US Releases Declassified Report On Russian Hacking, Concludes That Putin 'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (theverge.com) 734
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump? Wow, I never thought the US people and Putin could have so much in common.
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You mean the US electoral college and Putin, because in popular vote terms, the US people preferred Clinton.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Interesting)
If we used the popular vote it would be called "United State" not "United States".
You agreeed to the rules when you played the game.
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Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:4, Informative)
Which is utterly irrelevant per the rules.
Which rule says we can't consider the popular vote in any way whatsoever, even to make a pointed remark criticizing Donald Trump's inability to get more people to vote for him than anyone else?
The "Don't be a little bitch." rule. You can QQ all you want, but you should expect others to tell you to STFU when you do because everyone's sick of hearing it.
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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.
And the First Amendment makes it clear that it is perfectly legal to talk about the popular vote.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:4, Informative)
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FTFY. And of course those who want citations: http://www.politico.com/2016-e... [politico.com].
California chose Hillary by 3.4 million cotes. Hillary won nationwide popular vote by 2.9 million votes. The entire difference and then some is the state of California.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the US electoral college and Putin, because in popular vote terms, California preferred Clinton.
FTFY. And of course those who want citations: http://www.politico.com/2016-e... [politico.com].
California chose Hillary by 3.4 million cotes. Hillary won nationwide popular vote by 2.9 million votes. The entire difference and then some is the state of California.
Aaaaaaaand..... your point being that California is not..... a part of America?
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California suffers from numerous problems. 1. Illegal voters 2. Voter intimidation 3. Voter depression
Also,
4. Voter suppression
5. Voter aggression
6. Vote anticipation
7. Voter aggravation
8. Voter illustration
9. Voter constipation
10. Voter elaboration
11. Voter absolution
12. Voter abstraction
13. Voter inauguration
12. Voter incineration
13. Voter alliteration
Yes I threw awa my mod points to post this stupid comment.
Re:Well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Damn Hairy! There's your problem, she should have run for President of Mexico!
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Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Informative)
My state, Tennessee, is VASTLY different than California. Everybody is using a popular vote argument like the country is united against Trump, which is not accurate.
Re: 'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem confused. The electoral college is working precisely as intended: to prevent very few states with very high relative population from dominating the politics of the entire country via a simple majority.
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Or, what's actually part of the historical record, a compromise to empower the institution of slavery: http://time.com/4558510/electoral-college-history-slavery/ [time.com]
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If I try to rephase that in simpler and more modern terms:
"The north has more (white) people than the south, so if we use a popular vote the South wouldn't matter so much - they know this, and there's no way they are buying into this 'United States' thing if they would wield less influence than the north. So we'll use an electoral college. This effectively means a voter in a small state is more important than a voter in a large state, but it's the only solution everyone can agree to."
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Last I checked, California was still part of the United States. Unless you can cite something that proves otherwise.
A large portion of Trump voters is of the opinion that California's votes should not count in elections. Apparently they are, however, perfectly happy to collect the money California's voters pay into the federal coffers and that gets eaten up by federal aid to red states.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying Clinton didn't lose fair and square. But the GP made the claim the American people favored Trump, which is, in fact false. No one disputes that the Electors have the ultimate constitutional authority to choose the POTUS, and that constitutionally Trump is the rightful winner of the election. But whatever that may represent, what it does not represent is that Trump is the popular pick.
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https://medium.com/equal-citiz... [medium.com]
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I'm not even sure what's that supposed to mean? Remove the biggest state with the most Hillary supporters, and then they are even? TX, OK, AR, and LA have together about the same number of electoral votes, too, so let's remove the 2+ million that Trump won those by, too. We're back to square one.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
Headline: most populous state in the country has an opinion on who should lead it.
Clinton also won New York by 1.5 million votes. You could try to make a story of "without New York, Clinton would have only won by 1.4 million votes!", but that would also be dumb and misleading. In fact, if you skip all states where Clinton won, then Trump would have lead by 8.4 million votes! Of course, the opposite would have Clinton winning by 11.2 million, so you might want to keep that inconvenient fact in your pocket.
