Democratic National Committee – Strategic Culture Foundation https://www.strategic-culture.org Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Mon, 11 Apr 2022 21:41:14 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.16 Polls Show ‘No Confidence’, ‘Stolen Elections’: Provocations in Post-Republic America https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/07/24/polls-show-no-confidence-stolen-elections-provocations-in-post-republic-america/ Sat, 24 Jul 2021 16:00:16 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=745900 Election fraud effects all Americans, but what’s often not considered is the particularly negative impact it has on the historically disenfranchised black community, Joaquin Flores writes.

This is a critical moment in American history, where 75% of Republicans and 30% of Democrats agree that the 2020 Election was stolen from Trump, as our cited polling data below makes clear. Confidence in American institutions also continues to decline, while a new Trafalgar poll shows that Harris inspires no confidence at all among 60% of Americans.

The July 23 and 13 Trafalgar/Convention of States poll surveyed more than 1,100 likely voters for the 2022 midterm election with a startling 64 percent of respondents expressing little confidence that Harris is ready to be president. The bulk of these, close to 60 percent, said they were “not confident at all.” Mind you, a Vice-President is elected on the basis that they would be ready to serve as president whenever conditions may come to pass where the sitting president was unable.

In a parallel universe where Democrats don’t steal elections, this would be a disconcerting poll result.

The DNC needs to be building post-Biden energy now, as they enter the mid-term election cycle. Especially so now with MAGA activists pushing on every state legislature where they can, to push back against the Dominion/Smartmatic electronic voting systems and other voting integrity matters.

An election worker checks Dominion systems in Miami-Dade County in this uncredited photo from November 2020

MAGA voters are motivated by the de facto leader of the newly reformed Republican Party, Donald Trump. They are acting against election fraud, critical race theory, open and wanton double standards from the DOJ in handling the January 6th protestors compared to the leniency given to Antifa/BLM, the movement against lockdowns with no basis in science, and more.

The DNC doesn’t have an answer. They appear to keep offering up Harris and Buttigieg. All of their gas was spent in an anti-Trump message that lacked a positive message.

Well, to the extent there was a message, promises made by Biden, most of these have been broken.

Elections – Why bother?

Post-Biden energy would, in that parallel universe, be very important for the Democrat Party considering how much organic energy the MAGA movement continues to generate. Back during the DNC convention in 2020, Joe Biden himself said he was just a placeholder, inferring that he realized he would be a one-term president if elected. The future of the party sits with Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris according to DNC insiders and their Trans-Atlantic corporate and bankers masters.

As unbelievable as that sounds, keep in mind that this is a party that only was able to come into the White House based upon what Biden himself called the most “extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization” ever assembled. Some may say this was a slip, others would retort that it was a Freudian slip.

At least 1/3rd of Americans believe that Biden occupies the White House as the result of election fraud, according to late June 2021 Monmouth University poll. Looking at the methodology, it’s possible this number is tremendously higher.

Another reason this figure is probably many times higher, is a parallel Rasmussen Poll from late November 2020 that showed that 20-30% of Democrats, yes Democrats, believed that the election was stolen from Trump.

The picture becomes clearer when we look at the YouGov poll which asked Republican voters how accurate the statements:

millions of fraudulent mail and absentee ballots were cast”, and whether; “voting machines were manipulated to add tens of thousands of votes for Joe Biden.”

Lastly YouGov asked for respondents’ responses to the statement;

 “thousands of votes were recorded for dead people.”

As even the liberal WaPo reported: For each of these false statements [sic], more than 50 percent of Republican respondents said it was “very accurate”; over 75 percent of Republican voters said each one was “very accurate” or “somewhat accurate.”

This is not a matter that will go away. Many Americans historically felt that differences between Republicans and Democrats at the level of the Executive Branch were not decisive. But as times have gotten harder, Americans have look less to private enterprise and more to executive action to deliver on endemic and now multi-generational problems.

A Pro-Trump ‘Stop the Steal’ protest, in this unsourced image.

The MAGA movement is one that largely connects geopolitical and geo-economic issues of the trade imbalance with China and the outsourcing of key production to the intolerable conditions and uncertainty that prevails across the heartland. Much of America still hadn’t recovered from the 2007/2008 financial crisis, and we should note that real wages had been falling against growth for decades before.

Provocations and Hardships

It’s almost as if congress isn’t aware of this economic decline now more than forty years in the works. But we think they are, since they’re the ones who had an in depth Congressional Research Service report which highlights the fact of continued declining wage trends for the past forty years in the opening summary.

One of America’s fast growing “Tent Cities” – Nov. 10, 2017 photo, Stephanie Beasley, 36, foreground, a former resident (AP Photo/Mike Cardew/Beacon Journal/Ohio.com)/Akron Beacon Journal via AP)

It’s almost as if all of this is a provocation, intended on provoking the kind of ‘uprising of the deplorables’ that January 6th wasn’t. The open abuse of institutions, fraudulent elections, growing unemployment and uncertainty, the grotesque rising trend of medical bankruptcy, and the eventual rolling out of vaccine passports (whether governmental or de facto as a condition of employment and travel) are indeed horrific. And they would be all the more horrific if these were intentionally being orchestrated to provoke a reaction from the American people which would then be used as a pretext to double-down harder on the rising police state.

Given Biden’s state of mental deterioration, there is no possibility he is really developing policy, foreign or domestic. That’s what cabinets do anyhow, but historically there has been some notion that the ship has a captain other than the IMF, CFR and the World Economic Forum’s Nicolas Berggruen. It was he who financed John Podesta’s terroristic and secessionist war-game to oust trump, the Transition Integrity Project. There is also someone clearly telling Biden what to say through his earpiece, and his executive orders are signed in what appears to be his wife’s handwriting.

And with Pete Buttigieg showing off some decree of election theft acumen himself back in the Spring of 2020, guaranteeing a win against Bernie Sanders in the Iowa straw poll by using a crooked app made by Shadow Inc. (you can’t make this stuff up), we see a clearer picture. Biden’s role is to break every promise made, promises necessary to get those 50 or 60 million Americans who actually voted for him to turn out.

The future of the DNC relies on printing fake ballots, ballot harvesting, and media censorship if anyone tries to raise these facts. The announcement that the White House would be coordinating with Big Tech to further censor and repress Americans is most definitely a violation of the 1st Amendment, given that this is now an act of government deciding which political speech will be allowed.

And with all of that, it looks very much like the end-game here is to have a Harris and Buttigieg ticket for 2024. Having Harris and Buttigieg forced onto a majority pro-Trump America, would be a hardship and a provocation that could finally push America over the edge into disintegration.

Liars Do Their Work

Buttigieg and Harris rank very high on what the decidedly unlikable people in charge think likability looks like.

What’s more, there’s a very good chance that Biden won’t even finish his term, word on the streets is that foreign leaders and diplomatic missions have bet pools on which month in 2022 or 2023 that Biden steps down for one reason or another.

Because the DNC pretends also to be the party of organized labor and more, imagines that it represents the interests of the most vulnerable and socioeconomically oppressed strata, it can make these betrayals seem to be a step above what ‘Orange-man-bad’ would have been able to offer. Most American workers won’t believe it; they didn’t in 2016 or in 2020. But with voter fraud, election theft, social media censorship, and let’s throw in cyber-terrorism and a magical pandemic, food shortages and black-outs, the idea may very well just be to simply pummel and demoralize American workers into submission.

These deep state games are being played on very shaky ground, with Americans institutions suffering a growing loss of confidence among the public. An early July 2021 Gallup poll shows a continued decline in confidence since 1973, and this trend has been a consistent one.

This strongly suggests that Atlantic Council claims, used to justify censorship and repression, that Russian misinformation vectors are responsible for the loss of confidence are false. Instead, we can see that the loss of confidence parallels both the growing income inequality (Pew Research) and gap between economic growth and real earnings over the same exact period of time.

Despite this, there is a profound disconnect between DNC loyal professional ‘activists’ and pundits and the public at large, a special class that continues to have faith in the system they are paid to have.

The quacking pundit class of policy wonks and university graduate NGO ‘specialists’ living in a fantasy-land where there is some viable progressive strategy to ‘win back’ the DNC from the corporations will do their job in 2022 and 2024. Their job is to create a hyper-reality simulacrum of hope, so that big-hearted progressives continue to vote Democrat.

This all comes together beautifully. So long as these professional pundits on both mainstream and DNC backed ‘alternative’ media sell the story, then the rapidly diminishing strata of baby-boomer and older Gen X progressives might actually think that the ‘Democrat Landslide’ electoral outcomes in 2022 and 2024 were legitimate.

Restoring Democracy in America?

The election results continue to inspire incredulity still eight months after the November election. Once people lose confidence in that system, and as confidence in institutions erodes, people start to dig. Then they discover stock price manipulation, and start to pull out investments from there. Once the system loses buy-in from the public, then there’s very little left they can squeeze from the public. This is a basic question of the social contract.

Between big questions about election integrity, and a ‘Great Reset’ being forced onto the U.S. and the world by a banking class trying to hold on to power in a post financial world, a growing percentage of Americans – about 20% of all Americans – want the U.S. military to take matters in their own hands, and conduct military tribunals that would see large swaths of ‘elected’ officials, leaders of intelligence agencies, and even celebrities (thought to be involved in ritual child abuse), tried and possibly executed at Gitmo.

There are simple solutions to voter integrity issues, and genuinely open and fair elections could go a long way not only in restoring faith in institutions, but electing representatives that can do the kind of ‘reset’ that Americans actually want.

Historic voter disenfranchisement suffered by Black Americans is a provable phenomenon, caused by the prison-industrial complex and recidivism, DMV offices being used to issue state ID’s despite these being located hundreds of miles away in some states larger inter-county systems.

But the work-arounds proposed by Democrats to solve disenfranchisement are actually just covers for election fraud.

An undated Alabama State House disenfranchisement protest endorsed by the NAACP – source NYT

Those ‘solutions’ also simply treat Black Americans as default Democrats – and so ballots are stuffed ‘on their behalf’. That’s likely what poll workers who stuffed ballot boxes thought they were doing it in the name of justice. It’s understandable on a certain level, the existing injustices can certainly inspire a type of vigilantism at the counting tables. But this was used to take the election from Trump, who also earned more votes from Black America than any Republican since Reconstruction after the Civil War.

But it’s this half of the story that many conservatives are loath to appreciate. Their demands are pretty straight forward and rational: end electronic voting, return to a paper ballot-only system. Require a state ID to vote.

Election fraud effects all Americans, but what’s often not considered is the particularly negative impact it has on the historically disenfranchised black community. This is because election fraud is also used in Democrat primaries, meaning that Democrats that offer no real solutions for Black America can win primaries, leaving this vulnerable community without a working electoral system. Election fraud, because of who is behind it, benefits corporate America which perhaps counter-intuitively for old liberals, backed Biden and worked very hard to take the election from Trump.

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Biden’s Chances Rest on a John Podesta-Planned Military Coup, Ballot Harvesting, Police Shootings, and a False Flag https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/30/bidens-chances-rest-on-john-podesta-planned-military-coup-ballot-harvesting-police-shootings-false-flag/ Sun, 30 Aug 2020 16:00:18 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=506372 Our early August prognosis published by SCF on August 23rd, that Joe Biden would not concede the election even if Trump wins, was confirmed by Hillary Clinton herself on August 25th .

This piece will follow up on the strategy involved in that piece, and develop these in light of John Podesta’s election war-game and the situation in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In the Kenosha situation, we have armed groups on both sides, creating a volatile situation in what increasingly looks like a pre-civil war scenario. All together, we can now see the following is evident:

Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential bid now depends on a combination of a.) severe social media and search engine censorship of book-burning proportions, b.) signs from the military that they will back Biden (per John Podesta ) on the heels of c.) an inconclusive election (mailed-out blank ballots), and d.) (the Soros wing of) BLM’s ability engage in rioting and to pose as Trump-like supporters (QAnon and adjacent, such as ‘Save The Children’) in order to e.) conduct a dangerous or illegal public stunt (false flag).

Trump’s deep campaign has revolved around Christian, Gnostic, and New Age themes, which (with regard to the latter two) intersect themes of spirituality previously in the domain of the coastal left. These will form the substrate of a focus on this election being a contest of Good vs. Evil, of Light vs. Dark, of the champions of children against sexual predators, as well as anti-war and anti-vax themes; wherein ‘war mongers’ like ‘Hillary Clinton’, alleged child abusers like ‘John Podesta’, and regulatory capturers of healthcare like ‘Bill Gates’, serve as anthropomorphic reifications of unadulterated evil.

This is a novel phenomenon, and does not represent pre-Trump Republican tropes and organizing issues. Mainstream Republican tropes were represented at the RNC convention, and work to establish a continuity – even if ill fitted – between traditional conservatism (previously opposed to Trump) and Trump’s hardcore base.

[Image – Alleged Soros-BLM posing as a pro-Trump ‘Save the Children’ demonstration in what some fear foreshadows a false flag]

The Coup – Color Revolution and Arab Spring

Past political contests after the assassination of Kennedy appear to be based upon a consensus on key issues on international relations among elected officials, because the permanent administration had consensus on these themselves. But the rise of Trump, and the great lengths a part of the permanent administration has gone to frustrate his efforts, strongly indicate that there is now a political crisis and division so great, at the level of leadership, that all the soft-power and coup methods (used by the CIA abroad) are now being used within the U.S. against the executive branch.

