Slashdot Mirror
US Releases Declassified Report On Russian Hacking, Concludes That Putin 'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released its unclassified report on Russian hacking operations in the United States. "We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," according to the report. "Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump." The report, titled "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections," details the successful hack of the Democratic National Committee. "The Kremlin's campaign aimed at the U.S. election featured disclosures of data obtained through Russian cyber operations; intrusions into U.S. state and local electoral boards; and overt propaganda," according to the report. The report states that Russian intelligence services made cyber-attacks against "both major U.S. political parties" to influence the 2016 election. The report also publicly names Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks.com, two sources of stolen information released to the public, as Russian operatives working on behalf of the country's military intelligence unit, the GRU. Officials from the organization were recently the target of U.S. sanctions. WikiLeaks is also cited as a recipient of stolen information. The report also notes that the U.S. has determined Russia "accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards," though no vote-tallying processes were tampered with. The FBI and CIA have "high confidence" the election tampering was ordered by Putin to help then-candidate Trump, according to the report. NSA has "moderate confidence" in the assessment.
bongey writes: The declassified DNI report offers no direct evidence of Russia hacking DNC or Podesta emails. Exactly half of the report (subtract blank and TOC) 9 of 18 is just devoted to going after RT.com by claiming they have close ties to Russia and therefore a propaganda arm, trying to imply that rt.com is related to the hacking. "Many of the key judgments in this assessment rely on a body of reporting from multiple sources that are consistent with our understanding of Russian behavior. Insights into Russian efforts -- including specific cyber operations -- and Russian views of key U.S. players derive from multiple corroborating sources. Some of our judgments about Kremlin preferences and intent are drawn from the behavior of Kremlin loyal political figures, state media, and pro-Kremlin social media actors, all of whom the Kremlin either directly uses to convey messages or who are answerable to the Kremlin."
UPDATE 1/6/17: President-elect Donald Trump met with U.S. intelligence officials Friday, calling the meeting "constructive" and offering praise for intel officials. "While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.
'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump? Wow, I never thought the US people and Putin could have so much in common.
TL;DR:
- Russia wanted the candidate who didn't want to start WW3 to win
- The wikileaks emails were all real
- Russia didn't hack the election
- The Russian propaganda network dispensed Russian propaganda
I seem to remember the Obama administration had a preference against Brexit and Netin-yahoo...
"Russia, if you're listening..."
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Was there ever evidence that Russia was the Wikileaks source? Julian Assange has certainly denied it and implied not too subtly that it may have been a certain murdered DNC staffer named Seth Rich. Regardless if it was him or not Julian Assange has stated unequivocally that the source was a DNC staffer.
. . . there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. . .
Why bother with the voting machines when you can tamper with the voters?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
No, Assange has simply claimed it wasn't Russia (why anyone would believe Assange is beyond me, even if he was in a position to know that all the intermedaries weren't Russians). People like you keep trying to make Rich into some sort of victim of the Clinton Crime FAmily. It's a deep irony that you'll reject multiple US security services' claims that Russia was the source, but buy into a completely unevidenced and really quite idiotic conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton had a DNC staffer murdered. And for what? So that voting for Trump doesn't make you a fucking moron? Well, too bad, you're a fucking moron.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Was it the guy who was calling the election rigged and asking for Russia to hack Clinton emails during the campaign and has now been attacking US intelligence services?
Putin dislikes Clinton for one reason (imo):
No one in the world has more influence in the Balkans and Ukraine than Bill Clinton. Not only did he win a war there, he has deep understanding of the region (even knowing who some of the crime lords are), and has personal relationships with many people there. Apart from Lewinsky, he was an excellent president and he managed to settle a complex region that could have ended up like Iraq is now, if someone less competent had been in charge.
However, Putin has a goal to increase his influence in the exact same region. The biggest impediment to reaching that goal would be Bill/Hillary in power again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Let's compare/contrast the historical veracity of information released by Assange/WikiLeaks with that of any US intelligence service, shall we?
One has an impeccable record of authenticity, while the other is run by documented liars. In fact, both Brennan and Clapper sat before Congress and bald-faced LIED when asked about the existence and activities of the NSA's domestic spying apparatus.
The better question would be: Why would anyone in their right mind not believe Assange over the Liar McPantsonFires in Washington DC?
Do you think hurling pejoratives at someone strengthens your position? Look, I'm not a conspiracy nut but when you ask me whether I should believe people whose job it is to lie and deceive or someone who has dedicated his life to exposing lies.. yes I tend to side with the latter person. It strikes me as incredible that we are in a situation where progressives are siding with the covert intelligence agencies and conservatives with freaking wikileaks but here we are. I respect that you disagree with me but before any of this snowballed, back in Aug 2016 Assange was offering a 20k reward for info on Seth's death. Maybe he was seeking publicity for his organization, maybe not but you and me being on the sides we are... feels a bit like we've stumbled into the looking glass.
"While Russia, China, other countries, outside groups and people are consistently trying to break through the cyber infrastructure of our governmental institutions, businesses and organizations including the Democrat National Committee, there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines," Trump said in a statement after the meeting.
OMG! That seems like an actual, complete sentence with a coherent message from Trump!
Name one national American politician with any technical knowledge?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think Donald Trump did the best job, he did a tremendous job downplaying cyber and all this democracy thing, better than anyone else.
I've never heard of one. Anyone else?
Not all "progessives" are conspiracy nuts, and I think the general consensus from the Powell UN WMD presentation was that a lot of people had very little confidence in what the Bush Administration was making them do.
As to the $20,000 reward, of course it was a publicity stunt. There was no bloody hit, and the poor bastard took an hour to die. It was a robbery gone wrong, which a lot of Sanders and Trump supporters tried to spin as some sort of Clinton Crime Family hit. The fact that Assange went any distance down that rabbit hole demonstrates where he's coming from. And really how is he in any position to know the source of the. It's not like the guy handing Wikileaks the files is going to announce "Hello, I am Yuri from FSB."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Indeed. There's NATO and health care to destroy
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why would anyone believe Clapper, who has been cought at lying under oath before the congress before?
Just a reminder that the US government are proven liars. They lied all through the 1950s about the Middle East and Iran, They lied their arses about Vietnam. They lied about not supporting South American dictators. They lied about the Contras. And when came to WMD they even lied to themselves and then fabricated evidence to prove their own BS. Up until 1973, when they were found out, they even paid reporters at the New York Times and Washington Post to print fake news. This is an incredible but true fact. Well documented. It's amazing stuff. And they always get away with it. Heck, go back to the 1800s, the Philippine war or the Spanish-America war. They were even printing fake news back then. It never ends.
On the one hand: Yes they should have secured their machines and not put morons who would fall for simple phishing tricks in charge.
On the other hand: Whoever released the DNC/Podesta emails did us all a huge favor. We shouldn't care all that much who did it. We particularly shouldn't care about the fact free allegations being made by the crooks who were exposed and lost.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Not to mention that Hillary Clinton used the CIA to influence the 2011 Russian elections against Putin's party. This is just payback in kind.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
TIL that acting in a way that happens to somewhat align with a foreign power means one is now a foreign agent. Brilliant.
California suffers from numerous problems. 1. Illegal voters 2. Voter intimidation 3. Voter depression
Are those three things enough to make up for the difference in votes? We don't have a way to measure those things accurately, but they surely played a big role. I work in SF, and the majority of the people I discussed politics with either didn't vote or voted Trump. The majority of the non-voters were afraid to vote Trump for fear of being blackballed.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
How does what Russia is accused of differ from the Obama administration influencing the Israeli presidential election by giving over $300k to groups acting against Netanyahu?
