What’s Left of Russiagate – Are We Down to the 1,000 Paid Trolls?

Those who pay attention to what is going on – as opposed to passively consuming the obsessions of MSM – know that the Clinton-related material published by Wikileaks emerged from leaks, not hacks. Assange has stated in no uncertain terms that the Russian government was not responsible for providing the material Wikileaks published, and his friend Craig Murray – a whistleblower hero who exposed the torture practiced by the government of Uzbekistan while he was British ambassador there – indicates that he has direct knowledge that the DNC and Podesta Wikileaks releases derived from leaks, not hacks.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/01/03/julian-assange...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-Wi...

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/12/18/a-spy-coup-in-america/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2016/12/cias-absence-conviction/

Now, just in time for the anniversary of Seth Rich’s death, it has been clarified that the “Guccifer 2.0” releases of DNC material resulted from local downloads – via thumbdrive or LAN – of DNC computer files, and could not have been hacked from a distant location such as Russia or Romania, as our intelligence community has claimed. More importantly, the metadata of the released files appears to have been intentionally altered to leave clues that Russian hackers may have accessed the material, in a clear effort to falsely implicate Russians in the hacking of those files. The strong implication is that someone affiliated with the Clinton campaign created the persona of Guccifer 2.0 to trick our gullible intelligence agencies into concluding that Russian hacks had been responsible not only for the Guccifer 2.0 releases, but for the WIkileaks releases as well – thereby devaluing them in the eyes of the American public. “Guccifer 2.0”, of course, topped off the scam by claiming he was the Wikileaks source.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-e...

http://g-2.space/

https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2-ngp-van-metadata-analysis/

http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/07/new-research-shows-guccifer-2-0-file...

https://www.reddit.com/r/WayOfTheBern/comments/6mgjuy/implications_of_re...

As Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have emphasized, the timeline of Guccifer 2.0’s first appearance is curious. On June 12, Wikileaks announced that it would soon be releasing Clinton-related emails. On June 15, the DNC cybercontractor Crowdstrike announced that it has found malware on the DNC computer which they suspect originated from Russia, and, in seeming coordination, Guccifer 2.0 proclaimed that he is the hacker who supplied Wikileaks with its Clinton material — posting a document that bore “Russian fingerprints”. Then the DNC material subsequently released by Guccifer 2.0 was downloaded locally from DNC computers on July 5th — five days before Seth Rich was murdered by hitmen. These facts are consistent with the thesis that the DNC, or someone affiliated with the DNC, hoaxed our intelligence services to blame the Wikileaks releases on Russia. Could they then have gotten rid of someone who could have spoiled this narrative?

There were also files from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that were published on Guccifer 2.0's own website prior to the election. This episode has received little attention, and in any case, if the goal of the Russian government was to impede Clinton’s election, why would they care about the DCCC? Because they wanted to get more Republicans elected to Congress? – Not likely! In any case, if Guccifer 2.0 was the source of these releases, it wasn't the Russians, so let’s just move on.

Finally, there is DC Leaks, which, beginning in July of last year has released purloined info on a diverse range of targets, including the former commander of NATO, Senators McCain and Graham, the Soros Foundation, and personal info of 200 Democratic lawmakers. This has received little media commentary, possibly because it is hard to see how this effort was an attempt to influence the election. Nonetheless, the cybersecurity firm ThreatConnect claims that DC Leaks is a front for the hacker group Fancy Bear, which they claim is linked to Russian intelligence. They also think that Guccifer 2.0 is involved. Sounds a lot like the analyses that linked the Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks releases to Russian intelligence – and we’ve seen how credible those analyses were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DCLeaks

Then there was the NSA document leaked by Reality Winner, in which it is “assessed” that Russians at the behest of the Kremlin targeted a number of local government operations in spearphishing operations just prior to the election. Scott Ritter has carefully analyzed the NSA document and demonstrated that the NSA agents responsible had nothing but speculation to link these spearphishing attacks to the Russian government.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/leaked_nsa_report_short_on_facts_pro...

Recent claims that Russia tried to hack into 21 state electoral databases prior to the election have been skewered by Gareth Porter, who shows that, in the only one of these attacks that was successful, the perpetrators merely extracted personal information saleable to criminal networks, without making any effort to alter electoral data. Evidently the work of cybercriminals, not Russian government operatives.

http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2017/07/03/foisting-blame-cyber-hacki...

Alleged claims from our intelligence agencies that Russia was responsible for election interference in Germany and France have been debunked by the intelligence agencies in those countries:

https://caucus99percent.com/content/are-russian-hackers-under-your-bed

Last month, CNN reported that “Russian hackers had breached Qatar’s state news agency and planted a fake news report that contributed to a crisis among the US’ closest Gulf allies, according to US officials briefed on the investigation….US officials say the Russian goal appears to be to cause rifts among the US and its allies.”

http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/06/politics/russian-hackers-planted-fake-news...

But now, as reported by WaPo, US officials have concluded that the UAE had arranged this hacking to demonize Qatar:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-qatar-report-idUSKBN1A200H

(The story on CNN, of course, is that UAE denies this: http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/17/middleeast/uae-qatar-report/index.html. Cue the laughter: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-16/cnn-caught-faking-news-again-us...).

But What About all that “Evidence”?

But what about all the “evidence” our intelligence agencies have for Russia’s nefarious election interference?

