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Senators Accuse Russia Of Disrupting US Election (washingtonpost.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes The Washington Post:
Two senior Democratic lawmakers with access to classified intelligence on Thursday accused Russia of "making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election," a charge that appeared aimed at putting pressure on the Obama administration to confront Moscow... "At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes," the statement said. "We believe that orders for the Russian intelligence agencies to conduct such actions could come only from very senior levels of the Russian government..."
White House officials have repeatedly insisted that they are awaiting the outcome of a formal FBI investigation, even though U.S. intelligence are said to have concluded with "high confidence" that Russia was responsible for the DNC breach and other attacks. The White House hesitation has become a source of frustration to critics, including senior members of Congress.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly investigating whether Donald Trump's foreign policy adviser "opened up private communications with senior Russian officials -- including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."
White House officials have repeatedly insisted that they are awaiting the outcome of a formal FBI investigation, even though U.S. intelligence are said to have concluded with "high confidence" that Russia was responsible for the DNC breach and other attacks. The White House hesitation has become a source of frustration to critics, including senior members of Congress.
Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly investigating whether Donald Trump's foreign policy adviser "opened up private communications with senior Russian officials -- including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."
As if the US never tries to influence elections in many many countries. Oh, wait .. they don't matter. They are not the US.
This is really about a monopoly on Psy-Ops. If the spooks are the only ones with hundreds of millions of email passwords, they get to have all the fun. Now they are mad that the world is wise to their games. Global Free Speech is SUPPOSED to disrupt elections.
"Meanwhile, U.S. intelligence officials are reportedly investigating whether Donald Trump's foreign policy adviser "opened up private communications with senior Russian officials -- including talks about the possible lifting of economic sanctions if the Republican nominee becomes president."
WTF? There's no reason for the 'intelligence officials' to get involved with this, it's perfectly legal behaviour for a candidate. That it is being sprayed about is a measure of desperation of some people to stop Trump. Whilst I have sympathy with their purpose, their behaviour is deeply wrong.
Is there really much of a difference between multinational corporations influencing elections and individual nations influencing elections? If you're going to criticize the one you better be criticizing the other.
Must be those dirty Russians fucking the election.
I hate elections!.. Actually... I love the concept of elections.. I hate the people who just ruin the process for everyone!
The US, of course, has never tried to interfere with, or influence, a foreign election.
Anyway, I actually doubt that Russia in interfering at all, in 2016. The political elite in the US have produced the current situation all by itself: people are fed up with being presented with a non-choice (it was supposed to be Jeb vs. Hillary), so they did their damnedest to make it Bernie vs. Trump. Half succeeded, too, and Trump's chances are looking pretty good.
Pisses of the political elite no end, and since nothing could possibly be their fault, it must be the Ruskies. Or maybe aliens.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
If they are behind the leaks of the DNC emails that showed Sanders was never going to be allowed to run that's something every registered Democrat had a right to know.
If they are behind the release of the fact Obama used a pseudonym to email hillary, despite the fact he denied having any knowledge of her private email. That's good to know too.
Then there is the price list for all the government posts that were handed out.
At the very least they have done us one hell of a favor.
Which one will most easily defeat this attempted "disruption", without drawing any blood?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
DOESN'T IT SUCK to have people spying on YOUR Communications? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha! Serves You Right!
Did Trump have known aRab supporters of 9/11 at his home and secretly fly them out of the country?
I DON'T THINK SO. If, I as a private U.S. citizen, want to meet w/Putin, there's no law against that...
This is complete BS from the Democrats.
CAP === 'sterile'
Lets look at what all has happened.
On the Republican side, as far as we can tell, Trump has legitimately trumped the others. Could be wrong but that is what we can tell.
Now, lets look at the Democratic side,
1) We had the FBI admitting that the election systems in at least 2 states were compromised.
2) We had the DNC leak showing were they were screwing around and doing all they could to kneecap one of their own candidates to prop up another to the point the head had to resign and, in a huge spit in the face of the american voters was immediately hired by Clinton.
3) Had massive credible claims of election fraud where they had videos of people manually changing the exit poll data to forcefully make it match the actual result as the exit poll data is used as an indicator of fraud.
4) We had hundreds of thousands if not million of voters who were denied the ability to vote due to one reason or another between their affiliations changing without their consent or Florida handing out the wrong ballots trying to make sure independents couldn't vote for president.
And a whole bunch of other crap.
Lets face it, this election was tampered with heavily, at least on the democrat's side.
