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'DNC Hacker' Unmasked: He Really Works for Russia, Researchers Say (thedailybeast.com)
The hacker who claimed to compromise the DNC swore he was Romanian, but new investigation shows he worked directly for Russia President Vladimir Putin's government in Moscow. The Daily Beast reports: The hacker who claims to have stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and provided them to WikiLeaks is actually an agent of the Russian government and part of an orchestrated attempt to influence U.S. media coverage surrounding the presidential election, a security research group concluded on Tuesday. The researchers, at Arlington, Va.-based ThreatConnect, traced the self-described Romanian hacker Guccifer 2.0 back to an Internet server in Russia and to a digital address that has been linked in the past to Russian online scams. Far from being a single, sophisticated hacker, Guccifer 2.0 is more likely a collection of people from the propaganda arm of the Russian government meant to deflect attention away from Moscow as the force behind the DNC hacks and leaks of emails, the researchers found. ThreatConnect is the first known group of experts to link the self-proclaimed hacker to a Russian operation, amidst an ongoing FBI investigation and a presidential campaign rocked by the release of DNC emails that have embarrassed senior party leaders and inflamed intraparty tensions turning the Democratic National Convention. The emails revealed that party insiders plotted ways to undermine Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential bid. The researchers at the aforementioned security firm are basing their conclusion on three signals: the hacker used Russian computers to edit PDF files, he also used Russian VPN -- and other internet infrastructure from the country, and that he was unable to speak Romanian.
totally not north korea this time
How so? Politicians lying is protected speech.
Have gnu, will travel.
Fraud. Money laundering. Racketeering. Violations of campaign finance laws.
The Republicans are so inept, that they had nothing to do with this! This is all on the DNC and DWS and the entire Clintonista Crime Family. They own this, full and completely. The DNC is proven to be just as homophobic (no HOMO), racist (Taco Bowl) and Sexist ("bimbo" comment). I mean, if this was the GOP doing these things it would be front page of the NYT, but since the DNC has also been found colluding with the media to control the narrative ... several times ... this is just what everyone already knew, we just have a shit ton of smoking guns now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
And I also said that they shouldn't be claiming their emails are hacked by Russians, after all we've been hearing about hacked emails for the past year. They may be telling the truth, but making the argument at all is bad optics.
But then I hear this from Trump yesterday, clarifying his previous statements on NATO, which makes the Russian involvement seem more suspicious:
NATO. They ask me about NATO. Right? You saw that the other day, Meet the Press.
"Well, I hear you want to give up NATO..." I don't want to give up NATO. I like... NATO's fine. But they gotta pay. They gotta pay.
So we have all of these countries, and they're not paying. They're not paying. And we're protecting them.
And the question is: "If such-and-such a country were attacked, are you willing to start World War 3?" Because that's essentially what's happening. They don't pay.
They say, "Well, we have a treaty!" So they have these articles: "Donald Trump wants to give up NATO." No no no. I don't want to give up anything. I want them to pay.
We're a country. It's not 40 years ago, 50 years ago. And now, most people in this audience don't even know, that we're protecting Japan, China, we're protecting Germany! Nothing but money.
We're protecting Saudi Arabia. If we weren't around, Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia wouldn't be around for two weeks. We protect Saudi Arabia. They don't pay us what that should be paying. We're losing everything. Folks, we lose on everything.
We protect South Korea. We have 28,000 soldiers on the line, against the maniac on the right. We have 28,000 soldiers against North Korea, separated. Pretty dangerous stuff, considering he's got a million-person army. Pretty dangerous stuff.
So we're doing all this, and yet they're paying us a fraction of what it is.
I saw it with Japan. And by the way, I think it's fine- but they've got to pay us. We don't have the money. They gotta pay us. And they will pay us if the right person asks. If the right person asks. They will. They will.
Do you have any idea the difference that makes for our country if we get countries to take care of us the way they should.
We had a general recently, because we've been doing this, and he said, "Mr. Trump doesn't understand that Japan is paying almost 50 percent of the cost of what we do for them." And I said, why not 100 percent? Why? Tell me why. Tell me why.
Folks, we're run by incompetent people and it's going to end. And it's going to end soon. Because people aren't taking it anymore.