Official claims in this regard began with the release of this joint statement by DHS and ODNI on Oct. 17 of last year:
"The U.S. Intelligence Community (USIC) is confident that the Russian Government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations. The recent disclosures of alleged hacked e-mails on sites like DCLeaks.com and WikiLeaks and by the Guccifer 2.0 online persona are consistent with the methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts. These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process. Such activity is not new to Moscow—the Russians have used similar tactics and techniques across Europe and Eurasia, for example, to influence public opinion there. We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities."

Note how James Clapper, with the backing of Jeh Johnson of DHS, imperiously represented his views as those of “The U.S. Intelligence Community”. Hillary Clinton subsequently seized on this to make the hyperbolic self-serving claim that “17 intelligence agencies” had reached this conclusion – a claim that was echoed by our servile MSM until it recently was retracted by the New York Times.

The supposedly definitive statement of our intelligence agencies on alleged Russian election interference was an Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), a de-classified summary of which was released on Jan. 6th. As subsequently admitted by Clapper in congressional testimony, this assessment was not a formal National Intelligence Estimate, which would have required the participation of all intelligence agencies and would have included any dissenting opinions, but rather represented the opinions of a couple dozen intelligence operatives hand-picked (presumably by Clapper, Director of National Intelligence) from the CIA, NSA, and FBI.

It is useful to understand these things about Clapper: He played a key role in convincing the nation that Saddam had ample stores of WMDs before our Iraq invasion. When these WMDs failed to appear, he stated that Saddam had had them shipped to Syria just prior to the invasion (subsequently debunked). He lied under oath before Congress and the nation regarding surveillance of American citizens by the NSA. And in a recent interview with Chuck Todd, he revealed himself to be a virtually psychotic Russiaphobe, claiming that Russians were virtually “genetically programmed” to foment chaos for us.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/us-anti-russia-sentiment-is-built-on-...

So what do you think is going to be the outcome when a psychotic Russophobe is allowed to hand-pick the members of an intelligence panel intended to evaluate alleged Russian meddling? As acclaimed investigative journalist Robert Parry noted:
“Yet, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you “hand-pick” the analysts, you are really hand-picking the conclusion. For instance, if the analysts were known to be hard-liners on Russia or supporters of Hillary Clinton, they could be expected to deliver the one-sided report that they did.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/05/23/new-cracks-in-russia-gate-assessment/

As to the unclassified report itself, the most cogent observation is that it provides no hard evidence whatever to back up its conclusion that Russian operatives had interfered in our election on the orders of Vladimir Putin. Rather hilariously, over half of its length is devoted to splenetic venting about the Russia-sponsored TV network RT, which nefariously had featured Third Party political debates and criticisms of fracking – and of course the seditious ravings of that evident Kremlin puppet Larry King. If RT constitutes vile and unacceptable election interference, what have we been doing with Voice of America for decades?
Most tellingly, the declassified ICA doesn’t even mention Wikileaks. The key point of the Russiagate narrative is not just that Russians were hacking the DNC and John Podesta, but that, at the behest of the Russian government, they were transferring their booty to Wikileaks for release to the public. It is hard to escape the conclusion that our intelligence agencies have no hard evidence whatever that Wikileaks received its Clinton-related emails from sources commissioned by the Russian government. And of course Assange, who presumably knows how he got the material he himself published - and has far greater credibility than Clapper could ever have - vehemently denies this.

In the run-up to the Iraq invasion, our intelligence agencies at least deigned to convey to us some “evidence” that Saddam did indeed still have WMDs. In the present instance, they are effectively just saying “Trust us”. In the context of the fact that our intelligence agencies used wholly bogus evidence to propel us into an Iraq involvement that led to the death, maiming, or exile of literally millions of people in Iraq – not to mention thousands of American deaths and casualties, and catastrophic expense – anyone in our government or our media who is willing to just “trust” a hand-picked cabal of intelligence agents on an issue that may foment a new Cold War with the second-leading nuclear power, is engaging in gross criminal negligence.

In formulating its ICA, the panel relied on the conclusions of a private cyber company, Crowdstrike, with respect to alleged hacking of the DNC server, because the DNC had repeatedly refused to turn their server over to the FBI – and the FBI had failed to subpoena it. Crowdstrike was recruited for this purpose by the Clinton campaign, and had previous associations with Hillary Clinton. Its founders are affiliated with the Atlantic Council, a think tank known for its virulently anti-Russia stances. Its previous effort to incriminate Russia in a hacking attack has been shown to be wholly erroneous.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/23/cybersecurity-firm-that-attribut...

Cyberexpert Adam Carter suspects that Crowdstrike might have been involved in creating the Guccifer 2.0 fraud. The purposely tainted Guccifer 2.0 releases, in conjunction with Crowdstrike’s conclusion that Russian agents had hacked the DNC, could have readily led unsuspecting intelligence agents to indict the Russians.

http://g-2.space/

And guess who the DCCC retained to investigate it's breach?

http://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/dccc-hacked-in-series-of-cyber-att...

Another key difficulty with the ICA has been raised by William Binney, one of the co-founders of the NSA. He indicates that if the DNC had been hacked, the NSA would know precisely when this had happened, and where the data had gone:
“Because NSA can trace exactly where and how any “hacked” emails from the Democratic National Committee or other servers were routed through the network, it is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack, as other reporting suggests. From a technical perspective alone, we are convinced that this is what happened.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/06/the-dubious-case-on-russian-hacking/

Intriguingly, it was the NSA which indicated that they were only “moderately confident” about the ICA’s conclusion.