A part of this permanent administration appears to back Trump, or rather Trump appears to be ‘their candidate’, and this may well in part explain his electoral success in 2016 despite what appeared as overwhelming odds to the contrary.

Perhaps the most visible permutation of this division and crisis were events in the deserts of Syria and Iraq, where Pentagon backed Kurdish YPG forces fought against CIA backed ISIS forces, with Americans in the employ of these institutions embedded on either side, firing at each other and taking losses. It would make sense that to military intelligence, such an incoherent and openly corrosive dynamic would need to be finally headed off.

Therefore, all of the lessons drawn from the Color Revolution, Fourth Generational Warfare (4GW), counter-insurgency and hybrid warfare, learned in our study of the events of Yugoslavia, Occupy Wall Street, BLM, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine, Brazil, Venezuela and lately Belarus, all become necessary reading in order to understand the absolutely destabilized position that the U.S. finds itself in as we approach the 2020 election.

We should expect, in line with the color-springs tactic, that police will engage in the killings of black men, orchestrated by police secret societies operating on behest of the permanent administration (known colloquially and hereafter as the ‘deep state’). These will be timed in such a way for maximum utility with regard to high/low points in the campaigns of the two candidates.

Kenosha On Fire

Such an incident just occurred on August 23rd in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the shooting of a black man, Jacob Blake. Standard and divisive motifs followed: the event was not clear cut, and definitive aspects of the case are open to interpretation and subject to confirmation bias in the public’s eye. This will provoke reaction and polarization, with the nuances and facts of the situation and its context often traded in for political expedience. Pro law enforcement types more closely associated with conservative politics will say the shooting was justified prior to a hearing of the facts, and will include biographical information about Blake which demonstrates his past criminal offenses, while ignoring that these past offenses do not form the basis for legitimizing a ‘summary execution’. Likewise, anti-police liberals will condemn the shooting as racist and unjustified, without regard to the views on race of the police involved, and without a review of the actual facts that anti-Trump corporate media was reluctant to expose but which were contained in the police report. At the same time, there is a long history of police falsifying evidence and statements to justify shootings such as these.

Note that the governor of Wisconsin, the Democrat Tony Evers, is the one who declared a state of emergency for Covid-19 and an unpopular lockdown. He is a career government bureaucrat, and was met by a mobilization of armed citizens against those diktats. Yet the fall-out and riots in the aftermath of the Blake shooting, of which the Evers-mandated high unemployment (per lockdown) forms the substrate but yet expressed through BLM/Antifa riots, will be blamed on Trump, whose years in public service can be counted on a single hand, and whose general efforts have been to end the lockdown and ‘re-open the economy’. Evers will not call on rioters to observe social distancing, and will call the armed detachments involved in arson and looting, ‘protesters’, and the constitutionalist militias who deployed to protect the rights of both protestors (from police excess) and civilians (from protestor-arsonists) as ‘right wing’.

The increasing emergence of ‘armed peaceful protestors’, an Orwellian oxymoron as a phrase in itself, first appeared in the Syrian conflict, where American corporate media and fake-left publications like Counterpunch regularly referred to armed Al Qaeda/ISIS/FSA groups engaged in shootings and killings as ‘peaceful protesters’.

[Video, Photo – an ‘armed peaceful protestor’ stands off with an armored Sheriff vehicle.]

In our past pieces, we have explored the mechanisms that the DNC and the permanent administration will use to nullify or falsify the outcome of the 2020 U.S. presidential election in November. This included the use of Democrat governors in certain states, as we previously wrote, to declare a state winner so that its electors go to Biden, in manufactured cases where the desired vote by state citizens could not be determined. It included the use of NGO employees, Labor/BLM/Antifa activists alongside contact tracers to use the coronavirus and social upheaval around manufactured racial justice issues to interfere with voters’ access to polls, and voters’ use of mailed-out ballots and ballot harvesting schemes.

In our last piece we disclosed that the DNC plans to have Biden declare himself the winner of the election, whatever the pending (inconclusive, tampered, stolen, etc.) outcome may be.

In a separate piece published on FRN, this author explained that for the Trump strategy against the riots to work, would require a plan that involved the co-opting of the BLM hashtag by his supporters. This would mean a separation of the BLM from Antifa, the latter being a designated terrorist group.

We explained there that this approach would be similar to that taken by Russia and Syria in the Syrian war, where certain Free Syrian Army (FSA) units had to be separated from ISIS, so that these FSA units could be considered ‘legitimate opposition’ (a change of tact in itself, previously all armed opposition were considered illegitimate by the Syrian government), and even incorporated into joint attacks with the Syrian Arab Army (SAA – Assad’s forces) against ISIS.

Of particular interest will be how the public and courts view the actions of Kenosha Guard militia member Kyle Rittenhouse. These two videos, the news commentary dubbed over and to the contrary, show Rittenhouse acting in self-defense. It also shows that those with him provided first responder assistance to the man who pulled a gun on Rittenhouse and who was subsequently shot in the arm.

 

 

Censorship

We now know, per the New York Times, that Facebook execs have been meeting to implement a strategy to censor information that Donald Trump has won the 2020 election, because of the working contingency plan (which appears to still be in operation) that Biden will declare victory regardless of a determinable outcome, as we previously wrote. This, however as we explained, would result in a vote in the Congress and Senate where it is likely that Nancy Pelosi may assume the presidency.

Simultaneously, Facebook execs have had a difficult time pushing against a terrified DNC which has been making irrational demands to further censorship.

Why are the DNC’s Censorship demands on Facebook irrational?

The DNC demands are fear-based and reactionary, and while Facebook execs have been happy to do the bidding of the DNC and pro-deep state Republicans (still a majority), they know the requests to further censor pro-Trump twitter accounts are known to produce the opposite effect. This is confirmed by the known science on the subject.

Studies of social revolutions and regime legitimacy show that further censorship in an environment where citizens have access to alternate informational lines, only erodes the legitimacy of the regime. Such a study was conducted on how the DDR tried to cover up the mass exodus of citizens into West Germany some thirty years ago [Sometimes Less Is More: Censorship, News Falsification, and Disapproval in 1989 East Germany . Christian Gläßel Katrin Paula , 2019].

Facebook execs called upon MIT to conduct a study to help establish their case, and a layman’s version of these conclusions were published in MIT’s online magazine ‘Technology Review’ in a piece titled, It’s Too Late to Stop QAnon with Fact Checks and Account Bans.

In this article by MIT, it is reported that: “Friedberg, who has studied the movement deeply, says he believes it is “absolutely” too late for mainstream social-media platforms to stop QAnon, although there are some things they could do to, say, limit its adherents’ ability to evangelize on Twitter.

Like the study of the DDR and regime legitimacy, the DNC finds that the more they push for censorship, the more popular the pro-Trump conspiracy theories grow.

What appears to be a work-around for this conundrum the deep state faces, is a new development, where the Soros wing of BLM has been instructed to stage at least one rally (so far) in Chicago that took place during the week of August 17th. In this, a group wearing what looked like Soros wing BLM uniforms actually carried placards associated with QAnon – such as WWG1WGA, #SaveTheChildren, #EndHumanTrafficking, and were replete with signs calling for ‘ending the pedophile Satanic cabal’.

Podesta’s Simulation Sees Public Looking to Military for a Sign

Of particular interest is that John Podesta recently ran a simulation on the DNC’s approach and response to election 2020, where he played the role of Biden. This war-game exercise was covered by David Frum for the Atlantic. Despite its counter-factual ‘facts’ and erroneous presumptions (poll based, etc.), the findings were startling.

Neither side would concede, courts would be too slow to act, Antifa and QAnon groups would clash in the streets, and the actions of the military, in either direction, or as with the National Guard – as deployed by the Justice Department under AG Barr, would be the deciding factor.

In that simulation there were a total of 67 players who met on Zoom in the first week of June 2020. This was composed of high-profile critics of President Donald Trump, including law professors, retired military officers, former senior U.S. officials, political strategists, attorneys, and cable news room editors.

We have to reiterate that Podesta, playing the role of Biden, understands that the real outcome of the election will therefore be the position that the military takes.

A wing of Trump’s supporters – Qanon – are adamant that military intelligence, or at least an operation within the NSA, will not only back Trump, but have been backing Trump since before the 2016 election. They believe this partly explains Trump’s victory despite what they see as an election ‘rigged’ by Clinton – thereby explaining Clinton’s otherwise unfounded confidence that she would win by a landslide in that fateful election now four years ago.

On the other side have been several notable members of the deep state, such as Colin Powell and former CIA chief John Brennan.

This all gels with the insider information that we have written about from SEIU, which as explained previously, forms the nexus between the Biden ground campaign and its GOTV, Bernie’s ‘Our Revolution’ and ‘Working Families Party’, Antifa, and BLM.

Conclusion

The likelihood that the 2020 election will not produce an agreed winner, barring effective active measures from Trump, is nearly certain. Based on the Northop/Standard model, Trump has an over 90% chance at winning an election if following the rules in place in the past dozen election cycles. This explains why the DNC has introduced as many X factors as possible – a politicized Covid-19 response, slanted news which riles up reliable protest movement assets towards rioting and looting, and a mailed-out ballots scheme which is indistinguishable in effect from known problem vote riggings techniques like ballot harvesting.

It is clear that the DNC wants to produce no clear winner, and use some combination of article XX, XII, and provisions as reinforced by related constitutional provisions for the continuation of government, and NSDP 51.

Because there are so many variables, possible counter measures, and new ‘X factors’ that can be introduced, this is a developing story with no clear outcome now estimable. If it is true that the NSA is backing Trump, then this provides strong reason to believe that this candidate will emerge the winner out of the fray. In either event, future X factors are almost certain.

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With Harris Pick, Dems Cede Election to Trump https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/14/with-harris-pick-dems-cede-election-to-trump/ Fri, 14 Aug 2020 20:00:11 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=491419 We haven’t even reached the DNC convention in Milwaukee next week and the election season is already over. Former Vice President and (presumptive) Democratic Party Nominee Joe Biden picked Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.

She is the first non-white woman to be so ‘honored.’

But that’s not a pick designed to win an election, that’s a white flag of surrender.

Harris ran one of the worst primary campaigns in recent memory, trying desperately to be the ‘black’ Hillary Clinton. She crashed out in spectacular fashion. If there is a better example of being tone-deaf to what voters want in a woman candidate, I really can’t think of one.

What does Harris bring to the ticket? She’s a former prosecutor of black men from California. Were the Democrats so worried about that state that they felt it necessary to lock it down?

No, obviously, I’m being facetious.

Harris was simply the only choice they could make after Biden announced his running mate would be a ‘woman of color’ and there was little chance he’d choose party gadfly Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) since he’s as globalist, empire-defender as everyone else in charge at the DNC.

The other possibilities were not serious. And Susan Rice has two real strikes against her. One, she has no name recognition. And two, she may wind up being indicted by John Durham before the election.

In fact, if you read between the lines, Rice not being the choice is a signal that the DNC’s legal troubles are a lot more serious than anyone is willing to let on.

The far better choice for the DNC strategically would have been Elizabeth Warren. Now, while Warren is just as much an unlikeable harpy as Harris is, she’s also more of a true moderate who could campaign to bring the party back from the brink.

Moreover, since she is one, she would have shored up the so-called ‘Karen Vote’ which is a core Democratic constituency far better than Harris can.

In an election cycle where the straw man arguments about Republican Bogeymen taking away the right of women to murder their unborn children is strangely absent, that voting block is more precious to the DNC than ever before, especially after they openly backed the race riots and urban violence that has dominated the news cycle for the past three months.

The only way I think this pick works for them is that they try to claw back their support for BLM and Antifa by putting the strong authoritarian Harris at the top of the ticket. As Gabbard pointed out in the debates last year, no California Attorney General put more black men in prison than Harris.

Since Biden skillfully avoided backing the rioting, he and Harris will now pivot in the most disingenuous way to being the ‘law and order’ ticket accusing President Trump of allowing our cities to burn and mishandling everything from the economy, to COVID-19, to the CHAZ in Seattle.

You can see the script they’ve written in their strategy sessions at the DNC. It’s the classic Alinsky play of fomenting a problem, nurturing it and coddling it and then attacking your opponent for being weak on handling that which you’ve been doing.

They’ve done this completely with all of the main issues of 2020 to date. And now at the convention in Milwaukee, the Democrats will try to argue, in Straussian fashion that they are the synthesis between an incompetent President Trump (thesis) and a failing America which he alone created (antithesis).

The only problem is it won’t work.

At all.

Trump has weathered these three storms about as well as someone with his level of competence can. And over the weekend he took the fight directly to the Democrats over stimulus and relief, crafting four executive orders which strike at the heart of their usual talking points. I covered them in a recent blog post.

