The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby justdrew » Thu Apr 27, 2017 9:06 pm

I've said for years that Russia was running large segments of the woo wide web, I probably reached that conclusion around 2010. They're not the only actors in the game, but a major one. Probably been a serious effort on their part since the late 90s or very early 2000s.

It's a long term influencing campaign of unprecedented scope and complexity, and much of it is simply done by useful-idiots who have no real connection to Russia at all.

stage one was something like "encourage disbelief" - in everything and anything
stage one went on a long time, planting little seeds all over the meme-space and generally preparing the ground.
stage two likely went into effect around 2013, although some seeds had sprouted earlier.
they could have gone in a few different directions, but by 2013 it was decided to push destabilization through pseudo-fascist authoritarianism. Why? They gave up on any hope of the US working constructively with Russia, our leadership system was just too committed to treating them as them permanent enemy. If we'd backed off and acted as a "responsible global power" and recognized Russia's legitimate interests and stopped with all the anti-russian knee-jerk propaganda, things could have been different. They're not a perfectly great country, there's plenty of things we could have done within a reasonable framework of diplomacy etc to reach amicable compromises and solutions. Instead we went after trying to break them up, constant military threats, etc. Way over-the-top and we're now getting just what we asked for. Sadly.

their op has worked in combination with 'natural' developments, methods and tendencies native to the social system in 'western democracies' but primarily focus is on the UK and the US.

I don't see any feasible way to prevent such operations, the only real option is to have a similar counter operation in play that pulls people in a different more "positive" direction. "We" do not have that.

( possibly it's not even fair to call it a conspiracy, because while they may have, they would not absolutely need to break any laws.)
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 27, 2017 9:39 pm

Le Pen Promotes Holocaust Denier and Plans to Ban Kosher Butchers and Yarmulkes
Robert Mackey
April 27 2017, 2:06 p.m.
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Photo: Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images
FRANCE’S JEWISH COMMUNITY is watching the second round of this year’s presidential election with profound unease, as Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Front has unveiled plans to ban the ritual slaughter of animals for kosher and halal meat and promoted a deputy who has been accused of praising an infamous Holocaust denier.

Le Pen temporarily stepped aside this week as the leader of the extreme nationalist party founded by her Holocaust-denying father, Jean-Marie, as part of an effort to present a more moderate face in the general election.

That attempt was immediately spoiled, however, by the revelation that the former associate of her father she put in charge of the party, Jean-François Jalkh, told a scholar in 2000 that he did not accept evidence that the Nazis used the pesticide Zyklon B to murder Jews in the death camps.

Jalkh’s comments were published 12 years ago in an academic journal, but not widely known about until a reporter for the Catholic daily La Croix, Laurent de Boissieu, came across them on Tuesday.

Laurent de Boissieu‏
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Je tombe sur ceci au sujet du nouveau président par intérim du FN!!!
(Le Temps des Savoirs, numéro 7, La Création, Odile Jacob, mars 2005).
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During a three-hour interview with the researcher Magali Boumaza, for her dissertation on the National Front’s youth activists, Jalkh, who joined the movement at 17, said that he had been struck by the “seriousness and rigor” of arguments made by the Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson about the gas chambers.

That reading led Jalkh to consult a chemist, he added, before saying, in a passage shared on Twitter by the reporter who unearthed it: “the use of a gas, for example, called Zyklon B, I personally consider that from a technical point of view, it is impossible, clearly impossible, to use it in […] mass exterminations. Why? Because it takes days before decontaminating a room … where one used Zyklon B.”

Although Jalkh quickly denied ever having made such comments, Boumaza, who is now a professor, told Le Monde that she still had a recording of the conversation. “The interview lasted three hours, and it was he who spontaneously broached the subject of the gas chambers,” she said. “At no time did he ask me to stop recording or not to transcribe his words.”