And finally, there’s the intriguing detail that the declassified ICA contains a preamble indicating that the “assessments” it provides are not necessarily equivalent to “facts”. In other words, they are “best guesses”. Ray McGovern has pointed out that, in spyspeak, “assess” effectively means “guess”. So those trumpeting the “proven” election interference by Russia are relying on the guesses of a couple of dozen people hand-selected by the virulent Russophobe James Clapper.

Topping it all off, of course, is that the key crime that the Russians are alleged to have committed - a crime that has been likened to an “act of war” by some over-the-top commentators - was to provide the American public with true facts regarding the ways in which the DNC, in violation of its charter, leaned over backwards to favor Hillary Clinton over her rivals in the 2016 primary – and also finally gave us access to Hillary’s Wall Street speeches in which she helpfully clarified that she had two sets of views – those for the public, and those for her donors, who of course were the ones that really mattered. (Of course, it’s not as though percipient observers didn’t know these things already.) Isn’t it the role of our MSM to be providing such “interference”?

Craig Murray has summed much of this up in a recent excellent essay:

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/07/stink-without-secret/

And the fabulous Caitlin Johnstone has assembled a voluminous summary of pertinent facts on Russiagate here:

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/the-index-of-russiagate-debunkery-f5b...

But the Russian Trolls!

But wait – there’s still the 1,000 Russian trolls, paid by the Kremlin to spread “fake news”TM to the gullible American public. As far as I know, the only source for this is a statement by Sen. Mark Warner of the Intelligence Committee, referring to unspecified “reports”:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/russian-tro...
Hillary embellished this narrative at a recent sit-down comedy performance at the 2017 Code Conference - for which she received rave reviews:

https://www.recode.net/2017/5/31/15722218/hillary-clinton-code-conferenc...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4560344/Hillary-Trump-colluded-R...

http://observer.com/2017/06/hillary-clinton-insults-voters-fake-news-rus...

After repeating her by-then-debunked lie about the “17 intelligence agencies”, she focused on the Russian trolls and bots who had helped to tank her campaign:
“So the Russians…could not have known best how to weaponize that information unless they had been guided. Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.”

Her implication was of course that the people providing this guidance were the Trump campaign. And apparently this guidance was so astute that, according to Warner, the trolls targeted the rust-belt states that Hillary gave short shrift to. According to tweeter Maple Cocaine – “Pretty big indictment of the Hillary campaign when the fucking Kremlin knew to campaign in Wisconsin but she didn’t.”

https://extranewsfeed.com/help-me-find-the-1-000-russian-twitter-trolls-...

Of course, it's hard to see how, with tens of millions of Americans active on social media, a thousand or so Russian trolls could have had a significant impact - how many of those pestilential buggers did David Brock employ on Hill's behalf? - but who needs logic.

A rather hilarious variation on this theme is the claim that Russian troll armies were actually writing the “fake news” stories that denigrated Hillary during the campaign:
“The House and Senate Intelligence Committees are looking into the rash of anti-Clinton fake news that originated in Russia and was spread online by Trump supporters in advance of last year’s election.”

http://secondnexus.com/politics-and-economics/investigators-fake-news-no...

Apparently, Russian fabulists are supposed to have dreamed up Pizzagate, the neurological problems which Hillary is hiding, the lengthy lists of Clinton opponents who have died mysteriously, Clinton’s raving fits and abuse of Secret Service agents, and just about every story denigratory to Clinton that the MSM won’t touch. Should we give our fellow Americans so little credit for perceptiveness and creative imagination? This has now truly degenerated to the level of farce.

And note the title of this story: Investigators: “Fake News Now at Center of Trump Russia Probe”. Which suggests that at that point we really ARE down to the 1,000 Russian trolls.
I can see the scenario now: “Vladimir Vladimirovich, what are your suggestions for this week’s troll assault?” “Our young friend Donald Donaldovich informs me that Wisconsin, especially the Milwaukee area, could be a fertile ground for the Pizzagate fantasy that Kuryakin dreamed up last month. Give that a try.”

I won’t comment on the “Trump campaign colluded with the Russians” fantasy because it surpasseth understanding how the Russians would need the permission or guidance of Trump if they did indeed intend to interfere. And yet this has been the chief obsession of our MSM for lo these many months.

This narrative got its start when, in light of claims by intelligence experts that Russia, China, and other nations had very likely hacked Hillary’s private server during her tenure as Secretary of State – and the fact that Hillary’s crew had managed to bleach-bit out of existence tens of thousands of Hillary’s “personal” emails then under court subpoena (with no legal consequences) – Trump joked that Russia should hand over those deleted emails to us to expedite our legal process. The Clinton campaign, echoed by the MSM, chose to interpret this as a treasonous request that Russia hack Hillary’s server – an interpretation that was particularly absurd in light of the fact that Hillary’s SOS server had been offline for many months.

The latest variant on this theme is consternation over a meeting Trump Jr. had with a Russian lawyer whom he was informed had dirt on Clinton which the Russian government was eager to spread. Alas, the lawyer had no such dirt, she denies that she is affiliated with the Russian government or is acting at their direction, and the email which proposed this meeting was from a British music promoter whose credentials as a Kremlinologist are a mite suspect. Moreover, the MSM breathlessly pushing this revelation have neglected to mention that friends of the Clinton campaign paid money to Russian sources – via “piss dossier” entrepreneur Christopher Steele – to invent imaginative slanders of Trump, which, incredibly, were appended to the classified version of the ICA by Clapper.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/10/forgetting-the-dirty-dossier-on-tr...