  1. Defer Payroll Tax Collection — Here Trump is doing at least two things. First, he’s a Republican lowering taxes on the poor and middle class. Second, he lowers the cost of U.S. labor, cuts away red tape and makes it easier for businesses in a cash flow crunch to stay open not having to worry about paying monthly/quarterly tax payments. This attacks a core Democrat talking point, “Republicans don’t care about the little guy, we do!”
  2. Extend Student Loan deferments – This is one step closer to debt jubilee on debt that, again, freezes people in place, dealing with debt servicing rather than creating demand in the real economy for goods and services. This also attacks the banks who made these predatory loans, which most student loan debt is, which undermines the “Occupy Wall. St.” talking point that all the money goes to the banks.
  3. Extend Renter and Mortgage Eviction Moratorium – Again Trump hits the banks where they live by stopping the eviction of people whose income the Federal and State governments destroyed with their COVID-19 lockdown orders. This is a direct attack on the DNC’s plan to see the banks throwing millions of people out of their homes during the height of the election campaign. Restates the argument that the GOP is only for the rich vulture capitalists.
  4. Lower and extend Unemployment Assistance — Trump’s no dummy. At this point the budget deficit is ludicrous. Lowering the assistance through the election season, again, says he’s helping and they are obstructing. It’s not perfect, but it extends the fiscal cliff people are facing until after the election allowing him to make more sweeping changes to the tax code while keeping people in their homes, fed and capable of maintaining some semblance of normality. Trump claims the ‘I care about you’ moral high ground.

At this point in time all Trump has to do to counter this pivot by Biden and Harris is to stand his ground on relief for the lower and middle classes, defend the police as “Blue Lives Matter” rallies spring up all around the country and reassure all those shiny new gun-owning soccer moms in the suburbs that Antifa isn’t coming to their neighborhoods on his watch.

The strategy to oust Trump has been to attack the three main pillars of the middle class, the safety of their health (COVID-19), their wealth (financial crisis) and their homes (rioting). Trump’s approval rating has held up during all of this because he hasn’t panicked.

He waited until his opposition overcommitted themselves to a strategy that turned a majority of the country against them. The polls today have been structured to bring to life the fiction of a Biden victory, but the state map has Biden in real trouble in the states he needs to win to even have a chance at victory.

In 2016 I never doubted that Trump would beat Hillary. The polls are not there to measure voter opinions but to shape them. And if this map is the best they can muster after systematically destroying the U.S. economy then, honestly, I expect Trump to win in an electoral college walk in November.

There’s a lot of time between now and the election and I suspect the pressure on Trump will only rise. But if we’re truly honest about the messaging of the Democrats and the way they are positioning themselves for this election they are expecting to lose and steal the election through ballot harvesting and contesting state results to sow further discord.

We we’ve seen so far in 2020 is the ultimate form of political blackmail from the elites through their mouthpieces in the media and the Democratic Party’s election strategy. They are telling voters to dump Trump and restore them to power or they will tear down the United States and burn down your homes.

I don’t think that’s a winning strategy, nor do I think Kamala Harris can make a dent in Trump’s rising approval ratings with black and Hispanic voters. Everything I’m seeing from them tells me they know they are going to lose but they have to put up a fight because the future of the party depends on it.

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‘Russiagate’ Hoax Unravels, but Their Anti-Russia Sanctions Don’t https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/08/russiagate-hoax-unravels-but-their-anti-russia-sanctions-dont/ Sat, 08 Aug 2020 16:11:18 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=484017 Eric ZUESSE

It was reported only on ‘fringe’ media (such as “Disobedient Media” now gone from the Web) until recently. However, the evidence that the entire “Russiagate” charge — that Russia’s Government had “hacked” the Democratic National Committee in 2016 — is an Obama Administration hoax (which was continued into Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report), is now starting to come out into public view and be endorsed publicly by retired U.S. intelligence professionals who can’t be fired. It’s not yet published in any mainstream U.S. news media, however. So, in this place will be chronologically presented the gradual unraveling of the Russiagate hoax, and maybe someday this history (all of which is solidly documented) will be publishable in the United States, even within the mainstream (non-billionaire-controlled) media.

Also, the complicity of the U.S. Congress — both Parties — in advancing this hoax, and in suppressing its being exposed as being a hoax, will be discussed here, because Congress’s nearly unanimous votes in favor of imposing sanctions against Russia for this “Russiagate” that never was, are now forcing every member of Congress who had voted for those hoax-based sanctions to either apologize to his/her voters, or else to continue ignoring the now (and increasingly) solid proof that they had been either fooled, or else themselves were complicit, in advancing this hoax and voting for those sanctions.

So: undoing the evil that has been perpetrated by this Obama-Administration hoax will be next to impossible, and the cover-up of it by America’s mainstream media will likely continue, unless and until the news-media themselves are held severely to account for what they have done by their pumping — instead of exposing — this hoax by the former Administration, which hoax and cover-up of it have thus far been continued into the present Administration, as if Trump himself doesn’t even know (or perhaps even much care) what has happened, in this matter.

Here, then, is that unravelling, as it has gradually unfolded, and every step of it is fully documented in the links hereto:

These revelations began in a mainstream UK tabloid that — unlike others — sometimes veers far off from the U.S. Government’s position, the Daily Mail, and which headlined on 14 December 2016, EXCLUSIVE: Ex-British ambassador who is now a WikiLeaks operative claims Russia did NOT provide Clinton emails – they were handed over to him at a D.C. park by an intermediary for ‘disgusted’ Democratic whistleblowers”, and the newspaper reported that

Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and associate of Julian Assange, told the Dailymail.com he flew to Washington, D.C. for emails.

He claims he had a clandestine hand-off in a wooded area near American University with one of the email sources.

The leakers’ motivation was ‘disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the ‘tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders’.

Murray says: ‘The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks’.

‘Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that,’ Murray insists.

On 7 January 2017, I headlined The Russian Hacking” “How the ‘Leaks’ From Clinton and the DNC Happened”, and reported that

Julian Assange, who received the computer-data from what U.S. President Barack Obama alleges was ‘Russian hackers’, had an opportunity, in his 3 January 2017 interview with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, to deny the allegation by Craig Murray (a former British Ambassador and longtime friend of Assange) that no Russian or any other hackers were involved passing that information to Wikileaks; and, in reply, Assange declined the invitation to deny it, and he said, in short: Obama and his Administration are flat-out lying about this matter.

Hannity then probed further, to find whom the source actually was:

(See 55:00- in this interview, especially at 56:50-)

Hannity: There was one report in the [UK newspaper] Daily Mail that suggested somebody that you are friendly with, actually was handed the documents at American University, in a wooded area, by a disgruntled Democrat, who felt betrayed because the revelations showed that Bernie Sanders had been betrayed and they didn’t like the corruption of the Clinton Foundation. Can you confirm or deny that?

ASSANGE: Well that statement came from Craig Murray, a friend of mine, but Wikileaks is a source-protection organization. We are famous for never having exposed one of our sources. That’s why sources trust us and they come to us. So, I can’t comment on other people’s statements about our sources, except what we have said, which is that our sources [in this] are not a state party [such as Russia or any other government].

No one — not even Obama — denies that the publisher of the information was Wikileaks. Furthermore, Assange said in this interview (56:50-), “There is one person in the world, and I think it’s actually only one, who knows exactly what is going on with our publications, and that’s me.” He was saying there that (at least as regards the present matter) he — and perhaps only he in the entire Wikileaks organization — was the person who received and published this information from the individual who was supplying it. This doesn’t necessarily exclude Craig Murray from the possibility that he had passed it along to Wikileaks (i.e., to his friend Assange), but it says that only Assange knows whether or not Murray had supplied it to him. (And Assange refuses to answer that question.)

Craig Murray did, in fact speak at American University in Washington DC, at 10:15 AM on Saturday 24 September 2016, addressing a “World Without War” conference, in the Founders’ Room at the University’s School of International Studies. The video is here. Essential background on this heroic man, Murray, is here, explaining why the U.S. State Department under Obama had initially denied him entrance into the United States to speak at this event and to receive in Washington a whistleblower’s award.

Then on December 10th, buried in an article at Britain’s Guardian, was this blockbuster, which was mentioned there only in passing (because that newspaper represents the Blair wing of UK’s Labour Party and the Clinton wing of U.S.’s Democratic Party):

Craig Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, who is a close associate of Assange, called the CIA claims “bullshit”, adding: “They are absolutely making it up.”

“I know who leaked them,” Murray said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them, and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider. It’s a leak, not a hack; the two are different things.

Then, on 16 July 2017, I headlined Russiagate Exposed: It’s a Fraud” and reported:

It has now been incontrovertibly proven that the time-stamps and other data in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) files that were leaked to Wikileaks are consistent with those files having been leaked by a person who was inside the DNC and not by an external hacker as has been presumed by all of the ‘news’-reports that this was a ‘hack’ of any sort — not from Russia nor from anywhere else outside the building, much less from outside the east coast time zone.

There’s a very real scandal involved in this matter, but it is extremely different from the Russia-hack narrative, and it will be revealed here (for the first time anywhere) at the very end. But, first things first — and that’s what the previous investigators have now proven:

On July 9th, was published at Disobedient Media a report that not only discredits the ‘news’ reports that the Russian government (or anyone else in Russia) ‘hacked the election’ — discredits the very core of the Russiagate story — but that shows the ‘hacks’ were instead likelier leaks , to Wikileaks, by someone who had physical access to the computers at the Democratic National Committee, and who, in any case, was clearly and incontrovertibly operating only within the time-zone of America’s east coast — not at all in Russia, nor anywhere else outside that time zone.

In other words: it shows that the data itself provide indications that this was a leak instead of any hack at all: that the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray (who claimed to have picked up the data-recording device from the leaker in DC and brought it to his friend Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London) was correct when he had said that he picked the file up from an insider who gave it to him in Washington DC — that the data themselves are more consistent with that than with the ‘hack’ interpretation of the narrative of how Wikileaks obtained these data.

So, now we have not only Murray’s testimony about it, and we have not only my own investigation showing that Murray had, in fact, been in Washington DC at the very time he says he had picked up the information physically in DC from the leaker there, but we also now have — as of July 9th — the technical proof of its having likely been transferred to Wikileaks by means of a leak instead of a hack. Even the data that were transferred are entirely consistent with this having been a voluntary release of this information.

Consequently, any ‘news’medium, after July 9th, which still ‘reports’ about Russiagate, which so much as even just suggests that people in Russia ‘hacked’ these data from the DNC, are now the lowest order of fake ‘journalism’, not an authentic journalistic operation at all, but pure propaganda. How long will it take for that lie (the Russiagate-myth) to stop being published as being established truth by the U.S. (and its allied) ‘news’ media? But it continues to be embellished, as if that basic storyline is likely or even definitely true. It is much likelier false than true.

Here then will be presented, first of all, a generally good summary dated July 15th, of this important new information, a summary of what was published on July 9th by Disobedient Media; and I am here publishing a transcript that I have made of this video, which was uploaded to youtube on July 15th, in which, by means of questions and answers, the gist of the findings in the July 9th report and of how the findings had been obtained, is set forth, in that July 15th video, which is titled, “TV Exclusive: Forensic investigator says DNC computer hacked locally”:

A forensics expert has determined that the DNC computers were hacked locally by someone with physical access to the DNC network and not by someone far away like the Russians. This story was broken online by the hot new investigative website called Disobedient Media. The forensic expert handed over the information to the reporter Elizabeth Vos. Joining me this time out of Iowa City Iowa is the managing editor of Disobedient Media . com, Ethan Lyle; Ethan, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

Ethan, no one has been sitting on this story you guys are. Tell us how you got this information and what we know.

Elizabeth Vos, Disobedient Media’s associate editor — a man named Adam Carter reached out to her. And he had an analysis from somebody online named The Forensicator.

Let me ask you: Who was Adam Carter? Adam Carter got this and gave it to you guys; who is he?

He’s an independent journalist [who had, in fact, long been working on this case]. And, so, [as Carter called to Vos’s attention] an anonymous blog of a forensic analyst looked at the data, and he had noticed that because of the transfer-speed and the timing of those transfers [it was actually only one transfer], that they were [the person was on the] east coast, and they [the files] had to have been accessed in the east coast. They were initially copied in the east coast, he guaranteed [the person actually demonstrated, not ‘guaranteed’] that … the likelihood of it [the file] being accessed initially from anywhere but the east coast, is impossible [proven so, by that analyst, “the forensicator”].

So, what that means in layman’s terms is again that the DNC computer network which the media tells us and the DNC tells us was hacked by the Russians, … that it was physically accessed by someone within close proximity of the DNC?

Correct. Given metadata and … the transfer and the stop times in between them, the only likely scenario is that it was accessed from inside of the Local Area Network of the DNC or with a USB drive into a computer [in] which you would have to be inside the building.

Now, I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist because there’s a lot more work to be done here, but … those computers were hacked five days prior to Seth Rich’s untimely demise if I’m not mistake, is that not correct?

That’s correct and it’s important to state that this does not indicate that Seth Rich was the person that accessed the files, because they [the DNC] won’t turn over their logs to the FBI. There’s no way to tell which credentials were used to get into the system.

Since you have broken this story online, has anyone in law enforcement reached out to you?

No, they have not.