Le Monde also noted that its own archives reveal that in 1991 Jalkh attended a memorial for Marshal Pétain, the wartime leader of Vichy France who collaborated with the Nazis, at which prayers were said “for the restitution of the outraged honor of this great soldier.”

The Council of Jewish Institutions in France, which is known by the French acronym CRIF, noted that Jalkh’s appointment clearly undermined Le Pen’s effort to detoxify her party’s image — which included expelling her own father for Holocaust denial two years ago. Still, the council asked, why would anyone would be surprised that the new leader of the National Front is “a traditional Lepenist.”


After elevating Jalkh in her place, Le Pen campaigned among butchers at a market in Paris and defended her proposal to ban the ritual slaughter of animals without prior stunning, in accordance with Jewish and Muslim dietary regulations, as a matter of animal welfare.


Like her earlier call for a ban on religious head coverings, including hijabs and yarmulkes, Le Pen’s proposed policy appeared to be a strike aimed at preventing devout Muslims from adhering to their faith, but she seemed entirely untroubled by the “collateral damage” the ban would cause to France’s Jews.

In response to the proposal, the Chief Rabbi of France, Haïm Korsia, told Agence France-Presse Le Pen’s idea was “stupefying.”

“Is it necessary to launch real religious wars in France by saying that it is essential to ban Jewish and Muslim ritual slaughtering?” Korsia asked.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Korsia has endorsed Le Pen’s rival, Emmanuel Macron, in the election to be held on May 7th. “It is necessary to call on all of those who believe in France to vote for Emmanuel Macron,” the rabbi wrote on Twitter, “because he now carries this hope of fraternité.”


Le Pen’s call for a ban on the ritual slaughter that would make it impossible for French Jews to keep kosher attracted the attention of Israeli journalists. Gilbert Collard, a member of the National Front’s political bureau, was pressed on the issue during an interview on Wednesday with the French channel of Israel’s i24 news network. Collard defended the move as essential to protecting secularism in France, and even argued that anti-Muslim measures were necessary, in part, to protect French Jews.


Attempting to cast the National Front as the defender of French Jews, Collard pointed to what he said was an outrageous example of anti-Semitism by leftist protesters – the slogan “Jews: Thieves, Murders!” (“Juifs: voleurs, assassins“) which he said was chanted during a recent demonstration.

In fact, Collard was repeating a willful misinterpretation of video that showed protesters chanting instead “Cops: Rapists and Murders!” (“Flics: violeurs, assassins“) while marching on April 16 against the National Front in Paris. That slogan makes reference to the violent anal rape with a police baton of a young man named Theo in a Paris suburb in February.


Nonetheless, video of the chant shared by Collard on Twitter and Facebook with that inaccurate transcription has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. (Collard appears to have gotten the video, and the inaccurate transcription, from a self-described French-Israeli Zionist who posted it on Twitter earlier the same day.)

Amandine Sanchez, an independent journalist who was with the protesters on the street where the video was recorded confirmed to The Intercept on Thursday that the chant was indeed about the police, not Jews.

Video recorded at street-level during another part of the demonstration that day — scroll to the 5:20 mark of the Periscope clip embedded below — appears to confirm that the anti-fascist protesters were indeed chanting “flics: violeurs,” not “juifs: voleurs.


As supporters of the demonstrators and journalists pointed out, there is quite a lot of evidence on social networks that this slogan about police brutality has become common at left-wing protests across France since Theo was brutalized in February.



Back on the campaign trail, Le Pen spent part of Thursday with Collard on a fishing boat in the Mediterranean region he represents in the French parliament. The outing gave rise to some bizarre images of the politicians attempting to fit in on the boat, including video of Le Pen demonstrating her dolphin call for the non-plussed fishermen.


From the Paris suburbs, where he was demonstrating his skills with a soccer ball, Macron mocked Le Pen’s outing on Twitter, suggesting that her promise to take France out of the European Union would devastate the French fishing industry.

