RussiaDidIt: Cheap Meddling, Closet Marxists and Racial Tensions
By Ricardo Vaz | Investig’Action | November 2, 2017
Are you a western journalist or analyst with an issue you cannot explain? Do your symptoms include an unwillingness to learn anything from history and an unconditional embrace of western exceptionalism? Then we have just the thing for you: RussiaDidIt! Taken in the appropriate dosage, RussiaDidIt can be used for just any issue, small and large, old and new, near and far. Call your local US embassy or EU office and order your RussiaDidIt talking points. Side effects may include total paranoia, loss of credibility and a desire to wear the EU flag as a cape.
It seems like all the evils that plague the western world these days have a common cause. Brexit, Catalonia, Trump, racial tensions, the lack of credibility of the EU, all of these have a simple explanation, if we are to believe the mainstream media and pundits: Russia is behind it. And not just Russia, but Putin himself. He must be the busiest villain in history.
True journalists like Robert Parry have analysed and exposed the rise of this new McCarthyism, and how uncorroborated, or sometimes outrightly false, allegations gradually become unquestionable facts.(1)
Screenshots from the Washington Post and Politico
In this piece we examine three articles that have different angles of this RussiaDidIt approach. They have the paranoia of Russian meddling in US elections as a background, but everything applies just as well to similar stories about the EU. Inevitably it all ties back to an inability, or unwillingness, to learn anything from history, and this disgusting myth that everyone should look up to the West as a beacon of superior values. We start of course with the ineffable Guardian.
Cheap journalism and cheap meddling
One day journalism students will study the spiral of lowering standards that took hold of the Guardian. One can sense the denial taking hold of the newspaper as their liberal centrist paradise crumbles. They yearn for a knight in shining armour who can come and save them from Brexit, even if it is Tony Blair, because, believe it or not, the idea of the EU has been here since the Renaissance!(2)
As expected, the Guardian has embraced the idea that the Russians “hacked” the 2016 US elections (whatever that means) wholeheartedly. And it recently reported on new, ground-breaking revelations:
“Russian trolls posing as Americans made payments to genuine activists in the US to help fund protest movements on socially divisive issues […]
[…] the newspaper RBC published a major investigation into the work of a so-called Russian “troll factory” since 2015, including during the period of the US election campaign, disclosures that are likely to put further spotlight on alleged Russian meddling in the election.”
So far it sounds very serious. We then learn that the main “socially divisive issue” was race relations.
“RBC counted 16 groups relating to the Black Lives Matter campaign and other race issues that had a total of 1.2 million subscribers. The biggest group was entitled Blacktivist and reportedly had more than 350,000 likes at its peak.
Last month, CNN also reported that US authorities believed the Blacktivist Facebook group and Twitter account were the work of Russian impostors.”
The liberal media have often thrown these outrageous suggestions that activism like Black Lives Matter is part of a foreign agenda, as opposed to a reaction to the structural racism that exists in the US (more on this later). But the main point that needs to be addressed about this cunning plan is the following: how much did the Russians spend in these devious activities of inflaming tensions in the US? A whopping… 80,000 dollars! The Guardian thinks the activities of some alleged troll factory engaging in social media activity and paying activists a grand total of $80,000 represents unacceptable Russian “meddling”!
Billboard accusing Martin Luther King Jr. of being a communist
Let us put this number in perspective. Hillary Clinton made $3 million out of 12 speeches to big banks. The entire spending in the US presidential election was almost $2 billion. And the Guardian is worried about $80,000 worth of meddling. For comparison USAID spent $4.2 million advancing US interests in Venezuela in 2015 alone. Even if these $80,000 had been spent in a single year, it would still be 50 times smaller than what one of the US empire’s foreign policy branches spent only in Venezuela.
The Guardian piece closes by mentioning that the evil Russians also bought ads on Google and Facebook for “tens of thousands of dollars” and “$100,000”, respectively. So in essence, the Guardian is reporting that it found suspicious grains of sand in the desert.(3) It would seem Putin is not just an evil mastermind, he is also a legendary bargain hunter. It should also be clear that the tech giants are more than happy to play their part in the witch-hunt and the crusade against “fake news”, which is nothing but an attempt by the dominant classes to monopolise their control over information.
Trump is a closet Marxist!
Next we look at an opinion column which has got to be one of the most ludicrous texts ever written. At first glance it could be mistaken for satire, but it was actually written by Cass Sunstein, a professor at Harvard and former member of the Obama administration, for Bloomberg News. The title is “Russia Is Using Marxist Strategies, and So Is Trump”!
While the entire piece should be framed for posterity, we will just quote some of the highlights:
“Karl Marx and his followers argued that revolutionaries should disrupt capitalist societies by “heightening the contradictions.” Russia used a version of that Marxist idea in its efforts to disrupt the 2016 presidential campaign. […]
What is more surprising, and far more important for American politics, is that President Donald Trump is drawn to a similar strategy.
Marx contended that as the conditions of workers started to improve, they would cease to be content with their lot, or to regard their alienation as inevitable. Lenin seized on this idea and transformed it into a revolutionary strategy. […] The job of the communist revolutionary was to “heighten” or “accelerate” those contradictions.
During the 2016 campaign, Russians did something very much like that, not to produce a revolution, but to deepen and intensify social divisions (and to help elect Donald Trump).
In short, the Russians tried to foster a sense of grievance and humiliation on all sides. […] Lenin would have been proud.”