America preferred Clinton. "America, except for..." doesn't matter for shit because it wasn't "America, except for..." who votes on these things.
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The actual numbers from Politico that was "quoted" above. The 2.8M number is made up, there are no official results that show that discrepancy.
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Counties don't vote, people do.
There are more counties in which more people voted red than blue, yes. But this can mean 50%+1 vote voting red; and if you count it all as red, you ignore all those people who voted otherwise.
That's actually the biggest problem that Democrats have: the demographics that support them are clustered in densely populated areas, where they have huge but completely useless margins, thereby wasting votes (because once your guy got over 50% of the votes, every additional vote is a "wa
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As a Californian, I say Californians should have no right to vote in national elections until they prove they are US citizens.
I'd extend that to any state that has an illegal immigration problem. And I'd support a Constitutional Amendment to require proof of national citizenship to vote in national elections. (I would NOT approve of any federal law other than a Constitutional Amendment to require this nationwide - currently, the Constitution says that States run their elections.)
Further, California can't
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:4)
It is true that there would be a rife of problems were CA to try to secede; but you didn't actually state any of them. Instead you went on a rant full of your own biases and judgements. And who cares what you think? I don't, not enough to even finish reading your crap.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
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There are some that have a strong opinion in the other direction, though:
https://twitter.com/realdonald... [twitter.com]
The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.
Or at least did...
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Zoo animals also expressed an overwhelming desire... shame neither are at all relevant: http://www.msn.com/en-us/video... [msn.com]
Not so clear... (Score:2)
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?..
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Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Informative)
So a more fair assessment of the popular vote tally would be that the U.S. people preferred a conservative candidate.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:4, Insightful)
In several obvious ways:
1) He brings up the popular vote, which is pretty much irrelevant within the current American electoral system (i.e., the one used for the 2016 election). It's a pointless distraction within the context of this submission's discussion.
2) He disparages the electoral college, presumably because he disagrees with the result in this particular case. Yet the American electoral system is well-established, fair, and well-understood. He's just upset that his candidate lost, although he probably would be completely supportive of the electoral college were the outcome in his preferred candidate's favor.
3) He suggests that Putin had an impact on the outcome of the election, when the evidence suggests there was no such impact.
So in summary, his comment doesn't contribute to the discussion here, and in fact it appears to be trying to derail it with irrelevant points, false accusations, an undeserved sense of entitlement, and just a lot of whining in general.
He's just upset that his candidate lost in a fair election, and now he appears to be trying to disrupt the conversation here with nonsense.
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Informative)
Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this trolling?
Clinton didn't win even 50% of the vote. The majority of voters voted ABC - anybody but Clinton.
You could flip that and claim that an even greater majority of voters voted ABT.
You can nitpick that MightyMartian's post was inaccurate because a majority of US voters in fact did not prefer Clinton. But a majority did not prefer Trump either. And Clinton did get more votes than any other candidate. And that bugs the hell out of Trump, so much that he created a fiction of 'millions' of illegal aliens voting for Clinton.
Yes, I know that it's the Electoral College that matters. That doesn't mean the popular vote is not of interest.
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I'm pretty sure the only clear preference shown in this past election by the US people was for none of the available candidates.
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Re:'Developed a Clear Preference' For Trump (Score:5, Informative)
The most entertaining part to me is the part where it says, "it was revenge for the Panama papers." Heh. As if Russia had no other reason to hack US computers.
Another interesting part is where it mentions Assange's ties to the official Russian news channel (RT). I was unaware that he sometimes appeared on TV there.
Another interesting part is where it analyzes Russian television support for Trump as a candidate. For example, as soon as he won, they say that the Russian TV stopped criticizing the election process as "unfair." So their analysis that Russia wanted Trump to win seems reasonable.
Their analysis of the hacking is not good though. They say:
1) Guccifier 2.0 is the Russian government because: he is probably a Russian speaker, not Romanian speaker. That's it? Very not convincing.