It seems to me that that is the documented Russian interference in the election.

And now it is alleged that the music promoter who lied to Trump Jr. when setting up the meeting, as well as the Russian lawyer who attended, are associates of GPS Fusion, the company which concocted the Trump "piss dossier". Sheer coincidence?

http://www.independent.co.uk/News/world/americas/us-politics/trump-jr-ru...

But we’re still left with the issue of the 1,000 paid Russian trolls. Surely Clapper can provide us with the names and addresses of these demons – they seem to be in Russia, or Macedonia, or somewhere else sinister – and the receipts for their payments. Come on James, this is all you’ve got left – you’d better not blow this.

And by the way, WHERE THE HELL IS MY PAYMENT, VLAD?!

A Personal Coda

So why I am so hellbent on driving a stake through the heart of the Russiagate hoax?
Here’s my perspective. Russia and the Russian people are not our enemies. Our true enemies are the people who are trying to brainwash us into despising and fearing the Russians.
Watch this speech by Bernie delivered to Congress a quarter century ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDOycQrRXUU

Bernie recognized that the collapse of the Soviet Union was our chance to turn away from our catastrophically expensive militarism, and to devote more of our attention and finances to meeting the real needs of the American people. And that goal is still a worthy one.
Russia is not threatening to invade the Baltics or re-establish the Soviet empire – such an aspiration would be totally insane. With respect to Ukraine, the reason there was a Ukrainian civil war is that, after Yanukovich had negotiated a deal with the EU to hold accelerated elections, after which he would step down – a deal which Putin wholly endorsed – neo-Nazi troops stormed the Kiev government buildings, establishing a coup government which the US immediately recognized – thereby rendering moot the Yanukovich/EU deal that would have prevented civil war. After the coup government quickly dropped official recognition of the Russian language, and neo-Nazi gangs burned to death dozens of Russophiles in Odessa, eastern Ukraine rose up in revolt. (What do you think would happen in fly-over America if a coup in Washington DC installed Hillary as President?) Russia helped to make sure their Russian-speaking compatriots in east Ukraine had enough arms to defend themselves from the battalions sent to crush them.

In Crimea, which had been part of the Russian empire for nearly 200 years and where nearly everyone grows up speaking Russian, the duly elected Crimean parliament held a referendum in which the people overwhelmingly endorsed rejoining Russia. The Crimean parliament then petitioned Russia for reunification, which the Russian gladly assented to. (However, they did not agree to annex any of eastern Ukraine proper). Russia never invaded Crimea, because tens of thousands of Russian troops were already stationed there under a longstanding agreement with Ukraine; Crimea hosts Sevastopol, Russia’s only southern port. Most Americans don’t know, because MSM has never told them, that Khrushchev inexplicably gave Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1950s without asking the permission of the Crimean people. Most Crimeans consider themselves Russians, a minority are native Tatars (whom Stalin oppressed and exiled) – almost none consider themselves Ukrainian. And the Crimeans appreciate that Russia has a relatively stable economy, whereas Ukraine is now a basket case.

And with respect to Syria, the Russians are acting legally in response to a legitimate request from the Syrian government; they are trying to prevent Syria from being overrun by the psychotic jihadi hordes who have infiltrated Syria and are armed and funded by the CIA, the Saudis, and other bad actors. Only a very small percentage of the so-called “rebels” are actually Syrian. Our MSM have brainwashed the American people on this issue as well as on so much else.

In fact, it is WE who have antagonized Russia. We have completely welshed on the promise we gave Gorbachev that, in return for East Germany being allowed to unite with West Germany and join NATO, we wouldn’t move NATO “a single inch” to the east. Instead, since Bill Clinton’s administration we have expanded NATO steadily to the east, until it is on Russia’s doorstep. The desire of the neocons to now incorporate Ukraine into NATO is a bridge too far for Russia – they will only accept so much humiliation. And Russia sees our ringing of their country with ABMs – under the transparently phony pretext of protecting Europe from nonexistent Iranian nuclear missiles – as an effort to establish first strike capacity. This terrifies the Russians – and should terrify us too, because who knows what the Strangeloves in our Deep State are capable of.

And we in recent years are largely responsible for a string of catastrophic, illegal wars, motivated by capitalist venality and justified with lies, that have devastated much of the Middle East and North Africa. Russia as well as other nations have decried these wars as illegal, but their concerns have fallen on deaf ears.

So tell me what is so terrible about Russia, another capitalist nation that would like to do good business with us, and which reached out to help us after 9/11? Okay, so they have some growing up to do when it comes to gay rights, but 50 years ago we were very backward on that issue too. We should respond by showing them a good example. If their political system is still somewhat authoritarian – that’s their problem to cope with, not ours; it’s not as though our effective plutocracy is ideal. And we are in official alliance with some countries that are grossly authoritarian and horrific on human rights.

And perhaps we should remember and appreciate the fact that it was the incredible heroism and sacrifice of the Russian people that was primarily responsible for the allied victory over Hitler in WWII.

Consider also the treasures of music and literature with which Russia has gifted world civilization.

The reason the Deep State needs us to hate Russia is so that we will continue to plow tons of money into the massive boondoggle of NATO – which should have dissolved after the Warsaw pact was dissolved. And hatred and fear is absolutely great for arms sales. Plus Israel wants us to hate Russia because Russia is allied with nations that oppose the land grab of Greater Israel. None of this has anything to do with the real needs of the American people – except for those engaged in weapons production.