The Russian actions that Sunstein is talking about are none other than the buying of social media ads and fostering of activism that we described in the previous section. But how about that for a deep understanding of Marx and Lenin? Sunstein does try to shield himself with a footnote that says:
“I am giving a brisk summary of some famously complex and ambiguous arguments from both Marx and Lenin.” (my emphasis)
Marx, Engels, Lenin… and Trump? Cass Sunstein of Harvard University and Bloomberg News is on the maximum dosage of RussiaDidIt !
There is nothing ambiguous about Marx and Lenin. Sunstein’s argument, on the other hand, is unambiguously idiotic. The fundamental contradiction in capitalist society is that one (large) group, the working-class, sells its labour, while another one, the bourgeoisie, profits from it because it owns the means of production. These two groups have fundamentally different interests and are irrevocably at odds, this is called class struggle. Marx’s work is monumental because it was the first truly scientific analysis of the capitalist system, which meant it also explained how it could be destroyed.
The “accelerating of these contradictions” means accelerating this class conflict in order to do a little more than “disrupting” capitalism. The goal is to overthrow capitalism altogether, have the workers seize power and the means of production, and have a society free of exploitation(4) and where production is directed to satisfy human need and not the profit of capitalists. In other words, socialism.
Lenin’s contributions to Marxism, both in theory and practice, are of course way beyond the childish arguments in this piece, from his understanding of capitalism’s inevitable development into imperialism, to his development of the role of the vanguard party. Lenin and the Bolsheviks were responsible for the October Revolution of 1917, the first time that capitalism was overthrown, and the starting point for all the liberation movements that followed.
The whole argument, if it were taken seriously, would be about the strategy to “divide and conquer”, which has nothing to do with Marxism. Just like Trump, the real-estate mogul and reality-TV star, has nothing Marxist about him. If anything, Trump is the highest embodiment of western capitalism.
Surely among the vast libraries at Harvard there must be a “Marx for dummies” book that Professor Sunstein can read. But of course, writing these disingenuous pieces is much easier. The goal of course is to simultaneously push the RussiaDidIt argument and discredit a true alternative to the (capitalist) system, which has nothing to do with Hillary Clinton and a lot (or everything!) to do with Marx and Lenin.
Black Power and Red Baiting
The final article we wish to examine appeared in The Atlantic magazine, and it focuses on the long history of Russia’s “involvement in America’s race wars”. First of all, for a country with a history of slavery and segregation of African-Americans, not to mention the internment of Japanese-Americans during WW2, the term “race wars” seems like an awful understatement. One thing that actually has not changed is the red-baiting practices of the mainstream media, accusing anyone who deviates from the approved narrative of being a Soviet/Russian agent.
The article explores the history of the Soviet Union taking advantage of racial injustice in the United States for propaganda purposes. How dare those commies bring up the plight of black people in the US? Anyone who knows a bit of history knows that this is not entirely out of place. For example, in the struggle against apartheid, notably in the war in Angola, the US was on the side of apartheid South Africa and the Soviet Union was on the side of the Angolans (and of black South Africans), even if their hand might have been forced by the Cubans.
Soviet posters about the struggle against colonialism: Left: “Capitalism is doomed!” (Artsrunyan, 1966); Right: “People of Africa Will Overpower the Colonizers!” (Kukryniksy, 1960)
There is plenty to be said about the Soviet Union’s foreign policy, but the fact is that there was not a single liberation struggle in the Third World in which the Soviet Union was on the side of the oppressor/colonist and the US on the side of the liberation movement. In fact it is the opposite that was true in most cases, if not all.
This takes us to the crux of the matter. According to historian Mary Dudziak, quoted in this piece,
“Early on in the Cold War, there was a recognition that the U.S. couldn’t lead the world if it was seen as repressing people of color,”
Dudziak and all these analysts and journalists take for granted that the US, and the west in general, are supposed to lead the world. According to them, these issues of treating black people as second class citizens are a problem mainly because they make the US look bad, and its noble mission of spreading freedom and democracy becomes much harder! It would seem that if racism was a little more polite (or if the Soviets did not bring it up!), then the Sandinistas would have been happy with Somoza, the Viet Cong would have had nothing to fight for, etc.
This unquestioned embrace of US exceptionalism, coupled to a complete ignorance of history, is what ensures that these analysts completely miss the point. For them, people rejecting and resisting US imperialism, or rejecting the EU after years of austerity policies, is just a misunderstanding, which needs to be explained by nonsense such as RussiaDidIt. Had these people actually read Marx and Lenin, as opposed to spewing these idiocies, they would understand that backlash against neoliberalism, or resistance against US imperialism, is to be expected. And there is no amount of fancy speeches by the likes of Obama, saying “freedom” and “democracy” in every other sentence, that will fix that.
The loyal flag-bearers of the imperial establishment are outraged at the idea of someone paying $80,000 to US activists, but the US spending tens of millions funding NGOs and political parties all over the world is more than natural. They are outraged that RT reports on Occupy Wall Street or Ferguson, but Voice of America and Radio Martí are supposed to be welcomed by the rest of the world. Because they stand for the better values… Apart from all the death and misery that is caused by US imperialism, it is this belief in American exceptionalism that makes the US so despised around the world.
Finally, we should stress that our argument is not whataboutism. We are not saying that this issue in place X should not be discussed because there is this other issue in the US. Outlets like RT and Sputnik should have their editorial lines and journalism standards analysed and criticised. The same holds true for Russia’s foreign policy. But, paraphrasing someone who was also accused of being a Soviet agent, it cannot be the greatest purveyor of meddling in the world and media outlets with ever lowering standards bringing these charges forward and pretending to be the Guardians of truth.