2) The leaks to Wikileaks were from the Russian government because Assange appears on the Russian news channel (RT). Again, that's it? Not very convincing.
3) They claim "Russia accessed elements of multiple state or local electoral boards." Of this, they give no evidence. Absolutely nothing to support this claim. Seriously, tell us which electoral board, or arrest the members of the board, or something.
Some things we do know: John Podesta had an extremely insecure password, and that's how his email leaked. We know that Assange claims the email came from a disgruntled DNC operative. That is not unreasonable, if I saw what they were doing in the DNC, I would have been upset about it too.
Enough Americans are good people, that if you have some surveillance program, or are doing things to mess with our free election process, sooner or later someone is going to leak that.
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"Trust us" worked out really well last time! (Score:3)
> 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
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You're only seeing the unclassified information. What you're saying about the quality of the evidence is only relevant to the public portion of the report. The intelligence agencies do not like to disclose information that can compromise their methods.
Yeap, but if they say, "trust us, we have classified information that proves it," I don't trust them, because they've lied too many times before.
In this case, they didn't even say that.
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If I recall correctly, the IT response was along the lines of "that's legitimate; go here to reset your password" providing an appropriate link. But Podesta (or whoever managed his e-mail) followed the link in the phish e-mail rather than the one IT said to use.
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I had a Coke instead of Pepsi with lunch today.
What does that matter?
It's just as relevant to the subject of Presidential elections as what you said.
The rules have been in place for a couple hundred years now, they were accepted by all who played, and only after losing are you throwing a hissy fit. moveon.org
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The Russians were also Hitler's ally and would have continued to be so until Hitler attacked them.
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Stop with rewriting history. Russia and Hitler had a non-aggression pact, not an alliance. The pact included dividing up Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Finland, and Romania between the two.
Same as the US Monroe Doctrine back in the 1800s claimed political dominance of the Americas to be US's right. This was seen by the whole "banana republic" US corporatism favorable to US business at the expense of central and south america.
Wow, it's effing nothing (Score:4, Informative)
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
Big deal (Score:2, Insightful)
Absolutely No Effect (Score:2)
Why bother with the machines? (Score:4, Insightful)
. . . there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. . .
Why bother with the voting machines when you can tamper with the voters?
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. . . there was no tampering whatsoever with voting machines. . .
Why bother with the voting machines when you can tamper with the voters?
Because tampering with the voters is what elections are about and nobody has really discovered a fool proof way of doing that yet. Meanwhile, what was released was probably actually real and not some sort of fraud. Even so, if we actually catch the people who did it, they'll get hit with a large stick. What I really worry about is that I doubt if the Republican and Trump servers have significantly higher security, so there is probably some of their info out there too. Could be they are just sitting on it, b
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. . . there is the possibility it is being used to tamper with the lawmakers. . .
Exactly: .
1) Hack BOTH parties A & B during an election
2) Use hack of party A to help party B win
3) Use hack of party B to blackmail party B after they come into power
4) . .
5) Pribyl'!
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Hiring trolls seems like something Russia might do, but to say for sure they did, I want to see the evidence.
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po'shyol 'na hui, Russkiy shpion!
An Actual Sentence? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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!
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Probably written by a staffer.
I pity the guy who had to chew that sentence into Trumps ears for hours on end until the Orange Menace finally learned it by heart.
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Which has very little to do with the central allegations. I don't think many people seriously believed voting itself was hacked.
No evidence here (Score:2, Insightful)
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The Ds were just caught keeping pet reporters on staff at the NYT, CNN etc. Even when caught, the NYTs/CNN didn't fire anybody, hence it still is newspaper/network policy to lie for the democrats.