The real danger of a new Cold War is not only the massive diversionary expense, but the fact that it greatly increases the risk for a catastrophic nuclear exchange to be triggered accidentally – an exchange that potentially could wipe out not only human civilization, but much of life on earth, owing to nuclear winter. Such accidents nearly occurred several times during the previous Cold War. As long as both we and the Russians have massive nuclear arsenals, it’s very smart indeed for us to get along well with them. Caitlin Johnstone has discoursed eloquently on this point.

https://medium.com/@caityjohnstone/nuclear-war-is-as-great-a-threat-as-e...

What is especially galling about Russiagate to me is that fact that it is the Democrats that are driving this hysteria. Traditionally, during the Cold War, it was the Democrats who were less hawkish – now the situation is flipped on its head, thanks to the fact that Trump’s common sense tells him that getting along with Russia is smart. (God knows I’m no fan of the unqualified buffoon Trump, but his instincts on Russia are on target. Whether the neo-cons whom he inexplicably has appointed to his administration allow him to make any progress on this score remains to be seen.)

Here’s an idea – how about we take to heart Rodney King’s admonition – “Why can’t we all get along?” Step back and realize that, in many ways we really do have a wonderful world. We can enjoy Thai cuisine, Russian and German symphonies, fine French wines, fuel-efficient Japanese cars, American jazz and popular music, world soccer, Italian opera, the range of American sports, English drama, Chinese art, Jamaican reggae – the fusion of all the world’s great cultures can give us a very rich life. With a few notable but rather paltry exceptions like the jihadi psychotics of ISIS, the peoples of the world are eager to get along with each other and collaborate in making the world better for all of us. They are eager to cooperate in minimizing the damage done by global warming, to establish trade deals that protect the interests not only of plutocrats, but of workers, consumers, and the environment, to enjoy the cultural riches which each society can bring to the table. We need to minimize the scourge of war by returning to the principles of international law – which our own great Eleanor Roosevelt helped to establish. The baseless hysteria of Russiagate has no place in such a world – nor does the neo-con-fueled obsession of the US to dominate all other nations by force of arms. Let’s get our act together America, and join the rest of the world in mutual respect and appreciation. Let’s fight our wars on soccer fields, basketball courts, and in Olympic stadia. Let’s just be cool.

Note: Previously posted at the Way of the Bern subreddit.

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WaterLily's picture

Hear, hear.

Thanks for this essay. I'm marking it for a later, more thorough, read. (And have saved it for ammunition, though I've already learned the hard way that people who don't want to hear reason, won't).

(I mean, how does anyone buy the "bot/troll" argument -- unless they're absolutely convinced that every American who didn't vote the way they did is incapable of thinking for themselves? FFS).

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@WaterLily One of the great lunacies which seems to be believed by democrats is that Putin controls the White House. This is great news for the billionaires, lobbyists, MIC, big pharma, fossil fuel industry, and various other powerful elites. The focus is off them. They walk the halls of the White House and Congress and shit in the hallways if they want and nobody will notice.

I bet in the near future, we will get accusations of Putin hacking into social security funds. Yah, it was the Russians who stole it, not the gop or dem quislings.

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Wink's picture

@MrWebster

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

Great essay. Those 1000 hackers story illustrates the unwavering credulity of the media and democrats. We are to believe that Putin and his henchmen knew the Rust Belt States were in play, but not one party operative or American pundit or American pollster. This is why my advice to democrats is to hire Putin as unlike the democratic establishment, he knows how to win American elections (and unlike Hillary supporters, understands the Electoral College.)

I have given up trying to even trying to simply raise questions as in "doesn't it seem strange that Russians would use a British publicist writing in plain text email to start and begin the process of collusion? Where is the follow up emails or evidence of ongoing communication?"

While the mere weight, complexity, and illogic of the Russian conspiracy is folding on itself, the more the media and democrats grow ever more fervent about the great Russian conspiracy. It has reached the levels of Monty Python.

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster scam? Every day he has been accused of basically committing treasonous acts and all he has been doing is tweeting how false this narrative is.
He's the type of person who will sue people at the drop of a hat, yet he has been pretty compliant regarding the hits to his character.

I have believed that TPTB wanted Trump as president instead of Hillary because they thought that he would have been easier to control.
Yes Hillary would have signed on to their neocon march to Israel's drums through the MENA and elsewhere, but for some reason they went with Trump.

Rumor was that it was Bill Clinton who suggested that Trump run in the first place so that Hillary could beat him in the general election. Remember her collusion with the media and her pied piper gambit.
The media did their job by giving him $2 billion in free advertising. And now they are deriding every thing he does.
This morning huffpo had a headline stating that Trump is covering his butt.
This website in particular has been writing very derogatory articles about him, and when I click on them, they read like a gossip column.

This just seems off to me.
Thoughts?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg focusing on this Russian propaganda and what Trump and his family have been doing, the republicans have been working hard in the background overturning most of Obama's last minute legislation. And who knows what else they are trying to do while no one is paying attention to them.

And Trump's cabinet appointees are creating as much damage as they can in the departments they were appointed to head.
Zinke wants to roll back many presidential antiquities acts and reduce the amount of acreage they protected.
Sessions is ramping up the drug war and the sentences for people who have been found guilty on anything regarding drugs.
He's going after medical and legal marijuana stores and doing other nefarious things.