The night before, Macron’s rhetoric against Le Pen was even sharper, telling supporters that while “she pretends to be one of the people, she is an heiress.”

Le Pen’s attempt to cast herself as the champion of the common man, despite her well-off upbringing, inspired some of her critics to share a photograph of her and her sisters with their father in evening clothes in front of the family mansion in 1988.
https://theintercept.com/2017/04/27/le- ... yarmulkes/


Why France's Marine Le Pen Is Doubling Down on Russia Support
http://time.com/4627780/russia-national ... pen-putin/


Russia’s Putin Picks Le Pen to Rule France
French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen—anti-American, anti-NATO, pro-Trump—was received in Moscow Friday as if she already were a head of state.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ule-france
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby JackRiddler » Thu Apr 27, 2017 11:37 pm

justdrew » Thu Apr 27, 2017 8:06 pm wrote:I've said for years that Russia was running large segments of the woo wide web, I probably reached that conclusion around 2010. They're not the only actors in the game, but a major one. Probably been a serious effort on their part since the late 90s or very early 2000s.

It's a long term influencing campaign of unprecedented scope and complexity, and much of it is simply done by useful-idiots who have no real connection to Russia at all.


I see what you're saying, but sorry I don't buy it. The Woo Wide Web is such an American avalanche starting way before that, everyone else's efforts can only be the fart echoing in a shitstorm. Let me know when they've set up some Petrograd School economists in Washington to completely run policy, restructure the entire economy according to their self-serving theories, really fix the elections and brag about it, etc. etc. What is the present government doing, what are the corporations and the institutions in the U.S. doing right now that they would not have been doing? The American image of "Russia" is a field of projection for the American shadow side, and never mind how much of it actually corresponds to truths about Russia.

.
Last edited by JackRiddler on Fri Apr 28, 2017 9:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby MacCruiskeen » Fri Apr 28, 2017 9:45 am

^^Jack saved me having to say it.

Meanwhile, Credit Suisse report (pdf) that Russia is now the world's most unequal country: 10% of the population owns 87% of the wealth:

According to our calculations, the top decile of wealth holders owns 87% of all household wealth in Russia. This is significantly higher than any other major economic power: the corresponding figure is 76% for the United States, for example, and 66% for China. The very high level of wealth inequality in Russia is reflected in the fact that it has 92,000 US dollar millionaires and 122,000 individuals in the global top 1% of wealth holders. It is also well endowed with billionaires, of whom there are an estimated 90.

https://publications.credit-suisse.com/ ... AF9341D47E


Image
Great job, Boris!


(Mark Ames has just written an illuminating report about all this.)

What's instructive is that barely anyone on what is laughably known as "the left" has condemned this shocking growth in wealth inequality. No one is describing this blatant theft of a nation's life, labour, resources and achievements as what it is: scandalous. In fact, it is barely even noticed in the US or the UK and it would not be disapproved of if it were noticed. It's just another mission accomplished for Western Values. Instead, prominent liberal spokesmillionares such as Rachel Maddow have chosen to go publicly insane over this PUTIN HACKED OUR ELECTION!!! bullshit. If the US does go to war with Russia, she and her ilk will share heavily in the responsibility.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby MacCruiskeen » Fri Apr 28, 2017 10:45 am

"Ich kann gar nicht so viel fressen, wie ich kotzen möchte." - Max Liebermann,, Berlin, 1933

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, NYC, 1966

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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Apr 28, 2017 11:03 am

APRIL 28, 2017
Marine Le Pen Is a Fascist—Not a ‘Right-Wing Populist,’ Which Is a Contradiction in Terms
by HARVEY WASSERMAN

.......
Led now by France’s Le Pen, America’s Trump and so many others, the core corporate values of Kleptocracy, war mongering, racism, misogyny, homophobia and ecological contempt can be seen in sibling reactionaries throughout Europe, in Russia’s Putin, in the Philippines’ murderous Duterte and among countless corporate dictators in developing nations.

