're fine.

james -> turcopolier ... , 21 February 2018 at 05:19 PM
pat - b did a post to break down this us .25 million a month b.s..

here is the quote for you - "(Some U.S. media today made the false claim that $1.25 million per month were spend by the company for its U.S. campaign. But Point 11 of the indictment says that the company ran a number of such projects directed at a Russian audience while only the one described in 10d above is aimed at an U.S. audience. All these projects together had a monthly budget of $1.25 million.)

as memory serves they had at least 10 different projects going... - 100 grand a month is a better guesstimate... chump change...

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html#more

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:21 PM
james

you prefer b's opinion? Go there and abide. pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:24 PM
Norbert S. Solomon

Do you really think that Russia sees its relations with the US as other than a zero sum game? How could they see it any other way given the way the US has acted toward them? pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:28 PM
joe100

I didn't say the Russian project created the aura of animosity. The US is falling apart politically. The Russian project originators perceived this and sought to exacerbate it, and succeeded. pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:30 PM
grazdanochka

So, you think this project was put up on "spec" like building something in the hope that someone will buy it and redeem your costs. Have you ever done that? pl

shepherd , 21 February 2018 at 05:37 PM
TTG,

I concur on Burgess. The graphic in the article you cite is pretty good, though it doesn't mention the "seeding and feeding" use of bots and commenters in blog and media platform threads to influence the discussion. But I think that's inferred by the use of the term "computational propaganda." I've never seen that before, but I like it. In psychology, it is called the "availability heuristic." The idea is that if you make the same claim or idea appear again and again, people will eventually become convinced it's true. So if you can swarm the Internet with many instances of the same falsehood or argument, people will come to believe it's true.

In case anyone's curious, this is the same tactic employed by GEICO in the US.

Barbara Ann -> turcopolier ... , 21 February 2018 at 05:37 PM
With respect Colonel, my point was that the use of KPI's in this context is indeed meaningless. Thus the authors are discredited in my view by using & abusing the term.

This report reads no different to many others to me - allegations that the mission was to sow discord. So is this a new Pearl Harbor or a laughably tiny contribution to the immense discord extant already. My own gut feel is that it is likely well towards the latter end of the scale.

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:40 PM
Barbara ann

You are quibbling over words. I never said Lakhta had a significant effect. My piece dealt only with intentions and goals. pl

turcopolier , 21 February 2018 at 05:44 PM
lars

Russophobic bigotry and based on what? your reading of Russian history? pl

[Feb 21, 2018] Russian Troll Farm Indictment Shredded By Journalist Who First Profiled It In 2015 Zero Hedge

Feb 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Following Special Counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three entities behind a Russian "troll farm" said to have meddled in the 2016 U.S. election (admittedly, with zero impact ), two people familiar with both the ads purchased by Russians on Facebook, and the "troll farm" in question have refuted Mueller's narrative over the course of four days. Indeed, things don't seem to be going well for the Russia investigation, which started out with serious claims of Collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and has been reduced to CNN diving through the garbage of a Russian troll farm.

About that troll farm...

Adrian Chen, staff writer for The New Yorker - who first profiled the indicted Russian troll farm in 2015, sat down with MSNBC's Chris Hayes, where he proceeded to deflate Mueller's big scary indictment to nothing.

"Tried to tamp down the troll farm panic on @chrislhayes show last night," Adrian Chen tweeted . " It's 90 people with a shaky grasp of English and a rudimentary understanding of U.S. politics shitposting on Facebook. "

Watch:

me frameborder=

Chen then responded to a tweet saying the IRA has 300-400 individuals. "That was the entire Internet Research Agency," Chen wrote." The American department had ~90 people , according to the Russian journalists who did the most in-depth investigation."

Chen links to a Washington Post article which profiles Russian journalists who also investigated said troll farm.

me title=

A brief review:

And for all of this, Obama and Congress slapped sanctions on Russia, evicted two diplomatic compounds, and launched several Congressional investigations over.

But at least the US Military Industrial Complex is happy, while the stock of Boeing has never been higher.

Tags Politics Apparel & Accessories Retailers - NEC Commercial Aircraft Manufacturing

Vote up! 7 Vote down! 0

AlaricBalth -> American Psycho Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:22 Permalink

Our "troll farm" is better funded than theirs...

The United States, through a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) called The National Endowment for Democracy has spent over $27,000,000 since 2013 in Russia to "promote democracy".

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a U.S. non-profit soft power organization that was founded in 1983 with the stated goal of promoting democracy abroad. It is funded primarily through an annual allocation from the U.S. Congress in the form of a grant awarded through the United States Information Agency (USIA).

NED was banned in Russia as an undesirable international NGO in for "using Russian commercial and noncommercial organizations under its control... to declare the results of election campaigns illegitimate, organize political actions intended to influence decisions made by the authorities, and discredit service in Russia's armed forces.

Former Congressman Ron Paul also argued against NED funding stating that NED has "very little to do with democracy. It is an organization that uses US tax money to actually subvert democracy, by showering funding on favored political parties or movements overseas. It underwrites color-coded 'people's revolutions' overseas that look more like pages out of Lenin's writings on stealing power than genuine indigenous democratic movements."

Investigative reporter and editor of Consortiumnews Robert Parry has characterized NED as a "neocon slush fund," whose founding was the brainchild of Reagan Administration CIA Director William Casey and its leading propagandist Walter Raymond Jr., then on the staff of the National Security Council. The idea was to set up an organization funded by the U.S. Congress to take over CIA programs that attempted to influence foreign elections by promoting the selection of candidates who supported U.S. policy and would "do what the U.S. government tells them to do.

See screen grab of chart here from USAID showing NED spending in Russia: https://imgur.com/DuQwJZW

https://explorer.usaid.gov/query?country_name=Russia&fiscal_year=2016&t

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_Democracy

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jul/28/national-endowment-for-de

Interference in elections

NED's Statement of Principles and Objectives, adopted in 1984, asserts that "No Endowment funds may be used to finance the campaigns of candidates for public office." But the ways to circumvent the spirit of such a prohibition are not difficult to come up with; as with American elections, there's "hard money" and there's "soft money".

As described in the "Elections" and "Interventions" chapters, NED successfully manipulated elections in Nicaragua in 1990 and Mongolia in 1996; helped to overthrow democratically elected governments in Bulgaria in 1990 and Albania in 1991 and 1992; and worked to defeat the candidate for prime minister of Slovakia in 2002 who was out of favor in Washington. And from 1999 to 2004, NED heavily funded members of the opposition to President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to subvert his rule and to support a referendum to unseat him.

Additionally, in the 1990s and afterward, NED supported a coalition of groups in Haiti known as the Democratic Convergence, who were united in their opposition to Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his progressive ideology, while he was in and out of the office of the president.

The Endowment has made its weight felt in the electoral-political process in numerous other countries.

https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-

The United States has continued democracy programs despite local prohibitions.

Nevertheless, USAID and the NED have continued to fund organizations, even where that's against the local country's laws. In Venezuela, for example, the United States has openly continued funding civil society organizations, even listing that in its annual budgets, albeit without naming recipients.

USAID and the NED are undoubtedly keeping their plans in the country secret. However, the NED and its leaders continue to openly counter Russian ideological efforts throughout Eurasia. For instance, when NED President Carl Gershman testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in June 2016, he said that one of the NED's five main focuses includes pushing back against "an information offensive by Russia and other authoritarian regimes."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/20/putin-is-

ebworthen Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:01 Permalink

MSM has a story to run for 3 nights on "Russian meddling" - the sheeple bleat - go to work, pay bills, pay taxes, invest in their "retirement", and send their kids off to die in pointless wars.

LetThemEatRand Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:03 Permalink

The other funny thing about the indictments is that the speech of these Russian nationals if they ran ads as alleged, is protected by the First Amendment, which does not limit itself to US citizens. "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech ...". The indictments claim that one must register as a foreign lobbyist if they want to engage in political speech in the United States. For very important reasons, the Constitution does not limit its protections to citizens, including and especially where speech and religion are concerned.

Give Me Some Truth -> Cozy Vanilla Sugar Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:38 Permalink

Let's use a little math here. Even FB admits that only 1 in 23,000 images on their site during this time period were paid for by the trolls. The vast majority of FB users would never even have seen this content. If they were in the .0004 of users who stumbled upon "troll speech," the message would no doubt be drained out by all the other hundreds or thousands of messages they did notice (mostly pictures of friends' babies). And, believe it or not, a whole lot of voters don't even use Facebook. So only a minute fraction of FB users could have conceivably seen one random, lonely impression, which would have been drowned out by thousands of other non-troll impressions, posts made by people who actually speak English and made by people the FB users actually know.

Finally, if you were in the subgroup that found one of the five golden tickets (stumbled upon a real Russian troll post), who is to say the dang post wasn't 100 percent accurate.

I know I'm supposed to panic over all of this, but I'm not gonna do it. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

Zorba's idea -> Give Me Some Truth Wed, 02/21/2018 - 00:48 Permalink

The FBof Matters apparently have exposed their MSM strategy...they stole it from the Chocolate Factory...(((super secret FIB methods)))... Oomph Loompa doompadee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Ooompa Loompa doompadah dee, If you are wise you'll listen to me." I suppose Mueller and associates have their heads so far up their asses they actually believe they're in Wonka's Chocolate Factory...Oh look!!! Another pristine Passport!!!

Give Me Some Truth -> Cozy Vanilla Sugar Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:38 Permalink

Let's use a little math here. Even FB admits that only 1 in 23,000 images on their site during this time period were paid for by the trolls. The vast majority of FB users would never even have seen this content. If they were in the .0004 of users who stumbled upon "troll speech," the message would no doubt be drained out by all the other hundreds or thousands of messages they did notice (mostly pictures of friends' babies). And, believe it or not, a whole lot of voters don't even use Facebook. So only a minute fraction of FB users could have conceivably seen one random, lonely impression, which would have been drowned out by thousands of other non-troll impressions, posts made by people who actually speak English and made by people the FB users actually know.

Finally, if you were in the subgroup that found one of the five golden tickets (stumbled upon a real Russian troll post), who is to say the dang post wasn't 100 percent accurate.

I know I'm supposed to panic over all of this, but I'm not gonna do it. Not. Gonna. Do. It.

Zorba's idea -> Give Me Some Truth Wed, 02/21/2018 - 00:48 Permalink

The FBof Matters apparently have exposed their MSM strategy...they stole it from the Chocolate Factory...(((super secret FIB methods)))... Oomph Loompa doompadee doo, I've got another puzzle for you. Ooompa Loompa doompadah dee, If you are wise you'll listen to me." I suppose Mueller and associates have their heads so far up their asses they actually believe they're in Wonka's Chocolate Factory...Oh look!!! Another pristine Passport!!!

Give Me Some Truth Tue, 02/20/2018 - 23:22 Permalink

The trolls were allegedly trying to "sow discord." The MSM - working closely with the FBI and the Establishment in Washington - are trying to "spread panic."

For once, the fear-mongering isn't playing in Peoria.

Mzhen Wed, 02/21/2018 - 00:20 Permalink

If Obama hadn't slapped sanctions on Russia, what were the Oval Office conspirators going to leak to media about Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador? What was Sally Yates going to assert could be a violation of the Logan Act, and also a possible way for Russia to blackmail Flynn? What was the FBI going to question Flynn about? So McCabe could change their 302s. So there had to be sanctions. And there had to be trolls.

Jung Wed, 02/21/2018 - 00:47 Permalink

The Saker gives a few findings to those who understand what might be happening:

The best way to get information is to make it up.

Everything what we know now about the so-called "Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin's favorite chef," came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.

They were arrested in November 2016 and revealed as the FSB and former FSB officers . One of them even managed a security department for the Kaspersky Lab.".........."

Now, this is a very important grave mark.

Just think about this working scheme: Shaltay-Boltay with a group of anti-government "activists" created the "Internet Research Agency," they and some "activists" created 470 FaceBook accounts used to post comments that looked unmistakably "trollish."

After that other, CIA affiliated entities, like the entire Western Media, claimed the "Russian interference in the US election." Finally, the ODNI published a report lacking any evidence in it."

[Feb 20, 2018] Since only Russians were indicted, can we conclude that Russia was the only nation in the world that tried to influence the American election?

Notable quotes:
"... I turned in a blank ballot in November 2016. A choice between the Devil's Sister and the Devil's Jester wasn't a choice that sober grownups would make. I didn't need 13 Russians's help to arrive at that conclusion. ..."
"... My God, what a confession it is to believe that 13 non-billionaires could influence an American election: "Horosho! Now that election goes to Trump, next we get Moose and Squirrel!" Seriously?! ..."
"... "Is the Great Republic about to fall because a bunch of trolls tweeted in our election?" The Deep State folks want us to think so. Is there any way to turn the tables on them? ..."
"... If career lawyers at DOJ told Jeff Sessions that he should probably recuse himself because of X, Y, and Z, then they are presumptively guilty of bad faith, and Sessions need not necessarily feel bound to stay recused. ..."
"... Sessions was under no legal compulsion to recuse himself, as Andrew C. McCarthy has demonstrated. Arguably, the A.G. can point to any such bad faith as a reason for taking back his recusal. "The rule of law!" the Deep State will scream. But bad faith of the kind in question is ipso facto a negation of the rule of law. ..."
"... The rule of law only demands that a reversal of a recusal bear an extremely heavy burden of proof for its justification. No problem if Sessions relied on bad-faith actors at DOJ–reversing his recusal would be justified. ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

VikingLS February 19, 2018 at 10:17 pm

Cue the resident amoral neocon scumbags to tell us that darn it, it's DIFFERENT when we do it. Sure our "allies" might be neonazis, slave traders, people who bomb churches, behead priests, kidnap nuns, and enslave Christians .but you know .Putin.
Ken , says: February 20, 2018 at 12:26 am
The Internet Research Agency is a commercial enterprise, Don't buy this new McCartyism. Read
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html#more
spite , says: February 20, 2018 at 3:11 am
The insanity that is engulfing the USA is no longer just a joke, that these lunatics have nuclear weapons is now a very serious threat to the rest of the world – that is hopefully not as insane. Bombing foreign nations is not considered an act of war (kinetic action in Syria, Libya, Niger, Somalia, etc), however making online comments is an act of war?!?

I have made online comments against America, I suggest I also get added on that list as an act of war.

David Nash , says: February 20, 2018 at 8:41 am
Such a short trip from "Fake News" to "No Big Deal, and what about X?"

You, and I, know full well that if Trump were a Democrat, you would be crying TRAITOR from the rooftops.

Have you no decency left, sir? At long last, have you no decency left?

You can sell your soul to a door-to-door peddler with tweety birds flying about his head, but can you ever get it back? Apparently not.

TR , says: February 20, 2018 at 10:51 am
I don't think if I were a "resident amoral neocon scumbag" I would dare to reply after VikingLS' opening comment.

The title sounds silly: "acts of war" in the real world are defined by people who want to go to war.

And BTW, Pat's language is slippery when talking about the Chilean coup. Maybe the White House had "deniability" but State and the CIA left fingerprints everywhere. If you want to see an obviously lying Kissinger, read the section on the coup in "White House Years."

VikingLS , says: February 20, 2018 at 11:21 am
"You, and I, know full well that if Trump were a Democrat, you would be crying TRAITOR from the rooftops."

Maybe, but Buchanan has been pushing to deescalate with Russia consistently for over a decade now, so probably not.

Have you ever read any of his books?

KD , says: February 20, 2018 at 2:28 pm
Since only Russians were indicted, can we conclude that Russia was the only nation in the world that tried to influence the American election?
Steve S. , says: February 20, 2018 at 2:37 pm
I turned in a blank ballot in November 2016. A choice between the Devil's Sister and the Devil's Jester wasn't a choice that sober grownups would make. I didn't need 13 Russians's help to arrive at that conclusion.

My God, what a confession it is to believe that 13 non-billionaires could influence an American election: "Horosho! Now that election goes to Trump, next we get Moose and Squirrel!" Seriously?!

I tell my kids all the time that half the people in this country are, by definition, below average in intelligence.

Ken Zaretzke , says: February 20, 2018 at 2:37 pm
"Is the Great Republic about to fall because a bunch of trolls tweeted in our election?" The Deep State folks want us to think so. Is there any way to turn the tables on them?

If career lawyers at DOJ told Jeff Sessions that he should probably recuse himself because of X, Y, and Z, then they are presumptively guilty of bad faith, and Sessions need not necessarily feel bound to stay recused.

Sessions was under no legal compulsion to recuse himself, as Andrew C. McCarthy has demonstrated. Arguably, the A.G. can point to any such bad faith as a reason for taking back his recusal. "The rule of law!" the Deep State will scream. But bad faith of the kind in question is ipso facto a negation of the rule of law.

The rule of law only demands that a reversal of a recusal bear an extremely heavy burden of proof for its justification. No problem if Sessions relied on bad-faith actors at DOJ–reversing his recusal would be justified.

Career lawyers at DOJ, especially in the Office of Legal Counsel, would clearly have known that Sessions was under no legal compulsion or professional obligation to recuse himself. If they left him with a different impression and advised that it would be best for him to recuse himself, their actions couldn't realistically be attributed to incompetence. Only bad faith could explain such advice.

This is true even if they deliberately neglected to inform the A.G. of the legal non-necessity for recusal and played up the alleged political necessity for recusal. It would still be bad faith.

If that's correct, it doesn't mean Sessions should immediately take back his recusal. Weeks or months of preparation might be needed for educating the public and injecting a spine-stiffening drug in a number of Republican senators–call your office, Lindsey Graham. But it does allow for a stronger attack right now on Robert Mueller, who needs to get out from under his own shadow of bad faith before he ends up earning the nickname "Bad Faith Bob."

[Feb 20, 2018] A classic case of misdirection, served up and serving the converging interests of a variety of players: neo-cons and defense contractors wet for a new Cold War with Russia, the Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party desperate to use this to distract from their catastrophic political negligence, and factions in the National Security State looking to be rehabilitated in the eyes of media and liberal elites

Notable quotes:
"... The whole of American politics is nothing but 'sowing discord'. The only thing that holds the two parties together is the hatred shared for the 'other party'. ..."
"... Again, if election laws were broken, arrest, try, convict and imprison the perpetrators. Lots of money gets spent sowing discord during the elections. I'm not concerned one bit about the drop in the bucket spent by the Russians ..."
"... She had over a billion dollars to tell me that she was for universal health care. ..."
"... So, if I have a heart attack, based on my obesity, poor diet and alcoholism, I should immediately blame the background radiation in my basement? ..."
"... A classic case of misdirection, served up and serving the converging interests of a variety of players: neo-cons and defense contractors wet for a new Cold War with Russia, the Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party desperate to use this to distract from their catastrophic political negligence, and factions in the National Security State looking to be rehabilitated in the eyes of media and liberal elites. ..."
"... What Russian government? It was a commercial operation posting click bait, of all sorts, to sell ads. And yes, that's the explanation that fits the facts best. If Putin was really bankrolling it, no evidence so far, he was wasting his money. From our point of view, a good thing. ..."
"... A foreign government employed copy editors to sow dissent in American politics by way of Twitter, Facebook, online advertising and a network of blogs. ..."
"... Google files patent for robot that writes your Facebook posts, emails and tweets ..."
"... All Russian bot claims appear to originate from the same group of warmongers and their highly flawed Hamilton 68 Dashboard project: McCarthyism Inc.: Terror Cranks Sold America the Russia Panic Truthdig ..."
"... [The Alliance for Securing Democracy's] researchers and advisors have become go-to pundits for mainstream reporters seeking expert opinions on Russian online meddling. They have been endorsed by John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and chief of staff for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Julia Ioffe, the Atlantic's Russia correspondent, has also weighed in to promote the ASD's efforts. Both highlighted the ASD's Hamilton 68 Dashboard as a scientific barometer of Kremlin influence over the American social media landscape ..."
"... Bill Kristol, among others, is on the so-called Alliance for Securing Democracy's board of advisors. ..."
"... And "b" at Moon of Alabama thinks that they've deliberately indicted a bunch of people they don't expect to prosecute (they're all in Russia) in order to have the above "message" on the books for as long as it takes for someone to stage a legal test of it. ..."
"... Until then it is simple intimidation. ..."
"... If the Russian government actually funded this sort of thing, they must be pretty simple-minded. ..."
"... Anyway, do we even know that it was Russian "government" money financing these things? It was some oligarch who had "ties" to Putin. By the standards used so far in Russiagate reporting, that basically means that he and Putin are both Russian. ..."
"... The Russian Federation is very much against neo-Nazi and white supremacy movements due to what it suffered from Nazi Germany during WWII. Now Russia sees this on it's boarders in Ukraine. But Russia is branded with this because white folk live there. What about all the Muslims in Russia, many of which have come from Central Asia? What about all the Asians in Eastern Russia? The quoted statement is born of either ignorance, misinformation or disinformation. ..."
"... Unfortunately for Soros (and fortunately for the entire planet) the Russian government realised the cancerous nature of Soros backed NGOs, and took the proper preventative measures which in hindsight, and after reviewing the DC Leaks memos, proved to be a very wise move. ..."
"... Crowdstrike is the only source of evidence of Russian hacking of DNC. And Crowdstrike had to walk it back when they used the exact same evidence to claim that Russia had hacked Ukraine's artillery. That is likely why DNC refused to let FBI run forensics on their servers. ..."
"... negotiable convictions ..."
"... This is the mental equivalent of the sunk cost fallacy. At this point the media, the Dems and legions of David Brock led trolls have invested so much time and energy into "Muh Russia" that they can't write off their investment. ..."
"... Keep going. You're doing fine. It's down there somewhere. You can endure another season of Persist, the payoff is right around the corner. There is nothing more important right now than ignoring inconvenient facts. ..."
"... Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, is a highly regarded email security system that can be used to independently authenticate the contents and sender of an email that uses it. ..."
"... argumentum ad ignorantium ..."
"... argumentum ad ignorantiam ..."
"... Feffer says that progressives don't take Russiagate as seriously as they should. I think critical thinkers are taking it very seriously, because of potential censorship of dissenting voices that favor peace over war, and that favor productive social spending over wasteful military spending. ..."
"... Even absent such concerns, the Russiagate hysteria is obviously a partisan power struggle that sucks the air out of the room for productive political discourse to address real social, economic, and environmental problems. ..."
"... So, the 13 incitements, in addition to keeps the Russian narrative alive for another few weeks, is providing political cover for the establishment to clean house as it were, and clear out the Progressive infestation threatening to cripple the money train the establishment has become accustomed too. ..."
"... democracy in the USA is broken. ..."
"... when 10s of thousands of soldiers would be sent somewhere for an extended period ..."
"... Historically speaking, America peaked at the moon landing. ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

XXX February 20, 2018 at 4:19 pm

I find this question, in light of Real News (quite missing from the American landscape) and Real History (likewise), rather tedious and specious.

Time doesn't allow me to go on for more pages, plus this site has a word limit.

todde , February 20, 2018 at 12:43 pm

The whole of American politics is nothing but 'sowing discord'. The only thing that holds the two parties together is the hatred shared for the 'other party'.

Again, if election laws were broken, arrest, try, convict and imprison the perpetrators. Lots of money gets spent sowing discord during the elections. I'm not concerned one bit about the drop in the bucket spent by the Russians

Anon , February 20, 2018 at 12:46 pm

So this is more about Americans and their political intelligence than Russia and its intelligence. Trolls bringing down the Merican political system is theatre of the absurd. How many people died, again?

Buck Eschaton , February 20, 2018 at 1:44 pm

What I find truly amazing is that Hillary Clinton had over a billion dollars to provide me with reasons to vote for her. I was searching for anything.

It was obvious to every one that she was a hard-core neo-liberal and hard-core neo-conservative. All she offered was "America is already great!!!" A billion dollars and all she could provide was insults and paranoia.

sgt_doom , February 20, 2018 at 4:25 pm

And people still don't know that as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, she attended those rightwing prayer breakfasts at the Bush White House; belonged to rightwing, imperialistic/military organizations, and had an uncle, Wade Rodham, who was a member of the US Secret Service's presidential protection unit during the Kennedy Administration.

Not to mention those fundraisers thrown by Lady Rothschild at Martha's Vineyard for HRC.

And so it goes . . .

OldBear , February 20, 2018 at 4:47 pm

She had over a billion dollars to tell me that she was for universal health care.

She not only didn't tell you (or me) that she was for it, she angrily yelled that it "would never, ever come to pass!"

Expat , February 20, 2018 at 6:17 pm

This is not about Clinton. It's about Russia and the Trump campaign. Hillary lost and thank God. We should ban any spouses, children or grandchildren from holding elected office of any kind.

But turning this into a Democrat or Hillary thing is wrong. If there is something there, then the investigation might find it. If not, we have already grabbed up some arch-criminals in the persons of Gates and Manafort. So that is a already justification enough. Frankly, all the talk of costs is also a lie. Manafort's milllions will be seized. Russiagate will turn out to be profitable!

Michael Fiorillo , February 20, 2018 at 7:28 pm

So, if I have a heart attack, based on my obesity, poor diet and alcoholism, I should immediately blame the background radiation in my basement?

Most of the "attacks" Lobel referred to were traditional white propaganda by the likes of RT, which are invariably conflated with, first, Trump/Putin collusion, and since that puppy died, Russian "attacks" on our exceptional democracy.

Assume every hyper-ventilating charge by Mueller to be true, and magnify it fifty-fold; it's still bupkis in the toxic and corrupt stew that is US politics.

A classic case of misdirection, served up and serving the converging interests of a variety of players: neo-cons and defense contractors wet for a new Cold War with Russia, the Clinton/Obama wing of the Democratic Party desperate to use this to distract from their catastrophic political negligence, and factions in the National Security State looking to be rehabilitated in the eyes of media and liberal elites.

Big River Bandido , February 20, 2018 at 9:23 pm

This entire tempest (in a teapot) only gained legs because Hillary Clinton is congenitally unable to accept responsibility for her own mistakes.

What started out as merely a convenient way to distract the public from the embarrassing and politically crippling *leak* of her own internal emails (the actual content of which no one in Clintonland or the media ever protested) has, over the last 18 months, devolved into a swampland of denial and fantasy which has engulfed the Democrats.

lyman alpha blob , February 20, 2018 at 1:46 pm

So you must be the one who has the actual evidence that any of this was financed by the Russian government. Please do post it and enlighten us all. Then please forward it to the DNC – if they know the type of bang for their buck they can get for just $1000 maybe they'll stop sending the rest of us so many emails begging for money.

Clif , February 20, 2018 at 2:50 pm

Kevin-it seems to me you presume your conclusion when you say 'This is not the case. A foreign..' What's your source? What long history, the internet came around in early 90's, I'm old but that's not that long ago. And seriously, millions of impressions when Trump rallies were chanting "lock her up" you don't think word had gotten around or you don't think any Americans would think of that without foreign assistance.

Your tone of confidence betrays credibility.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 20, 2018 at 4:38 pm

The World Wide Web went live in 1991. The "internet" has become a catchall term for the WWW, but there were previous proto-internets including the Internet. "Kevin" isn't on the ball clearly. "Sow dissent" is pretty much code for how upset he was that "Dear Mother" didn't have a coronation.

Harry , February 20, 2018 at 3:45 pm

"A foreign government employed copy editors to sow dissent in American politics by way of Twitter, Facebook, online advertising and a network of blogs." Er, citation? I read the indictment. It doesn't say that.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 20, 2018 at 4:06 pm

"to sow dissent in American politics "

Can you possibly explain this? If the political system can suffer from a few internet memes, the problem is the state of American politics.

Is the country really this childish? The whole country is founded on dissent. Have you ever seen those bumper stickers about "Well behaved women not making history"? Do you not see the problem with your issue.

We aren't discussing arming paramilitary groups or rousing violence. We are discussing a social media click bait farm in an indictment presented by Bob Mueller, who's greatest hits include torture, lying about WMDs in Iraq, rounding up Muslims, entrapment, and the Anthrax farce. I would probably start with a prosecutor with a shred of credibility outside of the circles where Joe Scarborough is respected.

The worst part is the "OMG Russia" frauds are going to shout so much that nothing will be done about gun control or any other calamity, but I bet the Pentagon will get more money for another failed weapon system.

oh , February 20, 2018 at 8:15 pm

Mueller's greatest hits are still in the Top Forty Charts everywhere, albeit covertly.

Oregoncharles , February 20, 2018 at 5:07 pm

What Russian government? It was a commercial operation posting click bait, of all sorts, to sell ads. And yes, that's the explanation that fits the facts best. If Putin was really bankrolling it, no evidence so far, he was wasting his money. From our point of view, a good thing.

will_f , February 20, 2018 at 5:19 pm

A foreign government employed copy editors to sow dissent in American politics by way of Twitter, Facebook, online advertising and a network of blogs.

There is no proof that this troll farm was acting on behalf of any government.

In one example, for a mere $1000 or so, Russians were able to get American citizens to build a fake jail cell on a trailer complete with actors to play Hillary, Bill and Trump.

Right, no republican ever made an offensive parade float before the Russians came along.

Jim Haygood , February 20, 2018 at 12:02 pm

NYT headline today:

Russian Bots Moved Quickly to Exploit the Florida Shooting. By SHEERA FRENKEL and DAISUKE WAKABAYASHI

What ever happened to good old made-in-USA trolls? *sniff* Facebook, Google and Twitter are a global sandbox get used to it.

blennylips , February 20, 2018 at 4:58 pm

>What ever happened to good old made-in-USA trolls? *sniff*

Did you miss yesterday's links? About the google patent? Essentially a troll-bot to fake FB posts, ie, a BernaysBot, as american as you cant get!

Google files patent for robot that writes your Facebook posts, emails and tweets

It's a bit like stuxnet, or the tool chest the Equation Group lost control of: We invent it and then lose control of it.

Besides, we do so much election meddling that it had to be automated!

Montanamaven , February 20, 2018 at 5:01 pm

I fear Lambert is right and that the DNC will hyjack the Florida High School students anti-gun movement and make it serve their purposes. Not Russians bots to fear.

marym , February 20, 2018 at 5:18 pm

Actually saw someone (somebot? sometroll?) get called out on twitter today for doing the Russia! thing and not the US people who actually believe whatever the issue was. I think it's the first time I've seen that. Maybe the last too, but still for a moment there

Elizabeth Burton , February 20, 2018 at 7:01 pm

Yes, those nasty Russians were stirring up conflict by using hashtags calling for gun control. Bad Russians! Bad!

integer , February 20, 2018 at 7:42 pm

All Russian bot claims appear to originate from the same group of warmongers and their highly flawed Hamilton 68 Dashboard project: McCarthyism Inc.: Terror Cranks Sold America the Russia Panic Truthdig

[The Alliance for Securing Democracy's] researchers and advisors have become go-to pundits for mainstream reporters seeking expert opinions on Russian online meddling. They have been endorsed by John Podesta, the founder of the Center for American Progress and chief of staff for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign. Julia Ioffe, the Atlantic's Russia correspondent, has also weighed in to promote the ASD's efforts. Both highlighted the ASD's Hamilton 68 Dashboard as a scientific barometer of Kremlin influence over the American social media landscape

However, an investigation by AlterNet's Grayzone Project has yielded a series of disturbing findings at odds with the established depiction. The researchers behind the ASD's "dashboard" are no Russia experts, but rather a collection of cranks, counterterror retreads, online harassers and paranoiacs operating with support from some of the most prominent figures operating within the American national security apparatus.

Bill Kristol, among others, is on the so-called Alliance for Securing Democracy's board of advisors.

jsn , February 20, 2018 at 12:06 pm

Our current Powers That Be have never been happy with the legacy of "free speech." It's now, demonstrably, an indictable offense for non-US citizens to engage in it in the US.

And "b" at Moon of Alabama thinks that they've deliberately indicted a bunch of people they don't expect to prosecute (they're all in Russia) in order to have the above "message" on the books for as long as it takes for someone to stage a legal test of it.

Until then it is simple intimidation.

drumlin woodchuckles , February 20, 2018 at 3:17 pm

Here at Sic Semper Tyrannis is a post with a link to the text of the Indictment. When I clicked on the link to the Indictment, I got to see it without any paywall. So here is the link to that SST post. http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/02/the-text-of-the-indictment-of-the-svr-13.html

OldBear , February 20, 2018 at 5:05 pm

If the Russian government actually funded this sort of thing, they must be pretty simple-minded.

For not the first time in recent days, I am reminded of a Dave Barry joke from many years ago, perhaps even before the collapse of the Soviet Union. I don't remember what the column was about; it might have been about comic strips in general, which were his favorites and which ones he didn't care for, etc. He mentioned the strip Nancy and said something like it "was the product of a 70-year Soviet government experimental project to produce a joke."

Anyway, do we even know that it was Russian "government" money financing these things? It was some oligarch who had "ties" to Putin. By the standards used so far in Russiagate reporting, that basically means that he and Putin are both Russian.

RandyM , February 20, 2018 at 10:41 am

It's easy to be skeptical of Russigate. For over a year now the MSM have breathlessly published a steady stream of "evidence" only to have it fall apart. When "progressive skeptics" point this out they're accused of going too far? I think we can all assume the Russian government hasn't been sleeping through the relentless pressure put on it by the West, but hasnt it been obvious that Russiagate is a politically motivated project?

Arizona Slim , February 20, 2018 at 1:34 pm

Toward the end of the book Shattered , there's a passage describing how the Russia! Russia! Russia! narrative was planned. This happened in a room full of Shake Shack containers and it involved people from the Clinton campaign.

Peter Pan , February 20, 2018 at 10:41 am

"It's not a surprise that neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups have identified Russia as one of their key allies, in part because Russia is home to so many white people, and that the Putin government has identified these movements of key allies as well."

This is an absolutely ridiculous statement. The Russian Federation is very much against neo-Nazi and white supremacy movements due to what it suffered from Nazi Germany during WWII. Now Russia sees this on it's boarders in Ukraine. But Russia is branded with this because white folk live there. What about all the Muslims in Russia, many of which have come from Central Asia? What about all the Asians in Eastern Russia? The quoted statement is born of either ignorance, misinformation or disinformation.

JTMcPhee , February 20, 2018 at 11:26 am

The 'net says there are maybe 40,000 "blacks" living in Russia. Also reports a wide variety of experiences and opinions on what it's like to be a black (actually, of course, various shades of skin tones from dark olive to golden russety shades of brown, to near obsidian with hints of blue, but lumped together as "black," like I am a "white" even though my skin tones range from pinky yellow [soles and palms] to a light tannish cream [most of the rest]), living and traveling in Russia. One bit of the discourse: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/15/black-in-the-ussr-whats-life-like-for-a-russian-of-colour

I'm reminded of Dick Gregory's observation on America, that as to whites and blacks, "Down South, they don't care how close you (African-Americans) get, as long as you don't get too big. Up North, they don't care how big you get, as long as you don't get too close."

Russia is a big place, with some 143 million people living within the geographic boundaries. Nativism and related notions seem present in any population anywhere, whether deeply held convictions or convenient ladder rungs to political and economic power. It's so hard to develop any completeness and accuracy in understanding what's really shakin' and doin' in the world when people revert to simplisticated personifications as actual important functional categories. "Russia" is getting the full treatment. Too bad us USians don't use the same lenses and mirrors to examine our own linty navels

JustAnObserver , February 20, 2018 at 1:05 pm

Absolutely right. Russia's dead in WW2 – 20 million (*) is the accepted estimate. I don't think any other nation suffered as badly (+). If anyone on earth knows the evil consequences of fascism, neo-Nazism, racial purism the Russians do. That one single line in Feffer's argument comes squeaky close to invalidating the whole thing.

(*) Strictly the USSR.

(+) Query: Maybe the brutality of the Japanese invasion of Manchuria ?

rd , February 20, 2018 at 1:21 pm

It is estimated that the total deaths in the Soviet Union under Stalin range from 9 to 50 million (book-keeping was their forte), including famines but not including death by the Germans.

Mao's policies are believed to have resulted in 40 to 70 million deaths in China.

War is bad. Sometimes peace can be worse.

Clif , February 20, 2018 at 3:04 pm

strange that good book keeping has a margin of error of 5 fold?

NotTimothyGeithner , February 20, 2018 at 4:34 pm

Not really. The German sympathizers and later defectors who just wanted out couldn't all claim to be rocket scientists. A factory worker who just wanted to drive a big car and live in McClean has to come up with a story worth paying for.

There was a cottage industry of tall tales for Stalin's personal use/entertainment. I don't think the later defectors are an issue, but powerful people helped facilitate the arrival of too many people with missing records and German accents who weren't in a rush to go to Israel to not be a political problem.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/09/canadas-foreign-minister-says-russia-is-spreading-disinformation-about-her-grandfather/?utm_term=.b8c691c10933

The former Canadian foreign minister's grandfather was a collaborator. How did he get to the West? He probably told a tall enough tale. Someone could make their career with that kind of information coup. What happens if its discovered it was a run of the mill Nazi that was helped by a now powerful person?

The U.S. actually sent out people to look for Hitler in South America, not escaped war criminals but Adolph, himself. The U.S. is a paranoid society. Someone was giving tips, and reason would pretty much dictate the Soviets weren't stopping until they finished the job.

Its similar to how many people Caesar killed in Gaul, not that he didn't kill a great deal of people, but after a while, it comes back to there not being that many people.

drumlin woodchuckles , February 20, 2018 at 9:06 pm

Here is a Rigorous Intuition post about the CIA's importation of Nazis into post WWII America . . . . more about the reasons for it than a lot of details about the whole scope of all the operations . . . all the ratlines, all the paperclips, all the etc.

http://rigorousintuition.blogspot.com/2006/06/mephistopheles.html

And here is another, this one about Allen Dulles's persistent sympathy for German Fascism with perhaps a little of the smelliest Nazism pressure-washed off of it. It talks about his negotations through various go-betweens with German interlocutors during the early WWII period.

http://rigint.blogspot.com/2007/01/patterns-of-force.html

Donald , February 20, 2018 at 4:56 pm

The larger figures attributed to Stalin are bogus.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2011/03/10/hitler-vs-stalin-who-killed-more/

He killed millions, but people in the modern era are as prone to using figures as metaphors as medieval historians.

sgt_doom , February 20, 2018 at 4:26 pm

And what was the historical figure of Nazi soldiers killed by the Russkies: I believe it was 3 out of every 4?!

lyman alpha blob , February 20, 2018 at 1:52 pm

I'm going with ignorance – the rest of Feffer's arguments were a bunch of bafflegab too.

He's got nothing.

Montanamaven , February 20, 2018 at 5:22 pm

A combination of ignorance and arrogance is annoying and more dangerous than Russian troll farms. I can't believe his stupidity about Russians being Nazis. And of Putin being an Imperialist. If you read Putin's speeches, he is very much a nationalist or patriot. The Bear is in defense mode and trying to protect its huge borders. Putin' s Speech to the UN in 2015 was about "sovereign democracy" i.e. self -determination of a nation. He said they learned from the USSR that you can't and shouldn't spread ideology. Feffer could have a permanent gig on Morning Joe for all the "bafflegab" he spouts.

JerryDenim , February 20, 2018 at 4:02 pm

It's not a particularly well-supported or well-worded statement but it's not ridiculous nor is it without merit. Muslims are a minority group in Russia and not a very popular one. Some particularly barbarous acts of terrorism by various aggrieved groups has done nothing to improve their standing in Russian society. Vladimir Putin's government has actively cultivated various domestic ethno-nationalist astro-turf movements with fascist predilections for some time. It is believed that Putin sees these groups as a bulwark against liberal, western ideology that can be weaponized as CIA sponsored color revolutions or MeToo# type identity politic movements. Knowing what I know about the United States and post-Cold War US political meddling, I can't say I blame Putin for wanting a bulwark.

I remember years ago watching a documentary about a state-funded ultra-nationalist Putin youth group called "Nashi". They staged pro-Putin rallies, hosted summer camps and would organize free skin-head metal concerts with complimentary vodka and private tents for appropriately "Russian" ( not muslim and definitely not brown) couples to patriotically procreate in the service of the fatherland. You can call these state-sponsored groups of young Russian ethno-nationalists whatever you want, but neo-nazi doesn't seem too unfair if you're familiar with the ideological history and psychological undercurrents of National Socialism.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nashi_(youth_movement)

I don't believe Russia hacked any DNC servers, hijacked our elections or flipped any votes, but I don't doubt for a minute that Russia is actively sowing discord and disinformation among the American body politic. I believe the ultimate goal is the political disintegration, or at least paralysis of the United States as payback for the disintegration of the USSR and Warsaw Pact. I've heard Putin make sly statements over the years where if you read between the lines this goal is discernible through his thinly veiled remarks and his smoldering anger at the US for it's continued aggression against Russian influence and territory post-1989. Years before the 2016 election I remember reading reporting of how the modern Texas secessionist movement was nothing more than Moscow funded astro-turf. I have no doubts the "Cal-Exit" campaign that sprung up right after the election (and ironically supported by the exact same people most worried about Russian influence) was chiefly organized and funded by professional Russian propagandists as well.

I don't believe the hysterical, McCarthyist media narrative concerning the election and Russia, but I am also skeptical of absolutist, overarching narratives to the contrary. Putin is no dummy, he's not a pacifist, and he definitely views the US as a threat/adversary. None of that means Russian needs to be treated as an enemy or that diplomacy could not result in a mutually beneficial accommodation for both countries. The world is complicated and becoming emotionally invested in overly simplistic narratives, even contrarian ones, is unwise.

ChrisPacific , February 20, 2018 at 4:04 pm

I just about choked when I read this bit:

my major concern is its support for far right-wing nationalist and frankly, racist movements around the world, including here in the United States.

What does he think Ms. Nuland and her friends were up to in Ukraine? Other than a few bits like that, Feffer does seem to be at least somewhat grounded in reality (contrast his comments with the quote from Dan Coats). He thinks Russiagate had little to do with Trump, for example, and was just targeted at spreading confusion in general. That alone would get him branded as a heretic by the true believers.

Mo's Bike Shop , February 20, 2018 at 8:19 pm

I quit reading shortly after that. TV/Video is just awful at policy discussions. The stupid factoid barrages. I feel dumber just for reading this conversation, I suppose that's the point.

zagonostra , February 20, 2018 at 10:59 am

Take a look at the online cover of the NYT and tell me this whole Russiagate canard hasn't gone off the rail? https://zagonostra.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/opinon/

flora , February 20, 2018 at 1:17 pm

Great examples of how to fill up newspaper columns without doing any real reporting and without rocking any important boats.

Also, from 2013:

For decades, a so-called anti-propaganda law prevented the U.S. government's mammoth broadcasting arm from delivering programming to American audiences. But on July 2, that came silently to an end with the implementation of a new reform passed in January. The result: an unleashing of thousands of hours per week of government-funded radio and TV programs for domestic U.S. consumption in a reform initially criticized as a green light for U.S. domestic propaganda efforts.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/

Thanks, Obama.

Zagonostra , February 20, 2018 at 5:35 pm

Thanks for link Flora, I posted at Zagonostra.

I just started a website to organize all these scattered articles I read on the various sites I visit I need to find where I put the link to an article that outlines the planting of CIA paid journalist in major newspapers

Elizabeth Burton , February 20, 2018 at 7:09 pm

Just do what I do and tell people to research Project Mockingbird. :-) And welcome to the growing club of alternative news site aggregators.

Ur-Blintz , February 20, 2018 at 11:05 am

"There's always one " – Spike Lee

Given the "resistance" and other self-described "progressive" voices who have lost their minds over the election of Donald Trump, one should not be surprised by Feffer's credulity. He may do a better job at hiding it, with his oh-so-civil language, but the desperation coming from partisan believers, who rightly see Trump as dangerous but refuse to go after him for real reasons (first-strike policy in retaliation for cyber attacks, for instance – has a single Democrat gone on record saying how utterly wrong that is? Oh wait, didn't Hillary herself campaign on refusing to rule out the first strike option?) is palpable.

And who can blame them for being desperate?

But I find the notion that Russian "meddling" successfully increased the amount of discord among USians to be.ridiculous. We don't need any help from Russia to be dissatisfied with our polity and the false choices it constantly gives us.

Mate was far too kind. Some people and some ideas don't deserve the benefit of rational debate.

drumlin woodchuckles , February 20, 2018 at 3:22 pm

The "#TheResistance" don't care about Trump's genuine dangers. They care about how he prevented their Jonestown Priestess Clinton from getting coronated Empress as they were all expecting.

There are millions and millions of Jonestown Clintonites. They are a deadly threat and a menace to political improvement in this country. You can get a sample of what they smell like by reading Riverdaughter's blog "The Confluence" and its threads. Put your nose close to the screen and you can smell the Jonestown Punch.

Byron the Light Bulb , February 20, 2018 at 11:17 am

Not since German security services sent VI Lenin back on a sealed train to Petrograd, has one nation fractured the politics of another with cynical support for the deranged.

Disturbed Voter , February 20, 2018 at 12:42 pm

Nice. If the Russian Empire wasn't on the verge of falling apart, it wouldn't have taken the one Lenin domino to topple it all. If the US is on the verge of falling apart people will be blamed, but not the American people, the people who are actually responsible for this sociopathy.

Stormcrow , February 20, 2018 at 11:20 am

Do the Skeptics Go Too Far?

Caitlin Johnstone made a three-part Debunking Russiagate series back in June 2017. Here are all three. I think they hold up pretty well. (They were noted at NC.)

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-russiagate-part-1-7cca3eb88ffa
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-russiagate-part-2-9e4b1dd895e9
https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/debunking-russiagate-part-3-b159aedc9410

Here's her latest.

America's Election Meddling Would Indeed Justify Other Countries Retaliating In Kind
February 20, 2018
https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/20/americas-election-meddling-would-indeed-justify-other-countries-retaliating-in-kind/

The late Robert Parry was also consistently trenchant.
Here is a link to some of his articles. (Many also noted at NC.)

https://www.google.com/search?q=Robert+Parry+russiagate&lr=&hl=en&source=lnt&tbs=qdr:y&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjCkuSC8bTZAhVIA6wKHQCUCFAQpwUIIQ&biw=1849&bih=925

Johnstone and Parry are only two of many incisive skeptics. I am diasppointed in Feffer.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 12:24 pm

goddamn i miss robert parry.

sgt_doom , February 20, 2018 at 4:29 pm

And wasn't it AP who fired Mr. Parry for attempting to publish Real News?

hemeantwell , February 20, 2018 at 2:37 pm

Ian Welsh offered a suggestion http://www.ianwelsh.net/how-to-stop-russian-election-interference/

.From the outside, Americans screaming about this look like a bully screaming, "How dare you do to me what I do to everyone else. I'm going to bury you!" This does not induce sympathy.

Still, we can make a strong case that countries shouldn't interfere in other countries' internal political affairs, including–especially including–elections.

I think that the Russians might be willing to agree to that.

So the sane method of dealing with this issue, to which which virtually everyone will agree, would be to begin negotiations towards that end.

Americans and Russians get together and have frank talks, which amount to a peace treaty: We won't do it to you, if you don't do it to us.

They might even extend that to not doing it to other countries.

This is the actual road out, though it seems laughable because it's really impossible to imagine. Both the US and Russia have been interfering in many countries for a long time, though America is the champion of the last 30 years or so, and by a wide margin.

Bittercup , February 20, 2018 at 5:59 pm

Russia has been arguing for just that -- a cyberwar peace treaty -- for almost a decade now. Here's a 2009 write-up , which is really quite interesting in a hindsight-y way.

"We really believe it's defense, defense, defense," said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified because authorization had not been given to speak on the record. "They [the Russians] want to constrain offense. We needed to be able to criminalize these horrible 50,000 attacks we were getting a day."

Carolinian , February 20, 2018 at 11:20 am

Feffer's argument boiled down

I find the narrative that's been put forward to be honestly more convincing than the counter narrative

We're supposed to be convinced because he's convinced. It's a gut feeling. Appeals to actual evidence bounce right off. Guess I don't get out much but had to look up who John Feffer even is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Feffer

The latest M of A–linked here the other day–is a great takedown of Mueller's troll farm allegation. Some of us prefer a little evidence prior to being "convinced."

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html#more

integer , February 20, 2018 at 12:52 pm

As noted on his Wikipedia page, and his own website, Feffer is/was a fellow at Open Societies Foundations. The incontinent George Soros hates Russia:

Leaked memo shows how George Soros planned to overthrow Vladimir Putin and destabilise Russia The Duran

Russia is Soros' white whale a creature he has been trying to capture and kill-off for nearly a decade.

Unfortunately for Soros (and fortunately for the entire planet) the Russian government realised the cancerous nature of Soros backed NGOs, and took the proper preventative measures which in hindsight, and after reviewing the DC Leaks memos, proved to be a very wise move.

integer , February 20, 2018 at 1:08 pm

From commenter danny j at TRNN:

Crowdstrike is the only source of evidence of Russian hacking of DNC. And Crowdstrike had to walk it back when they used the exact same evidence to claim that Russia had hacked Ukraine's artillery. That is likely why DNC refused to let FBI run forensics on their servers.

Feffer claims to oppose Cold War II, but is actively promoting it. Russiagate is being used to silence progressives. Note that both Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein are named in Mueller's indictment as beneficiaries of the alleged "Russian meddling" in our election. BTW: Feffer is a Fellow at Open Society, a NGO financed by George Soros who also funds the Atlantic Council, whose board includes the owner of Crowdstrike. So Feffer and Crowdstrike are both funded by the same oligarch.

Watt4Bob , February 20, 2018 at 1:15 pm

Feffer strikes me as a man of ' negotiable convictions '.

shinola , February 20, 2018 at 11:29 am

Lions and tigers and Russian bears, oh my!

So, it appears that some Russians may have used social media to try and sway the US elections in a direction more favorable to their own interests.

If that gets your panties in a wad, then hang onto your hat because I've some shocking news for you: Ice is cold & fire is hot!

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 11:54 am

and most of whatever it was came after the election, not sure how that worked.

Bill Smith , February 20, 2018 at 12:39 pm

The Soviets and now the Russians have been messing about with the US for 70 years. Nothing new about it. Read "The Sword and the Shield" which is sourced from the KGB archives when they were briefly opened to the west after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Things are just easier now than then. "The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the the Third World" is also sourced from the KGB archives has details about what they did then.

The US messed with the Soviet Union and Russia when they could. See the stories about Yeltsin's reelection. Or the Ukraine in 2014.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:15 pm

this was reportedly a commercial venture. still awaiting evidence that the election was in any way affected by some online scam that may have originated in russia. the us has interfered, as you point out, much more effectively in russia. other countries do it to us, but there is no evidence that russia effected clinton's loss to trump, or colluded in effecting it.

lyman alpha blob , February 20, 2018 at 2:00 pm

A commercial venture, as opposed to David Brock's pro-Clinton paid trolls which was definitely not a commercial venture and designed solely to influence the election. Also illegal by the way but he's a Murican so who cares?

Loblolly , February 20, 2018 at 11:45 am

This is the mental equivalent of the sunk cost fallacy. At this point the media, the Dems and legions of David Brock led trolls have invested so much time and energy into "Muh Russia" that they can't write off their investment.

Keep going. You're doing fine. It's down there somewhere. You can endure another season of Persist, the payoff is right around the corner. There is nothing more important right now than ignoring inconvenient facts.

I might suggest that things would go faster if you give up just a little more of your critical thinking skills. To be honest they just get in the way at times like these when the narrative gets tenuous.

Roquentin , February 20, 2018 at 11:46 am

No one outside of the Dem party faithful really cares about the Russiagate nonsense. The rest of the world has watched the US meddle in and outright rig elections in more countries than I have the time to list for decades, a list with very ironically includes Russia in 1996. If a troll factory is the best they have, it's a straight up joke. They better have more to go along with it, because as it stands now buying a few ads and paying people to post online, standard PR practice, is incredibly weak. At this stage in the game, it feels kind of pathetic, an attempt by a party elite still unable to admit they lost, grasping at straws and still in this late hour desperately trying to make it seem like Hillary was the rightful winner.

It also, not coincidentally, works to taint the criticism of anyone, right or left, who disagrees. Not only that, it further casts doubt on all news sources which aren't the Democrat party approved corporate sources, another bonus. One could make a good case this was the goal all along: absolve themselves for bungling the 2016 election and discredit any information sources they don't control lock, stock, and barrel.

Jim Haygood , February 20, 2018 at 2:05 pm

'The rest of the world has watched the US meddle in and outright rig elections in more countries than I have the time to list.'

Not only has the US been hollering "regime change" since the infamous neocon Project for a New American Century began in 1997, it actually invaded and plundered several countries -- Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan -- for the express purpose of replacing their governments with US-backed ones.

Check out ex-CIA douchebag James Woolsey making weird barnyard noises when MSM anchorette Laura Ingraham asks him whether "we" still meddle in other countries' elections, before admitting on the record that it's "only for a very good cause" [yuk, yuk]

https://tinyurl.com/yded4ugt

With waving arms and hair on fire, Rep. Jerrold Nadler claimed on MSNBC that the Russian troll farm is "the equivalent of Pearl Harbor." If special snowflake America's democracy is so fragile that a bunch of amateurish Boris & Natasha trolls can bring it down, then let it bleed [and share the Stoli, comrades].

shinola , February 20, 2018 at 3:36 pm

" If special snowflake America's democracy is so fragile that a bunch of amateurish Boris & Natasha trolls can bring it down, then let it bleed [and share the Stoli, comrades]."

I like that framing. I am so gonna steal it.

FluffytheObeseCat , February 20, 2018 at 2:10 pm

Your second paragraph is I think all that matters at this point. The Russian trolls (who are probably still active online, albeit with less vigor) are pikers compared to the native manipulators who swarm the 'liberal' ring of our 2-ring media circus. The latter are devoted to squelching dissent, and unconcerned about sounding like idiots while they do it. Of course the only people they are aiming to shame are waverers on their 'own side'. Republican flyover types are unpeople in their eyes; their target audience is pretty select -- mainly those who don't want to be out of place among the youthful hipster elite. I.e. former Sanderistas who might pay attention to establishment Democrat perfidy if the noise machine stops howling for a second.

I'd love to know where these frantic fellows were when the New York Times comments sections were overtaken by Correct the Record trolls 2 years ago. That Brockian anti-Sanders effort was more effective and Orwellian than anything they've since tagged as Russia-generated. So much of the furor now seems to be coming from men who fear they may be getting bested at their own game!

drumlin woodchuckles , February 20, 2018 at 3:29 pm

"Tainting the criticism" of anyone who disagrees is the primary mid-range goal of the Russiagate Information Operation. The long range goal is to pass Patriot Act type laws to suppress and control all expression on all media; digital, analog or other.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 11:53 am

feffer keeps saying "who hacked the dnc" but there is no evidence anybody did. it's like the repeated assertions made about saddam's "wmd's" in the runup to iraq 2.

False Solace , February 20, 2018 at 1:19 pm

Timestamps on the DNC data show the files were copied locally, not over a network. That means they were leaked. Not hacked. Leaked by someone with physical access to the data. This came out back in July . Maybe Mate isn't "convinced" but I haven't seen anything, ever, that convincingly refutes the analysis.

So if someone wants me to believe in Russiagate they need to show me some damn evidence. I'm not going to believe something simply because every flexian apparatchik in the press parrots it 24/7 (90% of whom were in the tank for Hillary and personally devastated when she lost and more than happy to blame evil foreigners for how they called the election wrong). What we're seeing is a serious mental breakdown on the part of Democrats. What happened to these people? Back when GWB was in office they were supposedly the party of reality, the rational people who didn't make things up to justify a convenient war. It appears that only lasted as long as elections went in their favor. Now we see them for the dishonest hysterical fantasists they really are. Just like Republicans.

So where does that leave us? At the dawn of a Second Cold War with a psychopathic party on either side. Well, that's just awesome.

Bill Smith , February 20, 2018 at 5:39 pm

How do we know that the time stamps where created on the DNC's computer and not some other computer later on? It's easy to change the date backwards and make those time stamps be anything.

blennylips , February 20, 2018 at 8:57 pm

I had occasion to view a Podesta email recently: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/11409 Big banner across the top: This email has also been verified by Google DKIM 2048-bit RSA key. Like a blockchain transaction, this DKIM algo was designed to prove cryptographically that you are viewing what existed when the user clicked send.

Click on the DKIM link in that banner for a full explanation.

Domain Keys Identified Mail, or DKIM, is a highly regarded email security system that can be used to independently authenticate the contents and sender of an email that uses it.

JTMcPhee , February 20, 2018 at 8:46 pm

Some folks just can't keep themselves from pushing the Narrative. I wonder how many of those people have been involved in "interfering with elections," as part of the Great American Enterprise

Just for a little fun, here's a list of actual "interference" done by the good old US of C.I.A, attempts and actual overthrows of various governments, including democratically elected ones: http://theduran.com/list-of-foreign-governments-overthrown-by-the-cia-is-massive/

DJG , February 20, 2018 at 12:03 pm

Yves Smith: You yourself have written that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What we are getting is flimsy hearsay and calls for war. It is all Remember the Maine (and don't remember that the Democrats, in particular, brought this on themselves).

Feffer's typical in not being able to keep control of the simplest of facts:
"It's not a surprise that neo-Nazi groups and white supremacy groups have identified Russia as one of their key allies, in part because Russia is home to so many white people, and that the Putin government has identified these movements of key allies as well."

So now Russia is the international source of white people? What can this possibly mean? And don't tell the Volga Tatars or the Mari or the Yakuts or any of the many peoples who aren't "white" by U.S. standards. (Many of the Mari are among the last pagan Europeans.) The comment is worthy of Sarah Palin, well-known foreign-policy expert and Chunky Monkey shoes fancier.

I am reminded of the Watergate crisis. By all means, let's have indictments for real crimes (besides lying to the FBI) of people who are living within American jurisdictions or can be extradited. Then have a trial(s) with a judge of the quality of John Sirica.

But that isn't what the powerful want, particularly because establishment figures soon will be dragged in. They want confrontation, more looting, and more war. And if we are all suddenly worried about Putin being morally stinky, what should we do with Erdogan, Netanyahu, Viktor Orban of Hungary, Brazilian President Temer, and Aung San Suu Kyi, all of whom are considered "friends" of the U S of A?

And as to sowing discord: Someone should have noticed that 50 years ago with Nixon and the Southern Strategy.

Paul Cardan , February 20, 2018 at 12:05 pm

Seems to me that Maté did just fine. I'm not sure of what else you can do with someone like Feffer. When presented with good reasons for doubting his purported evidence, Feffer pretty much concedes the point every time. But then he insists that he finds the evidence convincing. In other words, he insists that he's going to go on treating it as good evidence, drawing the relevant conclusions, and asserting as much. That means he's a gullible person, and rather dogmatic to boot. Arguing with such people won't get you very far.

I did find Feffer's repeated demand for a counter-narrative interesting. This seems to be a way of simultaneously lowering the bar for knowledge and raising the bar for doubt. He's trying to say that doubt is only reasonable if the skeptic can produce a better theory than the believer. Absent such a theory, doubt isn't reasonable and everyone should believe. In other words, having conceded that the evidence isn't very good by ordinary epistemic standards, he's decided to switch to extra-ordinary standards. Roughly, I think the ordinary standard for doubt goes something like this: I can correctly say I doubt something when I can explain why the supposed evidence doesn't provide sufficient support for the claim in question. I'm not required, as a skeptic, to produce a superior argument for a different, incompatible claim about the same issue.

And now, having written that, it looks to me like Feffer is just engaging in a bit of argumentum ad ignorantium , a fallacy so old they named it in Latin.

Susan the other , February 20, 2018 at 1:48 pm

Exactly. Thank you for this ancient nutshell: argumentum ad ignorantium.

