Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Forty Two » Mon Dec 18, 2017 2:57 am

Sometimes things can be made more complicated than they really are. And such is the case with the story that the Russian government hacked the Democratic National Committee so as to help Trump become president.

In July 2016 Wikileaks released a number of documents showing that the nomination of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic candidate for president had been rigged. A month earlier the DNC had announced it had been "hacked" and the cybersecurity company it hired announced that the Russians had done it – one of the reasons they gave was that the hackers had helpfully left the name of the Polish founder of the Soviet security forces as a clue.

Since then, this story has been broadly accepted and it has spun on and on for eighteen months. But it doesn't really make any sense.

Let us pretend that Moscow wanted Trump to win. Let us further pretend that Moscow thought that there was a chance that he could win despite the fact that almost all news outlets, pollsters and pundits were completely confident that he could not. And let us pretend that Moscow thought that, with its thumb on the scale, Trump could make it. And, the fourth if, let us pretend that Moscow decided to put its thumb on the scale.

How to do it? Let us pretend (number five) that the strategy was to try and discredit Clinton. Let us further assume (this assumption is the one that's probably true) that Moscow has very good electronic intelligence capacities. So, we imagine the scene in headquarters as they look for an approach; they quickly find one that is very good, a second that is pretty good and a third area that is worth digging around in.

The Russians would know all about the Uranium One matter where, as even the Clinton-friendly NYT admitted, "a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation". It would be very easy for them to package this as a case of Secretary of State Clinton selling US policy for personal profit. Russian intelligence organisations would have a great deal of true information and would find it easy to manufacture material to fill in any gaps in the story. Presented as a case of corruption and near treason, the story could have done a great deal of damage to her. And, given that it had happened six years earlier, all the details would have been known and ready to be used. It would have been a very powerful attack that even the complaint media would have had difficulty ignoring.

We know, and it's very likely that the Russians did too, that she ran a private e-mail server on which there were thousands and thousands of official communications. The server was very insecure and we can assume that Russia's signals intelligence (and everyone else's, for that matter) had penetrated it. Think of all the real material from that source that could be revealed or twisted to make a scandal. That would make quite a campaign. Further, it is a reasonable assumption that Russian intelligence would have some of the thousands of e-mails that were "bleached". There would be enough material for a months-long campaign of leaks.

Finally, Hillary Clinton has been in public life for many years and there would have been ample opportunities, and, many would say, ample material in her scandal-plagued career, for the construction of many campaigns to weaken her appeal.

So, a preliminary look would suggest that there were several angles of attack of which Uranium One would be the easiest and most effective. But, failing that, or as a supplement to that, there was plenty of embarrassing and incriminating material in her illicit private server. Now we have to pretend (number six), contrary to the universal practice of security organs in all times and places, that the (always assumed in the story to be implacably hostile) Russians would decide to forgo the chance of compromising a future POTUS in favour of a harebrained scheme to get another elected.

But we're supposed to believe that they did. The Russians, the story goes, with all this potential material, with a solid hit with Uranium One, decide instead to expose the finagling inside the Democratic Party structure. And to expose it too late to make any difference. As I said at the beginning, sometimes things are easier to understand when you, as it were, turn them upside down.

In the middle of June 2016 the DNC admits that its documents have been obtained – a "hack" they insist – and almost immediately, "Guccifer 2.0" pops up to claim responsibility and the DNC's experts (Crowdstrike) claim Russia was behind it. A month passes before Wikileaks releases the first batch of DNC documents showing the extent of the manipulation of the process by Clinton – who had, according to most counts – already secured the nomination about two weeks before. A couple of days before the release, Trump gets the Republican nomination and a couple of days after that Clinton easily wins the Democratic nomination by a thousand-vote majority.

So, the first thing that should have occurred to the observer (but didn't) was, if the Russians had had this incriminating evidence that the Democratic Party nomination had been fixed in Clinton's favour, wouldn't it have been more useful to put it out at a time when Sanders who was, after all, the swindled one, might have been able to do something about it? Instead those supposedly clever Russian state hackers dropped the news out at a time when it made very little difference. No difference in fact: Clinton got the nomination and there was no comeback from Sanders' people.

So, the "Russian hackers" made their arrow, shot it, hit the target and... no one cared. The people who devoutly believe in the Russian hacking story now have to explain (but don't) why the Russian state, apparently so determined to bring Clinton down, didn't immediately hit her with the Uranium One documents and anything else they had that could feed the flames of scandal.

But, as we all know, they didn't. While long rumoured, and even briefly reported on, we only learned of Uranium One in a big way in October 2017 and the fact that her server contained Special Access material (the very highest classified secrets) was confirmed authoritatively only in November 2017. If the Russian had really had this sort of information and the hostility to Clinton that we're incessantly told that they had, two years earlier would have been the time.

So, on the one hand we are supposed to believe that the Russian government is so clever that it can hack anything, has innumerable social media trolls that influence elections and referendums around the world ("control the American mind"), drives a "fake news" campaign at a fraction of the cost but with far greater effectiveness than the massed legions of the Western media, is a threat to practically everything we hold sacred... but is too stupid to get it right. Possessing great and powerful secrets and a stunningly powerful machine to spread them, it chooses to fire a damp squib too late to make any difference and passes up the chance to have a compromised US president for it to control.

In other words, it's nonsense: we don't really need the forensics of VIPS; we don't need to argue with people who say it's fake news about Seth Rich, or that Assange is a Putinbot, or carefully ignore Murray. Those efforts are useful enough but they're not necessary. In any case, the Russia story is a Gish gallop and a whole academy of wise men and women couldn't keep up with the latest. (Robert Parry bravely attempts to list the most prominent ones from the Vermont power facility, through all 17 agencies to 14th not 4th.)

