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Putin Hints At US Election Meddling By 'Patriotically Minded' Russians (nytimes.com)
Two anonymous readers share a report: Shifting from his previous blanket denials, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Thursday that "patriotically minded" private Russian hackers could have been involved in cyberattacks last year to help the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump (Editor's note: the link could be paywalled; alternative source). While Mr. Putin continued to deny any state role, his comments to reporters in St. Petersburg were a departure from the Kremlin's previous position: that Russia had played no role whatsoever in the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and that, after Mr. Trump's victory, the country had become the victim of anti-Russia hysteria among crestfallen Democrats. Raising the possibility of attacks by what he portrayed as free-spirited Russian patriots, Mr. Putin said that hackers "are like artists" who choose their targets depending how they feel "when they wake up in the morning."
Oh, come on. Nobody is fooled by this, are you? Of course when Putin gave his cyberwarfare people their marching orders, they all knew that if caught they'd be disavowed by the State. Standard operating procedure. Every nation on the planet that has covert intelligence organizations does the same exact thing. Nothing to see here..
The unraveling of the denials begins. This is the exact same process Putin used when Russia stole Crimea from Ukraine. For months Putin denied Russian troops had been sent in to steal the land. Denial after denial was given.
Then, miraculously, Putin admitted he ordered Russian troops to seize the land. The excuse he used was those Russian troops were "helping" the Crimean sefl-defense forces. And by helping he means the Russian troops were doing the dirty work.
So now the excuse of "patriotic" Russians doing the hacking is being tossed out. What patriotism? Is he now admitting they were helping Trump win the election? That would be an interesting admission since he's denied any Russian meddling in the election despite the overwhelming evidence.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
That invaded Ukraine and Georgia. Nothing to do with their government at all. Nothing.
Seriously Putin's word as a man is a joke
The attacks you say were brought on by "patriotic russians" crestfallen by the disappointed democrats who lost the election, disregards the actual timeline. The hacking occurred prior to the election. Unless more is ongoing of course. And the Democrats though Hillary was going to win by a landslide.
Even though I am a strong fiscal conservative and voted against Hillary, Russian interference in the US election process is the same as any other hacking efforts aimed with malicious intent, and is clearly illegal. You assassinate your political rivals. Neither that nor the hacking are acceptable. Open bad mouthing in the press, sure, but that's political discourse. Informed voters can evaluate the source as well as the content. The current sourceless allegations against Trump, they could just as easily be attributed to "patriotic russians" who might be disappointed about the Presidents support of Ukrainian interests. The acceptance you show for the hackers within the russia just shows that, along with your other actions, in Ukraine for example, that under Putin the russia is a rogue state that needs to be marginalized.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The only people who still believe that Putin did not try to interfere in any way with the U.S. election are the same people who believed that Clinton ran a pedophile ring from the basement of a pizza restaurant.
`Nuff said.
Not in my book. Exposing wrongdoing is a good thing, no matter who it embarrasses.
Having visited Russia and exposed to Russian culture and so on, I actually totally believe him for once!
But what is more amusing to me is how this statement is basically telling us that even Putin is scared with how horrible Trump is for the planet... ;-)
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain... time... to... die...
I mean, let's suppose that somehow, actual evidence that was somehow incontrovertible showed that there was meddling... and let's even further say that they managed to identify the people responsible, and were able to bring them to court, where they were appropriately and justly tried and sentenced for the crime.
Would that really change anything, though? I'm betting it wouldn't.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The phrase election hacking (meddling/w.e) is agenda driven, as it implies there was tampering with the election process or results. If this is election hacking, then so is recording a private conversation and releasing it to affect results. Just because it may have affected voters minds (because it informed them) doesn't mean we need to add negative connotations to them. Let's reserve that for tampering with the actual election process.
Like stacking the deck against popular candidates so that your candidate can win.
How is it treasonous?
IF Russia "hacked" into DNC emails (remember, as far as we know the "hack" was a fucking phishing link that yielded a certain someone's iCloud password), and did so in a state-sponsored way (such that you could say Russia did it, and not Russians did it), you then have to look at what they did with that access.
All they did was reveal the truth. Notice how the media and the DNC and Hillary herself kick and scream about how they were exposed. They do this because they have absolutely no defense for what was exposed - the fucking truth about how the DNC is corrupt, how Clinton is corrupt, and how the media was influencing the debates and election for Hillary.
If you want to call someone a traitor and throw out claims of treason, then look at the DNC and the US media. They were the ones tampering with the election. Russia is merely accused of exposing it. And keep in mind, we have been shown Z E R O evidence. This is on the level of claiming that North Korea hacked Sony for a shitty Seth Rogen & James Franco movie.
And no, I didn't vote for Trump.
American democracy was attacked when the secret ethical misconduct of the DNC was revealed to the public. In order to preserve American democracy, misdeeds must remain guarded and kept from the public eye.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Sadly, the above post is typical of modern slashdot, where group think and unsubstantiated attacks are modded up as "smart.".
Statement 1: Weak and Ineffective US: This statement is founded on the premise that the United States is somehow weak and ineffective. There is no reasons given to back this claim, and non that could be possibly substantiated. What exactly do you suppose as made the U.S. weaker? Is it the call to increase U.S. industry by undoing horribly lopsided trade deals that drain our wealth? Is the U.S. made weaker by asking NATO members to actually contribute to their defense at a proportion to the GDP as ours? Is it made weaker by asking the press to cover both political parties with the same zeal, instead of cheerleading for one? I am confused by how weaker?
Statement 2: Illiterate President. As is well known, he has ran a successful multibillion dollar corporation. Although he did start with wealth, he increased it several times. A good analog would be Elon Musk, turning a small company Zip2 into larger ones through sales and mergers. Success at these levels is rarely the work of an illiterate. Disagreeing with someone does not make the illiterate, but it if you think it does that means you are intellectually close to one.
Furthermore, we know he graduated from Fordham and Penn with and economics degree. We do not know his GPA. In contrast, the previous president had failing grades at a private high school (read his autobiography) yet somehow got admitted to an Ivy league school, and his grades are also not known, but was not reported to be a great student. Did you hold him to the same criticism?
Alienate the press: CNN actually gave his opponent the questions for the debate. The coverage on the other networks were laughably biased, with numerous other errors and gaffs made. The press in the U.S. is no longer the press, but an arm of the democrat party. This is dangerous and tragic and should not be applauded. The press should be about uncovering truth, not suppressing it. Speaking of which... The whole Russia is blame part of this thread. Lets be clear about what happened. Hillary Clinton and the DNC conspired to fix the democrat primary. They controlled the media, the timing of events, and funding to make Berny Sanders seem like a buffoon and have no chance. In all honesty, he had drawn many of the same concussions about the system being corrupt as Mr. Trump, but offered different solutions. The press knowingly helped burry the story of the unfair primary election.
The Russian hackers helped bring to light these issues. Through them, we learned that the Sanders supporters were denied a legitimate shot. The Russians did not report anything that was untrue. Do you understand that? The Russians were the force of truth and light in this election. For that, we in the U.S. should be ashamed.
In this thread and others like it today, people are acting like the Russians made up horribly untruths and it cost Hillary the election. For some reason of nothing less than extreme stupidity, there are posters who conveniently seem to forget what the so called fake news was, and why it worked. Hillary attempted to fix the fucking election, and thankfully, despite a biased media, she got caught. The people who got cheated were angry, and did not vote. Its that simple.
So, instead of feeling this false righteousness because you hate the current president for no particularly good reason, look in the mirror. Please stop the bullshit character assassinations. Try to grow up, and hold all politicians to a high standard, instead of just one.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.