Paul Cardan , February 20, 2018 at 2:13 pm

You're welcome. But I misspelled it: argumentum ad ignorantiam .

Mattski , February 20, 2018 at 3:35 pm

The counter-narrative, IMO, is this: The avaricious and foolhardy Trump wanted to build more onanistic monuments to himself in Moscow, to slurp oysters there and cavort with Russian women. He threatened to upset decades of planning by both Dems and Republicans alike to encircle Russia, expand NATO, and SELL BILLIONS AND BILLIONS WORTH OF ARMS, often to dictators, with kickbacks on the side (legal and illegal) to ours truly. The powers that be in the CIA and FBI decided that intervention was needed, even if the cost was democracy itself. Trump has enough irons in the fire with Russia, enough outstanding loans and dirty dealings, that such a clear-eyed narrative may never get its head above water, but that is as close as we may come to nutshelling it.

witters , February 20, 2018 at 5:26 pm

"That means he's a gullible person, and rather dogmatic to boot. Arguing with such people won't get you very far."

Which also means, surely, that his demand that others who refuse to endorse his gullible dogmatism must meet "extra-ordinary epistemic demands" is – at best – mere sounding off. For who could be a worse pick for assessing both the required standards and their being met?

I think the kindest thing to say here, epistemically, is that the man is in a terrible mess. It is a sad thing to see. But then there are a lot of sad things to see in the "progressive reality-based community" today.

Paul Cardan , February 20, 2018 at 8:05 pm

Makes me wonder what's to be done about it. When I hit upon the idea that he's just arguing from ignorance, I started thinking about informal logic courses, the ones called Critical Thinking hereabouts. Perhaps more of those would help.

By the way, I was talking with a colleague who does Ancient yesterday, specifically the philosophy of Socrates, and I mentioned the question you raised about the Noble Lie. He told me that it's quite similar to a myth recounted by Hesiod. That was news to me. He also said that Greek colonists, prior to departure, would settle on a constitution for the new city together with a founding myth. As for the bit about the whole of one's childhood having been a dream, he guessed that this was a story that was intended to be told repeatedly, to successive generations. Now, the first generation was unlikely to believe, granted. But later generations would believe it of the first , the founding generation. He noted that this would be quite similar to what a number of native American peoples believed about the first of their kind. Oh, and one more thing occurred to me: earth mother goddess myths were common to the region back then, dating back at least to the Minoan civilization. Altogether, to me this makes the Myth of Metals seem a good deal more plausible relative to the people for whom it was intended.

This also makes me think that education in the humanities could be part of the solution to widespread credulity and dogmatism. Studying Plato can, for instance, inoculate against myth, something which is still with us. Knowing myth when you see it, it's possible to appreciate it without being taken in. There's much to be gained, too, from thinking like Thucydides from time to time. It's good to recall that both Sparta and Athens claimed to be fighting for freedom. And every time I hear about how we're going to use better, more powerful tools to finally vanquish the things we find most threatening, whether those things are "enemy" states or tactics (terrorism) or catastrophic ecological processes that we have ourselves set in motion, I can't help but recall Lucretius' account of what happened when bulls and boars and lions were trained up for war and loosed upon the enemy. "Don't believe what I've just told you about all this," he says, "for no one would be so foolish as to think they could ever really control such beasts." I don't often use the word, but there's wisdom here, or so it seems to me. We'd profit from knowing it. But, by and large, we don't.

JohnnyGL , February 20, 2018 at 12:32 pm

If I take my young kids and have an easter egg hunt with those plastic eggs and tell them that there's candy inside, and they keep finding them, opening them and there's just candy wrappers with no candy, then my kids are going to quickly grow tired of looking for the eggs since they're not delivering the promised candy.

This is what Russiagate feels like. We keep finding eggs, getting excited, then, no candy. But we're told to keep at it .eventually SOME of those eggs will have some candy. Other people who are really good at finding eggs have said they found some eggs with candy in them, even though we know they're habitual liars.

Feffer and the others who believe in this story are going to need some SERIOUS F-ING CANDY at this point to justify this unshakable belief they have that THERE IS CANDY SOMEWHERE IN THESE STUPID, PLASTIC EASTER EGGS!?!?!?!

Mo's Bike Shop , February 20, 2018 at 9:06 pm

I won't get my hopes up, some people like that kind of thing. The internet can always bring them together. /oi

John Merryman , February 20, 2018 at 12:32 pm

It reminds me of that iceberg that broke off Antarctica last year. The enormity and extent of the hypocrisy and global delusion it represents. If anyone wants to understand the level of breakdown, consider the amount of debt being issued today. That is the real source of cognitive dissonance.

Susan the other , February 20, 2018 at 1:58 pm

I certainly agree. When politics gets this chaotic and confusing there is some far more important hidden agenda being guarded by a "bodyguard of lies." The turn of this century will go down in history as the beginning of the energy wars. When the stakes are this high everybody pretends to be innocent. My knowledge is scant – I assume Russia's lifeblood is natural gas and LNG and they want to sell it to Europe. We claim Europe as our URally and do not want this to happen. Unless we can strong arm our way into some of the action. To that end we have been pushing US natural gas/LNG exports regardless of the expense and short returns of fracking. The dead silence on global warming and the energy crisis should be the first give-away.

Clive , February 20, 2018 at 3:48 pm

A hugely important point which is seldom ever if ever covered in the media here (umm scratching his head, I wonder if it could be for any particular reason) -- Europe is highly dependent on natural gas from Russia. We're forecast to have a big, late cold sna p and suddenly everyone starts getting a little twitchy about energy security.

Of course, us gas consumers here (well, our governments, anyway) resent their dependence and the self-loathing which it engenders. But that dependence in fact increases geopolitical security because neither "side" wants to do anything which upsets the energy apple cart.

Shale gas and LNG exports from the US threatens this equilibrium. But there's no economic (cost of production) advantage for US shale gas over pipeable Russian gas. Wouldn't it be nice for the US shale gas industry if, oh, I don't know, there were some shenanigans which gave a voice to anti-Russia sentiment and a clamour for, maybe eventually, economic sanctions?

Cynical, moi?

Elizabeth Burton , February 20, 2018 at 7:23 pm

And during the last cold snap in the US, several tankers full of Russian LNG made port here to make up a shortage. So, having prohibited Europe from buying Russian gas in favor of importing the US version, we ended up not having enough for our own people and got it from Russia.

The farce be with you.

Rob P , February 20, 2018 at 12:37 pm

>We have the report from the intelligence community here in the United States that provides at least a trail. It's been challenged, but I find the narrative that's been put forward to be honestly more convincing than the counter narrative.

I agree that the 'Russia hacked the DNC' theory is more likely to be true than any other individual theory, although there still isn't any hard proof available to the public. But that's hardly a good defense of 'Russiagate'. Not having a better suspect isn't really a justification for sanctioning Russia (or more, if the Russiagaters get their way).

voteforno6 , February 20, 2018 at 1:19 pm

I disagree that the report provides a trail. It lists a number of APTs that conducted the hacking, and states that they are tied to Russia. However, it provides zero underlying evidence that the hacking was conducted by those APTs, and that they were related to Russia in any way.

Another possibility is that, yes, Russia did hack the DNC for intelligence-gathering purposes, but didn't provide the emails to WikiLeaks. It's entirely possible that more than one entity hacked into them (if anyone did at all). As flimsy as the narrative is with Russia doing the hack, it's even thinner when it comes to transmitting the emails to Russia.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:59 pm

thanks for this summary. just more assertions sans evidence from the people that brought you the iraq war (republicans and democrats, working together like the harlem globetrotters and the washington (hmm) generals.

False Solace , February 20, 2018 at 1:27 pm

That's like saying the most popular theory is correct, on the basis that it's the most popular. Truth doesn't work that way. Supply some evidence. Otherwise you're operating on the basis of what feels true. "Truthiness", not truth.

Why did the FBI never examine the server?
Why do the timestamps show the data was copied locally by someone with physical access to the machine?
Why did the NSA decline to back the whitepaper when we know they have every single network intercept and can literally prove what happened?

All we have is a bunch of handwaving and people who don't know much about computers repeating things they heard from people with a track record of lying.

JohnnyGL , February 20, 2018 at 12:42 pm

I think it's worth looking at the Russia-gate believers, on this. If they all agreed on one narrative, that'd be something, but they don't even agree among themselves, which I'd argue is actually really problematic.

I may be off on one or more of the details above, but all of these "serious" believers in Russia-gate don't even agree with one another.

I'm growing increasingly tired of watching Aaron Mate disembowel these people one-by-one but I'd agree it needs to be done because this story just .won't .go .away .

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 12:47 pm

it's like global warming deniers, they often take contradictory positions in coming to the preordained conclusion that it isn't happening.

JohnnyGL , February 20, 2018 at 1:24 pm

Exactly .I've heard

Climate change is real, but not caused by humans .not real ..real, but caused by solar activity .real, but planet is getting colder and risking new ice age .maybe real, but don't have enough evidence .

almost like it's an organized campaign to spread DIS-information?!?!?!?

Mo's Bike Shop , February 20, 2018 at 9:20 pm

If anyone has a fun link to someone trying to tackle where the secret volcanoes spewing CO2 are, I'd appreciate it. Because it's become a meme-earworm to me: "Which volcanoes?!?"

FluffytheObeseCat , February 20, 2018 at 2:35 pm

The people you've mentioned are not perfectly mainstream. At least they were not until quite recently. They are members of the (formerly) 'left' wing blogosphere. A group that contains many natural contrarians, who each have cultivated slightly different views of things over the years.

Although they sure seem pretty lockstep now, on this matter, don't they? I suspect most of them cannot not allow themselves to accept why it is that a skank like Trump was elected. The 'left' blogosphere was completely neutered over the past decade, and it's leading lights now have little value to add to anyone's thinking on current affairs.

HotFlash , February 20, 2018 at 3:47 pm

Perhaps they are applying for the gravy train?

Dwight , February 20, 2018 at 12:44 pm

Feffer says that progressives don't take Russiagate as seriously as they should. I think critical thinkers are taking it very seriously, because of potential censorship of dissenting voices that favor peace over war, and that favor productive social spending over wasteful military spending.

Even absent such concerns, the Russiagate hysteria is obviously a partisan power struggle that sucks the air out of the room for productive political discourse to address real social, economic, and environmental problems.

How seriously to take Russiagate is a separate question from skepticism over evidence we have yet to be shown. The bigger question that Feffer doesn't address is "So what?" Even if the facts stated in the 3-agency report and the DOJ indictment are true, do they really justify all this hysteria?

If the Russian state is actually interfering in our elections, then quietly take measures to stop it. Instead, over the past 15 years, the federal government has promoted hackable computers and voting systems.

Moreover, even if the Russian state did interfere for geopolitical goals, treat it as the actions of an adversary and quietly take countermeasures. This should not be a political issue.

The Russiagate narrative has gone far beyond authentic reaction to Russia's actions, which many experts such as Cohen and Mearsheimer consider to be reactions to NATO actions.

Feffer's concern is that Putin and Trump are colluding to promote white supremacy. That's his big picture, and would be concerning if true. However, even if true that doesn't address the concerns I raise above.

sgt_doom , February 20, 2018 at 4:32 pm

Would recommend a recently published book by investigative journalist, Michele McPhee: Maximum Harm: The Tsarnaev Brothers, the FBI, and the Road to the Marathon Bombing. Highly recommended

moving left , February 20, 2018 at 5:11 pm

All good points, Dwight. We need to separate the discussion/investigation of Russian influence from the ridiculous and dangerous hyperbolic reaction to it. We need to take steps to make the election process fair and transparent and un-hackable as far as possible (paper ballots, hand-counted) as much or more for domestic reasons. I care far more about voter suppression (legal and illegal) and about domestic players monkeying around with electronic voting systems than I care about a tiny amount of crude ads and trolling on social media.

Code Name D , February 20, 2018 at 12:52 pm

Democrats have just strangled the "Blue wave" in the cradle. Political tides are turning, and the Democratic Establishment is starting to feel the pressure from Progressive primary challengers. And evidence is mounting that Progressives win elections, even in "red districts" while corporate Democrats still manage to lose even in blue ones. And on the horizon, is a Sanders run in 2020.

So, the 13 incitements, in addition to keeps the Russian narrative alive for another few weeks, is providing political cover for the establishment to clean house as it were, and clear out the Progressive infestation threatening to cripple the money train the establishment has become accustomed too.

The "Do Russia-gate skeptics go too far" is a part of that narrative. Interesting to note that "Russia-gate skeptics" don't actually get much air-time to challenge the narrative. So, the notion that they have gone "too far" is a bit laudable. No, the point here is to justify further squelching independent media and to silence the few individuals out there who still dare to speak out over watercoolers.

Already, more assertive smears have been made against Jill Stine and Birney Sanders as receiving "Russian aid" in their campaigns. The end game is to knock them out of the running in 2020, justifying even more extreme steps.

Democratic Establishment being challenged in primaries will start to invoke a kind of "don't change horses" privileges for their primaries in response to this new "9-11". They might even go so far as to accuse the primary challengers as receiving "aid from Russia." This will cripple their primary efforts. And failing that, justifies simply locking them out of the primary all together in the name of "election integrity."

Their thinking is that if they lock out the progressives, then the establishment can rise the wave for another cycle. But in so doing, they squelch the issues progressives are trying to represent, and makes Russia-gate more prominent in the 2018 strategy.

It plays right into the hands of the Republicans. Giving them the intellectual high ground when it comes to rallying around the president. While at the same time de-mobilizing the progressive vote, ending the blue wave before it gets started.

The Dem-establishment are finished, they just don't know it yet. It's just a mater of time before they fade away completely. What remains undecided is whether a progressive moment will take their place, either by taking over the Democratic Party or forming a new third party to take its place. Or weather America becomes a single party state under Republican Rule.

The 13 indictments is a step closer to the later.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:17 pm

yes, i think it's a twofer, clean house in the democratic party to preserve their control and maintain their grift, and support the neocons who haven't had enough wars lately.

MichaelSF , February 20, 2018 at 3:29 pm

So, the 13 incitements, . . .

I think that is an apt term to use instead of indictments, as it seems to cut to the heart of why this is happening.

drumlin woodchuckles , February 20, 2018 at 6:52 pm

The answer is to defeat every single mainstream Democrat in every single race, every single time. Loss by loss, the Mainstream Democrats can be exterminated from political existence.

Tobin Paz , February 20, 2018 at 1:08 pm

Clinton paid for the dossier

Clinton campaign, DNC paid for research that led to Russia dossier

The Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped fund research that resulted in a now-famous dossier containing allegations about President Trump's connections to Russia and possible coordination between his campaign and the Kremlin, people familiar with the matter said.

which included Russian sources

How Ex-Spy Christopher Steele Compiled His Explosive Trump-Russia Dossier

How good were these sources? Consider what Steele would write in the memos he filed with Simpson: Source A -- to use the careful nomenclature of his dossier -- was " a senior Russian Foreign Ministry figure. " Source B was " a former top level intelligence officer still active in the Kremlin. " And both of these insiders, after "speaking to a trusted compatriot," would claim that the Kremlin had spent years getting its hooks into Donald Trump.

lied about it

Hillary Clinton's Campaign Wasn't Honest About Paying for Trump Dossier, Watchdog Says

The Washington-based Campaign Legal Center (CLC) said in a Wednesday complaint to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) that Hillary for America and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) broke campaign finance law by trying to hide payments related to the dossier, which included graphic, unproven claims about the current president's sexual habits.

and the FBI used it:

FBI used dossier allegations to bolster Trump-Russia investigation

The FBI last year used a dossier of allegations of Russian ties to Donald Trump's campaign as part of the justification to win approval to secretly monitor a Trump associate, according to US officials briefed on the investigation.

And what is the origin of all this Russia BS?

Political Strategy: The Origins Of The Trump/Russia Nonsense & Hysteria

Thanks to the Podesta Emails available on Wikileaks, we can have a clear view of what research and polling was done to try to come up with a good strategy for the Clinton campaign.

Secretary Clinton's top vulnerability tested in this poll is the attack that claims as Secretary of State she signed off on a deal that gave the Russian government control over 20% of America's uranium production, after investors in the deal donated over $140 million to the Clinton Foundation. Half of all likely voters (53%) are less likely to support Clinton after hearing that statement and 17% are much less likely to support her after that statement.

And guess who was the FBI director at that time:

FBI uncovered Russian bribery plot before Obama administration approved controversial nuclear deal with Moscow

Before the Obama administration approved a controversial deal in 2010 giving Moscow control of a large swath of American uranium, the FBI had gathered substantial evidence that Russian nuclear industry officials were engaged in bribery, kickbacks, extortion and money laundering designed to grow Vladimir Putin's atomic energy business inside the United States, according to government documents and interviews.

The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller , now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey , whom Trump fired earlier this year.

voteforno6 , February 20, 2018 at 1:14 pm

I found the intelligence agency report on the DNC hacking to be rather flimsy. I think the tell for me was that roughly half of it consisted of some very generic, boilerplate cybersecurity tips – the kind that you'll find in your agency's annual security refresher training. The only thing that would've made it more obvious, I think, is if they had changed around the font size and margins, in order to drive up the page count. What does that say about their confidence in the rest of the report, that they felt the need to add fluff to it?

todde , February 20, 2018 at 9:48 pm

You have no chain of evidence to convict anyone in a court of law for the hack. The FBI was called in months later, and the already deemed guilty party just so happened to collude with her election opponent.

cocomaan , February 20, 2018 at 1:18 pm

Lee Camp's takedown of the Mueller indictments is incredible:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ccn2oE3v4

Ranger Rick , February 20, 2018 at 1:24 pm

I often get called a supporter of "fake news" for ignoring any and all reports on Russian election interference and Russian twitter bots as profoundly not interesting or important. No evidence has ever surfaced that votes were changed, fabricated or deleted. The electoral process itself was untouched. The candidates were not bribed (for a given value of 'bribed' -- i.e. 'quid pro quo'). Thus, there was no interference.

I was especially ridiculed for claiming that the recent four-alarm fire at Wired about Russian Twitter posts following the Parkland school shooting was crisis exploitation at its most disgusting. I do not dispute that posts by Russian government employees exist. I just fail to see them as a threat or even a meaningful fact to report about.

cocomaan , February 20, 2018 at 1:54 pm

You CLEARLY don't spend your whole life on twitter. If you DID you'd UNDERSTAND.

What are you, some kind of shut in?

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:27 pm

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/19/mueller-the-politician/
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/a-consensus-emerges-russia-committed-an-act-of-war-on-par-with-pearl-harbor-and-911-should-the-u-s-response-be-similar/

I'm sure the second article has been linked here, but bears repeating.
h/t to Sonja commenting on it for the counterpunch link.

Tomonthebeach , February 20, 2018 at 1:27 pm

Why would Putin prefer Trump to Clinton? SABOTAGE.

The term sabotage derives from the practice of throwing "sabots" (clogs) into machines to break them. It's Luddites 101. Tossing Trump into the machinery of Democracy has clearly achieved precisely the same thing. Since Trump, many headlines continue to assert that democracy in the USA is broken.

To Putin, the beauty of it is that he did it so easily and for so little money.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:39 pm

clinton sabotaging the primaries broke our democracy, and so did the supreme ct in citizens united. are the justices and clinton controlled by putin, too? i understand clinton has a higher price tag than the average russian troll.

Massinissa , February 20, 2018 at 1:41 pm

Yeah, sorry, but if we lost our 'democracy', we lost it some good number of years before Trump. Perhaps when George W Bush beat Gore, if not before that. Trump is just the latest right wing sh*tlord president we have had in succession, including supposed leftists Obama and Clinton. The only reason Democrats hate Trump more than they hated Bush (whose image by the way has since been rehabilitated by the Democratic establishment!) is that he is rude and goes against social norms.

Also, do you really think a few hundred thousand dollars worth of shitty advertisements comparing Hillary to the Devil is really enough to actually affect the election in any significant way?

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 1:47 pm

yeah love it when shrub is now getting brought back into the fold, assuming their disdain for him ever was real. and ronnie was often complimented by obama.

Arizona Slim , February 20, 2018 at 3:51 pm

Trump is hated because he is rude and goes against social norms? Well, I'll bet that the Democrats would have hated Lyndon Johnson too. Oh, wait

Taras 77 , February 20, 2018 at 1:54 pm

The extent of the hysteria is mind boggling-do people believe this? another pearl harbor, worst atk sincie 9-11?
The head of these 13 people, yes just 13, was a former hot dog vendor in St Pete. The $1.2 mil also covered ads to internal Russian markets. Moon over alabama says it was a commercial exercise-VP of Facbook says most ot the russian sourced ads were place after the election.

i agree with kuntzler that the us has collectively lost its mind-it really is beyond hysteria, it goes to "can you top this." I think "worst atk since 9-11" gets us close to the top but I have never credited scarborough with any ability to think-just keep repeated the mantra. I do not know where this will wind up but clearly the neo cons have won big time and america has embarassed itself beyond what anyone could conceiveably imagine. I hold my head and try not to completely dispair.

Buck Eschaton , February 20, 2018 at 2:06 pm

It's the blatant in your face lies and it's the ludicrousness of the lies. I recently saw Dr.Strangelove at the theater, and what do you do when confronted with people who are crazed or possessed by something? To say things in all seriousness that would make you spit your drink out in laughter. There's got to be something going on for this many people in "serious" media outlets to be saying the most lunatic and bizarre things in unison.

pretzelattack , February 20, 2018 at 2:11 pm

i'm afraid it's a push for another war, syria, iran, russia, you name it. it's just about as bad as the extended propaganda campaign before we attacked iraq for nonexistent (and very obviously nonexistent, as hans blix and mohammed elbarridei shot down each and every report of wmd's) weapons. i just hope and pray to the gods of randomness that this one doesn't work as well.

NotTimothyGeithner , February 20, 2018 at 5:12 pm

A few thoughts: Cord cutting. Who watches cable news? In the end people who are older and towards the more comfortable end of the spectrum, the last eight or sixteen years, weren't terrible. Trump might be more upsetting to them that the Iraq War, hence the new found admiration for Shrub.

We should remember the rightward shift of the media in the 90's to chase after the audience being lost to cable news and talk radio. Rush harped endlessly on the liberal media. It was grossly inaccurate, but newspapers shifted right in response as conservatives stopped buying newspapers.

Who is the most likely to be a cable news viewer of the next few years? A kid who went to an Occupy rally? No, I don't think so. The networks have been furiously fear mongering to keep the election viewership watching because in the long term they won't pick up new people. After all, what does Maddow do in an hour (imagine she never went full Glenn Beck) that you couldn't read in under five minutes? They are pulling out all of FoxNews tricks to win old people over. Look at the graphics on MSNBC and CNN. In years past, the three cable networks had different acts, but they look almost interchangeable. Everything, even opinion pieces, get the "breaking news" chyron. Turn on MSNBC. I guarantee you, you will see "breaking news" in a frightening form over something entirely trivial.

http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/heres-the-median-age-of-the-typical-cable-news-viewer/355379

Senior citizens viewership. Anathema to advertisers. Seniors even the ones with money already have loyalty to brands. Ads are a waste on them.

Then of course, there is the basic problem with "access journalism." The msm "press" revolves around the need for "interviews" and access to subjects. For example, Trump and the NYT have the strangest relationship. The snipe at each other non-stop, and then hold weird public love fests when Trump does an interview. Instead of "following the money," the media looks for Deep Throat to provide answers. The Bush and Clinton courtiers dominate Washington (Obama just kept whoever was around in power), but going forward, what good is a useless Clinton lackey to a corporate board? A Bush family endorsement? They are still in Washington, but they desperately need for the paymasters to believe the Clinton/Bush apparatus are still marketable. They provide the press with a story, and their story of "OMG Russia" excuses their own losses. Lets not forget $125 million Jeb lit on fire and promises of how Trump couldn't down to Bush Country and defeat Jeb after the Southern Dandy's endorsement in SC.

At the end of the day, it still goes back to "What Happened?" The political elites in this country are so effed up that they allowed Jeb vs. Hillary to be a real possibility. The future of the GOP is a clownshow, and the Democrats have Bernie Sanders and a drooling Kennedy or whoever their desperate attempt to block a candidate having to make promises is. Who is at fault? It can't be "Mother." It can't be people with fancy titles. No, its foreigners.

albert , February 20, 2018 at 2:04 pm

Lee Camp sums it up quite well:

IT'S INSANE!

. .. . .. -- .

Taras 77 , February 20, 2018 at 2:31 pm

To cap things off, CNN, yes that CNN, dispatched one of their reporters to St Pete to go through the garbage of the troll farm; he tried to enter the building and was asked to leave.

This was all on video presented by cnn.

Buck Eschaton , February 20, 2018 at 3:07 pm

I can't help thinking of Zizek and his trash can of ideology.
https://youtu.be/j28DtHJCamA

Rob P , February 20, 2018 at 2:14 pm

I think the most recent Mueller indictments are more dangerous than many people realize. Claims that Bernie was supported by 'Russian bots' in the primaries are already being used against him. Assuming most Democratic primary voters still believe in Russiagate in 2020, it would be very easy for Trump to use the Russia conspiracy against Bernie or another progressive that had a good chance of beating him. His intel heads are all Russia hawks who have vowed to help prevent 'Russian interference in our elections'. There's guaranteed to be at least a few Russian internet trolls supporting the campaign, or some minor official with some vague connection to Russia, so all they have to do is open an investigation, and leak that investigation to the press.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , February 20, 2018 at 4:24 pm

Ironically, Sanders said we needed to investigate Russian collusion.

petal , February 20, 2018 at 2:16 pm

I was just at a talk and Q&A session given by NH senior Sen. Jeanne Shaheen. There will be an article in the local paper tomorrow that I'll post, but in the meantime I will do my best to write up the highlights here today, so please bear with me. I was scribbling furiously. Unfortunately it was not videotaped.

She gave a 15-20 minute talk at a podium and then the rest was Q&A with the crowd and a professor moderated it. There were 168 chairs set out but from a quick head count only a little over 100 people attended- most were retirees, and then students made up the rest. It was at 11am, so not a very good time of day for normal people.

Okay so for her talk: she said she looks at the cybersecurity threat through a lens of global security, and that the Kremlin has used these tactics versus Ukraine and in the lead up to Brexit. She said this isn't a new Cold War because technology has rendered countries borderless, and only recently has the US become aware that it's been targeted by cyberattacks, especially spread through social media. She said our efforts in Syria were damaged by these cyberattacks. She kept mentioning Kaspersky over and over again, how he's a major buddy of Putin and does his bidding, said Kaspersky Labs is Kremlin-linked, and that under Russian law it is required to have all servers located in Moscow available/all info shared with the FSB. She used the term "Russia's hybrid warfare" at least a few times, and said that our government has to "protect Americans from threats". She wants to establish a clear command structure for cybersecurity at the federal government level. And that it's crucial for younger generations to be taught how to identify fake news and disinformation.

She thinks Putin is doing this to manipulate our open media in order to turn Americans against each other, and reiterated that all 17 intel agencies have incontrovertible evidence of Russian interference. She brought up that Dan Coates repeated Pompeo's statement that the US is under attack. Sanctions against Russia were brought up and she repeated how the bill was bipartisan, and it sends a strong message to the Kremlin and that Trump won't okay these sanctions. She said there have been partisan attacks on Mueller, the DoJ, and FBI in order to undermine the investigations, and that this would help achieve the Kremlin's goal of turning Americans against each other. She said elections here in the US and "all across Europe" have been threatened.

The "misleading" Nunez memo was mentioned and she said trolls and bots using facebord and twitter led to its release, that the Russians are pushing the deep state narrative along with anti-Obama messages in order to enflame social divisions in the US, and that the Russians are pushing messaging about Ukraine and Syria. She said "a hostile foreign power interfered in our election", that the Russians are trying to undermine American democracy, that we have to fight back because "It's about Patriotism"(yeah, she actually said this-it was all I could do to not throw up at that point), and how important the independence of the FBI is and that the Mueller MUST be allowed to complete his investigation. She said the US is being eroded from within and trotted out a JFK quote about defending freedom "against Putin's methods". Unity unity unity! Felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.

She accused the Russians of building up their military might and extending it to Ukraine and Syria, that they caused the Brexit vote result, fomented and stirred up Catalonia's secessionist movement the other month, and caused a certain Czech leader to be elected(I'm not up on Czech politics).

She brought up the idea of using paper ballots again and admitted there had been no hacks to voting machines. She said the Russians were trying to undermine people's(not just Americans) faith in democracy, getting folks to think elections are rigged, and that their vote doesn't count (yeah yeah I know, right?!).

During the Q&A session, she said how they were talking to Treasury and others to find out ways to force the sanctions through, brought up the Magnitsky Act(and his murder in jail). Someone asked about the Korea troubles and she said how she completely believes McMaster and other military leaders that the bloody nose strategy isn't on the table even though "Trump has pleaded for it". She stated that she thinks an AUMF from Congress is only necessary when 10s of thousands of soldiers would be sent somewhere for an extended period , and she mentioned how the Syria situation deteriorated because Obama drew a red line and then didn't back it up.

She thinks the Russians are trying to undermine The West in order to create a new Russian Empire. She actually said this out loud. A student called out the US's efforts influencing the elections of other countries(he brought up a recent Carnegie Mellon paper about how the US meddled in 80 countries), coups, propping up dictators, etc and you could hear a pin drop. I think she looked like a deer in headlights and then she spurted out she thinks we shouldn't be doing that. It was awesome and I thanked the kid on the way out.

Anyway, sorry for the super long post, but that's how it went down. She seemed not very intelligent, like she was just mindlessly repeating what someone above had told her to say, kept repeating certain terms and statements like Russian hybrid warfare, etc. She sounded like a crackpot, to be honest with you-I couldn't believe some of the stuff she was saying. It was very concerning-this is a US senator and there must be a lot more like her, and they are leading the Dems. She seemed very uncomfortable and not very knowledgeable talking about this stuff, even though that's why she was here and it's supposed to be her thing. It's like for example when you didn't actually do the work but you're talking about it-you memorize the answers or what you're supposed to say and that's it-no depth, just repeat certain terms over and over. I got the feeling she doesn't know much geography or history, too. It was scary. These are the people in control and driving this agenda. Cheers.

tegnost , February 20, 2018 at 3:06 pm

Thanks petal

hemeantwell , February 20, 2018 at 3:19 pm

Thanks for the report.
The public gutlessness and corresponding stupidity of most senior US elected officials regarding relations with major competitive powers is like a bizarre form of patriotic observance in which the speaker proudly announces the sacrifice of their critical faculties in the service of the nation. It's as though there are no constituents who will reward analytic honesty and the corresponding lives and resources saved. One wonders if her interactions with staff on these matters amount to anything more than a selection of camouflage statements that allow her position to become indistinguishable from the modal patriotic dimwit her fellow elected officials aspire to be. It's like watching high schoolers try out team cheers.

flora , February 20, 2018 at 3:45 pm

Thanks for this report.

todde , February 20, 2018 at 4:05 pm

Did we repeal the War Powers Act and I missed it? Why are we confused about when we can send troops abroad?

Russia can't dominate more than one province in the Ukraine. I think we are safe from the Russian Empire for the time being.

todde , February 20, 2018 at 4:13 pm

anyway, left a tweet on her twitter, for all the good that'll do

petal , February 20, 2018 at 7:16 pm

After today, I'm not confident she knows what the Twitter actually is. And bots this, bots that, bots bots bots. It was a lot to digest, and makes me appreciate Lambert and his yellow waders even more. I tried to write down as much as I could word for word what she said, especially the Russian Empire thing. It seemed like she really thinks the Russians are trying to take over the whole world to create a new Russian Empire with Tsar Putin at the helm, and that this supposed meddling is truly an act of war. It's scary. Walking out of there, I felt like a (family blog) genius. What she said about congressional authorisation needed only when 10,000s of troops are being sent for an extended period, my head exploded. Like I said before, caught in a Twilight Zone episode.

petal , February 20, 2018 at 7:25 pm

The D party is pushing this Russia! thing whole hog-this is what they're going with for the long haul instead of focusing on real issues. They are 100% sure Mueller's going to find something that takes down Trump. That's their whole plan.

petal , February 20, 2018 at 7:47 pm

So I must have missed a page in my notebook earlier, sorry-just remembered how she made a point to crow about forcing the Kremlin-backed and very well-funded RT to register as a foreign agent, and talked about how if RT's on in a hotel in the US and you watch a few minutes of it, it's very subtly biased(those sneaky Russians!) and the delivery is a little different than on CNN and other mainstream US news stations and this is in order trick American viewers and to subtly sow discord amongst the American public. It was epic stuff today, so much to try to keep track of and remember.

grizziz , February 20, 2018 at 2:33 pm

John Feffer, "the reason we take it seriously is twofold." (What do you mean we , kemo sabe?)

"One, because we're worried about our U.S. democracy and whether it can function in a fair way." (We live in a Republic which by design favors the moneyed classes primarily through the Senate and Electoral College. Fairness has been in retreat since Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United v. FEC.)

"And the threats to U.S. democracy, by the way, are not, you know, specific to Russia." (I'm afraid and you should be, too.)

Anonymous , February 20, 2018 at 2:57 pm

It sure doesn't help cybersecurity when top US officials (e.g. a former 2016 POTUS candidate) do not even bother to follow basic government cybersecurity protocols.

Clif , February 20, 2018 at 3:17 pm

i just did something fun. Google 'Evidence of Russian meddling', or 'Why can't Google find evidence of Russian meddling?'. One gets links to GWB and McMaster's claims of 'clear evidence' and 'incontrovertible', but no actual evidence.

Good times.

Anonymous , February 20, 2018 at 3:17 pm

What was up with Feffer's wall art? Not exactly confidence inspiring images.

John , February 20, 2018 at 3:32 pm

The American electoral system has always been open to the corrupt current flavor of the day. George Washington passed out free whiskey,poll taxes, Jim Crow, voter suppression, gerrymandering, Citizens United, secret money, hackable computerization and so on. We leave the barn door open and are surprised when stuff happens.
I would be shocked if the Russians did not try to stick a toe in the door and create a little chaos if for nothing else than our hypocritic and insufferable claims to exceptionalism, freedom fries and all things bright and beautiful. Especially using a tool as perfect as the web and social media the Americans own creation.
We have lost all sense of racketeering though sort of on the books, it is not really a crime any more in this country. I think Russia and the USA are organized as competing racketeering oligarchies. The cold war was about the commies and the commissars. This is just about your basic Sicilian mob activity.
Very muddled and gray.
Average Americans do not understand cultures where the lie is the first response in most discourse. We are working on it, but we are not really there in comparison to the older cultures.
So while I am certain that elements within Russia have been sowing chaos wherever possible and that there is some truth in Russia Gate I also recognize that it mirrors the chaos that the US has sowed throughout the world. Mostly motivated by an ideology of greed and naked power on both sides.
Donald Trump was for sure laundering money in New York real estate and saved by mob money in everyone of his bankruptcies. We know Sheldon Adelson was in collusion with the Chinese mob and got a "cost of doing business" penalty from the government. Grrr. Rant. corrupt.corrupt.corrupt

John , February 20, 2018 at 3:37 pm

Did the finagling around the election have any effect on the outcome? As far as I can see, no it did not. Worse than Pearl Harbor? Worse than 9/11? Of course not. The hysterical posturing became tedious long ago. Wake me if you find anything.

Why is Trump trumpeting? I would follow the money.

RMO , February 20, 2018 at 3:44 pm

A minor point but perhaps someone could point out to Feffer that Nazis (both the ur-example and those currently U.S. favored Ukranian ones) consider Russians to be sub-human?

Fastball , February 20, 2018 at 3:50 pm

I get labeled a Trump supporter by decrying Russiagate.

Frankly I couldn't care less what Mueller does to Trump. This bothers me on several different fronts.

1. This is demonstrably a McCarthyite witch hunt with goals at clear divergence from what Mueller was originally appointed for, which was to investigate "collusion" (whatever that means) between Putin and Trump. We know because of one Adam Schiff (D-McCarthy) and similar Democrats and their Russian demagoguing anyone who dares to disagree with them.

2. These indictments are clearly exaggerated in their impact on the American system. Why? I can think of one major effect of the witch hunt: The attempt by the establishment to roll up dissent of any kind. We now have this media fueled hysteria going on by proven liars in the establishment to suppress what they call "fake news". We saw efforts such as the infamous "PropOrNot" anonymous troll cavalcade to try to censor sites. Now Google and Facebook are doing the censoring for them by ranking non-establishment sources as somehow untrustworthy -- as if the establishment press was ever trustworthy.

3. The hypocrisy. No one in the corporate media establishment ever seems to note that this cyber behavior and other types of regime undermining is completely typical of the U.S., which mere hypocrisy might not be so bad, except it leads directly to #4:

4. The warmongering. People have openly talked about Russia engaged in acts of war (as if the U.S. is pure as a crystal snowflake in this regard). This exaggeration and hypocrisy are a direct threat to world peace and my own personal survival as a human being.

These are the things I fear: Being silenced by authoritarians who call themselves "liberal" and getting nuked. That's it. People who accuse everyone of being "Russian dupes" or "supporting Trump" are IMHO engaged in sheer demagoguery. The influence of the Russians on the American system, whatever you call it, can be described as ephemeral at best, but the censorship and warmongering are very real and dangerous.

That our politicians and media are being grossly irresponsible in a supposed effort to get Trump (the real effort is much more than that) is an understatement.

Expat , February 20, 2018 at 6:23 pm

That the US is hypocritical is not news. But that we should call this a witch hunt because we are guilty of tampering and worse is not fair to either our constitution or the American people.
The costs of this investigation are small in the grand scheme and tiny compared to the principles it purports to protect. Mueller is far from done. Writing this off now smacks of partisanship. If there is something there, then it will out. If not, then a few will hang anyway. I, for one, am quite happy that the likes of Manafort and Gates got caught. I think hillary should swing as well, so don't tar me with a red or blue brush. But the Republicans had their chance to investigate her and never did, so that tells me something.

Remember that this is a 100% Republican administration carrying out this investigation. Everyone involved is Republican from Potus to Congress to Mueller.
Frankly, if this keeps Trump from doing too many stupid things, it's time and money well spent.

Procopius , February 20, 2018 at 8:03 pm

I may be wrong, but I seem to recall they investigated her AND Bill many, many times over the years, starting when he was governor of Arkansas, and never found any evidence they could take to a prosecutor. Do you happen to recall how many discrete investigations of Benghazi there were?

Donald , February 20, 2018 at 9:48 pm

It's pressuring Trump to do stupid things. Russiagate is hyped to justify a more militaristic and hardline policy towards Russia and Syria.

Trump is a fool, but it seems difficult for some people to understand that both sides of the Russiagate controversy have bad motives.

rps , February 20, 2018 at 3:57 pm

"Robert Mueller has indicted 13 Russian nationals and three Russian organizations for allegedly using social media to sow discord in the U.S. and support the candidacy of Donald Trump"

The 13 Russian national stooges social media talking points show is all smoke and mirrors to distract from the DNC and Clinton campaign tactics that did intentionally interfere with a presidential election. Considering the enormous amount of actual evidence in the complicity of the DNC, a foreign ex-spook national- Christopher Steele is fed 'info-mation' by Clinton buddies Trey Gowdy and Sidney Blumenthal, Fusion GPS, Hillary Clinton campaign, FBI surveillance and FISA memo to spy on the opposing presidential candidate (Trump) is the real show. All based upon a dubious paid for foreign dossier filled with hearsay of anonymous sources used to undermine and destroy an american presidential candidate during an election year is the real crime of complicity Mueller is trying to avoid.

Throwing a ruskie sheet over the 800lb elephant sitting in the middle of the room doesn't hide the facts and more than likely brings into question the Clinton campaign influences and connections with the NSA.

Onto more relevant news: Lucky Charms has added marshmallow unicorns to its cereal.

rps , February 20, 2018 at 4:30 pm

Lynn de Rothschild has been howling a tweeter Trump hate-storm since her bff Hillary lost. One minute she's congratulating Mueller on Russiagate, the next tweet reprimanding the FBI failure in Parkland Florida . Doesn't she have a bilderberg polo match to attend somewhere in the world and annoy them?
Hillary Clinton's Intimate Relationship with the Rothschild Banking Dynasty, The Shadowy Network of Super-Elites

OldBear , February 20, 2018 at 5:15 pm

This actually makes me a little sad. I am only skimming the transcript so far and I don't think I could stand to watch the video, even though I really like Aaron Maté. I didn't care when he took apart that Luke Harding fool, but John Feffer always seemed like a pretty smart guy and a good writer. I was dismayed a few days ago when he went off in this direction in one of his posts. If Aaron is holding back, maybe he feels a little sorry about him, too.

John Feffer, one more decent person lost to the McCarthyite pod people, for whom I can no longer have a shred of respect. Is that going too far?

Angry Panda , February 20, 2018 at 5:46 pm

Why .is this here?

I could have gotten the same exact "depth" of analysis from watching CNN. Or MSNBC. Or what have you.

Even the interviewer was off the ball – by the time he identified KASPERSKY as a "Russian hacker" I was essentially howling with laughter. And by the time the interviewee started insinuating that Russia is supporting far-right neo-nazi type groups in the West yeah. No. Incidentally, the West [i]is[/i] doing just that in specific places, but that is a different conversation.

Finally the stamement: "So I don't think anybody, much less Vladimir Putin, could have predicted the turn U.S.-Russian relations would take " pretty much discredits the interviewee as any kind of analyst or expert on the subject. Because on every single US-Russia flashpoint 2017 was a direct continuation of 2016 (and 2015, and 2014 ) – and that was pretty much the "base case" to begin with, since it is silly to imagine that either nation will just "surrender" and stop pursuing its policies whether in Europe, Asia or the Middle East. The "Trump == unpredictable-loose-cannon-maverick" talking point, much as it has been bandied about, applies mainly to Trump's twitter account and decidedly not the ACTUAL foreign policy steps taken by the US.

And so I reiterate the point – why is this blog suddenly carrying MSNBC-level content? Because that's why we come here in the first place?

oaf , February 20, 2018 at 6:14 pm

"we're worried about our U.S. democracy and whether it can function in a fair way."

WTF???

Very high entertainment value .

The Rev Kev , February 20, 2018 at 7:12 pm

Sometimes when this whole things goes several shades of crazy you have to pull back and try to look at it from a historical level. I try to imagine what people will be saying some 20 years from now when there is a new generation in place. What will their text books say about what is happening now. And I realize that we are going to be mocked but hard by them. Can you imagine what comedians routines on us will say? It will be embarrassing. So, getting back to the present, I pull up the news this morning and I find a CNN reporter checking out trash dumpsters next to the 'troll farm' in Russia – which is no longer even there. Uh, OK.

Maybe some people in government and the media should go back on their meds again and have a nice warm cup of shut-the-xxxx-up. Just because Trump won the election does not mean that the 'establishment' gets to have an epic triggering – and take the rest of the country with it. Are there criminal charges to be laid against certain people? Absolutely. Thing is, they don't have Russian addresses but more likely American ones and I think that a lot of people are starting to realize this which may partially explain the increasing support for the GOP. You can only keep up evidence free accusations so long until somebody shout "Call!".

If you want to know about election meddling, ask the Russians ( https://www.rt.com/op-ed/419371-election-meddling-us-russia/ ) as they have much experience here. And that story doesn't cover even half of what went on. Getting back to seeing things from a historical level, my own idea is that what we are seeing is a power that has dominated the world for decades now finding itself with peer competitors arising and the people in charge are unable to deal with this. There are far too many careers at stake. Too many lucrative contracts at risk. Too many rice bowls to be broken. It's too many powerful people not being able to get their way – and being unable to handle it. This is what I think that we are seeing.

todde , February 20, 2018 at 7:57 pm

Historically speaking, America peaked at the moon landing.

Clark Landwehr , February 20, 2018 at 7:51 pm

Foreign interference in the U.S. is nothing new. Its why we are so divided.

"The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union."
Otto von Bismarck, German chancellor, 1865

Procopius , February 20, 2018 at 7:53 pm

This is a great example of why I think I've gone crazy. This guy Feffer seems more reasonable than most of the Russiagaters I see on other blogs, but when Mate points out the lack of evidence he acknowledges that and then goes right on as if he had refuted it. He acknowledges that the Dutch "revelation" is unsupported, and regrets that, and then goes right ahead as if that is irrelevant. His whole method of argument seems to be, "Well, we have a pattern of other Russian involvement, " and then cites speeches by Putin that probably are not relevant to the case. I mean, supporting white nationalism? This is something you want to blame Russia for? Spreading divisiveness? Undermining confidence? Kill me now.

[Feb 20, 2018] Is That Russia Troll Farm an Act of War by Pat Buchanan

Jerrold Lewis Nadler is an American attorney and politician who serves as the US Representative from New York's 10th congressional district. So it is reasonable to assume that this guy is a stooge of financial oligarchy and as such died in the wool globalist
When Congressman Jerrold Nadler equated Internet Trolls with Pearl Harbor that does not mean that his a paranoiac. That means that he is a sleazy opportunist, for whom Party line is more important then truth. That's why he repeated DemoRats Party like in the color revolution against Trump. In which NeoMcCartyism is a fundamental component, creating the necessary prerequisites for the witch hunt on Trump conducted by Mueller. He just can' deviate from the story.
"Have you no decency left, sir? At long last, have you no decency left?" applies
This "slash and burn" style of internal politician debates is another sign of the deep crisis of neoliberalism in the USA. The crisis that led to election of Trump.
Tactically all this noise is a preemptive move to save Strzokgate participants scalps by putting a smoke screen on Nunes memo as well as the forthcoming report of Inspector General.
Notable quotes:
"... When MSNBC's Chris Hayes pressed, Nadler doubled down: The Russians "are destroying our democratic process." While the Russian trolling may not equal Pearl Harbor in its violence, said Nadler, in its "seriousness, it is very much on a par" with Japan's surprise attack. Trump's reaction to the hysteria that broke out after the Russian indictments: "They are laughing their (expletives) off in Moscow." ..."
"... While Mueller's indictments confirm that Russians meddled in the U.S. election, what explains the shock and the fear for "our democracy"? Is the Great Republic about to fall because a bunch of trolls tweeted in our election? Is this generation ignorant of its own history? Before and after World War II, we had Stalinists and Soviet spies at the highest levels of American culture and government. ..."
"... As for Russian trolling in our election, do we really have clean hands when it comes to meddling in elections and the internal politics of regimes we dislike? ..."
"... Sen. John McCain and Victoria Nuland of State egged on the Maidan Square crowds in Kiev that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. ..."
"... "Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries' elections?" Laura Ingraham asked former CIA Director James Woolsey this weekend. With a grin, Woolsey replied, "Oh, probably." "We don't do that anymore though?" Ingraham interrupted. "We don't mess around in other people's elections, Jim?" "Well," Woolsey said with a smile. "Only for a very good cause." Indeed, what is the National Endowment for Democracy all about, if not aiding the pro-American side in foreign nations and their elections? ..."
"... "One cannot observe democracy objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself -- it's apparent ineradicable tendency to abandon its philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what invariably happens in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves into instant despots of an almost fabulous ferocity." H.L. Mencken ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

According to the indictment by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Russian trolls, operating out of St. Petersburg, took American identities on social media and became players in our 2016 election. On divisive racial and religious issues, the trolls took both sides. In the presidential election, the trolls favored Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein and Donald Trump, and almost never Hillary Clinton.

One imaginative Russian troll urged Trumpsters to dress up a female volunteer in an orange prison jump suit, put her in a cage on a flatbed truck, then append the slogan, "Lock Her Up!"

How grave a matter is this?

This Russian troll farm is "the equivalent (of) Pearl Harbor," says Cong. Jerrold Nadler, who would head up the House Judiciary Committee, handling any impeachment, if Democrats retake the House.

When MSNBC's Chris Hayes pressed, Nadler doubled down: The Russians "are destroying our democratic process." While the Russian trolling may not equal Pearl Harbor in its violence, said Nadler, in its "seriousness, it is very much on a par" with Japan's surprise attack. Trump's reaction to the hysteria that broke out after the Russian indictments: "They are laughing their (expletives) off in Moscow."

According to Sunday's Washington Post, the troll story is old news in Russia, where reporters uncovered it last year and it was no big deal.

While Mueller's indictments confirm that Russians meddled in the U.S. election, what explains the shock and the fear for "our democracy"? Is the Great Republic about to fall because a bunch of trolls tweeted in our election? Is this generation ignorant of its own history? Before and after World War II, we had Stalinists and Soviet spies at the highest levels of American culture and government.

The Hollywood Ten, who went to prison for contempt of Congress, were secret members of a Communist Party that, directed from Moscow, controlled the Progressive Party in Philadelphia in 1948 that nominated former Vice President Henry Wallace to run against Harry Truman.

Soviet spies infiltrated the U.S. atom bomb project and shortened the time Stalin needed to explode a Soviet bomb in 1949.

As for Russian trolling in our election, do we really have clean hands when it comes to meddling in elections and the internal politics of regimes we dislike?

Sen. John McCain and Victoria Nuland of State egged on the Maidan Square crowds in Kiev that overthrew the elected government of Ukraine. When the democratically elected regime of Mohammed Morsi was overthrown, the U.S. readily accepted the coup as a victory for our side and continued aid to Egypt as tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members were imprisoned.

Are the CIA and National Endowment for Democracy under orders not to try to influence the outcome of elections in nations in whose ruling regimes we believe we have a stake?

"Have we ever tried to meddle in other countries' elections?" Laura Ingraham asked former CIA Director James Woolsey this weekend. With a grin, Woolsey replied, "Oh, probably." "We don't do that anymore though?" Ingraham interrupted. "We don't mess around in other people's elections, Jim?" "Well," Woolsey said with a smile. "Only for a very good cause." Indeed, what is the National Endowment for Democracy all about, if not aiding the pro-American side in foreign nations and their elections?

Did America have no active role in the "color-coded revolutions" that have changed regimes from Serbia to Ukraine to Georgia?

When Republicans discuss Iran on Capitol Hill, the phrase "regime change" is frequently heard. When the "Green Revolution" took to the streets of Tehran to protest massively the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, Republicans denounced President Obama for not intervening more energetically to alter the outcome.

When China, Russia and Egypt expel NGOs, are their suspicions that some have been seeded with U.S. agents merely marks of paranoia?

The U.S. role in the overthrow of Premier Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, and of Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, and of President Ngo Dinh Diem in Saigon in 1963 are established facts.

... ... ...


Randal , February 20, 2018 at 9:23 am GMT

This "hysteria" as Buchanan accurately describes it is very characteristically American, in its sheer hypocritical dishonesty.

The US has made a regular practice for a century or more of pushing and attacking others, via political interference, subversion, diplomacy or outright military aggression, until they respond, and then screaming hysterically about "unprovoked aggression" against America.

It's who they are.

Ronald Thomas West , Website February 20, 2018 at 9:45 am GMT
Of several factual mistakes in your piece, Pat, why do you slip in crap like this

"Yet we do have evidence that a senior British spy and Trump hater, Christopher Steele, paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to dig up dirt on Trump, colluded with Kremlin agents to produce a dossier of scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges, to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump"

bs claiming 'Kremlin agents' when it would appear the entire hit job on Trump originated with s ** t made up on the USA end, and Steele was little more than a cut-out to give the USA's DoJ (and more likely CIA) cover? Isn't that more than just a bit like playing the insider game? If you"re going to take a shot at Hillary, why not bring up the actual Russia collusion concerning uranium?

And pushing the 'hack' line

"What do these indictments of Russians tell us? After 18 months, the James Comey-Robert Mueller FBI investigation into the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails has yet to produce evidence of collusion"

giving cover to the 'Russians did it' hack bs when it is clear the DNC 'hack' was actually an insider leak? You're no better than yellow rag Marcy Wheeler's 'empty wheel' blog:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2018/01/31/the-wheel-is-indeed-empty/

You're both disgusting, limited-hangout-sellouts.

NoseytheDuke , February 20, 2018 at 11:29 am GMT
Destroying the democratic process? A president was shot dead in full view of the nation and it was never properly investigated, the same goes for 9/11. Endless and unconstitutional wars that have bankrupted the nation. I'd say that it was destroyed a long time ago and all that remains is nostalgia. Buckle up my colonial cousins!
anonymous Disclaimer , February 20, 2018 at 1:05 pm GMT
@anonymous

Addendum, lifted from comment (#3) of Ronald Thomas West:

"What do these indictments of Russians tell us? After 18 months, the James Comey-Robert Mueller FBI investigation into the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta emails has yet to produce evidence of collusion." Are you still unaware of the forensic evidence and credible analysis of people like Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity that the DNC emails were leaked, not hacked?

Columnists like Pat Buchanan and Andrew Napolitano may help people find this website, but week in and week out they show themselves as sloppy, at best. There may be something to be said for putting them up here, where they can be compared to Dinh, Giraldi, Hopkins, Sailer, Whitney, et al.

I read their columns closely when it comes to Russia, and comment when I see them serving the Establishment line. It has become apparent that "Judge" is purposeful in his Eastasia bulls ** t. I am reaching the same conclusion about Mr. Buchanan.

Jason Liu , February 20, 2018 at 1:14 pm GMT
Read this NYT article about American interference in other countries' elections. Makes Russia look like an amateur.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/17/sunday-review/russia-isnt-the-only-one-meddling-in-elections-we-do-it-too.html

And it's still going on under the guise of NGOs. So if Russians tweeting stuff is an act of war, then the US is already at war with a bunch of countries.

jacques sheete , February 20, 2018 at 2:45 pm GMT

Before and after World War II, we had Stalinists and Soviet spies at the highest levels of American culture and government.

During WW2, too.

They were running some of the biggest banks and corporations, too. It was fashionable for the trust fund kiddies and some of the money bags "upper crust" to play commie as well. Still is, apparently.

Famous names, Vanderbilt, Lamont, Whitney, Morgan, mingled with those of communist leaders. The Russian Institute was so respectable that it was allowed to give in-service courses to New York City schoolteachers for credit.

-Bella Dodd, School of Darkness, Chap 11

Carroll Price , February 20, 2018 at 3:42 pm GMT

When MSNBC's Chris Hayes pressed, Nadler doubled down: The Russians "are destroying our democratic process." While the Russian trolling may not equal Pearl Harbor in its violence, said Nadler, in its "seriousness, it is very much on a par" with Japan's surprise attack.

"One cannot observe democracy objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself -- it's apparent ineradicable tendency to abandon its philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what invariably happens in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves into instant despots of an almost fabulous ferocity." H.L. Mencken

exiled off mainstreet , February 20, 2018 at 8:42 pm GMT
This is an excellent article summarizing the major issues presented. Though I have views which vary somewhat about the postwar witchhunt in the US which sort of sets the beginning precedent for this one the fact situation described is correct. As for whether it is an act of war, I say that it is, but not by the Russians. It is an act of war by out of control extra-legal yankee authorities against any individual, foreign or domestic, who would choose to resist them in any fashion, including those just trying to make money like the Russians in this case from farming US internet subscribers.
mark green , February 20, 2018 at 9:56 pm GMT
Russiagate is a starched and stuffed empty suit. Buchanan is right to demean its significance. And yes, there is the shameful fact of rank US hypocrisy in all this. No doubt. But the relatively modest impact of Russian 'meddling' in the last US election, coupled with the moral emptiness within the entire Russiagate investigation, is what's most revealing.

Indeed, not only does the US routinely interfere (and even overthrow) other sovereign states, but Russian machinations in America pales besides other extranational interference, particularly Israel's.

When it comes to pushing around Washington and shaping US public opinion, Israel is in a class by itself. You haven't noticed?

Not only do crypto-Israelis own or supervise most American mass media (including hard news) but hundreds of young, paid Jewish/Israeli trolls regularly clog US social media sites, American internet news comments sections, and Wikipedia entries.

Israelis (and their US-based cousins) are the masters of political chicanery. No one else comes close.

Then there's the overbearing influence of AIPAC, the ADL, and dozens of other crypto-Israeli pressure groups. These highfalutin lobbies have managed to buy their way into the halls of Congress, the White House, and onto national TV. It's a continuous phenomena. But we're not supposed to notice or be concerned. After all, they're our best friends!

By comparison, Russian access and interference in American life is infantesimal.

Does this shock you? It shouldn't. It's been this way in America for decades.

Incredibly, it's publicly examining, discussing, and criticizing this odd situation that becomes 'shocking' (and career-ending). That's the scary part.

Crypto-Israelis have dominated, and continue to dominate, a vast swath of American culture; especially news and entertainment.

Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh, and Marlon Brando all complained about this unique and dangerous situation. And conditions have not improved since they did. If anything, Zionist power in America has only hardened.

This makes far-away Russia even more of a bit player in our corrupt political circus. And this is why Russiagate is such a farce.

In Hollywood, on Wall Street, as well as in Washington, the top dog (and most sacred cause) involves Israel. Every US politician recognizes this unpublicized fact. Just read their speeches. See how they vote. And those public servants who don't recognize Israel's unique status in Washington tend to fade rapidly into oblivion. This is Jewish power.

Zio-Americans helped steer Washington into its preemptive and criminal annihilation of Libya and Iraq and, if they have their way again, there will be additional American wars fought on behalf of the Jewish state.

Due in large part to Zionist dictates, Assad's Syria is being targeted by Washington right now. Iran is next. All foes of Israel end up in Washington's crosshairs.

America has been quietly captured and domesticated by Zionists.

Sadly, even referring to the overriding impact of Zionist power in America is taboo. Buchanan and others have learned this lesson the hard way. But this explosive fact ultimately renders the entire Russiagate 'scandal' little more than a contrived distraction.

Call it Jewish political theater if you like. But it's mostly a charade.

Randal , February 20, 2018 at 10:27 pm GMT
@International Jew

Mr. Buchanan is correct, of course, that we interfere in other countries. But defending foreign hostility to America by pointing to America's own misdeeds is a traditional leftist line.

It's not a "leftist line" (at least in this case), it's one that's basic to human nature – don't dish it out if you can't take it in turn, and don't whine like a hypocritical two year old when you do get some back. Nothing "left wing" about that.

There's nothing wrong with us taking our own country's side.

No, not if you don't mind being a hypocrite.

But hypocrisy is a very American thing – throughout your history you've been manipulated into wars by the very weakness you adhere to here. "We can do it but if anyone does it back to us that's unacceptable, because we're special" has been pretty much the way the US has been kept interfering around the world for decades.

The answer is to stop doing it yourself, then complain about other people doing it. But that isn't going to happen, is it? Your lords and masters are going to keep poking their noses into other countries' affairs all over the world, and people like you are going to complain like bitches if you get any back, and those complaints will justify further aggression in response to supposedly unacceptable foreign "unprovoked" aggression/interference against your country.

And I write that while being pretty much the very opposite of anything that could be described as "left wing", just as a foreigner weighing US behaviour.

SteveK9 , February 21, 2018 at 12:15 am GMT
'Yet we do have evidence that a senior British spy and Trump hater, Christopher Steele, paid by the Hillary Clinton campaign and DNC to dig up dirt on Trump, colluded with Kremlin agents to produce a dossier of scurrilous and unsubstantiated charges, to destroy the candidacy of Donald Trump. And the FBI used this disinformation to get FISA Court warrants to surveil and wiretap the Trump campaign.'

Correct except for 'Kremlin agents' Steele hadn't been to Russia in more than 20 years. The 'dossier' is full of ridiculous mistakes about Russia. It's just as likely he made the whole thing up, or was fed stuff by the CIA, not the Kremlin.