Notes
(1) We have also written on the ridiculous report published by the CIA, FBI and NSA on the Russian “hacking” of US elections.
(2) One wonders why the EU is symbolised by the Medici paying Leonardo da Vinci or by Erasmus and Thomas More being friends and not, for example, by the bubonic plague or Lucrezia Borgia’s antics. You know what else was common to all of Europe before the EU? The slave trade.
(3) More recently the Guardian published another bombshell piece, saying that Russia’s Facebook posts reached 126 million Americans. But we are talking about 80,000 posts, only 0.004% of news feed content according to Facebook, during a two year period. The big number is perfect for propaganda, but conveniently it is not made clear whether 126m different users saw the posts, or if for example 10m users on average saw 120 of these posts.
(4) We should clarify that exploitation does not mean having an evil boss that pays low salaries and forces workers to work weekends. Workers in capitalism are exploited simply because there is a value difference between what they earn and what they produce. In other words, profit comes from unpaid labour. Exploitation is the foundation of capitalism and should not be framed in moral terms, which imply that the problem is not the system but a matter of finding “good capitalists”.
Manafort Indictment Underwhelms, Poses No Immediate Threat to Trump
By Jerri-Lynn Scofield | Naked Capitalism | November 2, 2017
On Monday, special counsel Robert Mueller indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and business partner Richard Gates on twelve counts, including conspiracy against the United States and conspiracy to launder money, and various charges of failure to file Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), and failure to register as a foreign agent, concerning activities in the Ukraine that ended in 2014. (Read the indictment here.)
I’m not alone in pointing out that absent Manafort’s involvement in Trump’s campaign, his failure to register as a foreign agent– would not have been targeted, as many lobbyists are not conscientious in fulfilling this reporting requirement. See, for example, this National Review account:
The offense of failing to register as a foreign agent (Count Ten) may be a slam-dunk, but it is a violation that the Justice Department rarely prosecutes criminally. There is often ambiguity about whether the person’s actions trigger the registration requirement, so the Justice Department’s practice is to encourage people to register, not indict them for failing to do so.
Much has been made of the absence of any tax charges in the present indictment, one which alleges conspiracy to commit money laundering. The lawyers I spoke to weren’t unduly concerned about such seemingly missing counts, pointing out that the indictment can be amended later to include tax charges, as investigations proceed.
In fact, this indictment should probably be read as a warning shot– the first step in a lengthy, wide-ranging investigation. I was reminded by one lawyer I spoke to yesterday that special prosecutors have virtually limitless powers, and certainly no major lobbyist could expect to survive unscathed the level of scrutiny that will be brought to bear in this investigation.
Unsurprisingly, the New York Times published a piece reinforcing that line, Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s Legal Pit Bull, that reads like the work of a legal fanboy, and the message of which is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid:
Two decades later, Mr. Weissmann has turned his attention to a more prominent set of prospective conspirators: He is a top lieutenant to Robert S. Mueller III on the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible links to the Trump campaign. Significantly, Mr. Weissmann is an expert in converting defendants into collaborators — with either tactical brilliance or overzealousness, depending on one’s perspective.
It is not clear if President Trump and his charges fear Mr. Weissmann as they gird for the slog ahead. It is quite clear, former colleagues and opponents say, that they should.
The million dollar question: Will this implicate or threaten Trump? So far, I think no. But we must all stay tuned– and pass the popcorn.
Bottom Line for Trump
One goal in indicting Manafort was to force him to give up the goods on Trump regarding alleged Russian collusion in the election campaign. Yet the offenses alleged in the indictment concerned activities in the Ukraine during a specific time period ending before Manafort’s campaign involvement. (The indictment also include a charge of making false statements to prosecutors in 2016, concerning these earlier activities.)
As the Wall Street Journal opined:
The most striking news is that none of this involves the 2016 election campaign. The indictment makes clear that Mr. Manafort’s work for Ukraine and his money transfers ended in 2014. The 2016 charges are related to false statements Mr. Manafort made to the Justice Department.
There’s reason to think Manafort might not have such goods to deliver. Recall that Trump initially brought Manafort into his campaign in March 2016, elevated him to campaign manager in June, and tied [cut loose] him in August, according to The Washington Post.
Now, there’s no denying that Manafort kept some very sleazy company (see, for example, this September post from John Helmer). The Journal noted (drily): “Mr. Manafort has lobbied for a rogues gallery of dictators, with the occasional domestic scandal (HUD contracts).” But lobbying on behalf of unsavory foreign clients isn’t per se illegal (reminding me of Michael Kinsley’s quip, “The scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the scandal is what’s legal”.)
The Journal further notes:
One popular theory is that Mr. Mueller is throwing the book at Mr. Manafort so he will cop a plea and tell what he knows about Russian-Trump campaign chicanery. But that assumes he knows something that to date no Congressional investigation has found. Prosecutors typically try to turn witnesses before they indict, and Messrs. Manafort and Gates pleaded not guilty on Monday.
Issues With Manafort Indictment
In the interests of keeping this post of readable length, I’m going to limit my focus.
The National Review account cited above is worth reading in full. I am of course aware of the ideological slant of that publication, but I found little to fault in its analysis– admittedly, making the case for the defense and summarized thus: “On first glance, Mueller’s case, at least in part, seems shaky and overcharged.” Since Manafort has pleaded not guilty, he can and will draw on high-priced legal talent that will certainly make these and similar arguments, zeroing in on weaknesses in the government’s case.