The ONLY way to fix it would be to restart the whole thing. To continue now after the damage is done is about like putting on a bullet proof vest after you were already shot in the gut. The damage is done.
And when it comes to the elections, you don't need to rig the general election if you have already rigged the primaries and got to control who made it into the general to begin with.
If there is any, and I mean *any*, evidence that Trumps communications to said senior Russian officials came with a "wink and a nod", or indeed anything more specific, then there is every reason for the FBI to get involved....
And of course, selling a third of our Uranium reserves to Russia or selling dual-use technology to Russia doesn't count. It's not important, and was scrubbed from someone's Wikipedia entry.
Thinking through the outrage over Palmer Luckey (Oculus Rift founder) from his support of Trump, and all the crass, oafish things that have happened during this election, one thing seems clear.
The time to address these issues is after the election.
That's the only time where anyone can legitimately claim that their concern is real, and not partisan sniping.
The ends don't justify the means, and it's not worth tearing down the system "just this once". Getting your candidate elected is not worth sacrificing their legitimacy to do it.
If your candidate was worth his/her salt, then you wouldn't need any of these dirty tricks. Right now, the only limits we should have are legal ones.
I note that while Lyndon Johnson was negotiating the end of the Vietnam War, [candidate for president] Richard Nixon called up [Vietnam revolutionary leader] Pol Pot and said that if he delayed negotiations, Nixon would give him a better deal when elected. Negotiations failed, Nixon was elected and the Vietnam war was extended for 2 more years.
This was an American citizen interfering in the political process of the US, and promising aid to our enemy. It was clearly illegal, and the FBI of the time knew about it.
And did nothing. Illegal, and the FBI did nothing. Ring a bell?
Recently, Hillary literally(*) accused Trump of treason. That seems a bit over the line even for Democrats, and it seems illegal on it's face.
But now is not the time to complain, we've let these people have the run of our media, our internet, and our zeitgeist. Let's let it play out for another 6 weeks, then we can carefully examine these things with the benefit of hindsight.
(*) Using the correct definition of literally
Accusation = guilt nowadays haven't you noticed? I swear I heard him say "Long live the King!"
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Definitely not Saudi Arabia, for example.
It appears as though the USA is doing a well enough job on it's own at disrupting elections. The Russians probably thought this all a joke.
FTFA: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. Adam B. Schiff"
Schiff is in the House, not the Senate. Furthermore, where did they get this rock solid information from?
Clapper, the guy that lied to congress about intelligence activities.
I think that says it all.
he has to force Putin to help him.
"At the least, this effort is intended to sow doubt about the security of our election and may well be intended to influence the outcomes,"
The only thing I've seen is the truth be exposed. If you didn't make underhanded deals that needed to be exposed, there wouldn't be a problem. As for security, it's shit, it's absolute shit and the people who created this mess need to have spotlights shone on them until their fraud is exposed and they are jailed.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
He knows how to use Reddit to find the answers.
So the US are openly picking battles with Russia AND North Korea now?
Guys, seriously, has the terrorist thing worn thin or something? Or have you realised that piling into other people's countries and "fixing" them achieves fuck-all that people in that country consider "fixing"?
If you want another hundred billion for the military just say so, stop picking fights with people who either do - or may soon - have the capability to fight back once and for all.
And if the Russians are manipulating your election and affecting your candidates, maybe you should look at your election and candidates instead of the Russians. Because, for sure, you'd do exactly the same if you could over in their country.
How about fixing your election system and having news channels that report on real things, like who's taking backhanders, what crappy laws have been slipped into completely unrelated bills, and such-like?
Oh, sorry, that would involve having impartial news channels not already owned by the people in charge, right?
He needs to tread a careful line - as sitting president, waiting for the results of the FBI investigation is the right thing to do.
I've railed against Trump here on more than one occasion. I think he'll be a disaster as president. But what the Democrats are REALLY upset about here is Hillary and her people are doing their damnedest to lose this election. There are numerous things to dislike about Clinton, and she seems hellbent on repeatedly bringing those things to the fore.
#DeleteChrome
Cost to get a government appointment
https://www.google.com/search?...
Obama Emailing Hillary
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Obama+use...
Sanders never considered as nominee
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=DNC+Email...
So, the whole thing amounts to the United States government and press is upset at a foreign nation for telling the truth?
I am not when did I fall through the rabbit hole and end up in Bizarro World?
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
So why not have some fun ?
Ted Kennedy enlists Soviet aid against Reagan in 1984
The whiners today can shove this right up their collective asses. It's just repeating past Democratic behavior.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
One of which is the fact that Tony Podesta, a big Hillary bundler and brother of John Podesta, her campaign manager, is registered lobbyist for Putin's bank:
Snip.