"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
When did Obama or Clinton become tech wizards?
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Clinton an excellent president? You mean the DINO (Democrat In Name Only) who dismantled the New Deal protections (see Glass-Steagall) that could have prevented the financial meltdown? What f*ing planet are you living on?
Or the same president who was too chickenshit to allow gay marriage, instead passing the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act? The same guy who claimed he didn't inhale (what was he smoking to even think anyone would believe that?). And let's not forget Don't Ask Don't Tell.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Yes, of course, he meant Electoral College. The US has been electing Presidents via the institutions from the very beginning.
How many of them voting illegally?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You mean the DINO (Democrat In Name Only)
That's part of why he was a good president: he was practical instead of ideological. Ideologues mess things up. It was funny watching his gyrations about DOMA later, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Would be Obama/Clinton, given the number of "red lines" enacted and withdrawn.
Assad crossed the "red line" when Hillary was no longer SOS. So it was Obama/Kerry not Obama/Clinton. Hillary has said she would have been more aggressive in Syria.
Personal opinion: Obama made the right choice. Bombing would have accomplished nothing. So instead we demanded that Assad destroy his entire stockpile of chemical weapons, and then we verified that he did it. That was an accomplishment.
More personal opinion: We are backing the wrong side in Syria. Assad is preferable to the opposition in almost every way. We don't need to oppose him just because the Russians support him.
I thought WikiLeaks was supposed to protect it's sources. If he implied 'not too subtly' that it was this DNC staffer, then I guess he just killed the only reason to trust WikiLeaks. When the heat is on, Assange just might give you up. It's super-convenient that the guy's dead, so no one can run that down.
Assange feels like an ass, because he got played by an intelligence agency, and he knows it.
Fuck them.
The system has failed you, don't fail yourself. --Billy Bragg
Who the hell is bongey, and why does he get his own editorial section? The editors are fucking trolling us here, this post is explicitly crafted to be flame bait.
We don't want either side to win. We want a decades long, bloody stalemate between Sunni/Shia. Keep them busy and out of trouble.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution makes it quite clear that the popular vote is irrelevant when it comes to electing the President.
See the parts where it says "The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for President ..." and "The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President ...".
The Electors' votes matters. The popular vote does not.
The Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution says that whatever point you're trying to make (be it mockery or otherwise) with the popular vote is irrelevant, pointless, and not worthy of consideration.
especially without qualification.
I might believe this report over Assange because he had a very clear motive to make sure Hilary Clinton didn't get elected. Her dislike for him (and Snowden) was well documented).
And you'd be a fool if you didn't believe Russia preferred Trump over Hilary. Trump has been pro-Russia all along and has millions (billions?) to gain from his business interests by supporting them. The real question is, do American interests align with Russia. If the answer is yes, by all means, believe Trump and his ilk. Otherwise, well, Houston, we have a problem...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Like it or not, the perception of the incoming president as Putin's lapdog is going to stick. You cannot wipe off the stink at this point. In the history books, Donald J Trump is going to have an asterisk after his name, and the image of #RussianDon cuddling up to Vladimir Putin is forever.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The NSA said it has moderate confidence or about 50% that it was the Russians. So for nearly the same probability of flipping a coin, 35 diplomats were kicked out and 2 Russian sites that have been open since the 1970s were closed down.
The NSA opinion holds vastly more weight related to hacking because the NSA are the hacking experts, the FBI/CIA are doing political guessing.
The FBI changed there opinion on the CIAs information. Considering the former CIA head came out for Clinton and the current head John Brennan spoke out against Trump. Both the CIA/FBI ended with highly confident, sure not political at all, wink, wink.
I will trust the NSA over the CIA/FBI.
Can't speak for the Balkans, but that is certainly not true about Ukraine. McCain has influence there — he knows Russians since his youth. Biden does — his son has sizeable investments there. Obama and Trump do — for their own obvious reasons.
But Clinton?..
The difference with Iraq may be more due to differences between Iraqis and Yugoslavs — and their respective neighborhoods — than that between Bush and Clinton.
Really? You mean, the Hillary of the "Reset" fame? The Hillary, that was on his payroll for years? The Hillary, whose e-mails his staff has been accessing more reliably, than weather forecasts? That Hillary?..
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I admit that I get some kind of vague sadistic pleasure from watching Republicans getting their ass fucked by Putin voluntarily.
Giving up an already murdered source isn't much of a betrayal. I'd say it did credit to the dead guys memory. He was wrong most of his life, but just before he was killed, he turned from the dark side, Vader style. Better than most democrats, who just double down on crooked when confronted with facts.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So setting the world up for the financial crisis made him a good president? Wow, you must have really been cumming in your pants over any of the presidential candidates except Sanders.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I will add to that - he won a war there without even telling Russia he was going in, let alone Russia's involvement in what they saw as their "backyard". The pissed off Putin and many other Russians immensely. Putin used Clinton's actions as an example in his climb up the political ladder, stirring up a fair bit of hate for the USA. It was his often cited example of how Russia was no longer "great" and needed a "strong leader" to fix it.
With authoritarians the personal is political so his hate for Bill would have become hate for Hillary and he's very likely to have used his political resources to do something to slow down Hillary.
Google 'Weather underground'. Thank dog leftists are so fucking stupid.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Do you think hurling pejoratives at someone strengthens your position? Look, I'm not a conspiracy nut but when you ask me whether I should believe people whose job it is to lie and deceive or someone who has dedicated his life to exposing lies.. yes I tend to side with the latter person. It strikes me as incredible that we are in a situation where progressives are siding with the covert intelligence agencies and conservatives with freaking wikileaks but here we are. I respect that you disagree with me but before any of this snowballed, back in Aug 2016 Assange was offering a 20k reward for info on Seth's death. Maybe he was seeking publicity for his organization, maybe not but you and me being on the sides we are... feels a bit like we've stumbled into the looking glass.
Yes, intelligence services lie sometimes, that's what intelligence services do but it does not mean that the CIA is always lying all of the time and that Vladimir Putin, the FSB and the GRU are the fountains of eternal truth. The people who work for the CIA are, when push comes to shove, patriots for their nation who care when an enemy tries to sabotage Americans Democracy. Anybody who is so entrenched in their left/right trench warfare that they are prepared to believe Vladimir Putin over their own intelligence services when the GRU and FSB try to undermine American elections needs to take a long hard look at whether political trench warfare is more important than preserving peoples faith in the electoral process which has enough problems without the Russians screwing around with it as well as the Trump and the US political establishment.
We want a decades long, bloody stalemate between Sunni/Shia. Keep them busy and out of trouble.
Wars don't reduce trouble. They create radicalized and desperate people. Syrian refugees are destabilizing the EU, and many of the recent terrorist attacks in France, Germany, and Turkey can be traced back to Syria.
hahaha - are you having a laugh? Okay, pretending for a minute this is actually true (let's see some evidence, apparently the US dumped money into Russian campaigns, but that's fairly legitimate and above-board - if Putin or Russia publicly funded US candidates, I wouldn't be too chuffed, if it's legal) no one has had a snowball's chance in hell for decades of upsetting the dominant power regime in Russia. A little reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Fuck you! I'm from the Balkans and US involvement only made things worse. Facts were turned upside down, people were killed and their rapists and torturers were praised and supported by US. You are right about Bill knowing the crime lords there, he and CIA created most of them to benefit from smuggling and other illegal activities. Do die in a ditch you piece of shit, you don't know what you are talking about!