In particular, while even this National Review account concedes that the failure to register as a foreign agent seems to be a slam-dunk (leaving aside the clear political motivation of taking a particularly Javertian line on this lapse), whether this will result in a win for the government isn’t wholly clear, due to possible prosecutorial overreach:
Specifically, Congress considers false statements in the specific context of foreign-agent registration to be a misdemeanor calling for zero to six months’ imprisonment. (See Section 622(a)(2) of Title 22, U.S. Code.) That is the offense Mueller charges in Count Eleven. But then, for good measure, Mueller adds a second false-statement count (Count Twelve) for the same conduct — charged under the penal-code section (Section 1001 of Title 18, U.S. Code) that makes any falsity or material omission in a statement to government officials a felony punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
Obviously, one cannot make a false statement on the foreign-agent registration form without also making a false statement to the government. Consequently, expect Manafort to argue that Mueller has violated double-jeopardy principles by charging the same exact offense in two separate counts, and that the special counsel is undermining Congress’s intent that the offense of providing false information on a foreign-agent registration form be considered merely a misdemeanor.
Possible Fourth Amendment Violations Taint Manafort Evidence?
Continuing with another potential defense argument, I’ll mention another possible problem with the government’s case, discussed in a Rachel Stockman opinion piece published by LawNewz. Again, lest I be accused of pro-Manafort or– shudder– pro-Trump bias, I want to emphasize if I can spot these issues and develop such arguments, based on on-line research, assorted back and forth email exchanges, and telephone calls conducted over the last couple of days, certainly Manafort’s defense team will do this and more– so please do not shoot your humble messenger.
While calling the indictment “very detailed and well-documented” Stockman continued:
… there is one area that could hurt Mueller’s investigation. Mueller’s team may have obtained evidence in the raid of Paul Manafort’s home that was not covered by the search warrant. That could be problematic.
In a surprise raid on July 26th, FBI agents busted into Manafort’s home in Alexandria, Virginia to collect documents and other materials related to the FBI probe into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians. At the time, Manafort’s attorney raised concerns about how the raid was conducted. In order for the feds to obtain a warrant, a federal judge would have to determine that probable cause existed that a crime was committed. As part of the warrant, investigators attached an affidavit which contained a list of items that FBI agents hoped to collect. That’s where the trouble appears to be in Manafort’s case.
The key issue is whether this constituted an illegal search, and exactly what was seized. Here, the Stockman piece relies on a September CNN report:
During that raid, Mueller’s investigators took documents considered to be covered by attorney-client privilege, sources told CNN.
Lawyers from the WilmerHale law firm, representing Manafort at the time, warned Mueller’s office that their search warrant didn’t allow access to attorney materials. The documents in question have now been returned, the sources say.
The episode raised questions about whether investigators have seen materials they weren’t entitled to obtain.
“You can’t unsee something,” one source said.
It’s not an uncommon problem in FBI investigations. US attorneys typically have separate document-review teams to prevent investigators from handling materials they aren’t allowed to have. It’s not clear what procedures Mueller’s office uses.
I’m not taking a position on this issue one way or another, but merely flagging this as a potential problem for the government’s case.
Attorney-Client Privilege Pierced
Finally, I’d like to mention a another LawNewz opinion piece, this by Elura Nanos, which spotlights a potential problem for the defense. The piece discusses a Memorandum Opinion, unsealed at the end of October, in which D.C. federal district court chief judge Beryl A. Howell compelled grand jury testimony from a lawyer representing Manafort and Gates under the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege. The attorney-client privilege isn’t absolute, and judges can order an attorney’s testimony if it falls within certain exceptions.
Over to Nanos:
Now we know that the grand jury proceedings culminated in indictments, and Judge Howell’s ruling on the this motion to compel testimony is more than a little foreshadowing. The Court’s opinion on this issue allows us to peek into the generally secret grand jury proceedings, and that peek isn’t looking so good for the defendants.
Now, frustratingly, Judge Howell’s opinions was heavily redacted– interested readers may wish to click the link above to see just how extensively for themselves. I’ll again rely on the Nanos account which lays out the key concern:
The court’s memorandum was heavily redacted, so at this point, it’s unclear which statements the judge meant, but this portion of the document sure sounds bad for the defendants:
“… the above statement is false, a half-truth, or at least misleading because evidence shows that Target 1 and Target 2 were intimately involved in significant outreach in the United States on behalf of the ECFMU, the Party of Regions and/or the Ukrainian government.”
Yeah, things can change at trial, but even at a preliminary phase, it’s not good for a judge to make a finding that you’re “intimately involved” in sinister foreign misdealings. Oh, and there was also this:
“Through its ex parte production of evidence, the [Special Counsel’s Office] has clearly met its burden of making a prima facie showing that the crime-fraud exception applies by showing that the Targets were “engaged in or planning a criminal or fraudulent scheme when [they] sought the advice of counsel to further the scheme.”
Those seven little letters should strike fear in the hearts of Manafort, Gates, and their lawyers. The SCO hasn’t just met its burden – it’s done so clearly. Allow me to translate from judge-to-English: “You guys are screwed. Take a plea or watch everyone around you– even your own lawyers — go down.”
For more in a similar vein lauding Mueller’s “serious, deliberative, and far-sighted inquiry”, see this Atlantic account, which extensively discusses the plea agreement of Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulus– and which I lack space to discuss further in this Manafort indictment post.
Trump Response
I’d like to point to a New York Times piece, headlined In Call With Times Reporter, Trump Projects Air of Calm Over Charges that suggests that Trump is managing to keep it together, and dare I say it, respond to the Manafort indictment in a ‘presidential’ way– in the traditional pre-Trumpian sense of that word.