[Feb 20, 2018] Russia's Election Meddling Worse Than a Crime; a Blunder

Notable quotes:
"... The National Interest ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com

When Napoleon Bonaparte executed the Duc d'Enghien in 1804 for what seemed like trumped-up treason charges, the implications extended far beyond questions of French justice and even beyond the borders of France. European leaders were shocked, and the episode helped crystallize anti-Bonaparte sentiment throughout the Continent and in Britain. The famous French diplomat Charles de Talleyrand captured the moment when he said: "It was worse than a crime; it was a blunder."

That might well be said now about the Russian effort to manipulate the 2016 presidential election by using social media to undermine Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, promote the candidacy of Donald Trump, and generally sow discord throughout the American body politic. Three Russian companies and 13 Russian citizens were indicted by U.S. authorities Friday on charges of engaging in a three-year, multimillion-dollar effort to interfere in the election. Americans naturally are shocked at this brazen effort to unravel the political fabric of their country.

But it isn't really all that shocking. To understand why it was more of a blunder than a crime -- and a blunder with likely tragic consequences -- it is important to absorb five fundamental realities surrounding this important development in U.S.-Russian relations.

First, countries have been doing this sort of thing for centuries. It is a fundamental part of tradecraft -- the use of covert actions to undermine the internal workings of rival nations. No country likes being on the receiving end, but few refrain from such activity when they think it will thwart national security threats.

Second, no nation has been more aggressive than the United States in pursuing efforts, covert and even overt, to destabilize other regimes. In part that's because, as the leading global power since World War II, the Unites States has had more at stake in events of significance throughout the world. In part also, it's because America has had the greatest capacity for bringing the latest technology and the greatest covert capabilities to meet the challenge.

In any event, the U.S. record in this area is beyond dispute. A New York Times piece by Scott Shane over the weekend quoted a University of Georgia professor named Loch Johnson as saying, "We've been doing this kind of thing since the CIA was created in '47. We've used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners -- you name it." Among other things, he adds, the United States has planted false information in foreign newspapers and distributed "suitcases of cash" to influence foreign elections. Steven L. Hall, a 30-year CIA veteran (now retired) with extensive experience leading the Russia desk, told Shane that the United States "absolutely" engaged in such activities, "and I hope we keep doing it."

Shane cites a study by Dov H. Levin of Carnegie Mellon that sought to quantify "election influence operations" by the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia between 1946 and 2000. He counts 81 by the United States and 36 by the Soviet Union or Russia (though he figures there were more ops initiated from Russian soil than we know about).

Beyond that, there is what has become known as the "democracy industry" -- legions of U.S. NGOs, many funded with federal money, that fan out through the world to remake regimes they consider insufficiently imbued with Western values. Writer and thinker David Rieff, writing in The National Interest a few years ago, attacked these democracy promotion adherents as people who "will not or cannot acknowledge either the ideological or the revolutionary character of their enterprise." He likened the democracy promoters in propaganda terms to Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 boast to America that "we will bury you."

Third, the greatest interference in the internal affairs of foreign nations, aside from invasion, is regime change, and here the United States is by far the leader in the post-World War II era. We know of major efforts -- covert or overt, successful or not -- by America to upend regimes in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam, Chile, Nicaragua, Grenada, Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

Leaving aside the case-by-case merits, this is a powerful record, and it has implications far beyond U.S. domestic politics. Like Bonaparte's execution of the Duc d'Enghien, it generates concerns and fears among foreign leaders. In the case of America's regime change zest, it sends chills down the spines of leaders fearful that they may be next on the list of U.S. regime change targets. Certainly the resolve of North Korea's Kim Jong-un to develop nuclear weapons with a delivery capacity to the United States is partly a product of such fears.

Fourth, America and its allies bear by far the greater share of the blame for the current tensions between the West and Russia. It was all predictable back in 1998 when NATO fashioned its policy of aggressive eastward expansion toward the Russian border. George F. Kennan, the highly respected U.S. diplomat and Russia expert, predicted the outcome in particularly stark terms. He called it "the beginning of a new cold war a tragic mistake." He foresaw that of course the Russians would react badly, as any nation would, and then the NATO expansionists would say, see, we always said the Russians were aggressive and couldn't be trusted. "This is just wrong," Kennan warned.

But if NATO expansion was a provocative policy destined to elicit a strong Russian response, the provocation was heightened hugely when America helped perpetrate a regime change initiative in Ukraine, which is not only next door to Russia but has been a crucial part of Russia's sphere of influence going back to the mid-17th century. Further, Russia lies vulnerable to invasion. The unremitting grassy steppes of the nation, extending from Europe all the way to the Far East, with hardly a mountain range or seashore or major forest to hinder encroachment by army or horde, has fostered a national obsession over the need to control territory as a hedge against incursion. Such incursions from the West occurred three times in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ukraine is crucial in this Russian sense of territorial imperative. It's a tragically split country, with part tilting toward the West and part facing eastward toward Russia. That makes for a delicate political and geopolitical situation, but for centuries that delicate political and geopolitical situation has been overseen by Russia. Now the West wants to end that. Upending a duly elected (though corrupt) Ukrainian president was part of the plan. Getting Ukraine into NATO is the endgame.

Note that the Ukrainian revolution occurred in 2014, which just happened to be the year, according to the U.S. indictments, that Russia initiated its grand program to influence America's 2016 elections. Kennan was right: Russia inevitably would react badly to the NATO encirclement policy, and then America's anti-Russian cadres would cite that as evidence that the encirclement was necessary all along. That's precisely what's happening now.

Which brings us to the fifth and final fundamental reality surrounding the revelation of Russia's grand effort to influence the U.S. election. It was an incredible blunder. Given all that's happened in U.S.-Russian relations this century, there probably wasn't much prospect that those relations could ever be normalized, much less made cordial. But that is now utterly impossible.

Donald Trump campaigned on a platform of seeking better relations with Russia. After getting elected he repeatedly asserted in his first news conference that it would be "positive," "good," or "great" if "we could get along with Russia." Unlike most of America's elites, he vowed to seek Moscow's cooperation on global issues, accepted some U.S. share of blame for the two countries' sour relations, and acknowledged "the right of all nations to put their interests first."

This suggested a possible dramatic turn in U.S.-Russian relations -- an end to the encirclement push, curtailment of the hostile rhetoric, a pullback on economic sanctions, and serious efforts to work with Russia on such nettlesome matters as Syria and Ukraine. That was largely put on hold with the narrative of Russian meddling in the U.S. election and vague allegations of campaign "collusion" with Russia on behalf of Trump's presidential ambitions.

It doesn't appear likely that investigators will turn up any evidence of collusion that rises to any kind of criminality. But it doesn't matter now, in terms of U.S.-Russian relations, because these indictments will cement the anti-Russian sentiment of Americans for the foreseeable future. No overtures of the kind envisioned by Trump will be possible for any president for a long time. It won't matter that every nation does it or that America in particular has done it or that the West's aggressive encirclement contributed to the Russian actions. The U.S.-Russian hostility is set. Where it leads is impossible to predict, but it won't be good. It could be tragic.

Robert W. Merry, longtime Washington, D.C., journalist and publishing executive, is editor of The American Conservative . His latest book, President McKinley: Architect of the American Century , was released in September.


Gazza February 18, 2018 at 10:12 pm

I'm disgusted that people are taking this garbage indictment seriously A bunch of Russian private citizens working for a privately-funded NGO (allegedly funded by an owner of a restaurant chain) using faked social media accounts to carry out political activism, and no evidence of Russian government involvement, and this clown Mueller thinks this is some evidence for "Russian meddling" in elections? It wouldn't be so laughable except that the US spook agencies do this sort of thing as a routine .

This is just Mueller doing as he was told to do by his Establishment leash-holders, and come up with any old steaming pile of garbage to be packaged as "evidence" to support this Cold War 2 paranoia mindset and promote the unfounded allegation of Trumps "collusion" with Russians in order to undermine his Presidency.

The US continues to disappoint me This country seems to be utterly incapable of getting things into perspective or acting rationally. A nation run by amoral psychopaths who are completely obsessed with power and wealth and control, and who will stoop to anything in order to achieve their unspoken power agendas.

VikingLS , says: February 18, 2018 at 10:29 pm
Perfectly written. Unless the Russians come up wit ha very good explanation (which most people won't believe) this was a serious screw-up.
Jim Jatras , says: February 18, 2018 at 10:41 pm
The sad fact is the Mr. Merry is probably right. The die is cast. Enmity is almost certainly now permanent, with the increasingly likely result indeed tragic.

With this latest indictment, the bogus "Russian collusion" charge has finally achieved its primary goal -- which was not to remove Trump (that's 3; goal 2 was to elect Hillary), but to ensure unchangeable hostility towards Russia. The fact that Trump even now controverts what H.R. McMaster calls "incontrovertible" is nice but irrelevant. It hardly matters what the president thinks at all. (Besides, for whom does McMaster work, Trump or Mueller?)

Everybody now agrees that "Romney was right." There's nothing Trump can do about it. Ruthenia delenda est. The madness may now become terminal – for everybody.

Notice too how everyone, including Trump's cheering section at Fox News, has immediately lost sight of the REAL collusion within the US government (with a little help from "hands across the water"): Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Comey, Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, Rod Rosenstein (remember, he signed one of the FISA requests to spy on the Trump team), John O. Brennan, Christopher Steele, Andrew Wood (former British ambassador to Russia who peddled the Steele dossier), Loretta Lynch, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and of course Barack Obama. They'll all skate. No surprise there.

All that said, it would have been nice to explain who "the Russians" are we're talking about. This looks less like a government op than a clickbait scam of the sort hundreds of firms in dozens of countries engage in:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html#more

AG , says: February 18, 2018 at 11:04 pm
Donald Trump campaigned on having better relations with Russia(?). Ok, why? A) Is he a deep well read strategic thinker on Russian US relations and envisioned better relations as a positive step towards world peace or B) he admires Putin for being a white right nationalist that he is coupled with his deep business ties to Russian oligarchs which have the potential of being un earthed by that Witcher hunter himself Robert Mueller?

I'm inclined to go with B.

RichterRox , says: February 18, 2018 at 11:30 pm
The man on street doesn't give a squat about the Russians, it's a purely media driven event .
Alexander , says: February 18, 2018 at 11:31 pm
This is a good article, but I feel that it would have been stronger if Mr. Merry had elaborated on the reasons why elevated hostility between Russia and the West represents a tragedy for both parties.

The geopolitical argument for a modus vivendi between America and Russia can be summarised with a single phrase: 'the rise of China'. As an immense body of commentators have argued for years, the #1 geostrategic imperative for the U.S. in the foreseeable future is thwarting Chinese ambitions to become the military, political, and economic hegemon of Asia. China also threatens to displace Russia's influence in Central Asia, and menaces the security of its hold on the thinly populated territories of Siberia. So it would seem that there is a common interest to build on.

Unfortunately, Russia will always value the security of its western lands above all other priorities, and so Eastern Europe remains an enduring sticking point in its relations with the U.S.A. Regardless of whether or not the expansion of NATO back in the 1990s was wise or not, America cannot let go of its commitments there without incurring an unacceptable loss in prestige and credibility. An adversarial relationship appears to be locked in on both sides.

Even if Russia hadn't attempted to influence the 2016 election, I suspect that attempts to forge a new detente would have proven unavailing – just like the infamous 'reset' attempted by Obama. What neither Obama or Trump seem to have understood is the first rule of successful diplomatic resets: 'Only Nixon can go to China'. It takes a leader with genuine credibility on the issue to make such a thing stick. Otherwise the whole thing collapses as soon as the political cycle rotates.

Taras 77 , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:31 am
"Which brings us to the fifth and final fundamental reality surrounding the revelation of Russia's grand effort to influence the U.S. election. It was an incredible blunder."
_________________________________
I'm not all sure what we are talking about here in the grand effort: the troll army, thefacebook/twitter "massive" campaign, the DNC "hacking" which by all accounts did not happen?

I fear that we are falling into the trap of actually believing the press and the hysterical democrats.

My sense is that it was a minor effort in terms of financial expenditures and people involved-I am very skeptical that any votes were influenced to any degree.

So where is the there in all of this smoke and hoopala?

Cornel Lencar , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:52 am
There is a worst outcome of these events, never mind the massive hypocrisy of the US establishment. It will not be possible to have another Bernie Sanders, or even Trump movement in the US, because such movements will be blamed on Russia.

Pro-social ideas and more political diversity in the US are dead and the country will be even more overtly move towards a corporatism, militarist regime.

The time will come that even TAC and likes of Daniel Larson will be accused of being Russian puppets.

JEinCA , says: February 19, 2018 at 2:37 am
My Grandfather (God rest his soul) was born in 1910 and was a brutally honest (and frank) man who never shied away from giving you his opinion on anything. When I was a teenager in the mid 1990's we'd watch the CBS evening news together. Him on his recliner and me on the couch we'd watch the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and he'd turn to me and say, "You know why every other country hates America?". Of course I'd say I didn't know and he'd say to me, "it's because we've got our nose up everybody's ass. We should mind our own Goddamn business!". That was my Grandfather's take on foreign policy. Most might try to dismiss it out of simplicity but his opinion on the matter was not without wisdom. My Grandfather lived through two World Wars (and served in the US Navy during WWII and the Korean War) and worked for the VA hospital during the Vietnam War. Had Washington followed my Grandfather's advice (which has been echoed here at TAC by Patrick J. Buchanan and the rest of the gang for almost two decades now) then there wouldn't be a New Cold War with Russia or China.
Celery , says: February 19, 2018 at 3:28 am
Trump's constant assertions of "nothing to see here" are certainly the acts of someone guilty. Hard to believe there is nothing there. Too many around him have been shown to have ties to Russia, Trump wasn't even in office yet when he promised to remove sanctions on Russia, and his loyalty to Russia over the US in the election meddling is telling. If large numbers of Republicans want to be useful idiots, that's their business, but ducks that quack and walk, and all that

Was the Russian election meddling a blunder? It was certainly successful. It has fractured our society. I believe we will come back stronger from this, but it showed the rot in society, in our religious institutions, and our political institutions. You have to identify the rot to get in there and clean it out, so the Russians gave us that advantage, but it has brought us to the brink.

Again, a blunder? Were we really going to get closer to Russia? I don't think so. Trump tried his best and it didn't work. Not being politically minded, he had to have personal gain as a motivation to promote closer ties with Russia. So if the odds politically of having better ties with Russia were next to nothing at this time, again, Russia won with their troll campaign. While the duped continue to refuse to admit they were duped, Russian influence remains strong, and the duped can be duped again.

Adriel Kasonta , says: February 19, 2018 at 4:54 am
For God's sake, this is madness. There are no winners in this situation. All of us are losers, because we couldn't prevent it from occurring.
Terrence Moloney , says: February 19, 2018 at 6:29 am
This article trots out the usual inaccuracies about NATO expansion and Eastern European history. There is no conceivable scenario in which the Eastern European countries admitted to NATO threaten Russia. Estonia has no invasion plans. NATO does not war game invading Russia and has no capacity to do so. Russia is not by any reasonable measure encircled by anyone. She is the largest country in the world and has managed to survive with Turkey as a NATO member at its doorstep for years.
It's also absurd to make the case that having been invaded three times in the past two centuries makes Russia especially sensitive to invasion. Many European countries have had that experience and aren't annexing bits and bobs of their neighbors if things don't go their way. The Baltic States were invaded three times in FIVE years in World War II, twice by Russia. Now, they have cause for paranoia.
For that matter, Russia hasn't been invaded three times in the 19th and 20th century. In WWI, Russia invaded East Prussia. Most of the war took place in what is now Poland and Belarus, not Russia.
Please stop trying to buttress your commitment to a non-aligned US with dubious statements about Eastern Europe.
PAX , says: February 19, 2018 at 6:29 am
Why can't we trade and exchange with Russia and just get along? Why so much hostility to a country that did the heavy lifting in WW2? Why not call out Isreal (mainly) and Saudi Arabia for trying to manipulate us as their attack dog on a very short and disciplined leash? Recall when Netanyahu addressed the full U.S.Congress (screaming and yelling like rabid fans at a Beatles concert) and a sitting president was forced to watch on TV? Recall how Johnson let Israel attack the USS Liberty for hours and would not let our planes splash the aggressors? What has happened to our values of democracy, dignity, international human rights and above all national independence, especially from relatively client states? P.T. Barnum's "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but not all the people all of the time will take hold." Enough dying and resource wasting on designer wars, not in our interest.
Dan Green , says: February 19, 2018 at 7:06 am
Post WW 2 we have a history of cozing up to Dictators or questionable regimes, then turning on them. Our adversaries especially China and Russia understand this very well.
Michael Antony , says: February 19, 2018 at 7:50 am
Excellent analysis of America's foolish and perhaps fateful policy of encirclement, encroachment and permanent alienation of Russia. Buy why expect Russia to remain passive? Surely they could be forgiven for picking out Trump as a possible source of a more rational and peaceable policy, and saying: let's help this guy get elected. And doing it with their usual clumsiness. Why would they stand by and let the warmongering Hillary push the policy to its ultimate conclusion: war?
Mel Profit , says: February 19, 2018 at 8:01 am
Mr. Merry does a brilliant job–the best I have read–of contextualizing the Russia election interference story. But his analysis is also telling, and typical, in what it omits: any consideration of what in fact the Russians did, and how and to what extent it mattered. And this for a reason that says everything that does matter in our time: the truth of the allegations is irrelevant. Everything is the "narrative".

So, he is correct. Relations will be poisoned for decades. We may even go to war. And the underlying cause will be something that may or may not have happened and, if it did, was–relative to the actual presidential election–inconsequential.

I would only add that in a world more than ever shaped and driven by contesting narratives, the question should be: who benefits most from the Russia indictments, evidence-based or not?

The answer is the dominance of American hawkishness and interventionism, which can now accelerate and expand, unopposed, out to infinity.

Johann , says: February 19, 2018 at 8:50 am
@Terrence Maloney. Expansion of NATO to the Baltics puts OUR troops on Russia's border.

The Washington Post put out an article yesterday interviews a Russian journalist who published a detailed report on the Russian troll factory back in October.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/18/the-russian-journalist-who-helped-uncover-election-meddling-is-confounded-by-the-mueller-indictments/?utm_term=.aa9cdb79d885

"Zakharov (the journalist) explained how it was a strange feeling seeing something he had so closely investigated become a major issue in the United States, when it had not been a "bombshell" when he published his report at home."

You would think the major news organizations like NYT and WaPo would have the resources to constantly research foreign publications. Evidently not, because if the MSM thinks that an indictment of 13 Russian trolls is a bombshell, surely they would think 90 Russian Trolls, as described in the Russian news report and $2M would be an even bigger bombshell. And yet it was never picked up on in this country. It goes to show our big media are navel gazers.

But in any event its NOT a bombshell at all. 90 trolls with $2M in a multi-billion election? I believe what really upsets our self-proclaimed adults, is that the vast unwashed masses' opinions can be changed by comments on facebook or any other outlets where they cannot control the message.

This whole "Russia ate our homework" thing is to divert attention from the corrupt use of the Justice Department and intelligence agencies to spy on political opponents.

Christian Chuba , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:02 am
@Terrence Moloney, it's not an issue of Latvia invading Russia it's an issue of those countries being used as missile platforms and choke points against their navy.

The game goes like this, the U.S. keeps encircling Russia with NATO expansion. If Russia doesn't resist, great, it continues. If Russia resists then that is evidence of 'aggression' that justifies a military buildup on existing NATO countries.

Russia lost an area the size of the United States when the Soviet Union collapsed 1991. After an earthquake there are after shocks.

Crimea never wanted to be part of Ukraine. In 1992 they created their own constitution only to have it nullified by Ukraine. Ossetia declared independence from Georgia in 1992. Is 1992 early enough for you? You act like Moses created these boundaries.

Putin has stated that Russia will not invade the Baltics or Kiev. That it is wrong to try to rule over an unwilling population, that Russia has more than enough land for their people. The premise behind the Crimean annexation was that it was the population's will.

collin , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:19 am
There is a part of me that agrees with you. But.

So Democrats are suppose to simply turn a blind eye towards the Trump campaign then? After years of Benghazi! and Birtherism during Obama. And do you think Russians would have been as effective with Marco Rubio running? Or how the Russian activity started against Democrats Congress in the late election?

Or how the Republican fought against Obama on announcing this activity to the country?

2016 was a God-awful election and conservative have been incredibly smug on their slight victory. And President Trump is DOING NOTHING on this activity so I assume he is hoping for their assistance in 2018. (And notice how much they were active they were on the David Nune memo.)

Why don't Republicans do anything now?

John Gruskos , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:27 am
13 Russians illegally volunteered for Trump's campaign?

So what!

The establishment is straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel.

Hundreds of thousands of Mexicans illegally voted for Hillary Clinton.

Worse, billionaires whose first loyalty is to Israel, such as Haim Shaban and Paul Singer, exercise immense influence over American foreign policy.

Immense resources are being devoted to investigating minuscule Russian activity. Why?

1. Because the establishment wants to overturn the results of the 2016 Presidential election.

2. They also hope to find some connection between the Russian government and the American hard right (via Dugin) which can be used to jail the leading figures of the American hard right, thus doing what the ADL, SPLC and Antifa have failed to do – nullify the First Amendment.

This is arguably the most serious assault ever on the Constitution of the United States.

ARGON , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:37 am
Putin requires hostility with the west in order to remain in power. He doesn't want a war, he just needs Russian citizens to feel aggrieved against outsiders so that they don't react to the kleptocrats running the country. It's classic 'strong man' strategy.
Nathan , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:49 am
"Which brings us to the fifth and final fundamental reality surrounding the revelation of Russia's grand effort to influence the U.S. election. It was an incredible blunder."

What a second. You call that a "grand effort?" A few Facebook accounts and some organized trolling? That is anything but a "grand effort" and I question why anyone would characterize it as such. Especially in the context of what we Americans have done and do (which you touch on).

Fred Bowman , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:50 am
At some point the US needs to turn away from it's "Do as we say, not as we do" mentality. Only thing it's gotten us is a world that doesn't trust us anymore. Unfortunately that day won't come until the day the American Empire collapses and America returns to it's roots as a Republic.
pfed , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:54 am
The Ukrainian president wasn't toppled; he fled,doubting the loyalty of his own security forces and despite an agreement with the opposition to stay in power pending a new election within 10 months.
implications , says: February 19, 2018 at 9:59 am
@celery "Was the Russian election meddling a blunder? It was certainly successful. It has fractured our society. I believe we will come back stronger from this, but it showed the rot in society, in our religious institutions, and our political institutions. You have to identify the rot to get in there and clean it out, so the Russians gave us that advantage, but it has brought us to the brink. "

An apt comment. And in this connection it's crucially important that henceforth we hold other countries to the standards we're holding Russia.

I'm thinking of Israel in particular, which has meddled in and distorted American politics to a degree that the Russians can only dream of. One need say only "Sheldon Adelson" to suggest its corrupting, distorting influence. What if a Russian oligarch came here and did for Russia what Adelson and so many others do for Israel? Would we have American politicians grovelling for the millions that a Russian oligarch could lavish on those who promise to do Putin's bidding – as they already do for Adelson and Netanyahu?

If the end result of this "Russian meddling" case is criminalization of this behavior (or even just reinvigorated enforcement of existing laws, like FARA and the Espionage Act), and if that serves to end Israeli meddling in our political process, then all to the good. Meddling by foreign countries in our political process is indeed "rot", as you put it – and as George Washington urgently warned in his Farewell Address. It must be stopped at all costs, for reasons so obvious that we shouldn't even have to discuss them.

SteveK9 , says: February 19, 2018 at 10:05 am
Sorry, there is still no 'Russian Meddling' of any kind. The indictments were against a commercial marketing scheme, using clickbait to build reputations that could be used to sell ads. That is why the posts have no coherence. Some are for Trump, some against, some for Hillary, some against, and of course there is the post that is definitely for, puppies.

Again, there is nothing here, about 'Russia'. Even Mueller's team of liars did not claim any involvement by the Russian government.

What these indictments mean is that being a foreigner, and posting opinions during an election, without registering as a foreign agent, means you can be indicted for 'defrauding' the US.

It's just another step towards censorship.

Oshell , says: February 19, 2018 at 10:15 am
Hillary supposedly received most of the popular vote. So exactly what effect did the Russians have?
Fran Macadam , says: February 19, 2018 at 10:40 am
Since Washington is rolling in a slush fund of billions in foreign lobbying money from countries overwhelmingly not Russia, why is this influence peddling not the real issue? One guy with a million bucks has more influence with Washington than a million guys with one buck, and there are thousands of former elected and unelected government officials flush with their cash doing the bidding of well moneyed foreign states other than Russia, not that of the hundreds of millions of ordinary Americans.

Now we have the chimera of an indictment against 13 ham sandwiches with Russian dressing which can never be eaten – there will be no actual trials as the people accused are people in a foreign country. So, as has become the new standard for public belief in this and other politicized matters, such findings of fact are unnecessary – accusations become the same as proof, the very definition of witch hunt hysterias, from McCarthy to McMartin preschool.

Fran Macadam , says: February 19, 2018 at 10:51 am
Far from benign foreign influences with far more effective and vast resources were bent on running interference to make sure that Hillary Clinton was elected, since they believed her ascendancy was in their best interests. Because millions of Americans knew that her policy predilections were not in their own best interests, does that make them unwitting tools of a Russian conspiracy? It's a witch hunt by powerful domestic forces not acting in Americans' best interests, but those of elites who feel threatened by their own country's heartland and its increasingly dispossessed.
Michael Kenny , says: February 19, 2018 at 10:55 am
This, I assume, is the latest pro-Putin propaganda line. With Putin openly interfering in the Italian election in favour of the Lega Nord, it is now impossible to deny his interference in the US election. So now the interference is admitted but of course it couldn't possibly be nice Mr Putin's fault. It was just a blunder and, as we've come to expect, it was all provoked anyway by the ever dastardly US! The rest is just a re-has of the "let Putin win in Ukraine" pretexts that we've all heard a thousand times.
Will Harrington , says: February 19, 2018 at 11:15 am
I'll say it again. One of the oldest tricks any regime uses when it begins to feel insecure is to create an enemy for its people to focus on. Our oligarchy has chosen Russia, probably because China makes them too much money.
connecticut farmer , says: February 19, 2018 at 11:46 am
Who, specifically, was indicted? Let's hear some names! From whom did they get their marching orders? How did they "meddle" in the election? Examples please. And, most importantly, where are they? If ( as rumor has it) they are in Russia then those indictments aren't worth the paper they're written on.
four alarmer , says: February 19, 2018 at 11:47 am
Yes, please stop the Russian meddling! And please stop all the other foreign meddling while you're at it. We're sick of doing the spending, fighting, and dying for foreign countries.
Fran Macadam , says: February 19, 2018 at 11:57 am
Will Harrington, so right. The ancien regime doesn't want to do anything for the heartland, except to drive a stake through our hearts.
Chris in Appalachia , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:14 pm
An American here. How can I think the Russians for interfering in American elections? I trust Putin more than our own so-called "leaders." I say, interfere away (and let Hungary and Poland join in)! Maybe then Americans will have the chance to break free of the chains of the two-party sham, neocon foreign policy, and corporate globalism.
SteveM , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:18 pm
The always insightful (and sometimes TAC contributor) Charles Hugh Smith has an excellent related essay on this:

https://www.oftwominds.com/blogfeb18/russia-irony2-18.html

David Nash , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:28 pm
Interesting how the Trumpeteers have gone so swiftly from "Fake News" to "So What!". (I guess Oceania has Always been at war with Eurasia.)

What people are missing, including the NeverTrumpers and the ForeverTrumpers is this even betting there was no collusion (because not even ham-fisted Ruskies would cozy up too close with such a band of inept jerks as the Trump Campaign) it shows Trump is a Chump.

Donnie the Strong Man is a clueless loser who was USED by the Russian troll factory because he would be pliable (ie easily manipulated) to give them what they wanted.

Trump has SUCKER written all over his face. He should go play a round of golf and tweet out pathetic insults to everyone. What else has he left.

For those who have projected their own agenda onto Trump's blatherings (just like the Lefties did with Obama's vague platitudes), when will it occur to you that if you have to keep making excuses and attacking those who point out the obvious, you have backed the wrong horse's ***.

I know he can put on his Admiral-General uniform and review the troops, just like the Ruskie leadership. Tanks, rocket launchers, ICBMs and goose-stepping soldiery (just like the Russians). That will Prove he has *large hands*. "I'll Show You!"

Siarlys Jenkins , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:35 pm
An excellent overview. Merry has stepped on a lot of people's preferred narratives, left, right and center, but he is pitilessly accurate.
Dee , says: February 19, 2018 at 12:38 pm
Putin got elected because Russians were tired of Western rapacious capitalists trying to use the broken Soviet Union to make money.. Putin then used his KGB thugs to turn the Russian government into a mafioso.. The chosen, Putin enablers, looted the country.. The looters want to free their stolen money to buy things in the west, cause who wants old soviet crap.. Western capitalists who dont care are more than willing to take their cut.. This is Trump, who could not get a loan in this country.. This article is repugnant, it reduces the USA to the level of these thieves in Russia.. God help us all.
connecticut farmer , says: February 19, 2018 at 1:32 pm
@ Jim Jatras

"All that said, it would have been nice to explain who 'the Russians' are we're talking about."

Bingo! I'd like to see names, who their bosses were (if they had any), places from which they did their deeds. I'd like more specifics on exactly "what" they did and how. Most importantly, and to paraphrase the Fermi (UFO) Paradox, "where are they?" Rumor has it they're in Rooshia. If so, fuggedaboudit! We ain't EVER gonna seem them.

Indictment! As the saying goes "you can indict a ham sandwich."

Interguru , says: February 19, 2018 at 1:33 pm
@Jim Jatras

"All that said, it would have been nice to explain who "the Russians" are we're talking about. This looks less like a government op than a clickbait scam of the sort hundreds of firms in dozens of countries engage in:"

Russia has very tight control of net communications within its borders. This could not have happened without their support, or at least their tacit approval.

That being said, I agree with the article.

LouisM , says: February 19, 2018 at 1:35 pm
This is falling right into the trap of the neocon and neoliberal warmongerers.
1) No I don't believe Russia wants to reconstitute either the Russian Empire or the Soviet Empire. Its about territorial integrity and relevancy on the world stage.
2) The US and EU backed Russia into the corner with the tug of war in Ukrainian elections between pro-Russian candidates and pro-EU candidates then threatening Ukraine to take Crimea away from the Russian navy. A clear threat to Russian territorial integrity and Russia would be irrelevant without its warm water port in the Black Sea.
3) US and EU and Israel spy and influence elections around the world. Its concerning yes, but does the US and EU expect Russia not to reciprocate?
4) I don't care what anyone says, everyone in the US owes Russia a debt of gratitude. I will thank any nation that tried to tell the US citizenry what an evil, shrill, bipolar, incompetent, traitorous woman Hillary Clinton was and still is! Hillary and Obama and their administration should be in jail for murder, corruption and collusion.

This blunder will force a further deterioration between the US and Russia when both the US and EU need friendly relations with Russia now more than ever. There are threats in this world far greater than Russia like terrorism and nuclear proliferation and radical islam etc. This means the US will have to tackle these issues without the help of Russia because it will be punishing Russia. Mr. Trump, we need a master negotiator now more than ever to get Russia out past this scandal and build a better relationship with them.

Room 237 , says: February 19, 2018 at 1:48 pm
What is distressing is not that it happened. We are an open society (and I use that term in a general sense, not teh Karl Popper sense). So it is easy to do so.

What is distressing to me is that it may have worked.

Ken T , says: February 19, 2018 at 1:53 pm
One of the strangest things about this whole matter is that it was just a few years ago that Obama and Clinton were talking about trying to have a "reset" in our relations with Russia, and the Right was apoplectic that they would even consider trying to talk to the implacable enemy that was just waiting for the chance to destroy us. Now, with clear evidence that Russia has in fact caused us harm, those exact same people are the ones saying "No problem, nothing to see here. We trust Putin implicitly, he would never do anything to hurt us."
andy , says: February 19, 2018 at 2:11 pm
A very timely article indeed- one only needs the most basic outline of Russian history of the last millennium to understand that their foreign policy has always been primarily defensive.
One thing, though, needs to be corrected: The next president will indeed have an opportunity to demonstrate a broad understanding of the situation and stretch out a cautiously friendly hand.
This can't happen with Trump for two reasons- he hasn't demonstrated any understanding of the context of the issue, and he has thoroughly poisoned the well by only seeing recent events in terms of his own personal repuatation, not of the nation that he was hired to represent.

[Feb 20, 2018] a 37 page document

Notable quotes:
"... self-enrichment ..."
"... Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. ..."
Feb 20, 2018 | www.politico.com

inter alia allegedly later ran a clandestine operation seeking to influence opinion in the United States regarding the candidates in the 2016 election in which it favored Donald Trump and denigrated Hillary Clinton. The Russians identified by name are all back in Russia and cannot be extradited to the U.S., so the indictment is, to a certain extent, political theater as the accused's defense will never be heard.

In presenting the document, Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, stressed that there was no evidence to suggest that the alleged Russian activity actually changed the result of the 2016 presidential election or that any actual votes were altered or tampered with. Nor was there any direct link to either the Russian government or its officials or to the Donald Trump campaign developed as a result of the nine-month long investigation. There was also lacking any mention in the indictment of the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton and Panetta e-mails, so it is to be presumed that the activity described in the document was unrelated to the WikiLeaks disclosures.

Those of the "okay, there's smoke but where's the fire" school of thought immediately noted the significant elephant in the room, namely that the document did not include any suggestion that there had been collusion between Team Trump and Moscow. As that narrative has become the very raison d'etre driving the Mueller investigation, its omission is noteworthy. Meanwhile, those who see more substance in what was revealed by the evidence provided in the indictment and who, for political reasons, would like to see Trump damaged, will surely be encouraged by their belief that the noose is tightening around the president.

Assuming the indictment is accurate, I would agree that the activity of the Internet Research Agency does indeed have some of the hallmarks of a covert action intelligence operation in terms how it used some spying tradecraft to support its organization, targeting and activity. But its employees also displayed considerable amateur behavior, suggesting that they were not professional spies, supporting the argument that it was not a government intelligence operation or an initiative under Kremlin control. And beyond that, so what? Even on a worst-case basis, stirring things up is what intelligence agencies do, and no one is more active in interfering in foreign governments and elections than the United States of America, most notably in Russia for the election of Boris Yeltsin in 1996, which was arranged by Washington, and more recently in Ukraine in 2014. From my own experience I can cite Italy's 1976 national election in which the CIA went all out to keep the communists out of government. Couriers were discreetly dispatched to the headquarters of all the Italian right wing parties dropping off bags of money for "expenses" while the Italian newspapers were full of articles written by Agency-paid hacks warning of the dangers of communism. And this all went on clandestinely even though Italy was a democracy, an ally and NATO member.

Does that mean that Washington should do nothing in response? No, not at all. Russia, if the indictment is accurate, may have run an influencing operation and gotten caught with its hand in the cookie jar. Or maybe not. And Washington might also actually have information suggesting that Russia is preparing to engage in further interference in the 2018 and 2020 elections, as claimed by the heads of the intelligence agencies, though, as usual, evidence for the claim is lacking. There has to be bilateral, confidential discussion of such activity between Washington and Moscow and a warning given that such behavior will not be tolerated in the future, but only based on irrefutable, solid evidence. The leadership in both countries should be made to understand very clearly that there are more compelling reasons to maintain good bilateral working relations than not.

With that in mind, it is important not to overreact and to base any U.S. response on the actual damage that was inflicted. The indictment suggests that Russia is out to destroy American democracy by promoting "distrust" of government as well as sowing "discord" in the U.S. political system while also encouraging "divisiveness" among the American people. I would suggest in Russia's defense that the U.S. political system is already doing a good job at self-destructing and the difficult-to-prove accusations being hurled at Moscow are the type one flings when there is not really anything important to say.

I would suggest that Moscow might well want to destroy American democracy but there is no evidence in the indictment to support that hypothesis. I particularly note that the document makes a number of assumptions which appear to be purely speculative for which it provides no evidence. It describes the Russian company Internet Research Agency as "engaged in operations to interfere with elections and political processes." Its employees were involved in

"interference operations targeting the United States. From in or around 2014 to the present, Defendants knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016."

The theme of Russian subversion is repeated throughout the indictment without any compelling evidence to explain how Mueller knows what he asserts to be true, suggesting either that the document would have benefited from a good editor or that whoever drafted it was making things up. Internet Research Agency allegedly "conduct[ed] what it called 'information warfare against the United States of America' through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media." The indictment goes on to assert that

"By in or around May 2014, the ORGANIZATION's strategy included interfering with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with the stated goal of 'spread[ing] distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general'"

with a

"strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton. Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the name of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities."

Two company associates

"traveled in and around the United States, including stops in Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas, and New York to gather intelligence. After the trip, [they] exchanged an intelligence report regarding the trip. The conspiracy had as its object the opening of accounts under false names at U.S. financial institutions and a digital payments company in order to receive and send money into and out of the United States to support the ORGANIZATION's operations in the United States and for self-enrichment . Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist. All in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1349."

Note particularly the money laundering and for-profit aspects of the Internet Research scheme, something that would be eschewed if it were an actual intelligence operation. There is some speculation that it all might have been what is referred to as a click-bait commercial marketing scheme set up to make money from advertising fees. Also note how small the entire operation was. It focused on limited social media activity while spending an estimated $1 million on the entire venture, with Facebook admitting to a total of $100,000 in total ad buys, only half of which were before the election. It doesn't smell like a major foreign government intelligence/influence initiative intended to "overthrow democracy." And who attended the phony political rallies? How many votes did the whole thing cause to change? Impossible to know, but given a campaign in which billions were spent and both fake and real news were flying in all directions, one would have to assume that the Russian effort was largely a waste of time if it indeed was even as described or serious in the first place.

And apart from the money laundering aspect of the alleged campaign was it even illegal apart from the allegations of possible visa fraud and money laundering? If the Russians involved were getting their financial support from the Moscow government then it would be necessary to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938, but if not, they would be protected by the Constitution and have the same First Amendment right to express their opinions of Hillary Clinton on blogs and websites while also associating with others politically as do all other residents of the United States. Many of the commenters on this Unz site are foreign and are not required either by law or custom to state where they come from.

And, of course, there is one other thing. There always is. One major media outlet is already suggesting that there could be consequences for American citizens who wittingly or unwittingly helped the Russians, identified in the indictment as "persons known and unknown." A former federal prosecutor put it another way, saying "While they went to great pains to say they are not indicting any Americans today, if I was an American and I did cooperate with Russians I would be extremely frightened " Politico speculates that "Now, a legal framework exists for criminal charges against Americans " and cites a former U.S. district attorney's observation that "Think of a conspiracy indicting parties ' known and unknown' as a Matroyshka doll. There are many more layers to be successively revealed over time."

Under normal circumstances, an American citizen colluding with a foreign country would have to be convicted of engaging in an illegal conspiracy, which would require being aware that the foreigners were involved in criminal behavior and knowingly aiding them. But today's overheated atmosphere in Washington is anything but normal. Russia's two major media outlets that operate in the U.S., Sputnik and RT America, have been forced to register under FARA. Does that mean that the hundreds of American citizens who appeared on their programs prior to the 2016 election to talk about national politics will be next in line for punishment? Stay tuned.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is www.councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

[Feb 19, 2018] Internet Marketing - Why Is This Smelly Fish Priceless (updated)

Interesting illustration of how bots (in this case sole sleazy Dems operative with Slavic last name, not Russians ;-) work.
Notable quotes:
"... Democratic Coalition ..."
"... Progressive Army ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
about the Mueller indictment on Twitter some seemingly automated accounts retweeted my promotion.

The original piece is about an internet marketing scheme that is supposed to have influenced U.S. elections. It is thus amusing that the retweeting bots are part of an internet marketing scheme that is supposed to influence U.S. elections.

But why do they use the line "Omg. Fish is priceless"?

My original tweet:


WorldBLee , Feb 19, 2018 11:58:10 AM | 25

Commentators pointed out:

1. The first retweet shown above, which introduced the 'fish' line, is from a real person. Debbie Lusigman, the @saneprogessive , who has her own video channel with lots of legit content. The other tweets though are copies (not regular retweets) of the first retweet.
(h/t oldandyoung and integer )

2. The other personalities are likely bots that may well be run by one Scott Dworkin , a grifter who runs the fundraising campaign Democratic Coalition and channels most of the funds to a company he owns. Geoff Miami found the connection and reported on it at Progressive Army .
(h/t Demeter )

Posted by b on February 19, 2018 at 07:36 AM | Permalink

@saneprogressive is a real account; the rest appear to be bots. The bots RT some posts and appropriate others as their own. For instance, another one of @saneprogressives posts was also posted by @SenWarren2020 as its own yesterday. These are simple bots that attach themselves to certain accounts that have been deemed to be in the right ideological sphere, one suspects.

Demeter , Feb 19, 2018 12:01:23 PM | 26
I know those bots. @GeoffMiami has called them out as accounts controlled by Scott Dowrkin (@funder) and his "resistance organization" The Dem Coalition (@TheDemCoalition). "They hope to grift off Bernie supporters by using Bernie-themed bot accounts to push their propaganda."


More here - exposing Dworkin as a grifter Resistance Grift – How Scott Dworkin Turned the Resistance into a Personal Payday

Dworkin's Super PAC promotes fear through a repeating cycle of Russian-based propaganda, which garners donations, which pay consultants that generate those stories over and over again, garnering yet more donations. As to what purpose his Super PAC actually serves, it appears to be little more than a Möbius strip of self-serving opportunism.

b , Feb 19, 2018 12:16:49 PM | 27
@Bobby Mueller @6
"because they are not re-tweeting your post from MOA - they are re-tweeting @saneprogressive's re-tweet of your MOA post."

No - the 2nd to 8th account are not "retweeting" the 1st. They copied and reposted its content.
If those were legit one click "retweets" a la normal Twitter it would says so (XYZ retweeted ABC) and lock different. The form they used as shown above would require several clicks to 1. go to my original tweet, 2. retweet that with comment, 3. type (or copy) the fish line, 4. send.

These are for sure bots running on some script.

psychohistorian , Feb 19, 2018 1:00:03 PM | 28
I am not sure that I have taken enough of the right drugs but here goes

1. The retweets are secret messages from "saneprogressive" that bots are trained to retweet so others know to read your posting as it is priceless

2. The retweets are NSA manipulation to deprecate and make light of your posting by making it unserious

3. Twitter/NSA has developed bots behind the scene to manipulate public focus and it is just coming out of Beta testing

4. Some blogs have weekly cat pictures but this is clear evidence that MoA needs to have at least weekly sock puppet pictures.

5. All this focus on sock puppets and fish on America's president's day is unpatriotic and taking focus away from the current president's tweets which cannot be tolerated.

6. If this fish is so priceless, why is it stealing focus from humanity's more pressing problems like determining if this persons G in OMG is the same as that persons G in their OMG

It is just at freezing in Portland OR with a light dusting of snow from last night on all but the roads and the sun is shining.....Happy day/life to all!

b , Feb 19, 2018 1:00:16 PM | 29
@all -

I updated the piece above with the information provided by oldandyoung, integer, and Demeter.
Thanks folks!

Sebastian Dangerfield , Feb 19, 2018 1:57:44 PM | 30
This is an absolutely hilarious illustration of your argument. While I don't think the argument that the Internet Research Agency was a marketing endeavor is conclusive, it certainly is a compelling explanation, especially given the ridiculous nature of the content that it produced. It's like everyone simply ignored the fact that there are gazillions of these click-harvesting schemes and that the 2016 election, being a perpetual internet outrage machine, was especially fertile ground for them. They all (probably deliberately) ignored the reporting about, say, the Macedonian bullshit farm, which was generating mostly pro-Trump posts in order to harvest clicks. https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/how-macedonia-became-a-global-hub-for-pro-trump-misinfo?utm_term=.ynwo9nn2#.rvBVyoo3
Jen , Feb 19, 2018 4:02:14 PM | 33
The sock puppet does look a bit like a fish and maybe Debbie Lusignan saw a pun in there that is lost on the bots retweeting her Tweet.

"Fish" is good for "fishing" and "phishing" = collecting clicks (and possibly personal information attached to metadata generated by clicks) to forward on to third parties willing to pay for that information.

Kat C , Feb 19, 2018 5:12:04 PM | 34
I have been tweeting your article, not the fish picture, frequently, as I am tired of even supporters of Trump spouting a false narrative. #IamnotaRussianbot or bot of any sort, just a human who wants to pass on the excellent info you wrote. I hope it gets new followers to your blog!
Daniel , Feb 19, 2018 5:31:41 PM | 35
I've been following Debbie Lusignan since early in the 2015/2016 Primaries. She was a Bernie supporter who documented the election fraud better than any other source. She has since come to see Bernie as a sell-out at least, if not a sheep dog from the start. And her focus since has been on discarding the "right/left paradigm" and joining in common causes against the global, plutocratic, warmongering powers.

I've posted links to MoA articles on her sites several times, so maybe her following b is my fault. ;-)

This is her Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/saneprogressive

daffyDuct , Feb 19, 2018 8:42:02 PM | 42
Demeter@26

"Resistance Grift – How Scott Dworkin Turned the Resistance into a Personal Payday"

So he's kind of like the IRA chef?

[Feb 19, 2018] Goofy Indictments divert attention from Criminal Abuses at the FBI and DOJ by Mike Whitney

The fact that Mueller politicized the action of Russian Internet scammers (who are at best petty criminals) suggest that he has nothing more significant to offer hungry US Russophobes.
At this point Mueller turned his investigation into pure political propaganda
Notable quotes:
"... My impression has been that the "fake news" of dubious sources that circulates on social media is much better at generating money through clicks and shares in appealing to existing bias than it is at changing opinions. ..."
"... information that is true & irrefutable can hardly be considered harmful to the function of democracy, no matter the self-interested motive of the source: the electorate will consider it with their own self-interest in mind. And if any meaningful number of the American electorate – reaching up, say, to triple or even quadruple digits – was duped into texting their vote instead of going to their precinct then we need to resolve to get wise to this trick and not get fooled again. ..."
"... Poor Russia cant get a break, neither can Americans get a break from this USA 'get Russia' monkey circus. The monkeys now reach back a year ago to get Russia on a cyber attack. ..."
"... This a great article: it summarizes the poverty of the entire "Russians done it" meme. Let's not forget: this is another BIG LIE, on par, if not worse than the Iraq fiasco LIES ..."
"... "U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." When are we going to indict Israeli nationals for the above-mentioned crimes? When are we going to single out Bibi as a foreign national who engages with childlike enthusiasm in political activities within the United States? ..."
"... It's even more depressing than that. The indictments are against what is probably just (one of a million) commercial marketing scams. That is why the posts have no coherence. Some are for Trump, some against, some are for Hillary and some against, and of course there is the post that is for puppies. These are clickbait to establish the trolls as leaders so they can get advertisers to purchase ads. ..."
"... The word Lügenpresse has has entered German dictionaries, 'lying press', I hope a similar expression will enter USA dictionaries soon. In Germany this expression also is used with regard to TV. ..."
"... How creepy these pyschopaths are is hard for most people to understand, but gradually they are. Also, Trump has powerful opponents, one of which is the inability of most people to politically wake up quickly. He is the front man for a Military, Political, and Scientific Alliance making war against entrenched elitist, sociopathic, self-centered, control freak cabals that almost seized complete power in our country. Give him some slack okay. He's / they are doing pretty good considering the incredibly dangerous situation they took over. Keep writing Mike Whitney! ..."
"... It appears that Mueller is intent on prolonging his little fishing trip. My own cynicism suggests to me that his motive is, at least partially, financial. Sure, the media has said that he's being paid what will amount to only $200k or so per year for his "service" and that he has given up a position that pays him closer to $3 million for the same amount of time in order to act as Special Counsel. ..."
"... This indictment has publicised for the whole world that US has a 'law' that prohibits free speech by foreigners in foreign countries if they dare to speak disparagingly of US politicians. That is a PR disaster. People will be laughing about this for decades. Why do something so obviously stupid? ..."
"... Many countries have bad laws – in Thailand people can go to jail for offending the king. But to apply it to free speech by foreign people living abroad is self-destructive. To my best knowledge no country has ever attempted to charge people living abroad with 'disparaging comments' about their politicians. By that standard, literally millions of people are daily breaking the 'law' – e.g. all the bad stuff people say about Trump. During 2016 election there were literally millions of people in foreign countries who expressed 'disparaging' views about Trump. And some about Clinton. ..."
"... Doing nothing would had been better than becoming a laughing stock. How is Washington going to preach freedom of speech and internet after this self-inflicted fiasco? What if Russia starts 'indicting' millions of people who expressed negative comments about Putin? ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | www.unz.com

Robert Mueller's Friday night indictment-spree, is a flagrant and infuriating attempt to divert attention from the damning revelations in the Nunes memo (and the Graham-Grassley "criminal referral") which prove that senior-level officials at the FBI and DOJ were engaged in an expansive conspiracy to subvert the presidential elections by spying on members of the Trump campaign. The evidence that the FBI and DOJ "improperly obtained" FISA warrants to spy on Trump campaign affiliate, Carter Page, has now been overshadowed by the tragic massacre in Parkland, Florida and the obfuscating indictments of 13 Internet "trolls" who have not been linked to the Russian government and who are being used to conceal the fact that the 18 month-long witch hunt has not yet produced even one scintilla of hard evidence related to the original claims of "hacking or collusion".

Think about what's Mueller is really up to: He's not just moving the goalposts, he's loading them onto a spaceship and putting them on another planet. Where's the evidence that Russia hacked the DNC computers and stole their emails? Where's the proof that members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russia? That's what we want to know, not whether some goofy Russian troll was spreading false information on Facebook. That has nothing to do with the original charges. It's just politically-motivated gibberish that proves Mueller has nothing to support his case. After a full year, the investigation has failed to produce anything but a big goose egg.

According to the indictment, the alleged Russian trolls "posted derogatory information about a number of candidates" and its "operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Clinton."

Big whoop. If people are so malleable that they can be brainwashed by some suggestive posting on Facebook, then maybe we should abandon democracy altogether. But that's not what this is really about, is it? Because if it was, Mueller would have posted the contents of those nefarious Russian comments in the indictment WHICH HE DIDN'T because he knows it's all obfuscating bullsh** designed to make the sheeple think evil Putin is dabbling in our precious elections.

Oh, and here's a little tidbit the MSM managed to overlook in their typically-hysterical coverage. This is from journalist Alexander Mercouris at the pro-Russia website, The Duran: (If you think your delicate mind might be brainwashed by Russian propaganda, please, shield your eyes!)

"The third thing to say about the indictment – and a point which has been almost universally overlooked in all the feverish commentary about it – is that it makes no claim that the Russian government was in any way involved in any of the activities of the persons indicted.

Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf ." (The Duran, Alexander Mercouris)

No Ruskis involved? But how can that be? We were assured that diabolical Russia is behind everything bad that happens in America. Has evil Putin been sleeping on the job??

Yes, it's true that the Internet Research Agency, LLC, is in fact located in St. Petersburg but–as yet–there is no known connection between the company and the government. And, if there was, you can bet that Mueller would have exploited it for all it's worth.

By the way, Mueller's presumption that the hackers were trying to influence the election, is just that, a presumption. It has no basis in fact whatsoever. It is mere speculation like the rest of the claptrap he's come up with. The more reasonable explanation is that the hackers were trying to make a little dough on "pageviews or clicks" rather than trying to persuade voters to vote for one candidate or the other. Here's more from the indictment:

" Defendants and their co-conspirators began to track and study groups on U.S. social media sites dedicated to U.S. politics and social issues. In order to gauge the performance of various groups on social media sites, the organization tracked certain metrics like the group's size, the frequency of content placed by the group, and the level of audience engagement with that content, such as the average number of comments or responses to a post."

WTF! Isn't this what everyone is doing, including the Intel agencies, advertisers, media and corporations? So now it's a crime? Give me a break!

Here's a blurb from the comments-line at Sic Semper Tyrannis:

"The "conspiracy" started in 2014, and cost a whopping $1.2 MILLION, which includes salaries, tech support, and bonuses. The indictment includes info that the Russians ran ads supporting Black Lives Matter, Muslims, Jill Stein, Ted Cruz, Rubio, and Trump. They also organized rallies in support of, and in opposition to Trump and Hillary Clinton. They continued their activities up into 2017, still organizing pro-Clinton and pro-Trump rallies. At one point, the indictment says that the Russians ran an ad that reached 59,000 people, which is laughable, people with a camera in their kitchen get more views than that. Essentially, after about 1.5 years of investigating "Russian collusion" this is all they've come up with." –London Bob, Sic Semper Tyrannis

And here's more from the indictment:

"U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General."

This is mind-numbingly stupid. Does Mueller really think he can cobble together a case against 13 foreign-born defendants based on the thin gruel of Russian support for "Black Lives Matter, Jill Stein and Donald Trump?" Good luck with that, Bob.

Political analyst Paul Craig Roberts summarizes how absurd the indictments are in a Friday article tiled "The Result of Mueller's Investigation: Nothing":

"How did the 13 Russians go about sowing discord? Are you ready for this? They held political rallies posing as Americans and they paid one person (unidentified) to build a cage aboard a flatbed pickup truck and another person to wear a costume portraying Hillary in prison clothes ."

The whole thing is ridiculous and anyone with half a brain knows it's ridiculous. The only reason this fiasco continues to drag on, is because the mandarins in the US National Security State run everything in America and they've decided that they can invent whatever reality suits their foreign policy agenda and the rest of us will simply accept it in silence or be denounced as "Putin apologists" or "Kremlin stooges". Fortunately, facts and reason appear to be getting the upper hand which why the deep state powerbrokers are getting so desperate. They're now genuinely concerned about what might "come out" and who might be exposed.

Do the names John Brennan or Barack Obama ring a bell?

Indeed. I'm sure both names would factor quite large in any seriously impartial and thorough investigation of the Russiagate conspiracy.

One last thing for all you supporters of Donald Trump. I suggest you carefully examine his latest tweet on the topic. Here it is:

"Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!" Donald Trump, Twitter

As I expected, Trump is going to save his own skin, but allow the "Bigger Lie" to persist. It looks to me that Trump may have cut a deal with his deep state antagonists to support their spurious claims of Russian meddling as long as they exonerate him on the charges of collusion. That means, he will NOT use his power as President to try to uncover the roots of Russia-gate fabrication. (that would probably expose the former Directors of the CIA and NSA and, perhaps, even the former president of the United States, who likely gave Brennan the greenlight to set the wheels in motion.) All of these suspects will go uninvestigated, unindicted, and unpunished just like the perpetrators of the Iraq War, just like the perpetrators of the Financial Meltdown, and just like the perpetrators of all the major crimes against the American people. As always, it is complete and total immunity for Parasite Class while the rest of us have to play by the rules. But you probably already knew that.

Trump will get off the hook while the rest of us languish in permanent ignorance of how the shadow government really works. You heard it first here.


Svigor , February 18, 2018 at 6:23 am GMT

http://www.unz.com/proberts/rosenstein-and-mueller-running-for-cover-leaving-brennan-exposed/

What perhaps has surely happened

Now there's some tight writing. No wonder he insisted on disabling comments on his pieces.

El Dato , February 18, 2018 at 2:08 pm GMT
@Svigor

This is a perfectly valid and understandable turn of phrase for NuMerica 2018

https://imgur.com/DIVoxL5

fenster , February 18, 2018 at 2:31 pm GMT
<>

Beat you by one day, though you have more readers . . .

https://uncouthreflections.com/2018/02/17/wonton-speculation/

John Achterhof , February 18, 2018 at 6:48 pm GMT
After all of the concern expressed in the abstract I'd like to see some concrete examples of the material used to change opinions of American voters. My impression has been that the "fake news" of dubious sources that circulates on social media is much better at generating money through clicks and shares in appealing to existing bias than it is at changing opinions.

In any event, in this new environment – absent some form of censorship as with authoritarian states – any interested party such as a foreign government may introduce anonymously, by way of levels of remove, political content intended to change opinion. Of course, information that is true & irrefutable can hardly be considered harmful to the function of democracy, no matter the self-interested motive of the source: the electorate will consider it with their own self-interest in mind. And if any meaningful number of the American electorate – reaching up, say, to triple or even quadruple digits – was duped into texting their vote instead of going to their precinct then we need to resolve to get wise to this trick and not get fooled again.

Now, if this Mueller investigation would set out anew with a determination to find some Russian government involvement in fomenting the red hot molten lava of Identity Politics bubbling out of our universities – the obscene notion that a "patriarchy" of white males, acting as some kind of an informal fraternity in favoring themselves in the economy to the detriment of the outsiders, needs to get taken down in status in order to make America great – then they'd be cooking with gas toward the concern of harming the bonds of our civil union.

renfro , February 19, 2018 at 7:38 am GMT
Poor Russia cant get a break, neither can Americans get a break from this USA 'get Russia' monkey circus. The monkeys now reach back a year ago to get Russia on a cyber attack.

White House blames Russia for 'reckless' NotPetya cyber attack

https://www.reuters.com/ russia /white-house-blames-russia-for-reckless-notpetya-c&#8230 ;

3 days ago – WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) – The White House on Thursday blamed Russia for the devastating 'NotPetya' cyber attack last year , joining the British government in condemning Moscow for unleashing a virus that crippled parts of Ukraine's infrastructure and damaged computers in countries across the

Best advice for Americans believe nothing, trust nothing that issues from a government.

The experts:

John McAfee, founder of an anti-virus firm, said: "When the FBI or when any other agency says the Russians did it or the Chinese did something or the Iranians did something – that's a fallacy," said McAfee.

"Any hacker capable of breaking into something is extraordinarily capable of hiding their tracks. If I were the Chinese and I wanted to make it look like the Russians did it I would use Russian language within the code. "I would use Russian techniques of breaking into organisations so there is simply no way to assign a source for any attack – this is a fallacy."

I can promise you – if it looks like the Russians did it, then I can guarantee you it was not the Russians."

Wikileaks has released a number of CIA cyber tools it had obtained. These included software specifically designed to create false attributions.

Ronald Thomas West , Website February 19, 2018 at 7:38 am GMT
Naw, we didn't hear it here first, it's been glaringly obvious to about everyone outside of the USA propaganda loop, here's just one example:

http://ian56.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-spuious-mueller-indictments-of-13.html

Per the preceding, my own observation would be, when your lead investigator/special prosecutor's known history is framing people for crimes they didn't commit, sandbagging & sinking criminal investigations into international narcotics & arms trafficking, protecting related money laundering & hired killers, and providing cover for the perpetrators (intelligence agencies), we know why any reasonably honest & intelligent person wouldn't give two cents credibility to, and possess a rat's ass level of sympathy for, 'special' counsel Robert Mueller. The real question is, why the Boyd Cathy and Mike Whitney types don't go after these guys at the level the deserve; pointing to their established international criminal mafioso (read intelligence agency) crimes sprees and history of impunity:

https://ronaldthomaswest.com/2018/02/07/bob-manson-charlie-mueller/

^ It's 'alternative news' cowards won't take this s ** t on

Anonymous Disclaimer , February 19, 2018 at 7:45 am GMT
From a different Anonymous ..Mr. Whitney I can see the point of Donald Trump doing the kind of deal you suggest if there was enough for him to fear as you suggest but do not demonstrate. Why shouldn't we believe that it's all over, the indictments show there's nothing to be concrrned about?

Before your suggestion of the deal I had already concluded that you had not made a case against the indictments. Are you in fact willing to say that they should not have been instituted? If so, why?