DeVos, Carson, Mnunchkin (so) treasury secretary (?) and Perry and the other department heads are all rolling back the Obama era regulations or defunding and attacking their agencies and the only people covering this is the alternative media.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg was that by going with Trump, and losing so many seats in the entire nation, Democrats can let him destroy it all, and they can blame Repugnants for it. Team sports. But Democrats somehow think people will go back to them after the major crash that's coming, and they might be right.

The gutting of everything? As you so rightly point out in my opinion, nice set up. Let an ignoramus like Trump "take the fall" for breaking what's left of the US, but then come in and be the only source of so called "stability" that you can persuade enough scared panicked people to believe in. Along with your militarized police, full austerity policies at home, MORE people with nothing at all, and lots of propaganda and diversion, it just might work. Much easier to just take it all then. Totalitarian capitalism, global.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

snoopydawg's picture

@lizzyh7 as to the democrats losing so many seats in such a short time, has this big loss ever happened before?
The democrats would let republicans run unopposed or wouldn't fund the candidates running against them. This was one reason why they lost so many seats during the first midterm election. I didn't bother to vote because after Obama's betrayals, it didn't seem to matter which party the president belonged to, nothing would change to make our lives better.
Then there's Obama hiding behind the republicans blocking his legislation and not calling them out on it.

People said that he couldn't because he would have come across as an angry Black man.
This was total bs because he knew that the republicans would work against him. This is what the opposition party is supposed to do. Stand up to them. FDR:

I welcome their hatred.

Obama:

I don't want people to dislike me.

Besides, he couldn't use that excuse during his first two years when the democrats had both houses. Yes there were many blue dog democrats who wouldn't vote with the democrats, but did he ever threaten them?

Remember how Lieberman, who had worked on McCain's campaign, was able to keep his cabinet chair even though the democrats needed his vote on so many bills they wanted passed.

How many years did he continue to say that he wanted to reach across the isle and work with them even though they said they wanted to make him a one term president.

I remember this statement from his campaign:

I would rather be a one term president and try to pass legislation that helps people, then be a two term president who didn't even try.

We know what type of president he turned out to be.

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Creosote.'s picture

@snoopydawg
whose piece in the Guardian -- https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/19/despot-disguise-de... -- goes into detail on the views of one James McGill Buchanan, who seems to have created the architect's drawings for amost every facet of the destruction we've been seeing for decades. Stealth was written into the picture from the beginning.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Creosote.
not only the brilliant essayists, but the informed members who add to them.

From your link:

Her discoveries in that house of horrors reveal how Buchanan, in collaboration with business tycoons and the institutes they founded, developed a hidden program for suppressing democracy on behalf of the very rich. The program is now reshaping politics, and not just in the US.

And as usual, look who is once again found in the middle of this plan: Charles Koch.
The Koch brothers are behind so many republican governors who are wreaking havoc on their states such as the right to work laws which has been marching across the country, the distracting laws against transgender bathrooms, the religious freedom acts so that so called religious people can keep their LGBT neighbors downtrodden and the push to reverse the size of our national monuments as well as many other legislation.

Worthwhile article to read and bookmark.

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Creosote.'s picture

@snoopydawg
So appreciate this site's clarity and its strong, articulate observers. I'd be desolate without it.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg This part of your argument is entirely right, but it's more like the establishment making hay while the sun shines--they have the opportunity to do all sorts of shit while people's attention is completely distracted, and that's a nice side benefit for them.

They don't really disagree with Trump about anything except starting World War III with Russia. And maybe some of the imperialistic regime change (maybe not). So giving cover to the horrific domestic policies that the Bushes and the Clintons and their donors want too is a nice side benefit. But that doesn't mean they want Trump in there. They want someone who will do whatever they say immediately without question, and if possible with gusto.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@snoopydawg It seems to me that Trump's attacks on establishment media have made him stronger with his base. He is out front on every attack against him, rather than retreating. It looks like the Russia stuff is playing well with the democratic party choir and media, but not with the base that got him into office--and maybe Trump knows this and basically to build support, he tweaks the nose of democrats. Maybe Trump knows instinctive that picking a fight with him is not a winning proposition. And so yah, he deliberately goads on the media with his tweets.

The Hillary campaign was under the illusion and delusion that republicans would be so disgusted with Trump they would vote for her. They still believe that when quoting some stat that gopers don't think Trump is presidential. Yet, when push comes to shove, they will back Trump.

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snoopydawg's picture

@MrWebster they say that there hasn't been any proof of Trump colluding with Russia and think it's the democrats just finding an excuse for why Her lost.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@snoopydawg Nope. They don't want Trump in there. Hillary was their first choice, Pence is their backup choice.

If they wanted Trump in there, they wouldn't have started picking off his Cabinet before he even got inaugurated.

Not for my money.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

@MrWebster It has emerged that Rob Goldstone - the music producer (and apparently ace Kremlinologist, according to the MSM) who sent the lying email to Trump setting up the meeting with Veselnitskaya, is an associate of GPS Fusion, as is Ms. V and a Russian who also attended as interpreter. GPS Fusion, as you will recall, is the organization which first Jeb and then friends of the Clinton campaign hired to compile the infamous piss dossier on Trump. I suspect I'm not the only one smelling a set up. Also intriguing is the fact that Lynch granted Ms. V a special waiver to allow her to enter the country 2 days before her meeting with Trump. Allegedly, Ms. V's facebook page is chock-a-block with postings critical of both Trump and Putin. Let's see where this goes!