Anyone from CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, the New York Times?

Absolutely not. (3:51)

At this stage, this cover-up by the government and press is even bigger than the crime by the pro-Clinton DNC insiders (which had used, as I’ll indicate, the chief PR agency for NATO, to do this — to generate and spread this lie) who are trying to provoke even more fear and hatred of Russia than they already have cooked-up and generated. Adam Carter on July 16th, said that “The MSM have kept this hidden from viewers for almost 150 days”, but certainly it has been hidden now, after it was conclusively proven , on July 9th.

Here, then, are the openings of those more detailed sources reporting on this, first being the news-report by Elizabeth Vos, and then the original analysis by The Forensicator (which report Vos was restating well in non-technical terms):

——

http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/07/new-research-shows-guccifer-2-0-files-were-copied-locally-not-hacked/

web.archive.org/web/20190613052241/http://disobedientmedia.com/2017/07/new-research-shows-guccifer-2-0-files-were-copied-locally-not-hacked/

New Research Shows Guccifer 2.0 Files Were Copied Locally, Not Hacked

9 July 2017, Elizabeth Vos

This was then taken up on 24 July 2017, by the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity:

“Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence”

July 24, 2017

In a memo to President Trump, a group of former U.S. intelligence officers, including NSA specialists, cite new forensic studies to challenge the claim of the key Jan. 6 “assessment” that Russia “hacked” Democratic emails last year.

Editor’s Note: This VIPS Memo included two mistaken dates. Neither affected the Memo’s main conclusion; i.e., that the July 5, 2016 intrusion into DNC emails that was blamed on Russia could not have been a hack – by Russia or anyone else. The portions of the Memo affected by the mistaken dates have been corrected.

A short explanation of the corrections:

-(1) June 14, 2016 (not the 15th, as the VIPS memo erroneously stated) was the day Crowdstrike said malware had been found on the DNC server and claimed there was evidence the malware was injected by Russians. (On the following day – the 15th) – “Guccifer 2.0” claimed responsibility for the “hack” and claimed to be a WikiLeaks source.)

-(2) Although the VIPS Memo indicated, correctly, that on June 15, 2016, “Guccifer 2.0” … posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with ‘Russian fingerprints,’” other language in the Memo was mistaken in indicating that evidence of such tainting was also found in the “Guccifer 2.0” metadata from the copying event on July 5.

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT : Was the “Russian Hack” an Inside Job?

Executive Summary

Forensic studies of “Russian hacking” into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer. After examining metadata from the “Guccifer 2.0” July 5, 2016 intrusion into the DNC server, independent cyber investigators have concluded that an insider copied DNC data onto an external storage device.

Key among the findings of the independent forensic investigations is the conclusion that the DNC data was copied onto a storage device at a speed that far exceeds an Internet capability for a remote hack . Of equal importance, the forensics show that the copying was performed on the East coast of the U.S. Thus far, mainstream media have ignored the findings of these independent studies [see here and here].

Finally, now, Bill Binney has been taking this to the “home stretch”:

“CIA Fabricated Russiagate ‘Evidence’, Says Former NSA Tech Chief”

July 29, 2020

An important public statement was made on July 27th by Bill Binney, the U.S. Government’s top expert on the internet, and on computer hacking. He had been the Technical Director of the NSA when he quit and became a whistleblower against that Agency while George W. Bush was the U.S. President and invaded Iraq on the basis of faked evidence. Binney has now laid out, in this speech, the evidence that he wants to present in court against Barack Obama’s CIA, that it defrauded Americans to believe in “Russiagate” (the allegation that Russia ‘hacked’ the computers of Hillary Clinton and Democratic Party officials and fed that information to Wikileaks and other organizations). Binney cites evidence, which, if true, conclusively proves that Russiagate was actually created fraudulently by the CIA’s extensive evidence-tampering, which subsequently became covered-up by the Special Counsel Robert Mueller, in his investigations for the Democratic Party’s first (and failed) try at impeaching and removing from office U.S. President Donald J. Trump.

Here is the transcript of his 10-minute speech (and I add links to explanations of the meaning of technical phrases, and also boldface for emphasis of his key findings, and I place into [brackets] explanatory amplifications of my own), summarizing why he is convinced that the CIA (under President Barack Obama) did this frame-up against Russia, ‘Russiagate’ — it’s a case that he is seeking to present to Congress, and in court, and to debate in public, instead of to continue to be hidden from the public; he wants to show, and publicly to debate, this evidence, so that the public will be able to see it, and evaluate it, for themselves:

Basically the problem is that I can’t seem to get the forensic evidence into a court or up into the mainstream of evidence for defeating-refuting Russiagate. The point is that in the Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity we have a bunch of technical people including Kirk Wiebe and I and some others and some affiliates that were in the UK who also joined the analysis process, and we were looking at the files posted by Wikileaks, because the allegation from the beginning is that Russia hacked the DNC and gave the emails to Wikileaks to publish. So, we looked at those emails, to see if there was something there that might give us some idea of how Wikileaks got that data. Well, in all the 35,813 emails that they posted in three batches, one [batch was] downloaded according to last modified times on the 23rd of May, and another on the 25th of May, and one [other] on the 26th of August, of 2016. Now, all those files, all 35,813, had a last modified time that was rounded off [rounded up] to an even [the next-higher] second, so they all ended up in even [meaning complete or full, not fractional] seconds. Now, if you know anything about data processing and data storage and things of that nature, there is a program that was quite common in the past [including 2016] using what’s called fat file formatting file allocation, table formatting, which is a process that when doing a batch process of data and transferring it to a storage device like a thumb drive or a CD-ROM, it rounds off the last modified time to the nearest even [next-higher] second, so that’s exactly the property we found in all that data posted by Wikileaks. Now, that said very simply this data was downloaded to a storage device a CD-ROM or a thumb drive and physically transported before Wikileaks could post it, so that meant it was not a hack [since there’s no rounding off to the next-higher second, as it would be if it’s a file that’s been carried over the internet] no matter how you look at it. We’re looking at the forensic evidence that says the DNC emails were not hacked, they were downloaded and physically transported to Wikileaks.

And, then, we had the other issue, [which was] with Guccifer 2. Now, Guccifer 2 came out shortly after, you know, Julian Assange announced that he had emails on Hillary Clinton, and so on, and the DNC. Well, we looked at all the material that Guccifer 2 posted and [he] was saying here are the hacks that I did on the DNC. He claimed he did one on the fifth of July, and one on the first of September, of 2016. Well, when you start looking at that — and we looked at the files — he posted a series of files, with file names, the numbers of characters in the file, and a timestamp at the end of the file. Then, the next file number of characters and timestamp, and so on, for I don’t know how many thousands of files. So, we looked at all those files, and we ran a program to calculate the transfer rate of all that data, because all you have to do is look at between the two time stamps, the file name and the number of characters in the file, and take the difference between the times [start-time versus end-time] , and that’s the transfer rate for that number of characters, so we found that the variations ran from something like 19 to 49.1 megabytes per second. Now, that means for 19 to 49 million characters per second, and [yet] the world wide web would not support that rate of transfer, not for anybody who’s just, you know, a hacker coming in across the net, trying to do it. They won’t support that kind [speed] of transfer, and some people thought we could be wrong [and] that it could be done, and so we said okay, we’re going to try it. So, we organized some hackers in Europe, to try to transfer a data set from the U.S. over to Europe, to see how fast we could get it there, and we tried it from Albania, and Serbia, a couple of places in the Netherlands, and London. Well, we got various rates, but the highest rate we got was between the data center in New Jersey and one in London, and that was [the one which had gone at] 49.1 megabytes per second, and it went at 12 megabytes per second, which is one-fourth the rate, little less than one-fourth the rate necessary to do the transfer at the highest rate that we saw in the Guccifer 2 data, which meant it didn’t go across the net, so, in fact, the file rate transfers couldn’t. We were nowhere near the maximum rate that [would have been necessary if this had been a hack] . And so we said, okay, if anybody has a way of getting it there, let us know, and we’ll help you try to get to do that, and so far no one has ever come forward to dispute either the facts on the DNC data last file, modified file times, nor the transfer rates, for the Guccifer 2.

Plus, there’s another factor with Guccifer 2, there’s actually two more with Guccifer 2 data, the first of the five July data, and the one September data, if you ignored a date and hour they could merge like you’re shuffling a deck of cards the holes in the five July data timing were filled by data from the first September, that said to us that Guccifer 2 was playing with the data, separating in the two files, saying he made two different acts and and doing a range change on the date and the hour on the one file, so this to us was also an indication of fabrication on the part of Guccifer 2. Then, there’s another factor: when Guccifer 2 put out some from files on 15 june of 2016, with the signatures of Russian saying it’s a Russian hack, our fellows in the UK looking at the data found five of those files at a minimum, I don’t know they’re through yet looking, but they found five files that Guccifer 2 posted on the 15th of June with Russian signatures saying the Russians did this because of a signature they found the same five files posted by Wikileaks from a Podesta emails and they did not have the Russian signatures, so that meant Guccifer 2 was inserting Russian signatures to make it look like the Russians did the [alleged] hack. Well, if you go back to the Vault 7 release from Wikileaks again, from CIA, and you look, they have this Marble framework program that will modify files to look like someone else did the hack, and who were the countries that they had the ability to do that, in the in the Marble framework program? Well, one was Russia, the other was China, North Korea, Iran, and Arab countries. Well, to us, then, that means that the fabrication of the insert of the Russian signatures means that somebody modified the file and made it look like it fits the Marble framework definition of doing that kind of activity, which thus says all of this boosts with two materials pointing back now to CIA, as the origin of it, that’s the basic evidence we have, and none of it points to Russia.

In fact, we can’t even find anything that points to Russia, when in fact the Mueller indictment, or the Mueller report, and that Rosenstein indictment, named some that they called trolls for the Russian government, the IRA, the Internet Research Agency, out of St. Petersburg, and Russia, they named it in a court document, and, well, the IRA over there said we are no way near, we are not in any way associated with, the Russian government, so they sent lawyers in to challenge that in the court of law here in the U.S., and the court charged the government to prove it, and they couldn’t, they couldn’t prove anything, and so the judge basically reprimanded them and said you were never to mention the IRA as in any way affiliated with the Russian government again, so their whole case was falling apart. Everything looked like the rooks were two potato, was a fabrication, the alleged hack and so on, all applications, fabrication, and even if you look at some of the testimony that came out from the Crowdstrike CEO (correction: President of CrowdStrike Services and CSO) [hired by the Democratic National Committee] , I think his name was Sean Henry (correction: Shawn Henry), he said we we had no indications of exfiltrating the data, but we had evidence that it was exfiltrated. Now, if he’s talking about the last modified times as an indication of exfiltration, which it was but it wasn’t from a hack it was from a download, so that download then is an indication it was done locally as were the Guccifer 2 data that couldn’t go across the net. It was a download locally. All that stuff happened locally. In fact, some of the data and the Guccifer 2 material had all the time stamps indicating it was done on the East Coast of the United States, we had one in Central time, and one on the West Coast, but most of them fell on the East Coast, so it implied that all this stuff [both Wikileaks and Guccifer 2] was happening on the East Coast, and that really pointed right back at CIA, as the origin of all this fabrication.

Binney wants to present this case at trial, against the CIA’s top officials under President Barack Obama.

NOTE: This news-report was submitted, in advance, to each of the following 40 mainstream news-media, offering it as an exclusive, to: ABC, BBC, CBS, FNC, NBC, New York Times Washington Post USA Today Guardian McClatchy Wall Street Journal The Atlantic The Nation The Spectator The New Republic Time The Week Progressive Jacobin New Yorker Vanity Fair Economist National Interest Rolling Stone , Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, Business Insider, Politico, The Hill, The Gray Zone, The Intercept, The Daily Beast, Vice, Spiked, Bloomberg, Truthdig, Truthout, Vox, Common Dreams. None accepted it. None of them wanted their audience to see it. So, this article is now is being submitted for publication, free of charge, to all English language (and a few other) news-media, simply in order to make known to as many of the public as possible, the information that it contains.

And, on August 5th:

“Debate: Is ‘Russiagate’ a CIA Hoax? UPDATE:”

Eric Zuesse

There now is a public debate regarding whether or not ‘Russiagate’ was/is a CIA-generated hoax, instead of (as it has been reported) a Russian Government hacking operation. Whatever it was, did spark massive U.S. economic and other sanctions against Russia, and is therefore important in today’s U.S. international relations. Had the CIA actually created the “evidence”? Were those sanctions based upon a U.S. Government fraud? That is the question here.

On July 30th, the former Technical Director of the NSA — America’s top position on cyber intelligence including computer-hacking — Bill Binney, summarized, by a ten-minute presentation, the latest up-to-date information that exists regarding, and discussing, the actual sources of the various unauthorized releases, to the public, of emails and other documents from the computers of the Democratic National Committee and of John Podesta who headed the Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Binney alleged there that the raw data prove conclusively — not just speculatively — that the CIA tampered with the evidence, in order to become enabled to accuse Russia as having been involved in those unauthorized information-releases. He further alleged that Robert Mueller’s report on the Democratic Party’s charges that Russia and Trump were involved in these matters was false when it unquestioningly accepted the CIA’s assertions against Russia and on that basis accused the Internet Research Agency, in Russia, as having “hacked” the data. Consequently: if Binney’s case is correct, then recent U.S. history is based upon fraud by the U.S. Government itself. This would be a case like America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, but perhaps even worse.