Just common sense will do it: if the Russians had wanted to bring Hillary Clinton down, they had far more powerful charges which they could have detonated much earlier. It is not plausible that all they had was the rigging evidence and that they then deployed it too late to have an effect.

Or, maybe they're not so all-competent in which case all the other stuff we've had shoved down our throats for months about "Russian information warfare" is even bigger nonsense.
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Seabass » Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:10 am

I'm sure this "Strategic Culture Foundation" is a very "trustworthy" "news" source.
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Brian Peacock » Mon Dec 18, 2017 7:56 am

And It's not like this incident was or is a unique or special case.

This whole thing has been turned into a loyalty test. You've got to question the motives of anyone who tells us it's reasonable to presuppose a particular outcome or conclusion.
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Forty Two » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:12 am

Seabass wrote:I'm sure this "Strategic Culture Foundation" is a very "trustworthy" "news" source.
It's not news, it's commentary on news.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Forty Two » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:15 am

Why would one "presuppose" in this instance?

If we tacitly assume something to be the case before beginning a line of argument, then we're sort of begging the question.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Forty Two » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:18 am

Brian Peacock wrote:It doesn't matter if it's true or not, the charge that the investigation acquired the emails illegally only needs to be aired to be believed by those who've already made up their mind about it. One more bit of fake news added to the avalanche of fake news, concern trolling, miss-direction and miss-information the #FAKENEWSMEDIA have to wade through. At this point I would even be surprised if we heard allegations that the Trump appointee in charge of keeping Trump Campaign emails away from the FBI was actually murdered by the FBI. Again, it wouldn't have to be true, just spread around and concern trolled on FOX and infowars for a couple of days - all adding to the GOP's ongoing screed about how the FBI are a biased and corrupt organisation incapable of independent investigation.
That's what Trump supporters and critics of the media have been saying for 18 months now. That the media publishes bullshit that turns out to be false, and it doesn't matter, because enough boner reports in the news and people who hate Trump see smoke and conclude there must be fire. It's like the old saw, we lose money on each unit sold, but we make it up in volume. Our stories turn out not to be true, but since there are so many of them, something bad must be going on....
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:19 am

Forty Two wrote:Why would one "presuppose" in this instance?

If we tacitly assume something to be the case before beginning a line of argument, then we're sort of begging the question.
You've already presupposed that Trump and/or his team didn't collude with the Russians.
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Feck » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:21 am

It wasn't prostitutes taking a pee on Trump It was Putin taking a shit on him .
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:21 am

Forty Two wrote:
Brian Peacock wrote:It doesn't matter if it's true or not, the charge that the investigation acquired the emails illegally only needs to be aired to be believed by those who've already made up their mind about it. One more bit of fake news added to the avalanche of fake news, concern trolling, miss-direction and miss-information the #FAKENEWSMEDIA have to wade through. At this point I would even be surprised if we heard allegations that the Trump appointee in charge of keeping Trump Campaign emails away from the FBI was actually murdered by the FBI. Again, it wouldn't have to be true, just spread around and concern trolled on FOX and infowars for a couple of days - all adding to the GOP's ongoing screed about how the FBI are a biased and corrupt organisation incapable of independent investigation.
That's what Trump supporters and critics of the media have been saying for 18 months now. That the media publishes bullshit that turns out to be false, and it doesn't matter, because enough boner reports in the news and people who hate Trump see smoke and conclude there must be fire.
Except that there's three major investigations into possible Trump campaign collusion with Russia. :roll:
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Feck » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:27 am

There are a lot of questions about Trump's impeachment personally I don't want to see him impeached ..... I want to see him raped by an elephant
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Seabass » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:52 am

Last edited by Seabass on Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:03 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Dec 19, 2017 1:59 am

Probably a Hillary supporter...
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Forty Two » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:07 am

pErvinalia wrote:
Forty Two wrote:Why would one "presuppose" in this instance?

If we tacitly assume something to be the case before beginning a line of argument, then we're sort of begging the question.
You've already presupposed that Trump and/or his team didn't collude with the Russians.
I haven't presupposed it. I just don't believe things without evidence, even if those things relate to someone who I am positive I would intensely dislike if I knew him personally.
“When I was in college, I took a terrorism class. ... The thing that was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders went up, But you know, it is that you don’t say ‘America’ with an intensity, you don’t say ‘England’ with the intensity. You don’t say ‘the army’ with the intensity,” she continued. “... But you say these names [Al Qaeda] because you want that word to carry weight. You want it to be something.” - Ilhan Omar

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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by pErvinalia » Tue Dec 19, 2017 2:07 am

You've repeatedly claimed the whole thing is a beatup by Hillary supporters / liberal media / deep state (?).
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Re: Enjoy President Trump, Courtesy of The Kremlin

Post by Brian Peacock » Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:10 am

Forty Two wrote:Why would one "presuppose" in this instance?

If we tacitly assume something to be the case before beginning a line of argument, then we're sort of begging the question.
I seem to remember asking you if you thought this Russia-Trump thing was purely a partisan issue, and you replying that it was definitely partisan. I think it goes beyond that. If the Trump Campaign was being played and manipulated it's in all our interests to know by whom and to what tune they were made to dance to. Same with the operation of the election. It seems that the GOP and the administration are eager to put time and effort into undermining the investigations and personally discrediting those carrying them out - even those 'safe pairs of hands' the President nominated himself - and I think that impulse has take this far beyond partisan powerplay now. The President has been quick to make this a personal conflict between himself and the press, the FBI, the NSA, the CIA, Democrats, Obama, and whoever else he sees as challenging his and his teams blanket assertions about how this is all smoke without fire and how the entire world and his wife are against him.
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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