.......

The “F” word applies. It is FASCIST. It’s time to use it
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/28/ ... -in-terms/


Russian police raid Moscow office of Putin opposition group
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/ ... 60950.html


Russia bans three Khodorkovsky-linked opposition groups

Move comes before planned protests across 30 cities on Saturday


..

The Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday declared the Open Russia Foundation, the Institute of Modern Russia and the Open Russia movement to be “undesirable organisations”. Such a status allows authorities to freeze their assets in Russia and exposes anyone working with them to criminal prosecution.

A month ago, tens of thousands took to the streets in more than 80 Russian cities in anti-corruption rallies organised by opposition politician Alexei Navalny,

....
https://www.ft.com/content/9690e8be-2aa ... 28796fe35c
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Rory » Fri Apr 28, 2017 1:23 pm

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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby MacCruiskeen » Tue May 02, 2017 12:07 pm

This is where the tsunami of anti-Russian sewage has landed us:

Image

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... killed-jfk

So now if you even suspect that the CIA might have had anything to do with JFK's murder, you've been duped by the Russkies.

Says the Daily Beast.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby JackRiddler » Tue May 02, 2017 6:58 pm

MacCruiskeen » Tue May 02, 2017 11:07 am wrote:So now if you even suspect that the CIA might have had anything to do with JFK's murder, you've been duped by the Russkies.

Says the Daily Beast.


Max Holland has been doing this already for 30 years. He's been the CIA's mouthpiece for exactly this thesis. You can find his articles about this on the CIA site. The idea that Clay Shaw may have been CIA is attributed to a Communist paper in Italy that placed the story for the KGB. Thirty years, seriously. So now he's just adapting it to the neo-anti-Russian moment.

.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 02, 2017 7:22 pm

Robert Baer and The History Channel are also jumping on the bandwagon

http://www.history.com/shows/jfk-declas ... ing-oswald
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu May 04, 2017 11:35 am

WORLD NEWS | Thu May 4, 2017 | 9:53am EDT
Germany challenges Russia over alleged cyberattacks
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-germa ... SKBN1801CA


Mysterious rash of Russian deaths casts suspicion on Vladimir Putin
Oren Dorell , USA TODAY Published 5:04 a.m. ET May 2, 2017


A former member of the Russian parliament is gunned down in broad daylight in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. A longtime Russian ambassador to the United Nations drops dead at work. A Russian-backed commander in the breakaway Ukrainian province of Donetsk is blown up in an elevator. A Russian media executive is found dead in his Washington, D.C., hotel room.

What do they have in common? They are among 38 prominent Russians who are victims of unsolved murders or suspicious deaths since the beginning of 2014, according to a list compiled by USA TODAY and British journalist Sarah Hurst, who has done research in Russia.

The list contains 10 high-profile critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin, seven diplomats, six associates of Kremlin power brokers who had a falling out — often over corruption — and 13 military or political leaders involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, including commanders of Russian-backed separatist forces. Two are possibly connected to a dossier alleging connections between President Trump's campaign staff and Kremlin officials that was produced by a former British spy and shared with the FBI.

Twelve were shot, stabbed or beaten to death. Six were blown up. Ten died allegedly of natural causes. One died of mysterious head injuries, one reportedly slipped and hit his head in a public bath, one was hanged in his jail cell, and one died after drinking coffee. The cause of six deaths was reported as unknown.


Putin has long dealt with opponents harshly. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in March that Putin “has murdered his political opponents and rules like an authoritarian dictator.”

Yet the list of fatalities — 36 men and two women — suggests that Putin’s alleged attacks on his critics and whistle-blowers are more extensive and lethal than previously known. It also raises new concerns about contacts Putin and his lieutenants had with Trump’s campaign staff.