One of the news-sites that published his presentation was Silver Doctors. A reader-comment there, from an anonymous “Fred” and challenged Binney’s reconstruction of what had occurred. Here below is Fred’s reader-comment, and Binney’s response to it:

  • FredOMG, what a quack, I watched the video and as a cyber security professional, the man knows spews a lot of terminology but really knows nothing. First, time stamps can change every time files are moved to a new source. Of course they would be very close to each other when copying in bulk. Emails are mostly text if they don’t have attachments which takes up very little space. Depending on the system all the emails can be contained in one file, so when that 1 file is transferred and of the contents would be the same time stamp. 2nd, of course data can be transferred at much high rates than 19mbs, what is he living in the 20th century? We have gigabyte internet now., data can be transferred well over 100 mbs. 3rd. he presents no evidence directly linking CIA other than to say, who else could have done it. His whole theory is just an opinion, absolute rubbish. No wonder he’s not taken seriously.Reply
    • Eric Zuesse Fred“Fred,” I sent your comment to Bill Binney and asked him to respond. His response included an attachment, which probably won’t be able to be included here, but I now am pasting here his reply to you:
    • Eric, here are my comments to this “professional.”
    • “OMG, what a quack,”
    • When people don’t have any substance to address, they throw labels out to try and prejudice the issue.
    • ” I watched the video and as a cyber security professional, the man knows spews a lot of terminology but really knows nothing.”
    • I guess I achieved the position of Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis and Reporting at NSA by knowing nothing. Sure! This is a typical baseless assertion that
    • Sophists make all the time. And our country has thousands of people like this.
    • “First, time stamps can change every time files are moved to a new source. Of course they would be very close to each other when copying in bulk. Emails are mostly text if they don’t have attachments which takes up very little space. Depending on the system all the emails can be contained in one file, so when that 1 file is transferred and of the contents would be the same time stamp.”
    • The last modified times on the DNC emails had different times all rounded to the nearest even number. See attachment. For comparison, this file contains the DNC email last modified times (LMT) showing FAT file
    • properties and the Pedesta emails LMT’s that do not show FAT file properties.
    • ” 2nd, of course data can beReplyEric Zuesse Eric Zuesse(continued):
    • “2nd, of course data can be transferred at much high rates than 19mbs, what is he living in the 20th century? We have gigabyte internet now., data can be transferred well over 100 mbs.:”
    • While the ISP standard is Mbps = mega bits per second and MBps = mega bytes per second, I believe Fred is referring to mega bytes per second. What he says is true but only for shorter distances – not
    • across the Atlantic to Europe let alone Russia. In our testing, the further east we went; the lower speeds we got. In other words, assuming there was a hacker, he/she would have to have a high speed line
    • all the way from the target to the hackers location. The WWW does not support that. If Fred thinks it does, he needs to illustrate/prove where and how that can be achieved. So far, no one has done that –
    • not even NSA/CIA/FBI or private security companies.
    • ” 3rd. he presents no evidence directly linking CIA other than to say, who else could have done it. His whole theory is just an opinion, absolute rubbish. No wonder he’s not taken seriously.”
    • Does Fred work for CIA? Or, is he just an advocate for them? In either case, I pointed out what evidence we have which is circumstantial and not absolute. But, in terms used in the ICA of CIA/NSA/FBI,
    • I have “high confidence that CIA did it.”
    • Note: all this data including Guccifer 2.0 files and speed calculations have been provided to lawyers in several currently on-going court cases.

Reply

• Fred

[replying to] Eric Zuesse

1 August, 2020

Glad that my comments my the hit parade. Maybe I’m a bit harsh in name calling, I don’t like when others do it either. However, does Mr. Binney understand that we have fiber optic cables under the Atlantic? In many cases you can transfer data quicker to London from Washington then to California. Also the time stamp doesn’t prove anything, so what if they were rounded off. Maybe the hackers tool did that, who knows. Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped

Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?

Reply

• BinneyResponds

Fred

Here’s my reply.

FRED: “Glad that my comments my the hit parade. Maybe I’m a bit harsh in name calling, I don’t like when others do it either. However, does Mr. Binney understand that we have fiber optic cables under the Atlantic?”

BINNEY: You can find all the transoceanic cables and their capacity documented at: Greg’s cable map or https://www.submarinecablemap.com/ plus others. While these sites show capacity to carry data, they do not show service provider capacity provided to users. So, if Fred knows a way to pass data to Russia across the WWW at the speeds of the Guccifer 2.0 evidence posted, then he needs to let all of us know. As I said before, not even NSA/CIA/FBI or any commercial company have come forward to do that.

FRED “In many cases you can transfer data quicker to London from Washington then to California. Also the time stamp doesn’t prove anything, so what if they were rounded off.”

BINNEY: Are you saying that LMT’s rounded to even numbers is not a property of FAT transfers?

FRED: “Maybe the hackers tool did that, who knows.”

BINNEY: And, maybe pigs fly. Talk about conspiracy theories.

FRED: “Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?

Binney Responds

BINNEY:

the last part of my reply was cut. Here it is.

FRED: “Again he offers no proof the CIA did it and admits it purely circumstantial. Meanwhile everyone goes around saying see the CIA did it because of his comments. Here’s another point, why would the CIA do it? To frame Russia? And give it to Wikileaks who they despise and had Assange arrested? If anything the hacked emails were bad for Clinton and helped Trump, who praised the hack and wanted more. So what’s the CIA motive?”

BINNEY: I only make assertions based on evidence available for all to examine. In this case, Vault 7 has Marble Framework program used 1 time in 2016. Guccifer 2.0 files from 15 June 2016 had Russian fingerprints while at least 5 of those items posted by Wikileaks did not have those fingerprints. Says, to us, Guccifer 2.0 modified those Podesta emails to make it look like the Russians did it. Note also that the Marble Framework program was documented in Vault 7 as having the capability to frame Russia/China/North Korea/Iran and Arab countries. This is why we have higher confidence in our assertion that CIA did it, than CIA/FBI/NSA did in their (baseless) ICA assertion that the Russians did it.

So, we now know that Russiagate was a hoax. However, America’s President, Donald Trump, at least until very recently, has given no indication that he knows it. On 10 July 2020, the Washington Post headlined “Trump confirms, in an interview, a U.S. cyberattack on Russia” and reported that

During an Oval Office interview with me this week, President Trump acknowledged for the first time that, in 2018, he authorized a covert cyberattack against Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the St. Petersburg-based troll farm that spearheaded Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and was doing the same in the 2018 midterm elections.

Asked whether he had launched the attack, Trump replied: “Correct.”

Trump said that, in 2016, President Barack Obama “knew before the election that Russia was playing around. Or, he was told. Whether or not it was so or not, who knows?

So: Trump authorized in 2018 a cyberattack against Russia for retaliation against a bogus 2016 cyberattack against the Democratic National Committee. And, even as late as July 10th of this year, Trump didn’t know that Russiagate was an Obama Administration scheme, while Obama was President, to frame Trump as being a secret agent of the Kremlin.

Meanwhile: the Kremlin is being increasingly surrounded by U.S. and NATO troops and weapons on and near Russia’s borders, while The West accuses Russia of ‘aggression’, and Russia is warning America and its allies that Russia may need to take pre-emptive actions before those countries invade Russia. It’s a reasonable fear they have, just as America’s fear was, when the Soviets were preparing to place their missiles in Cuba in 1962.

On August 3rd, all 12 on the “Steering Group” of VIPS, sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi, asking her to condemn her fellow Democrats’ promotions of the lies. Headlining “VIPS MEMO: To Nancy Pelosi — Did Russia Hack the DNC Emails?” they damned the New York Times’ s and other media’s constant lying against Iraq, and now against Russia, to ‘justify’ unjustifiable and aggressive war, and wrote to her:

There were no consequences for those officials who lied about WMD in Iraq. Donald Rumsfeld had put one of them, James Clapper, in charge of imagery analysis which, as you know, was the key to finding WMD. Clapper made a stunning admission in his memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths From a Life in Intelligence. He wrote that “intelligence officers, including me, were so eager to help [Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld] that we found what wasn’t really there.”

Nevertheless, with a glowing recommendation from Obama confidant John Brennan, President Obama appointed Clapper director of national intelligence in 2010. He remained in that post for the remainder of Obama’s term despite having misled the Senate in March 2013 about what he later admitted was a “clearly erroneous” testimony, under oath, regarding NSA surveillance of Americans.

Here’s the rub: Clapper and those he conspired with have gone from blissful sans souci to apprehension, acutely aware that they may not have a stay-out-of-jail card this time around.

theduran.com

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The DNC Convention Is the Election https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/06/dnc-convention-is-election/ Thu, 06 Aug 2020 14:00:48 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=476701 For nearly a year it has been my primary thesis that the DNC nominating convention would determine the fate of the presidential election here in the states. These four days may, in fact, be more dramatic than any Democratic convention since 1860 when incumbent James Buchanan was tossed aside to ensure a lawyer with railroad ties from Illinois, Stephen Douglas, squared off against Republican Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was also a railroad lawyer from Illinois. Just sayin’.

The convention is less than two weeks away and serious questions about the Democrats’ strategy should be plain to see for anyone who pays even cursory attention to presidential politics.

How can they possibly run Joe Biden?

It’s not that Biden hasn’t been a good soldier for the empire, he has. It is that he is unpresentable as a candidate in public. The evidence of his cognitive decline, which has accelerated in recent months, mounts every time he fails to even read a teleprompter correctly.

The only thing the Democrats are united on is their hatred for Trump. But that hatred cannot be an animating principle to base an election strategy on, though, to this point, they certainly have tried.

Internally, there has been a three-sided war on for control of the party’s future. There is the Boomers, represented by Hillary Clinton’s faction, who lost spectacularly when she backed a male version of herself, the profoundly disconnected and unlikeable Mike Bloomberg, as a stalking horse to pad her delegate count.

There is the frustrated Gen-Xers, represented by Barack Obama who was supposed to lead the party after his two terms as president. Biden is his representative and was the clear winner in the primaries as the candidate who theoretically could swing the center of the country away from Trump.

And then there is the Millennials, represented in the primaries by Bernie Sanders and the so-called squad. They are led now by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez whose goal is to kick out all of these globalists and remake the party as the vanguard of a U.S. cultural revolution.

None of these people are acceptable to the center of the U.S. who today, no matter how hard they are being gaslit to believe, ultimately blame Donald Trump for their current problems.

And Obama pressed for Biden to be the candidate. He finally beat Hillary for nominal control of the party, getting his candidate through the primary miasma.

You can’t blame a President for a natural disaster, but that’s been the Democrats’ strategy all year with COVID-19. Whatever Trump said or did in response to the virus was wrong, even if that meant exhibiting blatant hypocrisy or openly contradicting previous positions.

In fact, this has been the Democrats’ strategy since before Trump took office and it has made them look hysterical and irrelevant.

So, with the convention less than two weeks away the big question is who Biden’s running mate will be. The fact that he hasn’t chosen one yet tells you that they have no strategy for actually winning the election other than trying to steal it through mail-in ballots.

Because none of the potential candidates can do what the Democrats need a vice-presidential candidate to do, deliver a key battleground state.

For Biden, given the rapidity of his decline, the V.P. pick has the added burden of actually being the President for most of the elected term, because the convention will make it clear to the world that Biden will step aside for health reasons no later than mid-2021 if he wins.

But, more pressing for the Democrats, is the fundamental problem that in order to beat back AOC’s Squad and keep Hillary bound down, they are now saddled with an unelectable candidate and a platoon of potential running mates who are wholly unacceptable to either the DNC establishment, the country at large or both.

Whoever tunes into the virtual convention will realize almost immediately that this time, more than any election in the televised era, when filling in that ballot in November you will be voting on the qualifications bottom half of the ticket rather than the top.

Moreover, since Biden has declined so quickly the odds of an internal coup against him occurring at the convention in Milwaukee is high. It’s why the New York Times is now calling to cancel presidential debates. It’s not because “never made sense as a test for presidential leadership.” It’s because, though the writer doth protest too much, everyone knows that Trump will wipe the floor with Biden.

In fact, I would argue debates between Trump and Biden will be so lopsided they would work to Biden’s advantage as people who see Trump’s attacks on him as ‘elder abuse.’ Trump would have to actually tone down his persona in a way I’m not sure he’s capable of doing.

But I digress.

The other factions within the DNC are sharpening their knives I type this. Hillary will go in filled with all the bile her gall bladder can still produce to thwart the potential ascension of any other woman to the presidency before her.

AOC and company will go in with Bernie’s delegates and play spoiler. Obama will try to figure out how to hold his new-found power together while Biden, frankly, drools on himself in the corner.