Permit me to quote from the Grey Lady’s account at length:
President Trump projected an air of calm on Wednesday after charges against his former campaign chief and a foreign policy aide roiled Washington, insisting to The New York Times that he was not “angry at anybody” and that investigations into his campaign’s links to Russia had not come near him personally.
“I’m not under investigation, as you know,” Mr. Trump said in a brief telephone call late Wednesday afternoon. Pointing to the indictment of his former campaign chief, Paul Manafort, the president said, “And even if you look at that, there’s not even a mention of Trump in there.”
“It has nothing to do with us,” Mr. Trump said.
He also pushed back against a report published Monday night by The Washington Post, which the president said described him as “angry at everybody.”
“I’m actually not angry at anybody,” Mr. Trump told The Times.
The phone call seemed intended to dispel the impression of a president and a White House under siege. The indictment of Mr. Manafort and his longtime deputy, Rick Gates, on Monday came as little surprise to Mr. Trump or his team, and they were relieved that the charges were not directly related to last year’s campaign. Instead, both were indicted on charges including money laundering, tax evasion and failing to properly disclose lobbying on behalf of foreign governments.
Jerri-Lynn Scofield has worked as a securities lawyer and a derivatives trader. She now spends much of her time in Asia and is currently working on a book about textile artisans.
Zero evidence, but… DOJ source says it ‘knows identities of Russians involved in DNC hack’
RT | November 2, 2017
Just days after the Mueller investigation came up short on Kremlin involvement in the US presidential election, a source in the Department of Justice says the names of the Russians who hacked the DNC computers are known, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In yet another effort to make a connection between the Kremlin and Hillary Clinton’s loss in the November 2016 US presidential elections, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department “has identified more than six members of the Russian government involved in hacking the Democratic National Committee’s computers and swiping sensitive information.” The leaked materials divulged a mountain of unsavory information related to the Clinton campaign.
Although relations between the world’s two preeminent nuclear powers hang in the balance over the charges, the accusations about “Russian meddling” in the US democratic process come without the outlet offering any evidence to support the claims. This much was admitted by the authors of the WSJ article early in the report.
“US intelligence agencies have attributed the attack to Russian intelligence services, but haven’t provided detailed information about how they concluded those services were responsible, or any details about the individuals allegedly involved,” authors Aruna Viswanatha and Del Quentin Wilber wrote.
Curiously, the US mainstream media has only shown interest in pursuing the “Russian hack” narrative regarding the release of thousands of the DNC’s emails, which were made public by WikiLeaks last year. Yet there were possible other suspects in this case, not least of all Seth Rich, former Voter Expansion Data Director, who was gunned down on July 10, 2016, in Washington DC.
WikiLeaks offered $20,000 reward for information regarding Rich’s death, while saying their offer should not be taken as implying Rich had been involved in leaking information to them. At the same time, however, WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, stated emphatically that Russia was not the source of the DNC data leak.
“We can say, we have said, repeatedly over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party,” he said in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
Nevertheless, despite providing zero evidence to support these extremely severe charges, the Obama administration took the unprecedented step of expelling 35 Russian diplomats right before the New Year, and the changing of the presidential guard, as well as imposing sanctions.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time the Wall Street Journal has produced “evidence” allegedly incriminating Russia in some conspiracy, only to be debunked later.
In early October, the influential business newspaper reported that the Russian government used software, created by the Moscow-based company Kaspersky Lab, to “secretly scan computers around the world for classified U.S. government documents and top-secret information.”
Without identifying its sources, WSJ accused the respected anti-virus company of being aware of “an adjustment to its normal operations,” allowing the company to search for terms as broad as “top secret,” as well as the “classified code names of US government programs.”
These accusations were immediately refuted by Germany’s BSI federal cyber agency.
“There are no plans to warn against the use of Kaspersky products since the BSI has no evidence for misconduct by the company or weaknesses in its software,” BSI said in an emailed response to questions about the latest media reports. “The BSI has no indications at this time that the process occurred as described in the media.”
The unsubstantiated report by the WSJ comes as Robert Mueller’s investigation into “Russian interference” in the 2016 presidential election has failed to turn up any evidence.
Attempts by US investigators to find alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump’s campaign have led to the discovery of a “Ukrainian trail,” Russia’s FM Sergey Lavrov said, suggesting Washington should now investigate Kiev’s role.
Over the past several years, Washington has attempted to blame any negative world events on Russia, “be it political protests, companies going bankrupt, or man-made disasters,” Lavrov said. “I’ve already heard we’ll soon be not only interfering in elections, but also manipulating the environment in order to create floods,” he added.
US Lawmaker demands RT YouTube ban during Russia hearing
At a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, Rep. Jackie Speier (D-California) put RT in her crosshairs, asking Kent Walker, the general counsel at Google, why his company has not yet banned RT from YouTube.
Walker said that Google “carefully” reviewed RT’s history on the social media platform and said they have “not found violations of our policies against hate speech and incitement to violence and the like.”
“It’s a propaganda machine, Mr. Walker,” Speier interjected. “The Intelligence Community – all 17 agencies – says it’s an arm of one of our adversaries. I would like for you to take that back to your executives and rethink continuing to have it on your platform.”
Walker responded that Google is looking into ways to increase transparency for “all government-funded sources of information.”
However, when Walker would not agree to the lawmaker’s wishes, Speier asked him if Google would at least consider putting a disclaimer on RT’s YouTube page that would say: “the Intelligence Community in the United States believes it’s an arm of our adversary, Russia.”