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Mark F. McCarty

@veganmark What got me about this entire episode was how wide open this meeting and email exchanges were. I thought the Russians were supposed to be masters at spy craft. And now eight people at this meeting that apparently nobody kept secret. And now two people at the meeting GPS Fusion associated. Not stopping there Natalia Veselnitskaya had dirt on Hillary but her FB page is described as anti-Trump and anti-Putin. WTF? I am not sure what the real agenda was, but one thing for sure, there was no sinister collusion which is the crux of the accusation against the Trump campaign.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@veganmark Are they connected with the same Fusion that Cenk Uygur and TYT got a contract with last summer? A subsidiary of Univision?

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

I agree with you from top to bottom. If you have a FB account, look for it. I will be posting this on c99's page. Great read.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

@dkmich This one is one I may have to resend to some friends. Great one. Great job spreading the word!

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

snoopydawg's picture

Russian propaganda war that the democrats, the media and the people who have gone insane have been pushing on us.

Except one. Russia was responsible for the congressional hearing during the Obama administration when the lawyer who had met with little Trump and Kushner was in the audience.
Apparently the Kremlin instructed congress member Dana Rohrabacher to stage a "Show Trial" against the Maniski Act!
This is a diary on you know where and there are so many twists and turns inside it, I fried trying to make sense of it.
I'm sure you can imagine the comments. This is one diary that is worth a click on. Seriously, you have to read this to see how far they have jumped the poodle over there.

So now we are supposed to believe that Obama not only knew that Russia was hacking into our voting machines, Vermont's electrical grid, many of our nuclear power plants and even our congress, yet he did nothing about it because he didn't want to give Trump an excuse to say that the election was rigged when he lost the election to Her?

Outstanding job on this essay. I too will bookmark it and read it again because of all the points you hit. Smashing good job ole chap!

ETA this article on the congressional hearings.

Curiousor and Curiousor – Natalia Veselnitskaya Pictured With Obama Officals in DC on June 14th, 2016…

IMG_1125.JPG

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logged on just so I could rec it and I'm bookmarking it for further use.Thank you.

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Wink's picture

When we first heard of this Russia-gate horse$h!t - about 5 mins. after Trump declared victory - my first thought was "Wag the Dog." "Hillary's gonna blame everyone but Hillary on her spanking."
Great essay! Thanks for the work!

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

snoopydawg's picture

@Wink for losing the election.

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Wonder how many cases of vodka Bad Vlad had to send to Rohrabacher for his support.

Actually, Robert Parry has severe doubts about the credibility of the media's take on the Magnitsky affair: https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/13/how-russia-gate-met-the-magnitsky-...

So if Parry is right, Rohrabacher might be in the right - as would Hillary, who came out against the Magnitsky act as SOS. (Though the 500K Bill had just been given by a Kremlin-connected bank might have had something to do with it. Intriguing thought - Hillary being bribed to take the CORRECT position.)

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Mark F. McCarty

snoopydawg's picture

@veganmark after the uranium deal was made?

This article shows how Hillary used her position as Secretary of State to enrich both her foundation and Bill's pockets.

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

Hillary and her friends helped Russia purchase 20% of our country's uranium. This deal had the blessing of Obama and many members of congress.

I'm surprised that the Times covered this deal, but it was before she announced that she was running for president.
I doubt they would do so again in today's climate.

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CB's picture

I would like to add the following link to explain the history on how we got to this point with Russia in the first place.

The History of the Neocon Takeover of the USA
By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould

Part 1 – American Imperialism Leads the World into Dante’s Vision of Hell

May 10, 2017 "Information Clearing House" - Before the Tomahawk Missiles start flying between Moscow and New York, Americans had better educate themselves fast about the forces and the people who claim that Russia covered up a Syrian government gas attack on its own people. Proof no longer seems to matter in the rush to further transform the world into Dante’s vision of Hell. Accusations made by anonymous sources, spurious sources and outright frauds have become enough. Washington’s paranoia and confusion bear an uncanny resemblance to the final days of the Third Reich, when the leadership in Berlin became completely unglued. Tensions have been building since fall with accusations that Russian media interfered with our presidential election and is a growing threat to America’s national security. The latest WikiLeaks release strongly suggested that it was the CIA’s own contract hackers behind Hillary Clinton’s email leaks and not Russians. The U.S. has a long reputation of accusing others of things they didn’t do and planting fake news stories to back it up in order to provide a cause for war. The work of secret counter intelligence services is to misinform the public in order to shape opinion and that’s what this is. The current U.S. government campaign to slander Russia over anything and everything it does bears all the earmarks of a classic disinformation campaign but this time even crazier. Considering that Washington has put Russia, China and Iran on its anti-globalist hit-list from which no one is allowed to escape, drummed up charges against them shouldn’t come as a surprise. But accusing the Russians of undermining American democracy and interfering in an election is tantamount to an act of war and that simply is not going to wash. This time the United States is not demonizing an ideological enemy (USSR) or a religious one (al Qaeda, ISIS, Daesh etc.). It’s making this latest venture into the blackest of propaganda a race war, the way the Nazis made their invasion of Russia a race war in 1941 and that is not a war the United States can justify or win.