Jimmy Carter!
He lost because he told the American people the truth - nobody in politics is going to make that mistake for a while.
There were no real shocks there, it was just a slimy political party acting like a slimy political party, but I suppose there are so many that are ridiculously naive about politics that it may have made a difference.
Also, the FBI never even examined the DNC server. No need to redact top secret info which doesn't exist.
I'm humored by this, where the report states that they "rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the precise bases [sic] for its assessments..." Huh? They didn't reveal any knowledge or basis, at all.
And, they don't know the difference between a troll and a sockpuppet.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That's fucking horrible. Perhaps thinking that makes you feel smart as if you were Sun Tzu or were playing a game of Sid Meier's Civilization, but there are actual people living there. This sounds like ramblings of a jerky hand lunatic Hitler waiting it out in the bunker.
What would you rather like (assuming in the US) : functioning education, health, Department of Transportation, EPA etc., DoJ, Police and so on, or three decades of protestant vs catholic war? While, far from leaving the rest out of trouble, the situation spills into Canada and Mexico with even a couple bombings in Brazil, and US Jews have to flee wherever they can.
If that was bitter sarcasm, let us know.
NATO will be much better/healthier when the euros start to pay their fair share.
Western Europe's military spending picking up will not please Russia at all.
I still say: If we want the Russians to shit themselves, we ship the Germans 100,000 tons of steel and a ton of weapons grade. Only half joking, but the Germans wouldn't take it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The last 8 years must have been fun for you. Putin has been consistently outmaneuvering the amateurs running the USA.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Considering that staffer was already murdered, there's not much point in protecting him, especially when you add in the fact that the clowns accusing Russia risk inciting world war.
"Excellent president"
Sure, if you ignore the fact that:
1) He dismantled the protections that American consumers had from Wall Street when he signed the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
2) He destroyed the Democratic Party as a party of the people when he led the "Third Way" into control of the party and made it into the conservative, pro-corporate trash that it is today. (Which is ironically, led to the rise of people like DWS who destroyed Hillary's campaign for president.)
3) Waco and Ruby Ridge happened under Clinton's DOJ, which led to the further rise of insane right-wing militias. Those incidents also led directly to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
4) Clinton arguably committed war crimes in Serbia. (Part of his expertise on the Balkans that you cite so favourable?)
5) Osama Bin Laden attributed Clinton's bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory (which killed tens of thousands of Sudanese as a result of lack of medicine) as one of his motivations for revenge on 9/11.
6) Don't Ask; Don't Tell. DOMA.
7) The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act
8) The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act
Other than that, great president though.
Basically, the guy was lucky enough to be president at the time that the economy was booming because the Cold War was over and the Internet happened. And he at least had enough foresight not to fuck those things up. (And most of that foresight was probably attributable to Gore and Clinton's pro-corporate interests.)
So far US government has utterly failed to provide any compelling evidence to support it's assertions. Yet another worthless mostly off-topic 13 page document crying about success of foreign propaganda rather than supporting any of it's positions with evidence.
Everyone knows what "RT" is. It's no secret to anyone who isn't living under a rock why they exist and what they do any more than it's no secret why VOA/CNN exist.
All I've seen on CNN the past few weeks is... Wikileaks is an agent of Russia, Wikileaks stole information, Assange is wanted for rape, Assange rapes little girls and persistently pathetic stories of low morale and despair among TLAs because Trump won't listen to them.... WAHHHHHHH.
Do I trust US intel to provide truthful and accurate "assessments" to the public? After curveball's mobile production facilities, aluminum tubes and Uranium (dramatic pause) from Africa do you really need to ask?
Same as it's always been. The liberals need to use their voters before they (age/are informed) out of the stupidity.
Popping a stupid idealists bubble is an unqualified good thing. I'd say it as much for some 'bible thumper' as for some 'das Kapital thumper'. The world will be better when they move into the real world.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
prove it otherwise stfu
First Dotcom bubble popped under Clinton, right at the end. You fuckup a bubble by letting it continue to inflate. You don't fuck it up by letting air out slowly.
Clinton absolutely fucked up the dotcom bubble, Bush took the heat, inheriting the mess.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The Catholics and Protestants aren't fighting now because they were allowed to kick the fight out of each other. In that historic case, it was Swiss bankers funding both sides of the wars, we can play that role for the Muslims.
In the long run, it's the only thing that will fix their culture. They can make peace anytime they grow up.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Can't speak for the Balkans, but that is certainly not true about Ukraine. McCain has influence there — he knows Russians since his youth. Biden does — his son has sizeable investments there. Obama and Trump do — for their own obvious reasons.
You are way off target on Ukraine as well. Biden's son was given a sinecure by Ukrainian oligarchs, probably because they thought that this would be a good way to influence Biden - this way of doings things is part of the Soviet legacy which the Ukrainian public is trying to leave behind, although clearly, it exists to some extent in Western nations as well. In turn, Biden has very little influence in Ukraine, as he has flown there multiple times, and practically begged the Ukrainian government, which is, unfortunately, still dominated by oligarchs, to fight corruption; he did this to little avail. McCain has no influence in Ukraine, although he was one of the few US politicians who was decent enough to overtly support Ukraine's popular revolution against Yanukovych, and has visited there since. McCain's "influence" in Ukraine consists of giving moral support to the Ukrainian public, and he's well-liked there.
Obama had about as much influence in Ukraine as he had in any other Western nation, simply by virtue of being President of the US, but he was generally not interested in getting involved in Eastern Europe, aside from some useful moves to bolster NATO's presence in the Baltics. His disinterest and tendency to appease Russia, has severely emboldened their belligerence. Trump has influence in Ukraine? It's the other way around, as Paul Manafort, who worked for the worst gangsters in Ukraine (such as the "clan" of former President, Yanukovych), and is likely still beholden to some of them, was Trump's campaign manager, until his dealings with Ukrainian oligarchs came under scrutiny, and he had to resign from the Trump camp. Trump is widely hated in Ukraine, due to his overt pro-Putin stance, and most Ukrainian politicians are careful to distance themselves from Trump, although they'll have to deal with him to a certain extent, given that he's going to be US President.
And indeed, Bill Clinton has no influence in Ukraine, although I wouldn't be surprised if oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, son in law of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma (another nasty piece of work, perhaps most famous for allegations of having ordered the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze), has paid him for his time.
Trump never called for the Russians to hack Clinton's emails. He was calling for them to turn over emails the'd previously hacked after Clinton illegally deleted them. There's a big difference.
Where's the Beef? Here is the Declassified version of the U.S. Intelligence Report regarding Russia.
https://www.dni.gov/files/docu...
You know, the one cited for proof of undermining the U.S. election process. Well, I've read it, and I will sum it up with the following:
TOTAL BUNK...
Just some highlights...
"Russian efforts to influence the 2016 US presidential election represent the most recent expression of Moscow’s longstanding desire to undermine the US-led liberal democratic order"
This was funny, so they're only focused on undermining the liberal democratic order, conservatives and libertarians - YOU ARE SAFE!
"We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."
The fact that statement is made, shows that this entire intelligence review is utter BS and mere politics. There is NO reason for Russia to be supporting Trump, and the actions could have just as easily benefited Bernie Sanders. If they were to accuse Russia of a motive, it would be to prevent Hillary being elected. Nothing to do with her competitors.