And this is just one of many Clinton ties to Putin...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Anyone remember when Mitt Romney called out Obama for not paying enough attention to Russia, and Obama laughed it off with "The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back becausethe Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Good times!
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Two senior Democratic lawmakers with access to classified intelligence on Thursday accused Russia of "making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election,"
>>>>
Two senior Democratic lawmakers (because all the Republican ones were "out to lunch") with access to classified intelligence (which they shouldn't have revealed even the existence of, if they're really and truly classified) on Thursday (the best day for reporting viral news) said that the people (who were actually aliens wearing face-masks) who came to them (without providing any concrete verifiable proof of their credentials) put some bits of paper in front of them (without any way for those lawmakers to verify the authenticity of the documents) which had some words in it *claiming* to "accuse Russia of making a serious and concerted effort to influence the U.S. election,"
what a complete crock. over how many pairs of eyes do these people *really* think that this can be pulled? oh wait.... they've probably run the numbers, and they only need to make it look like *DEMOCRAT* Lawmakers are incompetent, so that a large enough percentage will vote for Republican.... and the rest they can swing by manipulating the numbers using that new-fangled "percentage" adjustment they added into the backdoors after the last time some of the vote totals went NEGATIVE. i wonder if they remembered to do rounding to integers? we'll find out soon enough, if the number of votes comes out to "25012.79" won't we!
I'm not sure exactly how much influence the Russians could have on an American Election. The US pretty much looks towards itself when it comes to news, and as for Election Issues, it's an even tighter focus inward. There is, of course, the influence you can get by throwing something out there and letting the victims (American News outlets, US citizens, and the Candidates themselves) do the actual influencing portion, however innocently they come by it.
But any non-US entity really has always had that power, if by some other means than hacking some server somewhere, by raising some issue or acting in some manner that involves a Foreign Policy situation. Still, the US Election is rarely about Foreign Policy issues, at least to the extent that, say, the British Elections traditionally have been. But it seems to me (warning: personal opinion ahead) that broadly speaking an American Presidential Election is about domestic issues, and to a large degree very local issues. In other words, the scope of influence possible with regard to a Foreign Policy issue is I believe small.
If you would argue that even a small influence is too many, well, there is a valid point there, but it seems unavoidable. Looking back, I would say that Israel has probably tried more often than Russia to influence an American election. The net effect was probably greater than zero, but still small, in the grand scheme of things.
Sort of off-topic, but topical, the British Monarchy has a very strict policy whereby no member of the British Royal Family will visit any Commonwealth Nation during an election campaign. By strict I mean to the point where they will cancel any planned visit (and in some countries, they don't get many, so it's a big deal and a big loss) should an election be called. In this case I would suggest it's more a thing of not wanting to be seen to influence an election rather than any actual influence, but there is the argument that a Royal Visit would tend to support the current administration as far as re-election goes.
All in all, though, I think that there are too many issues and too many way in which an Election could potentially be influenced, that in the end you are not going to get much traction from foreign influence in the first place.
Just accusing Russia of an attempt to influence a US Election goes a long way to negating that influence, because the US is somewhat paranoid about foreign influence in the first place (not that it's a rare trait amongst nations, but it does vary and America is on the more, rather than less wary side).
The end result is you can't actually be sure your "influence" is going to go your way; it could easily backfire. The risk itself is probably enough of a brake to make the practice unlikely to be a true influence, versus just one of a thousand small potential influences.
This blaming Russia every time they get leaks proving they are corrupt shit has to stop before these idiots start a new cold war.
As we all saw, Russia interfered with the free and open elections in Eastern Ukraine after the Putin lapdog Yanukovych fled into the arms of Putin when the people of Ukraine wanted closer, more open ties with the West.
Russia sent in its troops and armed its terrorist proxies who burned polling places, burned ballots, threatened anyone who tried to vote, tried to rig votes, and even bragged about doing all of the above by recording their goings on.
Considering the amount of groveling Trump is doing at Putin's feet for his own personal gain and has openly asked for the same foreign government to commit espionage on a U.S. citizen, it would be surprising if Russia wasn't trying to game the system. So long as Putin has been in power that has been the name of game in Russia: only those Putin approves are allowed to run for office.