Walker said that they would “take a look at all forms of transparency.”
Speier also claimed that during the 2016 election, President Donald Trump’s campaign was “mimicking” stories from RT. Specifically, she referenced a video from CNN that was posted to Trump’s Twitter account on August 31, 2016. The tweet featured Trump speaking before a crowd and questioning former secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s “strength and stamina.”
Speier said RT “hammered” the same message, comparing Trump’s tweet to a video posted to RT’s Twitter account, which featured footage of Clinton stumbling at the 9/11 memorial on September 11, 2016. Clinton’s campaign repeatedly changed its story as to the circumstances of Clinton’s fall at the time.
“What I would like to understand is who is mimicking who,” Speier asked, without acknowledging that Clinton’s stumble was covered by every major media outlet.
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-California) also appeared to be grasping at straws during the hearing when he called out RT for reporting an event that was covered by other major news agencies.
Swalwell pointed to a July 2016 report about Ted Cruz being booed at the Republican National Convention (RNC) and suggested that the factual story, which was widely reported, could somehow be interpreted as election meddling or “propaganda.”
Referencing a large poster board display of an RT tweet promoting the story, Swalwell concluded that “if this interference campaign has taught us anything, it’s that the Russians don’t care.”
“They’re not pro-Republican, they’re not anti-Democrat, they’re just pro-Russian,” Swalwell said, warning his Republican colleagues that they could be targeted in the next election.
However, Swalwell failed to mention that the story about Cruz was entirely true and carried by numerous media outlets.
Swalwell also asked if RT made any money on the ads they posted.
“The same is true beyond the internet, of course, because RT is featured on cable stations, satellite stations, hotel television networks, they buy advertising in newspapers, magazines, airports, etc,” Walker said.
Walker then went on to explain that the money comes from advertisers and Google gets a small percentage of that money while the majority goes to the publisher.
House Intelligence Committee members accusing RT of being “fake news” were only able to point to accurate and widely reported stories on the network, during the hearing with social media executives on alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.
‘Red flag’
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-Alabama) directed most of her questions to Facebook, suggesting that it should have been a “red flag” that some of the ads in question were paid for in Russian rubles.
In response, Colin Stretch, the general counsel at Facebook, said that all ads on the social media platform go through “a combination of automated and manual review.”
Sewell, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, interrupted Stretch at that point, seemingly distracted from the official purpose of the hearing.
Instead of pursuing a line of questioning about Russia, Sewell asked who vets material posted on Facebook and if they are a “diverse group of people.”
Stretch explained that Facebook has vetters speaking a “number of languages” based “around the globe” adding that the company is “committed to building a workforce that is as diverse as the community we serve.”
“With all due respect, I have to stop you there,” Sewell interrupted again. “I don’t know if you know exactly how many racially diverse workforce that you have, what the percentage is, but I can tell you if you don’t know. It’s very low.”
Sewell went on to say that Facebook’s overall racial ethnicity was poor, with black employees making up 8.8 percent of the total workforce and only 2.3 percent of the leadership roles.
Later in the hearing, Sewell asked all three companies if they would agree with legislation that would require them to add a disclosure of who paid for any given ad.
The executives from all three companies responded by saying they were in agreement with the “general direction” of that notion, to which the other two companies agreed.
In October, lawmakers introduced the Honest Ads Act, which would subject social media outlets to the same transparency and disclosure laws as television and radio ads.
Wait, how do Facebook ads work?
When Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio) took the floor, he asked how each of the companies helped RT target the audience that would see their ads.
Sean Edgett, the acting general counsel at Twitter, said the company did not have much of an interaction with RT and most of the ads were promoted content.
“So, they take a tweet of a news story and they promote it so that it is seen by users who don’t follow them and potentially want to drive viewership to their own platform or then have them follow back,” Edgett explained.
Edgett went on to explain that RT used “very general targeting,” which included US citizens who follow other media or news organizations. He added that the RT en Español account specifically targets users in California and Florida.
When asked if Facebook was aiding RT, Stretch said that all of the ads that the company has released to the committee were bought through their “self-serve ad platform,” adding that there was “no human interaction with any of the advertisers.”
Read more:
Twitter: Speaking Russian, Having Russian IP Makes You a Kremlin Shill
Sputnik – 02.11.2017
During testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, a representative of Twitter admitted that his company discovered alleged Russian election interference on their platform by flagging every account with Russian text, email, phone, IP address and so on as a potential agent of the Kremlin.
It sounds like we’re making this up, but we aren’t. This statement came from the mouth of Twitter’s Acting General Counsel Sean Edgett as he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We’re looking at things like, whether they registered in Russia, do they have a Russian phone number, are they on a Russian mobile carrier, do they have a Russian email address, are they coming in from a Russian IP, have they ever… logged in at any time from Russia?” Edgett testified.
In other words, Russian shills include anyone who bought a phone in Russia, lives in Russia, used Twitter in Russia, does business in Russia or with Russians. You’re probably a Russian shill just for reading this article, according to Twitter.
Perhaps the most telling comment was in Edgett’s written testimony that was submitted to the Senate. It read that accounts with “Russian language or Cyrillic characters [that appear] in the account information or name” were also flagged as “Russia-linked.” (Emphasis ours.)
Although this should probably go without saying, speaking Russian does not make you Russian — and being Russian does not make you a servant of Vladimir Putin. Virtually every former Soviet Socialist Republic has a large percentage of Russian speakers among their population.