"When it appeared to Moscow that Secretary Clinton was likely to win the election" Really, cause the appearances and statements across U.S. media was that this was an apparent given that Hillary would win and be our next president. This was de facto for a year or more.
I saw in another article that they had record of Russian officials celebrating upon Trump's win. And clearly this means they were for Trump. Bogus. I didn't want Trump, but I was happy to not have Hillary. And I believe the Russians simply did NOT want Hillary - for good reason.
"Russia’s state-run propaganda machine contributed to the influence campaign by serving as a platform for Kremlin messaging to Russian and international audiences."
Which has zero affect on U.S. populace. Really, so what...we have tons of evidence that the mainstream media was a propaganda machine for Hillary which went so far as to rigged debates and more.
"Kremlin’s TV Seeks To Influence Politics, Fuel Discontent in US" Really? How many American's were watching Kremlin TV?
Basically, this report is Russian media outlets denigrated Hillary, while U.S. media outlets denigrated Bernie and Trump. And it's only okay for foreign media to denigrate Trump, not Hillary.
"Putin publicly pointed to the Panama Papers disclosure and the Olympic doping scandal as US-directed efforts to defame Russia, suggesting he sought to use disclosures to discredit the image of the United States and cast it as hypocritical."
HE IS RIGHT, IT WAS!!!
Do I doubt Russia has hacked U.S. systems. Not one bit. Every government is doing it. Though few at the level the U.S. is. We've conducted more hacking and election affecting than every other country in the world has combined. So threatening military action and retaliation is not only hypocritical, it's ludicrously insane.
Gee, so per the document Russia has had agents involved in monitoring the election process since the Carter days. Of course they do. So do we. Of course they're going to want to have insight into who will be the head of their largest rival. Duh... nothing to see here, go home.
"Russia Times aired a documentary about the Occupy Wall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November. RT framed the movement as a fight against "the ruling class" and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations."
Um, ya...seems like the truth to me.
So far as I read this, it pretty much appears to be 25 pages going thru decades of Russia and U.S. opposing opinions and expressions. Well duh...we did have a cold war. And even after it's pretty much been lukewarm. So none of this crap is evidence for U.S. claims being made against Russia currently.
At
James Clapper lied about U.S. cybersecurity. James Clapper is the U.S. Director of National Intelligence. He resigned.
Two big issues:
1) If he feels comfortable lying, can anything he says be considered to be reliable?
2) He is 75 years old. Photos of him give the impression he is extremely conflicted. (See the resignation story.) Does he have any technical knowledge?
There is the possibility that everything that has been said is manipulated nonsense. Apparently NONE of the authors of the stories have investigated the depth of technical knowledge of ANYONE. There is no depth to any of the stories.
Clinton absolutely fucked up the dotcom bubble, Bush took the heat, inheriting the mess.
You're remembering it wrong. There was nothing to clean up, the market had already corrected by the time GWB took office. The housing bubble mess he left for Obama, on the other hand, took a while.
Fuck you! I'm from the Balkans and US involvement only made things worse
Guess it depends on your Point of View. This is one of those conflicts where the term genocide came up regularly, if you were one of those ethnicities being persecuted, you were 100% grateful for NATO involvement. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slobodan_MiloÅeviÄ
It's interesting that "denigrating Clinton" is comprised of revealing what she communicated.
Seems she shot herself in her own foot.
Pragmatism is, in effect, an ever-changing magic 8-ball of ideology, and is very much capable of messing things up. The closest thing to non-ideological leadership that's actually possible is being ideologically ignorant enough to see ideologies you agree with as purely logical.
It scares me whenever someone thinks non-ideological leadership is possible, because it's the political equivalent of saying "Let me swing this broomstick around in a china shop with a blindfold and shooting muffs on, I can't break anything while doing this, probably because I have Jedi powers."
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Remember back before we knew the NSA was listening to everybody's packets and phone calls we would get declassified reports that were vague with statements that were essentially backed up with "trust us." Thing is we will not know because they will not declassify it and if it is political we can't tell and if it is 100% supported by proof they will not disclose that evidence. They will not even give evidence that leaks to the sources possibly how they collected it.
Remember North Korea? people were claiming BS politics on that until Obama announced/declassified we were into their computers and that is how we knew. We allowed the Sony hack because why would we stop them? We at least logged their actions. Giving away our secret just to help Sony? Forget that! Many people died in WW2 to avoid leaking we knew. Obama shouldn't have leaked just to shut up critics.
Instead of Trumptards preaching for the USA to harm itself, they need to get their heads out of their asses and realize that we should be galvanized against foreign influences in our elections. We should have expected it and prepared... but idiotically we don't despite the fact we do it to other countries. Obviously, you can't counter most of it without educating the public properly so they can THINK critically and not support our crappy media as well as reform the election system (instant run off; paper ballots; human counted - with checks) and campaign finance system is foobar -- foreign powers have unlimited access (even thru the US chamber of commerce!) Frankly, without limiting how much power a small group can acquire you can't make a system that can stand for long. "The Balance of Powers" must extend much further.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Another government expressed a clear preference for a presidential candidate? For example, like Merkel and most other European leaders expressed a clear preference for Hillary? Like the Norwegian Nobel Prize committee interfered in US politics by awarding Obama the Nobel Peace Prize? Like those kinds of "clear preferences"?
Or, for that matter, like the US government has not just expressed "clear preferences" for candidates in various democratic elections around the world, it has supplied money, secret information, and even weapons in order to influence foreign elections.
Folks, this sort of thing is what countries do. And what Russia did in this election, which is to let people know their viewpoints and leak some stupid stuff Democrats did, is pretty benign stuff. In fact, I'm quite happy we got to see the kind of crap the DNC was pulling behind the scenes; it certainly did influence me, and I'm not apologetic about that.
All you need to provide at the polling station is a name and address. It is illegal to ask people for ID in California, and I know of several polling stations (publicized on 870AM LA morning show) who chastised people who volunteered ID.
This is why it's so hard to prove voter fraud, especially in places that refuse to implement a requirement for ID at polling stations.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You're right, and I disagree with Trump there. I think it had an effect on the outcome of the election: revealing the kind of dishonest stuff Democrats were doing was a good thing.
When Hillary was talking about a "basket of deplorables", she was obviously talking about people like you. Gosh, I'm glad that I left the Democratic party a couple of years ago.
You're only getting the public portion of the report, the part that doesn't compromise methods. Instead of making up your own stories about this, you should be asking people that have sat in the intelligence briefings what their opinion is, and whether the remaining, and valid, questions have been answered.
>> Why would anyone believe Clapper...? Because he works for the U.S. and not Russia, maybe? You should read Michael Hayden's book about the years and programs around the Clapper testimony, as well.
Bases is a common plural form for basis.
The conspiracy laden Drudge, etc. sites and the mentally challenged MSM are to blame. The leaked emails show no actions were taken, just banter about activities, including emails saying they can't do some of the things discussed due to direction from the top. Just because some people talk about stuff doesn't mean they act on it, and everyone has bias. Note the DNC doesn't run any state elections, either. The noise around these emails was just that, but the MSM reporters have no clue how to sort that out.
Fuck you! I'm from the Balkans and US involvement only made things worse.
Clearly you're not Albanian.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The Catholics and Protestants aren't fighting now because they were allowed to kick the fight out of each other.
That's cute but imagine how it would have turned out if the Protestants got their hands on a nuke.