Are they so completely hopeless in law, or as a matter of practicality in terms of their ever being got to court that it is an abuse if Mueller's position to support them? And if, as seems likely, nothing will come of them (certainly Russia won't help with extradition), is there not a case for using these indictments to clear the air on the law and, possibly, by the courts throwing the cases out on weakness of the matters of fact alleged? Could there even be a Machiavellian desire to have arguments put which would embarrass the Israel Lobby?

renfro , February 19, 2018 at 7:56 am GMT
@Anonymous

This should not be allowed either. CNN . 'Israel has 200,000 eligible American voters, according to the non-partisan organization IVoteIsrael, which registers American Israelis to vote.

Wizard of Oz , February 19, 2018 at 8:15 am GMT
Mike Whitney. Do you think Mueller should have avoided bringing the indictments even though US law appears to make what was done illegal? If so, why?

Could Mueller be justified by thinking it could help to sort out a bad law, especially if lawyers appear for the named defendants and move for the dismissal of the case on the facts alleged. Or, as has also been suggested, ia this a move which might allow the defendant's case to embarrass the Lobby? Would Mueller or the FBI be upset by that.

Tom Welsh , February 19, 2018 at 10:22 am GMT
"Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
"Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

"Jeff Jarvis: Washington shows the morals of a clumsy spammer"

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks

Yet again, Washington is projecting its own vile schemes onto other countries.

jacques sheete , February 19, 2018 at 11:22 am GMT

Goofy Indictments Divert Attention from Criminal Abuses at the FBI and DOJ

I wonder how much of the Syrian troubles are diverting attention away from Netanyahoo's legal problems.

animalogic , February 19, 2018 at 12:31 pm GMT
This a great article: it summarizes the poverty of the entire "Russians done it" meme. Let's not forget: this is another BIG LIE, on par, if not worse than the Iraq fiasco LIES.

Nor is it, per se, about Trump. This is about State &political actors using State agencies & the MSM to prevent/ bring down an elected president. Its a plain unadorned assault on what's left of US democracy. (The fact that the vast majority of DNC voters can't -- WONT see this demonstrates how successful Elites have been in morally & psychologically corrupting the US public.

How many BIG LIE narratives can a State take ? Or do we just whistle & say " oh, but we live in a post truth age" as if that's not somehow morally equivalent to being a Moloch worshipper out for sunny day icecream.

journey80 , February 19, 2018 at 1:06 pm GMT
"U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General." When are we going to indict Israeli nationals for the above-mentioned crimes? When are we going to single out Bibi as a foreign national who engages with childlike enthusiasm in political activities within the United States?
Redman , February 19, 2018 at 1:32 pm GMT
@Wizard of Oz

Law enforcement of course doesn't bring every case which meets the definition of a crime. If it did, nearly everyone would be involved in the criminal justice system.

Discretion is used. And here, the evidence points directly to Mueller's discretion being used to protect the asses of the FBI and security state.

This indictment will not see the light of day. It's a bit like declaring faux victory in Iraq and leaving (what should have been done in that case). No lawyer will have the opportunity to refute th bull shit.

This is also why Meuller just indicted Gates, to strengthen the Manafort case. The only thing of note that will come out of this debacle of an investigation. He's giving up on Russia and going after Manafort, the low hanging fruit.

tjm , February 19, 2018 at 1:57 pm GMT
This is all nonsense, The very idea that Trump, or Clinton is being attacked by the FBI or CIA, or "Deep State", while doing exactly what he was hired to do, is ludicrous. Trump is a PRODUCT, just like Obama, and Clinton, all paid whores of the Zionist money machine.

The CIA and FBI are merely players in this game of distraction. The whole Russia gate BS was a cleaver rouse to further Zionists goals: Distract Americans from the real foreign interference by Zionist Jews, and to further demonize Christian Russia to the left, opening up the support for war with Russia.

Washington, Trump, Congress all lie, the media all lies, yet time and time again I see their lies playing as truth. Are you just stupid or part of the problem? Nothing comes form any of this, just distraction and divide and conquer. Trump continues to ACT like an Israeli firster while he TALKS about Ameirca first, and idiots keep focusing on his words and NOT HIS ACTIONS!

tjm , February 19, 2018 at 2:05 pm GMT
Trump ran on anti-immigration, building a wall, and getting out of conflicts. Yet, Trump is pushing for AMNESTY FOR DREAMERS, is building no wall, and is pushing conflict in the Middle East. Seems to me, this should be the ONLY topics of conversation. Trump is a wolf in sheep's clothing, a Zionist traitor, and these FBI/Russia/Clinton back and forth accusations are just the Zionist Jews giving Trump cover.

This is all theater, the Zionists rule DC, 9/11 was the culmination of their control over DC, and now they play is like a Hollywood movie, full of intrigue and misdirection. None of this amounts to anything, yet, time and again it is front page news, while TRUMP's TREASON, HIS AMNESTY GO IGNORED???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It seems there is very little Zionist money cannot buy

LoodohLeaky , February 19, 2018 at 2:31 pm GMT
Does the writer want us to believe that a bunch of private Russians, with no connection to the government, decided for their own amusement to spend millions of dollars to play games with American voters' heads?
SteveK9 , February 19, 2018 at 2:40 pm GMT
It's even more depressing than that. The indictments are against what is probably just (one of a million) commercial marketing scams. That is why the posts have no coherence. Some are for Trump, some against, some are for Hillary and some against, and of course there is the post that is for puppies. These are clickbait to establish the trolls as leaders so they can get advertisers to purchase ads.

There is a lot of interesting detail here:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html

jilles dykstra , February 19, 2018 at 2:45 pm GMT
I think and hope that USA citizens have not lost their minds, but are using it, maybe just for the second time.
The first time then was when the USA refused to ratify Versailles, after USA citizens had discovered that their sons had die overseas for JP Morgan and British imperialism.

The word Lügenpresse has has entered German dictionaries, 'lying press', I hope a similar expression will enter USA dictionaries soon. In Germany this expression also is used with regard to TV.

Here in the Netherlands our Minister of Foreign Affairs Halbe Zijlstra had to resign after the newspaper Volkskrant, in very unusual opening a can of worms, publicised that Zijlstra never had been in Putin's dacha where Putin had explained what 'greater Russia' was: including White Russia, Ukraine, Baltic states and Khazakstan.
USA press, this time hitting the mark, called him 'the lying Dutchman'.

Zijlstra's friend, prime minister Rutte, already for years has the nickname Pinochio, his lies are well known.
Rutte must have known that Zijlstra lied at his party's congress, VVD, in 2016.
A poll now seems to show that more than half the Dutch have had enough with Rutte.

This seems to be the era in which nothing is trusted any more, politicians, media, experts, and so on.

jilles dykstra , February 19, 2018 at 2:56 pm GMT
@John Achterhof

For me one of the greatest nations on this earth is small insignificant Denmark.
It does not wage wars far from home, it does not allow foreigners to buy houses or land, it has an excellent pension system and social security system, and an excellent health care system.
It does not welcome large numbers of migrants, has a very low crime rate.
There may be very rich Danes, but they do not display their wealth.
The only thing I blame Denmark for is the oversized and luxurious post offices.
The country side is not impressive, nor what farmers produce, sugar beets.
And so the Danes are the happiest people on earth, surveys conclude.

Jake , February 19, 2018 at 3:00 pm GMT
"According to the indictment, the alleged Russian trolls "posted derogatory information about a number of candidates" and its "operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Clinton."

This is straight out of the Stalin and/or Mao playbook: those people thought bad thoughts and said some things that did not support us, which proves they are EVIL and must be destroyed for the good of all.

Jake , February 19, 2018 at 3:02 pm GMT
@LoodohLeaky

Do you mean the way that private Israelis, and Saudis, do that very thing, year after year? And with much, much more money?

Jake , February 19, 2018 at 3:06 pm GMT
@tjm

Jewish money 'bought' Oliver Cromwell, the chief epitome of WASP culture, not because it was an impossible offer to resist, but because Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judiaizing heresy, and Cromwell naturally saw Jews as the best allies for WASPs.

You cannot solve the Jewish problem without also solving the WASP problem.

Joe Hide , February 19, 2018 at 3:33 pm GMT
To Mike Whitney,

Good article and thank you for keeping your presentation a reasonable length. Unreasonable length is a problem for many authors and preachers!

The Florida school massacre, can be orchestrated by simply ignoring significant warnings. For instance, a rogue FBI leadership intentionally ignores warnings from many different locations on the likely danger, and just waits for it to happen. When it does happen the rogue FBI cell can claim plausible deniability, claiming incompetence or stupidity, instead of intention. Then tens of millions of Americans are distracted from recently released information exposing the rogue FBI cell.

How creepy these pyschopaths are is hard for most people to understand, but gradually they are. Also, Trump has powerful opponents, one of which is the inability of most people to politically wake up quickly. He is the front man for a Military, Political, and Scientific Alliance making war against entrenched elitist, sociopathic, self-centered, control freak cabals that almost seized complete power in our country. Give him some slack okay. He's / they are doing pretty good considering the incredibly dangerous situation they took over. Keep writing Mike Whitney!

Anonymous Disclaimer , Website February 19, 2018 at 3:57 pm GMT
@anon

It's wide open, your packets are shooting all over the place, nice n' secure. Hail Fatherland Security! When you read propaganda, they know all about you and what you're reading in advance. Us, them, Russians – to the farm junior!

Twodees Partain , February 19, 2018 at 4:36 pm GMT
It appears that Mueller is intent on prolonging his little fishing trip. My own cynicism suggests to me that his motive is, at least partially, financial. Sure, the media has said that he's being paid what will amount to only $200k or so per year for his "service" and that he has given up a position that pays him closer to $3 million for the same amount of time in order to act as Special Counsel.

Still, the total cost of his exploration has been over $6.5 million so far. This, I would have to guess, is all in legal costs, fees paid to attorneys he has selected to do the investigative work. That amount of money is in excess of what he is supposedly giving up in order to conduct this investigation.

Looking at his motivation from this angle, it would make sense that a lawyer, especially a greedy, power hungry lawyer, would set up a system of kickbacks for attorneys he appoints to do the work. Mueller may be suspected of ensuring himself an equal income to what he is supposed to have given up.

Any time his fishing trip comes under fire for failing to catch any fish big enough for a meal, he issues indictments. This time he has indicted some foreign nationals who will probably never even be arrested, let alone prosecuted. Still, he's allowed to keep fishing.

phil , February 19, 2018 at 4:54 pm GMT
@jilles dykstra

All true. Good comment. Also, Denmark appears to have a genetic advantage when it comes to happiness, its lousy weather notwithstanding! See "National Happiness and Genetic Distance: A Cautious Exploration," by Eugenio Proto and Andrew J. Oswald, University of Warwick.

Abstract
This paper studies a famous unsolved puzzle in quantitative social science. Why do some nations report such high levels of mental well-being? Denmark, for instance, regularly tops the league table of rich countries' happiness; Britain and the US enter further down; some nations do unexpectedly poorly. The explanation for the long observed ranking -- one that holds after adjustment for GDP and other socioeconomic variables -- is currently unknown. Using data on 131 countries, the paper cautiously explores a new approach. It documents three forms of evidence consistent with the hypothesis that some nations may have a genetic advantage in well-being.

Anon Disclaimer , February 19, 2018 at 4:56 pm GMT
Anon from TN
People who generated lies have vested interest in perpetuating them. They will gladly use new lies to "confirm" the old ones. Even Trump figured that the red herring of Russian interference in the elections made the US a laughing stock in Russia. That's an understatement, though: this red herring made the US a laughing stock of 90% of the world population (the remaining 10% have no sense of humor).
Patriot Paddy , February 19, 2018 at 6:39 pm GMT
Where are the indictments of the foreign nationals in California, who openly attacked Trump supporters in San Jose? They attempted to affect the election through criminal assaults and batteries, much more than a simple Facebook post. This is the newly unveiled America, the citizens are not running anything, we are bought and paid for by interests that Gen. Washington would have deemed treasonous.
Verymuchalive , February 19, 2018 at 6:41 pm GMT

Goofy Indictments Divert Attention from Criminal Abuses at the FBI and DOJ

Lets be honest, Goofy would have done a better job. Mickey Mouse indictments seem more apt.

Jasken , February 19, 2018 at 6:57 pm GMT
How do US Courts have jurisdiction to prosecute speech originating in another country?

If is was said here out in public, fine, but saying something on the internet in another country does not seem to be prosecutable. Some countries have speech laws, and I would hate to find myself in their court system for something I say here that violates their deal.

Also, First Amendment?

Beckow , February 19, 2018 at 7:14 pm GMT
@Wizard of Oz

Do you think Mueller should have avoided bringing the indictments even though US law appears to make what was done illegal?

This indictment has publicised for the whole world that US has a 'law' that prohibits free speech by foreigners in foreign countries if they dare to speak disparagingly of US politicians. That is a PR disaster. People will be laughing about this for decades. Why do something so obviously stupid?

Many countries have bad laws – in Thailand people can go to jail for offending the king. But to apply it to free speech by foreign people living abroad is self-destructive. To my best knowledge no country has ever attempted to charge people living abroad with 'disparaging comments' about their politicians. By that standard, literally millions of people are daily breaking the 'law' – e.g. all the bad stuff people say about Trump. During 2016 election there were literally millions of people in foreign countries who expressed 'disparaging' views about Trump. And some about Clinton.

Doing nothing would had been better than becoming a laughing stock. How is Washington going to preach freedom of speech and internet after this self-inflicted fiasco? What if Russia starts 'indicting' millions of people who expressed negative comments about Putin?

[Feb 19, 2018] The FSB breaks up Russia's most notorious hacker group

Notable quotes:
"... Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials, and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone connections. ..."
"... Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices. ..."
"... Through the Looking Glass, ..."
"... The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the phones and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people with an active civil stance. ..."
"... Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start. ..."
"... Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. ..."
"... Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list. ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | www.rbth.com

The alleged leader of the Anonymous International hacker group, also known as Shaltai-Boltai, has been arrested along with important officials in the security services who collaborated with the group. For several years Shaltai-Boltai terrorized state officials, businessmen and media figures by hacking their emails and telephones, and threatening to post their private information online unless blackmail payments were made. "The price tag for our work starts at several tens of thousands of dollars, and I am not going to talk about the upper limit," said a man who calls himself Lewis during an interview with the news website, Meduza , in January 2015.

Lewis, whose name pays hommage to the author Lewis Carroll, is the leader of Anonymous International, the hacker group specializing in hacking the accounts of officials and businessmen. Another name for Anonymous International is Shaltai-Boltai, Russian for "Humpty-Dumpty."

Several years ago Lewis and his colleagues prospered thanks to extortion. They offered their victims the chance to pay a handsome price to buy back their personal information that had been stolen. Otherwise their information would be sold to third persons and even posted online. In the end, Russian law-enforcement tracked down Lewis, and in November he was arrested and now awaits trial . His real name is Vladimir Anikeyev.

Shaltai-Boltai's founding father

"One's own success is good but other people's failure is not bad either," said the profile quote on Vladimir Anikeyev's page on VKontakte , Russia's most popular social network.

Vladimir Anikeyev / Photo: anikeevv/vk.com

Rosbalt news website said that in the 1990s Lewis worked as a journalist in St. Petersburg and specialized in collecting information through various methods, including dubious ones. "He could go for a drink with someone or have an affair with someone's secretary or bribe people," Rosbalt's source said.

In the 2000s Anikeyev switched to collecting kompromat (compromising material). Using his connections, he would find the personal email addresses of officials and entrepreneurs and break into them using hackers in St. Petersburg, and then blackmail the victims. They had to pay to prevent their personal information from ending up on the Internet.

Fake Wi-Fi

Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials, and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone connections.

Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices.

In the beginning Anikeyev was personally involved in the theft of information but later he created a network of agents.

The business grew quickly; enormous amounts of information were at Anikeyev's disposal that had to be sorted and selected for suitability as material for blackmail. In the end, according to Rosbalt, Anonymous International arose as a handy tool for downloading the obtained information.

Trying to change the world

The second name of the group refers to the works of Lewis Carroll, according to Shaltai-Boltai members. The crazy world of Through the Looking Glass, with its inverted logic, is the most apt metaphor for Russian political life. Apart from Lewis Anikeyev, the team has several other members: Alice; Shaltai, Boltai (these two acted as press secretaries, and as a result of a mix-up, the media started calling the whole project, Shaltai-Boltai); and several others, including "technicians," or specialist hackers.

The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the phones and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people with an active civil stance.

"We can be called campaigners. We are trying to change the world. To change it for the better," Shaltai told the Apparat website. In interviews members of the group repeatedly complained about Russian officials who restricted Internet freedom, the country's foreign policy and barriers to participation in elections.

Hacker exploits

Shaltai-Boltai's most notorious hack was of an explicitly political nature and not about making money. It hacked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account. On Aug. 14, 2014 tweets were posted on the account saying that Medvedev was resigning because he was ashamed of the government's actions. The `prime minister' also had time to write that Putin was wrong, that the government had problems with common sense, and that the authorities were taking the country back to the past.

The scourge of banks and politicians: 4 famous Russian hackers

On the same day Anonymous International posted part of the prime minister's stolen archive, admitting that, "there is nothing particularly interesting in it."

"The posted material was provided by a certain highly-placed reptilian of our acquaintance," the hackers joked .

Medvedev is far from being Shaltai-Boltai's only victim. The hackers published the private correspondence of officials in the presidential administration: Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Vladimir Putin; Aram Gabrelyanov, head of the pro-Kremlin News Media holding company; and of Igor Strelkov, one of the leaders of the uprising in east Ukraine. Lewis, however, insisted that only material that had failed to sell ended up on the Internet.

Law-enforcement links

Anikeyev was detained in November, and the following month Sergei Mikhailov, head of the 2nd operations directorate of the FSB Information Security Center, was also arrested. According to Kommersant , Mikhailov was a major figure in the security services who, "was essentially overseeing the country's entire internet business."

Mikhailov's aide, FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, and a former hacker known as Forb, was also arrested. Shortly after, Ruslan Stoyanov, head of the department for investigating cybercrime at the antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, was also detained. Stoyanov also worked closely with the secret services.

According to Rosbalt , Anikeyev revealed information about the FSB officers and the Kaspersky Lab computer expert and their close involvement with Shaltai-Boltai.

Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start.

Shaltai-Boltai had a big fall

Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov.

Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list.

Anyway, Shaltai-Boltai anticipated this outcome. "What awaits us if we are uncovered? Criminal charges and most likely a prison sentence. Each member of the team is aware of the risks," they said dispassionately in the interview with Apparat in 2015.

[Feb 19, 2018] Shaltai-Boltai's leader arrested by the FSB Crime

Notable quotes:
"... Anikeev immediately began to cooperate with the investigation and provide detailed evidence, which repeatedly mentioned Mikhailov as being associated with the Shaltai-Boltai's team," said the source of Rosbalt. And in December 2016, Mikhailov and his "right hand," another official of the Information Security Center, Dmitry Dokuchaev, were arrested. The Court took a decision on their arrest. Another ISC official was also detained, but after questioning, no preventive measures involving deprivation of liberty were applied to him. ..."
"... After the summer, Shaltai-Boltai began to work exclusively with the content given to it by the curator. ..."
"... later it switched to civil servants' email that contained information that could bring serious trouble. When it became known that Surkov's correspondence "leaked" to Ukraine, it broke the camel's back. "Mikhailov's a magnificent expert. Best in his business. One can say that the ISC is Mikhailov.. But he crossed all possible borders," told a source of Rosbalt. ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | rusletter.com

RusLetter

The story around the arrest of a high-ranking ISC official, Sergey Mikhailov, is becoming an actual thriller.

The creator of Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty) website, which containted the correspondence of officials, journalist Vladimir Anikeev, better known in some circles as Lewis, was arrested on arrival from Ukraine, where he is supposed to have been involved in the publishing on a local site of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov's correspondence. In his testimony, Lewis said about the employee of the Information Security Center, Mikhailov.

As a source familiar with the situation told Rosbalt, Vladimir Anikeev was detained by the FSB officers at the end of October 2016, when he arrived in St. Petersburg from Ukraine. "The operation was the result of a long work. There was a complicated operative combination with the aim to lure Lewis from Ukraine, which he didn't indend to leave," said the source to the news agency. Anikeev was taken to Moscow, where the Investigation department of the FSB charged him under Article 272 of the Criminal Code (Illegal access to computer information).

First and foremost the counterintelligence was interested in the situation with the "leakage" of Vladislav Surkov's correspondence: by the time it was known that it was in the hands of the Shaltai-Boltai's team. Since it was e-mail with from the .gov domain, the situation caused great concern in theFSO. As a result of this, the correspondence was published on the website of a Ukrainian association of hackers called Cyber-Junta. In reality, it is suspected that Anikeev was involved in that affair. He'd been constantly visiting this country, his girlfriend lived there, and, according to available data, he was not going to return to Russia. Lewis was also asked about other officials' correspondence, which already appeared on the Shaltai-Boltai website.

" Anikeev immediately began to cooperate with the investigation and provide detailed evidence, which repeatedly mentioned Mikhailov as being associated with the Shaltai-Boltai's team," said the source of Rosbalt. And in December 2016, Mikhailov and his "right hand," another official of the Information Security Center, Dmitry Dokuchaev, were arrested. The Court took a decision on their arrest. Another ISC official was also detained, but after questioning, no preventive measures involving deprivation of liberty were applied to him.

According to the version of the agency's source, the situation developed as follows. At the beginning of 2016, the department headed by Mikhailov received an order to "work" with Shaltai-Boltai's website, which published the correspondence of civil servants. The immediate executor was Dokuchaev. Officers of the ISC were able to find out the team of Shaltai-Boltai, which participants nicknamed themselves after Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland": Alice, the March Hare, etc. The website creator and organizer, Anikeev, was nicknamed Lewis. In the summer there were searching raids in St. Petersburg, although formally for other reasons.

According to the Rosbalt's source, just after the summer attack the team of Shaltai-Boltai appeared to have the owner, or, to be exact, the curator. According to the source, it could be Sergey Mikhailov. As the result, the working methods of the Lewis's team also changed, just as the objects whose correspondence was being published for public access. Previously, Lewis's people figured out objects in places where mobile phone was used. They were given access to the phone contents by means of a false cell (when it came to mobile internet) or using a false-Wi-FI (if the person was connected to Wi-FI). Then the downloaded content was sent to member of the Lewis's team, residing in Estonia. He analyzed to to select what's to be put in the open access and what's to be sold for Bitcoins. The whole financial part of the Shaltai-Boltai involved a few people living in Thailand. These Bitcoins were cashed in Ukraine. Occasionally the Lewis published emails previously stolen by other hackers.

After the summer, Shaltai-Boltai began to work exclusively with the content given to it by the curator. Earlier, it published correspondence of rather an "entertaining" character, as well as officials whose "secrets" would do no special harm; but later it switched to civil servants' email that contained information that could bring serious trouble. When it became known that Surkov's correspondence "leaked" to Ukraine, it broke the camel's back. "Mikhailov's a magnificent expert. Best in his business. One can say that the ISC is Mikhailov.. But he crossed all possible borders," told a source of Rosbalt.

[Feb 19, 2018] Russian Lawyer Says FSB Officers, Kaspersky Manager Charged With Treason

Feb 19, 2018 | www.rferl.org

At the time of their arrests in December, Sergei Mikhailov and Dmitry Dokuchayev were officers with the FSB's Center for Information Security, a leading unit within the FSB involved in cyberactivities.

Pavlov confirmed to RFE/RL the arrest of Mikhailov and Dokuchayev, along with Ruslan Stoyanov, a former employee of the Interior Ministry who had worked for Kaspersky Labs, a well-known private cyber-research company, which announced Stoyanov's arrest last month.

The newspaper Kommersant reported that Mikhailov was arrested at a meeting of FSB officers and was taken from the meeting after a sack was put on his head.

The independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, meanwhile, said that a total of six suspects -- including Mikhailov, Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov -- had been arrested. The state news agency TASS reported on February 1 that two men associated with a well-known hacking group had also been arrested in November, but it wasn't immediately clear if those arrests were related to the FSB case.

There has been no public detail as to the nature of the treason charges against Mikhailov, Dokuchayev, and Stoyanov. The Interfax news agency on January 31 quoted "sources familiar with the situation" as saying that Mikhailov and Dokuchayev were suspected of relaying confidential information to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Pavlov told RFE/RL the individuals were suspected of passing on classified information to U.S. intelligence, but not necessarily the CIA.

[Feb 19, 2018] So "Russian interference" in our elections are some Facebook trolls?

Notable quotes:
"... Bottom line if Hillary was not such an abysmal candidate the Russians couldn't have affected anything. Any traction any narrative gained was a reflection of the dismal status of maybe the most corrupt candidate in American political history. ..."
"... This Russian gambit is to forestall prosecutions of Treason. Hillary was engaged in a Conspiracy to defraud a Federal election. Her campaign gave money to foreign nationals against the law. Conspiracy not collusion. From Brennan and Clapper and Comey in down you have obvious perjury. ..."
"... The Schiffs and the Warners have committed Treason by promulgating this patently false fairy tale to the detriment of the American people. ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

whosyerdaddy Sun, 02/18/2018 - 13:47 Permalink

So "Russian interference" in our elections are some Facebook trolls? Are you freakin' kiddin' me? After 18 months of investigation not one shred of evidence has been presented. Has even one voting machine been hacked?

I seem to remember Nuland and McBraintumor on the barricades in the Ukraine.

These Russian trolls are exercising what used to be called Political speech. Good or bad I don't think you will be able to stop it.

Bottom line if Hillary was not such an abysmal candidate the Russians couldn't have affected anything. Any traction any narrative gained was a reflection of the dismal status of maybe the most corrupt candidate in American political history.

This Russian gambit is to forestall prosecutions of Treason. Hillary was engaged in a Conspiracy to defraud a Federal election. Her campaign gave money to foreign nationals against the law. Conspiracy not collusion. From Brennan and Clapper and Comey in down you have obvious perjury.

The Schiffs and the Warners have committed Treason by promulgating this patently false fairy tale to the detriment of the American people.

[Feb 19, 2018] Mueller's Investigation A Farce Files Joke Indictment Against Russian Trolls

Feb 19, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Disobedient Media

If one needed proof that Mueller's investigation was an utter farce, they were in for a treat this morning when the Deputy Attorney General announced the indictment of indicted 13 "Russian trolls," for allegedly interfering in the 2016 Presidential election by posting on social media accounts.

Laying Mueller's disregard of the First Amendment aside, the indictment is blatantly hypocritical in light of active social media intervention by pro-Clinton David Brock and his multi-million dollar efforts to 'Correct The Record.' Julian Assange tweeted on the matter:

The indictment alleges that: "Beginning in or around June 2014, the ORGANIZATION obscured its conduct by operating through a number of Russian entities, including Internet Research LLC, MediaSintez LLC, GlavSet LLC, MixInfo LLC, Azimut LLC, and NovInfo LLC."

The indictment further alleges that: "The ORGANIZATION sought, in part, to conduct what it called information warfare against the United States of America through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media."

According to the indictment, the co-conspirators "engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

The indictment represents the latest mutation of Russian interference allegations that have dragged on for over a year. As this author previously noted , the definition of Russian interference has shifted from unsubstantiated claims of Russian hacking, to Russian collusion, and finally to Russian social media trolling. Wikileaks tweeted on the subject:

The Washington Post reported in 2015 that David Brock's Correct The Record would work directly with the Clinton Campaign, "testing the legal limits" of campaign finance in the process. How did Correct The Record skirt campaign finance law? The Washington Post tells us: "by relying on a 2006 Federal Election Commission regulation that declared that content posted online for free, such as blogs, is off-limits from regulation." And post online, Brock's PAC did: "disseminating information about Clinton on its Web site and through its Facebook and Twitter accounts, officials said."

Time reported the opinion of a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center who characterized Correct The Record as: "creating new ways to undermine campaign regulation." Meanwhile, The New York Times detailed the "outrage machine" that Brock and fellow Clinton supporter Peter Daou had created:

"Peter Daou sat with his team at a long wooden table last week, pushing the buttons that activate Mrs. Clinton's outrage machine. Mr. Daou's operation, called Shareblue , had published the article on Mr. Trump's comment on its website and created the accompanying hashtag. "They will put that pressure right on the media outlets in a very intense way," Mr. Daou, the chief executive of Shareblue, said of the Twitter army he had galvanized. "By the thousands."

Going further, the New York Times details fervently the $2 million budget of Daou's Shareblue and admits that the intent of the entire operation is interference in the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election in favor of Hillary Clinton: "Beyond creating a boisterous echo chamber, the real metric of success for Shareblue, which Mr. Brock said has a budget of $2 million supplied by his political donors, is getting Mrs. Clinton elected. Mr. Daou's role is deploying a band of committed, outraged followers to harangue Mrs. Clinton's opponents."

The New York Daily News put the matter most bluntly: "Hillary Clinton camp now paying online trolls to attack anyone who disparages her online." The LA Times described the active election interference: "It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical."

Despite the millions of dollars poured into a pro-Clinton 'outrage machine' bent on her support, Clinton inexplicably lost the election to Donald Trump, a fact which still seems not to have sunk in for the former First Lady and Secretary of State.

But why bring up this apparently old news, in the face of Mueller's latest mockery of the American judicial process and the First Amendment? Because it reveals in the words of the legacy press that by definition Mueller's circus has zero interest in campaign or election integrity and is solely interested in getting scalps for Clinton and for the unelected powers she represented.

Despite obvious hypocrisy given the actions of Shareblue and David Brock's Correct The Record, corporate media ignored all double standards and attempted to report on "Russian twitter trolling" with a straight face. Business Insider wrote: "Russian Twitter Trolls Tried To Bury Or Spin Negative Trump News Just Before Election," as if that wasn't what Correct The Record spent millions on doing for the benefit of Clinton.

The double standards applied to Clinton for her benefit goes beyond hypocrisy. Many have claimed that constantly metamorphosing allegations of Russian interference represents an insidious effort to silence dissent and anti-establishment political discourse: for example, by turning third-party, anti-establishment or conservative voices into "Russians" by proxy of their opposition to Clinton.

By converting legitimate American free speech into insidious "Russian bots," a pretext is created to silence dissent across the board. Without the Russian interference circus, the efforts to breach the First Amendment would be overtly authoritarian and would be inexcusable even by the most corrupt establishment media standards.

The results of such a clamp-down on free and effective speech have manifested in censorship crackdowns across large social media platforms including Twitter , Youtube, and Facebook , with Twitter admitting to actively censoring roughly 48% of tweets that included the "#DNCEmails" hashtag. It seems anyone with an opinion the establishment doesn't like is liable to be memory-holed.

This article was co-authored with Kenneth Whittle


Boscovius Fri, 02/16/2018 - 19:29 Permalink

These indictments are the worthless filler in your nothingburger. Mueller is covering his ass. That is all.

CuttingEdge -> are we there yet Sat, 02/17/2018 - 03:15 Permalink

Can we have a virtual standing ovation for our very own Boris avoiding Mueller's attentions (thus far)?

CuttingEdge -> CuttingEdge Sat, 02/17/2018 - 03:25 Permalink

This:

"The ORGANIZATION sought, in part, to conduct what it called information warfare against the United States of America through fictitious U.S. personas on social media platforms and other Internet-based media."

What in the statement hasn't been going on since the internet came into existence? The social internet was founded on bullshit personas. When you can open a Faecesbook account, and become an internet sensation as a fucking dog, what about the above doesn't look patently ridiculous?

These twats are living in La La Land, and its getting beyond disturbing.

nmewn -> Kayman Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:46 Permalink

And another thing, from what I understand Grand Inquisitor Mueller indicted these 13 Russian internet trolls for being "foreign agents" trying to affect the outcome of the 2016 election.

So when is he going to indict Christopher Steele for being an actual bonafide foreign agent trying to affect the outcome of the 2016 election? ;-)

DPLETTENBERG -> nmewn Sat, 02/17/2018 - 18:53 Permalink

Mueller has to know that none of these people will respond to his indictment, so why indict them them at all?

The only possible reason is to make it look like he is doing something as he knows no one in the MSM will question his actions

nmewn -> DPLETTENBERG Sat, 02/17/2018 - 20:26 Permalink

He knows.

None of them will be hopping on a plane to come here and I doubt very seriously that Vlad will play along with this kind of stupidity...although it would be a fun trial to have...lol.

Defense counsel opening statement: "My clients have voluntarily come here to America to assert their universal free speech rights in much the same way that Hillary crony David Brocks "Correct the Record" paid internet troll army from India did and we look forward to exposing all of Hillary's and Obama's astroturfing paid bots in this venue.

Grand Inquisitor Mueller: "Ahem. Your honor, may we approach the bench?"

And the rest as they say, would be jurisprudence history.

It was nothing but a contrived media ploy by Mueller to say he had found...RUSSIANS!...(insert audible gasp here) "somewhere" and surprisingly enough, he found them, in of all places, Russia...lol.

Its stupid to the tenth power...he's losing. Badly ;-)

Dame Ednas Possum -> nmewn Sun, 02/18/2018 - 05:44 Permalink

How about Israeli Zionist interference?

The Voldermort that cannot be mentioned.

nmewn -> Dame Ednas Possum Sun, 02/18/2018 - 08:25 Permalink

Well, I don't run my life trying to keep up with the comings & goings of Jews and what they may want or don't want but...

Weinstein raised money for Hillary. This crooked as a dogs hind leg Weissmann is Muellers lead attack dog and Rosenstein appointed Mueller.

On the other hand, Trumps son-in-law is Jewish so really to me this is more about left vs right...statists vs individuals.

Now I'm sure someone more consumed with "Just what the hell are (((they))) up to today?!" (lol) can pick my statement apart and call me a rabbi or hasbra troll or any other damned thing they want but I just don't live in that Catholic vs Protestant vs Black vs White vs Aryan vs Slav etc Balkanized world.

Not to the degree they do anyways.

It's clear to me a gross miscarriage of justice is happening (and has been happening) and those are just the facts, regardless of any skulking Israeli or Russian supermen others may see hiding behind every blade of grass who seem to "control everything" because clearly they do not or we wouldn't be having this conversation ;-)

[Feb 19, 2018] Russian Meddling Was a Drop in an Ocean of American-made Discord by AMANDA TAUB and MAX FISHER

Highly recommended!
Very weak analysis The authors completely missed the point. Susceptibility to rumors (now called "fake new" which more correctly should be called "improvised news") and high level of distrust to "official MSM" (of which popularity of alternative news site is only tip of the iceberg) is a sign of the crisis and tearing down of the the social fabric that hold the so social groups together. This first of all demonstrated with the de-legitimization of the neoliberal elite.
As such attempt to patch this discord and unite the US society of fake premises of Russiagate and anti-Russian hysteria look very problematic. The effect might be quite opposite as the story with Steele dossier, which really undermined credibility of Justice Department and destroyed the credibility o FBI can teach us.
In this case claims that "The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan " are just s a sign of rejection of neoliberalism by voters. Nothing more nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made. ..."
"... A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.nytimes.com

That these efforts might have actually made a difference, or at least were intended to, highlights a force that was already destabilizing American democracy far more than any Russian-made fake news post: partisan polarization.

"Partisanship can even alter memory, implicit evaluation, and even perceptual judgment," the political scientists Jay J. Van Bavel and Andrea Pereira wrote in a recent paper . "The human attraction to fake and untrustworthy news" -- a danger cited by political scientists far more frequently than orchestrated meddling -- "poses a serious problem for healthy democratic functioning."

It has infected the American political system, weakening the body politic and leaving it vulnerable to manipulation. Russian misinformation seems to have exacerbated the symptoms, but laced throughout the indictment are reminders that the underlying disease, arguably far more damaging, is all American-made.

... ... ...

A recent study found that the people most likely to consume fake news were already hyperpartisan and close followers of politics, and that false stories were only a small fraction of their media consumption.

Americans, it said, sought out stories that reflected their already-formed partisan view of reality. This suggests that these Russians efforts are indicators -- not drivers -- of how widely Americans had polarized.

That distinction matters for how the indictment is read: Though Americans have seen it as highlighting a foreign threat, it also illustrates the perhaps graver threats from within.

An Especially Toxic Form of Partisanship

... ... ...

"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."

The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.

Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other side.

Advertisement Continue reading the main story

In taking this approach, the Russians were merely riding a trend that has been building for decades. Since the 1980s , surveys have found that Republicans and Democrats' feelings toward the opposing party have been growing more and more negative. Voters are animated more by distrust of the other side than support for their own.

This highlights a problem that Lilliana Mason, a University of Maryland political scientist, said had left American democracy dangerously vulnerable. But it's a problem driven primarily by American politicians and media outlets, which have far louder megaphones than any Russian-made Facebook posts.

"Compromise is the core of democracy," she said. "It's the only way we can govern." But, she said, "when you make people feel threatened, nobody compromises with evil."

The claim that, for example, Mrs. Clinton's victory might aid Satan is in many ways just a faint echo of the partisan anger and fear already dominating American politics.

Those emotions undermine a key norm that all sides are served by honoring democratic processes; instead, they justify, or even seem to mandate, extreme steps against the other side.

[Feb 19, 2018] 'Absurd' meddling claims indictment of Russians show new US policy

Russia is a perfect scapegoat which ensure lucrative levels of funding for both intelligence agencies and MIC. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"
Notable quotes:
"... "Turns out, there've been 13 people, in the opinion of the US Justice Department. 13 people interfered in the US elections? 13 against billions budgets of special agencies? Against intelligence and counterespionage, against the newest technologies? Absurd? – Yes." ..."
"... The indictment, however, is the "modern American political reality," Zakharova added, jokingly suggesting that the number 13 was picked due to its negative associations. ..."
"... "The Americans are very emotional people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. I am not at all upset that I am on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them," ..."
"... "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump...and disparaging Hillary Clinton." ..."
"... "no allegations" ..."
"... On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that supporting Donald Trump has never been an official Russian policy, even if some Russians did express their backing of the new US leader. ..."
"... "It's a pity that under Donald Trump, for more than a year of his presidency, our relations have not improved compared to the period of the Democratic administration. Even worsened to a certain extent," ..."
"... "meddling saga," ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | www.rt.com
Mueller indicts 13 Russians

"Turns out, there've been 13 people, in the opinion of the US Justice Department. 13 people interfered in the US elections? 13 against billions budgets of special agencies? Against intelligence and counterespionage, against the newest technologies? Absurd? – Yes." Zakharova said in a Facebook post .

The indictment, however, is the "modern American political reality," Zakharova added, jokingly suggesting that the number 13 was picked due to its negative associations.

One of the indicted, Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, said he was not really upset by the accusations.

Read more The US Department of Justice, Washington DC. © Bjoertvedt US indicts 13 Russians for 2016 election meddling, but 'no allegations' they influenced outcome

"The Americans are very emotional people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. I am not at all upset that I am on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them," Prigozhin told RIA Novosti.

The entities and individuals were indicted by a US federal grand jury on Friday of "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump...and disparaging Hillary Clinton."

However, there are "no allegations" that the suspected activities of the Russian nationals somehow affected the polls, according to the US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that supporting Donald Trump has never been an official Russian policy, even if some Russians did express their backing of the new US leader.

The Minister has expressed his discontent with the apparently continuing nosedive in the US-Russia relations. "It's a pity that under Donald Trump, for more than a year of his presidency, our relations have not improved compared to the period of the Democratic administration. Even worsened to a certain extent," Lavrov told Euronews.

The indictment of 13 Russians is the latest twist in the "meddling saga," which has persisted in the US politics and media for over a year. The illicit activities attributed to Russia include, but are not limited to, "hacking" into Democratic National Committee (DNC) computers during the 2016 elections campaign, maliciously leaking emails filled with unsavory revelations, meddling through media coverage and fake social media accounts. However, no solid evidence to back the numerous allegations has been presented yet.

[Feb 18, 2018] The FSB breaks up Russia's most notorious hacker group - Russia Beyond

Notable quotes:
"... Through the Looking Glass, ..."
"... Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start. ..."
"... Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov. ..."
"... Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.rbth.com

The alleged leader of the Anonymous International hacker group, also known as Shaltai-Boltai, has been arrested along with important officials in the security services who collaborated with the group. For several years Shaltai-Boltai terrorized state officials, businessmen and media figures by hacking their emails and telephones, and threatening to post their private information online unless blackmail payments were made. "The price tag for our work starts at several tens of thousands of dollars, and I am not going to talk about the upper limit," said a man who calls himself Lewis during an interview with the news website, Meduza , in January 2015.

Lewis, whose name pays hommage to the author Lewis Carroll, is the leader of Anonymous International, the hacker group specializing in hacking the accounts of officials and businessmen. Another name for Anonymous International is Shaltai-Boltai, Russian for "Humpty-Dumpty."

Several years ago Lewis and his colleagues prospered thanks to extortion. They offered their victims the chance to pay a handsome price to buy back their personal information that had been stolen. Otherwise their information would be sold to third persons and even posted online. In the end, Russian law-enforcement tracked down Lewis, and in November he was arrested and now awaits trial . His real name is Vladimir Anikeyev.

Shaltai-Boltai's founding father

"One's own success is good but other people's failure is not bad either," said the profile quote on Vladimir Anikeyev's page on VKontakte , Russia's most popular social network.

Vladimir Anikeyev / Photo: anikeevv/vk.com Vladimir Anikeyev / Photo: anikeevv/vk.com

Rosbalt news website said that in the 1990s Lewis worked as a journalist in St. Petersburg and specialized in collecting information through various methods, including dubious ones. "He could go for a drink with someone or have an affair with someone's secretary or bribe people," Rosbalt's source said.

In the 2000s Anikeyev switched to collecting kompromat (compromising material). Using his connections, he would find the personal email addresses of officials and entrepreneurs and break into them using hackers in St. Petersburg, and then blackmail the victims. They had to pay to prevent their personal information from ending up on the Internet.

Fake Wi-Fi

Rosbalt said that when Anikeyev's business reached national levels, he started using new techniques. For example, Anikeyev would go to restaurants and cafes popular among officials, and with the help of sophisticated equipment he created fake Wi-Fi and mobile phone connections.

Unsuspecting officials would connect to the network through the channel created by the hacker and he would have access to the information on their devices.

In the beginning Anikeyev was personally involved in the theft of information but later he created a network of agents.

The business grew quickly; enormous amounts of information were at Anikeyev's disposal that had to be sorted and selected for suitability as material for blackmail. In the end, according to Rosbalt, Anonymous International arose as a handy tool for downloading the obtained information.

Trying to change the world

The second name of the group refers to the works of Lewis Carroll, according to Shaltai-Boltai members. The crazy world of Through the Looking Glass, with its inverted logic, is the most apt metaphor for Russian political life. Apart from Lewis Anikeyev, the team has several other members: Alice; Shaltai, Boltai (these two acted as press secretaries, and as a result of a mix-up, the media started calling the whole project, Shaltai-Boltai); and several others, including "technicians," or specialist hackers.

The Anonymous International website was opened in 2013 and content stolen from the phones and emails of Russian politicians immediately started appearing on it. According to Life News , only the correspondence of the public officials and businessmen who refused to pay was published. At the same time members of Shaltai-Boltai positioned themselves as people with an active civil stance.

"We can be called campaigners. We are trying to change the world. To change it for the better," Shaltai told the Apparat website. In interviews members of the group repeatedly complained about Russian officials who restricted Internet freedom, the country's foreign policy and barriers to participation in elections.

Hacker exploits

Shaltai-Boltai's most notorious hack was of an explicitly political nature and not about making money. It hacked Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev's Twitter account. On Aug. 14, 2014 tweets were posted on the account saying that Medvedev was resigning because he was ashamed of the government's actions. The `prime minister' also had time to write that Putin was wrong, that the government had problems with common sense, and that the authorities were taking the country back to the past.

The scourge of banks and politicians: 4 famous Russian hackers The scourge of banks and politicians: 4 famous Russian hackers

On the same day Anonymous International posted part of the prime minister's stolen archive, admitting that, "there is nothing particularly interesting in it."

"The posted material was provided by a certain highly-placed reptilian of our acquaintance," the hackers joked .

Medvedev is far from being Shaltai-Boltai's only victim. The hackers published the private correspondence of officials in the presidential administration: Yevgeny Prigozhin, a businessman close to Vladimir Putin; Aram Gabrelyanov, head of the pro-Kremlin News Media holding company; and of Igor Strelkov, one of the leaders of the uprising in east Ukraine. Lewis, however, insisted that only material that had failed to sell ended up on the Internet.

Law-enforcement links

Anikeyev was detained in November, and the following month Sergei Mikhailov, head of the 2nd operations directorate of the FSB Information Security Center, was also arrested. According to Kommersant , Mikhailov was a major figure in the security services who, "was essentially overseeing the country's entire internet business."

Mikhailov's aide, FSB Major Dmitry Dokuchayev, and a former hacker known as Forb, was also arrested. Shortly after, Ruslan Stoyanov, head of the department for investigating cybercrime at the antivirus software company Kaspersky Lab, was also detained. Stoyanov also worked closely with the secret services.

According to Rosbalt , Anikeyev revealed information about the FSB officers and the Kaspersky Lab computer expert and their close involvement with Shaltai-Boltai.

Mikhailov tracked down Anonymous International at the beginning of 2016 and decided to take it under his control, as well as make some money from blackmail along the way. According to Life News , there is another theory - that Mikhailov had been managing the Shaltai-Boltai business from the start.

Shaltai-Boltai had a big fall

Whatever the truth, Mikhailov and Dokuchayev have now been charged with treason. Anikeyev and Stoyanov will be prosecuted under a different charge - "unauthorized access to computer information." According to Rosbalt , the treason charges against Mikhailov and Dokuchayev are to do with Anonymous International's involvement in leaking to Ukraine the private correspondence of presidential aide Vladislav Surkov.

Shaltai-Boltai's website has not been updated since Nov. 26 and its Twitter account since Dec. 12. The group's remaining members, who are believed to live in Thailand and the Baltic States, have been put on an FSB wanted list.

Anyway, Shaltai-Boltai anticipated this outcome. "What awaits us if we are uncovered? Criminal charges and most likely a prison sentence. Each member of the team is aware of the risks," they said dispassionately in the interview with Apparat in 2015.

[Feb 18, 2018] Moscow Court Sentences 'Shaltai-Boltai' Hackers To Prison

Notable quotes:
"... A Moscow court has sentenced two Russian hackers to three years in prison each for breaking into the e-mail accounts of top Russian officials and leaking them. ..."
"... The 2016 arrests of the Shaltai-Boltai hackers became known only after Russian media reported that two officials of the Federal Security Service's cybercrime unit had been arrested on treason charges. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.rferl.org

A Moscow court has sentenced two Russian hackers to three years in prison each for breaking into the e-mail accounts of top Russian officials and leaking them.

Konstantin Teplyakov and Aleksandr Filinov were members of the Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty in Russian) collective believed to be behind the hacking of high-profile accounts, including the Twitter account of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The two were found guilty of illegally accessing computer data in collusion with a criminal group.

Earlier in July, Shaltai-Boltai leader Vladimir Anikeyev was handed a two-year sentence after striking a plea bargain and agreeing to cooperate with the authorities.

The 2016 arrests of the Shaltai-Boltai hackers became known only after Russian media reported that two officials of the Federal Security Service's cybercrime unit had been arrested on treason charges.

Russian media reports suggested the officials had connections to the hacker group or had tried to control it.

[Feb 18, 2018] Notorious Russian Hacker With Links To FSB Scandal Sentenced To Prison

Feb 18, 2018 | www.rferl.org

A notorious Russian hacker whose exploits and later arrest gave glimpses into the intersection of computer crime and Russian law enforcement has been sentenced to two years in prison.

The Moscow City Court issued its ruling July 6 against Vladimir Anikeyev in a decision made behind closed doors, one indication of the sensitivity of his case.

[Feb 18, 2018] Making Sense of Russia's Cyber Treason Scandal

Notable quotes:
"... The stories implicating Mikhailov gained credence when Russian businessman Pavel Vrublevsky made similar accusations. He asserted that Mikhailov leaked details of Russian hacking capabilities to U.S. intelligence agencies. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | worldview.stratfor.com

In January, the Kremlin-linked media outlet Kommersant suggested that the heads of Russia's Information Security Center (TsIB) were under investigation and would soon leave their posts. The TsIB is a shadowy unit that manages computer security investigations for the Interior Ministry and the FSB. It is thought to be Russia's largest inspectorate when it comes to domestic and foreign cyber capabilities, including hacking. It oversees security matters related to credit theft, financial information, personal data, social networks and reportedly election data -- or as some have claimed in the Russian media, "election rigging." Beyond its investigative role, it is presumed that the TsIB is fully capable of planning and directing cyber operations. A week after the initial Kommersant report surfaced, Andrei Gerasimov, the longtime TsIB director, resigned. Not long after Gerasimov's resignation at the end of January, reports emerged from numerous Kremlin-linked media outlets in what appeared to be a coordinated flood of information and disinformation about the arrests of senior TsIB officers. One of the cyber unit's operational directors, Sergei Mikhailov, was arrested toward the end of last year along with his deputy, Dmitri Dokuchaev, and charged with treason. Also arrested around the same time was Ruslan Stoyanov, the chief investigator for Kaspersky Lab, which is the primary cybersecurity contractor for the TsIB. There is much conjecture, but Mikhailov was apparently forcibly removed from a meeting with fellow FSB officers -- escorted out with a bag over his head, so the story goes -- and arrested. This is thought to have taken place some time around Dec. 5. His deputy, a well-respected computer hacker recruited by the FSB, was reportedly last seen in November. Kaspersky Lab's Stoyanov was a career cybersecurity professional, previously working for the Indrik computer crime investigation firm and the Interior Ministry's computer crime unit. Novaya Gazeta, a Kremlin-linked media outlet, reported that two other unnamed FSB computer security officers were also detained. Theories, Accusations and Rumors

Since the initial reports surfaced, Russian media have been flooded with conflicting theories about the arrests; about Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and Stoyanov; and about the accusations levied against them. Because the charges are treason, the case is considered "classified" by the state, meaning no official explanation or evidence will be released. An ultranationalist news network called Tsargrad TV reported that Mikhailov had tipped U.S. intelligence to the King Servers firm, which the FBI has accused of being the nexus of FSB hacking and intelligence operations in the United States. (It should be noted that Tsargrad TV tends toward sensationalism and has been used as a conduit for propaganda in the past.) The media outlet also claimed that the Russian officer's cooperation is what enabled the United States to publicly accuse Moscow of sponsoring election-related hacking with "high confidence."

The stories implicating Mikhailov gained credence when Russian businessman Pavel Vrublevsky made similar accusations. He asserted that Mikhailov leaked details of Russian hacking capabilities to U.S. intelligence agencies. Vrublevsky, however, had previously been the target of hacking accusations leveled by Mikhailov and his team, so it is possible that he has a personal ax to grind. To further complicate matters, a business partner of Vrublevsky, Vladimir Fomenko, runs King Servers, which the United States shut down in the wake of the hacking scandal.

[Feb 18, 2018] The FBI just indicted a Russian official for hacking. But why did Russia charge him with treason?

This article is almost a year old but contains interesting information about possible involvement of Shaltai Boltai in framing Russia in interference in the USA elections.
Notable quotes:
"... Also called Anonymous International, Shaltai-Boltai was responsible for leaking early copies of Putin's New Year speech and for selling off "lots" of emails stolen from Russian officials such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ..."
"... Later media reports said that the group's leader, Vladimir Anikeyev, had recently been arrested by the FSB and had informed on Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and Stoyanov. ..."
Mar 17, 2017 | www.washingtonpost.com

The FBI just indicted a Russian official for hacking. But why did Russia charge him with treason? - The Washington Post But what is less clear is why one of the men has been arrested and charged with treason in Russia. Dmitry Dokuchaev, an agent for the cyberinvestigative arm of the FSB, was arrested in Moscow in December. He's accused by the FBI of "handling" the hackers, paying "bounties" for breaking into email accounts held by Russian officials, opposition politicians and journalists, as well as foreign officials and business executives. The Russian targets included an Interior Ministry officer and physical trainer in a regional Ministry of Sports. (The full text of the indictment, which has a full list of the targets and some curious typos, is here .)

Reading this hackers indictment. I'm pretty sure there is no such position as the "deputy chairman of the Russian Federation" pic.twitter.com/DOWXYNoWjZ

-- Shaun Walker (@shaunwalker7) March 15, 2017

Dokuchaev's case is part of a larger and mysterious spate of arrests of Russian cyber officials and experts. His superior, Sergei Mikhailov, deputy chief of the FSB's Center for Information Security, was also arrested in December and charged with treason. According to Russian reports, the arrest came during a plenum of FSB officers, where Mikhailov had a bag placed over his head and was taken in handcuffs from the room. Ruslan Stoyanov, a manager at the Russian cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, was also arrested that month. Stoyanov helped coordinate investigations between the company and law enforcement, a person who used to work at the company said.

Below are some of the theories behind the Russian arrests. Lawyers for some of the accused have told The Washington Post that they can't reveal details of the case and, because of the secrecy afforded to treason cases, they don't have access to all the documents.

None of the theories below has been confirmed, nor are they mutually exclusive.

1. Links to U.S. election hacking : With attention focused on the hacking attacks against the U.S. Democratic National Committee allegedly ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, some Russian and U.S. media suggested that Dokuchaev and Mikhailov leaked information implicating Russia in the hack to the United States. The Russian Interfax news agency, which regularly cites government officials as sources, reported that "Sergei Mikhailov and his deputy, Dmitry Dokuchaev, are accused of betraying their oath and working with the CIA." Novaya Gazeta, a liberal, respected Russian publication, citing sources, wrote that Mikhailov had tipped off U.S. intelligence about King Servers, the hosting service used to support hacking attacks on targeted voter registration systems in Illinois and Arizona in June. That had followed reports in the New York Times, citing one current and one former government official, that "human sources in Russia did play a crucial role in proving who was responsible for the hacking."

Nakashima wrote yesterday that "the [FBI] charges are unrelated to the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the FBI's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. But the move reflects the U.S. government's increasing desire to hold foreign governments accountable for malicious acts in cyberspace."

2. A shadowy hacking collective called Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty-Dumpty) : Also called Anonymous International, Shaltai-Boltai was responsible for leaking early copies of Putin's New Year speech and for selling off "lots" of emails stolen from Russian officials such as Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. In a theory first reported by the pro-Kremlin, conservative Orthodox media company Tsargrad, Mikhailov had taken control of Shaltai-Boltai, "curating and supervising" the group in selecting hacking targets. Later media reports said that the group's leader, Vladimir Anikeyev, had recently been arrested by the FSB and had informed on Mikhailov, Dokuchaev and Stoyanov. A member of the group who fled to Estonia told the Russian media agency Fontanka that they had recently acquired an FSB "coordinator," although he could not say whether it was Mikhailov. None of the hacks mentioned in the FBI indictment could immediately be confirmed as those carried out by Shaltai-Boltai.

Lawyers contacted by The Post said that in documents they had seen, there was no link to Shaltai-Boltai in the case.

3. A grudge with a cybercriminal : A Russian businessman who had specialized in spam and malware had claimed for years that Mikhailov was trading information on cybercriminals with the West. Mikhailov had reportedly testified in the case of Pavel Vrublevsky, the former head of the payment services company Chronopay, who was imprisoned in 2013 for ordering a denial of service attack on the website of Aeroflot, the Russian national airline. Vrublevsky claimed then that Mikhailov began exchanging information about Russian cybercriminals with Western intelligence agencies, including documents about Chronopay. Brian Krebs, an American journalist who investigates cybercrime and received access to Vrublevsky's emails, wrote in January : "Based on how long Vrublevsky has been trying to sell this narrative , it seems he may have finally found a buyer ."

4. Infighting at the FSB: The Russian government is not monolithic, and infighting between and within the powerful law enforcement agencies is common. The Russian business publication RBC had written that Mikhailov and Dokuchaev's Center for Information Security had been in conflict with another department with similar responsibilities, the FSB's Center for Information Protection and Special Communications. The conflict may have led to the initiation of a criminal case, the paper's sources said.

[Feb 18, 2018] Yahoo hack and Russia's cyber hacking

Feb 18, 2018 | www.businessinsider.com

As Leonid Bershidsky, founding editor of the Russian business daily publication Vedomosti, wrote in January, the dramatic arrests of two high-level FSB officers -- Sergei Mikhailov , the deputy head of the FSB's Information Security Center, and Major Dmitry Dokuchaev , a highly skilled hacker who had been recruited by the FSB -- on treason charges in December offers a glimpse into "how security agencies generally operate in Putin's Russia."

At the time of their arrest, Dokuchaev (who was one of the Russian officials indicted for the Yahoo breach) and Mikhailov had been trying to cultivate a Russian hacking group known as "Shaltai Boltai" -- or "Humpty Dumpty" -- that had been publishing stolen emails from Russian officials' inboxes, according to Russian media reports.

"The FSB team reportedly uncovered the identities of the group's members -- but, instead of arresting and indicting them, Mikhailov's team tried to run the group, apparently for profit or political gain," Bershidsky wrote. Shaltai Boltai complied, Bershidsky wrote, because it wanted to stay afloat, and didn't mind taking orders from "government structures."

"We get orders from government structures and from private individuals," Shaltai Boltai's alleged leader said in a 2015 interview. "But we say we are an independent team. It's just that often it's impossible to tell who the client is. Sometimes we get information for intermediaries, without knowing who the end client is."

It appears that Dokuchaev and Mikhailov got caught running this side project with Shaltai Boltai -- which was still targeting high-level Russian officials -- when the FSB began surveilling Mikhailov. Officials targeted Mikhailov after receiving a tip that he might have been leaking information about Russian cyber activities to the FBI, according to the Novaya Gazeta.

Short of working against Russian interests, hackers "can pursue whatever projects they want, as long as their targets are outside of Russia and they follow orders from the top when needed," said Bremmer, of Eurasia Group. The same goes for FSB officers, who are tactically allowed to "run private security operations involving blackmail and protection," according to Bershidsky.

US intelligence agencies have concluded that the hack on the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 election was likely one such "order from the top" -- a directive issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin and carried out by hackers hired by the GRU and the FSB.

It is still unclear if the Yahoo breach was directed by FSB officials at the instruction of the Kremlin, like the DNC hack, or if it was one of those "private security operations" Bershidsky alluded to that some Russian intelligence officers do on the side.

Bremmer said that it's possible the Yahoo breach was not done for state ends, especially given the involvement of Dokuchaev, who was already caught up in Shaltai Baltai's operations to steal and sell information for personal financial gain.