It isn’t just the former Soviet Union. There are 3 million speakers in Germany (a holdover from East Germany) and about 1 million in Israel (a result of the diaspora of Russian Jews after the Soviet Union collapsed.) Some 850,000 Americans have Russian as their primary household language. If any of them thought to type something Russian on Twitter, they are now Kremlin shills. Oops.
But wait, there’s more. Cyrillic is the alphabet used in the Russian language — as well as the national languages of countries such as Ukraine (a US ally) Bulgaria and Montenegro (NATO members alongside the US). It is the alphabet of the languages of dozens of ethnic groups in Central Asia, as well as the Dungan and Uyghur peoples of China.
It’s also the alphabet of the language of the Yupik people — the vast majority of whom live in reservations in Alaska, US of A. Truly, the network of Kremlin interference is frightening, that an entire ethnic group of American Indians have become their election-jacking puppets. There are, of course, already allegations that Russians somehow infiltrated or co-opted the Standing Rock Sioux protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline last year.
Twitter also admitted to censoring (or “taking action… to fight automation and spam on our platform,” in their parlance) hashtags that related to the WikiLeaks release of the private emails of Hillary Clinton campaign chair John Podesta in October as well as emails from the Democratic National Committee in July. Twenty-five percent of all tweets tagged #PodestaEmails were automatically hidden, and 48 percent of tweets tagged #DNCLeak met the same fate.
Again, this is not a Pepe Silvia-esque conspiracy theory. These are statements taken directly from sworn testimony from Twitter’s official representative.
Putin, Trump and Manafort
By Margaret Kimberley | Black Agenda Report | November 1, 2017
The American propaganda campaign being waged against the Russian Federation and its president Vladimir Putin has reached a stage of perverse perfection. It is virtually impossible to put forth a dissenting opinion that will be accepted or considered worthy of consideration. The Democrats are leading the charge to silence and censor and they are getting buy-in from people who otherwise consider themselves to be progressive.
This columnist has been interviewed on Radio Sputnik on two occasions. That fact should not be at all noteworthy but in the current atmosphere of Russophobia being pushed by the corporate media and Democratic politicians, it is a risky statement to make. Sputnik International is a Russian government entity, just as the BBC is “state run media” on behalf of the British government and the CBC for Canada. But anyone and anything connected to Russia gets the double standard treatment and is targeted for attack.
Marcus Ferrell was until recently a campaign staffer for Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. He resigned after the Atlanta Journal Constitution revealed that he had been a guest on the program By Any Means Necessary which is hosted by Sputnik. Ferrell didn’t discuss Russia at all. Confederate monuments were the topic of conversation. But the level of fear is so great that he felt compelled to resign. His boss made no effort to fight against the tide and she didn’t defend him either.
Every day a new shoe drops in this faux scandal. Twitter announced that it would not accept advertisements from Sputnik or RT, formerly known as Russia Today. Sputnik had never even paid for ads on Twitter but why be bothered by facts when ginned up phony outrage is so readily available.
It is Democrats who demanded that Facebook and Twitter stop telling the truth about Eastern European click bait schemes and instead join in that party’s witch hunt. Now we are told that Russian social media posts meant to influence American politics reached 126 million people on Facebook over a two-year period. Of course the last paragraphs of that story reveal that only one out of 23,000 pieces of content actually reached anyone. That fact is too inconvenient and makes for a bad headline.
While social media giants are submitting to marching orders, the state and corporate sponsored Public Broadcasting System (PBS) produced its second anti-Putin documentary in as many years. First “Putin’s Way” in 2015 and now “Putin’s Revenge” feature so-called experts who outdo one another in stoking anti-Russian flames. PBS can never seem to find any expert who can make counter arguments.
While the corporate media compete to see who can dumb down the country the fastest, the legal wheels are turning to get Trump out of office and Russia is the pretext for the action. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort has been indicted for tax fraud. His indictment is just the beginning of the bipartisan effort to end the Trump presidency. They hope to resume doing the elites’ business without hindrance from the man who is so bad for the neoliberal brand.
Nothing matters to liberals more than getting Trump out of office. Their juvenile political understanding was turned upside down by Hillary Clinton’s defeat and they haven’t been the same since. They are obsessed with the man they hate. They have been fed a steady diet of red meat which explains away their illusions about the failed Democratic Party and the fact that millions of their fellow citizens don’t see the world the way they do.
Paul Manafort was a long time Republican Party operative going back to the days of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign. He used his connections to become a lobbyist, a hired gun for governments ranging from Nigeria to the Philippines to Kenya to Romania to Ukraine. Manafort would not be facing serious legal jeopardy if he hadn’t taken on that particular gig.
We are told that Ukraine’s former president Victor Yanukovich was “pro Russian” and that Manafort’s representation proves Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign. Neither statement is true but no one knows outside of the small circle of people who make herculean efforts to educate themselves about world affairs.
As the old saying goes, the fix is in. Manafort is just the first notch on former FBI director Robert Mueller’s gun. He will go after other Trump connected cronies and relatives who have done shady business but that won’t be the reason for the pursuit. There are many sleazy American lobbyists and business people but no one cares until there is a moment when their downfall is politically useful.
Free speech is being undermined, the left are losing their access to media and prosecutors are going after crooks, but not because they want justice to be done. If Putin was trying to destroy America he couldn’t do a better job than the media, crooked politicians and the deluded liberals who all work together.
Margaret Kimberley can be reached via e-Mail at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.
UK PM Takes Russia’s Alleged Attempts to Intervene in Elections ‘Very Seriously’
Sputnik – 01.11.2017
UK Prime Minister Theresa May has voiced London’s concern over Russia’s alleged attempts to interfere in the electoral or democratic processes of any country.