I'm not sure your comment makes much sense. You want people to be ideological?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's fine, Russia seems like a better country now than in the late 90s.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
One thing is perfectly clear. The Democrats would be perfectly justified in blocking any Trump Supreme Court Nominee. The Republicans said they were waiting for the American people to speak. They did by giving Clinton about 2.9 MILLION votes more than Trump. While he was elected by the Electoral College, it's clear the American people preferred Clinton. The people have spoken and Trump has no mandate to choose any Supreme Court justices. Of course, if the Republicans had any respect for the Constitution, they would have given due consideration to Obama's court nominee since he was president at the time of Scalia's death and constitutionally required to nominate a SC justice, and the Senate constitutionally required to consider Obama's nominee. Since the Republican Senate majority disregarded the Constitution they all swore to defend and protect, the Democrats in the Senate would be in accordance with both the Constitution and the majority of Americans and, interestingly, the Republican precident, in blocking any Trump nominee until a majority of American voters agreed with the Electoral College.
> You're only getting the public portion of the report, the part that doesn't compromise methods.
I have secret evidence that your secret evidence is completely bogus. This same secret evidence also indicates that you secretly wet the bed last night. And 20 organizations have signed off on it. Secretly. So it must be true! Unnamed high-level sources will gladly confirm this to any credulous media outlets that ask me about it. So you can't dispute it, just trust the experts. We have top men working on it right now. Top men. ~
See, it doesn't work that way. The burden of proof is on them. You can't be rational and still accept things based on secret, unverifiable evidence. The US public did this already and paid for it with stupid wars. You all were worried about fake news, but it's A-OK to start another lie-based war with secret evidence? Oh, and let's do that with a nuclear power this time. That's *really* good for the environment.... right?
I've seen the public evidence. The Russian state does not need to use ancient versions of P.A.S. Tor exit nodes are not evidence that Russia did anything. This isn't what nation state level hacking looks like to begin with and we do know that thanks to what we saw from the Belgacom hacks, from the leaks of the NSA's Tao catalog, or even the evaluation of Stuxnet.
If they were any good, they'd have been the ones to tell us that malware was an old version of P.A.S. All that took was someone googling, so what "sources and methods" would that have compromised? If they miss something that utterly basic, how can we trust the rest of the secret report of secret evidence from known liars? Why didn't they report that most of those IPs were Tor exit nodes?
It's supposed to be "trust, but verify" anyhow, not just "trust us." And I've done the verification on this one. This is a snow job.
I'm not dumb enough to fall for it. Are you?
Assad is preferable to the opposition in almost every way.
Same goes for Saddam. Just because someone is a dick is not reason enough to remove them. You only remove them if you have a clearly better alternative.
I see this phenomenon happen all the time in sports teams. A player does something bad, gets dropped only for the coach to realise he doesn't have better replacements and the team suffers. Sometimes, a good player playing bad is still better than a bad payer playing good.
The only account they have on Twitter is the one that mirrors the organization's name.
That belligerent bitch would've been the worst.
A lot of effort has gone into making it "seem" that way including murdered journalists.
That is bad of course, but going out and walking around various cities in Russia there's a lot of new construction and people seem optimistic. Birth rates are moving up again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You're suggesting that people read a book by a professional liar to mitigate their skepticism of lies currently being told by a guy who's on record lying under oath before Congress?
Has the world gone completely insane?
The Catholics and Protestants aren't fighting now because they were allowed to kick the fight out of each other.
That is simplistic nonsense. For instance, during the 17th century wars of the Counter-Reformation, Catholic France fought on the side of the Protestants, while simultaneously waging a war of extermination against the Protestant Huguenots inside France.
In the long run, it's the only thing that will fix their culture. They can make peace anytime they grow up.
There is (or was) a strong movement toward secularism in the Arab world, modeled on Ataturk's reform of Turkey after WWI. It is called "Ba'athism", and it is precisely the movement that America attacked and destroyed in Iraq, and is currently trying (ineptly) to destroy in Syria. The spillover from those conflicts is helping to radicalize Turkey. So your assertion that war is the solution to religious extremism is exactly the opposite of what is actually happening.
Winner: Dumbest fucking thing said on the Internet, Jan-6, 2017.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Clinton has made it very clear that she is interested in a new cold war with Russia. She goes out of her way to continually strain relations with them. If I were Putin, I wouldn't want her as president, either.
> "Russia's goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."
Sounds like someone is a bit butthurt, considering DNC was doing the exact same thing to Bernie Sanders, and it didn't quite work out as expected in the end. Come to think of it, it's actually ironic, that if DNC didn't sabotage Bernie, there would be no emails to leak, so there would be much less leverage in the alleged attempt to influence the elections, by exposing DNC's dirty laundry. So, basically, DNC did it to themselves, and double-time. Too bad the whole country has to suffer as the result too...
I think that the wrath of the US political elite could be explained by the fact that the small potatoes dared to trespass its territory.
They invested billions and years of organized hard work in software & hardware back doors, surveillance infrastructure, data centers, and suddenly some punks have stolen some simple email passwords. The whole world was reading with the genuine interest these email messages.
Certainly in their opinion it may seem so unfair. It is their pitch, they are the kings, but not these parvenus.
"Da. You want hear?"
"Of course!"
"OK. Here is sentence. Hey Donald, how my dictate last night? I got cigar for you too.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Your text wall needs paragraphs almost as much as citations. Bold statements without these things is not an argument; it's just your stream of consciousness puddling up in the corner like cat piss.
Your statement appears to assume that Russian elections are fair and honest.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Revealing dishonest stuff from politicians is a good thing, but revealing it selectively is not. I have no doubt that the RNC has just as much dirty internal political strife going on inside, and just as much borderline-corrupt money-grabbing from speaking fees - but they were not hacked and exposed. If they had been, it's very likely the election would have gone the other way, as the margins in several states were very slim. The hacking broke the symmetry of corruption right before an election, and in doing so it probably changed the outcome.
Putin successfully invaded and annexed half a country with barely a shot fired and hardly a man lost. Makes me wish he was on our side.
Every country tries to influence U.S. politics. That has been happening since the inception of this country. Our government has had a hand in foreign elections. But what is the "Russians" do? They hacked behind the doors truth and exposed it. They exposed some minor deceptions from a political candidate. It's the equivalent of egg on someones face.
When hackers expose Trump are we going to care about where the information came from or the content of the information?
It is everyone's responsibility to lock their own doors and close their curtains before they take off their closes.
Hilary lost the electoral college by millions of votes. She lost the election because she like her husband is a two faced used car salesmen except she doesn't have her husbands charm. And it doesn't help to have cry ins on TV about far left issues no matter if I slightly agree with the issues. During an election your suppose to be charming the other camp. I think middle America and the right is tired of Social Justice Warriors.
Interestingly enough, in the book I read about WikiLeaks, it said that at that time they were working on infrastructure to make it possible to submit documents to WikiLeaks in total anonymity, without knowing who is submitting them in any traceable way. I do not know whether or not WikiLeaks finished implementing that system or if the documents in question were submitted via that mechanism. I do know that such systems are in use elsewhere by actual journalists.
However, if WikiLeaks does have it, then Assange cannot know the truth of his assertion.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Fair enough. My view is coming from Russian ex-pats that visit every couple of years instead of live there so is probably biased.
How does such a manager determine that people he or she hired have technical knowledge, when he or she has no technical knowledge?
Doesn't seem logical to me. You can't evaluate people for something you yourself don't understand.
The point is that the stories about cyber security and other technical issues are without foundation. Neither the reporters nor the people being reported have any idea what is being done.