And that may be the most damning image of this pathetic and sordid affair I can muster. Biden should have already stepped aside. He should have already accepted the gold watch for his service and moved on to the great globalist golf course. But instead he’s being abused by cynical, power-mad ideologues desperate to avoid not only their own malfeasance, i.e. Obamagate, but have one last shot at delivering the U.S. back into the hands of The Davos Crowd’s move towards their Great Reset.

It’s clear that this election season has been about prepping the stage for the campaign season that puts so much pressure on Trump to perform miracles that Americans simply reject him as incompetent and will accept anyone other than him as President.

In Milwaukee, no matter what happens, we’re going to find out just how incompetent his opposition truly is.

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7 Ways the DNC Will Use Contact Tracers for Biden’s Campaign to Oust Trump https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/26/7-ways-dnc-will-use-contact-tracers-for-biden-campaign-oust-trump/ Tue, 26 May 2020 17:00:20 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=404230 The Democrat Party’s GOTV (Get Out the Vote) program relies on labor unions and the NGO sector. Those who organized these directly as this writer has, or those who have been on the receiving end of it, will understand how this zeal, backed by the force of law under the auspices of Contact Tracers/Compliance Officers, will change the electoral outcome.

Contact Tracers are Compliance Officers Backed by Police and Operating under Governor’s Orders

Contact Tracers are based on public sector workers in the area of public health, or NGO’s that rely on funding from DNC backed philanthropy and state budgets. They all rely on their relationship to the DNC to exist.

Among the first NGO’s to receive grants to carry out Contact Tracing work is PIH – Partners In Health. This group, funded by the Clinton Foundation, worked in Rwanda and Haiti and may have been involved in unspeakable crimes. Chelsea Clinton sits on the governing board, and other prominent backers and allies include Rahm Emanuel, Epstein, and Gates.

An investigative report by Raul Diego for Mint Press gives a comprehensive outline of just how Contact Tracers as a type of Compliance Officers from PIH, will work. From his journalism, we see components of the program and how they are meant to dovetail as part of the coming 2020 electoral strategy.

Clinton tweeted in mid-May, urging other governors in the country to follow California governor Newsom’s order for mail-in ballots.

Contact tracers as part of the NGO Industrial Complex, as a private-charter variation of the public sector, only less accountable, will become a new layer of society invested in preserving their work by voting to maintain their budget.

Because Contact Tracers can enter the homes and because some voting polls may also be closed, we can see where Contact Tracers will ‘assist’ voters in their homes with their mail-in ballots. We can predict that in Democrat voting households there will be a disproportionate increase in ballots that actually wind up being counted.

While there has been focus on HR 6666 that adds financing for Contact Tracers, there are ways these can be financed (as they already are) anyway. The ‘bailouts’ at the end of March included massive provisions for the NGO sector dealing in areas of civil society ranging from immigration to public education and healthcare.

These were the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), and the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

At-home methods of electronic voting and mail-in that do away with exit-poll cross-checks, is the preferred general strategy the Democrat Party will use to steal the election.

Polls showing Biden ahead should be discounted prima facie, as these are the polls before that intentionally projected Hillary Clinton despite unpublished polls used by the campaigns to the contrary. Both campaigns had a clear understanding that Trump had a very strong chance of winning on that decisive night. This is why ‘insurance policies’ were openly discussed by team Clinton as the election approached.

The fake polls will be used to show that Biden had a strong chance of winning all along. That’s pertinent to the strategy to oust Trump by way of coup tactics.

The strategy to remove Trump is designed to work as follows:

Suppress voter turnout by Party identification. To limit voter turn-out by precinct based on party affiliation, and to increase voter turnout in other areas. The inclusion of Contact Tracers and the ‘Compliance Officer-like’ powers they will be granted in short-time for the election, will be among the game-changers.

Cancelling In-Person voting. Towards 1., for Contact Tracers to ‘quarantine’ likely Trump voters not as individual households but by ‘infected precinct’. The presence of the Covid-19 ‘disease’ in a precinct, will be determined by Contact Tracers’ data (from both apps and human agents). The governor will be able to declare that elections should be online, by mail, or using greatly limited polls. These Contact Tracers will be able to use ‘voluntary’ apps to narrow down alleged infection rates by block, neighborhood, precinct/county. That these apps aren’t ‘voluntary’ however is explained in this report.

Contact Tracers to Police In-Person Polls. To have Contact Tracers work as Compliance Officers under the governor’s instructions at polls, which will slow-down voting and suppress the vote, close polls early or limit exit polling in line with social distancing norms. As was done in the Democrat primaries, counter-intuitive decisions were made to close down polls to ‘limit exposure’. This had the effect of forcing would-be voters to travel greater distances, if they were still motivated, only to find long-lines. Some of these polls closed before those in line were able to vote. Those who maintained their right to vote, because they had been in line on time, were either told that due to the pandemic they did not have that right, or given provisional ballots – which are counted mostly just in the instance of a re-count.

Contact Tracers blur line between work and campaign visits. To have Contact Tracers work as GOTV ‘volunteers’ on off-hours and weekends, both on telephone and in person in door-knock efforts for the Biden campaign. Critical here is that in areas where movement is limited, Contact Tracers as essential workers will not have to abide by such limitations. Or, in their capacity as Contract Tracers, they will also leave election literature at locations they visit. This may seem illegal, but this is what NGO and union employees do regularly. This strategy simply increases the size of the army and having the advantage of the freedom of movement in what will prove to be a highly unusual election.

To give Republican households a health and safety visit on Election Day. To have Contact Tracers focus on Republican homes, and bog the family down on election day with a health and safety check which could also involve the terrifying visit by CPS and the possibility of a mandatory Covid-19 test and possibly children being removed from an infectious environment.

Weaponize the second wave of Coronavirus. To make sure that overall there is a ‘second wave’ of Coronavirus that is treated similarly as the ‘first wave’ which we have only now begun to emerge from. A Digital Trends article from April 11th depicts a Bill Gates ‘super-worried’ about a second wave of coronavirus’.

Governors declare State of Emergency. This can be done in such a way that, using Contact Tracers’ data, can decide which targeted parts of a state – by county – to shut down. Expect that universities, and colleges will be shut down. Bernie Sanders and the Squad will use their popularity among college students to promote an alternate reality. We will have many youth mobilized to work both in social media and as campaign workers. From this fertile soil of youth, we will find many new Contact Tracer job openings created as we approach November. This May 11th article shows that universities have already started offering Contact Tracing courses.

We can therefore expect the strategy to take shape by state this way – by comparing the A). Electoral College map of 2016 to the B). breakdown of Dem and Rep governors by state in 2020. Recall the outcome of the 2016 Electoral College:

A)

B)

The Center for Politics affirms the following points to consider:

“Following the 2019 elections, Republicans retain a narrow 26-24 edge in governorships.”

We should be looking at the governorships by state because of the authority they have in establishing the rules when there is a state of emergency.

The governors declare states of emergency. In addition, they claim other powers as well which have not been challenged yet in federal courts.

The precedent for cancelling primary elections or changing how general elections will be done ( e-voting from home or mail-in) – was already seen for New York and California respectively.

Those who may be thinking that states are opening up and that this is not a subject in play come November, have not understood the meaning of Dr. Fauci and Bill Gates that the coronavirus will return again this coming Fall.

As we have mentioned, the tracing apps that will make voter suppression through Contact Tracers using the coronavirus pretext more easy to pull-off are nominally voluntary, but does that mean citizens will really have a choice?

Voluntary Tracing May Not be Voluntary

People generally interact not with government who indeed may not ‘mandate’ the use of such an app, but rather revolve in dealings with private businesses.

What is voluntary for you will also voluntary for businesses to mandate for customers and employees to enter the premises. Most employees are at-will, and businesses have the right to refuse service to anyone.

This is already in effect the Jacinda Ardern dictatorship of New Zealand. NZ is proving to be an effective test ground which most closely mirrors the Wuhan protocols of covid-19 containment through Contact Tracing and movement suppression, except that unlike China, this is never-ending.

Unless there is tremendous pushback from Trump and his activist base, we should assume moving forward that by November 2020 when most U.S. citizens will have a Contact Tracing app on their smart phone, the election will be stolen. There are 251 million smart phone owners in the U.S.

What’s also voluntary? That your smart phone comes with an OS, and the OS makers (Android, iOS) can voluntarily place a contact tracer in the next update.

The Philosophical Problem

Whether one wants one side to win or the other isn’t as much a question of who behaves most fairly, but on what outcomes we wish to see. For those who want to see a Bourbonesque ‘restorationist’ move to Clinton-Bush-Obama-era ‘norms’, they will go for Biden. For those who see in Trump a type of Napoleonic ‘revolutionist’ against the Ancien Regime who contained and corralled the Jacobinist forces of Occupy into a new type of system, their option is clear.

We must End Quarantine, not create ‘Jobs’ in ‘Contact Tracing’

The grass-roots Republican efforts, tacitly endorsed by the Trump campaign, to mobilize against the quarantine, are a step in the right direction. In Michigan we saw an armed ‘militia’/open-carry grouping backed by over four thousand citizens who converged on the state capitol. In Wisconsin it resulted in mass protests and such pressure that the Supreme Court in that state was forced to reign in the caprice of an autocrat governor. In California we saw a mass mobilization of thousands demanding access to the beach, and more.

These moves for citizens to push against quarantine are popular and also radical. It is odd that the progressive left, some thinking themselves ‘revolutionaries’, only defer to the institutional power of the billionaire class like Bill Gates, and institutions like the WHO and the CDC. They ignore the tools available within their own Marxian analysis, that regulatory capture by big pharma, and sinister elites with misanthropist capital-accumulating platforms, should render these institutions illegitimate.

So here we find the amazing part – that those who wanted to restore the greatness of America are the revolutionists, and those who utilize the naiveté and rage of the revolutionary left are restorationists.

This coming election will be the most unusual in American history, and if the above outlined problems are not addressed, could result in a chain of extra-legal, extra-parliamentary grass-roots violence.

Reach the author at FindMeFlores@gmail.com

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Guccifer 2.0’s Hidden Agenda https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/22/guccifer-2-hidden-agenda/ Fri, 22 May 2020 14:00:12 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=397441 Why would an alleged GRU officer supposedly part of an operation to deflect Russian culpability suggest that Assange “may be connected with Russians?”, asks Tim Leonard.

Tim LEONARD

In December, I reported on digital forensics evidence relating to Guccifer 2.0 and highlighted several key points about the mysterious persona that Special Counsel Robert Mueller claims was a front for Russian intelligence to leak Democratic Party emails to WikiLeaks:

On the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was plastering Russian breadcrumbs on documents through a deliberate process, choosing to use Russian-themed end-points and fabricating evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, the operation attributed itself to WikiLeaks.

This article questions what Guccifer 2.0’s intentions were in relation to WikiLeaks in the context of what has been discovered by independent researchers during the past three years.

Timing

On June 12, 2016, in an interview with ITV’s Robert Peston, Julian Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks had emails relating to Hillary Clinton that the organization intended to publish. This announcement was prior to any reported contact with Guccifer 2.0 (or with DCLeaks).

On June 14, 2016, an article was published in The Washington Post citing statements from two CrowdStrike executives alleging that Russian intelligence hacked the DNC and stole opposition research on Trump. It was apparent that the statements had been made in the 48 hours prior to publication as they referenced claims of kicking hackers off the DNC network on the weekend just passed (June 11-12, 2016).

On that same date, June 14, DCLeaks contacted WikiLeaks via Twitter DM and for some reason suggested that both parties coordinate their releases of leaks. (It doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks responded until September 2016).

On June 15, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 appeared for the first time. He fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC (using material that wasn’t from the DNC), used a proxy in Moscow to carry out searches (for mostly English language terms including a grammatically incorrect and uncommon phrase that the persona would use in its first blog post) and used a Russian VPN service to share the fabricated evidence with reporters. All of this combined conveniently to provide false corroboration for several claims made by CrowdStrike executives that were published just one day earlier in The Washington Post.

[CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry testified under oath behind closed doors on Dec. 5, 2017 to the U.S. House intelligence committee that his company had no evidence that Russian actors removed anything from the DNC servers. This testimony was only released earlier this month.]

First Claim Versus First Contact

On the day it emerged, the Guccifer 2.0 operation stated that it had given material to WikiLeaks and asserted that the organization would publish that material soon:

By stating that WikiLeaks would “publish them soon” the Guccifer 2.0 operation implied that it had received confirmation of intent to publish.

However, the earliest recorded communication between Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks didn’t occur until a week later (June 22, 2016) when WikiLeaks reached out to Guccifer 2.0 and suggested that the persona send any new material to them rather than doing what it was doing:

[Excerpt from Special Counsel Mueller’s report. Note: “stolen from the DNC” is an editorial insert by the special counsel.]

If WikiLeaks had already received material and confirmed intent to publish prior to this direct message, why would they then suggest what they did when they did? WikiLeaks says it had no prior contact with Guccifer 2.0 despite what Guccifer 2.0 had claimed.

Needing To Know What WikiLeaks Had

Fortunately, information that gives more insight into communications on June 22, 2016 was made available on April 29, 2020 via a release of the Roger Stone arrest warrant application.

Here is the full conversation on that date (according to the application):

@WikiLeaks: Do you have secure communications?