Trump praised Putin in March 2016 as a "strong leader," and in 2015 said “I’d get along great with” the Russian leader. On Feb 6, Trump defended Putin when Bill O’Reilly, then of Fox News, called Putin a killer. "There are a lot of killers," Trump replied. "Do you think our country is so innocent?"

The FBI and Congress are currently investigating contacts between Kremlin officials and Trump's campaign advisers, as part of its investigation into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Leahy made his comment about Putin at a congressional hearing that featured Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian political activist with personal experience of his government's efforts to silence outspoken critics.

"We’ve seen political opposition leaders and activists, whistle-blowers, anti-corruption campaigners and independent journalists lose their lives in one way or another," Kara-Murza told USA TODAY. "Sometimes these are suspicious suicides and plane crashes, really rare and horrible diseases. In many others they are straight murders."

Kara-Murza worked with former deputy prime minister and Putin opponent Boris Nemtsov before Nemtsov was gunned down in Moscow in 2015. Kara-Murza worked until recently with Russian anti-corruption lawyer and political candidate Alexei Navalny, who suffered eye injury Thursday after being attacked with a chemical following his release from jail for leading unsanctioned protests against the Putin government across Russia this spring.


Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny poses says unknown attackers doused him with green antiseptic April 27 outside a conference in Moscow. Navalny made a documentary about government corruption. (Photo: Evgeny Feldman, AP)
“Sometimes there are near-misses," Kara-Murza testified in March before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee.

Kara-Murza said he was the victim of attempted poisonings twice: in May 2015 and this past February.

"Twice in the past two years I have experienced symptoms consistent with poisoning, both times in Moscow," he said in an interview. "Both times, symptoms came on suddenly and out of nowhere. Both times spending weeks in a coma on life support machines. Both times, doctors set my chance of survival at 5%, so I’m very fortunate to be here today. "


Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., noted at the hearing the dangers of winding up on the wrong side of politics in Russia. “In our system, if we make a bad decision, we might lose an election and have to work as a paid analyst on TV," he told Kara-Murza. "In your case, people die.”

Rubio and other senators had called on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to meet with members of Russia’s political opposition during his April visit to Moscow, but Tillerson did not have time for a meeting, deputy spokesman Mark Toner said.

Most of the older diplomats on the list were probably victims of poor health, said Boris Silberman, a Russia analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

“Knowing how diplomats live, going from one cocktail party to the next and not to the gym in between, it finally catches up to you,” Silberman said.

That could apply to Vitaly Churkin, 64, the Russian ambassador to the U.N., who died on Feb. 20 in New York of an apparent heart attack. Others, like Petr Polshikov, 56, a chief adviser to the Latin America department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, found dead with a gunshot wound in his Moscow home on Dec. 20, require further investigation, Silberman said.

“There’s almost a fever on the Russia story,” Silberman said. “Some of it is substantial. It’s almost like there’s something nefarious behind every piece of news. Sometimes there is. ... They tend to clean up their messes this way.”

Many of the recent deaths raise suspicions because a string of Putin critics have died in obvious murders years earlier. They include:

• Nemtsov, who was shot to death while walking after dinner with his girlfriend in a security zone near the Kremlin. Two Chechen suspects, one a former bodyguard to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, are on trial, but the investigation did not reveal whether anyone ordered the hit.
• Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax lawyer who died in prison while investigating the alleged theft of $230 million by Russian government officials. No one was ever charged.
• Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian spy who defected, became a British citizen and was murdered in London in 2006 with radioactive polonium-210 while helping European authorities in a corruption investigation. The "state-sponsored murder" was an effort by the Russian government to send a chilling message to its critics, Peter Clarke, Scotland Yard's former deputy commissioner who led the investigation, told the British Daily Mail on April 17. Two Russian suspects were identified by British authorities, but Russia refused to extradite them, and no one was charged.