[Feb 18, 2018] Here s how Mueller s latest indictment further discredits the Trump Dossier by Alexander Mercouris

Notable quotes:
"... As the days since Mueller's latest indictment have passed, the failure of his investigation to make any claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has begun to sink in, even amongst some of Donald Trump's most bitter enemies. ..."
"... Even the Guardian – arguably the most fervid of Donald Trump's British media critics, and the most vocal supporter of the Russiagate conspiracy theory – has grudgingly admitted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has "once again failed to nail Donald Trump" ..."
"... In fact the latest indictment when considered properly is a further huge nail in the coffin of the Russiagate conspiracy theory and in the already disintegrating credibility of the Trump Dossier, which is the foundation document for that theory ..."
"... Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the Russiagate conspiracy theory is laid out in its most classic form in the Trump Dossier, and it is the Trump Dossier which remains the primary and indeed so far the only 'evidence' for it ..."
"... This theory holds that Donald Trump was compromised by the Russians in 2013 when he was filmed by Russian intelligence performing an orgy in a hotel room in Moscow, and he and his associates Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Michael Cohen subsequently engaged in a massive criminal conspiracy with Russian intelligence to steal the election from Hillary Clinton by having John Podesta's and the DNC's emails stolen by Russian intelligence and passed on by them for publication by Wikileaks. ..."
"... The Trump Dossier never mentions Jared Kushner's four conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak, including the famous meeting between Kislyak and Kushner in Trump Tower on 1st December 2016 (which Michael Flynn also attended) over the course of which the setting up of a backchannel to discuss the crisis in Syria is supposed to have been discussed (Kushner denies that it was). ..."
"... The last entry of the Trump Dossier is dated 13th December 2016 ie. twelve days after this meeting took place, and given its high level a genuinely well-informed Russian source familiar with the private ongoing discussions in the Kremlin might have been expected to know about it. ..."
"... Nor does the Trump Dossier mention the now famous meeting in Trump Tower between the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Junior – which Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also attended – which took place on 9th June 2016. ..."
"... Now Special Counsel Mueller has provided further details in his latest indictment of actual albeit unknowing contacts between members of the Trump campaign and various Russian employees of Yevgeny Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency, LLC, apparently both in person and online. ..."
"... The Trump Dossier has however nothing to say about these contacts either, just as it has nothing to say about the Internet Research Agency, LLC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, or the entire social media campaign set out in such painstaking detail by Special Counsel Mueller in his indictment. ..."
"... I only remembered Helmer's 18th January 2017 article about the Trump Dossier after I wrote my article about Senator Grassley's and Senator Lindsey Graham's memorandum to the Justice Department on 6th February 2018. ..."
"... This is most unfortunate, not only because Grassley's and Lindsey Graham's memorandum resoundingly vindicates Helmer's reporting, but because it shows that a genuine expert about Russia like Helmer was able to spot immediately the holes in the Trump Dossier, which only now – a whole year and months of exhaustive investigations later – are starting to be officially admitted. ..."
"... Heroic efforts to elevate Papadopoulos's case and the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya into 'evidence' of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia which exists supposedly independently of the Trump Dossier fail because as I have discussed extensively elsewhere (see here and here ) they in fact do no such thing. ..."
"... With the Trump Dossier – the lynchpin of the whole collusion case – not just unverified and discredited but proved repeatedly to have been completely uninformed about events which were actually going on, why do some people persist in pretending that there is still a collusion case to investigate? ..."
Feb 19, 2018 | theduran.com

As the days since Mueller's latest indictment have passed, the failure of his investigation to make any claim of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has begun to sink in, even amongst some of Donald Trump's most bitter enemies.

Even the Guardian – arguably the most fervid of Donald Trump's British media critics, and the most vocal supporter of the Russiagate conspiracy theory – has grudgingly admitted that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has "once again failed to nail Donald Trump"

There will be understandable disappointment in many quarters that the latest indictments delivered by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, once again failed to nail Donald Trump. Although the charges levelled against 13 Russians and three Russian entities are extraordinarily serious, they do not directly support the central claim that Trump and senior campaign aides colluded with Moscow to rig the vote.

The Times of London meanwhile has admitted that the latest indictment contains "no smoking gun"

The Department of Justice, however, offered no confirmation to those still smarting from the election in Nov­em­ber 2016, who believe that, in the absence of Russian interference, Hillary Clinton would be in the White House today. Friday's allegations offered no evidence that the outcome had been affected. Sir John Sawers, former head of MI6, said yesterday that Donald Trump's victories in the key swing states were his own.

There was further comfort for Mr Trump, which he was quick to celebrate with a tweet. The investigation uncovered no evidence "that any American was a knowing participant in the alleged unlawful activity". That includes, so far, anybody involved in the Trump campaign. If there is a smoking gun it has yet to emerge, though Robert Mueller's investigation will grind on. Presi­dent Vladimir Putin is a malign and dangerous mischief maker. It has not been proved that he is an evil genius with the ability to swing a US election.

In fact the latest indictment when considered properly is a further huge nail in the coffin of the Russiagate conspiracy theory and in the already disintegrating credibility of the Trump Dossier, which is the foundation document for that theory.

Notwithstanding claims to the contrary, the Russiagate conspiracy theory is laid out in its most classic form in the Trump Dossier, and it is the Trump Dossier which remains the primary and indeed so far the only 'evidence' for it

This theory holds that Donald Trump was compromised by the Russians in 2013 when he was filmed by Russian intelligence performing an orgy in a hotel room in Moscow, and he and his associates Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Michael Cohen subsequently engaged in a massive criminal conspiracy with Russian intelligence to steal the election from Hillary Clinton by having John Podesta's and the DNC's emails stolen by Russian intelligence and passed on by them for publication by Wikileaks.

Belief in this conspiracy dies hard, and an interesting article in the Financial Times by Edward Luce provides a fascinating example of the dogged determination of some people to believe in it. Writing about Mueller's latest indictment Luce has this to say

Mr Mueller's report hints at more dramatic possibilities by corroborating contents of the "Steele dossier", which was compiled in mid-2016 by the former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele -- long before the US intelligence agencies warned of Russian interference. Mr Steele, who is in hiding, alleged that the Russians were using "active measures" to support the campaigns of Mr Trump, Bernie Sanders, the Democratic runner-up to Hillary Clinton, and Jill Stein, the Green party nominee. Mr Mueller's indictment confirms that account.

Likewise, Mr Mueller's indictment confirms the Steele dossier's claim that Russia wished to "sow discord" in the US election by backing leftwing as well as rightwing groups. Among the entities run by the IRA were groups with names such as "Secured Borders", "Blacktivists", "United Muslims of America" and "Army of Jesus".

What is fascinating about these words is that none of them are true.

Christopher Steele is not in hiding.

The actua l Trump Dossier does not allege "that the Russians were using "active measures" to support the campaigns of Mr Trump, Bernie Sanders, the Democratic runner-up to Hillary Clinton, and Jill Stein, the Green party nominee".

Bernie Sanders is mentioned by the Trump Dossier only in passing. By the time the Trump Dossier's first entries were written Bernie Sanders's campaign was all but over and it was already clear that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic Party's candidate for the Presidency.

Jill Stein is mentioned – again in passing – only once, in a brief mention which refers to her now infamous visit to Russia where she attended the same dinner with President Putin as Michael Flynn.

Nor does the Trump Dossier anywhere claim that "Russia wished to "sow discord" in the US election by backing leftwing as well as rightwing groups".

On the contrary the Trump Dossier is focused – exclusively and obsessively – on documenting at fantastic length the alleged conspiracy between the Russian government and the campaign of the supposedly compromised Donald Trump to get him elected US President.

Supporters of the Russiagate conspiracy theory need to start facing up to the hard truth about the Trump Dossier.

At the time the Trump Dossier was published in January 2017 little was known publicly about the contacts which actually took place between members of Donald Trump's campaign and tranisiton teams and the Russians during and after the election.

Today – a full year later and after months of exhaustive investigation – we know far more about those contacts.

What Is striking about those contacts is how ignorant the supposedly high level Russian sources of the Trump Dossier were about them.

Thus the Trump Dossier never mentions Jeff Sessions's two meetings with Russian ambassador Kislyak, or the various conversations Michael Flynn is known to have had with Russian ambassador Kislyak, some of which apparently took place before Donald Trump won the election.

The Trump Dossier never mentions Jared Kushner's four conversations with Russian ambassador Kislyak, including the famous meeting between Kislyak and Kushner in Trump Tower on 1st December 2016 (which Michael Flynn also attended) over the course of which the setting up of a backchannel to discuss the crisis in Syria is supposed to have been discussed (Kushner denies that it was).

The last entry of the Trump Dossier is dated 13th December 2016 ie. twelve days after this meeting took place, and given its high level a genuinely well-informed Russian source familiar with the private ongoing discussions in the Kremlin might have been expected to know about it.

Nor does the Trump Dossier mention the now famous meeting in Trump Tower between the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and Donald Trump Junior – which Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner also attended – which took place on 9th June 2016.

This despite the fact that the Trump Dossier's first entry is dated 20th June 2016 i.e. eleven days later, so that if this meeting really was intended to set the stage for collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – as believers in the Russiagate conspiracy theory insist – a well informed Russian source with access to information from the Kremlin would be expected to know about it.

Nor does the Trump Dossier have anything to say about George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign aide who had the most extensive contacts with the Russians, and whose drunken bragging in a London bar is now claimed by the FBI to have been its reason for starting the Russiagate inquiry.

In fact George Papadopoulos is not mentioned in the Trump Dossier at all.

This despite the fact that members of Russia's high powered Valdai Discussion Club were Papadopoulos's main interlocutors in his discussions with the Russians, and Igor Ivanov – Russia's former foreign minister, and a senior albeit retired official genuinely known to Putin – was informed about the discussions also, making it at least possible that high level people in the Russian Foreign Ministry and conceivably in the Russian government and in the Kremlin were kept informed about the discussions with Papadopoulos, so that a genuinely well-informed Russian source might be expected to know about them.

By contrast none of the secret meetings between Carter Page and Michael Cohen and the Russians discussed at such extraordinary length in the Trump Dossier have ever been proved to have taken place.

Now Special Counsel Mueller has provided further details in his latest indictment of actual albeit unknowing contacts between members of the Trump campaign and various Russian employees of Yevgeny Prigozhin's Internet Research Agency, LLC, apparently both in person and online.

The Trump Dossier has however nothing to say about these contacts either, just as it has nothing to say about the Internet Research Agency, LLC, Yevgeny Prigozhin, or the entire social media campaign set out in such painstaking detail by Special Counsel Mueller in his indictment.

The only conclusion possible is that if the Trump Dossier's Russian sources actually exist (about which I am starting to have doubts) then they were extraordinarily ignorant of what was actually going on.

That of course is consistent with the fact – recently revealed in the heavily redacted memorandum sent to the Justice Department by Senators Grassley and Lindsey Graham – that many of the sources of the Trump Dossier were not actually Russian but were American.

John Helmer – the most experienced journalist covering Russia, and a person who has a genuine and profound knowledge of the country – made that very point – that many of the Trump Dossier's sources were American rather than Russian – in an article he published on 18th January 2017, ie. just days after the Trump Dossier was published.

In that same article Helmer also made this very valid point about the Trump Dossier's compiler Christopher Steele

Steele's career in Russian intelligence at MI6 had hit the rocks in 2006, and never recovered. That was the year in which the Russian Security Service (FSB) publicly exposed an MI6 operation in Moscow. Russian informants recruited by the British were passed messages and money, and dropped their information in containers fabricated to look like fake rocks in a public park. Steele was on the MI6 desk in London when the operation was blown. Although the FSB announcement was denied in London at the time, the British prime ministry confirmed its veracity in 2012.Read more on Steele's fake rock operation here , and the attempt by the Financial Times to cover it up by blaming Putin for fabricating the story.

Given that Steele was outed by Russian intelligence in 2006, with his intelligence operation in Russia dismantled by the FSB that year, it beggars belief that ten years later in 2016 he still had access to high level secrets in the Kremlin.

What we now know in fact proves that he did not.

I only remembered Helmer's 18th January 2017 article about the Trump Dossier after I wrote my article about Senator Grassley's and Senator Lindsey Graham's memorandum to the Justice Department on 6th February 2018.

This is most unfortunate, not only because Grassley's and Lindsey Graham's memorandum resoundingly vindicates Helmer's reporting, but because it shows that a genuine expert about Russia like Helmer was able to spot immediately the holes in the Trump Dossier, which only now – a whole year and months of exhaustive investigations later – are starting to be officially admitted.

For my part I owe Helmer an apology for not referencing his 18th January 2017 article in my article of 6th February 2018. I should have done so and I am very sorry that I didn't.

I have spent some time discussing the Trump Dossier because despite denials it remains the lynchpin of the whole Russiagate scandal and of the claims of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Heroic efforts to elevate Papadopoulos's case and the meeting between Donald Trump Junior and the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya into 'evidence' of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia which exists supposedly independently of the Trump Dossier fail because as I have discussed extensively elsewhere (see here and here ) they in fact do no such thing.

Despite Edward Luce's desperate efforts to argue otherwise, Mueller's latest indictment far from corroborating the Trump Dossier, has done the opposite.

With the Trump Dossier – the lynchpin of the whole collusion case – not just unverified and discredited but proved repeatedly to have been completely uninformed about events which were actually going on, why do some people persist in pretending that there is still a collusion case to investigate?

[Feb 18, 2018] Internet Research Agency Russian journalist who uncovered election interference left confounded by Mueller

And now supporting information started to flow from Russia. Is it forgery or real thing we probably will never know.
Feb 18, 2018 | www.washingtonpost.com

Internet Research Agency: Russian journalist who uncovered election interference left confounded by Mueller - The Washington Post A 37-page indictment issued by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's team on Friday brings fresh American attention to one of the strangest elements of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election: The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a state-sponsored "troll factory" in St. Petersburg.

But much of the information Mueller published on Friday about the agency's efforts to influence the election had already been published last October -- in an article by a Russian business magazine, RBC.

In a 4,500-word report titled " How the 'troll factory' worked the U.S. elections, " journalists Polina Rusyaeva and Andrey Zakharov offered the fullest picture yet of how the "American department" of the IRA used Facebook, Twitter and other tactics to inflame tensions ahead of the 2016 vote. The article also looked at the staffing structure of the organization and revealed details about its budget and salaries.

Расследование РБК: как "фабрика троллей" поработала на выборах в США https://t.co/iYHjucGX9t

-- РБК (@ru_rbc) October 17, 2017

Zakharov agreed to answer some questions for WorldViews about his reaction to the details about the IRA in Mueller's indictments (Rusyaeva left journalism after the story came out, although she stresses she did not do so because of a reaction to the story). Zakharov explained how it was a strange feeling seeing something he had so closely investigated become a major issue in the United States, when it had not been a "bombshell" when he published his report at home.

... ... ...

[Feb 18, 2018] Saudi paid good money to meddle in US elections, immigration policies among others. Israel arranges payback thru their countless organizations operating and manipulating US. Hey even the lightweight Ukraine paid good money.

Notable quotes:
"... Situation goes up and down based on money paid. Look at Saudi, things starts to go wrong the moment they try challenge US. Same goes for Israel too. But once the account is filled back up, every problem disappear. ..."
"... Russia stopped payment to Deep State and even dared to try expose Clinton their candidate. Of course Russians got to pay.... ..."
"... All you need to see to know the MSM is fake and biased is to look at the front page the last two weeks. Congressional memo detailing FBI malfeasance in obtaining secret warrants for surveillance of US citizens, two paragraphs on page 13. Mueller indicts random Russian internet trolls that will never be arrested or extradited, front page headline, all caps. ..."
"... We live at a time when every honest and decent person who can and wants to think on his own, automatically receives a label of a supporter of Russia and Putin personally. ..."
"... If 13 Internet trolls are really able to influence the choice of the president in a certain country, then this is a third world country. Or the fourth world. Thus, Mueller publicly recognized America, a third world country. Or the country of the fourth world. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Wild E Coyote -> New_Meat Sat, 02/17/2018 - 04:22 Permalink

There is no double standards, It is always the same for everyone. Saudi paid good money to meddle in US elections, immigration policies among others. Israel arranges payback thru their countless organizations operating and manipulating US. Hey even the lightweight Ukraine paid good money.

Situation goes up and down based on money paid. Look at Saudi, things starts to go wrong the moment they try challenge US. Same goes for Israel too. But once the account is filled back up, every problem disappear.

Russia stopped payment to Deep State and even dared to try expose Clinton their candidate. Of course Russians got to pay....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XGAmPRxV48

jin187 -> jmack Sat, 02/17/2018 - 12:36 Permalink

All you need to see to know the MSM is fake and biased is to look at the front page the last two weeks. Congressional memo detailing FBI malfeasance in obtaining secret warrants for surveillance of US citizens, two paragraphs on page 13. Mueller indicts random Russian internet trolls that will never be arrested or extradited, front page headline, all caps. Flynn gets charged with lying to the FBI about something that had nothing to do with the investigation, and has resulted in no indictments, front page headline, all caps. Manafort indicted for errors in financial paperwork that happened before he even joined the campaign, and had nothing to do with Russia, front page, all caps.

You can go on like that all day.

silvermail -> Reaper Sat, 02/17/2018 - 07:01 Permalink

We live at a time when every honest and decent person who can and wants to think on his own, automatically receives a label of a supporter of Russia and Putin personally.

That is, if a person has reason, conscience and his own opinion different from the opinion of the Faux news and CNN, such a person will always receive accusations as a "secret agent of the Kremlin," regardless of his citizenship and nationality.

If 13 Internet trolls are really able to influence the choice of the president in a certain country, then this is a third world country. Or the fourth world. Thus, Mueller publicly recognized America, a third world country. Or the country of the fourth world.

GreatUncle -> silvermail Sat, 02/17/2018 - 07:48 Permalink

But every honest and decent person is realizing since 2008 the whole economy is a ponzi and in fact with ZIRP on pension growth the future looks like poverty on a massive scale.

World will go to rat shit now, as they try to raise rates on their centrally planned NIRP economy destroying the economy more when the economy is really calling out for NIRP across the board to make money cheap once again.

Mueller needs to keep spinning his tune for a long time as when the music stops the war starts.

Or he could be waiting for the economic implosion to kick it off.

jin187 -> GreatUncle Sat, 02/17/2018 - 12:53 Permalink

It's possible. If the economy crashes to depression levels while Trump is in office, which wouldn't shock most of us, what better time to try and impeach him than when he's got his own party gunning for him? That's the reason they went after him so quickly. They were trying to grab what they thought was low-hanging fruit, only to find nothing there, and now Trump's numbers are up, and Republicans have fallen in line, making impeachment impossible without a major smoking gun. Their only hope now is that the economy tanks. Hence all the wooden faces during the SotU speech, when Trump told them about how well the Democrat voting demographics were doing financially

[Feb 18, 2018] Facebook VP The Majority Of Russian Ad Spend Happened AFTER The Election

Feb 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Facebook VP of advertising, Rob Goldman, tossed a hand grenade in the Russian meddling narrative in a string of tweets responding to Mueller's indictment of 13 Russian nationals running a "bot farm" which, according to Mueller (via Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein), was unsuccessful at influencing the 2016 election.

... ... ...

Notably, Goldman points out that the majority of advertising purchased by Russians on Facebook occurred after the election - and was designed to "sow discord and divide Americans", something which Americans have been quite adept at doing on their own ever since the Fed decided to unleash a record class, wealth, income divide by keeping capital markets artificially afloat at any cost.

[Feb 18, 2018] The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back 'It's Russia! Russia! Russia!' by James George JATRAS

This is a very good overview that presents convincing hypothesis why Mueller made himself a joke. Along with desire to preserve his franchise they needed a smoke screen to distract people from the evidence of a color revolution against Trump, a palace coup d'état which involved two dozens or so highly placed officials in Obama administration, including CIA (Brennan), FBI (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, James A. Baker, etc) and Justice Department (Loretta Lynch, Bruce Ohr to name a few . In other words this is nothing more then " a well-timed effort to distract Americans' attention from the real collusion rotting the core of our public life by shifting attention to a foreign enemy. Many of the people behind it are the very officials who are themselves complicit in the rot. But the sad fact is that it will probably work."
Notable quotes:
"... And yet, "collusion" still lives! But while there is no actual allegation (much less evidence) that any American, much less anyone on the Trump team, "colluded" with the indicted Russians, the indictment makes it clear that Moscow sought to support Trump and disparage Hillary. ..."
"... Any and every Russian equals Putin. Incredibly, nothing in the indictment points to any connection of those indicted to the Russian government! ..."
"... Are you reading this commentary? ..."
"... The Mueller indictment against the Russians is a well-timed effort to distract Americans' attention from the real collusion rotting the core of our public life by shifting attention to a foreign enemy. Many of the people behind it are the very officials who are themselves complicit in the rot. But the sad fact is that it will probably work. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

For weeks the unfolding story in Washington has been how a cabal of conspirators in the heart of the American federal law enforcement and intelligence apparat colluded to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton and, when that failed, to undermine the nascent presidency of Donald Trump. Agencies tainted by this corruption include not only the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) but the Obama White House, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA, plus their British sister organizations MI6 and GCHQ , possibly along with the British Foreign Office (with the involvement of former British ambassador to Russia Andrew Wood ) and even Number 10 Downing Street.

Those implicated form a regular rogue's gallery of the Deep State: Peter Strzok (formerly Chief of the FBI's Counterespionage Section, then Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division; busy bee Strzok is implicated not only in exonerating Hillary from her email server crimes but initiating the Russiagate investigation in the first place, securing a FISA warrant using the dodgy "Steele Dossier," and nailing erstwhile National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn on a bogus charge of "lying to the FBI "); Lisa Page (Strzok's paramour and a DOJ lawyer formerly assigned to the all-star Democrat lineup on the Robert Mueller Russigate inquisition); former FBI Director James Comey, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and – let's not forget – current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, himself implicated by having signed at least one of the dubious FISA warrant requests . Finally, there's reason to believe that former CIA Director John O. Brennan may have been the mastermind behind the whole operation .

Not to be overlooked is the possible implication of a pack of former Democratic administration officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice , and President Barack Obama himself, who according to text communications between Strzok and Page "wants to know everything we're doing." Also involved is the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer – rendering the ignorance of Hillary herself totally implausible.

On the British side we have "former" (suuure . . . ) MI6 spook Christopher Steele, diplomat Wood, former GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan (who resigned a year ago under mysterious circumstances ), and whoever they answered to in the Prime Minister's office.

The growing sense of panic was palpable. Oh my – this is a curtain that just cannot be allowed to be pulled back!

What to do, what to do . . .

Ah, here's the ticket – come out swinging against the main enemy. That's not even Donald Trump. It's Russia and Vladimir Putin. Russia! Russia! Russia!

Hence the unveiling of an indictment against 13 Russian citizens and three companies for alleged meddling in U.S. elections and various ancillary crimes.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume all the allegations in the indictment are true, however unlikely that is to be the case. (While that would be the American legal rule for a complaint in a civil case, this is a criminal indictment, where there is supposedly a presumption of innocence. Rosenstein even mentioned that in his press conference, pretending not to notice that that presumption doesn't apply to Russian Untermenschen – certainly not to Olympic athletes and really not to Russians at all, who are presumed guilty on "genetic" grounds .)

Based on the public announcement of the indictment by Rosenstein – who is effectively the Attorney General in place of the pro forma holder of that office, Jeff Sessions (R-Recused) – and on an initial examination of the indictment, and we can already draw a few conclusions:

The Mueller indictment against the Russians is a well-timed effort to distract Americans' attention from the real collusion rotting the core of our public life by shifting attention to a foreign enemy. Many of the people behind it are the very officials who are themselves complicit in the rot. But the sad fact is that it will probably work.

[Feb 18, 2018] So "Russian interference" in our elections are some Facebook trolls?

Feb 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

whosyerdaddy Sun, 02/18/2018 - 13:47 Permalink

So "Russian interference" in our elections are some Facebook trolls? Are you freakin' kiddin' me? After 18 months of investigation not one shred of evidence has been presented. Has even one voting machine been hacked?

I seem to remember Nuland and McBraintumor on the barricades in the Ukraine. These Russian trolls are exercising what used to be called Political speech. Good or bad I don't think you will be able to stop it. Bottom line if Hillary was not such an abysmal candidate the Russians couldn't have affected anything. Any traction any narrative gained was a reflection of the dismal status of maybe the most corrupt candidate in American political history.

This Russian gambit is to forestall prosecutions of Treason. Hillary was engaged in a Conspiracy to defraud a Federal election. Her campaign gave money to foreign nationals against the law. Conspiracy not collusion. From Brennan and Clapper and Comey in down you have obvious perjury.

The Schiffs and the Warners have committed Treason by promulgating this patently false fairy tale to the detriment of the American people.

[Feb 18, 2018] The irony of this indictment is so thick that it is overwhelming

Feb 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Den Lille Abe | Feb 18, 2018 1:52:42 AM | 55

The irony of this indictment is so thick that it is overwhelming.

The US has as far back as I can recall, as an political aware person, say 1973, been implicated in regime change or meddling. In Europe less violent than the rest of the world, but never the less they were there, as was the USSR. Spending money, influencing, subverting, coercing and in some cases resorting to violence, in order to get their government of choice. Italy and Greece were places that were sought out because of the strong left. And things did get violent from both sides. Those not old enough , look it up, there is plenty of evidence, declassified documents available. Northern Ireland was another place they meddled quite openly.

In the rest of the world, especially in South America, it was far, far more violent and less covert, almost all South American countries suffered.

It is blatantly hysterical, mind boggling hysterical, that Israel's influence and is silently accepted, but Israeli influence is so huge that opposition can be suppressed.

To counter foreign "meddling" the US is quietly regulating the Internet, introducing the Great US Firewall. What a pathetic nation, what a joke....

[Feb 18, 2018] The people running these sites did not care who would win the election. But they found that stories about Trump generated MORE TRAFFIC than pro Clinton stories. (BTW: U.S. main stream media found the same and was therefore full of Trump stories.) More traffic/followers is their sole point. What Veles produced, though, was something more extreme still: an enterprise of cool, pure amorality, free not only of ideology but of any concern or feeling about the substance of the election. These Macedonians on Facebook didn't care if Trump won or lost the White House.

Feb 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Kalen , Feb 18, 2018 3:38:32 AM | 62
For hundred times it is all provocation against Russia, psyop that intensified since Putin returned to power and started rebuilding Russian military after another western provocation in Georgia and later in Moldova, it became exponential after Ukrainian putsch in 2014.

Ultimately removal and Putin and now Xi who will follow Putin to be elected four times breaking the western imposed rotation of CIA agents in the Chinese and Russian leadership is the ultimate goal of the Western globalists to be replaced by oth Chinese and Russian oligarchs with more consmopolitan autlooke devoid of notions of nation states but rather global imperial provinces of US western emporium.

These are neocons sick dreams but as we see they will not be stopped without real bottom up anti oligarchic revolution and instead escalate into preprogrammed chaos and global conflict among people while harmony among oligarchy.

b , Feb 18, 2018 3:52:42 AM | 63
@liburl @20 - "Could you comment on this. All things being equal the marketing scheme would have spread
their positive and derogatory posts equally to any given candidate, yet Mueller says
Hillary was under attack."

Aside from the "Russian influence" there were commercial fake-news site created and run from Macedonia. These were widely reported about. for example by Wired: Inside the Macedonian Fake-News Complex .

The people running these sites did not care who would win the election. But they found that stories about Trump generated MORE TRAFFIC than pro Clinton stories. (BTW: U.S. main stream media found the same and was therefore full of Trump stories.) More traffic/followers is their sole point.

What Veles produced, though, was something more extreme still: an enterprise of cool, pure amorality, free not only of ideology but of any concern or feeling about the substance of the election. These Macedonians on Facebook didn't care if Trump won or lost the White House.
...

Trump groups seemed to have hundreds of thousands more members than Clinton groups, which made it simpler to propel an article into virality. (For a week in July, he experimented with fake news extolling Bernie Sanders. "Bernie Sanders supporters are among the smartest people I've seen," he says. "They don't believe anything. The post must have proof for them to believe it.") He posted under his own name but also under the guise of one of 200 or so bogus Facebook profiles that he'd purchased for this purpose. (A fake profile with a Russian name cost about 10 cents; for an American name, the price went up to 50 cents.)

[Feb 18, 2018] In other words, what Prigozhin's company is doing is hardly much different from what Facebook originally was set up to do: sell its followers, their details and their behaviours to paying customers

Feb 18, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: Jen | Feb 18, 2018 5:40:31 AM | 65

"... The sole point of creating a diverse army of sock-puppets with large following crowds was to sell the 'eyeballs' of the followers to the paying customers of the marketing company [Concord Catering] ..."

In other words, what Prigozhin's company is doing is hardly much different from what Facebook originally was set up to do: sell its followers, their details and their behaviours to paying customers, be they marketing organisations or the US government.

Rich , Feb 18, 2018 7:27:05 AM | 66
No Russian influence-just more fake news, more lies, more manipulation, more of the same pantomime politics starring puppet politicians and directed by the dangerous psychopaths who rule us and who are rushing us down a one way street to extinction...
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078L8K9H3

[Feb 18, 2018] Anti-Trumpists Use Mueller Indictments to Escalate Tensions With Nuclear-Armed Russia

Notable quotes:
"... Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 alleged members of a Russian troll farm is leading to calls for escalation with Russia, exacerbating tensions that are already at historic – and dangerous – lows, observes Caitlin Johnstone.

By Caitlin Johnstone

U.S. empire loyalists are so close to telling the truth when they babble about "Russian propaganda." They are openly admitting that it is wrong to use media to manipulate the ways that Americans think and vote. Now all we need is for them to admit that they themselves do this constantly , and we'll be on the right track.

St. Petersburg's Internet Research Agency building, the alleged Russian troll factory that has sown discord in U.S. politics, according to Robert Mueller's indictment.

The word "Russians" is America's top trend on Twitter at the time of this writing because of a Mueller indictment of 13 alleged members of a Russian troll farm, those nefarious supervillains who posted pictures of puppies and promoted Bernie Sanders to "sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. election."

Predictably, no evidence is added to cohesively tie the establishment Russia narrative together with allegations of Russia hacking the Democratic Party and giving their emails to WikiLeaks, meeting with Donald Trump, Jr. at Trump Tower, any shenanigans with well-hydrated Russian prostitutes, or indeed anything tying the troll farm to Trump or the Russian government at all.

The focus instead is on people disguising their identities to troll Americans on social media, which we have now learned constitutes a "conspiracy to defraud the United States." As Disobedient Media's Elizabeth Lea Vos rightly points out , it is also behavior that the Hillary Clinton campaign is known to have funded and engaged in extensively.

In response to this underwhelming revelation, Democrats and Never-Trumpers are howling for new Cold War escalations with Russia. This despite the fact that this administration has already killed Russians in Syria , greatly escalated nuclear tensions with Russia, allowed the sale of arms to Ukraine (a move Obama refused for fear of angering Moscow), established a permanent military presence in Syria with the goal of effecting regime change, forced RT and Sputnik to register as foreign agents, expanded NATO with the addition of Montenegro, assigned Russia hawk Kurt Volker as special representative to Ukraine, shut down a Russian consulat e in San Francisco and expelled Russian diplomats as part of continued back-and-forth hostile diplomatic exchanges.

We are already at an extremely dangerous point in the ongoing trend of continuous escalations with a country that is armed with thousands of nuclear warheads. And these deranged lunatics want more.

"Special Counsel Mueller's indictments are further proof that Vladimir Putin directed a campaign to interfere with our elections, with the goal of tipping the outcome," tweeted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. "Given these indictments, @realDonaldTrump should implement the sanctions that Congress passed immediately."

Steven Schmidt, MSNBC analyst and former strategist for George W. Bush and John McCain, said that the word "meddling" is not a sufficiently inflammatory word, because "What Russia did is ATTACK the United States. Trump and the Corrupted GOP majority refuse to defend the sovereignty of the country from this outside THREAT from a hostile state actor."

Congressmen Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff , Senator Bernie Sanders , popular commentators Preet Bharara and Joe Walsh have all joined in the pile-on, along with many, many others, all demanding that the president do more to escalate tensions with Russia even further than he already has.

This is exactly what renowned U.S.-Russian relations expert Stephen Cohen has been warning of : an extremely dangerous mixture of continually escalating Cold War tensions coexisting with hot proxy wars between two nuclear superpowers, with a president facing immense political pressures to keep advancing and never, ever back down. A narcissist in the White House being baited by his political enemies into a game of nuclear "chicken," without the ability to swerve when necessary.

Meanwhile what are Republicans talking about? Why, they're all crowing about the fact that these Russia revelations began on Obama's watch and don't show collusion, of course.

Do you see what is happening here? There is never, ever going to be any proof of Trump-Russia collusion, because that has never been what this is about. We've talked about this before : America's unelected power establishment doesn't care about impeaching Trump, it cares about hobbling Russia in order to prevent the rise of a potential rival superpower in its ally China. All this lunacy makes perfect sense when you realize this. The U.S. deep state is using the hysterical cult of anti-Trumpism to manufacture support for increasing escalations with Russia, and the anti-Trumpists are playing right along under the delusion that pushing for moves against Russia will hurt Trump.

Well they will not hurt Trump, because there has never been any Trump-Russia collusion. If there had been it would have been picked up by America's sprawling surveillance networks and leaked to the Washington Post before the end of 2016, and if Trump were a Putin puppet he wouldn't be continually escalating toward direct conflict with Russia in ways his predecessor Obama never would have dreamed of doing. They aren't hurting Trump with these loud cries for increased sanctions and hawkishness, they're imperiling us all.

Democrats, it is time to stop letting them bait you into calling for even more escalations with a nuclear superpower and start calling for detente instead. Republicans, it is time for you to stop putting partisan politics ahead of the survival of our species and start pushing against these dangerous escalations that your president has been playing right along with. These escalations are extremely dangerous and getting ever more so, and in the name of all that is holy I implore you to stop before the unthinkable happens.

On my knees I beg you all to stop this madness, for the sake of my children and yours. You lunatics on both sides of the political divide are going to get us all killed. In God's name, stop. Please.

Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium . Follow her work on Facebook , Twitter , or her website. She has a podcast and a new book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers . This article was re-published with permission.

[Feb 18, 2018] This Mueller revelation of 13 Russians flipping a combined campaign amount of 6.9 billion dollars spent by both American presidential candidates, is awl inspiring, and convinces me to if I were to run for public office I would do myself well to get these 13 Russians to work for my campaign

Notable quotes:
"... Besides that Rosenstein did his duty, as to redirect our attention from those nasty FISA court accusations, made by the Nunes Memo how conveniently timed. Although, Mueller's fantastic work (not my words but Rachel's) did not implicate any Russian involvement, and to the disappointment of many Democrates Mueller didn't imply that Vladimir Putin gave his permission to flip Hillary's win, but all the same .the Russians are up to no good, period. ..."
"... Mueller's Russia investigation is the le creme de le crumb of FBI investigations ..."
"... Fox news was thrilled, and patted themselves on the back for knowing it was a lie all along, at least the part where Russia helped Trump get elected. However they continued with their anti-Russia rhetoric and repeatedly brought up Hillary's sale of Uranium to Russia. Now Trump is out there acknowledging, yes Russia interfered in our elections. Our interventionism on a world wide scale makes this all quite nauseating. ..."
"... Those Russians created discord, well, they really didn't have to bother since Americans were so good at it, they didn't need any outside help. I haven't had the stomach to see how CNN, and MSNBC are going to handle this since they were such proponents of Russia-gate. ..."
"... Annie I'm glad you bring up the predictable timing of Rosenstein's release of the Mueller Russia-gate investigation, for these new allegations of Russian interference could replace the news of that awful shooting down in Florida ..."
"... I am now convinced that the indictment is a fraud upon the court deserving of sanctions being imposed on Mueller by the Court. ..."
"... The Mueller indictment is a highly unusual document. It's extraordinarily verbose for an indictment. Coupled with the fact that Mueller knew there was no way he would ever be required to prove what was charged (the U.S. has no extradition treaty with Russia), the indictment is not in reality addressed to a judge or jury; it's fodder for propaganda purposes and as discussed below, is intended to protect the indictment's entire subject matter from Freedom of Information Act requests. ..."
"... The document is overflowing with information that would be filed under seal if it was not fictional. A host of classified intelligence sources and methods would be on full display if the information in the indictment was factual. E.g., we get internal Russian company documents and private emails. Those records would have to be authenticated at trial with admissible proof of how DoJ and the FBI acquired them (sources and methods) if the indictment was intended for a judge and jury. But we get a 37-page detailed document without a single redaction for classified information. Are we to seriously believe that the Deep State is willing to burn the identities of private actor spies in Russia so they can testify that they stole company documents and emails in a foreign country? Or are we to believe that the FISA Court issued search warrants for FBI or NSA to penetrate the company's networks for a criminal rather than foreign intelligence purpose? ..."
"... Since we are purportedly dealing with Russians, one would also expect at least most of the quotes to be in Russian, requiring translation to English, yes? But we have here perfect English language smoking gun quotes and lots of them, without any indication that they have been translated from Russian as would be required if they had been. And they all speak for themselves, without need for interpretation. Even one such quote would be rare in criminal cases. But to have a bunch of them, all in English? It beggars belief. ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Joe Tedesky

This Mueller revelation of 13 Russians flipping a combined campaign amount of 6.9 billion dollars spent by both American presidential candidates, is awl inspiring, and convinces me to if I were to run for public office I would do myself well to get these 13 Russians to work for my campaign utterly amazing, these Russian trolls could flip such an overly expensive long term election with so little.

Besides that Rosenstein did his duty, as to redirect our attention from those nasty FISA court accusations, made by the Nunes Memo how conveniently timed. Although, Mueller's fantastic work (not my words but Rachel's) did not implicate any Russian involvement, and to the disappointment of many Democrates Mueller didn't imply that Vladimir Putin gave his permission to flip Hillary's win, but all the same .the Russians are up to no good, period.

This story barely tops the exclusion of Russian athletes from the Olympics for drug doping, but Mueller's Russia investigation is the le creme de le crumb of FBI investigations . Florida 19 year old shooter, not so much.

In the end, this will just be another day in an America life, while Mueller and company wind this thing down, and with the hopes the open sore FISA court insinuation goes away.

This whole thing is maddening.

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 1:20 pm

Here's some extra reading .

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/16/falsehoods-and-lies-inciting-war-war-crime.html

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 1:27 pm

Read this it shows the quality of stupidity that is running our country, or at least is a part of the small cabal that is lying to us.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/02/15/when-former-spies-turn-into-tv-experts.html

Annie , February 17, 2018 at 2:37 pm

Joe, you do have to ask yourself why Mueller came out with their non-findings on Friday when everyone's attention was drawn to the school shootings in Florida where the FBI was given warnings, but neglected to pay attention, and the governor of Florida is calling for Wray's resignation, and heads to roll.

Fox news was thrilled, and patted themselves on the back for knowing it was a lie all along, at least the part where Russia helped Trump get elected. However they continued with their anti-Russia rhetoric and repeatedly brought up Hillary's sale of Uranium to Russia. Now Trump is out there acknowledging, yes Russia interfered in our elections. Our interventionism on a world wide scale makes this all quite nauseating.

Those Russians created discord, well, they really didn't have to bother since Americans were so good at it, they didn't need any outside help. I haven't had the stomach to see how CNN, and MSNBC are going to handle this since they were such proponents of Russia-gate.

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 3:10 pm

Annie I'm glad you bring up the predictable timing of Rosenstein's release of the Mueller Russia-gate investigation, for these new allegations of Russian interference could replace the news of that awful shooting down in Florida.

I actually picture Mueller & Rosenstein as planning this long before the shooting, and I can just see them figuring out that during the next mass shooting on a Friday before a weekend news cycle, that bringing up the Russia thing would not only distract our attention away from how the FBI dropped the ball on catching a 19 year old shooter who had tons of red flags surrounding him, while adding some new life to all that is bad about Russians, was the go to point.

I'm not surprised, although disappointed, that FOX is on the anti-Russian band wagon. This keeping Russia in the dog house has been discussed, and written about on this comment board, so keeping Russia & especially Putin in the spot light of all that is evil, to me comes as no surprise.

It would appear that the U.S. is eventually going to go to war with Russia, or do we dare? Neocon's are good at dropping bombs on far away places, but will they be any good at ducking them when the bombs drop here?

And yes we Americans don't need any help from any Russians in order to screw up our democracy, we are perfectly great at doing that ourselves. Joe

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , February 17, 2018 at 7:46 pm

Annie, I'll reply to your question in another comment. But I'm going to pile onto your near-top comment to spread some important information in its own right before commenting. Bernard at Moon of Alabama has just convincingly put the lie to Mueller's indictment by building upon an article he posted last October. http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html

I am now convinced that the indictment is a fraud upon the court deserving of sanctions being imposed on Mueller by the Court. I'll add some reasons for believing that in my follow-up comment.

Joe Tedesky , February 18, 2018 at 1:33 am

Paul that was the best so far of anything I read, or learned, about this Mueller/Rosenstein travesty. Joe

john wilson , February 18, 2018 at 6:04 am

Also Paul, did you know that the vice chairman of Face book has just announced that most of the Russian advertising spend happened AFTER the election. Read it for yourself on the zero hedge site.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , February 18, 2018 at 6:14 am

Yes, Joe. I'd really like to see VIPS dive into what b presented.

The Mueller indictment is a highly unusual document. It's extraordinarily verbose for an indictment. Coupled with the fact that Mueller knew there was no way he would ever be required to prove what was charged (the U.S. has no extradition treaty with Russia), the indictment is not in reality addressed to a judge or jury; it's fodder for propaganda purposes and as discussed below, is intended to protect the indictment's entire subject matter from Freedom of Information Act requests.

As further indications that the document is a work of fiction not intended for a judge or jury:

1. The document is overflowing with information that would be filed under seal if it was not fictional. A host of classified intelligence sources and methods would be on full display if the information in the indictment was factual. E.g., we get internal Russian company documents and private emails. Those records would have to be authenticated at trial with admissible proof of how DoJ and the FBI acquired them (sources and methods) if the indictment was intended for a judge and jury. But we get a 37-page detailed document without a single redaction for classified information. Are we to seriously believe that the Deep State is willing to burn the identities of private actor spies in Russia so they can testify that they stole company documents and emails in a foreign country? Or are we to believe that the FISA Court issued search warrants for FBI or NSA to penetrate the company's networks for a criminal rather than foreign intelligence purpose?

2. There are way too many perfect smoking gun English language quotes. It's rare to get smoking gun quotes from defendants and they almost always require context to interpret them. Since we are purportedly dealing with Russians, one would also expect at least most of the quotes to be in Russian, requiring translation to English, yes? But we have here perfect English language smoking gun quotes and lots of them, without any indication that they have been translated from Russian as would be required if they had been. And they all speak for themselves, without need for interpretation. Even one such quote would be rare in criminal cases. But to have a bunch of them, all in English? It beggars belief.

3. In a normal criminal case, an indictment's allegations would be tested at a public trial and the public would then learn what the evidence actually is. But with a case where the defendants will never be extradited to stand trial, the entire case file is exempt from public disclosure under the law enforcement records Freedom of Information Act exemption so long as the investigation is ongoing. By vastly increasing the level of detail beyond what is required for an indictment, Mueller sweeps far more evidence into what is clearly exempt from public disclosure.

4. Grand jury procedure permits what bernard describes, although it is highly unethical and violates a lawyer's duty of candor to the grand jury and the court. In a grand jury, the prosecution is not required to show any evidence tending to establish the defendants' innocence. Just enough evidence for the grand jury to find that the prosecution can present a prima facie case of guilt. That means Mueller did not have to show the grand jury any of the Internet communications that favored Hillary Clinton rather than Trump. But we know from bernard's October article and from MSM reports when the Facebook ads were disclosed to Congress that the pro-Clinton communications exist too. In other words, Mueller apparently cherry picked the evidence to support his charge that the communications all favored Trump instead of Clinton.

5.The indictment presents a wacky theory that the defendants conspired to defraud the United States that is riddled with First Amendment issues. Conspiracy to commit wire and mail fraud, that's not obviously a bad argument. But that fraud conspiracy claim smells like a very long distance stretch to me (caveat, I have not yet researched it thoroughly). But what's fraudulent about reports you never filed with the FEC and DoJ? Why not just charge them with not filing the reports? Is it just so you can trumpet "conspiracy to commit fraud on the United States?"

There's more but those are the major points I've got so far.

[Feb 18, 2018] It pains me to once again be confronted with the fact that Sanders is a neocon hack

Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Zachary Smith

Congressmen Ted Lieu and Adam Schiff, Senator Bernie Sanders , popular commentators Preet Bharara and Joe Walsh have all joined in the pile-on .

It pains me to once again be confronted with the fact that Sanders is a neocon hack.

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 1:30 pm

Your right Zachary in as much as Sanders has been inspiring, he along time ago should have dispelled this Russia-gate Bull, and went forward promoting his progressive goals. Joe

LaNinya , February 17, 2018 at 2:44 pm

I wrote off Bernie Sanders as a serious contender when, upon losing the Democratic nomination, instead of falling back on his life-long status as an Independent and socialist to throw his support to the Stein/Baraka ticket, he full-throatedly exhorted his supporters to vote for Hillary (Dick Cheney with lipstick) Clinton. Which, to me, indicated that he lacks faith in his own convictions.

It's interesting, though, that running as a "socialist" he attracted such great crowds and enthusiastic support. Remember how almost shocking that was? That anyone would be so bold as to run for president as a "socialist"?

And yet it hasn't been that long ago that the Communist Party itself would routinely field presidential candidates to run in the elections. Indeed, turns out John Brennan himself had voted for the communist candidate (Gus Hall) back in 1976.

When and how did the United States allow it's political discourse to get so cramped and narrow? Does anyone remember?

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 3:19 pm

I think the U.S. was captured into the net as far back as maybe starting with the midnight vote to establish the Federal Reserve in 1913. Another place would be the right wing Dem's putting Harry Truman on the VP ticket in 1944. And how could we analyze this downfall without including the assassination era, starting with JFK in 1963? Yes LaNinya it's been a long slow process, and it ain't over until the fascist take total control.

The public's yearning to hear Socialist Sanders, is interesting, but does anyone for one minute take the time to realize that Bernie at best is a tat to the right of an FDR new Dealer? Although you go with the best you got, it is a shame that there aren't more truly Leftist candidates, because I think Americans want them. Joe

mijkmild , February 17, 2018 at 3:39 pm

Add to that the end of the draft in 1973, which we thought was a victory, only to see a corporate military rise as the only means of access to "education" and "employment". A military corporation dedicated to war, death and destruction for profit, as well as censorship of its ultimate goals, and an industrial output of propaganda to encourage and prop up its agenda.

Rave on Sasha Alexandre. Rave on Jara. I am not your enemy. 173 Oudezijds Achterburgwal, Amsterdam Centrum.

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 4:04 pm

You raise a memorial point, milkmild. I just got off active duty around the time the draft was ended. As happy as I was, I also recall giving some thought to what would our military do, without all of us Constitutional pesky civilians around to nag the warmongering brass, as we did? Well now I know. Joe

mike k , February 17, 2018 at 3:07 pm

Sanders is a turncoat traitor to those he misled.

nonsense factory , February 17, 2018 at 3:51 pm

Sanders is interesting, in that he was basically running against Clinton just so she could say that she had an opponent. The Sanders platform is basically FDR-limited, in that if you look back to 1933 you can see FDR running on a very similar (but much more anti-Wall Street) platform.

My one piece of advice on Sanders is, don't trust politicians in this system to fix problems – we live in a seriously plutocratic system with remarkable similarities to Brezhnev's Soviet Union. Our politics is largely theater – Sanders was to be the foil to Clinton, and Trump's rise in the Republican Party was largely engineered by corporate allies of Hillary Clinton who thought he'd be easier to defeat than GW Bush. The Republican wing of the plutocracy wanted either Bush or Rubio, for similar reasons.

Trump was never supposed to win the general election, and Sanders was never supposed to get anywhere near Clinton in the primary. Somehow the whole program went off the rails, and the neolib/neocon crowd in Washington and Wall Street didn't see it coming. Now they're trying to pick up the pieces. . .

But I don't think all the king's horses and all the king's men, will be able to put the American Empire back together again. So I'm betting that the Soviet Union collapse scenario is going to play out in the United States; Gorbachev,Yeltsin, Putin. If we can find someone like Putin who will throw our politically-minded oligarchs in jail or exile them, as Putin did with Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky and Gusinsky, then we'll be much better off and the pain will not last as long.

As far as Russia vs. the USA, no, China holds all the cards, on renewable energy, on technology, on diplomacy. We should all learn to speak Chinese and Russian, anyway . . . Just so we can communicate with our equals on a level field. Bye bye Empire, bye bye. . .

[Feb 18, 2018] The Mueller indictment describes a common clickbait operation through a most hysterical and paranoid lens. Absurd madness. It's "commies are poisoning our vital bodily fluids" level stuff. Imposing controls on the internet is one endgame here

Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Herman

"The U.S. deep state is using the hysterical cult of anti-Trumpism to manufacture support for increasing escalations with Russia, and the anti-Trumpists are playing right along under the delusion that pushing for moves against Russia will hurt Trump."

On the mark, but the strategy goes beyond the deep state which I take to mean actors within our government. Cui bono, and that includes suspects that make no pretense of what they are after. The problems with their plans is that it assumes they have their hand on the switch that can turn this putsch on and off and somewhere in between.

Jessika , February 17, 2018 at 5:28 pm

Absolutely, politics is mostly theater, as nonsense factory stated. Tom Welsh and mike k, what a great exchange on humans as stupid as sand fleas! The western nations are floundering because of their slavish dependence on money and military might, and the US is set for economic collapse soon with $20tn debt and unbelievable deficit and continuing to rise to aid oligarchs; meanwhile with desperate masses, many of whom can't even put a roof over their heads without help. The Goldman has Sacked US. Notice how Goldman Sachs has been in charge of the gold since Bill Clinton? These fiends are using displacement because they have made the bloodiest mess of American society so they blame Russia for what they do, they're psychopathic. We've got to call them on it. Do read that article at The Saker, "A Brief History of the Kremlin Trolls". The imprint of CIA is all over this.

jaycee , February 17, 2018 at 6:01 pm

The Mueller indictment describes a common clickbait operation through a most hysterical and paranoid lens. Absurd madness. It's "commies are poisoning our vital bodily fluids" level stuff. Imposing controls on the internet is one endgame here.

Gregory Herr , February 17, 2018 at 8:42 pm

I put myself through the excruciation of watching a bit of Chris Hayes tonight talking with Nadler (D-NY) and some guy from the Clinton campaign who were both calling the so-called "interference" an "attack" tantamount to Pearl Harbor. Hayes played the straight man and poohed the comparison a bit, but they were insistent and Hayes suggested the logical conclusion of what they were demanding in response was war. Nadler stopped short of that but said the Russians must pay a heavy price (more sanctions) and the other guy said the new war would be of the cyber variety. I think you are right that "imposing controls on the internet is one endgame here".

David G , February 17, 2018 at 9:30 pm

The rhetorical slippery slope started with "hacking the DNC" (not that I'm conceding the reality of that), and slid rapidly through:
"hacking the election" to
"hacking our democracy" to
"attacking our democracy" to
"attacking our country",
and now what you saw on MSNBC, Gregory Herr, is the norm.

I've seen: What is the difference between what the Russians did here and if they'd occupied the Aleutian Islands?

How to rationally engage with argle-bargle paranoia like that?

David G , February 17, 2018 at 9:19 pm

jaycee, I think that is actually a key point that should be foregrounded in commentary on this nonsense: the psychological drivers are concerns about *purity* and *contamination*.

I've read about studies that show such preoccupations correlate with right-wing, or "conservative", political orientation, which absolutely describes the Russia-gate construct, despite its demographic base on the Dem-partisan, allegedly liberal, side of the aisle/populace.

KiwiAntz , February 17, 2018 at 6:26 pm

I'm from NZ so I'm going to use a Lord of the Rings analogy? America & it's Deepstate is the evil "Sauron" of the World"? Sauron (like the US) is a cowardly bully who wants to dominate all life on earth using his Ork minions (MIC) & one ring (nuclear weapons) to rule them all? What did it take to stop Sauron (& what will it take to stop the US?) A last alliance of men, elves & all the other people's of middle earth (planet earth) uniting & standing together as one to confront this grave threat to life on earth?? JRR Toiken understood the situation only to well I think? Simplistic solution,but a time is coming when all Nations of the Earth are going to have to stand up too & destroy the greatest existential threat too life on Earth, that has ever been, which is the American Empire & USA? A greater threat than Nazi Germany ever was? The survival of the human race is at stake as your lunatic leaders are leading us to permanent destruction! You'd be surprised at the amount of rich Americans, think Peter Thiel for one example, buying end times, survival prepper, bolt holes in my Country of NZ as they can see what your insane, hysterical Nation is leading us too? When the rich start abandoning the Country, like rats leaving a sinking ship, ITS TIME TO TAKE NOTICE? Just as one small hobbit, the most unlikeliest of hero's changed the outcome & the fate of middle earth, it set a precedent that ordinary people or small people of the World could stand up to & unite against EVIL & become the most unlikeliest of heroes in order to SAVE our Earth? God help us all?

mike k , February 17, 2018 at 6:53 pm

Well said!

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 7:12 pm

My dying last warning to you KiwiAntz while I'm stuck here on the USA mainland is when those rich creeps of ours do come to your beloved New Zealand .immediately arrest them, and put then in jail. Since I'm not big on capital punishment that's the best advice I can give you, but if you would rather I could hand this over to my cousins in Jersey, because their good at making things disappear. Be careful, watch yourself KiwiAntz. Joe

Jessika , February 17, 2018 at 6:43 pm

Good one, KiwiAntz! I agree with you and I also think that Mother Earth is sending messages to humans, too. Too many people allowing (mis)leaders to lead us over a cliff.

mike k , February 17, 2018 at 7:00 pm

"Worse than Hitler" hits Uncle Sam right on the head. Our leaders learned a lot from Hitler and his gang, but they have gone far beyond what Hitler accomplished. Racism, power lust, torture, fiendish weapons, mass murder – we have the whole package now in spades.

Marko , February 18, 2018 at 8:26 am

Worse , indeed , but what bothers me most is that we ( the American people ) have allowed the situation to get this bad.

I used to wonder : " How could the German people have allowed Hitler to obtain and maintain his power ? Were they blind , or were they just as evil as he was ? " Now I don't have to wonder any more – I'm experiencing the phenomenon first-hand , in real time. If the Guiness Book of World Records ever comes up with a category called " Nation With the Most Irresponsible Populace " , Germany no longer has to fear being named the record-holder , thanks to us.

Euroyankee , February 17, 2018 at 7:38 pm

To say that what the Russians did had any effect on the election is like claiming it was the fly fart in the tornado that blew the roof off.

Zachary Smith , February 17, 2018 at 7:45 pm

Lately I've seen some quips which are really memorable. "Fly fart in a tornado" is great, and the one by mike k the other day also made my day:

Voting in a crooked system is like pissing in the ocean – it's OK if you have nothing better to do .

jose , February 17, 2018 at 8:32 pm

You are correct when you assert that : "It's all been gossip and innuendo" Somebody ought to tell Mr. Mueller " clay, clay, clay for without it, I cannot make bricks" I have not seen anything remotely resembling hard evidence. This entire Russia debacle reminds me of the 2007 movie of Batman in which at the end the joker states the following: "Madness as you know is like gravity, all it takes is a little push" The worse part in all this is that millions of Americans believe this Russia meddeling as a given without demanding any solid prove. The grip of the American doctrinal system is very powerful, indeed.

Rael Nidess, M.D. , February 17, 2018 at 10:02 pm

"In God's name, stop. Please."

The voice of sanity.

Jessika , February 17, 2018 at 10:34 pm

Everything written here by Caitlin Johnstone makes sense except that you can't beg a psychopath to stop what they're doing. Like asking a serial killer not to kill you.

MLS , February 17, 2018 at 11:25 pm

The more I see the same commenters congratulating themselves on their respective confident, cognitive bias-laden assertions, the more painfully obvious it becomes that while posters here may know what they have read and heard, none have any clue what is going on.

Where exactly is the factual basis, for example, for this stunning paragraph:

"Well they will not hurt Trump, because there has never been any Trump-Russia collusion. If there had been it would have been picked up by America's sprawling surveillance networks and leaked to the Washington Post before the end of 2016, and if Trump were a Putin puppet he wouldn't be continually escalating toward direct conflict with Russia in ways his predecessor Obama never would have dreamed of doing. They aren't hurting Trump with these loud cries for increased sanctions and hawkishness, they're imperiling us all."

?

Because Caitlin said so? If/then theoreticals? Please.

The great Robert Parry did research. Journalistic legwork.

The cynicism olympics of small-time blogsylvania is no substitute.

BobS , February 18, 2018 at 12:11 am

Forget it Jake, it's Chinatown.

backwardsevolution , February 18, 2018 at 4:35 am

MLS – well, where's the evidence? Please enlighten us.

[Feb 18, 2018] My question is, is the American public wittingly or nonwittingly going along for the ride on this Russia-gate bus to no where?

Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Mild - ly - Facetious

Mueller Indictments Miss The Mark On Trump Russia Collusion

By Jonathan Turley
2/17/18

http://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/374312-mueller-indictments-still-miss-the-mark-on-trump-russia-collusion

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 2:05 pm

My question is, is the American public wittingly or nonwittingly going along for the ride on this Russia-gate bus to no where?

nonsense factory , February 17, 2018 at 4:00 pm

Based on what looks, at first glance, as widespread censorship of comment sections on this story in the corporate media across the English-speaking world, I'm guessing that the general public is not really buying it, outside the hardcore center of wealthy Clinton-Blair supporters and MIC insiders. That's just my impression, though.

When empires begin to collapse, the centers of wealth and power draw inwards and set up walls in a desperate bid to retain control; but the harder they try to grasp it the more slips through their fingers. They also tend to blame external forces for their own incompetence and Byzantine corruption, which is why all the finger-pointing at Russia. That's what I'm seeing, anyway.

Prophecy is never to be trusted; who knows how this will turn out? But it sure doesn't look good for the status quo of the Clinton-Bush-Obama era; those days are likely gone forever. Trump is ramping up wealth inequality with his massive tax cuts and huge military-industrial budget – again, much like the end days of the Soviet Union, when the apparatchiks had their Black Sea villas while the rest of the country lived in poverty.

Joe Tedesky , February 17, 2018 at 4:06 pm

I'm growing to like hearing from you nonsense factory, thanks for your input. Joe

nonsense factory , February 17, 2018 at 8:24 pm

Thans Joe, I have used a wide variety of outlets to post my samizdat commentary but Consortium is one of the few places where both the publishers and the commentariat seem to be honest people, not playing some manipulative game.

Joe Tedesky , February 18, 2018 at 1:36 am

That's great, and you fit right in. Stay with us, we all might learn something. Joe

[Feb 18, 2018] Mueller No Collusion between Trump and Putin, but the Russia Card is Bigger than Ever by Boyd D. Cathey

Feb 18, 2018 | www.unz.com

Earlier in February, according to various Fox and Neoconservative pundits, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was close to being labeled "the devil incarnate," the man responsible for naming Robert Mueller as Special Counsel (and who had basically given him carte blanche to engage in a slow-burn campaign, an ideological investigative war, based on a spurious made-up dossier, against President Trump). Calls went out that Rosenstein should be replaced, even fired.

Now, a few days later -- and thirteen indictments from one of Mueller's grand juries, announced by the very same Rosenstein, specifically against more "Russian players" who reportedly "meddled" in the 2016 American elections, but without any connivance by the Trump campaign -- and Rosenstein is feted as a veritable savior of the republic by those same commenters. Those Neocons who now selectively support the president and those bitterly anti-Russian Fox pundits (with the possible exception of Tucker Carlson) are absolutely giddy with delight! For too long, in their defense of President Trump against the charge of collusion, they had found themselves in the extremely uncomfortable situation (for them) of having to mount an attempt to exculpate the Russians, or at least lessen their culpability.

But now, Rosenstein has presented them with one of those exquisite "Aha!" moments: at last, the onerous burden of disputing Russian connections with the Trump campaign has been lifted, but they can still, with more reason, keep those evil Russkies in the cross hairs as the supreme enemy of America!