Now, when I talk about we're going to protect Japan, which is great, now, you always have to be prepared to walk. And I said, in one of the articles, they said, "Now what would happen if they didn't pay." I said, âoeWe have to walk."
Hillary Clinton said, "He wants to walk from Japan!" Now, see, what she did, she makes it impossible to negotiate. She's not a negotiator. She's a fool. She's a fool. No, she's a fool.
Because when you tell Japan- very smart people, great people, I have many friends there- but when you say you're not prepared to walk, you'll never walk? So she said, "How dare he say that! We will never walk!"
Then they're never going to pay us. We may have to walk! Folks, we may have to walk.
But- the same thing with Germany. We're spending a fortune in Germany. Same thing with Saudi Arabia. Let me tell you. Saudi Arabia? So we'll say this: "Folks, you gotta pay us. You gotta pay us. Sorry."
They're gonna say no. Bye-bye! Within two days, they're calling back, "Get back over here, we'll pay you whatever the hell you want."
OK? One hundred percent.
But whe
I don't remember this much controversy when the Russians were giving millions to the Clinton Foundation to award them with a giant uranium deal. Don't shoot the messenger on this one. She is what she is.
A lot of people (not myself, I'm voting Stein) may have mainstream political views which are much better represented by the major parties than by any of the half dozen or so minor parties likely to be on their ballot, but still dislike the individual candidates of the major parties.
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Yes, why vote against Hillary or Trump when you can vote against BOTH HILLARY AND TRUMP!
Vote third party, ANY third party. If you really want to stick it to them, vote for the most likely 3rd party Gary Johnson because if he wins even a few electoral votes, it could prevent either candidate from securing the election and the House of Representatives will have to make the call. You can't just not vote or write in, because those don't get counted and thus might as well be a vote for the status quo.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
On a side note - the Republicans had the most winnable presidential race in decades, handed to them on a silver platter. So they decided to nominate just about the most unelectable candidate imaginable. Unbelievable.
Yep, the Democrats parry by nominating a divisive, corrupt politician who is the #2 most disliked candidate in the history of presidential polling. The only person who is more disliked is her opponent. And then they go and find the most vanilla VP pick that no one outside of his state has ever heard of. They are intent on snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
It makes me wonder about all of their justifications. Now the convention is all about "we must defeat Trump!" If defeating Trump was so important to the Democratic party, then why the hell did they nominate the candidate who's untrusted and corrupt and is going to have a serious uphill battle to beat Trump? Why not just nominate the guy who consistently beat Trump in polls? I mean, if their stated goal is to defeat Trump, then why do anything else? Of course that's a trick question; their goal is not to defeat Trump and never has been, their only goal since the primaries started is to elect Hillary. It just so happens that the Republicans managed to nominate the only candidate who is actually more disliked than Hillary, so now the Democrats have a great boogeyman.
There's also the line about, "hey we've got the most progressive platform evar! Like 80% of Bernie's platform is there!" OK, if Bernie's platform is so great then why does Hillary get to be the president and not Bernie? If you really want those platform policies to be implemented and actually worked on, why not elect the guy who has been shouting about them for years? Why shove through a person who only adopted them because it was either adopt or die? Do you really think she's going to stick to that platform once she gets her foot in the door?
Regardless of all of that stuff though, I still can't vote for Hillary, and some people have a hard time understanding why. The major reason I supported Sanders wasn't because of his policy positions, it was because he legitimately wants to see an end to the political corruption caused by very large amounts of money in the political system. In my opinion, Hillary is a perfect example of that kind of corruption, the kind that I want removed from government. Since I see Bernie as the solution to the problem represented by Hillary, if I am not allowed to vote for the solution then I'm not just going to turn around and vote for the problem. I will not vote for the problem. I will cast my vote for a smaller party who will appreciate my vote far more than either Hillary or Trump will (just like I did in the previous election), and vote for someone else who at least is not part of the problem. And if the Democrats want to bitch and moan about that, and try to place any blame on me for them not getting enough votes to beat Trump, I'll be happy to remind them that there was a very easy way to ensure that they would have beaten Trump, but they decided to go with the corrupt one instead.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black