On regular basis at all election people from both side AND political analyst question the EC as it is now. It is an half backed solution. Either you want people to have a say, contrary to the original EC, then it should be the popular vote, or you don't want to, then it should be back to the original no-vote situation. The half backed situation lead to possible corrupt or demagogue (whatever you may think of Clinton or Trump) being voted in, what the EC was supposed to avoid. So it fails at its original purpose.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm saying I want people to recognize their ideology; that it's impossible not to be ideological, and "pragmatic" leadership is really just moral flexibility combined with political ignorance. At some level pragmatism does have a coherent ideology though - often one that simply places economic growth or security above all else.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I think you're conflating pragmatism with evidence-based policy, which can accompany any ideology that's not extreme enough to deny facts.
As I said in the post above, what we call "pragmatism" is really just moral flexibility combined with political ignorance. It's believing that making what you perceive as purely logical decisions while not understanding politics amounts to "apolitical leadership," when it's really just politically ignorant leadership.
What you call an ideologue is a person who has codified the practical applications of their ideology at some point in time into a dogma that they follow with ISIS-level rigidity, something that I don't think exists in the real world. There's no friction between any ideology and change other than through the inherent shortcomings of a particular ideology - for example, many forms of conservatism and libertarianism have a lot of friction with the reality of climate change because they believe that the free market can solve any problem it creates without government intervention. More extreme forms simply deny the facts that conflict with the ideology.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
They can make peace anytime they grow up.
Also, I like like how the "grown ups" in your scenario still believe in a cloud-dwelling deity and an afterlife. Nothing says "I'm an adult" like an imaginary invisible friend.
No doubt about RNC it is severely tainted since the Bush era, especially hawks. However that's the thing about Trump - he did everything to *not* be seen in the same bed with RNC - meaning disclosing dirt on RNC would be just purposelessly burning political capital (plus, dems used to pride themselves to not "play dirty" like that), as Trump would come clean from such attacks.
The asymmetry lies elsewhere - not in disclosure, but existence of the compro as such - Trump was largely unrelated to big politics cliques aside from trivial stuff such as bribes to get building permits and such, he had no *chance* to keep dangerous political skeletons in the closet. The only dirt they could find on him is more or less the usual you could find on any celebrity of his caliber - which pales in comparison compared to people who had access to real power for years.
Read John Perkins' book "Confessions of an Economic Hitman".
Agreed....
His followup book "Hoodwinked" reports that the predatory nature of the bad actors from "Confessions" was so successful that many of those techniques are being used closer to home.
Look at some of the comments in this Slashdot article to see how well it works.
This society is being worked over, "big time".
oh, ok.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The discussion is irrelevant. Totally irrelevant. When it costs billions to run a campaign, it's money that talks, discussion is just bs, and we all know that bs walks when money talks.
If you believe this is reversible short of breaking up the US, you are incredibly naive.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
They seem to prefer to take credit for other people's creations like the internet which was developed in Switzerland by a British guy.
You have a 4-digit uid and don't know the different between the internet and http? Really?
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
"Excellent president"
Sure, if you ignore the fact that:
3) Waco and Ruby Ridge happened under Clinton's DOJ, which led to the further rise of insane right-wing militias. Those incidents also led directly to the Oklahoma City Bombing.
I wasn't aware that Bill Clinton was already in office in 1992.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Sigh....:
"...there was absolutely no effect on the outcome of the election, including the fact that there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines,"
So basically, the voting machines are the most dependable part of the voting process? I guess the fact that there is no need to hack them when the voters can be hacked through Social Engineering instead goes right over his head (yeah, right).
You can't tell me he is unaware of this concept, it's what he does every stinking day. He has done this for so long, he is no longer aware of it.
He's the Spin Emperor!
I was born here. With little or no power to make decisions save a vote in a right wing state that gets drowned out by the zealots around me. The systems were built long before I had any say. Hell, most people had no say in the creation of America. You do know we have, had and always will have a ruling class, right?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The Electoral college failed miserable. It was there to prevent a popularist demagogue from taking advantage of momentary passions to damn a whole nation to disaster. On a side note it was also created to prevent those same popularists from voting themselves land and food from their ruling class. If you read even a little of what the founders wrote this is obvious. It failed miserably at the former though if the corruption in Trump's cabinet is any indication it'll do the latter swimmingly.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Moral flexibility has nothing to do with pragmatism, because if morals themselves are not pragmatic, so much the worse for them!
From what I understand, a lot of Russian civilians are fine with what Putin is doing.
I think it's more like, "things Russians criticize Putin about are completely different than the things Americans criticize Putin about." Americans can't get over that picture of Putin without a shirt.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But to be safe, Russia hedged its bets, and donated to the Clinton Foundation.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
Not to mention that Hillary Clinton used the CIA to influence the 2011 Russian elections against Putin's party. This is just payback in kind.
Your statement appears to assume that Russian elections are fair and honest.
Two corrupt wannabe dictators fuck with one another.
The rest of us should go to war over it?
How about we put em both in the Thunderdome and let nature take it's course.
On the other hand: Whoever released the DNC/Podesta emails did us all a huge favor.
I wish that they'd done us the same favor for the RNC. It's easy to say the DNC is awful (and they clearly are), but we have no basis for comparison for how awful they are in relative terms. That would have been an interesting comparison.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Again, you keep blaming the election on the hacking, rather than the content of the emails. If the emails were hacked and the content not made available to the public, it would have been a fruitless endeavor and we still would have seen Trump win the EC. Maybe the RNC does have corruption? Maybe they send emails back and forth full of racial slurs and bigotry (like the DNC)? Maybe they employed a better security system; one that doesn't allow an utter knob complete liability in a phishing attempt?
Blaming the hack for the election is like blaming a divorce on the fact that one spouse spied on the other, but caught them cheating in the act. It's juvenile and by this point, almost insulting to think any vindication is washed away as a result. Don't start with the whole "Putin interfered with our Democratic election" bullroar, either. America has and will continue arbitrarily dictating foreign elections, so to retort with that is literally a sense of American privilege that needs to be checked ASAP.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I'm certain most of the people around me did. I can tell you right now their minds were made up long before the exposure of corruption occurred.
The problem arise when you, instead of the crooks, elect a narcssistic psychopathic man-child with ADD for president. One who has no ideology and can be successfully triggered by a tweet.
Nazis expropriated all foreign owned business and ran them under their old names. At the end of the war the corporations set up shop again. During the war there did exist an IBM and Ford Germany, they were just owned by the fascists. (Remember folks, fascism = government owns corps, corporatism = corps own government).
There is pretty clear evidence that US bomber command preferred to attack factories that were not owned * by American companies. To the extent it was possible to destroy 'supply chains' while leaving Ford's engine plants alone.
* to be recovered after the war.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
How's the Vodka consumption?
I realize it's a tricky metric. Mixing Vodka consumed because happy with Vodka consumed because depressed.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They would have come to their senses sooner.
As evidence:
USA vs USSR
Pakistan vs India
Nukes keep/kept those wars cold. Oppenheimer/Gates etc deserved the Nobel peace prize.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
From you, I take that as a complement.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Putin dislikes Clinton for one reason (imo):
No one in the world has more influence in the Balkans and Ukraine than Bill Clinton. Not only did he win a war there, he has deep understanding of the region (even knowing who some of the crime lords are), and has personal relationships with many people there. Apart from Lewinsky, he was an excellent president and he managed to settle a complex region that could have ended up like Iraq is now, if someone less competent had been in charge.