And this fits to a tee their ideological predispositions. For the Neocons (and most of the Fox punditry) -- who are the dominant voice of the so-called contemporary "conservative movement" and the intellectual brain trust for much of the GOP -- are inveterate Russophobes. It makes no difference to them that Russia in 2018 is definitely not Russia of the old Soviet days; it makes little difference to them that since 1991 Russia has emerged as the leading global power in opposition to the secularist New World Order, and that its political and cultural trajectory is, if anything, more conservative and traditionalist. They ignore the fact that Gorbachev voluntarily agreed with George H. W. Bush to dissolve the Warsaw Pact (which he did), ending the Communist control of Eastern Europe, on condition that the United States not advance NATO further east (which is exactly what the United States then proceeded to do). They have repeatedly ignored and rejected Russian overtures for partnership, collaboration and cooperation (not the subinfeudation and subjection that Paul Wolfowitz and Charles Krauthammer demanded). They rip out of context Putin's statement that the dissolution of the old Soviet Union was "a monumental catastrophe" for Russia, failing to understand that his comments dealt specifically with the radical and disastrous ethnic and political consequences of the break up, with millions of ethnic Russians now in regions that were always part of Russia, now separated from the Mother Country, economically adrift and incapable of true independence.

Back on February 6 , in an effort to briefly explain some of the background for this zealous Russophobia, I wrote the following in a column:

"The Neocons, of course, owe their intellectual origin decades ago to that other major stream of Marxist thought, identified with Leon Trotsky and his zealous internationalism. Early on for those intellectual descendants of Trotsky their opposition to Soviet Communism was just as much a hatred for Russia, which they saw as anti-Semitic (e.g., the infamous "doctors' plot") and "reactionary," as it was for what they perceived as Stalin's (and Brezhnev's) perversion of the original "humanist" and "democratic core" of Marxist theory. Thus, even with the daily revelations, the reports and all the accounts of skulduggery by agents of the Deep State that seem to seep out, the narrative of "the Russians Did It!" must be maintained, by both Progressivists AND the Neocons. Either the Russians and that "new Hitler" (to use Neocon Max Boot's ill-chosen comparison) Putin were somehow directing Donald Trump like a puppet master controls a stick puppet, or the Russians and that "new Hitler" were working with Hillary and the DNC to blacken Donald Trump's good name and unseat him. Either way "the Russians Did It!"

So, now we hear the news from Rosenstein that thirteen individual Russians and Russian organizations, beginning back in 2014, two years prior to the 2016 elections (and before Donald Trump was even mentioned as a real candidate), are charged with "attempted meddling" in our national elections using mainly the Internet and social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). But no American citizens were compromised, and there was no collusion with the Trump campaign.

Duh. So? This is news? That a major world power spent a paltry million dollars (in a campaign in which a total of billions of dollars were spent) in some rather uniformly unsuccessful attempts to "meddle" here?

You would think that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor or that Putin's Cossacks had landed and seized Miami Beach! This story has nearly displaced the tragedy of the school shooting in Broward County, at least on Fox. With obvious satisfaction, Laura Ingraham (whom I do like on occasion), intoned on her Fox program: "I've been warning about the Russians for years!" But when she asked her guest former CIA director Admiral R. James Woolsey if we ever "meddled" in other countries' elections and governments, he simply laughed a bit nervously and attempted to avoid answering. (The answer is of course we do and have done so for decades : Guatemala, Iran, the Kennedy-approved assassination of President Diem, the recent Ukrainian coup against a popularly-elected but pro-Russian president, our funding of candidates subservient to our interests -- the list is endless.)

Another Fox pundit, Tucker Carlson on his program, briefly mentioned the "meddling" of Chinese operatives and organizations in the United States (where literally billions of dollars have been spent to shape American opinion and a major percentage of American commerce is now controlled by Beijing). Where is the Special Counsel investigating Chinese "meddling" and influence on American elections? Where are the congressional committees examining the extraordinary control by the Chinese of American business?

And what about Mexico which, using its various consulates scattered across the United States, helped engineer the registration of Mexican voters who would vote in the 2016 American elections? How many of those were -- are -- illegals? Except for such groups as ALIPAC, NumbersUSA, NC Listen, FAIR, VDare.com, and a few others, not a word and certainly, no congressional hearings.

Then, there is Saudi Arabia and the billions of oil-based petrodollars that have found their way into the coffers of American political leaders. When was the last time that you heard a serious critique of the Saudis (or their virtual, if remote responsibility for much of the Islamic extremism in the Middle East)?

And, lastly, and most significantly -- and this is the white elephant in the room -- what about the incredible influence of Israel in American politics? Okay, I recognize that you're not supposed to notice this, at least not mention it, lest you be labeled an "anti-semite" -- an accusation, a stain, like the charge of racism that is difficult, if not impossible, to expunge. Yet, can anyone rationally deny the immense influence of Israel -- and its "meddling" -- in our elections and politics?

I will make no judgments here whether the issues advanced by Israel and its supporters, the positions pushed, are good or bad, whether they are in our national interest or not. Israel has been an ally since its foundation in 1948, and the cultural and political bonds between our two nations have been and are very strong. But that doesn't change the facts: Israel is a major player in our politics, and such extremely powerful lobbying/public interest groups like AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) and the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) generally serve the interests of the State of Israel and attempt to identify them with American interests.

"Meddling" is an understatement when it comes to Israel. Remember the Jonathan Pollard espionage case? Pollard was a major American Israeli spy, whose spying and pilfering of top American secrets on behalf of Israel got him life imprisonment. And, politically, we only need to cast a brief glance to the past -- to the defeat of Senators J. William Fulbright (Arkansas) and Chuck Percy (Illinois), and Congressman Paul Findley (Illinois), and the attempted defeat of Representative Walter Jones Jr. more recently in North Carolina (e.g, Bill Kristol's million-dollar campaigns to defeat Jones in GOP primaries) -- all of whom refused to go along with unquestioning support of a pro-Israeli American agenda, or who raised some embarrassing questions, even in the most respectful and mildest manner.

Years ago, when working with the founder of the older conservative movement, Dr. Russell Kirk in Michigan, I met Dr. Alfred Lilienthal, a thoughtful Jewish opponent of Zionism and of the kind of international entanglements that he sincerely believed gave the Jewish state and Jews universally a negative reputation. Later on he presented me with copies of his major documented study on the topic, The Zionist Connection (original edition, 1978, and revised, 1982), which were revelatory for me.

More recently, Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski's impressively documented, The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (2008), and Drs. John Mearsheimer's and Stephen Walt's The Israel Lobby and U. S. Foreign Policy (2007) have deepened aspects of Dr. Lilienthal analysis. And additional research and discussion by such writers as Philip Giraldi ( "Are America's Jews Driving America's Wars," 2017), and such distinguished authors of Jewish descent as Professors Walter Block ( "Is It Permissible to Criticize Jews?" January 2018) and Paul Gottfried ( his review of Neil Jumonville's The New York Intellectuals , 2008, on the relationship between Russian Jewish emigres centered in New York and their powerful influence in American culture and politics), have raised questions that should be examined calmly and rationally, but probably won't.

The shadowy Russians purportedly spent a million dollars to "meddle" and "sow confusion" in American politics, beginning two years before the 2016 elections. And the Neocon narrative, the template that indicts Russia, is preserved, and that is all you need to know. An anti-Trump "demonstration" in New York with forty-five sullen attendees, some fake ads on Facebook (which is literally filled with millions of other fake ads), some cyber interference, some phony URLs -- and the Russophobes go literally wild.

And all the while the major players in meddling and espionage and influence here in the US -- they skate, are ignored with a wink-and-a-smile, dollar signs in the eyes of the supposed guardians of the Republic!

Sheer hypocrisy and crass dishonesty incarnate.

[A portion of this essay has appeared at: http://boydcatheyreviewofbooks.blogspot.com/2018/02/february-17-2018-my-corner-russians.html ]


Jonathan Mason , February 18, 2018 at 6:23 am GMT

Never mind, Mueller can now further boost his pension prospects by taking a leaf out of Kenneth Starr's book and start investigating Trumpian payoffs to bimbos, and consider indictments for adultery. That should give him another couple of years of pensionable Deep State service.
Ace , February 18, 2018 at 6:26 am GMT
** cultural and political bonds between our two nations **

Israel is an enemy and a financial parasite. There are no bonds between us.

NoseytheDuke , February 18, 2018 at 7:13 am GMT
Israel has been CALLED an ally. Israel has never actually been an ally.

[Feb 18, 2018] And, what about all the foreign nationals who post here in this forum on this blog? I daresay most offer opinions not complementary of the US government and its political menagerie.

"I swear that Russiagate is nothing more than trying to cover up the blatant corruption of the DNC, Hillary Clinton, the FBI, CIA and The Department of Justice. Keep everybody busy with Russiagate and don't allow the corruption (with the help of the press) to see the light of day. Otherwise, people in high places would be going to jail.
Notable quotes:
"... As many commentators have pointed out, we are a country of completely brain washed people now. Schiff, Schumer, Sanders . . . they are all cut from the same cloth. There is not one politician left in the country who will challenge the The Ruling Power Structure's narrative. Even in Russia, there are lot of opposition leadership voices who are making noises against the System they disagree with. ..."
"... They can't make "hacking" stick 'cause it's false. They can't make "Trump is a Putin puppet" stick 'cause it's false. So now the whole damn dumb show–regurgitated by either shameless war profiteers or straight-faced useful idiots–comes down to so-called Russian social media trolls exercising the same "speech" that we are supposedly so proud to call "free" in this country. ..."
"... The Thought Police use surveillance and psychological monitoring to find and eliminate members of society who challenge the party's authority and ideology. ..."
"... Anyone who has questioned the intelligence agencies narrative that Russians and Trump colluded to win the election are viewed with suspicion as potential enemies of the state. ..."
"... What is the end goal? The end goal is to prop up a long in the tooth multi-decade cold war with Russia to justify massive military spending. Do you want to know the answer to your question of whether or not the US defense industry and our intelligence agencies are trying to spark a war with Russia? ..."
"... The answer is yes they are. As crazy as that sounds, the hungry defense industry with its insatiable appetite for more weapons has decided to go for the ultimate win the lottery strategy and foment war with Russia. It had been happening under Obama and now it is happening under Trump. They are trying to box him into a corner where he will feel enough pressure to go against Russia. Perhaps they can goad him into attacking Russia which is what I believe they want to do. Our national media plays along and is in bed with the intelligence agencies as much as ever just like they spouted the lies of Chalabi in Iraq War II falsely believing his claims that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and chemical and biological weapons. ..."
"... "Yet still they want more as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out. What they want now to do is to do the same thing they have been doing under Obama and enlist Trump on the grandest military adventure of all. War with Russia." ..."
"... The Russiagate affair has been going on for almost a year and I would think Mueller is under a lot of pressure to find something to stick. This indictment may be it. ..."
"... Once again, Russia's reputation will be taken down a few notches and made to suffer another humiliation. And the US will move on to the next allegation, "UK and US blame Russia for the malicious NotPetya cyberattack" (headline on BBC). ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

"Realist , February 17, 2018 at 3:27 pm

Essentially, all Mueller did yesterday was to indict a bunch of private Russian citizens for expressing their opinions about the candidates in the last presidential election via public media (mainly Facedbook and Twitter), and the individual Russians contacted by the press about it did not deny doing so. Mueller made no links to the Russian government, Putin, the FSB or even their alleged puppet Donald Trump. Just private individuals being persecuted for expressing an opinion on American politics in public because they are foreigners. Doesn't matter whether the opinions were true, false, complementary or disparaging because they were subjective just like anyone else's opinions (you know, opinions are like a-holes, everybody's got one).

So, if that move by Mueller is allowed to stand and serve as a precedent in American jurisprudence, doesn't that mean that journalists from foreign lands, like Caitlin herself, are at risk of being indicated at any moment by the US Justice Department if they express opinions that the insiders in the Deep State do not like? And, what about all the foreign nationals who post here in this forum on this blog? I daresay most offer opinions not complementary of the US government and its political menagerie. And, to be honest, many do so in order to either change minds or solidify shared beliefs with others, including great swirling drifts of snowflake Americans.

This free exchange of thoughts is now to be verboten because someone other than Uncle Sam may have an influence or even change the mind of a precious American citizen? This is madness. That the most educated and articulate amongst us do not see this, but rather participate in the feeding frenzy upon the carcass of what is left of our liberal democracy is absolutely stupifying. As I have been saying for some time now, someone or some force must be imposing a form of mass hypnosis upon the population and only a few of us (including most here) seem to be immune to its effects. Maybe something we consume acts as an antidote. Perhaps your Italian grandma's muffalettas or calzones, Joe? Or my mother's German rouladen?

Dave P. , February 17, 2018 at 5:01 pm

Realist –

"As I have been saying for some time now, someone or some force must be imposing a form of mass hypnosis upon the population and only a few of us (including most here) seem to be immune to its effects."

You are dead right on that. My wife was yelling and screaming last night that why I was not watching this "Russia trolls" show with her on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS; to learn how the Russians have destroyed our beautiful democracy. She had seen the World too, mostly for fun and experiences; she taught English in Malaysia – British colony until 1957 – as a peace Corps volunteer during 1960's. There you have it. As many commentators have pointed out, we are a country of completely brain washed people now. Schiff, Schumer, Sanders . . . they are all cut from the same cloth. There is not one politician left in the country who will challenge the The Ruling Power Structure's narrative. Even in Russia, there are lot of opposition leadership voices who are making noises against the System they disagree with.

Gregory Herr , February 17, 2018 at 6:21 pm

They can't make "hacking" stick 'cause it's false. They can't make "Trump is a Putin puppet" stick 'cause it's false. So now the whole damn dumb show–regurgitated by either shameless war profiteers or straight-faced useful idiots–comes down to so-called Russian social media trolls exercising the same "speech" that we are supposedly so proud to call "free" in this country. They not only take us for moronic fools, but they can't even see that that they are insulting us further by insinuating that our voting decisions are completely unsophisticated and easily swayed to the point that 13 Russians could have an impact amidst a sea of election season campaign "propaganda" from both major parties and an array of special interest influence peddling. Like the Clinton campaign didn't hire Facebook trolls!
Bye Bye First Amendment no one in the halls of power takes it seriously enough to defend it unless you're spouting groupthink right Bernie?

Zachary Smith , February 17, 2018 at 8:00 pm

Essentially, all Mueller did yesterday was to indict a bunch of private Russian citizens for expressing their opinions about the candidates in the last presidential election via public media (mainly Facedbook and Twitter), and the individual Russians contacted by the press about it did not deny doing so.

I'll echo Drew Hunkins in calling this a brilliant condensation of the issue. What worries me is what the morons-in-charge might have in mind as a follow-up to this lunacy.

CitizenOne , February 18, 2018 at 2:31 am

Perhaps we are entering into the Orwellian dawn of Thought Crimes which are any feelings or thinking a Citizen has which are counter to the State Propaganda put out by the Ministry of Truth. The Thought Police (thinkpol in Newspeak) are the secret police of the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is their job to uncover and punish thoughtcrime. The Thought Police use surveillance and psychological monitoring to find and eliminate members of society who challenge the party's authority and ideology.

Anyone who has questioned the intelligence agencies narrative that Russians and Trump colluded to win the election are viewed with suspicion as potential enemies of the state.

It would appear to be allegations of thought crime because 15 foreign nationals posted things on social media. We have been under the perception that social media is a free forum for discourse but now, like China, we are seeing the formation of a witch hunt for foreign devils who have infiltrated the social mediascape and are on trial for the results of a national election.

We are literally burning some innocent teenager for the calamity we are convinced was not of our own making. We need to find a witch to brew some witchcraft to explain how our current situation has arisen.

Not sure if anyone alive today believes the Salem Witch Trials served justice and created a restoration of civil harmony. I'm fairly sure that everyone looks at those dark days as a travesty of justice.

Yes we are living in a time of universal deceit and the act of telling the truth has become a revolutionary act just as Orwell portrayed in his novel.

Thought crimes are fairly scary and they imply that our government is willing to indict the thoughts of whoever it deems to be an enemy of the state and bring the thinkers of thought crime as defined by the state as anyone who questions the official fake narrative of Russia Gate to "justice".

What is the end goal? The end goal is to prop up a long in the tooth multi-decade cold war with Russia to justify massive military spending. Do you want to know the answer to your question of whether or not the US defense industry and our intelligence agencies are trying to spark a war with Russia?

The answer is yes they are. As crazy as that sounds, the hungry defense industry with its insatiable appetite for more weapons has decided to go for the ultimate win the lottery strategy and foment war with Russia. It had been happening under Obama and now it is happening under Trump. They are trying to box him into a corner where he will feel enough pressure to go against Russia. Perhaps they can goad him into attacking Russia which is what I believe they want to do. Our national media plays along and is in bed with the intelligence agencies as much as ever just like they spouted the lies of Chalabi in Iraq War II falsely believing his claims that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and chemical and biological weapons.

Even the analysis on North Korea which opines that NK will use all weapons first as a first strike in a scenario the USA has called the "Use it or Lose it" fell short and was proved a false scenario or that there were really no actual WMDs in Iraq as the UN claimed.

Either way, the likely outcomes of a WMD armed Iraqi leader facing imminent demise which would cause him to use all available weapons at his disposal did not happen. There are only two conclusions to the outcome. Saddam did not have these weapons or the likely scenario of "Use it or Lose it" is all wrong.

Either way the premise of the war was shown to be false.

Unfortunately in the aftermath of that war there was no US counterpart to the British Chilcot Report and the US went on to engage in regime change in other nations like Ukraine, Syria, Libya and elsewhere.

There is no sense to it other than to destabilize nations, foment violence and create international tensions which have the effect of causing our elected leaders to pony up more money for defense to combat the new enemies we just created.

Yet still they want more as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out. What they want now to do is to do the same thing they have been doing under Obama and enlist Trump on the grandest military adventure of all. War with Russia.

I agree with her assessment that this is crazy. This is the most irresponsible thing yet but it has been enabled by a fake news press just as it was enabled by the fake news media all the times before.

I agree with you Joe that a form of mass hypnosis has gripped our democrat officials and a large segment of our population. We have been handed a leader they don't like and they are ready and able to make hay with the election outcome to persuade us by force to support more military adventures.

Dave P. , February 18, 2018 at 3:53 am

Citizen One –

"Yet still they want more as Caitlin Johnstone pointed out. What they want now to do is to do the same thing they have been doing under Obama and enlist Trump on the grandest military adventure of all. War with Russia."

I agree with her assessment that this is crazy. This is the most irresponsible thing yet but it has been enabled by a fake news press just as it was enabled by the fake news media all the times before."

Yes. This scenario is getting more and more likely. All steps point to that direction.

Skeptigal , February 17, 2018 at 11:10 pm

Unfortunately I'm not as confident. Here is the complete indictment at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43091945 . There are three counts (with almost 70 allegations): 1. Conspiracy to Defraud the United States 2. Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud And Bank Fraud and 3. Aggravated Identity Theft. It ends with a forfeiture allegation seeking property, real or personal from the defendants.

The Russiagate affair has been going on for almost a year and I would think Mueller is under a lot of pressure to find something to stick. This indictment may be it. Mueller will be the hero; Trump may be saved as the interference started in 2014, before his campaign began; the Hillary emails and Nunes memo will be cast aside; and the USA can say to the world "see I told you so."

Once again, Russia's reputation will be taken down a few notches and made to suffer another humiliation. And the US will move on to the next allegation, "UK and US blame Russia for the malicious NotPetya cyberattack" (headline on BBC).

Martin - Swedish citizen , February 18, 2018 at 1:15 am

If the allegations are true, they need to be put in perspective:
– what might be the rational behind? Eg tit-for-tat for Western meddling, arms race,
– do other nations engage in similar projects? What are the scale of those?

Starting in 2014 could it have been triggered by the Kiev coup and Nuland's was it five billion?

[Feb 18, 2018] The faction in the USA that seems to desperately want a nuclear war is now prosecuting people who opposed their candidate who virtually promised that nuclear war as a part of her campaign platform.

Notable quotes:
"... That "faction" is the trump regime (cough) justice department. They are who indicted the 13. Do the math. The trump regime is the "deep state". ..."
"... The 13 indictments were brought by Special Prosecutor Mueller. Due to Jeff Sessions recusal, he is answerable only to Deep State Globalist, Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein. 0% Trump involvement. ..."
"... The indictments are so sketchy they are almost certain to collapse. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/16/asst-attorney-general-rod-rosenstein-announces-robert-muellers-russian-election-interference-indictments/ ..."
Feb 18, 2018 | thesaker.is

Anonymous on February 16, 2018 , · at 2:38 pm UTC

On a related note . it is now apparently illegal to have opposed the Deep State's candidacy of Hillary for President. 13 people indicted by the US prosecutors for "supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton."

https://www.rt.com/news/419044-us-election-meddling-indicts/

The faction in the USA that seems to desperately want a nuclear war is now prosecuting people who opposed their candidate who virtually promised that nuclear war as a part of her campaign platform. Trying to save humanity is no defence apparently against charges that one interfered with the Deep State's plans for nuclear war.

Note, that this is not an isolated ruling. The people like priests and nuns who've protested against America's nuclear arsenal have had judges rule in court that arguments about the illegality of such programs (in violation of nuclear non-proliferation treaty) nor the immorality of planning to kill every living human and wipe out the human race are not permissible defenses to make against the charges filed against them.

Apparently one is now free to either die in a nuclear holocaust or to spend probably years in a US prison. The land of the free!

vot tak on February 16, 2018 , · at 5:00 pm UTC
"The faction in the USA that seems to desperately want a nuclear war is now prosecuting people who opposed their candidate who virtually promised that nuclear war as a part of her campaign platform."

That "faction" is the trump regime (cough) justice department. They are who indicted the 13. Do the math. The trump regime is the "deep state".

A123 on February 16, 2018 , · at 10:59 pm UTC
The 13 indictments were brought by Special Prosecutor Mueller. Due to Jeff Sessions recusal, he is answerable only to Deep State Globalist, Asst. AG Rod Rosenstein. 0% Trump involvement.

The indictments are so sketchy they are almost certain to collapse. https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/16/asst-attorney-general-rod-rosenstein-announces-robert-muellers-russian-election-interference-indictments/

[Feb 17, 2018] Empire actually don t know what Russia don t know or do know. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this subject. May be becuase speaking of paranoiacs with mania of world domination is not such a good idea

Russia became a standard punch ball in the US political games. As in "Russia dog eat my homework."
Notable quotes:
"... This article is very important and outlines the destructive effort being done to Russia by the USA. It should be noted and clearly displayed by the psychopathic nature of USA meddling in Russian affairs. ..."
"... "With the current uproar about Russia interfering in the USA elections. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this subject." ..."
"... It is extremely difficult and time consuming for an ordinary person to find the truth in the millions of pages on the Internet, the ordinary mushroom knowing that the MSM only serves you sh't and keeps you in the dark. ..."
"... Yea, just a common internet malpractice called spoofing, that any IT professional, especially one working in IT security, knows about. I suspected all along that most or all of this "Russian Hacking" and "Russians did it" was exactly that. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | thesaker.is

Nick on October 16, 2017 , · at 1:06 am UTC

With the current uproar about Russia interfering in the USA elections. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this subject. It is more important now than ever to bring forth information from Russia in exposing how serious the problem is from the USA interfering in not only Russian affairs but how the intelligence community continues unabated in interfering in most countries.

This article is very important and outlines the destructive effort being done to Russia by the USA. It should be noted and clearly displayed by the psychopathic nature of USA meddling in Russian affairs.

One has to wonder why people cannot see how the current government of the USA is totally out of control around the world.

Everything has its cycle of life and the USA is no exception to this theory. When humanity is controlled in such a fashion, by that I mean that the USA is supported by the four pillars consisting of GREED, CORRUPTION, POWER and CONTROL. They are sitting on the top of these structures and are desperately trying to maintain their grip over the world.

smr on October 16, 2017 , · at 3:01 am UTC
"With the current uproar about Russia interfering in the USA elections. It has to be noted that the Kremlin is very silent on this subject."

thank goodness! Trying to reason with drunken punks is hopeless and makes you look like a fool yourself.

Anonymous on October 16, 2017 , · at 11:02 am UTC
Perhaps the purpose is to "open Russia" to debunk those silly "Kremlin hacking" claims and give Empire more important information inside Russia. E.g how to go deep through military security defense line.

Empire actually don't know what Russia don't know or do know. Is this chess where you have to sacrifice pawn or two or even knight to secure queen and king? Or why to shoot fly with cannon?

Den Lille Abe on October 16, 2017 , · at 7:47 pm UTC
"One has to wonder why people cannot see how the current government of the USA is totally out of control around the world." end quote.

It is extremely difficult and time consuming for an ordinary person to find the truth in the millions of pages on the Internet, the ordinary mushroom knowing that the MSM only serves you sh't and keeps you in the dark. The most reliable method (not 100 % though) is the "Follow the money" method, who has to gain by this or that development, but even that can lead to false conclusions. Always count on that everyone has a hidden agenda, but watch out you are not gripped by paranoia.

MarkinPNW on October 16, 2017 , · at 2:27 am UTC
Yea, just a common internet malpractice called spoofing, that any IT professional, especially one working in IT security, knows about. I suspected all along that most or all of this "Russian Hacking" and "Russians did it" was exactly that.
Tom Welsh on October 16, 2017 , · at 4:55 am UTC
What a pathetic waste of time. American society and government are really getting very low.

And, of course, reality is actually defined as "what you cannot change by speaking about it". You can change reality, a very little bit at a time, by doing honest physical work.

[Feb 17, 2018] The only member of Shaltay-Boltay left on the loose reveals details on their work

Notable quotes:
"... Much later, in mid-2013, the idea of Shaltay-Boltay appeared. ..."
"... Anikeev had sources of information, the information itself, important and interesting one. Anikeev decided to leave the information and analytical structure for which he had been working, and start his own project. ..."
"... His role has been greatly exaggerated. He's just our mutual old friend. When we were getting significant numbers of files that had to be processed, we would ask Teplyakov to help, for a fee. We knew him and trusted him. ..."
"... Just then, I was beginning to get annoyed with the country, I decided to go to Thailand. When I started discussing this project with Anikeev, it seemed okay: you could engage in an interesting and promising business from home. What did I expect in financial terms? Definitely not the sale of arrays of information. I was rather thinking about advertising or administration fee. Lite-version. ..."
"... All the information came from Anikeev. I published the received information, perhaps, by illegal means, but I have nothing to do with how it was obtained. Yesterday, I sent a letter to the former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think by our actions, especially in 2014, when we were working on the idea, I deserved asylum in Estonia. So far no response was received. ..."
"... The Anonymous International published a lot of information from the correspondence of officials and businessmen between 2014 and 2016. Among the disclosed information was Dmitry Medvedev's hacked Twitter, and e-mail, Facebook, iPhone and iPad of owner of NewsMedia Holding Aram Gabrellyanov; e-mail and WhatsApp of TV host Dmitry Kiselev, official correspondence between the employees of "Prosecutor's Office" and the "Ministry of State Security" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, and a lot of other, equally interesting information. ..."
"... Before Anikeev's detention, Shaltay-Boltay also obtained the correspondence of the presidential assistant Vladislav Surkov. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | en.crimerussia.com

St. Petersburg programmer Alexander Glazastikov, who was hiding under the mask of Shaltay-Boltay (Humpty Dumpty), hoping for a political asylum reached out to the former President of Estonia. He is the only member of Anonymous International who remains at large.

Fontanka has been chasing the last Shaltay-Boltay member for a week. One member of the mysterious hacker group, which has been leaking e-mails of businessmen and officials for three years was found in Estonia, but shied away from a direct talk.

After the news came that Anonymous International members Vladimir Anikeev, Konstantin Teplyakov, and Filinov were arrested, it was not difficult to single out their colleague Alexander Glazastikov. The 'scary hackers' themselves, as it turned out, were quite unrestrained on social networks and left striking marks on the Internet.

Five days ago, Alexander Glazastikov gave an evasive answer to the straight question sent by Fontanka via e-mail. Three days ago, he admitted to being one of the Anonymous International on condition of anonymity. Then, he agreed to an interview saying "Come to Estonia".

When, on the arranged day, a Fontanka reporter arrived to Tartu, Alexander dropped a bombshell: "I'm on my way to Tallinn: already twenty kilometers away from Tartu." He suggested: "I can wait at the gas station Valmaotsa. Drive up, let's go together." It was the offer, from which one cannot refuse. A taxi was found quickly.

When the meeting took place, the Shaltay-Boltay member, who was easily recognizable due to the photos from the web, surprised the journalist once again: he silently passed him the ignition keys from the SUV. After a question, he explained: "You will have to drive, I was drinking beer while waiting." There wasn't much of a choice, and the correspondent of Fontanka drove the hackers group member to Tallinn to meet with the crew of Dozhd TV-channel and Ksenia Sobchak. 180 kilometers and two hours of time was enough to have a decent conversation.

- Alexander, you are probably the only member of the Anonymous International who managed to remain at large. You're in Estonia, the Russian justice is far away, can I call you by your name and surname?

- Perhaps, you can. Anyway, tomorrow or the day after, I will officially reach out to the authorities for a political asylum. The FSB already knows my name.

- They know the surname. And who are you in the Anonymous International: Shaltay or Boltay?

- Shaltay, Boltay ... what a mess. Initially, when starting this project, Shaltay-Boltay was supposed to be a spokesman for the Anonymous International. Mainly, I was doing this job. Then, Anikeev started introducing himself to the reporters as Lewis and got everyone confused.

- How many people initiated the Anonymous International?

- Me, Anikeev. Teplyakov helped with some things, but purely technical aspects.

- Who is Filinov, whose arrest was reported in connection with Shaltay-Boltay?

- I don't know the man. He was not involved in the creation of the Anonymous International. I think this is Anikeev's acquaintance, who accidentally got under the press. I've heard his name for the first time, when the media wrote about his arrest.

- Have you known Anikeev and Teplyakov for a long time?

- For a long time... There was a resource called Damochka.ru. When basically no social networks existed, and VKontakte only began to emerge, everyone was on this website, it was one of the most fun projects. In the real world, meetings of the website users were held, some users just organized those parties – Dima Gryzlov, Nikolai Bondarik, and Anikeev. That's how we met. Much later, in mid-2013, the idea of Shaltay-Boltay appeared.

- How? Did you just decide that you would steal e-mails of bad people?

- Anikeev had sources of information, the information itself, important and interesting one. Anikeev decided to leave the information and analytical structure for which he had been working, and start his own project.

- Could this project be called a business?

- It depends It was assumed that the project will bring substantial financial result, but initially it was made partly out of ideological considerations.

- But Anikeev is not a hacker at all, judging by the stories of his former colleagues.

- True. If he needed to install any software on the computer, he would usually ask me to do it.

- But Teplyakov is a programmer.

- His role has been greatly exaggerated. He's just our mutual old friend. When we were getting significant numbers of files that had to be processed, we would ask Teplyakov to help, for a fee. We knew him and trusted him.

- And why did you join this project?

- Just then, I was beginning to get annoyed with the country, I decided to go to Thailand. When I started discussing this project with Anikeev, it seemed okay: you could engage in an interesting and promising business from home. What did I expect in financial terms? Definitely not the sale of arrays of information. I was rather thinking about advertising or administration fee. Lite-version.

- With a reference to the investigation, there was information that Shaltay-Boltay has a whole network of agents with special equipment, who, at places popular among local officials, steal information by creating fake Wi-Fi connections. Do you have a network?

- Complete nonsense. There were discussions about getting to know technical possibilities like this. As far as I know, and I know a lot, in fact, we didn't have it.

- Where did you get the information from, then?

- From specialized hacking sites, one can order hacking someone else's e-mail box for a few thousand rubles.

- It worked successfully. If you remember 2014 was the most fruitful year. Serious stories, serious figures, and no commerce. Strelkov, Prigozhin...

- Out of the three years that the project existed, 2014 was the most significant. I am proud of that year.

- But, from 2015, the Anonymous International has become almost a purely commercial project. How much money did you manage to earn?

- Only one or two million dollars.

- So, you are now a rich man?

- No. Most of the money was spent on operating expenses, so to speak. There were about fifty boxes in the work. Plus, there were variants in which a transaction was made not via bitcoins, but with the help of Anikeev's friends; these intermediaries could ask for two thirds of the whole amount.

- Was there anyone above you and Anikeev? For several years, people have been wondering who Shaltay-Boltay works for?

- Funny. Everyone is looking for conspiracy, but, in fact, it was a 'quick and dirty' project made by me and Anikeev. However, at some point, in the summer or in the spring of 2016, Anikeev said that some person from the FSB found us, he knew our names. Allegedly, military counterintelligence was looking for us, but the FSB found our meadow attractive and decided to take control of our petty pranks. They, supposedly, were uninterested in the commercial part of the project: the scale was much bigger, but they wanted to supervise the project and to have the veto right. Mikhailov's name was not voiced, in fact, no one's was. Nothing, actually, happened: no one used the veto right and no one leaked any information. If these mysterious people existed at all. And who turned whom in: they – Anikeev or Anikeev – them, or even third force got them all, I do not know.

- How quickly did you find out about Anikeev's arrest?

- The next morning. He sent me a selfie from Pulkovo Airport, wrote that he checked in and flies to Minsk. The next morning, it was reported that he was arrested and transported to Moscow. Given the subsequent events, it could be the game of the FSB. Then, he contacted me, convinced that he solved all the issues and now works under the control of the FSB, called in me to Russia, but I didn't believe him for some reason.

- Did Teplyakov believe?

- Teplyakov, in the summer of 2016, moved from Thailand to Kiev. He had no permanent earnings, he depended on Anikeev. When the game was on, and it was claimed that the project would continue, but he needs to come to Russia and work there under supervision, for safety reasons, as well, Teplyakov didn't have much of a choice. He went to Russia.

- Is there somewhere a chest with Shaltay-Boltay's information?

- Good question. I need to think how to respond. Well no, not really. What was sold and purchased by the clients was deleted. What was sold was fairly deleted and this information doesn't exist anymore. Perhaps, some of our customers are now concerned about this question, but what was declared, was implemented. Some operative material that we had been working on, I also deleted. Maybe a couple of screenshots were left in the trash bin, but nothing more.

- Alexander, you're going to submit a request for a political asylum. Aren't you afraid that Estonians will simply put you in a cell? In this country, they are very sensitive to computer security, and the specificity of computer crimes lies in the fact that, for committing them, one can be prosecuted in almost any country?

- My position is that I was not personally involved in the cracking of passwords and sending malicious links. To me all that information was already delivered in an open form. Yes, it was, probably, stolen...

- So were you ordering its thefts or not?

- No.

- Who did, then?

- All the information came from Anikeev. I published the received information, perhaps, by illegal means, but I have nothing to do with how it was obtained. Yesterday, I sent a letter to the former President of Estonia Toomas Hendrik Ilves. I think by our actions, especially in 2014, when we were working on the idea, I deserved asylum in Estonia. So far no response was received.

We drove to Tallinn. More and more texts came to Alexander's telephone from Dozhd TV journalists, who were preparing to shoot with Ksenia Sobchak. After leaving the car in the parking lot, we said goodbye. Alexander Glazastikov promised to inform when he receives a reply from the Estonian government.

It is to be recalled that Glazastikov's colleagues from the Anonymous International are awaiting trial in a predetention center. The law enforcement agencies arrested Vladimir Anikeev and his two probable accomplices: Konstantin Teplyakov and Alexander Filinov. The latter two were arrested as early as November 2016, and, on February 1, the judge of the Lefortovo District Court of Moscow extended their detention until April. The alleged leader of the Anonymous International, who was acting under the nickname Lewis, was arrested on January 28 after a short time spent in the company of police officers; he confessed.

All three are charged with the crimes stipulated under part 3 of Art. 272 of the Russian Criminal Code (Illegal access to legally-protected computer information, which caused a major damage or has been committed because of vested interest or committed by a group of persons by previous concert through his/her official position).

Initially, the media associated their criminal case with the investigation on the FSB staff and the manager of the Kaspersky Lab, who were accused of treason, but later, the lawyer of one of the defendants denied this information.

The Anonymous International published a lot of information from the correspondence of officials and businessmen between 2014 and 2016. Among the disclosed information was Dmitry Medvedev's hacked Twitter, and e-mail, Facebook, iPhone and iPad of owner of NewsMedia Holding Aram Gabrellyanov; e-mail and WhatsApp of TV host Dmitry Kiselev, official correspondence between the employees of "Prosecutor's Office" and the "Ministry of State Security" of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, and a lot of other, equally interesting information.

Before Anikeev's detention, Shaltay-Boltay also obtained the correspondence of the presidential assistant Vladislav Surkov.

[Feb 17, 2018] Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI Investigation

Taking oil price to 30th or 40th is a strategic goal of the USA in relation to Russia. Listen at 3:30.
Notable quotes:
"... Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years. ..."
"... You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do. ..."
"... They are the product of the US society as a whole. ..."
"... Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them". ..."
"... In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power? ..."
"... I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors. ..."
"... The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin). ..."
"... Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States. ..."
"... What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference ..."
"... and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | theduran.com

Gano1 , February 17, 2018 10:31 AM

The USA has lost all morality, they are so hypocritical it is risible.

Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 10:25 AM

What Russian expansionism??? Look at the US expansionism..........get a grip!

Ann Johns Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 2:51 PM

Another tiresome, butthurt yank/wank? Between the new One Belt, One Road Chinese initiative, the Russians taking control of ME oil production and the fact that america has NO answers to help it's declining empire, it would seem to the non-partisan observer that america is well and truly f***ed. You must be talking about their debt expansionism, $20 TRILLION and rising by the second.

Vera Gottlieb Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 2:29 PM

US expansionism...really? Where? 😜

Mario8282 Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 2:58 PM

Syria? Libya? Yemen? Africa, Afgh...

Vera Gottlieb Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 3:00 PM

And you left out Latin America...

Mario8282 Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 3:05 PM

This is why I left with the dots... The list would end up with America itself (an endless spree of false flags and deception schemes).

Patricia Dolan Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 6:11 PM

Thank you Mario......let's not forget Ukraine, Kosovo, Bosnia, the entirety of eastern Europe, the entirety of northern Africa, Rwanda, the Congo, Venezuela, Chili, Guatemala, Panama, Jeeeeeeeze etc......

Patricia Dolan Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 6:07 PM

get a grip......and turn your TV off!

Terry Ross Patricia Dolan , February 17, 2018 6:08 PM

'twas sarcasm Patricia.

Patricia Dolan Terry Ross , February 17, 2018 6:18 PM

I guess the WINKS need to be LARGER!!!! LOL

ThereisaGod , February 17, 2018 10:05 AM

Russia condemned and defined as the enemy of America with laughably little evidence (effing Facebook posts being about the extent of it) .... not a word about JEWISH MONEY controlling the entire political system in the USA. When Netanyahu gets 29 standing ovations from Congress should that not have triggered an FBI "Investigation"? Nah ... nothing happening there. It is breathtaking that THIS is the Alice-In-Wonderland world we inhabit.

Ton Jacobs, Human Guardians , February 17, 2018 10:02 AM

Appeasing interview with a shockingly cheap incompetent former CIA head Woolsey. If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years.

christianblood Ton Jacobs, Human Guardians , February 17, 2018 12:32 PM

(...If this man seriously represents the intellectual level of the CIA, then the USA will implode even faster than in ten years...)

You are exactly right. U$ politicians are uninformed, stupid, detached from reality, selfish and they think like schoolyard kids do.

Jesse Marioneaux christianblood , February 17, 2018 12:43 PM

They are the product of the US society as a whole.

christianblood Jesse Marioneaux , February 17, 2018 12:57 PM

They indeed are! U$A! U$A! U$A!

tom , February 17, 2018 11:14 AM

Craig Murray nailed this issue stone dead for all time a few years ago, when he wrote:"[neo]liberal interventionism, the theory that bombing brown people is good for them".

journey80 , February 17, 2018 12:37 PM

Yeah, that's hilarious. Join the murdering creep in a giggle, Laura, that's cute. Here's a global criminal who should have been hung years ago for crimes against humanity. No one in their right mind would treat this creep with anything but contempt and horror, let alone find him funny.

Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:17 PM

In the former The Ukraine, the Jewish Quisling oligarch dictator, Poroshenko, has been appointing foreigners to positions of power (SackOfShvilli is but one). He supported this by stating: "Ukrainians are too corrupt to rule themselves." When will we in America hear such a statement from our leaders to justify the appointment of Jews and paid Judaeophiles to all positions of power?

journey80 Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:34 PM

We don't need to hear it, we're living it.

Franz Kafka journey80 , February 17, 2018 3:33 PM

My profound and sincere condolences. You are getting the 'Democracy Treatment' by the West. I hope some of you survive to tell the tale and take revenge.

Franz Kafka , February 17, 2018 12:09 PM

Are those ears or bat-wings? WOW! Yet another Jewe, pretending not be be. I guess he would say that the USA murdered all the Indians and enslaved Africans 'for their own good' as well.
Talmudo-Satanism is the pernicious underlying ideology of the people who have taken over, not just the USA, but, lets face it, the entire West.

Vera Gottlieb , February 17, 2018 2:28 PM

What a bunch of ingrates we are...not appreciating all that the CIA is doing for us. We must thank them instead of complaining.

Trauma2000 , February 17, 2018 5:30 PM

Lets not forget that the U.$.A. meddled in Australia's election of the Whitlam Government. (And several governments there after as soon as they realised they could get away with it an nothing would happen to them). The United States are a bunch of sick puppies; really sick puppies the way they have treated Australia.

So much for being allies. With allies like the United States you don't need enemies (Unless the U.$. doctors them up for you to force you to pay them more money for weapons and protection).

And it makes me sick that so many 'naive' people around the world keep falling for the SH*T that comes out of their mouths.

When dealing with the United States there are a few rules to follow. (Apologies to the innocent Americans out there but 'they' allow their government to do some unspeakable horrors to the world.)

  • Rule One: If an American politician is speaking, then they are lying to you.
  • Rule Two: If an American Politician is quiet, they they want you to believe a lie.
  • Rule Three: If you have relations with the United States, you will be lied to.

And that goes for the entire planet no matter who the United States is speaking to.

End of story.

Shue Trauma2000 , February 17, 2018 5:51 PM

Worst part is the our Gov can't think ahead, if they keep antagonising China on behalf of the Seppo's China will eventually pull their mineral imports and our economy will crash overnight.

HappyCynic , February 17, 2018 4:31 PM

Yes, nobody doubts that the US interferes with elections in other countries - we're the good guys, so this is ok :)

I'm just waiting for Yevgeny Prigozhin to hold a press conference in Russia to claim that Hillary Clinton paid him to run the Internet Research Agency to besmirch her opponent- watch the fireworks :) It's all a hall of mirrors.

The Internet Research Agency couldn't have possibly been more ineffective, which points to it's main purpose being to besmirch Trump (more more likely it was just an unimportant hobby of Prigozhin).

John R Balch Jr , February 17, 2018 6:31 PM

Sure the United States has, they have been doing it since 1953 with the overthrow of Iran, to as recently as 2012 Russian Election, 2014 Ukraine Election, the UK referendum on 23 June 2016 on Brexit and currently trying to overthrow it this year. These are just a few and there is a very long list of other countries also. The United States in now in Russia and Hungry today meddling it their elections. Got to get the right people in office so they will cow-tow to the United States.

Graeme Pedersen , February 17, 2018 6:11 PM

I believe john Key was sent from the U$A (Merrill Lynch) to ruin our economy in New Zealand as well.

janbn , February 17, 2018 5:37 PM

What an admission! trump doesn't want more drilling for oil to Americans to use. It is for export and for foreign interference.

Aidi Deduction , February 17, 2018 4:51 PM

Frederick the Great concluded that to allow governments to be dominated by the majority would be disastrous: "A democracy, to survive, must be, like other governments a minority persuading a majority to let itself be led by a minority."

General Kreeg , February 17, 2018 4:13 PM

Russian Trolls are all of a sudden the Russian Gov't.

fredd , February 17, 2018 3:18 PM

and if the price of oil would go down to 30/40$ that would make a unhappy input and so would be the saudis and you fracking industry would go down the toilet and thy will drag the banks with them. What a moron. And US oil companies would like that alot too

Mario8282 , February 17, 2018 2:56 PM

...and the US bombed half of the world's countries for their own good too. US made Libya a slave market for humanity's good as well. Oboomer even got the Nobel Peace Prize for it.

K Walker , February 17, 2018 2:55 PM

I would be greatly relieved if the USA government merely tweeted instead of invading and indulging in regime change.

Kevin S , February 17, 2018 12:55 PM

Talk about the pinnacle of hypocrisy!

[Feb 17, 2018] The US people swallowed the hogwash about Kremlin disinformation trolls working to undermine the West's irrepressible belief in itself

Notable quotes:
"... . As usual, the most appropriate response amounts to contemptuous, refined amusement ..."
"... It's not as though we have a lack of ludicrous, ridiculous material. As the inventor of this site once described, how did the people in the late-era Soviet Union fight their declining regime? Jokes. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | thesaker.is

Nussiminen on October 18, 2017 , · at 3:20 pm UTC

Frankly, I don't really see too big a problem with people swallowing the hogwash about "Kremlin disinformation trolls" working to undermine the West's irrepressible belief in itself. As usual, the most appropriate response amounts to contemptuous, refined amusement:

"They seem to know indeed what they are talking about -- well worth their salary for doing honest work."

If you cannot change the Weltanschau of Ziomedia addicts, then at least you're fully entitled to have some fun at the slobs' expense.

Internal Exile USA on October 19, 2017 , · at 9:20 pm UTC
Absolutely, humor is one of the best weapons around. The more pompous a person is, the more they hate being dropped down to size. Pop goes the balloon of hot air.

Humor has probably woken more people up than any other method.

It's not as though we have a lack of ludicrous, ridiculous material. As the inventor of this site once described, how did the people in the late-era Soviet Union fight their declining regime? Jokes.

[Feb 17, 2018] Comment Set Free: the Mueller indictment

Notable quotes:
"... What this guy did (who is not "Putin's Chef", a term that uses the ever-favorite smear of putting something next to Putin to make people think there is guilt among both parties) is what every sleazy purveyor of fake profiles and fake likes does. If you have done any work in marketing or social platforms, you will have seen dozens of the same outfits. ..."
"... They're also happy to sell you ads that will target these fake people, pocketing the cash without achieving any results for the business owner buying the ads. Meanwhile, the US Cointelpro operation continues, masquerading as an actual investigatio ..."
"... Of course the New York Times and Washington Post have reacted to this like US Cavalry coming to the rescue in the last reel of a 1950's B-movie by demanding that Trump apologizes and accepts that their stories about Russian interference in the elections, were true and had nothing to do with 'fake news.' How convenient for them! After all this time, this is what Mueller can come up with, give me a break! ..."
"... Maybe they should sue Mueller for libel, go on the offensive? So Mueller's accusations are 'free', cause he knows the Russians can't really reply. It's a kind of smear. ..."
"... And what about conflating 'Russians' with 'Russia' all the time? A hacker or troll living in Russia doesn't represent 'Russia.' There's this ghastly wave of hysteria sweeping the United States and it's dangerous. ..."
"... With this indictment: Rod Rosenstein has come clean and delivered on solemn oath that the entire Russiagate farrago is baseless and evidence free. The only thing he has truly indicted is the obvious and continually developing disassociation of the American ruling class psyche from reality. ..."
"... "'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality." ..."
"... An empire of unreality that can no longer be connected to the experiential, discernible and true. Such men are the architects of the demise of the dominant culture of lies? ..."
"... "a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted." – Sol Wachtler ..."
"... Well, they (Cocaine Importing Authority) do have history ..."
"... I personally know almost all pro-Russian English-speakers that have an influence on English language alternative and social media. None of them are Russians. If they ever were, they emigrated decades ago. There is no one that can translate Russian talking points from Russian society and media into the English speaking world. ..."
"... When will we discover who in Britain gave Steele authority to send his Dossier to the Clinton campaign? He needed that approval because the information was gleaned when in post as the Head of the Russian Desk of MI6 in quite recent times, apart from the normal requirements of the Official Secrets Act. Given that MI6 are an Intelligence Agency it's fair to assume they knew the Dossier's destination and the purpose to which it was to be put. Wasn't that interfering in the US election? ..."
"... The absurdity is that America spends billions on doing exactly these sort of things. $5 billion on Ukraine before pulling off the coup, according to Nuland. But that's just a crumb of the total mis-information cake. It's what the CIA spends most of its time doing! ..."
"... Since 1992, the government has spent about $5.1 billion to support democracy-building programs in Ukraine, Thompson said, with money flowing mostly from the Department of State via U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the departments of Defense, Energy, Agriculture and others. The United States does this with hundreds of other countries. ..."
"... About $2.4 billion went to programs promoting peace and security, which could include military assistance, border security, human trafficking issues, international narcotics abatement and law enforcement interdiction, Thompson said. More money went to categories with the objectives of "governing justly and democratically" ($800 million), "investing in people" ($400 million), economic growth ($1.1 billion), and humanitarian assistance ($300 million). ..."
"... The descriptions are a bit vague, which could lead people to think the money was used for some clandestine purpose. ..."
"... But let's be clear, by "democracy building programs" they mean sending in NGOs to promote the "values" of austerity and debt, and they mean funding candidates for elections approved by the IMF because they have agreed to promote austerity and debt. They aren't promoting democracy, they are promoting the western political belief system. They are also acting to disenfranchise and discredit people who don't support this system. Just as Yeltsin in Russia, so Yarushenko, Yatseniuk & Poroshenko in Ukraine – men prepare to tank the standard of living for ordinary people and asset-strip the country. ..."
"... An indictment is simply an accusation. Since all 13 (what a magical number) of these people are in Russia, and there's no extradition agreement with Russia, they will never be able to get a trial to exonerate themselves. ..."
"... Meanwhile, Clinton was running a fraudulent charity and accepted 145 million dollars in "donations" from Russian Banks. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | off-guardian.org

David C. Lee (@worldblee) says February 18, 2018

Indeed, b was one this in 2017 as well.

What this guy did (who is not "Putin's Chef", a term that uses the ever-favorite smear of putting something next to Putin to make people think there is guilt among both parties) is what every sleazy purveyor of fake profiles and fake likes does. If you have done any work in marketing or social platforms, you will have seen dozens of the same outfits.

I've even seen them in operation, delivering tons of fake followers and such. The goal is straight up sleazy commerce, and it should be noted that ALL the social platforms, especially Facebook, not only tolerate this but turn a blind eye as it makes their platform appear to have more users than it actually does.

They're also happy to sell you ads that will target these fake people, pocketing the cash without achieving any results for the business owner buying the ads. Meanwhile, the US Cointelpro operation continues, masquerading as an actual investigation.

MichaelK says February 17, 2018
More dreadful stuff from the Guardian's conspiracy farm https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/feb/17/putins-chef-a-troll-farm-and-russias-plot-to-hijack-us-democracy

It's a really awful sign of the times we live in, when the Guardian, supposedly a beacon of truth and true liberal, left-of-centre values, is so eager to swallow stuff like this latest report from Mueller on face value alone without any examination of the wider internal US context; the people and forces Mueller represent.

MichaelK says February 17, 2018
Of course the New York Times and Washington Post have reacted to this like US Cavalry coming to the rescue in the last reel of a 1950's B-movie by demanding that Trump apologizes and accepts that their stories about Russian interference in the elections, were true and had nothing to do with 'fake news.' How convenient for them! After all this time, this is what Mueller can come up with, give me a break!

It's all so pathetic. There's no way these Russians will receive a fair trial in the US, even if they decided to turn up for a hearing. Maybe they should sue Mueller for libel, go on the offensive? So Mueller's accusations are 'free', cause he knows the Russians can't really reply. It's a kind of smear.

And what about conflating 'Russians' with 'Russia' all the time? A hacker or troll living in Russia doesn't represent 'Russia.' There's this ghastly wave of hysteria sweeping the United States and it's dangerous. What's appalling is how the left/liberal press, typified by the ghastly Guardian, goes along with it all, without a murmur of protest, criticism or real searching analysis.

intergenerationaltrauma says February 17, 2018
The title and description of the linked article is right from the Time Magazine web site:

(( Yanks to the Rescue: the Secret Story of How American Advisors Helped Yeltsin Win ))

article description from Time's site –

"THE SECRET STORY OF HOW FOUR U.S. ADVISERS USED POLLS, FOCUS GROUPS, NEGATIVE ADS AND ALL THE OTHER TECHNIQUES OF AMERICAN CAMPAIGNING TO HELP BORIS YELTSIN WIN"

https://ccisf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/201612201405.pdf

This is how you really "rig an election" to get "your puppet" into power in a foreign nation.

Binra (@onemindinmany) says February 17, 2018
What we do 'in secret' we must expect to be secretly arraigned against us, and the knowledge that we do such thinks enforces the conviction the 'Other' is a deceiver, whatever they say or do. Because such is our own false witness.
Big B says February 17, 2018
With this indictment: Rod Rosenstein has come clean and delivered on solemn oath that the entire Russiagate farrago is baseless and evidence free. The only thing he has truly indicted is the obvious and continually developing disassociation of the American ruling class psyche from reality.

"'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

An empire of unreality that can no longer be connected to the experiential, discernible and true. Such men are the architects of the demise of the dominant culture of lies?

TJ says February 17, 2018
"a grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted." – Sol Wachtler

Grand Jury indicts Yevgeny V. Prigozhin of Concord Catering, that among other things does school meals such as ham sandwiches.

The USA is a farce, wrapped in a satire, inside a parody.

Kaiama says February 17, 2018
https://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/

The best article on the "trolls" is here.

Mikalina says February 17, 2018
Well, they (Cocaine Importing Authority) do have history ..
MLS says February 18, 2018
Well the fact you find it per se impossible the CIA would run a fake "Russian troll" outfit says more about your utter naivety than anything else. I'm not completely convinced that is what is going on in Savushkina Street. I think MoA is closer in pointing out it's just a slightly dodgy internet marketing outfit who are paid to say nice or nasty things about a whole range of things, mostly non-political.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/mueller-indictement-the-russian-influence-is-a-commercial-marketing-scheme.html#more

mathiasalexander says February 17, 2018
Have you noticed how nearly everybody in charge of the Amerikan state is past retirement age?
vexarb says February 17, 2018
@Matthias. Same fate for Britain in brilliant 1985 film Brazil. "Can you help me totter to the loo, young man?"
rtj1211 says February 17, 2018
Well we had Goldman Sachs CEO splashed all over the BBC website demanding UK remain in EU. After the Referendum. We had The Black Dude threatening to send us to the back of the queue if we were not subservient little vassals voting Remain. That was Headline News too. None of us asked the Black Dude to interfere in Our Referendum, but he did it anyway, because America does what it wants and everyone else gets indicted if they do the same thing back.

Just ask yourselves this: if you had a mad dog fascist HillaryBilly campaigning for US President saying: ' NUKE (insert your nation's name HERE)!', you would just sit by and say, 'Oh, none of my business'.

Basic lesson to subnormal, cretinous Yanks: as soon as your election campaigns on foreign wars, foreign blockades, foreign threats to nation state sovereignty, it is no longer just your business. Any politician eho says otherwise, in fact any Yank who says otherwise, has lost all right to human rights. Why? Because you have said that the right to safety within a doctrine of self-determination for the rest of the world does not exist without kissing America's ass .

Stop treating Americans as anything other than violent, psychopathic cretins who should be incarcerated for the safety of the world.

It is pointless treating them as human beings when they never behave like human beings ..

Binra (@onemindinmany) says February 17, 2018
I treat others as I would in truth be treated, not as a result of any set of rules of 'deservability' made in my mind or acquired from any other, but because such is a core sanity of being that does not give worthship to hate and thereby become the think it hates.
Oh I can feel hateful feelings – but these are MINE. and as mine they are in my power to release, rather than be defined and driven by.
So I appreciate your points, but not your personal result.

The elites operate on this sort of thinking: "It is pointless treating them as human beings when they never behave like human beings ."
WHO defines what is a human being and how they 'should' behave? A set of rules?

I agree that cause and consequence belong together – for only in recognising and accepting consequence can we reconnect with true cause – and so cause a different life than an attempt to deny and displace consequence to 'others' deemed unlike our self.

Power class operates (manipulates) its population while people use others (manipulate) to evade their own responsibilities ie they give power away in exchange for what they get, or believe they have got rid of. For example, they have got rid of guilt by assigning blame to others who failed to act as their 'rules' required. Except the results of guilt are still active in their own minds and bodies and not in those who 'fail us'.

Manipulation in a pure sense would be for example holding a tool correctly so as to attain the desired result, but in the sense of manipulative deceit, it holds the consciousness in distortion so as to achieve a wished for result.

Manipulative thinking – not Americans – runs the global agenda – and whatever agencies serve purpose, including the USA. It does so while conferring some sense of power and protection, in self specialness.

If you are too angry to read and consider, that's ok. But to assign it to a blanket blaming of Americans as unworthy of their humanity is playing the 'god' of vengeance. Perhaps this 'god' is the nature of the Beast.

Playing 'god' is the attempt to make reality be as your own Word defines. The lack of support, encountered rejection and sense of betrayal that follows is the 'wound' of a terror that generates the 'god' of rage as power and protection.

With regard to 'headline news', what ISN'T a psyop?

Mikalina says February 17, 2018
Whilst I fully appreciate the wisdom in removing the log from your own eye before you touch the splinter in someone else's eye, there comes a time when you have to take the f***er out.
writerroddis says February 17, 2018
What, all Americans? The problem, surely, is America's ruling class (definition available on request).
Petri Krohn says February 17, 2018
THE "INTERNET RESEARCH AGENCY" IS A HOAX

Mueller's indictment rests on the false claim that the suspended 'Russia-connected' Twitter and Facebook accounts were controlled by a non-existent company and 13 Russian individuals in Saint Petersburg. The only thing that connects the anonymous U.S. accounts to Russia or the hoax " Internet Research Agency " is that they may have used some Russian VPN service to hide their identities from NSA and FBI spies.

Twitter and Facebook self suspended the accounts based on some connection to Russia, including use of Russian IP addresses or Cyrillic letters in administrator names. They had no way of knowing if all accounts were controlled from a single "troll factory" or if that troll factory was operated by a company named "Internet Research Agency". (If they had such information, they would have said so.)

The whole thing is hoax. It is impossible for Russians to impersonate American internet personalities, when they are unable to speak up in English under their own names. Russia does not have the people and skills needed to maintain English language accounts that would influence and resonate among the American audience and electorate – yet alone do this at a minimum wage in a "troll factory" sweatshop.

I personally know almost all pro-Russian English-speakers that have an influence on English language alternative and social media. None of them are Russians. If they ever were, they emigrated decades ago. There is no one that can translate Russian talking points from Russian society and media into the English speaking world.

DiD says February 17, 2018
The amerikans will be relying on the Russians never getting their day in an open court. Can't have a repetition of the George Galloway business see here now can we?

The 'grand' jury process is even more corrupt deceitful and one sided than so called senate inquiries. At least with shit hurled from the hill, a bloke does eventually get the opportunity to speak against the allegations – albeit in a controlled environment where the accuser chairs the meeting, but a Grand Jury, which is similarly controlled by the prosecutor, provides no room for a defense argument.

The carefully hand selected 'jurors' unlike amerika's senators, most of whom are graduates of amerika's prestigious law schools, lack any legal training.

The law they are charged with investigating breaches of, is complex, riven with contradictory precedents and completely outside any retired contractor's area of expertise. So they rely on the prosecutor to tell em what's what.

amerikans are forthright in their condemnation of everyone else's legal system but the amerikan one has to be the most corrupt power serving travesty known to man.

Ask J. Assange who lives under the shadow of a so-called 'sealed indictment' which he's not even meant to know exists, much less what is contained in it and what deceits have been told by alleged 'co-conspirators' aka jailhouse snitches.