That Russia is now trying to electronically influence U.S. elections only shows how desperate Putin is to have the sanctions lifted which are dragging his country down each day they are in place. As reported a week ago, Russia will literally run out of money by the middle of next year if sanctions aren't lifted. Supporting the terrorists in Eastern Ukraine and the Syrian regime is costing Russia money it can ill-afford to lose yet from all appearances, Putin is vowed and determined to drag Russia down with him. That is why they are attempting to interfere in U.S. elections.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Under Saudi control, NATO, Soros, and the Rockefeller Fund have agents in Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia enforcing Sharia blasphemy law. They call it a national security initiative, the "Viral Peace" program: make everyone submit to Islam and there will be peace. No one will be shot for drawing a Mohammed cartoon if we make Western society so oppressive that no one would dare draw a Mohammed cartoon. That is seriously their line of thinking from the position papers of the US-Muslim Engagement Project, the UN Alliance of Civilizations, the Open Society Institute, etc.
They tell the public that the project is for trolling ISIS while they are actually trolling anyone and everyone who is opposed to ISIS, using their administrator powers to get voices against terrorism silenced from social media, and using their government connections to remain immune from consequences. Hillary Clinton personally helped put them there. And when conservatives started saying things on Twitter that had the potential to hurt the Clinton campaign, Twitter was happy to help her out by banning them and developing China-style censorship algorithms to suppress the spread of information by hiding posts for a few days and making it look like an innocent software glitch.
Gamergate happened when the public uncovered a small branch of the project in the game industry, which is why there was so much censorship: Zoe's friends are part of a secret government "national security" program that is ultimately run by Saudis who were investigated after 9/11 for funding al-Qaeda. Follow the leads to the end and you arrive at the ADAMS mosque, the Safa Group, the SAAR Foundation; or in Switzerland with DMI Trust, Ithmaar, al-Taqwa; or the leads go to Qatar or the Emirates.
But that's not newsworthy for some reason. Oh, the US government has an Internet censorship program modeled after China's, complete with software filters and paid trolls? It's been up and running for years? And it's run by al-Qaeda? Not news! Not news at all!
Maybe one of the reasons Clinton is about tied with Donald Trump is because the Clinton camp sounds like a bunch of lunatics ranting and raving about Russia. Trump works for Russia, Jill Stein works for Russia, the Intercept works for Russia...
David Brock seriously seems to have lifted his whole election strategy for Clinton from a crazy guy walking around Downtown Chicago wearing a sandwich board.
What if instead of making up conspiracy theories about Trump, they made valid critiques of Trump? Is it really that hard to criticize Donald Trump??? He's fucking Donald Trump, a bigoted lunatic! Yet Clinton is losing to him in some polls because the Democrats have decided they want to just act crazy instead of talking about reality.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
...than the ACTUAL sitting US president bargaining away missile defense?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
-Styopa
Tell me when they start complaining about the 60 million post-1965 immigrants and the Jews in AIPAC and Hollywood.
are privvy to some information, say, the Kremlin themselves admitting to this? Bullshit. They are just talking out of their asses as usual, there is no definitive proof that the Kremlin is trying to influence the elections, just bullshit propaganda as usual.
And now it is rigging elections like Florida in the year 2000.
Reagan got the Teheran hostages free by promising to unfreeze some shah-assets.
They were actually released on election day - and that's just a very public example.
Also, it's pretty clear that Russia has sent a little warning in the form of the Shadow Broker files.
That's why the Obama-Administration is so tight-arsed about calling out Putin. The Russians probably know a lot more about a couple of very shady intelligence operations than they could ever have gained from Ed Snowden - and they made it clear that they can leak it anytime.
The Russians basically said:
"We can play this game, too, you know? Don't rock the boat, be happy with your book-contracts, the Nobel-prize and your cushy 50000 USD/gig speaking engagements".
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
most of the US hates it when the US does it too. Our political system is, like most, set up to protect the rights of our ruling class. The working class, by and large, has little or no say in such matters. Poll Americans and outside of Jews who want us to keep protecting Israel there's very few who want us dabbling in the rest of the world's politics. Isolationism plays well and in a country as wealthy as ours would probably work. We'd have to give up cheap iPhones and beef up our Nukes (We'd need something like the hammer if Israel where we'd nuke the world into perpetual winter if China or India invaded. No, Russia's never going to have the resources to invade. Christ, we've got twice as many people...).
Anyway, point is we'd love to put a stop to this B.S.. If you wanna tell me how I can get my ruling class to do what I tell them (and maybe get my working class to stop caring about guns, gays & abortion long enough to notice economic issues) I'll get right on that...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
why did you make'em electronical and proprietary in the first place??
Doing a great job there Russia!