Hypocrisy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Well, in strict terms, the State Department sent that money to an Israeli group called OneGroup, which ostensibly was given the money to promote the Two-state solution. Now I'll agree it's likely the intent was that OneGroup use the money to attack Netanyahu, though you're not likely to find anyone on either side saying "That's what the plan was", but even that rather mild conspiracy is still out in the open. It's not like it was sent covertly, or that the Administration covertly passed on emails and docume
Re:Hypocrisy? (Score:4, Insightful)
Report does not state they have any evidence that the Russians hacked nor leaked emails to wikileaks, just basically "we think they did this". Read the god dam report, it absolutely provides no evidence or new information.
Re:Hypocrisy? (Score:4, Interesting)
$300,000 to a group that promotes a two state solution.
Definitely biased against the Israel government.
Comrade Drumpkov (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
NSA has moderate confidence (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Your comment incorrectly portrays the information in the report.
The CIA, FBI, and NSA all have high confidence that it was the Russians.
The NSA has moderate confidence the Russians did it to help elect Trump.
Please see page 7 of the report - https://www.dni.gov/files/docu... [dni.gov]
"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US
presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process,
denigrate Secretary Clinton, and har
Still waiting for evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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If you [WaffleMonster] actually read the released version of the report, then you would have noticed that it repeatedly says that the evidence cannot be released in public. It even explains why.
Now if the actual conclusions that are reported are different from those in the full version of the report that includes the evidence, then that will be reported by some of the people who are actually going to see the report. We can rely on that because some of those people are politicians who could not possibly keep
Where's the Beef? (Score:4, Informative)
Where's the Beef? Here is the Declassified version of the U.S. Intelligence Report regarding Russia.
https://www.dni.gov/files/docu... [dni.gov]
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
Re:Also in the report (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Also in the report (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Gee, I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Who says I believe either? (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
Re:Who says I believe either? (Score:5, Insightful)
Given that the Democrats are trying to start WWIII by doing everything from poking Russia with a pointy stick to rolling out tanks on their border, this is a damned good thing.
Every time I hear "trying to start WWIII" it becomes hard not to tune out. This is such a tired old talking point devoid of any coherent information or useful context to the extent of being virtually non-falsifiable in nature.
If a training exercise in Norway = WWWIII god can only guess what conducting the same in SK territory means with respect to DPRK, US warships "invading" Chinese territory in South China Sea, Russia annexing land in foreign countries, Russia invading Georgia, Russian invading a country they signed defense treaties with (e.g. Budapest Memorandum), planting flags in Artic and conducting joint training exercises in Cuba.
Anyone could make reverse argument being a pussy and standing down or otherwise perusing appeasement and capitulation can also lead to war by empowering those with expansionist aims to become blind to consequences.
None of these statements are worth anything in and of themselves. They are two sides of the same worthless coin.
If you don't agree with a particular course of action much better simply to support your position by providing falsifiable evidence explaining specifically why a course of action is reckless or dangerous.
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You only believe that because your hope and change turned out to be an expensive failure and your party decided to ignore its constituency and when you got to see what the DNC does to people like Sanders, the left turned on reality and became no better than the Infowars loonies.
If you look at it objectively, Wikileaks is no more or less political than they were during the Bush era and they've released plenty of dirt on both sides of the aisles over the years, most of it ignored by leftist "news" channels li
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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 distanc
Re:Also in the report (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would anyone believe Clapper, who has been cought at lying under oath before the congress before?
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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 g
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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.
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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.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
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.
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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?..
Re: A clear preference (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re: A clear preference (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck you! I'm from the Balkans and US involvement only made things worse.
Clearly you're not Albanian.
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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.
Re:A clear preference (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:A clear preference (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:A clear preference (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Name one national American politician with any technical knowledge?
Can't. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So you acknowledge that your statement:
would be equally true for: Clinton, Obama, Sanders, Pence, Pelosi, McCain, Graham etc etc etc?
What is your point than?
Re: (Score:3)
When did Obama or Clinton become tech wizards?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TIL that acting in a way that happens to somewhat align with a foreign power means one is now a foreign agent. Brilliant.
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. There's NATO and health care to destroy
Re:So problem solved (Score:4, Interesting)
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.