@WikiLeaks: Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing. No other media will release the full material.

@GUCCIFER_2: what can u suggest for a secure connection? Soft, keys, etc? I’m ready to cooperate with you, but I need to know what’s in your archive 80gb? Are there only HRC emails? Or some other docs? Are there any DNC docs? If it’s not secret when you are going to release it?

@WikiLeaks: You can send us a message in a .txt file here [link redacted]

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have GPG?

Why would Guccifer 2.0 need to know what material WikiLeaks already had? Certainly, if it were anything Guccifer 2.0 had sent (or the GRU had sent) he wouldn’t have had reason to inquire.

The more complete DM details provided here also suggest that both parties had not yet established secure communications.

Further communications were reported to have taken place on June 24, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: How can we chat? Do u have jabber or something like that?

@WikiLeaks: Yes, we have everything. We’ve been busy celebrating Brexit. You can also email an encrypted message to office@wikileaks.org. They key is here.

and June 27, 2016:

@GUCCIFER_2: Hi, i’ve just sent you an email with a text message encrypted and an open key.

@WikiLeaks: Thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: waiting for ur response. I send u some interesting piece.

Guccifer 2.0 said he needed to know what was in the 88GB ‘insurance’ archive that WikiLeaks had posted on June 16, 2016 and it’s clear that, at this stage, secure communications had not been established between both parties (which would seem to rule out the possibility of encrypted communications prior to June 15, 2016, making Guccifer 2.0’s initial claims about WikiLeaks even more doubtful).

Claims DCLeaks Is A Sub-Project Of WikiLeaks

On June 27, 2016, in an email chain to the Smoking Gun (exposing Guccifer 2.0 apparently being in the Central US timezone), Guccifer 2.0 claimed that DCLeaks was a “sub-project” of WikiLeaks.

There’s no evidence to support this. “Envoy le” is also a mistake as standard French emails read: “Envoye le.” Claims allegedly made by Guccifer 2.0 in a Twitter DM to DCLeaks on September 15, 2016 suggest that he knew this was nonsense:

There was no evidence of WikiLeaks mentioning this to Guccifer 2.0 nor any reason for why WikiLeaks couldn’t just send a DM to DCLeaks themselves if they had wanted to.

(It should also be noted that this Twitter DM activity between DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0 is alleged by Mueller to be communications between officers within the same unit of the GRU, who, for some unknown reason, decided to use Twitter DMs to relay such information rather than just communicate face to face or securely via their own local network.)

Guccifer 2.0 lied about DCLeaks being a sub-project of WikiLeaks and then, over two months later, was seen trying to encourage DCLeaks to communicate with WikiLeaks by relaying an alleged request from WikiLeaks that there is no record of WikiLeaks ever making (and which WikiLeaks could have done themselves, directly, if they had wanted to).

The ‘About 1GB’ / ‘1Gb or So’ Archive

On July 4, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 contacted WikiLeaks:

@GUCCIFER_2: hi there, check up r email, waiting for reply.

This was followed up on July 6, 2016 with the following conversation:

@GUCCIFER_2: have you received my parcel?

@WikiLeaks: Not unless it was very recent. [we haven’ t checked in 24h].

@GUCCIFER_2: I sent it yesterday, an archive of about 1 gb. via [website link]. and check your email.

@WikiLeaks: Wil[l] check, thanks.

@GUCCIFER_2: let me know the results.

@WikiLeaks: Please don’t make anything you send to us public. It’s a lot of work to go through it and the impact is severely reduced if we are not the first to publish.

@GUCCIFER_2: agreed. How much time will it take?

@WikiLeaks: likely sometime today.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u announce a publication? and what about 3 docs sent u earlier?

@WikiLeaks: I don’t believe we received them. Nothing on ‘Brexit’ for example.

@GUCCIFER_2: wow. have you checked ur mail?

@WikiLeaks: At least not as of 4 days ago . . . . For security reasons mail cannot be checked for some hours.

@GUCCIFER_2: fuck, sent 4 docs on brexit on jun 29, an archive in gpg ur submission form is too fucking slow, spent the whole day uploading 1 gb.

@WikiLeaks: We can arrange servers 100x as fast. The speed restrictions are to anonymise the path. Just ask for custom fast upload point in an email.

@GUCCIFER_2: will u be able to check ur email?

@WikiLeaks: We’re best with very large data sets. e.g. 200gb. these prove themselves since they’re too big to fake.

@GUCCIFER_2: or shall I send brexit docs via submission once again?

@WikiLeaks: to be safe, send via [web link]

@GUCCIFER_2: can u confirm u received dnc emails?

@WikiLeaks: for security reasons we can’ t confirm what we’ve received here. e.g., in case your account has been taken over by us intelligence and is probing to see what we have.

@GUCCIFER_2: then send me an encrypted email.

@WikiLeaks: we can do that. but the security people are in another time zone so it will need to wait some hours.

@WikiLeaks: what do you think about the FBl’ s failure to charge? To our mind the clinton foundation investigation has always been the more serious. we would be very interested in all the emails/docs from there. She set up quite a lot of front companies. e.g in sweden.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll be waiting for confirmation. as for investigation, they have everything settled, or else I don’t know how to explain that they found a hundred classified docs but fail to charge her.

@WikiLeaks: She’s too powerful to charge at least without something stronger. s far as we know, the investigation into the clinton foundation remains open e hear the FBI are unhappy with Loretta Lynch over meeting Bill, because he’s a target in that investigation.

@GUCCIFER_2: do you have any info about marcel lazar? There’ve been a lot of rumors of late.

@WikiLeaks: the death? [A] fake story.

@WikiLeaks: His 2013 screen shots of Max Blumenthal’s inbox prove that Hillary secretly deleted at least one email about Libya that was meant to be handed over to Congress. So we were very interested in his co-operation with the FBI.

@GUCCIFER_2: some dirty games behind the scenes believe Can you send me an email now?

@WikiLeaks: No; we have not been able to activate the people who handle it. Still trying.

@GUCCIFER_2: what about tor submission? [W]ill u receive a doc now?

@WikiLeaks: We will get everything sent on [weblink].” [A]s long as you see \”upload succseful\” at the end. [I]f you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok. I see.

@WikiLeaks: [W]e think the public interest is greatest now and in early october.

@GUCCIFER_2: do u think a lot of people will attend bernie fans rally in philly? Will it affect the dnc anyhow?

@WikiLeaks: bernie is trying to make his own faction leading up to the DNC. [S]o he can push for concessions (positions/policies) or, at the outside, if hillary has a stroke, is arrested etc, he can take over the nomination. [T]he question is this: can bemies supporters+staff keep their coherency until then (and after). [O]r will they dis[s]olve into hillary’ s camp? [P]resently many of them are looking to damage hilary [sic] inorder [sic] to increase their unity and bargaining power at the DNC. Doubt one rally is going to be that significant in the bigger scheme. [I]t seems many of them will vote for hillary just to prevent trump from winning.

@GUCCIFER_2: sent brexit docs successfully.

@WikiLeaks: :))).

@WikiLeaks: we think trump has only about a 25% chance of winning against hillary so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.

@GUCCIFER_2: so it is.

@WikiLeaks: also, it’ s important to consider what type of president hillary might be. If bernie and trump retain their groups past 2016 in significant number, then they are a restraining force on hillary.

[Note: This was over a week after the Brexit referendum had taken place, so this will not have had any impact on the results of that. It also doesn’t appear that WikiLeaks released any Brexit content around this time.]

On July 14, 2016, Guccifer 2.0 sent an email to WikiLeaks, this was covered in the Mueller report:

It should be noted that while the attachment sent was encrypted, the email wasn’t and both the email contents and name of the file were readable.

The persona then opted, once again, for insecure communications via Twitter DMs:

@GUCCIFER_2: ping. Check ur email. sent u a link to a big archive and a pass.

@WikiLeaks: great, thanks; can’t check until tomorrow though.

On July 17, 2016, the persona contacted WikiLeaks again:

@GUCCIFER_2: what bout now?

On July 18, 2016, WikiLeaks responded and more was discussed:

@WikiLeaks: have the 1 Gb or so archive.

@GUCCIFER_2: have u managed to extract the files?

@WikiLeaks: yes. turkey coup has delayed us a couple of days. [O]therwise all ready[.]

@GUCCIFER_2: so when r u about to make a release?

@WikiLeaks: this week. [D]o you have any bigger datasets? [D]id you get our fast transfer details?

@GUCCIFER_2: i’ll check it. did u send it via email?

@WikiLeaks: yes.

@GUCCIFER_2: to [web link]. [I] got nothing.

@WikiLeaks: check your other mail? this was over a week ago.

@GUCCIFER_2:oh, that one, yeah, [I] got it.

@WikiLeaks: great. [D]id it work?

@GUCCIFER_2:[I] haven’ t tried yet.

@WikiLeaks: Oh. We arranged that server just for that purpose. Nothing bigger?

@GUCCIFER_2: let’s move step by step, u have released nothing of what [I] sent u yet.

@WikiLeaks: How about you transfer it all to us encrypted. [T]hen when you are happy, you give us the decrypt key. [T]his way we can move much faster. (A]lso it is protective for you if we already have everything because then there is no point in trying to shut you up.

@GUCCIFER_2: ok, i’ll ponder it

Again, we see a reference to the file being approximately one gigabyte in size.

Guccifer 2.0’s “so when r u about to make a release?” seems to be a question about his files. However, it could have been inferred as generally relating to what WikiLeaks had or even material relating to the “Turkey Coup” that WikiLeaks had mentioned in the previous sentence and that were published by the following day (July 19, 2016).

The way this is reported in the Mueller report, though, prevented this potential ambiguity being known (by not citing the exact question that Guccifer 2.0 had asked and the context immediately preceding it).

Four days later, WikiLeaks published the DNC emails.

Later that same day, Guccifer 2.0 tweeted: “@wikileaks published #DNCHack docs I’d given them!!!”.

Guccifer 2.0 chose to use insecure communications to ask WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of “DNC emails” on July 6, 2016. Confirmation of this was not provided at that time but WikiLeaks did confirm receipt of a “1gb or so” archive on July 18, 2016.

Guccifer 2.0’s emails to WikiLeaks were also sent insecurely.

We cannot be certain that WikiLeaks statement about making a release was in relation to Guccifer 2.0’s material and there is even a possibility that this could have been in reference to the Erdogan leaks published by WikiLeaks on July 19, 2016.

Ulterior Motives?

While the above seems troubling there are a few points worth considering:

  • There is a considerable volume of evidence that contradicts the premise of Guccifer 2.0 being a GRU operation.
  • The persona lied about WikiLeaks and even stated that Assange “may be connected with Russians”.
  • Guccifer 2.0’s initial claim about sending WikiLeaks material (and that they would publish it soon) appears to have been made without justification and seems to be contradicted by subsequent communications from WikiLeaks.
  • If the archive was “about 1GB” (as Guccifer 2.0 describes it) then it would be too small to have been all of the DNC’s emails (as these, compressed, came to 1.8GB-2GB depending on compression method used, which, regardless, would be “about 2GB” not “about 1GB”). If we assume that these were DNC emails, where did the rest of them come from?
  • Assange has maintained that WikiLeaks didn’t publish the material that Guccifer 2.0 had sent to them. Of course, Assange could just be lying about that but there are some other possibilities to consider. If true, there is always a possibility that Guccifer 2.0 could have sent them material they had already received from another source or other emails from the DNC that they didn’t release (Guccifer 2.0 had access to a lot of content relating to the DNC and Democratic party and the persona also offered emails of Democratic staffers to Emma Best, a self-described journalist, activist and ex-hacker, the month after WikiLeaks published the DNC emails, which, logically, must have been different emails to still have any value at that point in time).
  • On July 6, 2016, the same day that Guccifer 2.0 was trying to get WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of DNC emails (and on which Guccifer 2.0 agreed not to publish material he had sent them), the persona posted a series of files to his blog that were exclusively DNC email attachments.
  • It doesn’t appear any further communications were reported between the parties following the July 18, 2016 communications despite Guccifer 2.0 tweeting on August 12, 2016: “I’ll send the major trove of the #DCCC materials and emails to #wikileaks keep following…” and, apparently, stating this to The Hill too.
  • As there are no further communications reported beyond this point it’s fair to question whether getting confirmation of receipt of the archive was the primary objective for Guccifer 2.0 here.
  • Even though WikiLeaks offered Guccifer 2.0 a fast server for large uploads, the persona later suggested he needed to find a resource for publishing a large amount of data.
  • Despite later claiming he would send (or had sent) DCCC content to WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks never published such content and there doesn’t appear to be any record of any attempt to send this material to WikiLeaks.
  • Digital forensics evidence places Guccifer 2.0 in the Eastern (US) timezone on July 6, 2016, the day on which he was trying to get WikiLeaks to confirm receipt of DNC emails.

Considering all of this and the fact Guccifer 2.0 effectively covered itself in “Made In Russia” labels (by plastering files in Russian metadata and choosing to use a Russian VPN service and a proxy in Moscow for it’s activities) on the same day it first attributed itself to WikiLeaks, it’s fair to suspect that Guccifer 2.0 had malicious intent towards WikiLeaks from the outset.