Assange will find out should he ever be kidnapped and abducted to amerika and held in solitary isolation under the 1917 espionage act – otherwise like many others including hundreds who have never even set foot in that arsehole of the universe, the us, also stitched up by grand jury, he must live in ignorance of the accusations and with no right of reply.

summitflyer says February 17, 2018
Thank you for the link to George Galloway's interrogation. He sure told them in no uncertain terms. The US justice system seems to be corrupt beyond redemption. So glad I don't live there and feel sorry for the ones that do to be honest.
Paul says February 17, 2018
When will we discover who in Britain gave Steele authority to send his Dossier to the Clinton campaign? He needed that approval because the information was gleaned when in post as the Head of the Russian Desk of MI6 in quite recent times, apart from the normal requirements of the Official Secrets Act. Given that MI6 are an Intelligence Agency it's fair to assume they knew the Dossier's destination and the purpose to which it was to be put. Wasn't that interfering in the US election?
Big B says February 17, 2018
Former intel analyst and regular UK Column guest, Alex Thomson, named Sir Richard Dearlove (he of dodgy dossier No1, seems to have had a hand in dodgy dossier N02?) However, I can't find the exact day or time for reference.
Paul says February 17, 2018
The absurdity is that America spends billions on doing exactly these sort of things. $5 billion on Ukraine before pulling off the coup, according to Nuland. But that's just a crumb of the total mis-information cake. It's what the CIA spends most of its time doing!
Matt says February 17, 2018
That $5 billion figure has been debunked.

Politifact directly asked the State Department and looked at public information released by the U.S. government since 2009 to sample what the money was spent on:

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2014/mar/19/facebook-posts/united-states-spent-5-billion-ukraine-anti-governm/

Since 1992, the government has spent about $5.1 billion to support democracy-building programs in Ukraine, Thompson said, with money flowing mostly from the Department of State via U.S. Agency for International Development, as well as the departments of Defense, Energy, Agriculture and others. The United States does this with hundreds of other countries.

About $2.4 billion went to programs promoting peace and security, which could include military assistance, border security, human trafficking issues, international narcotics abatement and law enforcement interdiction, Thompson said. More money went to categories with the objectives of "governing justly and democratically" ($800 million), "investing in people" ($400 million), economic growth ($1.1 billion), and humanitarian assistance ($300 million).

The descriptions are a bit vague, which could lead people to think the money was used for some clandestine purpose.

But even if it that were so, the money in question was spent over more than 20 years. Yanukovych was elected in 2010. So any connection between the protests and the $5 billion is inaccurate.

The State Department created ForeignAssistance.gov to help taxpayers, journalists and others find out where the money is going, but the data is limited in the number of years available and not reported by all agencies.

From that website, we calculated the United States spent $456.4 million in Ukraine since 2009. Again, that's an incomplete picture based on incomplete data reporting.

Some examples? The United States spent about $20 million on Peace Corps programs in Ukraine over the past four years. It spent about $40 million through U.S. AID on health programs in the countries since 2010 -- fighting HIV/AIDs, malaria and providing for maternal and child health. The United States spent an additional $80 million or so working on projects related to weapons of mass destruction , according to ForeignAssistance.gov.

MLS says February 18, 2018

Since 1992, the government has spent about $5.1 billion to support democracy-building programs in Ukraine .

But let's be clear, by "democracy building programs" they mean sending in NGOs to promote the "values" of austerity and debt, and they mean funding candidates for elections approved by the IMF because they have agreed to promote austerity and debt. They aren't promoting democracy, they are promoting the western political belief system. They are also acting to disenfranchise and discredit people who don't support this system. Just as Yeltsin in Russia, so Yarushenko, Yatseniuk & Poroshenko in Ukraine – men prepare to tank the standard of living for ordinary people and asset-strip the country.

Whether that $5 billion was spent over ten years or twenty the result has been the same.

The United States spent about $20 million on Peace Corps programs in Ukraine over the past four years. It spent about $40 million through U.S. AID on health programs in the countries since 2010 -- fighting HIV/AIDs, malaria and providing for maternal and child health. The United States spent an additional $80 million or so working on projects related to weapons of mass destruction, according to ForeignAssistance.gov.

Have you noticed how whatever money is allegedly spent on this worthy projects the countries receiving never seem to improve? They all become debt-slaves, they all end up exporting cheap goods to western countries and letting the IMF tell them how to run things.

Richard Wicks says February 17, 2018
An indictment is simply an accusation. Since all 13 (what a magical number) of these people are in Russia, and there's no extradition agreement with Russia, they will never be able to get a trial to exonerate themselves.

Meanwhile, Clinton was running a fraudulent charity and accepted 145 million dollars in "donations" from Russian Banks..

[Feb 17, 2018] Koroviev,Behemoth Woland LLP

Feb 17, 2018 | disqus.com

February 16, 2018 9:52 PM

Hide

[Feb 17, 2018] Mueller indicts some Russians; clears Trump campaign of collusion (detailed analysis of latest indictment) by Alexander Mercouris

Notable quotes:
"... There is no possibility that any of the Russians named in the indictment will ever be extradited to the US to stand trial there. Special Counsel Mueller cannot therefore obtain convictions against these people, which begs the question of why an indictment was issued at all. ..."
"... The short answer is that the indictment is intended to give credence to the claim of 'Russian meddling' in the US election, which has been made both privately and publicly ever since campaigning in the US began in 2015. ..."
"... Presumably, by giving that claim credence, more reasons can now be offered for keeping Special Counsel Mueller in his job. ..."
"... Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf. ..."
"... I would add that the indictment shows that US intelligence has successfully hacked the Internet Research Agency, LCC, a fact which by the way suggests that its internal security systems are very weak. The result is that US intelligence is very well informed about its structure, funding, personnel and activities. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | theduran.com

Indictment describes botched and amateur attempt to use social media, but no one in the Trump Campaign was involved

A recurring pattern of the Russiagate investigation is that whenever pressure increases on the FBI and on Special Counsel Mueller an indictment appears.

This happened in October when following the FBI's admission that the Trump Dossier – the keystone in the "evidence" of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia – could not be verified and the Wall Street Journal called for Special Counsel Mueller to resign, indictments against Paul Manafort, Rick Gates and George Papadopoulos appeared.

It happened again in December when growing demands from Congress – from Senator Lindsey Graham in particular – for another Special Counsel to be appointed were followed by the indictment of Michael Flynn.

It has now happened again.

Hot on the heels of the publication of the GOP memorandum, which catalogued a succession of breaches of due process by the Justice Department and the FBI in seeking surveillance warrants against Carter Page, we have a new indictment, this time against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities.

In every case the indictment is received with rapture by the Russiagate conspiracy theorists.

In every case the indictment appears to be intended to give the impression that progress in the Russiagate investigation is being made, presumably so as to justify keeping Special Counsel Mueller in his job.

In every case it turns out that the indictment is a damp squib, taking the whole Russiagate conspiracy theory no further forward.

The latest indictment against 13 Russian citizens and three Russian entities is a case in point.

The first thing to say about this indictment is that it is entirely declamatory.

There is no possibility that any of the Russians named in the indictment will ever be extradited to the US to stand trial there. Special Counsel Mueller cannot therefore obtain convictions against these people, which begs the question of why an indictment was issued at all.

The short answer is that the indictment is intended to give credence to the claim of 'Russian meddling' in the US election, which has been made both privately and publicly ever since campaigning in the US began in 2015.

Presumably, by giving that claim credence, more reasons can now be offered for keeping Special Counsel Mueller in his job.

The second thing to say about the indictment is that as even Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has admitted , it makes no claim that any US citizen or any member of the Trump campaign in any way colluded with Russia or with any of the persons named in the indictment either before or after the election.

Rosenstein was very clear about this in the press conference he held directly following the publication of the indictment

Now, there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election ..

QUESTION: On page 4 of the indictment, paragraph 6, it specifically talks about the Trump campaign, saying that defendants communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign.

My question is, later in the indictment, campaign officials are referenced, not by their name; by "campaign official 1" or "2" or "3." Were campaign officials cooperative, or were they duped? What is their relationship with this?

ROSENSTEIN: Again, there's no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge. And the nature of the scheme was the defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear that they were ordinary American political activists, even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network here in the United States so, if anybody traced it back to that first jump, they appeared to be Americans.

President Trump is treating this admission as further confirmation that there was no collusion between his campaign and Russia, and he is right.

Russia started their anti-US campaign in 2014, long before I announced that I would run for President. The results of the election were not impacted. The Trump campaign did nothing wrong – no collusion!

-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2018

The third thing to say about the indictment – and a point which has been almost universally overlooked in all the feverish commentary about it – is that it makes no claim that the Russian government was in any way involved in any of the activities of the persons indicted.

Nowhere in the indictment is the Russian government or any official of the Russian government or any agency of the Russian government mentioned at all. Nor at any point in the indictment is it suggested that any of the persons indicted were employed by the Russian government or were acting under its instructions or on its behalf.

Again Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's press conference is most revealing about this, with him speaking of the persons named in the indictment as if they were private persons

The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 presidential election.

The defendants allegedly conducted what they called information warfare against the United States, with the stated goal of spreading distrust towards the candidates and the political system in general.

According to the allegations in the indictment, 12 of the individual defendants worked, at various times, for a company called Internet Research Agency, LLC, a Russian company based in St. Petersburg.

The other individual defendant, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, funded the conspiracy through companies known as Concord Management and Consulting, LLC; Concord Catering; and many affiliates and subsidiaries. The conspiracy was part of a larger operation called Project Lakhta. Project Lakhta included multiple components, some involving domestic audiences within the Russian Federation, and others targeting foreign audiences in multiple countries.

Internet Research Agency allegedly operated through Russian shell companies. It employed hundreds of people in its online operations, ranging from creators of fictitious personas, to technical and administrative support personnel, with an annual budget of millions of dollars.

Internet Research Agency was a structured organization headed by a management group and arranged into departments, including graphics, search engine optimization, information technology and finance departments.

In 2014, the company established a translator project focused on the United States. In July of 2016, more than 80 employees were assigned to the translator project. Two of the defendants allegedly traveled to the United States in 2014 to collect intelligence for their American influence operations.

Note that there is nothing here that ties any of the individuals or entities named by Rosenstein to the Russian government.

The arch conspirator is said to be a Russian businessman called Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is alleged to have masterminded and funded the whole project.

Prigozhin has in fact long been identified in Russia as the owner of the notorious Internet Research Agency, LLC, the supposed Russian "troll farm" operating out of a nondescript building in St. Petersburg (shown in caption photograph).

It has moreover often been suggested in Russia that Internet Research Agency, LLC, is Prigozhin's own personal project.

Certainly no public information linking the Internet Research Agency, LLC, to the Russian government or to any Russian state institution has ever come to light.

Perhaps Rosenstein and Mueller have information that Prigozhin was indeed acting at the behest and on behalf of the Russian government. Perhaps they may have some reason for not disclosing the fact in their indictment.

However, for what it's worth, the indictment lends support to the theory that the Internet Research Agency, LLC, is indeed Prigozhin's own personal project, and that the Russian government is not involved in it.

I would add that the indictment shows that US intelligence has successfully hacked the Internet Research Agency, LCC, a fact which by the way suggests that its internal security systems are very weak. The result is that US intelligence is very well informed about its structure, funding, personnel and activities.

That suggests that if there really was some connection between the Internet Research Agency, LLC, and the Russian government the US authorities would be well informed about it.

The fact that neither the indictment nor Rosenstein in his press conference had anything to say about such a connection rather suggests that no evidence for a connection has been discovered, probably because it does not exist.

I would add – though this will be fiercely denied by some people – that it would be a grave mistake to think that it is impossible for an agency like the Internet Research Agency, LLC, to be set up in Russia on someone's private initiative. On the contrary, those genuinely familiar with the country know that such things go on there all the time.

The fourth thing to say about the indictment is that it centres exclusively on the social media activities about which so much has been said in the last few months as the evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia has failed to appear.

I have said very little about this aspect of the Russiagate affair up to now because I have felt that this aspect of the affair was not in any way important.

This is because the social media activities of which the Internet Research Agency, LLC, and its employees have been accused of have looked both astonishingly incoherent (witness that the indictment says that they were promoting both pro- and anti-Trump rallies on the same day) and quantitatively insignificant, making their impact on the election inconsequential.

The indictment gives no reason to change that view.

The highest number of followers of any of the bogus social media accounts that were set up is alleged by the indictment to have been in the hundreds of thousands, whereas social media activity on any given day runs into the tens of millions.

The social media advertisements mentioned in the indictment appear to have been par for the course during the election, and to have attracted no special interest.

The indictment fails to give numbers for any of the rallies which the persons who have been indicted allegedly tried to organise via social media; that suggests that the number of persons who attended these rallies was insignificant.

The whole project seems to have cost around $1.2 million a month, spent it appears mostly on salaries in Russia, a trivial amount compared to the $2.4 billion spent in the 2016 US Presidential election as a whole, of which $768 million was spent by Hillary Clinton's campaign, and $398 million by Donald Trump's.

That even some of those involved were not taking the project wholly seriously is shown by this frivolous episode solemnly recorded in paragraphs 12 (a) and (b) of the indictment

a.PRIGOZHIN approved and supported the ORGANIZATION's operations, and Defendants and their co-conspirators were aware of PRIGOZHIN's role.

b.For example, on or about May 29, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators, through an ORGANIZATION-controlled social media account, arranged for a real U.S. person to stand in front of the White House in the District of Columbia under false pretenses and hold a sign that read "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss." Defendants and their co-conspirators informed the real U.S. person that the sign was for someone who "is a leader here and our boss our funder." PRIGOZHIN's Russian passport identifies his date of birth as June 1, 1961.

This silly stunt provides more reason for thinking Prigozhin was the author of the whole project.

I do not wish to trivialise what happened.

Assuming that the claims made in the indictment are true – as I believe they are – then multiple serious crimes were committed.

These included cruel deceptions of innocent people, as well as cases of identity theft. The latter especially is a very serious crime, the impact or seriousness of which should not be minimised.

However I cannot believe that any of this activity – which looks like a botched and amateur attempt by Prigozhin to copy some of the highly professional 'colour revolution' activities carried out around the world by various US and Western NGOs – had any conceivable bearing on the outcome of the US election.

No less a person than Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has moreover said as much

There is no allegation in the indictment that the charged conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election

QUESTION: Jack, is there concern that this -- the (ph) indictment undermines the outcome of the election?

ROSENSTEIN: Well, haven't I (ph) identified for you the allegations in the indictment? There's no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election.

In summary, the latest indictment to have come from Special Counsel Mueller's team, far from causing problems for President Trump, actually helps him.

In the one part of the Russiagate conspiracy theory in which some evidence of Russian activity exists – the part relating to social media – it turns out that President Trump's campaign was not involved, and those members of his campaign who got drawn into the activities of Prigozhin and his people were completely innocent dupes.

As for the activity itself, the indictment shows that it was carried out on far too small a scale and in far too amateur and disorganised a way for it to have had any impact on the election, and the US authorities do not claim that it did.

It is also my personal view that what we are looking at is a private project cooked up by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who appears to fancy himself a sort of Russian anti-Soros.

If I am right about that then it is clear that Prigozhin has neither the high level backing nor the skill to play that role successfully, and his clumsy attempts to do so have instead simply caused Russia embarrassment and trouble.

I accept that the latter view will be disputed by many – though the evidence in my opinion supports it – but even if I am wrong about that, it does not detract from the fundamental fact that no evidence of collusion between anyone in the Trump campaign and Russia appears in the latest indictment, and that the activities catalogued in the indictment can have had no effect on the outcome of the election, and the US authorities do not say that they did.

[Feb 17, 2018] Russia has paid for a few Facebook trolls. Boo hoo. Better that than the typical US method of kidnapping and torturing opposition leaders we don t like.

Feb 17, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Expat Sat, 02/17/2018 - 18:28 Permalink

How is this "news"? The US has been meddling in foreign elections for hundreds of years. When we can't change the results, we change the leader. We have assassinated foreign leaders. We have organized revolutions. We have carried out false flag "terrorist" attacks to destabilize countries.

Russia has paid for a few Facebook trolls. Boo hoo. Better that than the typical US method of kidnapping and torturing opposition leaders we don't like. Fuck America and it's brutish hypocrisy.

Son of Captain Nemo Sat, 02/17/2018 - 17:59 Permalink

Woolsey is one of many profiles in the "machine" that turns out the worst socio/psychopaths called Langley!... Much like the Department of Defense they train them to believe they are the most highly intelligent and capable in espionage even when they "lose" and lose "badly"!

They look at themselves as superior beings in every way that deserve and expect no restraint. And are repeatedly rewarded with pay and responsibility even when failure on missions includes the worst "blowback"!

If there ever was a government agency alongside the DOD that deserves the honorary title of total betrayal to their motto " And You Shall Know The Truth And It Shall Set You Free "... that has economically and politically SINGLE HANDEDLY done the opposite of EVERYTHING DEMOCRACY STANDS FOR in it's TOTAL DESTRUCTION -- this agency is the personification without equal and "without question"!

[Feb 17, 2018] In the Mueller indictment it also notes (page 23) that "Trump is Not my President" NYC, Novermber 12 2016, was a Russian idea. So by Mueller logic the Resistance is a Russian idea. How many members of congress should get expelled over being Putin's puppets?

Notable quotes:
"... Is this all he has to show for millions of dollars and how many damned months of investigation? How about all the NGOs that get foreign donations? When the hell are they going to get investigated for "defrauding" the United States? Better not ask, that would violate the narrative . God help us. ..."
"... And then there was a pink-pussy D.C. riot and the DisruptJ20 protest group riot against Trump. Have Mueller and Rosenstein had a sudden onset of dementia and forgotten the mass protests? ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Fred ,

Publius,

In the Mueller indictment it also notes (page 23) that "Trump is Not my President" NYC, November 12 2016, was a Russian idea. So by Mueller logic the Resistance is a Russian idea. How many members of congress should get expelled over being Putin's puppets?

Is this all he has to show for millions of dollars and how many damned months of investigation? How about all the NGOs that get foreign donations? When the hell are they going to get investigated for "defrauding" the United States? Better not ask, that would violate the narrative . God help us.

Anna , 16 February 2018 at 03:14 PM
Russian meddling -- Finally some "evidence" for the gullible: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-16/special-counsel-robert-mueller-indicts-13-russians-hacking-during-us-election

"Defendant ORGANIZATION had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton."

-- Really? Somehow the righteous Mueller and Rosenstein have missed very important Intel:

Comment section: "Sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016, organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS, a Russian-linked group [?!!] that sought to capitalize on racial tensions between black and white Americans. The event was shared with 61,000 users. As many as 5,000 to 10,000 protesters actually convened at Manhattan's Union Square. They then marched to Trump Tower, according to media reports at the time. ... The group's protest was the fourth [4th!] consecutive anti-Trump rally in New York following election night, and one of many across the country." http://thehill.com/policy/technology/358025-thousands-attended-protest-organized-by-russians-on-facebook

-- And then there was a pink-pussy D.C. riot and the DisruptJ20 protest group riot against Trump. Have Mueller and Rosenstein had a sudden onset of dementia and forgotten the mass protests? Who was financing and organizing the logistics for the anti-Trump protests? Was there any investigation of the organizers of the protests against the elected POTUS? http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/what-i-saw-at-the-anti-trump-riot-in-dc/article/2612548
http://www.businessinsider.com/pussy-hats-womens-march-washington-trump-inauguration-2017-2

BillWade , 16 February 2018 at 03:14 PM
It sounds like the indictment makes 13 Russian trolls into felons. How many trolls do we have? Where do they work, will other governments decide they are felons as well? This isn't a "nothingburger", it's a "veginothingburger". Hasn't President Trump now been exonerated as well, "unwittings" versus "colluders"?
Keith Harbaugh , 16 February 2018 at 03:52 PM
Okay, let me try again. I tried to post what appears below the line to PT's post http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2018/02/pieces-of-the-coup-puzzle-fall-into-place-by-publius-tacitus.html but it was not accepted.

Given PT's reference to RFE/VoA in the post above, let me repeat the question:

------------------------

I have read numerous accounts of how the U.S. has attempted to influence political developments in:

  • Western Europe
  • the old Soviet Union, and its successor Russia
  • various other parts of the world.
  • Sometimes through kinetic means (Afg., Iraq, Libya, Syria, et al.)
  • but also through what seems to me like propaganda:
    Voice of America ,
    Radio Free Europe .

Back during the Cold War we were told that the USSR would try to block or jam VoA/RFE broadcasts from reaching their citizens.

So, my very sincere question is: Just how did U.S. efforts to influence the population of the USSR via the broadcasts of VoA/RFE differ from the alleged efforts of Russia to support what the media calls far-right parties and policies in the U.S. and Europe?

A Pols , 16 February 2018 at 03:52 PM
So these 13 Russians are accused of trolling and planting rumors?

Since the same thing is being done by Americans and, yes, Israelis, it seems ludicrous to suggest this is really "meddling" in the election. More like "feeding red meat to grey dogs" in the sense of stoking the fires of internecine culture wars already ongoing in this country.

If we actually end up arresting any of these individuals there will be tit for tat since there are still American financed NGOs operating in Russia whose personnel can be easily arrested on similar charges of promoting chaos and discord. Maybe the Germans can rent us that famous Berlin Bridge where "spies" were exchanged in various cold war movies.

Richardstevenhack , 16 February 2018 at 04:24 PM
See my comment in TTG's thread about who these "Internet Research Agency" people actually are. Scott Humor over at The Saker dug deep into these people and determined that they are actually anti-Russian Russians who were allegedly proven in court to be CIA spies!

I link to Scott's piece in the TTG thread. Hell, might as well link it here, too:

A Brief History of the "Kremlin Trolls" https://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/

This is a clever move on Mueller's part -- indict a bunch of Russians who (some) already have been arrested by the Russians and therefore are in no position to defend themselves against a US indictment.

I suppose Brennan doesn't care that a bunch of Russians recruited as CIA assets get dumped on their own resources. Good luck recruiting any more Russians to help you!

It's a measure of Mueller's desperation, nothing more.

Keith Harbaugh , 16 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
PT, if I understand you correctly you think the 2017 IC "assessment" that Russia meddled does not really reflect an IC consensus. If that is your view, how do you reconcile it with these statements:

https://youtu.be/6AHaOwU0_ZY?t=45m50s

(By the way, I am not hostile to you or your view, but simply interested in the truth.)

Valissa , 16 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
"Russians Did Not Alter The Outcome Of The Elections": Highlights From Rosenstein's Press Conference https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-16/russians-did-not-alter-outcome-elections-highlights-rosensteins-press-conference

To summarize: in 2014, 13 Russians launched a campaign to interfere with the US political system by "disparaging" candidates. This continued until ultimately Trump was elected, meanwhile, "there is no allegation in this indictment that any American was a knowing participant in this illegal activity. There is no allegation in the indictment that the [Russians'] conduct altered the outcome of the 2016 election."

----------------

How nice and simple and tidy. '13 Russians'... has nice ring to it... will make a great propaganda movie.

Seriously though, will this face saving result in any way encourage the Dems to pick a new strategy for "success" the Republicans? Or will they simply triple down on dumb?

BillWade , 16 February 2018 at 05:46 PM
Aren't the economic sanctions imposed upon Russia due to Russian meddling in our elections? Might it not be prudent for Putin to round the 13 yokels up and put them on the next flight to NY (with lots of publicity)?
iowa steve , 16 February 2018 at 05:47 PM
During the campaign any voter using social media could come across literally hundreds of posts effectively proclaiming "Hillary is trash" and "Trump is trash".

Or for that matter the voters could see much the same by reading the campaign literature in their mailboxes, or listening to speeches on television.

Yet, somehow, a few Russian trolls posting online claims that were indistinguishable from most of the "normal" election rhetoric is a threat to our democracy.

Imho, a far bigger threat to our elections is the massive amounts of money involved, and the funding of candidates by oligarchs. But the msm seems confortable with that.

And it goes without saying that one of the most immediate threats to our democracy generated by Russiagate are the ongoing attempts to silence alternative dissent to the status-quo and label it as coming from Russianbots.

bluetonga , 16 February 2018 at 07:17 PM
"anyone who was disparaging Clinton, may have "unwittingly" been a collaborator of the 13 Russian "specialists" who cost Hillary the election"

Sounds even more desperate than simply dumb to me. Comey and his kins seem so pressed by (the lack of) facts and the overall incoherence of their ludicrous tale that they finally see no other choice than resorting to the ultimate weapon in store : direct scolding and shaming of ordinary citizen bold enough to object HRC's wrongdoings, past, present and future.

I this vein, I also read in earlier comment threads speculations regarding a new, very cunning objective of the putative Russian attackers : getting willfully spotted in order to spread chaos within the US politics and doubt within the heart of citizen. Frankly this sounds a wee bit far-fetched, like machiavelous 2.3 with Putin and the Kremlin gang upgrading to 4-D chess politics. Wouldn't it have been bold enough for them to bet on the universally predicted loser Trump? What sense does it make to interfere ostenteously when precisely their vowed nemesis is bound to win? How would that have tarnished her victory if she had won despite their meddling? Doesn't hold any water to me, but desperation stimulates imagination, and truly, confusion. Contenders of this view seem well engaged in a perillous intellectual twister game.

Besides, such an account shows very little appreciation for the intelligence and critical thinking of American voters. I bet that if many came to distrust their institutions, it is out of their own experience and reflexion rather than out of foreign engineering.

Delusion, desperation, confusion, stupidity, whatever. But for sure the seams are creaking.

Alves , 16 February 2018 at 07:20 PM
The funny thing is that it looks like the Russian government jailed several people from IRA last year. It would be prudent to look into it and try to figure out what is going on for real.
plantman , 16 February 2018 at 08:04 PM
One comment on the Timeline...

You say: "Harry Reid was briefed by John Brennan on 25 August 2016, according to a 6 April 2017 NY Times piece by Eric Lichtblau.

Well, now that's pretty convenient timing, don't you think? After all, Trump didn't become the GOP candidate for prez until the GOP convention on July 16, 2016. That gave the scheming Brennan a month to make up this dumb story and start passing it around Capitol Hill.

Yeah, Right , 16 February 2018 at 08:32 PM
"anyone who was disparaging Clinton, may have "unwittingly" been a collaborator of the 13 Russian "specialists" who cost Hillary the election."

So the US-side-of-things isn't even a "conspiracy" any more, it has become a "collaboration" of dupes?

What next?

Is Mueller going to accuse Trump-followers of the heinous sin of "not being with the program"? Or of "bucking the system"?

Goddammit! Hillary was meant to be the winner. All the scales were tipped in her favour. How dare there be any other result! Heads. Must. Roll!!!

GeneO , 16 February 2018 at 09:20 PM
Publius Tacitus -

Regarding your claim that Mueller concluded "unwittingly collaborated":

According to the text of the indictment that our host, Pat Lang, posted Mueller made no such conclusion. I note you did not put it within quotation marks.

Is there a separate indictment floating around out there with those conclusions?

Fred -> Valissa... , 16 February 2018 at 09:20 PM
Valissa,

You mean Robby Mook is going to blow through $3 Billion next time out and still lose?

LondonBob said in reply to Richardstevenhack ... , 17 February 2018 at 06:19 AM
Well it is an organisation that has received a lot of publicity in the West for awhile so it is an odd choice, I would have thought they would want a less public organisation for any IO.

Comey was telling the truth: he was still in the delusional belief he could weasel out of it and continue on as FBI chief.

Peter AU , 17 February 2018 at 06:36 AM
PT, in the latest, US indictment against a number of Russians, as its only example, cites a US placard holder on the birthday of JFK as evidence of "Russian interference". Jeez, JFK was a Russian? What a friggin shambles the empire has become.
Bill H -> eakens... , 17 February 2018 at 10:30 AM
Yes indeed. As I said before in another thread. If the election is "disrupted" by voters altering their votes due to Russians posting on Facebook, then the problem is not that Russians are posting on Facebook, the problem is that voters are altering their votes based on posts they read on Facebook. There is little point in correcting the former problem without correcting the latter and vastly more serious problem.

The indictment accuses Russia of attempting to "diminish the public's faith in democracy," or some such thing. I really don't think our own voting public needs Russia's help in doing that.

J -> Bill H ... , 17 February 2018 at 11:51 AM
Nope, our crooked Politicians AND Intelligence/Law Enforcement entities are doing a good job of diminishing the public's faith. I don't know how many of my fellow Americans I have talked to have said to round them all the crooked politicians/intelligence/law enforcement and eradicate them from the earth permanently. That is why we see more and more the crooked politicians/intelligence/law enforcement understanding well their simmering public anger, and because of their fear of the angry public that they have created the surveillance grids (has nothing to do with misnomer terrorism), their legislation/laws that further restrict the public's ability to fight back against their crooked ways.

Diminished public faith, that's putting it mildly.

Sid_finster , 17 February 2018 at 02:32 PM
Mueller had a year and an unlimited budget, and all he has to show is an episode of "MTV's Catfish".

But that's not the point. The point is to distract from Deep State malfeasance, and use russiagate on domestic dissent.

Do you know whether that meme you are sharing didn't originate from.. RUSSIA!

different clue , 17 February 2018 at 03:26 PM
The Democrats remember how well the Republicans ( with help from Truman and others)
made Loyalty Oathism and HUACism and McCarthyism work for them. So the Democrats have decided to try making their own 2.0 version of Loyalty Oathism and HUACism and McCarthyism work for them. They will spend the next several-to-many years running their Reverse McCarthyism 2.0 operation.

They will accuse any Bitter Berners rejectful of yet-one-more-Clintonite of witless dupe-ness. If that doesn't win us over, they will accuse us of Russian subversive Fellow-Traveller-ism. If that doesn't win us over, they will accuse us of being Russian agents.

Of course they will try doing this to Republicans as well. If the Republicans complain, the Democrats will say such complaints are proof of Republican secret-Russian-agent subversionism; while quietly thinking to themselves " payback time for
McCarthy and HUAC").

DianaLC , 17 February 2018 at 03:26 PM
Thanks,PT, as usual.

I have no connection to intelligence agencies. I'm a mere citizen. I've been spending the last few days making cold calls to registered party members here in CO, trying to get them interested in the caucuses that are coming up. Remember how the caucuses became an issue when Trump was running?

Almost no one responded that they were going to attend. Several said they were so sick of politics they would definitely not attend. I'm beginning to believe that I and our precinct captain and her husband will be the only ones there.

What a sad state our country is in. Your last line is true, to a great extent, but I have to add to it. Yes, we need God to help American. And, yes, many Americans seem to have lost their mind. But what makes me sadder is that most of us who have not lost our minds are losing our belief that we could ever make a difference, to make things better.

[Feb 17, 2018] Rosenstein unaccountably failed to mention yesterday Mueller's having landed a really, really big fish on February 2, the unwitting colluder and witless Ricard Pinedo (age 28), a small town scammer who operates a fake ID business out of Santa Paula

Looks like now Rosenstein is a marked man.
Feb 17, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Newmarket

All very good questions and one more either related to, or subsumed within #s 3 and 6 is whether Steele/MI6 are "targetable" for having meddled in the 2016 election.

Rosenstein unaccountably failed to mention yesterday Mueller's having landed a really, really big fish on February 2, the unwitting colluder and witless Ricard Pinedo (age 28), a small town scammer who operates a fake ID business out of Santa Paula, CA, a 80% Hispanic farm worker town in boondocks California. Pinedo plead guilty to one count of identify fraud and had, apparently, profited to the extent of some $10,000 or so from the sale of identify and banking information on-line with only a minimal amount sourced from any of the 13 defendants in the indictments. http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-richard-pinedo-mueller-investigation-20180216-story.html. The MSM, apparently, like Mr. Mueller has decided not to make a big deal out of the Pinedo indictment for reasons which remain the subject of speculation.

[Feb 17, 2018] Robert Mueller charges 13 Russians with interfering in US election to help Trump

Building a cage on a flatbed track with Hillary in prison uniform played by an actor inside is directly from Gene Sharp playbook and could be Otpor! activity ;-) No that bad idea for a anti-Hillary rally actually :-)
Was internet Research Agency a real company or fake ? One author think that it was a fake: A Brief History of the "Kremlin Trolls" by Scott Humor
Notable quotes:
"... Mueller alleged that Russian operatives "communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign", but the indictment did not address the question of whether anyone else in Trump's team had knowingly colluded. ..."
"... Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said at a press conference in Washington: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge." Rosenstein added that the charges did not mean the Russian activity had an effect on the outcome of the election. ..."
"... In a statement on Friday, Trump suggested that what he called "outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories" relating to possible collusion were serving to further the Russian agenda. ..."
"... "This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet," said Rosenstein. He alleged that the Russians had "worked to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy," adding: "We must not allow them to succeed." ..."
"... Prigozhin, who has also been linked to the Wagner Group, a shadowy Kremlin-linked private military contractor believed to be operating in Syria, -> was included on a US sanctions list in July . ..."
"... Speaking to the RIA Novosti state news agency on Friday, Prigozhin said: "The Americans are really impressionable people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. If they want to see the devil -- let them see him." ..."
"... Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the allegations "absurd". "Thirteen people carried out interference in the US elections? Thirteen people against special services with a budgets of billions?" she wrote in a Facebook post. ..."
Oct 15, 2017 | -> www.theguardian.com
-> Robert Mueller , the special counsel, announced on Friday.

Mueller's office said 13 Russians and three Russian entities, including the notorious state-backed "troll farm" the Internet Research Agency, had been indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington DC .

A 37-page indictment alleged that the Russians' operations "included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J Trump ... and disparaging Hillary Clinton," his Democratic opponent.

Mueller alleged that Russian operatives "communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump campaign", but the indictment did not address the question of whether anyone else in Trump's team had knowingly colluded.

Rod Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, said at a press conference in Washington: "There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge." Rosenstein added that the charges did not mean the Russian activity had an effect on the outcome of the election.

Trump and the White House seized on Rosenstein's remarks to falsely claim that the indictment proved there had been no collusion and that the election result had definitely not been impacted.

In a statement on Friday, Trump suggested that what he called "outlandish partisan attacks, wild and false allegations, and far-fetched theories" relating to possible collusion were serving to further the Russian agenda.

The Russians allegedly posed as Americans to operate bogus social media accounts, buy advertisements and stage political rallies. They stole the identities of real people in the US to post online and built computer systems in the US to hide the Russian origin of their activity, according prosecutors.

"This indictment serves as a reminder that people are not always who they appear to be on the internet," said Rosenstein. He alleged that the Russians had "worked to promote discord in the United States and undermine public confidence in democracy," adding: "We must not allow them to succeed."

The charges state that from as far back as 2014, the defendants conspired together to defraud the US by "impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of government" through interference with the American political and electoral processes.

One defendant, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, is accused of using companies he controlled – including Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering – to finance the operations against the US. The operation at one stage had a monthly budget of $1.25m, according to Mueller, which paid for operatives' salaries and bonuses.

Events were organised by Russians posing as Trump supporters and as groups opposed to Trump such as Black Lives Matter , according to prosecutors. One advertisement shortly before the election promoted the Green party candidate Jill Stein, who is blamed by some Clinton backers for splitting the anti-Trump vote.

In August 2016, Russian operatives communicated with Trump campaign staff in Florida through their "@donaldtrump.com" email addresses to coordinate a series of pro-Trump rallies in the state, according to Mueller, and then bought advertisements on social media to promote the events.

At one rally in West Palm Beach, a Russian operative is even alleged to have paid Americans to build a cage on a flatbed truck and to have an actor posing as Clinton in a prison uniform stand inside.

-> Facebook Twitter Pinterest 55 Savushkina Street, St Petersburg, said to be the headquarters of Russia's 'troll army'. Photograph: Shaun Walker for the Guardian

One defendant, Irina Kaverzina, is accused of admitting her involvement in the operation and a subsequent coverup in an email to a relative in September last year, after Mueller's inquiry had begun. "We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity," Kaverzina allegedly wrote, "so I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues."

The Russians are also accused of working to suppress turnout among ethnic minority voters. They allegedly created an Instagram account posing as "Woke Blacks" and railed against the notion that African Americans should choose Clinton as "the lesser of two devils" against Trump.

In early November 2016, according to the indictment, the Russian operatives used bogus "United Muslims of America" social media accounts to claim that "American Muslims [are] boycotting elections today."

Following Trump's victory, the Russian operation promoted allegations of voter fraud by the Democratic party, according to Mueller's team. Around that time, Trump repeatedly claimed without evidence that he would have won the popular vote if not for large-scale voter fraud.

The individuals charged are Mikhail Ivanovich Bystrov, Mikhail Leonidovich Burchik, Aleksandra Yuryevna Krylova, Anna Vladislavovna Bogacheva, Sergey Pavlovich Polozov, Maria Anatolyevna Bovda, Robert Sergeyevich Bovda, Dzheykhun Nasimi Ogly Aslanov, Vadim Vladimirovich Podkopaev, Gleb Igorevitch Vasilchenko, Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina, Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin and Vladimir Venkov.

All were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Three defendants were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud, and five defendants were charged with aggravated identity theft.

Separately, Mueller's office announced that Richard Pinedo, of Santa Paula, California, had pleaded guilty to identity fraud . Pinedo, 28, admitted to running a website that offered stolen identities to help customers get around the security measures of major online payment sites. It was not made clear whether his service had been used by the Russian operatives.

Rosenstein said no contact had been made with Russian authorities regarding the charges so far, but that US officials intended to seek extradition of the defendants.

US intelligence agencies previously concluded that Russians mounted an attack on the US election system aimed at electing -> Donald Trump to the presidency.

Mueller is conducting a criminal inquiry into interference by Russians and possible collusion by Trump's campaign. Two Trump campaign advisers have pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. Two others have been charged with federal crimes.

US investigators have long signalled their belief that Prigozhin, a 56-year-old billionaire businessman, is behind Russia's internet troll factories.

Nicknamed the "Kremlin's chef", Prigozhin once ran Putin's favourite restaurant in St Petersburg, after which he was awarded multi-billion pound state catering contracts. He provided catering for Dmitry Medvedev's presidential inauguration in 2008, and also has lucrative contracts to feed Russia's army and Moscow's schoolchildren.

Prigozhin, who has also been linked to the Wagner Group, a shadowy Kremlin-linked private military contractor believed to be operating in Syria, -> was included on a US sanctions list in July .

Speaking to the RIA Novosti state news agency on Friday, Prigozhin said: "The Americans are really impressionable people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. If they want to see the devil -- let them see him."

Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the allegations "absurd". "Thirteen people carried out interference in the US elections? Thirteen people against special services with a budgets of billions?" she wrote in a Facebook post.

Vladimir Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media he had not yet had a chance to study the indictments.

[Feb 17, 2018] Isn t sowing discord like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries? . Is the Internet Research Agency a CIA hacking group?

Notable quotes:
"... The Russian organization named in the indictment - the Internet Research Agency - and the defendants began working in 2014 - so one year before the Trump candidacy was even announced - to interfere in U.S. elections, according to the indictment in Washington. ..."
"... 2014.......um, yeah, what a crock of bullshit. ..."
"... Seriously though, what is illegal about what they did? Sowing discord? Hell CNN and all of Soros' org would be guilty of the same thing wouldn't they? Isn't 'sowing discord' like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries? ..."
"... B-but the Russians conspired ... to commit free speech. They obstructed ... by speaking . (The story doesn't mention if what was said was true.) Mr. Mueller, please stop wasting our time and money. ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

dexter_morgan Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:03 Permalink

The Russian organization named in the indictment - the Internet Research Agency - and the defendants began working in 2014 - so one year before the Trump candidacy was even announced - to interfere in U.S. elections, according to the indictment in Washington.

They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with "unwitting individuals" associated with the Trump campaign, it said.

2014.......um, yeah, what a crock of bullshit.

Seriously though, what is illegal about what they did? Sowing discord? Hell CNN and all of Soros' org would be guilty of the same thing wouldn't they? Isn't 'sowing discord' like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries?

Not a lawyer, but seems this cannot hold up in court.

Noktirnal Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:14 Permalink

Sounds to me like they're being indicted for exercising free speech. Does that only apply to citizens?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It restricts Congress .

I believe political speech is the most protected form of speech. I think there's a Supreme Court ruling on that topic.

B-but the Russians conspired ... to commit free speech. They obstructed ... by speaking . (The story doesn't mention if what was said was true.) Mr. Mueller, please stop wasting our time and money.

SirBarksAlot Fri, 02/16/2018 - 17:09 Permalink

I'm re-posting this from an earlier post someone else made. The Internet Research Agency is a CIA hacking group!

The best way to get information is to make it up.

Everything what we know now about the so-called "Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin's favorite chef," came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.

http://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/

[Feb 17, 2018] Documents Show How Russia's Troll Army Hit America

This is the same online site which published Steele dossier
As for daily workloads those nasty Russians looks like real neoliberal slave owners not that dissimilar to Amazon packers, or WalMart cashiers ;-) "The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day. "
In A Brief History of the "Kremlin Trolls" The Vineyard of the Saker this "leak" is attributed to the Shaltay-Boltay group which was specializing of forgeries of compromising for Russia documents, claiming that those files were "hacked".
Notable quotes:
"... Osadchy told BuzzFeed he had never worked for the Internet Research Agency and that the extensive documents -- including apparent budgeting for his $35,000 salary -- were an "unsuccessful provocation." He declined to comment on the content of the leaks. The Kremlin declined to comment. The Internet Research Agency has not commented on the leak. ..."
"... "What, you think crazy Russians all learned English en masse and went off to comment on articles?" said Leonid Bershidsky, a media executive and Bloomberg View columnist. ..."
Feb 17, 2018 | www.buzzfeed.com

Plans attached to emails leaked by a mysterious Russian hacker collective show IT managers reporting on a new ideological front against the West in the comments sections of Fox News, Huffington Post , The Blaze, Politico , and WorldNetDaily .

The bizarre hive of social media activity appears to be part of a two-pronged Kremlin campaign to claim control over the internet, launching a million-dollar army of trolls to mold American public opinion as it cracks down on internet freedom at home.

"Foreign media are currently actively forming a negative image of the Russian Federation in the eyes of the global community," one of the project's team members, Svetlana Boiko, wrote in a strategy document. "Additionally, the discussions formed by comments to those articles are also negative in tone.

"Like any brand formed by popular opinion, Russia has its supporters ('brand advocates') and its opponents. The main problem is that in the foreign internet community, the ratio of supporters and opponents of Russia is about 20/80 respectively."

The documents show instructions provided to the commenters that detail the workload expected of them. On an average working day, the Russians are to post on news articles 50 times. Each blogger is to maintain six Facebook accounts publishing at least three posts a day and discussing the news in groups at least twice a day. By the end of the first month, they are expected to have won 500 subscribers and get at least five posts on each item a day. On Twitter, the bloggers are expected to manage 10 accounts with up to 2,000 followers and tweet 50 times a day.

They are to post messages along themes called "American Dream" and "I Love Russia." The archetypes for the accounts are called Handkerchief, Gay Turtle, The Ghost of Marius the Giraffe, Left Breast, Black Breast, and Ass, for reasons that are not immediately clear.

According to the documents, which are attached to several hundred emails sent to the project's leader, Igor Osadchy, the effort was launched in April and is led by a firm called the Internet Research Agency. It's based in a Saint Petersburg suburb, and the documents say it employs hundreds of people across Russia who promote Putin in comments on Russian blogs.

Osadchy told BuzzFeed he had never worked for the Internet Research Agency and that the extensive documents -- including apparent budgeting for his $35,000 salary -- were an "unsuccessful provocation." He declined to comment on the content of the leaks. The Kremlin declined to comment. The Internet Research Agency has not commented on the leak.

Definitively proving the authenticity of the documents and their authors' ties to the Kremlin is, by the nature of the subject, not easy. The project's cost, scale, and awkward implementation have led many observers in Russia to doubt, however, that it could have come about in any other way.

"What, you think crazy Russians all learned English en masse and went off to comment on articles?" said Leonid Bershidsky, a media executive and Bloomberg View columnist. "If it looks like Kremlin shit, smells like Kremlin shit, and tastes like Kremlin shit too -- then it's Kremlin shit."

Despite efforts to hire English teachers for the trolls, most of the comments are written in barely coherent English. "I think the whole world is realizing what will be with Ukraine, and only U.S. keep on fuck around because of their great plans are doomed to failure," reads one post from an unnamed forum, used as an example in the leaked documents.

[Feb 16, 2018] Moscow charges ex-FSB Kaspersky staff with treason 'in interests of US' lawyer

Notable quotes:
"... "treason in favor of the US," ..."
"... "There is no mention of the CIA at all. [The entity] in question is the US, not the CIA," ..."
"... 'Shaltai Boltai' ..."
"... "no personnel changes" ..."
Feb 01, 2017 | www.rt.com

Two senior FSB officers and a high-level manager of Russia's leading cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab are facing official charges of treason in the interests of the US, a lawyer representing one of the defendants has confirmed to Interfax. Ruslan Stoyanov, head of Kaspersky Lab's computer incidents investigations unit, Sergey Mikhailov, a senior Russian FSB officer, and his deputy Dmitry Dokuchayev are accused of "treason in favor of the US," lawyer Ivan Pavlov said on Wednesday, as cited by Interfax. Read more © Michael Weber / Global Look Press 70mn cyberattacks, mostly foreign, targeted Russia's critical infrastructure in 2016 – FSB

Pavlov chose not to disclose which of the defendants he represents, adding, however, that his client denies all charges.

The charges against the defendants do not imply they were cooperating with the CIA, Pavlov added. "There is no mention of the CIA at all. [The entity] in question is the US, not the CIA," he stressed, according to TASS.

The lawyer maintained the court files included no mention of Vladimir Anikeev, an alleged leader of 'Shaltai Boltai', a hacking group that previously leaked emails from top Russian officials, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The hacking group's name was in the news earlier in January, when Russian media reports linked Mikhailov and Dokuchayev to 'Shaltai Boltai' . In an unsourced article last Wednesday, Rosbalt newspaper claimed Mikhailov's unit was ordered in 2016 to work with the group.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RIA Novosti on Wednesday the treason charges do not relate to the US suspicions of Russia being behind the alleged cyberattacks on the 2016 presidential elections. He added that President Vladimir Putin is receiving regular updates on the current investigation.

Russian media reports said Mikhailov was arrested during a conference of top FSB leadership. He was reportedly escorted out of the room with a bag placed over his head. His deputy, Dokuchayev, is said to be a well-known hacker who allegedly began cooperating with the FSB several years ago. Kaspersky Lab manager Stoyanov was also placed under arrest several weeks ago.

Stoyanov is still employed by Kaspersky Lab, the company told RIA Novosti later on Wednesday, adding there were "no personnel changes" at this point.

Treason charges mean that the defendants could be handed a sentence of up to 20 years in prison. The treason charges also mean any trial will not be public due to its sensitive nature.

[Feb 16, 2018] What is the definition of a fake social media account ? What is the crime for operatine a fake social medial account? Is this the standard by which we will all be judged?

Notable quotes:
"... So, did Mueller address the crime committed by the then FBI head who refused to allow a FBI informant to address Congress on the Uranium One scam before it was authorized? Uh, that would be Mueller, his very self, so the answer is no. ..."
"... What is the definition of a "fake social media account"? What is the crime for operate a fake social medial account? Is this the standard by which we will all be judged? ..."
"... "In other words, anyone who was disparaging Clinton, may have "unwittingly" been a collaborator of the 13 Russian "specialists" who cost Hillary the election." No, not "in other words." That's not what he said at all. Idiot propagandist. ..."
"... And Hillary has done nothing criminal in the last 40 years. All of the evidence has been a fabrication. The Russians perfected time travel technology in the 70's, and have been conspiring against her and planting evidence since then. ..."
"... The goal of the MSM was the opposite. To unfairly disparage Trump and assist the election of Hillary Clinton. So why no indictments of members of the American MSM? ..."
"... What a bunch of horseshit. Mueller did nothing to locate just as much foreign or Russian support for Hillary. Grand Jury is just another one-sided court that passes judgment without any input from the other side. Now where have we seen that before? FISA. ..."
"... What is wrong with anyone doing what they want to support a candidate? If that is somehow illegal interference, why is Soros running loose in the world? ..."
"... I have a friend that was a US Federal Prosecutor. He once told me that the most un-American concepts that exist are grand juries and conspiracy laws. I'm sure he would have included FISA if it existed then. ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Genby Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:51 Permalink

Mueller effectively called himself an idiot and degenerate.

13 people won against the whole apparatus of FBI (including Mueller). That makes FBI a herd of idiots and degenerates (including Mueller).

SirBarksAlot -> rgraf Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:44 Permalink

What crime?

Impersonating an American?

Practicing freedom of speech?

Trying to influence an election?

I don't see any crimes.

Joiningupthedots Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:31 Permalink

When does Mueller get charged? He is part of the fabric of the Clinton Gang along with Comey and others. How many people have posted derogatory comments about Clinton on ZH alone. This sounds like when they ludicrously charged and entire unit of the Chinese PLA.

FringeImaginigs Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:31 Permalink

Agreed, it's against the law to steal identities and operate bank accounts and all that. But really, compared to the fraud committed by just one bank - Wells Fargo- this is smal small potatoes.

And did I miss it or did the indictment not even mention the value of the ads bought on Facebook - $100,000. (nope, not missing any zeros).

And it all started in 2014 while Donald was playing golf and sticking his dick in some whore.

And a few ruskies got into the good ol USofA with false statements on their visas.

While the courts fought Trump on the fact that immigration from a few countries need to be stopped because there was not way of checking data. I get it - somebody driving too fast gets a speeding ticket, and Muellers investigation gets to issue an indictment. I'm sure we all feel better now.

Lostinfortwalton Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:32 Permalink

So, did Mueller address the crime committed by the then FBI head who refused to allow a FBI informant to address Congress on the Uranium One scam before it was authorized? Uh, that would be Mueller, his very self, so the answer is no.

Grandad Grumps Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:35 Permalink

What is the definition of a "fake social media account"? What is the crime for operate a fake social medial account? Is this the standard by which we will all be judged?

Or is it that Mueller has NOTHING and is too big of a corrupt idiot to admit it.

Rick Cerone Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:36 Permalink

Putin should define what a NGO is. He should tell the world how the US uses NGO's to destabilize elections. He wont do it because he's digging tunnels for the big day.

BigPunny Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:36 Permalink

"In other words, anyone who was disparaging Clinton, may have "unwittingly" been a collaborator of the 13 Russian "specialists" who cost Hillary the election." No, not "in other words." That's not what he said at all. Idiot propagandist.

devnickle Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:36 Permalink

And Hillary has done nothing criminal in the last 40 years. All of the evidence has been a fabrication. The Russians perfected time travel technology in the 70's, and have been conspiring against her and planting evidence since then.

What planet am I living on again? We have now stepped into the twilight zone. Facepalm.....

moneybots Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:55 Permalink

"Ultimately, and this is the punchline, the goal was to disparage Hillary Clinton and to assist the election of Donald Trump."

The goal of the MSM was the opposite. To unfairly disparage Trump and assist the election of Hillary Clinton. So why no indictments of members of the American MSM?

Montana Cowboy Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:03 Permalink

What a bunch of horseshit. Mueller did nothing to locate just as much foreign or Russian support for Hillary. Grand Jury is just another one-sided court that passes judgment without any input from the other side. Now where have we seen that before? FISA.

What is wrong with anyone doing what they want to support a candidate? If that is somehow illegal interference, why is Soros running loose in the world?

I have a friend that was a US Federal Prosecutor. He once told me that the most un-American concepts that exist are grand juries and conspiracy laws. I'm sure he would have included FISA if it existed then.

dot_bust Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:03 Permalink

The indictment adds that the Russians " were instructed to post content that focused on 'politics in the USA' and to 'use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump -- we support them)' ."

Criticizing Hillary Clinton constitutes election interference? This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Over half the United States said she was corrupt and morally bankrupt. Does that mean all those Americans interfered in the election?

Son of Captain Nemo Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:04 Permalink

"Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities."

I thought this was our "shtick" for subverting and overthrowing government(s) since 194_?... Fast forward to 2012 and subverting sovereign foreign government(s) using other means then election(s) ( https://jasirx.wordpress.com/ )

Just ask this person ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CL_GShyGv3o ) who handed out cookies before starting an "overthrow of a sovereign government" right before a Winter Olympics?... And while we're on the subject of subversion of sovereign Nation(s) "OCONUS" ask this fat shit how it's going in the Middle East with it's "partners" ( https://southfront.org/meeting-between-us-state-secretary-and-lebanese- ) Nor should we forget 22 within the Russian diplomatic community in the last 6 years "eliminated" for early retirement courtesy of the U.S. government...

And if all this is true why isn't Muelller indicting government officials within the FBI Department of immigration and Homeland Security that would allow "some defendants" to impersonate Americans after 9/11 and the security infrastructure we built around U.S. to prevent "future attacks" that were obviously (here illegally)???...

On second thought DON'T ANSWER THAT!!!

atabrigade Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:05 Permalink

Our enemies are not overseas. They are right here at home.

Son of Captain Nemo -> atabrigade Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:13 Permalink

That did this ( http://www.ae911truth.org/ ) to their own to grab oil everyplace else they didn't control it!

Concertedmaniac Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:08 Permalink

What a complete load of horseshit. Waste of time and money while the crimes of the clintons and collaborators remain unpunished, including Mueller himself.

wobblie Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:08 Permalink

"Mueller describes a sweeping, years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump"

Only in the idiot world of Liberalism and Conservatism is this not a laughable statement.

Stupid fucks.

https://therulingclassobserver.com/

Obamaroid Ointment Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:10 Permalink

13 Russian bots to get life sentences in Twitter jail? Is a prisoner exchange with Putin for American bots a possibility?

[Feb 16, 2018] Mueller indicts non-existent Internet Research Agency, also known as Putin's Troll Factory in Saint Petersburg

Feb 16, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Petri Krohn | Feb 16, 2018 2:36:54 PM

BREAKING: Mueller indicts non-existent Internet Research Agency , also known as Putin's Troll Factory in Saint Petersburg.

Mueller Accuses Russians of Pro-Trump, Anti-Clinton Meddling - Bloomberg

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller unveiled the details of a widespread and coordinated campaign by Russians to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, delivering on his initial mandate by the Justice Department.

In an indictment disclosed in Washington on Friday, Mueller describes a sweeping, years-long, multimillion-dollar conspiracy by hundreds of Russians aimed at criticizing Hillary Clinton and supporting Senator Bernie Sanders and Trump. He charged 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities and accused them of defrauding the U.S. government by interfering with the political process.

The Internet Research Agency, a Russian organization, and the defendants began working in 2014 to interfere in U.S. elections, according to the indictment. They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with "unwitting individuals" associated with the Trump campaign, it said.

Click here to read the indictment in full.

The documents point to a broader conspiracy beyond the pages of the indictment, saying the grand jury has heard about other people with whom the Russians allegedly conspired in their efforts.

[Feb 16, 2018] Mueller Drops Hammer with Indictment of 13 Russians in Election Meddling Conspiracy Breitbart

Notable quotes:
"... New York Times' ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.breitbart.com

Bloomberg News cited a "person with knowledge" of Mueller's investigation in a report on Friday afternoon to note that this indictment is just the beginning of actions to be expected and avenues to be explored by Mueller in the coming months ahead. Bloomberg's Chris Strohm wrote .:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors haven't concluded their investigation into whether President Donald Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election, according to a person with knowledge of the probe. Friday's indictment of a St. Petersburg-based "troll farm" and 13 Russian nationals should be seen as a limited slice of a comprehensive investigation, the person said. Mueller's work is expected to continue for months and also includes examining potential obstruction of justice by Trump, said the person, who requested anonymity to discuss an investigation that is largely confidential.

The indictment targets 13 Russians as well as Internet Research Agency, LLC, which is a Saint Petersburg-based organization that pushes influence operations on behalf of the Russian government. The indictment alleges that those 13 Russians and Internet Research Agency, as well as fellow Russian firms Concord Management and Consulting LLC and Concord Catering,

knowingly and intentionally conspired with each other (and with persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury) to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.

The scheme, the indictment alleges, began as far back as 2014 and continued until after the 2016 presidential election. U.S. intelligence authorities and officials say the Russians intend to engage in similar actions in 2018's midterm elections here in the United States, and future elections thereafter.

While the indictment does not say how much money these Russian entities spent on this, it does say that Concord and Russian oligarch and Vladimir Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin "spent significant funds to further" the operations of Internet Research Agency and "to pay the remaining defendants" along with others not charged in this indictment but employed by Internet Research Agency.

In a Friday report filed from Saint Petersburg, the New York Times' Neil MacFarqhuar noted that Prigozhin is a Russian oligarch with deep connections to Putin.

"Despite his humble, troubled youth, Mr. Prigozhin became one of Russia's richest men, joining a charmed circle whose members often share one particular attribute: their proximity to President Vladimir V. Putin," MacFarqhuar wrote . "The small club of loyalists who gain Mr. Putin's trust often feast, as Mr. Prigozhin has, on enormous state contracts. In return, they are expected to provide other, darker services to the Kremlin as needed."

Prigozhin himself, per the Times quoting him via Russian state media outlet Ria Novosti, responded to the indictment in dark terms.

"The Americans are very impressionable people, they see what they want to see," Prigozhin said. "I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

The Mueller indictment alleges that these Russian actors engaged in paid and other social media efforts as well as staging political rallies and sowing discord in the United States using identity politics by propping up causes like Black Lives Matter, pro-Islamic causes, religious entities, and more. And they did it by posing as U.S. persons with falsified or stolen identities. The indictment reads:

Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive U.S. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by U.S. activists when, in fact they were controlled by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. to post on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans for purposes of interfering with the U.S. political system, including the presidential election of 2016." Some of these Russia-based Defendants, the indictment alleges, "traveled to the United States under false pretenses for the purpose of collecting intelligence" and obtained and "procured and used computer infrastructure" that was partially American-based "to hide the Russian origin of their activities and to avoid detection by U.S. regulators and law enforcement.

The indictment also details contacts that these Russians, posing as Americans with assumed or stolen identities, had multiple contacts with "unwitting" campaign officials with President Trump's campaign.

Internet Research Agency, the indictment says, had a "strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system" and that the Defendants "posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ('Trump Campaign') and disparaging Hillary Clinton." The indictment reads:

Defendants made various expenditures to carry out those activities, including buying political advertisements on social media in the names of U.S. persons and entities. Defendants also stages political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities and U.S. persons, and without revealing their Russian identities and ORGANIZATION affiliation, solicited and compensated real U.S. persons to promote or disparage candidates. Some Defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing Mueller's investigation after the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said in a press appearance announcing these indictments that no real U.S. persons who communicated with these fake U.S. persons who were really Russians actually knew that they were talking with Russians about these activities. Presumably, Rosenstein's comments would include the various Trump campaign officials and associates who were in contact with them. Rosenstein said at the press conference:

There is no allegation in this indictment that any American had any knowledge, and the nature of the scheme was the Defendants took extraordinary steps to make it appear as though they were ordinary American political activists even going so far as to base their activities on a virtual private network based here in the United States. If anybody traced it back to that first jump, they would appear to be Americans.

Rosenstein also said there is nothing in this indictment that suggests that the outcome of the election was impacted. "There is no allegation in the indictment of any effect on the outcome of the election," Rosenstein said.

But the allegation does detail a sophisticated scheme by which Russians tried to influence the American political discourse at such a volatile time in U.S. politics -- and that they did it through "fraud and deceit" by "making expenditures in connection with the 2016 U.S. presidential election without proper regulatory disclosure" and "failing to register as foreign agents carrying out political activities within the United States" as well as "obtaining visas through false and fraudulent statements."