However, Putin has a goal to increase his influence in the exact same region. The biggest impediment to reaching that goal would be Bill/Hillary in power again.
So Putin is going to get his wish, a win for his activities in the Balkins and Ukraine, and an arrogant President in the USA. Wow, the USA is live Peter Sellers movie, with Trump playing as Peter Sellers. Just the laughing stock of the USA for the next 4 years.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
1.) The popular vote may or may not be relevant to the current American political system, but it certainly seems like an appropriate and relevant response to determine what the U.S. population's preference is, which is exactly the subject of the comment he was replying to.
The popular vote for president in the 2016 election has little to do with with the US population's preference, specifically because of the Electoral College. The best that can be inferred from it (46% to 48%) was that the election was reasonably close (and there were significant numbers of people who didn't like either of them).
Most of the states are "winner take all" for the electors. Among those, many have sufficiently lopsided preferences that those on the minority side have no hope of swinging the state to their candidate. (This includes three of the four most populous states: California, New York, and Texas.) These people have little incentive to vote for president (and typically to vote at all, since they usually also can't affect state or local elections either - even in those voting districts that are lopsided the other way from the state as a whole). Similarly, the candidates lave little incentive to campaign in such states. They spend their money and effort elsewhere, where it can be more useful. Typically that is in the handful of "battleground states" - close enough to swing, big enough to swing a lot of electors.
If the President were elected by popular vote, especially in a close election, both the voters and the candidates would have different incentives. Voters opposed to the plurality candidate in lopsided states would still have as much effect on swinging the election. So they'd have more incentive to vote, and the candidates would have more incentive to woo them. So the popular vote outcome could be expected to be very different.
Trump concentrated his efforts where he could swing more electors, because that was what counted, and handily beat the candidate of the most powerful political machine, who had raised over a BILLION dollars and had the mainstream media in her pocket. Yet the popular vote was within a couple percent, despite large numbers of people not voting and/or not wooed. Don't you think that, if what counted was the popular vote, The Donald had campaigned differently, and the people had turned out differently, he might have been able to win that election, too?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Most of the states are "winner take all" for the electors. Among those, many have sufficiently lopsided preferences that those on the minority side have no hope of swinging the state to their candidate. (This includes three of the four most populous states: California, New York, and Texas.)
Oops. Meant Illinois, not Texas.
(Texas is the second most populous state. But it was a "battleground" / "swing" state this time around. Illinois is number four and Chicago puts it solidly in the Democratic camp.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Good question. Looks like it's been going down.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
3.) You suggest that Putin didn't have an impact, and that's clearly a debatable point. We simply don't know. What are almost certain of is that Putin attempted to have an impact on the election, and if a nation-state dedicated resources towards that goal then I'd certainly say it's plausible.
But by what means is he accused of having an impact on the election? Did he rig the election process so the votes weren't counted correctly? Did he inundate the people with lies? Or did he arrange to have true (but hidden) information discovered and published?
The last I heard, nobody is accusing him, other state actors, or even script kiddies in basements, of either tampering with the vote count or spreading false information. The only accusation is that he was behind the cracking of the Democratic Party's emails and their delivery to WikiLeaks (which Assange denies).
IMHO, even if he did the latter, so what? It just means the real opinions and actions of the people running the Democratic Party machine were exposed. That's called "investigative reporting", and what the news media SHOULD have been doing (when the leaks show the mainstream media were colluding with the party, instead).
So if it was really Putin's cyberspies, and not an internal leaker, random partisan, or lucky computer geek, who did the Media's job of exposing the Democratic Party's corruption for us, we should THANK him. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
After Wikileaks, I thought that every country in the world is looking back to hack every US Based Network and Server... but I was wrong. Looks like (according to this report) ONLY Russians actually care to get their hands on their Data. (Insert Picard's Epic Double Facepalm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There is no evidence that revelations were selective.
The RNC was target of the same hacking attempts directed against the DNC, but unlike the DNC, they defended against it. The DNC's utter incompetence alone is reason enough the Democrats should have lost, even more so in combination with Hillary Clinton's long term disregard for information security.
True; and unlike the DNC, which killed Sanders' candidacy, the outside candidate got nominated against the wishes of the RNC.
Where did Trump use government connections to give speeches for large amounts of money?
Your analysis makes no sense. Democrats screwed up big time, in sabotaging Sanders, in collusion with the media, in corruption, and in poor security; none of those applied to the Republicans.
We're sad for you as friends, gleeful as competitors.
This business of States (not people) electing the President has always struck us as dodgy. On top of your system basically a replacing the concept of "King" with "President", where the ENTIRE executive branch of government hinges on a single person, then that decision has rested, over and over again, on the vagaries of a half-dozen of your States representing 1/6th of your population.
What this election has absolutely done is clarify to everybody is that the American constitution that you so revere, is something no democratizing country writing one would touch with a 3-metre pole. (Only you use "feet", like only you think your Constitution is a good idea.)
The American constitution is like the Cathedral model: whomever gets into the papacy designs the cathedral. Parliamentary systems are more open-source, like Raymond's Bazaar model: you need a continuous sense of consensus to keep going forward. If Mr. Trudeau started ranting about Area 51 conspiracies tomorrow, his best friends would push him into resignation by the end of the week, after presenting him with the list of MPs who wanted him to know he's lost their support. It's just stabler system, as things have turned out.
Your Presidential "King" thing is a single-point-of-failure; affect that outcome, and you've hacked the country. And Palin showed nine years ago that utter incompetents with a string of applause lines can get past the outer filters. So it was a natural and obvious line of attack.
The US ship of state is very large, the bureaucracy gargantuan, the economy has enormous momentum; it'll "survive", obviously - but thriving is a whole other question. All Putin could hope for was to limit American advancement and growth to some extent. He's likely to get it, as good government rarely comes from radical voices, even popular ones.
Best of luck with it. Like all radical mutations, there's a chance it'll turn out really well; bold experiments sometimes do. But of course, most mutations turn out badly.
Firstly, Hillary Clinton had no control over the CIA in 2011. Sounds to me like you'd go for any fake news that came along if it generally agree with what you want to believe in anyway. BTW, did you hear that Donald Trump was a paid KGB agent in the 1980's. It's true. Believe me. Many people are saying it.
So sorry about your war criminals.
http://www.icty.org/
Russia just totally pwned the United States of America.
Ha ha.
Moving On.
The real revelation here, is that the data from the leak, regardless as to the context, and the party responsible, is authentic. It's been verified by the CIA and FBI as not containing any forgeries or being altered in any way. Not one word of the Podesta or DNC emails has been altered. So, now we know that pay for play, spirit cooking, post warrant email deletions on the private server, admissions of clinton foundation donors funding isis, and more, is all true. I'm not saying that anyone would ever chase Clinton down and press charges, but they certainly could now.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Even more impressive, is that Putin was able to prefer a candidate who wasn't even running at the time of the initial leak. Not only is he evil, but he has magical powers of prognostication.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Liberal Politifact says Hillary Clinton was SOS when "red line" policy was adopted. http://www.politifact.com/trut...
Your basically saying oh since she quit before Assad crossed the line, nothing is her fault.
That would put the leaders on the same playing field as the pawns, which the boss class is loathe to do. A former Marine I know said it best: "If someone wants a war, then only those that have children or are going to fight should be able to vote to approve it." That would tend to cut off stupid, useless wars like - well, pretty much all of them since WWII.
I'm pretty tired of our solders dying for the profit of the military-industrial complex, not to mention the "collateral damage" of non-combatants.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
The electrical system is well-established, but that means nothing, except that it's difficult to get rid of.