Given the choice between believing Democrats and believing Russians - and despite being old enough to recall the cold war in all it's glory - I have to say, I'd believe the Russians, first. I think they are intrinsically more honest, outgoing, reliable and forthright than Democrats are. They also have a sense of ethics, which Democrats do not.
"...they want their Foreign Policy Back"
Ken
The Democrats are pumping all these claims about Putin and Trump so that nobody will stop and think about the HUGE ties between the Clintons and Putin... including the one that transferred piles of cash into the Clinton foundation while she, as Secretary of State helped Putin's cronies buy a big chunk of American uranium production.
Just how did the Clintons go from "dead broke" in 2000 to half a billion dollars in 2008 without making/inventing/selling ANYTHING and without working for anybody else who was, and while she was paid for 4 years to be (at a salary $186,600.00 per year) Secretary of State????
Don't Ask! Don't think! Be a Drone!
Really? There's no corporate influence over the lesser parties? Democrat stakeholders don't support the Libertarian party to split the Republican base, and vice versa with the Green party?
Friend, if I was going to voice my honest and unfiltered opinion in a Presidential election, I'd write my own name in.
How is having more people vote for one of a carefully-curated selection of handpicked stooges any better? It would change nothing except the scale of the voting tally.
You're not going to change the rigged system by using the rigged system. That was the whole point of rigging it in the first place.
Those damn Russians always making Hillary Clinton install her own insecure email server and routing mail from Obama to Hillary and back.... how dare they. Next they'll be using weird mind control to make Trump into a racist arsehole.
The White House is hesitating over making any accusations along these lines because they know full well that if you make those accusations you'd better be able to back them up and the evidence to back them up is almost impossible to get. We may know that the Russians are behind it, but I doubt we've got the evidence to actually prove it to any acceptable standard and if we go off making official accusations without being able to prove them we're going to look like fools.
Dude, Clinton and the DNC actually did the shit that's revealed in the leaks. Who found out that they're crooked liars is not material to the question of whether or not they're crooked liars. Can you imagine a defendant trying this argument in court? "Yes, you honor, the defendant was filmed murdering Jon Doe, but if it weren't for the fact that the recording was found by a burglar it would have never seen the light of day. It makes sense, then, that my client should go free."
...have sold themselves very cheaply to global corporations. Why not to countries too? Maybe they'll get a better price into the bargain.
Discussing stuff with Russia now is not as bad as Reagan's discussions with Iran before his election.
Consider it partisan politics as usual.
Why put the country ahead of a political party? That's commie talk to people in politics.
The Dems have seen Hillary's huge lead vanish, and the election is a real horse race. If current trends continue, Trump could win. Obama doesn't want that. The alleged interference is just setting up an excuse for ignoring the election results if Trump wins.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It is not I who did something wrong.
It is
It is..
It is....
It is... every one else... - Those darn communists!
If the candidates were open and transparent AND if voters only cared about ability to govern, then no one could influence the election. But that isn't going to happen. But labor unions by far and away have the largest influence vector for elections, followed by large corporations. Large corporations by the amount of money they contribute, usually have more influence on a continuing basis, but often hedge their bets by donating to both sides in the election. Lately though some large entities (I'm looking at you Facebook!) have stopped any pretense of neutral news reporting and might as well be looked upon as strictly aligned with particular candidates. Labor unions strongly influence elections by the sheer number of their Sheeple following the edicts of their labor union "bosses". Not to say all do, but a large enough number to sway some elections. If all candidates where required to be open and transparent and there was a mechanism to expose when they weren't and if so called fact finding organizations where unbiased and not supportive of any particular candidate, and news organizations were actually news organizations, not thinly veneered arms of entities with a political agenda then the voters would be presented with a neutral view that was unbiased to choose from. Foreign governments influence on American elections is a "red" herring. The domestic influencers actually do influence the outcome.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
No such "deal" between Reagan and Iran existed. Period. Full Stop.
Some bitter carter admin people claimed it must have happened and they even tried to explain how and why. When their timelines did not work out because all Reagan's people were accounted for at the claimed times and dates and there was no actual evidence, the claim then morphed and they started claiming that George H W Bush (the elder ex pres) had flown to Iran in secret to make the deal..... aboard an SR-71 which was the only way to make the claim work within the proposed timeline. When it was pointed out that this was insane, they ranted that he had previously run the CIA and had been a pilot....
Unfortunately for their crazy foil hat claim, all SR-71s were accounted for and the lie therefore died, which is why there were never any prosecutions or even investigations by independent prosecutors which DID exist back then.
Yup, that's just how insane that quack claim and the then-recently-unemployed Carter admin people were back then.