The level and shrillness of the latest disinformation campaign has been growing for some time. But the American public has lived in a culture of fake news (formerly known as propaganda) for so long many have grown to accept fake news as real news. George Orwell saw this coming and here it is. As a big supporter of U.S. military intervention in Cuba and avowed practitioner of “yellow journalism”, in 1897 William Randolph Hearst admonished the illustrator he’d sent to Cuba who’d found no war to illustrate; “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Hearst eventually got his war and America’s experiment in imperialism was off and running.
...
Croziers cooperation with numerous “able and diligent Congressional staffers” as well as “the remarkable General Vernon (‘Dick’) Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence,..” cemented the rise of the neoconservatives. When Carter caved in to the Team B and his neoconservative National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s plot to lure the Soviets and into their own Vietnam in Afghanistan it fulfilled Burnham’s mission and delivered the world to the Machiavellians without anyone being the wiser. As George Orwell wrote in his Second Thoughts on James Burnham, “What Burnham is mainly concerned to show [in The Machiavellians] is that a democratic society has never existed and, so far as we can see, never will exist. Society is of its nature oligarchical, and the power of the oligarchy always rests upon force and fraud… Power can sometimes be won and maintained without violence, but never without fraud.”

Today Burnham’s use of Dante’s political Treatise, De Monarchia to explain his Medieval understanding of politics might best be swapped for Dante’s Divine Comedy, a paranoid comedy of errors in which the door to hell swings open to one and all, including the elites regardless of their status. Or as they say in Hell, Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

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snoopydawg's picture

@CB themselves to be taken in on this.
Especially the ones who used to question everything that the CIA and the FBI told them.
From the gulf of Tonkin scam, Saddam's WMDs and the other propaganda they used to see through.

The theories of what Putin managed to accomplish get more outlandish each day. When this comes crashing down and people find out that the government has been lying to them, it's going to be interesting to see their reactions.

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The Aspie Corner's picture

continue to swallow and plug the horseshit narrative.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywMiAPzr4As]

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Big Al's picture

@The Aspie Corner

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SpamNunn's picture

There are some places where you could never post this or, if you did, it would be the last thing you ever posted. Good stuff.

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It's just my opinion. It can't hurt you

which is why we are here and not there. Couldn't wait to leave. Emptied my emails and diaries, signed out, only go back when someone here asks me to.

@SpamNunn

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

chuckvw's picture

that those of us who posted comments critical of Clinton the Second over there and other places are counted among the "thousands".

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You should only listen to both sides when one side isn't totally full of shit. -Jim Jefferies

Not Henry Kissinger's picture

“So the Russians…could not have known best how to weaponize that information unless they had been guided. Guided by Americans and guided by people who had polling and data information.”

I have no idea what that phrase means.

Did Podesta's emails contain the secret plans for a mind ray that made a bunch of people in Saginaw County MI vote for Trump?

It's just an election ferchrissakes. It's not Hiroshima.

All that was wounded was Hillary's pride.

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The current working assumption appears to be that our Shroedinger's Cat system is still alive. But what if we all suspect it's not, and the real problem is we just can't bring ourselves to open the box?

@Not Henry Kissinger

seems to be their message.

nope.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@Not Henry Kissinger I know what weaponizing information is, and so, obviously does Hillary, Robbie Mook, and David Brock. It's also called hatchet jobs, character assassination, and misinformation.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

SpamNunn's picture

I am proud of body of work.

I left everything as is, and not because I had no choice. I want people to see who I was and am. They can't take my words and ideas away, only my ability to share them there.

Oddly enough, you can say what you want on Help Desk, until they delete it or hide it.

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It's just my opinion. It can't hurt you

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

The real danger of a new Cold War is not only the massive diversionary expense, but the fact that it greatly increases the risk for a catastrophic nuclear exchange to be triggered accidentally

Start listening at 4:32 and tell me how accidental you think it would be. They're not trying to start a new Cold War, they're trying to start World War III. Or accelerate World War III into the kind of open warfare everyone would recognize as such:

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

All the disparate parts pulled together factually and nicely organized. I would offer more elaborate praise if I had a working laptop desktop but now I have to figure out how to save your essay somehow. Kudos exclamation point.

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of the entire "Russiagate" charade. Thank you! It's really a remarkable piece of writing.

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native

Alphalop's picture

every bit of it.

I will have you know that I put my computer into sleep mode rather than shut down for the two days it took me to complete this essay and the dialog that followed just so I wouldn't lose my place, lol!

Superb writing and a great job gathering together all this information and weaving it into an understandable narrative.

This is the kind of stuff we should be seeing from the MSM, not the garbage they put forth on a daily basis.

Thanks for the read!

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"I used to vote Republican & Democrat, I also used to shit my pants. Eventually I got smart enough to stop doing both things." -Me

@Alphalop You're most welcome!

By the way, VIPS at Consortium News have just put their seal of approval on the Forensicator/Adam Carter analyses of Guccifer 2.0. That's big news!

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-e...

I've just added that link to the essay.

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Mark F. McCarty

@Alphalop You're most welcome!

By the way, VIPS at Consortium News have just put their seal of approval on the Forensicator/Adam Carter analyses of Guccifer 2.0. That's big news!

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-e...

I've just added that link to the essay.

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Mark F. McCarty

@Alphalop You're most welcome!

By the way, VIPS at Consortium News have just put their seal of approval on the Forensicator/Adam Carter analyses of Guccifer 2.0. That's big news!

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/24/intel-vets-challenge-russia-hack-e...

I've just added that link to the essay.

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Mark F. McCarty