'The electrical system,' right?
It is well-understood, and people who understand it the most (constitutional scholars and such) say it's no longer a good idea.
...
Your logic does not hold. Even if they do have such system, in case they say they know who submitted the leak, it is clear that it has not been used in this case. Not all submissions need to be anonymous.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
You were not shocked that Hillary Clinton has rigged both the Democratic and Republican primaries? Did you expect her to do that? You, Sir, are way more cynical than I am. I have certainly not expected her to use her press contacts to give prop Donald Trump so should could run against him. That was a total surprise to me. I also did not know she had a private and public position on policies. I have been surprised to hear so much. And I have been even more surprised that she was provided debate questions and actually used them. I mean, she was the stronger debater. For you this might have been a business as usual, for me it was a sign that maybe there is some truth in the other side's accusation of her corruption.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Ah, a rational response that actually noticed the logical gap. Not a deliberate omission, but I also noticed it after I posted.
Yes, but... If you were a Russian spy seeking to leave disinformation on WikiLeaks, why wouldn't you use such a system if it were available? The largest risk of the propaganda campaign would be that it gets traced back to such a source, and you're going to have a really hard time convincing me that anyone, let along the Russians, should trust Assange that much.
However, my main reaction to the activity on this topic is to regard it as evidence of Russian trolls hard at work. Can't decide whether or not to be suspicious of you on the basis of your comment... I've seen some comments that led me to suspect old and dormant Slashdot accounts had been targeted for acquisition and abuse by the trolls.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
You sure it wasn't Hilary Clinton acting like an ignorant git over the Crimea issue that had him disliking her? The record shows enough reasons for anyone disliking Hilary Clinton with her many decades long history of questionable, shady, self serving behavior.
NRRPT/RCT
Honestly, the FBI, seems to have a knack for being left a bread crumb and thinking they have found the culprit. Heck, more recent revelations about N. Korea's internet network has cast doubt as to whether it could of even handled the quantities of data in a timely fashion.
http://www.businessinsider.com...
http://gawker.com/a-lot-of-sma...
Per Wiki
Doubts about accusations against North Korea[edit]
Members of the press and various cybersecurity experts have expressed doubt about the claims that North Korea was behind the hack. Cyber security experts, independently analyzing the hack separately from the FBI—including Kurt Stammberger from cyber security firm Norse,[86][87] DEFCON organizer and Cloudflare researcher Marc Rogers,[88] Hector Monsegur,[89] and Kim Zetter, a security journalist at Wired magazine[90]—have tended to agree that North Korea might not be behind the attack.
Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times journalist, said that all evidence against North Korea was "circumstantial" and that some cybersecurity experts were "skeptical" about accusations against the government.[91] Cybersecurity expert Lucas Zaichkowsky said, "State-sponsored attackers don't create cool names for themselves like 'Guardians of Peace' and promote their activity to the public."[92] Kim Zetter of Wired magazine called released evidence against the government "flimsy".[93] Former hacker Hector Monsegur, who once hacked into Sony, explained to CBS News that exfiltrating one or one hundred terabytes of data would have taken months or years, not weeks, "without anyone noticing". Monsegur doubted the accusations due to North Korea's possibly insufficient infrastructure to handle much data. He believed that it could have been either Chinese, Russian, or North Korean sponsored hackers working outside of the country, but most likely to be the deed of a Sony employee.[94]
Stammberger provided to the FBI Norse's findings that suggest the hack was an inside job, stating, "Sony was not just hacked; this is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside. We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history."[95] Stammberger believes that the security failure may have originated from six disgruntled former Sony employees, based on their past skill sets and discussions these people made in chat rooms. Norse employees identified these people from a list of workers that were eliminated from Sony during a restructuring in May 2014, and noted that some had made very public and angry responses to their firing, and would be in appropriate positions to identify the means to access secure parts of Sony's servers.[96][97][98] After a private briefing lasting three hours, the FBI formally rejected Norse's alternative assessment.[99]
Maybe you should take a look at this. I don't know how much influence this guy has in the halls of government. Wikipedia would seem to imply that there is a considerable faction of their civil and military leadership which is very much interested in destabilizing American politics by inflaming racial tensions and supporting any and all dissidents.
You're generally arguing that it would be absurd for Russia to do these things, and it is absurd if you implicitly reject the notion that they would do so. Otherwise we can spin a pretty convincing narrative. Putin certainly has no love for Clinton, and is interested in increasing his share of world power. Since a direct military confrontation is a foregone conclusion, they turn to information and cultural warfare, and the well-worn tools of the spy trade. Hacking the voting machines directly is out of the question, but the majority of the people in the country are dumb enough to think that the major parties represent their interests, so the goal becomes controlling the narrative. Bribing journalists would be costly and prone to exposure. It's best to give them a story that is big enough that they have to report it. Hacking is deniable, doesn't require subverting anyone in a foreign nation, and has a fairly low cost and risk-reward ratio. Given the goal of destabilization, hacking a major political party becomes an obvious move. We've actually seen this exact scenario before, where state-level intelligence agents were caught attempting to hack the Democratic National Committee. We can probably assume that the intelligence interests between the major powers reflect the perceived threat level of the other powers, so it's probably safe to say that Russian hackers would be employed against US and Chinese targets primarily. It's likely that hacking attempts are made against the two major parties continually, but especially when the stakes are raised during an election.
So you're Putin. You exercise a great deal of power, but you are still ambitious. You don't exactly wake up every day thinking on how to knock the US off its pedestal, but it's never really far from your mind, and any ideas along that line will always find a willing ear. For Putin, this is nearly a foolproof solution, the only real consideration is what the US will do in response. You've already invaded the Ukraine and not drawn a military response. So why not do this?
So we have an established motive, an inarguable opportunity, and all of our intelligence agencies saying that there was at least some degree of influence. If Putin did not specifically authorize the hacks and subsequent leaks, he is certainly intensely pleased by this situation. Alexander Dugin and his friends in the Russian General Staff got everything they wanted, and not only that, they demonstrated the viability of this form of attack. If the goal is destabilization, one is led rather ineluctably towards this exact point of weakness.
The answer to this situation is to destabilize American politics. The voting system we have fairly obviously limits the power of minor parties, and encourages two large parties which are relatively homogenous in aims simply due to the laws of large numbers. So how are we, the electorate, driven to the polls? Wedge issues: global warming, border security, racism. The dissatisfaction with the major parties is very real, as are the underlying worldview differences, so it's not that we would not expect to see a strong conserv
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You sure it wasn't Hilary Clinton acting like an ignorant git over the Crimea issue that had him disliking her?
Probably not, she wasn't secretary of state then. It's John Kerry you're looking for.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Foreign funding is illegal for federal elections in the US."
Somebody that is not a lazy twit google up what 'Johnny Chung' and the 'Buddhist Temple contributions' were about.
Transparent ploy is transparent: paint the incoming president into a corner. Either he ignores the bullshit coming from the media and anonymous sources from the "intelligence community" and is portrayed as Putin's BFF, or starts down the Cold War 2.0 path with the new Birthers. The latter being Democrats who have lost their goddamn minds because the public rejected their shitty candidate who ran after Obama's shitty 8 years as president.
ZZ
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Still going to be the perverted twerp, eh? Appeal to authority and making excuses for one and ad hominems for the other. Oh well, at least people get a glimpse of the true you this way.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Z^3
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Once a twerp, always a twerp
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”