“We take very seriously issues of Russian intervention or Russian attempts to intervene in the electoral processes or in the democratic processes of any country,” May told the House of Commons.
The British prime minister’s statement comes in the wake of the ongoing investigation in the US into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election dubbed a “witch hunt” by Donald Trump.
Asked if the UK authorities were cooperating with US Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his inquiry into Russia’s alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, May pointed out that London was working closely with Washington.
“As part of that relationship, we do cooperate when required,” May said.
The statement comes amid the launch of a UK Electoral Commission investigation into the funding of the campaign supporting Brexit by a pro-Leave campaigner.
Russia’s Alleged Meddling
Moscow has repeatedly denied Russia’s interference in the US election which is being investigated separately by US Congress and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller, calling the claims “groundless” and “absurd.”
In the wake of US media reports claiming about the alleged Russia’s meddling in the November 2016 election, media outlets in several European countries, including France and Germany, have began speculating about Moscow’s “attempts” to interfere in their countries’ affairs.
Commenting on the growing number of foreign states’ accusations of alleged attempts by Moscow to undermine democracy, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called the claims ridiculous, emphasizing that there was no proof that Russia was involved in the election processes of the United States, Germany, France, or the United Kingdom.
READ MORE:
UK Electoral Commission Opens Probe Into Brexit Campaigner Banks
German Election: Futile Hunt for ‘Russian Meddling’ Continues
France Finds No Traces of Russian Hackers in Attack on Macron’s Campaign
First Indictment in Russiagate: Special Counsel Not Up to the Task
Strategic Culture Foundation | 01.11.2017
Special Counsel Robert Mueller, the “Russiagate” investigator aided by a team of seasoned prosecutors, has launched the first wave of charges. The indictment of Paul Manafort, the veteran GOP operative who once chaired Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and his former longtime business associate Rick Gates, went public on October 30. It made Russia’s alleged meddling into the 2016 US presidential election hit media headlines but they happened to be wrong. It wasn’t Russia the indictment was about.
In May, Robert Mueller was appointed Special Counsel of the Russia probe. He was given a mandate to investigate “any links and/or coordination” between the Russian government and Trump campaign associates. Surprising or not, the indictment does not mention either Trump nor Russia! The story is about Ukraine. Paul Manafort had ties with Ukraine’s Party of Regions, which was considered as a “pro-Moscow” political force. That’s the only “Russia connection.” Everything related to Manafort pertains to the period before he started to work for Donald Trump. And Rick Gates has never had any relation to the incumbent president or his team.
The text of indictment prepared by the one who media have often called the best US investigator is fraught with speculations, inaccuracies and mistakes to make the horse laugh.
For instance, Manafort’s indictment (Item 22, page 15) states very seriously that Yulia Tymoshenko had served as Ukraine’s President prior to Yanukovych! It takes a few seconds to have a look at the list of Ukraine’s presidents to find out that Yulia Timoshenko has never been the holder of the highest office.
Another indictment says Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, a cooperating witness, had repeatedly contacted individuals tied to the Russian government in an attempt to broker a meeting with Kremlin officials. Who do you think he met? “Putin’s niece” in flesh and blood! She was supposed to help him organize a meeting between the then-candidate and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The same document says it was later established she was not a relative of the Russian president and it is still not known who the Russian lady was! Ridiculous, isn’t it? Can it be called a high-quality investigation done by a team of seasoned prosecutors?
The document also mentions unmanned contacts preparing a top-level meeting. The indictment does not provide any explanation why Donald Trump should need any dubious mediators at all. He visited Moscow in 2013 and there were no problems.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Papadopoulos never was a presidential adviser. According to her, he was “nothing more than a campaign volunteer” not paid by the campaign. Was it so hard for such an experienced lawyer as Robert Mueller to make precise who exactly the man was before publishing the document?
Can the fancy stories based on mere rumors about “Putin’s nieces” and nonexistent presidential advisers preparing summits be considered serious evidence to go upon? The charges appear to be harmless for the White House and the nature of any potential allegations could be nebulous.
Nevertheless, Paul Manafort may be sentenced to 80 years behind bars; Rick Gates may get a 70-year term of imprisonment. The prospects are scary enough to make the indicted give any testimony the prosecution wants as the only way to reduce their sentences. The charges appear to be elements of a larger investigation. The threat of long prison sentences allows investigators to extract plea deals from potential witnesses, which can then be used to bring charges against more significant targets. Pressure is exerted on the indicted to provide information in connection with other possible violations of law involving other persons. The special counsel could file additional charges in the future. President Trump or one of the top officials may say something under oath and then Manafort or Gates will say it wasn’t true. Then the evidence given by those who are charged could constitute grounds for impeachment. Setting up the scene is the name of the game.
Donald Trump claimed on October 25 that former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton‘s campaign paid nearly $6 million to the firm behind a controversial opposition research dossier alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. But nobody talks about the need to launch an inquiry. That’s what justice is like in the United States.
Evidently, Mueller’s team is not up to the task. It has failed to find new examples of communication between the Trump campaign associates and Russia. If the mission is to smear Russia, then Robert Mueller has done a very poor job.
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Anti-science
The infinite list
The Naked Emperor’s Newsletter | October 12, 2022
Almost three years ago science entered a new dark age.
Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and co-author of the Great Barrington Declaration, seems to agree. He has been compiling a list of the examples of anti-science we have unfortunately become used to.
I have listed his thoughts so far but the list is continually expanding... continue
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