• Anna Politkovskaya, an investigative journalist who exposed Russian atrocities during the war in the restive Russian republic of Chechnya. She was gunned down in her Moscow apartment stairway in 2006. Former police officer Dmitry Pavliutchenkov was convicted of ordering surveillance of the journalist but denied killing her. He was sentenced in 2012 to 11 years in prison. Five alleged accomplices were later convicted, including two who were sentenced to life in prison. Pavliutchenkov's promise to identify who ordered the hit never resulted in further charges.

Russian police officers stand next to trace of the body of Boris Nemtsov, a former Russian deputy prime minister and opposition leader, at Red Square with the Kremlin Wall in the background in Moscow on Feb. 28, 2015. (Photo: Pavel Golovkin, AP)
Two of the recent victims, Oleg Erovinkin and Alex Oronov, have been described by Russian analysts as possibly connected to a dossier written by a former British spy about Trump and his campaign staff’s alleged collusion with Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

Erovinkin, 61, a general in the Russian spy agency and a close associate of a Putin confidant, was found dead in the back of his car on Dec. 26 in Moscow. The cause of death is unknown.

Oronov, 69, a Ukrainian-born businessman in New York, died under unknown circumstances around March 2, according to Andriy Artemenko, a member of Ukraine's parliament. Oronov had arranged a meeting between Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen; Trump business associate Felix Sater, and Artemenko in January about a peace plan for Ukraine that would benefit Russia. Artemenko alleged that Oronov died because of the peace-plan plot.

The list of recent deaths does not include Matthew Puncher, 46, a British polonium expert in the Litvinenko inquiry, reported to have stabbed himself to death in his home in Oxfordshire after returning from a trip to Russia last May.

Luke Harding chronicled a succession of suspected political murders in his 2016 book, A Very Expensive Poison; the Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko and Putin's War with the West. Former KGB officers and defectors described Soviet-era research into poisons used to kill enemies that continued in post-Soviet Russia, Harding wrote. Some substances are so rare and leave so little trace that death can be easily mistaken for a heart attack.

Journalist Hurst, who helped compile the list of deaths, said the recent uptick appears to be a sign of the growing political pressure on Putin and his cronies. “Putin is at the top of a criminal organization (and) there are all these people who have dirt on him,” she said. “It’s not surprising he’s willing to bump people off."

Kara-Murza, who is still recovering from the alleged poisoning, said he has "absolutely no doubt this was an attempt to kill me because of my political activities in the Russian opposition for the last several years, and more specifically because of my active involvement in the campaign in support of the Magnitsky Act," which calls for U.S. sanctions on Russian officials involved in human rights abuses and corruption.

Nataliya Magnitskaya's son Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer, died in prison. (Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP)
He plans to push for similar laws in other Western countries, and to return to Russia to continue his activism when he is physically stronger.

Since many of the suspicious deaths are related to government corruption or those who exposed it, Kara-Murza urged Congress to block Russians who stole their nation’s wealth from investing in the United States.

"This is not only about money," he said in his Senate testimony. “Much more importantly it is about the message that the U.S. sends to Russia.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/wor ... 100480734/
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby Rory » Thu May 25, 2017 4:51 pm

This would be hilarious (if true)

IMG_20170525_132359.jpg
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby tapitsbo » Fri May 26, 2017 12:39 pm

If true, she was hardly necessary for that to happen...
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby liminalOyster » Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:22 am

Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?
Glenn Greenwald
September 28 2017, 11:48 a.m.

LAST FRIDAY, most major media outlets touted a major story about Russian attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems, based exclusively on claims made by the Department of Homeland Security. “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year’s presidential election, officials said Friday,” began the USA Today story, similar to how most other outlets presented this extraordinary claim.


This official story was explosive for obvious reasons, and predictably triggered instant decrees – that of course went viral – declaring that the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election is now in doubt.