The indicted Russian organization Internet Research Agency allegedly created a team of "specialists" who were "tasked to create social media accounts that appeared to be operated by U.S. persons" then "divided into day-shift and night-shift hours and instructed to make posts in accordance with the appropriate U.S. time zone." Internet Research Agency also allegedly "circulated lists of U.S. holidays so that specialists could develop and post appropriate account activity" and that said specialists were "instructed to write about topics germane to the United States such as U.S. foreign policy and U.S. economic issues."

They created social media groups designed to enflame the fringes of American society, including pushing Black Lives Matter, immigration control, religious groups, and certain geographic areas inside the United States. Examples cited in the indictment include accounts called things like Blacktivist, United Muslims of America, Army of Jesus, Secured Borders, South United, and Heart of Texas.

"By 2016, the size of many ORGANIZATION-controlled groups had grown to hundreds of thousands of online followers," the indictment says.

The Defendants also allegedly bought social media ads starting in or around 2015 designed to promote their controlled entities, "spending thousands of U.S. dollars every month." They falsely made a Twitter account called @TEN_GOP to make it appear as though they were the Republican Party of Tennessee, a major political party in a U.S. State.

As Rosenstein detailed in the press conference, the indictment also explains how the Russians allegedly hid their Russian identities by buying "space on computer servers located inside the United States in order to set up virtual private networks ('VPNs')."

"Defendants and their co-conspirators connected from Russia to the U.S.-based infrastructure by way of these VPNs and conducted activity inside the United States -- including accessing online social media accounts, opening new accounts, and communicating with real U.S. persons -- while masking the Russian origin and control of the activity," the indictment says.

They also stole U.S. persons' identities -- or used stolen identities -- to engage in this scheme so they could create PayPal accounts. The indictment says:

In or around 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators also used, possessed, and transferred, without lawful authority, the social security numbers and dates of birth of real U.S. persons without those persons' knowledge or consent. Using these means of identification, Defendants and their co-conspirators opened account at PayPal, a digital payment service provider; created false means of identification, including fake driver's licenses; and posted on ORGANIZATION-controlled social media accounts using the identities of these U.S. victims. Defendants and their co-conspirators also obtained, and attempted to obtain, false identification documents to use as proof of identity in connection with maintaining accounts and purchasing advertisements on social media sites.

Regarding the 2016 election, the Defendants' efforts began per the indictment as far back as 2014 -- and over time became clearer as to their intentions. "They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump," the indictment says.

In line-item number 45 on page 17 of the indictment, it says that the Russians "also used false U.S. personas to communicate with unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters of the Trump Campaign involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups that supported then-candidate Trump."

"These individuals [the American Trump backers referenced] and entities at times distributed the ORGANIZATION's materials through their own accounts via retweets, reposts, and similar means," the indictment says. "Defendants and their co-conspirators then monitored the propagation of content through such participants."

In addition, via an Instagram account controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency called "Woke Blacks," in the weeks before the general election the account encouraged American minorities not to vote at all. Another Russian-controlled Instagram account called "Blacktivist" urged black people to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, something that would hurt Hillary Clinton's chances. And in early November 2016, the indictment says a Russian controlled "United Muslims of America" account encouraged Muslims not to vote for Clinton.

The indictment also says that the Russians from April 2016 through November 2016, while using false identities, "began to produce, purchase, and post advertisements on U.S. social media and other online sites expressly advocating for the election of then-candidate Trump or expressly opposing Clinton."

"Defendants and their co-conspirators did not report their expenditures to the Federal Election Commission, or register as foreign agents with the U.S. Department of Justice," the indictment says about the ads.

In addition, to pay for the ads, the Russians "established various Russian bank accounts and credit cards, often registered in the names of fictitious U.S. personas created and used by the ORGANIZATION on social media." They also allegedly used PayPal accounts.

The ads, several examples of which are detailed on line-item number 50 in the indictment on page number 20, are expressly political pleas to vote for Trump or oppose Clinton.

Perhaps even more significantly, the indictment alleges that these Russian operatives engaged in the staging of political rallies in the United States to further their objectives, starting approximately in June 2016.

"To conceal the fact that they were based in Russia, Defendants and their co-conspirators promoted these rallies while pretending to be U.S. grassroots activists who were located in the United States but were unable to meet or participate in person," the indictment says, adding that the Russians used their social media presence and contacts at they had spent years building to promote the rallies.

One particularly interesting tidbit comes on line-item 53 on page 21, where it says the Russian-controlled group "United Muslims of America" promoted a rally titled: "Support Hillary. Save American Muslims," a July 9, 2016 rally in Washington, D.C.

"Defendants and their co-conspirators recruited a real U.S. person to hold a sign depicting Clinton and a quote attributed to her stating 'I think Sharia Law will be a powerful new direction of freedom,'" the indictment says. "Within three weeks, on or about July 26, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators posted on the same Facebook page that Muslim voters were 'between Hillary Clinton and a hard place.'"

In June, July, and August 2016, the indictment says, other pro-Trump Russian-controlled social media accounts organized and promoted a variety of pro-Trump or anti-Clinton rallies in New York and "offered money to certain U.S. persons to cover rally expenses."

They also pushed to create pro-Trump rallies in Florida around this time, and in Pennsylvania. Then, after the election, the Russians organized rallies for and against then-President-elect Donald Trump.

In the case of the Florida efforts, the indictment details how the Russians created a false U.S. persona named "Matt Skiber" in August 2016 to communicate with real people connected with the Trump campaign. The indictment says:

On or about August 15, 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators received an email at one of their false U.S. persona accounts from a real U.S. person, a Florida-based political activist identified as the 'Chair of the Trump Campaign' in a particular Florida county. The activist identified two additional sites in Florida for possible rallies. Defendants and their co-conspirators subsequently used their false U.S. persona accounts to communicate with the activist about logistics and an additional rally in Florida.

The Russians then allegedly used an Instagram account they controlled to buy ads to push the rally. The indictment continues:

On or about August 18, 2016, the real 'Florida for Trump' Facebook account responded to the false U.S. persona 'Matt Skiber' account with instructions to contact a member of the Trump Campaign ('Campaign Official 1') involved in the campaign's Florida operations and provided Campaign Official 1's email address at the campaign domain donaldtrump.com. On approximately the same day, Defendants and their co-conspirators used the email address of a false U.S. persona, [email protected], to send an email to Campaign Official 1 at that donaldtrump.com email account

In the email, which is partially quoted, the Russian posing an American writes to the unidentified unassuming Trump campaign official that they are organizing a rally on Aug. 20, 2016, to support Trump. The Russian wrote:

Let us introduce ourselves first. 'Being Patriotic' is a grassroots conservative online movement trying to unite people offline [W]e gained a huge lot of followers and decided to somehow help Mr. Trump get elected. You know, simple yelling on the Internet is not enough. There should be real action. We organized rallies in New York before. Now we're focusing on purple states such as Florida.

The email, per the indictment, identifies "thirteen 'confirmed locations' in Florida for the rallies and requested the campaign provide 'assistance in each location.'"

They also sent money via wire transfer to a separate U.S. person "to build a cage large enough to hold an actress depicting Clinton in a prison uniform" then communicated again with a second Trump campaign official via official email -- and then the Russians used the fake "Matt Skiber" Facebook account to communicate with a real third Trump campaign official in Florida. The indictment then details several other rallies in Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania that the fake Russians helped organize, including payment via interstate wire transfer for costs.

That all is part of count one in the indictment, Conspiracy to Defraud the United States. Count two, Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Bank Fraud, as well as counts three through eight -- all Aggravated Identity Theft charges -- all build upon many of the revelations in the first part of the indictment.

[Feb 16, 2018] The defendants began working in 2014 - so one year before the Trump candidacy was even announced - to interfere in U.S. elections

Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

dexter_morgan Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:03 Permalink

The Russian organization named in the indictment - the Internet Research Agency - and the defendants began working in 2014 - so one year before the Trump candidacy was even announced - to interfere in U.S. elections, according to the indictment in Washington. They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with "unwitting individuals" associated with the Trump campaign, it said.

2014.......um, yeah, what a crock of bullshit.

Seriously though, what is illegal about what they did? Sowing discord? Hell CNN and all of Soros' org would be guilty of the same thing wouldn't they? Isn't 'sowing discord' like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries?

Not a lawyer, but seems this cannot hold up in court.

[Feb 16, 2018] The United States, which has interfered in the domestic affairs of nearly every country on the planet, including not only elections but armed attacks, government overthrows and assassinations, was terribly hurt by some Facebook ads placed by people who conspired to defraud this helpless government. The horrors!

Feb 16, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Don Bacon | Feb 16, 2018 6:18:32 PM | 47

The United States, which has interfered in the domestic affairs of nearly every country on the planet, including not only elections but armed attacks, government overthrows and assassinations, was terribly hurt by some Facebook ads placed by people who conspired to defraud this helpless government. The horrors!

from the indictment

From in or around 2014 to the present, in the Dustrict of Columbia and elsewhere, Defendants, together with others known and unknown to the grand Jury, knowingly and intentionally conspired to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of State in administering federal requirements for disclosure of foreign involvement in certain domestic activities. . . here

[Feb 16, 2018] Isn t sowing discord like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries? .  Is the Internet Research Agency a CIA hacking group?

Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

dexter_morgan Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:03 Permalink

The Russian organization named in the indictment - the Internet Research Agency - and the defendants began working in 2014 - so one year before the Trump candidacy was even announced - to interfere in U.S. elections, according to the indictment in Washington. They used false personas and social media while also staging political rallies and communicating with "unwitting individuals" associated with the Trump campaign, it said.

2014.......um, yeah, what a crock of bullshit.

Seriously though, what is illegal about what they did? Sowing discord? Hell CNN and all of Soros' org would be gulty of the same thing wouldn't they?

Isn't 'sowing discord' like the main mission of the CIA, both here and in other countries?

Not a lawyer, but seems this cannot hold up in court.

Noktirnal Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:14 Permalink

Sounds to me like they're being indicted for exercising free speech.

Does that only apply to citizens?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

It restricts Congress .

I believe political speech is the most protected form of speech. I think there's a Supreme Court ruling on that topic.

B-but the Russians conspired ... to commit free speech. They obstructed ... by speaking . (The story doesn't mention if what was said was true.)

Mr. Mueller, please stop wasting our time and money.

SirBarksAlot Fri, 02/16/2018 - 17:09 Permalink

I'm re-posting this from an earlier post someone else made. The Internet Research Agency is a CIA hacking group! The best way to get information is to make it up. Everything what we know now about the so-called "Kremlin trolls from the Internet Research Agency paid by Putin's favorite chef," came from one source, a group of CIA spies that used the mascot of Shaltay-Boltay, or Humpty-Dumpty, for their collective online persona.

http://thesaker.is/a-brief-history-of-the-kremlin-trolls/

[Feb 16, 2018] Did Russians tried to imitate Israelis?

So 13 Russians managed materially influence the USA elections. Nice... As ne ZeroHedge commenter noted "13 Russians can change the course of US history by going on-line and posting stuff. Okay, sure I buy that BS"
Feb 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Tachyon5321 Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:42 Permalink

This makes Mueller look like a clown.

For starters, MIKHAIL IVANOVICH BYSTROV is the former head of the Police in Moscow...While Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin is a businessman(Friend of Putin) with high-end Russian restaurants all across the country(In Russia).

So now Russia will go after the NSA trolls and charge them with interfering with their election, which we did do...

Kernighan Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:23 Permalink

Part of the PsyOps going on as the US public (and really much of the world) becomes MORE and MORE familiar with the Deep State operation undertaken by three letter agencies, FBI and DOJ, and the White House in 2016 and expanded after Nov 2016. The Special Council now needs to provide material to the rabid "Resist" crowd, and even though this entire set of indictments cannot possibly demonstrate a material alteration of election results, in so large a country as the USA, this would serve to feed the crowd who will believe this all to be "definitive". These are primarily political battles, since no one is going to bring Russian nationals over to the USA to serve time. This helps also to show "results" of the expensive and mostly useless Special Counsel project.

Posa Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:26 Permalink

Wow. Desperation time for Mueller.

Around page 12 the indictments says a total of two (2) Russian nationals entered the US and toured for a short while. How they were able to get rally permits, hand out fliers organize speakers etc isn't stated. So those claims remain entirely bogus.

The rest of the nefarious plot includes re-posting articles from the MSM or BLM sites... zero impact... Pathetic nonsense.

Meanwhile Israeli agents and dual-passport types pour hundreds of millions into the election. Crickets.

escapeefromOZ -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:28 Permalink

AIPAC against the wall . Shoot the bastards

JSBach1 -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:54 Permalink

Yes they are paid for their hasbara work:

Plan: using students who go on delegations abroad on behalf of the Union (approximately 250 students a year) for hasbara purposes. Before each delegation the students will undergo a hasbara workshop on behalf of the Ministry of Hasbara, which will give them the tools and information to contend with the questions and the critical salvos and the ability to present in their stead "a different Israel."

After selecting the students for a delegation, the students will undergo a hasbara workshop given on behalf of the Ministry of Hasbara, where the logistics are coordinated by the Department head. This training will be a condition for the student's going on any delegation this year.

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israels-pretty-face-h

"With Israel coming under ever-increasing criticism for its human rights abuses and war crimes against Palestinians and other Arabs, changing the subject is a common tactic for Israel's PR flacks and official propaganda or hasbara efforts .

Attempting to shift the conversation over to Israeli technology in this way is sometimes dubbed " techwashing ." Similar tactics include " greenwashing " – the effort to market Israel as supposedly environmentally friendly (something Israel21c is involved in too ) – and " pinkwashing " – the effort to market Israel as LGBT-friendly and progressive as well as a welcoming destination for gay-male sex tourism .

The main point about such cynical strategies is that, even were these stories all true, it would not in any way mitigate Israeli atrocities , such as its most recent round of slaughter in the Gaza Strip "

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/asa-winstanley/israel-tech-site-pa

Hasbara "War rooms" at universities in Isreal

"But in fact, these are campaigns of organized lying, orchestrated with government-approved talking points and crowdsourced volunteers and stipend recipients," Shunra added..."

"...Working in 30 languages, the students working this comment far target online forums including so called "anti-Israel" pages on Facebook and comments sections of online media."

https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-student-union-

The Israel Project's 2009 GLOBAL LANGUAGE DICTIONARY ( Hasbara communication guide )

https://www.transcend.org/tms/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/sf-israel-proj

mkkby -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:49 Permalink

Require valid ID to vote. How many mexicans vote multiple times? How many *activists* get bused around from county to county, voting multiple times?

The blue team loves this so no go. It's racist to require ID because blacks are too stupid to get one That's the democrats talking out of both sides of their mouths.

brianshell -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:58 Permalink

Nominated for best comment.

Mueller may be trying to jump the shark and improve on Ken Starr's operation by diverting to the other side of the investigation.

Perhaps his prime directive is to obfuscate until the end of Trump's term.

War Machine -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:18 Permalink

RT.com had to register as a foreign agent - and you know what, fair enough...

But AIPAC has been allowed to violate the law requiring them to do so by a DOJ that, admin to admin, never enforces the law as to Israel.

Meanwhile the Jewish/Israel Lobby, with the eager support of US politicians, are continuing their assault on the 1st Amendment. They want to criminalize boycotts and criticism of the state/govt of Israel.

And the media is, predictably, silent - and for the record a number of Jewish lawyers and libertarian writers have been vociferous in their opposition to the assault on free speech - but the ADL/AIPAC/neocon matrix is all in to criminalize speech that is both fair and factual.

Which brings me to this indictment, gents.

I'm no lawyer, and would be very happy to get comment/criticism/correction - but how in the fuck is posting anti-Hillary (or anti-anyone) comments on facebook not protected 1st Amendment speech?

So far as I know it is not a crime to pretend to be someone else on the internet absent actual fraud/theft. Israelis quite literally are paid to do so all the time, and while irritating - that's part of free speech and the free exchange of ideas.

This indictment, apart from more Deep State poking the bear, and distraction from the FBI's obstruction of justice and felony misrepresentation to a federal judge... is a direct assault on the 1st Amendment.

How is it 'interfering' with an election to present people with ideas? If presenting slanted, even false information to voters is now a crime - why arent the executives of CNN and the Times under indictment?

The Left's hatred of Trump (and I'm not a fan given his moves in Syria and deficit spending etc) has made them absolutely boond to the dangers to civil liberties, nevermind world war.

Apart from the idea of some internet trolls having any influence relative to the cia/dni controlled media being absurd on its face, how can an 'indictment' to 'conspire' to talk about some political issue even be brought given the 1st Amendment?

If they can indict some Russians for pretending to be Joe Six-pack to help a candidate - who else can they try to jail for saying the Establishment candidate is a lying cheating warmonger who belongs in prison?

Stuck on Zero -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 15:41 Permalink

Add George Soros to the list of enemies of humanity.

any_mouse -> SamAdams Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:01 Permalink

What about Soros?

The "Russians are coming!" is ridiculous.

Cloward Priven were Russians?

Alinsky was Russian?

Cruz was a Canadian until 2014. The People had enough with Obama.

The People had enough of Bush-Clinton from 1989 through 2008.

The odds are that Trump is controlled opposition.

The election process has been corrupted internally since the beginning.

Lincoln was installed by Northeast Industrialists and the Media. His opponent that was promoted by the large newspapers was the Democrat least likely to threaten Lincoln in an election.

Dr. Ron Paul received zero Media attention in 2012. Trump was in the news 24 by 7 in 2016.

escapeefromOZ -> Belrev Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:26 Permalink

Those people are only guilty of trolling and that is not a crime . I found ridiculous in the extreme that Mueller thinks he can seize the property of the agency in question is Russia ! ah,ah,ah, Nobody has told that ass hole that the USA has no Jurisdiction in other countries ? ah,ah,ah !

And then how many times that USA has in the past and in the present tried to interfere with Russian elections and those of other countries ? What about the coup d'etat in Kiev and the colored revolution ? Has that buffoon got no memory ?

That buffoon is out of his mind , Who believes his bullshit ? There are a lot personalities in the USA that buy favorable comments to their Facebook accounts . Thera ere firms specialist in opening FAKE accounts and writing fake favorable comments for customers . I am talking about tens of thousands and much more of favorable comments on Facebook and others social BLS networks . In conclusion this is a fake trumped up operation to continue with the farce

of the Russian / Trump investigation .

t0mmyBerg -> escapeefromOZ Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:36 Permalink

Exactly. They tried to change hearts and minds. Are we going to criminilaize politics then? PACs and millions of peoplel try to argue often using anonymous or false identities. What a load of horseshit this whole thing is.

Btw, the number 13 is a great number. That was my hockey jersey. Also my class rank after my bitch choir and glee club teacher got the grade for my last 2 years and gave me cs and ds despite the fact i was the president of the group. Dropped me from like 5th to 13th. Still pisses me off. And the Templars were burned at the stake on Friday the 13th werent they? Good enough for me

NumberNone -> Precious Hawk Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:49 Permalink

If we are chasing down foreign nationals attempting to influence the elections, I'm waiting on the indictment against Vincente Fox.

"Former Mexican President Vicente Fox is urging US voters to look before they leap. The global consequences would be dramatic if Donald Trump won the presidency, he told DW's James Blears in Mexico City."

I'm with Schiff, there's ample evidence of election hacking if you are willing to see it.

BlueGreen -> NumberNone Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:11 Permalink

So true, the hypocrisy and I'll say glee at watching the unintended consequences of their ill planned "findings", comments/ general stupidity (iq's just high enough to be a danger to society, but not high enough to keep society working well)

Killtruck -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:03 Permalink

Any news on the Secret Society indictments, Bob?

nmewn -> TeethVillage88s Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:36 Permalink

There is against the violation of a persons civil rights, perjury, using government resources for personal gain, knowingly introducing falsified evidence to a federal court, unmasking individuals found by use of said falsified evidence, theft and destruction of government documents.

Broadly called, a conspiracy and obstruction of justice ;-)

New_Meat -> nmewn Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:03 Permalink

I'm going to start a go-fund-me page to buy mirrors for Rosenstein and Mueller, and the love-birds (who I surmise have had their wings clipped) and others.

nmewn -> New_Meat Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:34 Permalink

As a point of interest, Rosenstein is the only one left of those who signed off on the now known to be specious FISA warrant or it's reauthorizations after this known false evidence had been submitted to a federal court.

The reauthorizations are key, they knew what the "Steele intel dossier" was by then.

And Rosenstein appointed Mueller on the basis of Comey stealing government documents and giving them to an unauthorized friend.

Basically, Mueller is illegitimate in everyone's eyes except the federal bureaucracies...hell, even one of the FISA judges recused himself after it came to light that the Hillary campaign paid Steele for what is, in essence, tabloid muck raking.

New_Meat -> nmewn Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:51 Permalink

Maybe we'll be able to afford two mirrors for Rosie, so he can be doubly sure who the bastards are.

Meanwhile, Mueller handing down these "indictments" is further making a joke of his investigation. He's surrounded himself with all of the Hillary partisans, keeping them closer. It will be worth all of the money and all of the spilled (digital) ink for the investigation to be a self-discrediting evolution.

I'll disagree with your "everyone" statement--it is only creeping to 50%. It needs to get up to landslide numbers (>60% or so) for a true black hole implosion.

That'll be fun ;-)

- Ned

SDShack -> nmewn Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:30 Permalink

Hey Bob, ever hear of Uranium One?

NumberNone -> nmewn Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:54 Permalink

This honestly looks like a surrender moment. He's saying there were bad people trying to portray Hillary in a negative light (as if anyone really needed to do that) but Trump's team were unwitting participants if they participated.

He had to show something for his work but clearly there's no trail of deliberate scheming and collusion leading to the Trump team. He even throws in the caveat that they were also working for Sanders.

Stick a fork in it..this is over and MSM once again are full of shit for all to see no matter how they spin it.

nmewn -> NumberNone Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:42 Permalink

In a land where freedom of speech is sacred, Mueller has just indicted thirteen people for exercising freedom of speech.

It will be interesting to see how those fine, freedom loving leftists try to spin a defense of him for that ;-)

Belrev -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:04 Permalink

13 Russians can influence US elections meanwhile US CIA and State Department spend $1 BIllion every year on opposition groups inside Russia without success.

curbjob -> Belrev Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:08 Permalink

"13 Russians can influence US elections meanwhile US CIA and State Department spend $1 BIllion every year on opposition groups inside Russia without success."

... and a billion is but a drop in the bucket compared to what Israel has spent influencing US elections over the last 4 decades.

Kafir Goyim -> Belrev Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:15 Permalink

Israel has built a money machine. They spend money to bribe politicians in the form of campaign contributions and PACS. They tell those politicians to vote on large aid packages to Israel. They take a small portion of the money from those aid packages and spend it to bribe politicians in the form of campaign contributions and PACS ... rinse and repeat forever. A wonderful machine that they have built for themselves to endlessly siphon blood and treasure from the USA for their benefit.

Lanka -> Kafir Goyim Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:42 Permalink

There are more than 50 Dem congressional reps that are dual citizens; start with deporting them.

FoggyWorld -> Kafir Goyim Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:57 Permalink

You left out trips to Israel for our congresspeople and their spouses to see Bethlehem up close and personal.

i poop pink ic -> Kafir Goyim Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:32 Permalink

Yes. THIS is the real scandal. Israhell using U.S. aid (U.S. taxpayer dollars) to buy off U.S. politicians who then undermine the U.S. taxpayers by increasing Israhelli control over U.S. politics.

silverserfer -> Belrev Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:16 Permalink

yes more JEW propaganda and their GOY puppets chasing their tails.

This investigation should be directed at Israel!

escapeefromOZ -> curbjob Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:37 Permalink

But according to Mueller the Zionist can buy members of Congress and the Senate , but Russian trolls are not allowed ........ ah,ah,ah,ah,

So there is the "good interference" , when it is done by the Rogue state in the Middle East and then there us the " bad " interference created by foreign trolls .

Pandelis -> Belrev Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:08 Permalink

it is like investing in bitcoin last january and getting out last december ... small cash big return - i suppose got to know how to do it.

TeethVillage88s -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:09 Permalink

Must be fake, Meuller never did anything in like 15 years as head of FBI.

ReasonForLife -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:13 Permalink

What a Mule!

BabaLooey -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:04 Permalink

Akin to trying to arrest Ivan The Terrible....

Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuler's in Dodge....Ivan's drinking vodka, watching porn and laughing...

..in a Gorky bar....

...................THIS is what we are blowing tax dollars for????

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me!

Mueller? Bueller? ..................anyone?

Justin Case -> Joe Davola Fri, 02/16/2018 - 16:12 Permalink

Concord Catering was serving Smirnoff for sure. That's very influential and definitely swayed voters. The rest on the list are back ups in case.

What a farce this witch hunt is. USSA is on cruise control and everyone is in the back of the Winnebago swinging at each other. This is neglect of the electorate and the country as it spirals into bankruptcy. (again)

Moe Hamhead -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:02 Permalink

Yeah, and it's Friday!

Moonchichi -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:33 Permalink

" Pandelis ParkAveFlasher Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:00 Permalink "

innit

shankster -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:37 Permalink

Nyet!

Dilluminati -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:38 Permalink

Defendants posted derogatory information about a number of candidates, and by early to mid-2016, Defendants' operations included supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump ("Trump Campaign") and disparaging Hillary Clinton .

(now what could these people possibly tell me about that ridiculous cunt Hillary that I didn't already know?)

divingengineer -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:56 Permalink

"13 an interesting number ... it does not signal good things for the world"

I think its more complex than that.

1 and 3 are both prime numbers, 1 X 3 = 3 a prime number. 1+3=4, not a prime number. 3+4=7, another prime number!!!

What does all this mean? I have no fucking clue.

Russian boogey men.

Croesus -> Pandelis Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:23 Permalink

"Defendants also staged political rallies inside the United States, and while posing as U.S. grassroots entities" -

Meanwhile, George Soros runs free...give me a mother****ing break.

Bastiat -> ParkAveFlasher Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:01 Permalink

Is he indicting the DNC for subverting the primaries?

Normalcy Bias -> Bastiat Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:03 Permalink

The 'Real' Russian was named Seth Rich, but since he was MURDERED, Mueller can't indict him.

silverserfer -> Normalcy Bias Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:17 Permalink

I would love to abuduct Muller and tatoo "His name was Seth Rich" on his forehead.

BigJim -> Bastiat Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:08 Permalink

No, they were Americans who did that (or, at least, "dual citizens"). "Subverting" democracy in the US is only illegal if carried out by foreign agents.

... with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar...

GUS100CORRINA -> Bastiat Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:11 Permalink

Special Counsel Robert Mueller Indicts 13 Russians For Hacking During US Election

My response: ROFL!!!! Since they (MARXIST PROGRESSIVE LIBERALS) could NOT get TRUMP, they have now decided that they are going after the RUSSIANS directly.

This action is probably really going to piss off PUTIN rightly or wrongly.

WAR DRUMS ARE BEATING AGAIN.

I now believe that a market CRASH is a real distinct possibility.

TeethVillage88s -> GUS100CORRINA Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:16 Permalink

Exactly, 17 intel agencies failed since the birth of the internet... then super icon steps in & makes them all look impotent.

- ROFLMAF

Omen IV -> Bastiat Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:18 Permalink

Mueller is cherry picking a small effect in the market place when there was huge subversion by Hillary et al - In NYC 125,000 registrations went missing and "the party in charge fired" at the Board of Elections who had direct line via family to Hillary - overwhelming number denied access to primary vote were young new residents - white people to Brooklyn - primarily Bernie voters

things elsewhere the same - Ohio / Iowa but not as much in your face

This is beginning of hit job by Mueller - is it sustainable?

Gold Pedant -> ParkAveFlasher Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:01 Permalink

...for Killary.

And afterward, thousands tried to subvert!

Thomas Paine -> ParkAveFlasher Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:03 Permalink

More likely with Russians

jfp661 -> ParkAveFlasher Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:27 Permalink

I'd like to see from Muellers analysis how many votes that swayed. Curious if it's as many as the illegal votes allowed in California. I'm sure the Russians had a huge impact in West Virginia (being sarcastic)

Bemused Observer -> khnum Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:48 Permalink

Let's allow them to hack the next one and see who they pick...maybe we should start thinking outside the box here...

God, this whole thing must just be an unending source of confusion for Putin. Guy's got to be watching this, thinking, "What the fuck is wrong with these people?". In fact, anyone expecting the US to be a source of leadership in the future has to feel like Shelley Duvall after she found out that Jack Nickolsen's months of work consisted only of typewritten sheets with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." over and over and over again...Her face as she flips through all those pages is EXACTLY how I imagine Putin's expression as he watches this unfold...

"Oh my god, it's so much worse than I ever suspected, and winter's only half over..."

. . . _ _ _ . . . Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:06 Permalink

I don't see the word "hack" anywhere except in the title.

http://theduran.com/new-evidence-shows-dnc-server-files-were-downloaded

Thebighouse Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:07 Permalink

Where are the AwAN brothers? and washermouthoutwithsoap-schultz?

Who had seth rich killed.

Why isn't podesta behind bars with obummer for interference with an election.

Why isn't the fbi focused on arresting for assault all the assholes threatening either people or institutions when

they state they want to harm them.

Mueller belongs in hell with clintons and podesta and obummer and all the politicized FBI jerks. Treason is punishable by hanging

ChanceIs -> Thebighouse Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:16 Permalink

How about where was Mueller when the Tsarnov (sp) brothers (Boston Marathon) when Vladimir warned him about them.

I see that on January 5th, somebody phoned the FBI about the soon-to-be Florida shooter. This is not to be confused with the September contact which the FBI couldn't track down.

So where was the FBI? Certainly not manning up and resigning in protest about all of the corruption anybody could see/smell on the 7th floor. Probably watching porn and whacking off on the job like so many SEC employees.

Robert Peters: SEC pornography scandal shows harms of obscene material

New York City, N.Y., Apr 24, 2010 / 07:02 am ( CNA/EWTN News ).-

The exposure of workplace pornography use at the Securities and Exchange Commission while the 2008 financial crisis was unfolding shows ........

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/robert_peters_sec_pornography_s

Dumpster Elite Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:11 Permalink

SO, according to this indictment, if I'm reading it correctly, we also need to indict every single foreigner that spoke highly, in a positive way, or tried to influence an American citizen, about Killary? Looks like a lot of indictments to be handed out to pretty much every Globalist on the planet.

Mike Masr Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:12 Permalink

I thought Mueller's job was to find out if Trump colluded with Russia.

Over a year now and he hasn't found jack shit!

So now he is going off in different directions. Small fry Russian actors on social media.

There are MUCH bigger crooks in the DOJ and FBI to catch.

Roger Ramjet Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:13 Permalink

Per the indictment, "Individuals had a strategic goal of sowing discord in the U.S. political system"

That's a crock, we really didn't need Russian help to make our political system any more broken and divided than it already is.

Come on, do you really believe the Russians were responsible for the absolute dismal choice of the two candidates we were stuck with in the last election? And that their effort made any difference in the outcome.

The indictment seems a bit of a stretch.

Full Court Lug Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:15 Permalink

LOLOLOLOLOL

Read the documents. Read what Muller is actually accusing them of:

- Buying a few thousand bucks worth of ads

- Holding a sparsely attended fake rally

- Trying to contact members of the Trump campaign without identifying themselves (this right here is the full limit of their vaunted "collusion", if it's even true)

Are any of those things even illegal? Does anyone, anywhere, actually think any of those things influenced the election in the slightest?

Meanwhile the DNC was paying Russian spies for fake intel so they could use illegally-obtained surveillance warrants to spy on US citizens and try to stage a coup on a duly-elected President.

Tick tock, mofos

Dumpster Elite -> Full Court Lug Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:19 Permalink

These indictments are basically just Mueller running out of ideas to prolong his meddling. He had to do something, or else Congress was gonna start saying, "OK, so what do you have? This has gone on long enough."

Tiger Rocks Dale Fri, 02/16/2018 - 13:42 Permalink

Look at the phrasing, "hacking the elections" which is a general term. Doesn't specify they hacked any specific voting machines. Per CNBC

  • The defendants allegedly conducted "information warfare" against the United States election process to help Donald Trump win.
  • The defendants used fake American personas, social media platforms, and other Internet media to advance their scheme, according to an indictment.

So basically trolling online. 13 Russian internet trolls swayed the ENTIRE election, therefore the entire anti-Russian rhetoric, sanctions and a new cold war is justified!.

CARONTE-RAPTOR Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:04 Permalink

20 security and espionage agencies! Hundreds of billions in counterintelligence operations around the world. A fire-armed uprising around RUSSIA! And with just 13 people a few accounts in faceboock and a few thousand dollars, what does not billions spent on political campaigns achieve ???? Damn Russians!!??

FoggyWorld -> J J Pettigrew Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:54 Permalink

Rosenstein explained it differently. He claims that these ads or whatever were done for the benefit of both candidates because Russia wanted to sow dissension and rip the US apart.

Soros did a much more effective job than that and certainly spent more than the Russians.

But Mueller doesn't chose to see things as they were and are.

hooligan2009 Fri, 02/16/2018 - 14:23 Permalink

so ...is israel about to be indicted because of the spies listed on this link?

https://govbanknotes.files.wordpress.com/2017/06/us-senators-and-repres

all libtard socialist demoNrats - except Cantor.

[Feb 16, 2018] Some defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities

Notable quotes:
"... First defendant: The Internet Research Agency. On a very ..."
"... "Fake News and Bots May Be Worrisome, but Their Political Power Is Overblown" [ New York Times ]. "Much more remains to be learned about the effects of these types of online activities, but people should not assume they had huge effects. Previous studies have found, for instance, that the effects of even television advertising (arguably a higher-impact medium) are very small. According to one credible estimate, the net effect of exposure to an additional ad shifts the partisan vote of approximately two people out of 10,000. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of numerous different forms of campaign persuasion, including in-person canvassing and mail, finds that their average effect in general elections is zero." ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

New Cold War

"The office of special counsel Robert Mueller on Friday announced indictments against 13 Russian nationals and a trio of Russian entities on charges related to the Kremlin's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election" [ Politico ]. "Charges in the indictment include conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud and aggravated identity theft "Some defendants, posing as U.S. persons and without revealing their Russian association, communicated with unwitting individuals associated with the Trump Campaign and with other political activists to seek to coordinate political activities," the indictment said." Here's the indictment . Finally we get to look at some evidence? First defendant: The Internet Research Agency. On a very quick read: The theory of the case is that the defendants used social media to "sow discord"; a search on "vot" yields zero hits.

Realignment and Legitimacy

UPDATE "Fake News and Bots May Be Worrisome, but Their Political Power Is Overblown" [ New York Times ]. "Much more remains to be learned about the effects of these types of online activities, but people should not assume they had huge effects. Previous studies have found, for instance, that the effects of even television advertising (arguably a higher-impact medium) are very small. According to one credible estimate, the net effect of exposure to an additional ad shifts the partisan vote of approximately two people out of 10,000. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of numerous different forms of campaign persuasion, including in-person canvassing and mail, finds that their average effect in general elections is zero."

"From Where I Sit, The Trump Era Began In 2014" [ FiveThirtyEight ]. "Numbers can't prove that 2014 was a pivotal year for the Trumpian political era to come, but they can show it was a year when Americans' institutional trust bottomed out, something that would come into play in 2016. A few days after the election, I wrote about the erosion of trust in American institutions over the past decade. There was a link, I wrote then, between our loss of trust and electing a man who promised to start a new American order. And in 2014, overall trust in American institutions, which started falling in the mid-2000s, hit 31 percent -- its lowest point since Gallup starting tracking the metric in 1993 . Trump's ultimately brilliant political intuition was to burrow deep into this recess of the American mind and to reflect back the sense of creeping disarray. He capitalized on racial and economic fears, but his campaign kickoff proclamation that "the American dream is dead" didn't just resonate with the people who might have voted for populist and nativist campaigns of the past. Trump's appeal was broad, resonating with the relatively well-off and the well-educated ."

UPDATE "A significant minority of Americans say they could support a military takeover of the U.S. government" [ WaPo ]. "Our research finds that, in fact, substantial numbers of U.S. adults say they would embrace ruptures in the constitutional order [and I thought I was the only one who used this term routinely], which is in keeping with Bright Line Watch findings that experts believe that measures of U.S. democracy have declined under President Trump . In 2017, about 25 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans said they favored a military intervention if the country faced rampant crime or corruption. The figure below shows the average support for a military coup when there is widespread corruption." More Third World stuff! Indeed: "U.S. public opinion on these questions resembles that of Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, countries with a history of military coups and dictatorships." Let us not, however, focus only on the military! We have an intelligence community, too!


Rob P , February 16, 2018 at 2:23 pm

Don't see anything about the DNC or Podesta hacks in the indictment. Isn't that what this whole thing was about? Changing the 'Russian hacking' meme to mean social media posts was an amazing feat of goalpost-moving.

Lambert Strether Post author , February 16, 2018 at 3:28 pm

And changing "Russian puppet" to "Russian hacking" is also impressive.

That said, there may be more shoes to drop. People who are smarter about investigations than I am can determine whether this is indicting the small fry to catch the big fish, or not. As a layperson, it's not clear to me how you do that by indicting Russians, if, as my very quick reading of the Politico story (and not the indictment), witting cooperation by the Trump campaign is ruled out. No doubt there will be a good deal of commentary to come!

DJG , February 16, 2018 at 4:00 pm

Rob P and Lambert Strether: The "vindicated" regular Democrats on my FacetoBook thread are passing around Greg Sargent's WaPo column. Sargent's summary of the indictments:

"Falsely posing as Americans to operate social media to influence voters; employing active efforts to suppress the turnout of minority groups; creating additional fictional U.S. personas to sway public opinion; purchasing large numbers of ads on social media; and much more."

Russkies? Uber? Israelis? Saudis? Tell me more. And are those fictional personas swaying our opinions, ohh, say, Apple and other tax avoiders?

Next up? The Democratic Party praying for a coup, on the assumption that their children won't be dragged off to jail to be tortured. (Ask South Americans how that worked out.)

Carolinian , February 16, 2018 at 6:18 pm

Next up? The Democratic Party praying for a coup

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/02/16/a-significant-minority-of-americans-say-they-would-support-a-military-takeover-of-the-u-s-in-the-right-circumstances/

25 percent of Dems in the poll were open to a military takeover.

foghorn longhorn , February 16, 2018 at 6:23 pm

I am pretty sure it has already occurred.

Sid Finster , February 16, 2018 at 4:33 pm

What, you think that these indicted Russians will now flip?

This is a pure PR exercise.

rd , February 16, 2018 at 5:38 pm

I think these indictments are to show credibility of a Russian issue.

I think the Popadopolous and now potentially Gates roll-ups are the missing links to connect the dots between the campaign and the ongoing operation by the Russians. This really is how organized crime investigations generally work.

I don't think the claim was ever that the campaign started the Russians doing things; simply that they were willing to work with them towards a mutual goal. This would be similar to the GOP claims about the Steele dossier; they leave out that it was begun by a conservative GOP group and Clinton only got involved when the conservatives dropped out of the race.

Sid Finster , February 16, 2018 at 4:32 pm

Worse, now it is apparently unlawful for a non-US citizen to express in public a preference with regard to a US election.

This in spite of the fact that UK and other non-US papers do so all the time, and even put their preferences out there ON THE INTERNET where innocent trusting Americans may stumble upon them. Not only that, the the Guardian even organized phone banks for Brits to call Ohio voters in key districts and urge them to vote for Team D.

Surely indictments are forthcoming, right? But let's consider the implications – does Yves need to check the citizenship status of every poster in a political thread? If not, is she aiding and abetting "fraud against the United States"? Is Yves now an unindicted co-conspirator?

Seriously, the implications of this move are terrifying. If that weren't enough, the indictment was careful to mention Bernie Sanders' name at every opportunity. The insinuation being that if you support any candidate outside the mainstream of Team D or Team R, then you are supporting ..

RUSSIA!

Jim Haygood , February 16, 2018 at 2:23 pm

Inquisitor Mueller indicts thirteen Russians:

"They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Lyin' Ted Cruz and Little Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump."

-- page 17 of Mueller's indictment

So now we know -- Bernie's candidacy was foisted on us by Russians sending thousands of tainted $27 donations. /snark

' The mountains labored, and brought forth a ridiculous mouse. ' -- Latin proverb

Carolinian , February 16, 2018 at 3:19 pm

Don't laugh. He'd better get a lawyer.

Hardball Chicago style.

MyLessThanPrimeBeef , February 16, 2018 at 3:38 pm

It's interesting only Russians were interfering.

No other foes, or friends, bothered.

Why couldn't the Russians have just sent better-looking cheerleaders from Moscow to this country? Why did they keep their armies of beauties in their Motherland?

Tom Stone , February 16, 2018 at 4:14 pm

It's not interference when Israel does it.

Sid Finster , February 16, 2018 at 5:17 pm

Hell, UK papers express their preferred outcomes for US elections all the time. And ZOMG! on the INTERNET! where innocent Americans might stumble across them and be "influenced"! ZOMG!

The Guardian even organized phonebanking campaigns to urge Ohio voters in key districts to vote Team D.

So when is the indictment coming down?

Lambert Strether Post author , February 16, 2018 at 3:44 pm

The "sowing discord" argument makes me crazy, because it's exactly like "outside agitators" in the segregated South. If only it weren't for Russian bots, "those damned n*****s voters wouldn't have gotten uppity."

I mean, does anybody really believe there was no discord in American politics before the 2016 elections and social media?

(This is not a theory of the case; something can be wrong and/or illegal even if there are no ill effects; but to my cynical mind, this is all about creating a casus belli , and that does require ill effects, I would think.)

Lee , February 16, 2018 at 3:54 pm

"Is sowing discord a crime?" I googled it and got something interesting and perhaps instructive:

http://english.khamenei.ir/news/4438/Global-arrogance-sowing-discord-among-Muslims-since-2-centuries

Carolinian , February 16, 2018 at 4:02 pm

Speaking as a Southerner I'd say you are exactly right. The assumption seems to be that simple minded voters are the puppets of rabble rousers rather than intelligent beings able to think for themselves.

foghorn longhorn , February 16, 2018 at 4:11 pm

A couple of things,
Watched a lot of russians in the Olympics over the years and these names look incredibly fake.
Usually when you drop news on a Friday afternoon of a three day weekend you want it to get buried.

MIKHAIL IVANOVICH BYSTROV,
MIKHAIL LEONIDOVICH BURCHIK,
ALEKSANDRA YURYEVNA KRYLOVA,
ANNA VLADISLAVOVNA BOGACHEVA,
SERGEY PAVLOVICH POLOZOV,
MARIA ANATOLYEVNA BOVDA,
ROBERT SERGEYEVICH BOVDA,
DZHEYKHUN NASIMI OGLY ASLANOV,
VADIM VLADIMIROVICH PODKOPAEV,
GLEB IGOREVICH VASILCHENKO,
IRINA VIKTOROVNA KAVERZINA,
VLADIMIR VENKOV
YEVGENIY VIKTOROVICH PRIGOZHIN

NotTimothyGeithner , February 16, 2018 at 4:11 pm

America was pure as snow. In fact, Russians are responsible for Jim Crow. Bear with me. The Czar, an autocrat if there ever was one, sailed the White Fleet in support of Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps, the British and French would have intervened on behalf of the CSA, thus allowing the Southern states to secede. Logic dictates this would have meant no Jim Crow. Yes, slavery would have continued, but it would be in a different country.

Summer , February 16, 2018 at 4:54 pm

"Sowing discord"

Sounds like a typical election.

lyman alpha blob , February 16, 2018 at 5:15 pm

As I'm sure NC readers are aware, there are emails from the Clinton campaign talking about calling in favors with the media to promote Trump's primary campaign , the thought being Trump would be easier for Clinton to beat.

So if manipulating the media to promote Trump is a crime

Not sure why those debunking the Russiagate nonsense haven't been pushing this more.

Sid Finster , February 16, 2018 at 5:19 pm

Because manipulating an election is OK, except when a Russian person is accused.

voteforno6 , February 16, 2018 at 3:10 pm

Re: Mueller Indictments

As noted by Rob P above, there is no mention of email hacking. Maybe that's coming later, but I doubt it. Instead, they indicted alleged Russian operators of troll farms. The implication, I guess, is that these people somehow swayed the election in favor of Trump. Some questions I have:

– What was the volume of their social media posts? How does that compare to the total volume of election-related social media posts?
– When were these posts actually made? Did they all occur prior to the election?
– Did these troll farms make any posts in favor of Clinton? Were there other Russians posting items in favor of Clinton?
– Is there any indication that these posts had any demonstrable impact on the outcome of the election?

It would be interesting to see these people go on trial. I imagine that a competent defense attorney would have fun with discovery. But, there's a part of me that suspects that these Russians were indicted, with the expectation that they won't go on trial. After all, it's a lot easier to control the narrative, when there's nobody pushing back against it.

So, what we're left with is the impression that the Russians were responsible for all the bullshirt flying around during the election. Bullshirt being, of course, anything that was anti-Hillary, or promoted an opponent of hers. All the pro-Hillary stuff doesn't count, of course. I guess I'm a Russophile for asking the question, but is this really all that they've got?

Reply
voteforno6 , February 16, 2018 at 3:30 pm

Also, I haven't read the indictment, but is there any allegation that these troll farms were acting in any capacity on behalf of the Russian government?

Reply
PKMKII , February 16, 2018 at 3:46 pm

The indictment indicates that there was some pro-Hillary posts/activity, but the bulk of it was anti-Hillary/Pro-Trump. Posts were both prior to and after the election. It doesn't look like the indictment is outright arguing that their activities swayed votes, but just that the activities violated bank/wire fraud laws (including fraud via cryptocurrencies!) and electioneering laws (which does not mean that votes were swayed; handing out flyers too close to a polling site is a violation of electioneering laws).

Looks less like the ultimate smoking gun, and more like another move, such as with Manafort, to get the small fry to tell on someone higher up.

Reply
voteforno6 , February 16, 2018 at 4:08 pm

That's the expectation for how a criminal investigation should take place. But, this is not a normal criminal investigation. The small fry in this case are Russians, and I'm not sure if indicting them has the same impact that it would for, say, a similar group of Americans. How does Mueller flip these Russians? Doesn't he have to get them into custody first?

Reply
Elizabeth Burton , February 16, 2018 at 5:43 pm

Indeed. The article on this much ado about not much done by the BBC:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said there was no allegation that any American was "a knowing participant in this illegal activity" nor was it alleged that the meddling altered the election outcome.

Which, of course, doesn't prevent the brainwashed from dancing with glee and attacking as a Trump supporter anyone who so much as points out the above. The least offensive response I've had today was that these things are incremental so this is likely just the starting point. It no longer matters whether the alleged interference had any effect on the election -- all sense of logic on this subject has evaporated even among people I know are intelligent enough they should know better.

Reply
edmondo , February 16, 2018 at 3:53 pm

So Mueller spent 12 months to come up with enough "evidence" to produce one episode of MTV's Catfish ?

Are they going to indict all those Democratic Party superdelegates who "colluded

Lambert Strether Post author , February 16, 2018 at 3:57 pm

Why I added the information on how hard it is to actually change opinion. IIRC, most of the contemporary hash tag tracking is coming from the highly dubious Hamilton68 dashboard, which is being treated as an authority even though, last I checked, they hadn't exposed their data or methods.

Adding, which is pretty funny, when you think about it; depending on whether the IRA was a contractor for the Russian government, and what its actual mission was*, the Russian government probably has a stronger case for fraud against them then Mueller does.

* Provoke a Bush-like blundering over-reaction?

PKMKII , February 16, 2018 at 4:41 pm

Putin's government overpaid for a intelligence tech contractor that promised way more than it was capable of delivering? Perhaps the Russians aren't so different from us after all.

Lee , February 16, 2018 at 4:17 pm

I guess I'm a Russophile for asking the question .

Yeah, you're sowing discord, which in some countries, other and the U.S., is a crime. Oh, wait .

ewmayer , February 16, 2018 at 5:45 pm

o "Fake News and Bots May Be Worrisome, but Their Political Power Is Overblown" [New York Times] -- Oh, I dunno, methinks the Grey lady is being far too pessimistic here. After all, the NYT's own fake-news project re. Saddam's WMDs 15 years back led to an actual large-scale hot war, $trillions in juicy defense contracts for US and foreign mercenary/logistics firms and upwards of a million dead Iraqis whose 'sacrifice', as former SoS and heroic liberal R2P goddess Madeleine Albright reminded us, was "worth it". So maybe the high-profile-ness and political connections of the fake news source might play a crucial role in its impact?

will_f , February 16, 2018 at 6:27 pm

Madeleine Albright made that comment in response to a publishing of a study which found that the US economic sanctions against Iraq resulted in the deaths of more than 500,000 children.

https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/3183zk/madeleine_albright_the_deaths_of_500000_iraqi/

Otherwise your point is valid. As Yves herself has mentioned regarding Judith Miller, the NYT did indeed publish a lot of "fake news" (also known as "propaganda") in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

[Feb 16, 2018] Meet the 13 Russians charged in Mueller probe

Was internet Reserach Agency a real company ? Here the author is thinking that they were a fake: A Brief History of the "Kremlin Trolls" by Scott Humor
Notable quotes:
"... Thirteen Russian nationals were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Three defendants were also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. Five defendants were charged with aggravated identity theft. Here's a rundown: ..."
Feb 16, 2018 | www.kgw.com
Takeaways from Mueller's indictment of Russian nationals who meddled in 2016 election

More: Information warriors: Here's how the U.S. is combating 'fake news' from Russia

The defendants are accused of working in conjunction with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which is also under indictment for allegedly conducting information operations to influence the 2016 election in the United States.

The Internet Research Agency operated what's become known as "troll farm" in Russian President Vladimir Putin's hometown that employed hundreds of English speakers to pose as Americans and gin up controversy and discord on Twitter, Facebook and other social media websites during the months leading up to the election.

The company, referred to as the "ORGANIZATION" in the indictment, "had a strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including... supporting the presidential campaign of then-candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaging Hillary Clinton," according to the indictment.

Thirteen Russian nationals were charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States. Three defendants were also charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and bank fraud. Five defendants were charged with aggravated identity theft. Here's a rundown:

Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin

Prigozhin, 56, is a businessman from St. Petersburg who's been called "Putin's chef" by Russian media because his restaurants and catering businesses have hosted dinners between Putin and foreign dignitaries.

Prigozhin is on the list of those sanctioned by the U.S., according to the Associated Press.

Prigozhin is accused of funding the Internet Research Agency, through companies he controlled -- Concord Management and Consulting, and Concord Catering -- and using them to launch operations against America. He paid the "ORGANIZATION," all the rest of the defendants and other unnamed employees, the indictment said.

Prigozhin's co-defendants arranged through social media for a U.S. person to stand in front of the White House on May 29, 2016, three days before Prigozhin's birthday, with a sign saying "Happy 55th Birthday Dear Boss."

"The Americans are very impressionable people, they see what they want to see," Prigozhin reportedly told the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti on Friday. "I have a lot of respect for them. I am not upset at all that I ended up on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

Mikhail Ivanovich Bystrov

Bystrov allegedly was named the general director of the Internet Research Agency, and served as the head of various other entities it used to mask its activities, including Glavset LLC, where he was also listed as general director.

He is accused of holding regular meetings with Prigozhin around 2015 and 2016. Bystrov is a retired police colonel, according to Voice of America.

Mikhail Leonidovich Burchik

According to the indictment, Burchik was named executive director of the "ORGANIZATION" as of March 2014, holding the second-highest ranking position. During operations to interfere in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 presidential election, Burchik was a manager involved in operational planning, infrastructure and personnel.

Burchik is described in a 2015 New York Times report as a young tech entrepreneur connected to the "Masss Post" tool used to create bulk social media postings.

Aleksandra Yuryevna Krylova

Krylova worked for the IRA from around 2013 to at least November 2014, according to the indictment, and was its third-highest ranking employee. She allegedly entered the U.S. on false pretenses in June 2014 and traveled through Nevada, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, Texas and New York to "gather intelligence."

Sergey Pavlovich Polozov

Polozov "served as the manager of the IT department and oversaw the procurement of US. servers and other computer infrastructure that masked the Russian location when conducting operations within the United States," according to the indictment.

An unnamed co-conspirator who worked for the company traveled to Atlanta in November 2016, and shared information gathered with Polozov, according to the indictment.

He traveled to the U.S. to create virtual private networks to hide his organization's ties to Russia, while communicating with U.S. citizens, the indictment said.

Anna Vladislavovna Bogacheva

According to the indictment, Bogacheva oversaw the IRA's data analysis group, and allegedly traveled through the U.S. in 2014 to gather intelligence along with Krylova.

Together with Krylova, Bogacheva planned travel itineraries, purchased equipment such as cameras, SIM cards and disposable phones and discussed security measures, including "evacuation scenarios" for defendants who traveled to the U.S., the indictment said.

Maria Anatolyevna Bovda

Bovda worked at the company from November 2013 to October 2014 as head of the translator project.

The project "focused on the U.S. population and conducted operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter," according to the indictment.

Robert Sergeyevich Bovda

Robert Bovda served as deputy head of the translator project and tried to travel to the U.S. under false pretenses to collect intelligence but could not obtain a visa, according to the indictment.

Irina Viktorovna Kaverzina

The defendant is accused of admitting her involvement in the operation and a subsequent coverup in an email to a relative in September last year, after Mueller's probe had started.

"We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity," Kaverzina allegedly wrote, "so I got preoccupied with covering tracks together with the colleagues."

She also wrote: "I created all these pictures and posts and the Americans believed that it was written by their people."

Dzheykhun "Jay" Aslanov

Aslanov was described by a manager at the ORGANIZATION's "troll farm" in St. Petersburg," according to an October interview on Moscow's Dozhd TV with former employee Alan Baskayev. Baskayev was the third former troll to identify Aslanov as a supervisor at the facility, according to the Moscow Times , which described the interview.

"Jay was a really bad manager: not the most competent in this field, well, frankly speaking, generally incompetent, but he had assistants," Baskayev told Dozhd TV.

Vadim Vladimirovich Podkopaev

Podkopaev allegedly was responsible for conducting U.S.-focused research and drafting social media content for the IRA, according to the indictment.

Gleb Igorevich Vasilchenko

Vasilchenko was allegedly "responsible for posting, monitoring, and updating the social media content" for many IRA-controlled accounts "while posing as U.S. persons or U.S. grassroots organizations."

Vladimir Venkov

Venkov allegedly "operated multiple U.S. personas, which he used to post, monitor, and update social media content," the indictment stated.

[Feb 16, 2018] BREAKING Mueller concludes Russians posted mean things on social media about Hillary Clinton

Feb 16, 2018 | theduran.com

BREAKING: Mueller concludes Russians posted mean things on social media about Hillary Clinton Mueller indicts 13 Russians and 3 companies for hacking the US election.

by Alex Christoforou February 16, 2018, 22:21 687 Views

[Feb 16, 2018] Kremlin quick to respond to Mueller's conclusion that 13 Russian nationals outsmarted America's democracy

Feb 16, 2018 | theduran.com

The indictment of 13 Russian nationals and three entities over allegations by the DOJ that Russians interfered in US elections – but "did not alter the outcome of the 2016 election" nor that any American was a knowing participant in this activity – are absurd, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday.

"13 people interfered in the US elections?! 13 against an intelligence services budget of billions? Against intelligence and counterintelligence, against the latest developments and technologies? Absurd? Yes," Zakharova wrote in a post on Facebook .

Then again, what else could she say.

Furthermore, as noted in the DOJ complaint, the funding for the Russian operation came from catering and management companies controlled by defendant Yevgeniy Viktorovich Prigozhin, a Russian businessman often referred to as "Putin's chef" in the media because his organizations had hosted dinners for Russian President Vladimir Putin and foreign leaders, the AP reported.

Prigozhin was quoted in Russian state media responding to the indictments, saying, "Americans are really impressionable people. They see what they want to see. I greatly respect them. I'm not upset at all that I am on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

This probably means that Russia will not exactly rush to extradite the 13 named officials to the US.

"Have you had any assurances by the Russians that they will provide these individuals for prosecution?"
Rosenstein: "We have no communications with the Russians about this. We will follow the ordinary process of seeking cooperation and extradition." https://t.co/oShWvKYDRW pic.twitter.com/vOT0iH6Cu0

-- CBS News (@CBSNews) February 16, 2018

[Feb 16, 2018] My favorite parts of this indictment: 1. Trump and his campaign are no longer involved, 2. the Russians did NOT influence the election, 3. they were supposedly advocating for Bernie as well as Trump.

Feb 16, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

frances , Feb 16, 2018 3:33:09 PM | 37

re:So Mueller indict russians for... talking about the american election in russia? What farce have this become? Posted by: Anon | Feb 16, 2018 3:15:09 PM | 35
Farce is certainly the operative word; two of the 13 Russians are the former head of Moscow Police and the other is a restaurateur friend of Putin.
And if there were " millions" spent then their is a financial paper trail certainly. Can't wait to see it...

My favorite parts of this indictment: 1. Trump and his campaign are no longer involved, 2. the Russians did NOT influence the election, 3. they were supposedly advocating for Bernie as well as Trump.


Lastly,so much "news" in the last few days; we have a possible Florida false flag, Russia hacking the world and now this. What are we not meant to see?? My first thought is they are moving forward with the Syrian chemical attack psy op; next week perhaps?

Anon , Feb 16, 2018 3:40:09 PM | 38
frances

Yeah, apparentlty these Russians sought to expand the political commentary and voice support for candidates, how is this even illegal? Ridiculous but this will give the anti-russia actors 100% more fuel for decades to come. That Trump will even talk with Putin is out of the question by now unfortunately. WW3 just came closer sigh.

stonebird , Feb 16, 2018 3:49:41 PM | 39
francis @37

One of the best bits about the indictement is the mention ;"arranging for a Real US person to stand in front of the White House in the district of Colombia with a sign that read; "Happy 55th birthday dear boss" (May 29, in 2016)" America must have trembled. (or maybe they were shaking with laughter?).

NemesisCalling , Feb 16, 2018 4:14:31 PM | 40
People read these accusational headlines, probably just the headlines, and it acts as a virus and penetrates the membrane of the collective subconscious, without even a moments thought to question the assertion.

In time, the virus breaks down the will of the rational consumer to weigh evidence fairly, though it is also aided by further bombardment of fake news, which increases the rate of infection. The virus then blossoms into a fairly beautiful and uniform flower with clean, geometric edges and universal appeal which catches the gaze of others and so is able to double the rate of infection from this secondary source.

This flower, the Ruskiesdidittous, is the result of haphazard propogation, though its ability to survive and thrive is notable due to a carrier population already enfeebled by a diet of Dr. Pepper and a lack of discernible vegetables.

I tremble for my countrymen.

Don Bacon , Feb 16, 2018 4:25:01 PM | 41
...adding to the remarks in #40...

The indictment includes charges not yet proven in a court of law, yet prominent Americans are treating the indictment as fact. from CNN:

>House Speaker Paul Ryan called the Russians' alleged actions "a conspiracy to subvert the process, and take aim at democracy itself." "We have known that Russians meddled in the election, but these indictments detail the extent of the subterfuge," Ryan said in a statement.

>Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement that given the indictments, Trump should "immediately" implement the Russia sanctions that Congress passed last summer to punish Moscow for its election meddling. "The administration needs to be far more vigilant in protecting the 2018 elections, and alert the American public any time the Russians attempt to interfere," Schumer said.

>House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that the indictments "make absolutely clear" that Russians tried to influence the presidential election to support Trump's campaign and continue to try to interfere with our elections. "We are on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections," the statement added. "There is no time to waste to defend the integrity of our elections and our democracy."

>Robby Mook, Clinton's former campaign manager, tweeted: "The intelligence community has repeatedly told us Russia meddled. Now criminal indictments from DOJ. We were attacked by a foreign adversary. Will our Congress and President stand strong and take action? Or let it happen again?"

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