Virginia’s Democratic Congressman Don Beyer, referring to the 21 targeted states, announced that this shows “Russia tried to hack their election”:

Follow
Rep. Don Beyer ✔ @RepDonBeyer
The same day @realDonaldTrump refers to "Russia Hoax," Homeland Security Dept. tells 21 states that Russia tried to hack their elections. https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/9 ... 7717501952
5:32 PM - Sep 22, 2017
35 35 Replies 704 704 Retweets 837 837 likes

MSNBC’s Paul Revere for all matters relating to the Kremlin take-over, Rachel Maddow, was indignant that this wasn’t told to us earlier and that we still aren’t getting all the details. “What we have now figured out,” Maddow gravely intoned as she showed the multi-colored maps she made, is that “Homeland Security knew at least by June that 21 states had been targeted by Russian hackers during the election. . .targeting their election infrastructure.”

They were one small step away from demanding that the election results be nullified, indulging the sentiment expressed by #Resistance icon Carl Reiner the other day: “Is there anything more exciting that [sic] the possibility of Trump’s election being invalidated & Hillary rightfully installed as our President?”

So what was wrong with this story? Just one small thing: it was false. The story began to fall apart yesterday when Associated Press reported that Wisconsin – one of the states included in the original report that, for obvious reasons, caused the most excitement – did not, in fact, have its election systems targeted by Russian hackers:



The spokesman for Homeland Security then tried to walk back that reversal, insisting that there was still evidence that some computer networks had been targeted, but could not say that they had anything to do with elections or voting. And, as AP noted: “Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator, Michael Haas, had repeatedly said that Homeland Security assured the state it had not been targeted.”

Then the story collapsed completely last night. The Secretary of State for another one of the named states, California, issued a scathing statement repudiating the claimed report:


Sometimes stories end up debunked. There’s nothing particularly shocking about that. If this were an isolated incident, one could chalk it up to basic human error that has no broader meaning.

But this is no isolated incident. Quite the contrary: this has happened over and over and over again. Inflammatory claims about Russia get mindlessly hyped by media outlets, almost always based on nothing more than evidence-free claims from government officials, only to collapse under the slightest scrutiny, because they are entirely lacking in evidence.

The examples of such debacles when it comes to claims about Russia are too numerous to comprehensively chronicle. I wrote about this phenomenon many times and listed many of the examples, the last time in June when 3 CNN journalists “resigned” over a completely false story linking Trump adviser Anthony Scaramucci to investigations into a Russian investment fund which the network was forced to retract:

Remember that time the Washington Post claimed that Russia had hacked the U.S. electricity grid, causing politicians to denounce Putin for trying to deny heat to Americans in winter, only to have to issue multiple retractions because none of that ever happened? Or the time that the Post had to publish a massive editor’s note after its reporters made claims about Russian infiltration of the internet and spreading of “Fake News” based on an anonymous group’s McCarthyite blacklist that counted sites like the Drudge Report and various left-wing outlets as Kremlin agents?
Or that time when Slate claimed that Trump had created a secret server with a Russian bank, all based on evidence that every other media outlet which looked at it were too embarrassed to get near? Or the time the Guardian was forced to retract its report by Ben Jacobs – which went viral – that casually asserted that WikiLeaks has a long relationship with the Kremlin? Or the time that Fortune retracted suggestions that RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN’s network? And then there’s the huge market that was created – led by leading Democrats – that blindly ingested every conspiratorial, unhinged claim about Russia churned out by an army of crazed conspiracists such as Louise Mensch and Claude “TrueFactsStated” Taylor?

And now we have the Russia-hacked-the-voting-systems-of-21-states to add to this trash heap. Each time the stories go viral; each time they further shape the narrative; each time those who spread them say little to nothing when it is debunked.



NONE OF THIS means that every Russia claim is false, nor does it disprove the accusation that Putin ordered the hacking of the DNC and John Podesta’s email inboxes (a claim for which, just by the way, still no evidence has been presented by the U.S. government). Perhaps there were some states that were targeted, even though the key claims of this story, that attracted the most attention, have now been repudiated.

But what it does demonstrate is that an incredibly reckless, anything-goes climate prevails when it comes to claims about Russia. Media outlets will publish literally any official assertion as Truth without the slightest regard for evidentiary standards.

Seeing Putin lurking behind and masterminding every western problem is now religious dogma – it explains otherwise-confounding developments, provides certainty to a complex world, and alleviates numerous factions of responsibility – so media outlets and their journalists are lavishly rewarded any time they publish accusatory stories about Russia (especially ones involving the U.S. election), even if they end up being debunked.

A highly touted story yesterday from the New York Times – claiming that Russians used Twitter more widely known than before to manipulate U.S. politics – demonstrates this recklessness. The story is based on the claims of a new group formed just two months ago by a union of neocons and Democratic national security officials, led by long-time liars and propagandists such as Bill Kristol, former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff. I reported on the founding of this group, calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, when it was unveiled (this is not to be confused with the latest new Russia group unveiled last week by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a different former CIA chief (James Clapper) – calling itself InvestigateRussia.org – featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is now “at war with Russia”).

The Kristol/Morell/Chertoff group on which the Times based its article has a very simple tactic: they secretly decide which Twitter accounts are “Russia bots,” meaning accounts that disseminate an “anti-American message” and are controlled by the Kremlin. They refuse to tell anyone which Twitter accounts they decided are Kremlin-loyal, nor will they identify their methodology for creating their lists or determining what constitutes “anti-Americanism.”

They do it all in secret, and you’re just supposed to trust them: Bill Kristol, Mike Chertoff and their national security state friends. And the New York Times is apparently fine with this demand, as evidenced by its uncritical acceptance yesterday of the claims of this group – a group formed by the nation’s least trustworthy sources.

But no matter. It’s a claim about nefarious Russian control. So it’s instantly vested with credibility and authority, published by leading news outlets, and then blindly accepted as fact in most elite circles. From now on, it will simply be Fact – based on the New York Times article – that the Kremlin aggressively and effectively weaponized Twitter to manipulate public opinion and sow divisions during the election, even though the evidence for this new story is the secret, unverifiable assertions of a group filled with the most craven neocons and national security state liars.

That’s how the Russia narrative is constantly “reported,” and it’s the reason so many of the biggest stories have embarrassingly collapsed. It’s because the Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq discourse of 2002 – is now driven by religious-like faith rather than rational faculties.

No questioning of official claims is allowed. The evidentiary threshold which an assertion must overcome before being accepted is so low as to be non-existent. And the penalty for desiring to see evidence for official claims, or questioning the validity and persuasiveness of the evidence that is proffered, are accusations that impugn one’s patriotism and loyalty (simply wanting to see evidence for official claims about Russia is proof, in many quarters, that one is a Kremlin agent or at least adores Putin – just as wanting to see evidence in 2002, or questioning the evidence presented for claims about Saddam, was viewed as proof that one harbored sympathy for the Iraqi dictator).

Regardless of your views on Russia, Trump and the rest, nobody can possibly regard this climate as healthy. Just look at how many major, incredibly inflammatory stories, from major media outlets, have collapsed. Is it not clear that there is something very wrong with how we are discussing and reporting on relations between these two nuclear-armed powers?


"It's not rocket surgery." - Elvis
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Re: The Russian Conspiracy as RI subject

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Sep 29, 2017 11:31 am

I hope you do not take this as argumentative towards you liminalOyster....it's a response to Glenn

so true but just who is responsible for all this Russia talk?

donald j trump

For some reason Glenn seems to want to deflect from the more important Russian mob story?

Everyone I know has stated the "hacking" had no effect on the election

maybe that should be a part of this Russian conspiracy thread...why does Glenn ignore the Russian money laundering and trump's ties to Felix Sater? Maybe he has reported on the Russian mob trump connection and I missed it? Has Glenn taken on the Dutch journalists or McClatchy?

I wish Glenn would think important to fact check trump once in awhile
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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