If this was the case, Guccifer 2.0 may have known about the DNC emails by June 30, 2016 as this is when the persona first started publishing attachments from those emails.


source: https://theforensicator.wordpress.com/guccifer-2s-russian-breadcrumbs/

Seth Rich Mentioned By Both Parties

WikiLeaks Offers Reward

On August 9, 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted:

In an interview with Nieuwsuur that was posted the same day, Julian Assange explained that the reward was for a DNC staffer who he said had been “shot in the back, murdered”. When the interviewer suggested it was a robbery Assange disputed it and stated that there were no findings.

When the interviewer asked if Seth Rich was a source, Assange stated, “We don’t comment on who our sources are”.

When pressed to explain WikiLeaks actions, Assange stated that the reward was being offered because WikiLeaks‘ sources were concerned by the incident. He also stated that WikiLeaks were investigating.

Speculation and theories about Seth Rich being a source for WikiLeaks soon propagated to several sites and across social media.

Guccifer 2.0 Claims Seth Rich As His Source

On August 25, 2016, approximately three weeks after the reward was offered, Julian Assange was due to be interviewed on Fox News on the topic of Seth Rich.

On that same day, in a DM conversation with the actress Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 claimed that Seth was his source (despite previously claiming he obtained his material by hacking the DNC).

Why did Guccifer 2.0 feel the need to attribute itself to Seth at this time?

[Note: I am not advocating for any theory and am simply reporting on Guccifer 2.0’s effort to attribute itself to Seth Rich following the propagation of Rich-WikiLeaks association theories online.]

Special Counsel Claims

In Spring, 2019, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who was named to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. general election, delivered his final report.

It claimed:

Guccifer 2.0 contradicted his own hacking claims to allege that Seth Rich was his source and did so on the same day that Julian Assange was due to be interviewed by Fox News (in relation to Seth Rich).

No communications between Guccifer 2.0 and Seth Rich have ever been reported.

Suggesting Assange Connected To Russians

In the same conversation Guccifer 2.0 had with Robbin Young where Rich’s name is mentioned (on August 25, 2016), the persona also provided a very interesting response to Young mentioning “Julian” (in reference to Julian Assange):

The alleged GRU officer we are told was part of an operation to deflect from Russian culpability suggested that Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

Guccifer 2.0’s Mentions of WikiLeaks and Assange

Guccifer 2.0 mentioned WikiLeaks or associated himself with their output on several occasions:

  1. June 15, 2016: claiming to have sent WikiLeaks material on his blog.
  2. June 27, 2016: when he claimed DCLeaks was a sub-project of WikiLeaks.
  3. July 13, 2016: Joe Uchill of The Hill reported that Guccifer 2.0 had contacted the publication and stated: “The press gradually forget about me, [W]ikileaks is playing for time and have some more docs.”
  4. July 22nd, 2016: claimed credit when WikiLeaks published the DNC leaks.
  5. August 12, 2016: It was reported in The Hill that Guccifer 2.0 had released material to the publication. They reported“The documents released to The Hill are only the first section of a much larger cache. The bulk, the hacker said, will be released on WikiLeaks.”
  6. August 12, 2016: Tweeted that he would “send the major trove of the  materials and emails to “.
  7. September 15, 2016: telling DCLeaks that WikiLeaks wanted to get in contact with them.
  8. October 4, 2016: Congratulating WikiLeaks on their 10th anniversary via its blog. Also states: “Julian, you are really cool! Stay safe and sound!”. (This was the same day on which Guccifer 2.0 published his “Clinton Foundation” files that were clearly not from the Clinton Foundation.)
  9. October 17, 2016: via Twitter, stating “i’m here and ready for new releases. already changed my location thanks @wikileaks for a good job!”

Guccifer 2.0 also made some statements in response to WikiLeaks or Assange being mentioned:

  1. June 17, 2016: in response to The Smoking Gun asking if Assange would publish the same material it was publishing, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “I gave WikiLeaks the greater part of the files, but saved some for myself,”
  2. August 22, 2016: in response to Raphael Satter suggesting that Guccifer 2.0 send leaks to WikiLeaks, the persona stated: “I gave wikileaks a greater part of docs”.
  3. August 25, 2016: in response to Julian Assange’s name being mentioned in a conversation with Robbin Young, Guccifer 2.0 stated: “he may be connected with Russians”.
  4. October 18, 2016: a BBC reported asked Guccifer 2.0 if he was upset that WikiLeaks had “stole his thunder” and “do you still support Assange?”. Guccifer 2.0 responded: “i’m glad, together we’ll make America great again.”.

Guccifer 2.0 fabricated evidence to claim credit for hacking the DNC, covered itself (and its files) in what were essentially a collection of “Made In Russia” labels through deliberate processes and decisions made by the persona, and, then, it attributed itself to WikiLeaks with a claim that was contradicted by subsequent communications between both parties.

Guccifer 2.0 then went on to lie about WikiLeaks, contradicted its own hacking claims to attribute itself to Seth Rich and even alleged that Julian Assange “may be connected with Russians”.

While we are expected to accept that Guccifer 2.0’s efforts between July 6 and July 18 were a sincere effort to get leaks to WikiLeaks, considering everything we now know about the persona, it seems fair to question whether Guccifer 2.0’s intentions towards WikiLeaks may have instead been malicious.

consortiumnews.com

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Turn Out the Lights, Russiagate Is Over https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/19/turn-out-the-lights-russiagate-is-over/ Tue, 19 May 2020 13:00:59 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=397370 The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

Ray McGOVERN

Seldom mentioned among the motives behind the persistent drumming on alleged Russian interference was an over-arching need to help the Security State hide their tracks.

The need for a scapegoat to blame for Hillary Clinton’s snatching defeat out of the jaws victory also played a role; as did the need for the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT) to keep front and center in the minds of Americans the alleged multifaceted threat coming from an “aggressive” Russia. (Recall that John McCain called the, now disproven, “Russian hacking” of the DNC emails an “act of war.”)

But that was then. This is now.

Though the corporate media is trying to bury it, the Russiagate narrative has in the past few weeks finally collapsed with the revelation that CrowdStrike had no evidence Russia took anything from the DNC servers and that the FBI set a perjury trap for Gen. Michael Flynn. There was already the previous government finding that there was no collusion between Trump and Russia and the indictment of a Russian troll farm that supposedly was destroying American democracy with $100,000 in Facebook ads was dropped after the St. Petersburg defendants sought discovery.

All that’s left is to discover how this all happened.

Attorney General William Barr, and U.S. Attorney John Durham, whom Barr commissioned to investigate this whole sordid mess seem intent on getting to the bottom of it. The possibility that Trump will not chicken out this time, and rather will challenge the Security State looms large since he felt personally under attack.

Writing on the Wall

Given the diffident attitude the Security State plotters adopted regarding hiding their tracks, Durham’s challenge, with subpoena power, is not as formidable as were he, for example, investigating a Mafia family.

Plus, former NSA Director Adm. Michael S. Rogers reportedly is cooperating. The handwriting is on the wall. It remains to be seen what kind of role in the scandal Barack Obama may have played.

But former directors James Comey, James Clapper, and John Brennan, captains of Obama’s Security State, can take little solace from Barr’s remarks Monday to a reporter who asked about Trump’s recent claims that top officials of the Obama administration, including the former president had committed crimes. Barr replied:

“As to President Obama and Vice President Biden, whatever their level of involvement, based on the information I have today, I don’t expect Mr. Durham’s work will lead to a criminal investigation of either man. Our concerns over potential criminality is focused on others.”

In a more ominous vein, Barr gratuitously added that law enforcement and intelligence officials were involved in “a false and utterly baseless Russian collusion narrative against the president. It was a grave injustice, and it was unprecedented in American history.”

Meanwhile, the corporate media have all been singing from the same sheet since Trump had the audacity a week ago to coin yet another “-gate” — this time “Obamagate.” Leading the apoplectic reaction in corporate media, Saturday’s Washington Post offered a pot-calling-the-kettle-black pronouncement by its editorial board entitled “The absurd cynicism of ‘Obamagate”?

The outrage voiced by the Post called to mind disgraced FBI agent Peter Strzok’s indignant response to criticism of the FBI by candidate Trump, in a Oct. 20, 2016 text exchange with FBI attorney Lisa Page:

Strzok: I am riled up. Trump is a f***ing idiot, is unable to provide a coherent answer.

Strzok – I CAN’T PULL AWAY, WHAT THE F**K HAPPENED TO OUR COUNTRY …

Page– I don’t know. But we’ll get it back. We’re America. We rock.

Strzok– Donald just said “bad hombres”

Strzok– Trump just said what the FBI did is disgraceful.

Less vitriolic, but incisive commentary came from widely respected author and lawyer Glenn Greenwald on May 14, four days after Trump coined “Obamagate”: (See “System Update with Glenn Greenwald – The Sham Prosecution of Michael Flynn”).

For a shorter, equally instructive video of Greenwald on the broader issue of Russia-gate, see this clip from a March 2019 Democracy Now!-sponsored debate he had with David Cay Johnston titled, “As Mueller Finds No Collusion, Did Press Overhype Russiagate? Glenn Greenwald vs. David Cay Johnston”:

(entire debate is worth listening to). I found one of the comments below the Democracy Now! video as big as a bummer as the commentator did:

“I think this is one of the most depressing parts about the whole situation. In their dogmatic pushing for this false narrative, the Russiagaters might have guaranteed Trump a second term. They have done more damage to our democracy than Russia ever has done and will do.” (From “Clamity2007”)

In any case, Johnston, undaunted by his embarrassment at the hands of Greenwald, is still at it, and so is the avuncular Frank Rich — both of them some 20 years older than Greenwald and set in their evidence-impoverished, media-indoctrinated ways.

Deranged by Trump

Sadly, as is apparently the case with Covid:19, older people seem particularly susceptible to what has been called Trump Derangement Syndrome—the notion that Trump is uniquely evil, while, for instance, George W. Bush, who illegally invaded Iraq—what Nuremberg termed the worst war crime, the crime of aggression—was not.

Johnston now has his own website: DCReport.org. A piece dated May 8, bears the title “How Barr Is Advancing Trump’s Quest to Become President For Life.”

Adducing “evidence” of this purported effort by Barr, Johnston indicates that he does not like what Barr’s Justice Department did in moving to drop the charges against Gen. Michael Flynn. He does not like it, not one bit! Here are some additional gems from Johnston’s latest:

“— Flynn and his company were on Putin’s payroll

– Flynn made himself susceptible to blackmail by taking Russian money and lying about it.”

Johnston drivels on:

“Trump denies the Russians helped him become president. But America’s intelligence agencies, the bi-partisan chairs of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the 418-page Mueller report and emails from none other than Donald Trump Jr. all make clear the Kremlin helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. The only issue on which the facts are not complete was whether Trump was a passive beneficiary or he knowingly worked with the Kremlin, whether obliquely or hand-in-glove.

Just weeks after assuming office Trump held an unannounced meeting in the Oval Office with Russia’s foreign minister and Russian ambassador and a “photographer” for the Kremlin-owned Tass news agency. The Russians revealed the meeting. They also disclosed that Trump gave them “sources and methods” intelligence, which is closely guarded to protect human and technological assets.

This latest abuse of power to protect a criminal crony who was on Vladimir Putin’s payroll and a secret foreign agent is more than an impeachable offense. Trump, Barr and Shea also sent a clear message: Team Trump harbors no regard for the rule of law, the foundation of our liberties and democratic freedoms.”

Frank Rich Not Immune

David Cay Johnston enjoys the company of other erstwhile respected pundits, notably Frank Rich. In younger days, both wrote for The New York Times, where, sadly, writers of all ages are showing acute susceptibility to the syndrome.

In a New York magazine article by Frank Rich performsing what he passes off as analysis of the recent statement of President Donald Trump about Obamagate. Read it and lament over what has become of yet another formerly respectable journalist.

“Obamagate’, in Trump’s brilliant coinage, is a conspiracy so vast, a crime so dastardly, that it should guarantee his reelection as soon as he figures out how to tell voters exactly what it is. As best as I can glean from his spokespeople on the Rupert Murdoch payroll — at Fox News, the New York Post, and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal — it was a coup that involved both installing Trump in the White House so that he could preside over the most corrupt and incompetent administration in American history and propelling a beloved national hero, the Kremlin sycophant and former Obama official Michael Flynn, to prison. For a moment, it seemed that at least that second goal might be thwarted by Bill Barr’s effort to hand Flynn a Get Out of Jail Free card. But thanks to the deep-state intervention of a U.S. district judge in Washington this week, Flynn may end up behind bars after all. Obamagate Accomplished!”

Has Rich lost it? Is this dismissive gibberish meant to be facetious, sarcastic? Is it a pedantic attempt at reductio ad absurdum? — like Saturday’s Washington Post editorial board pronouncement of “ The absurd cynicism of ‘Obamagate’”.

Does Rich keep up with the news, or is he now filing from Joe Biden’s basement? Is Consortium News included in his diet of reading? Quick. Someone tell Rich that “Russia-Trump collusion” and the far-fetched charges that the Russian Internet Research Agency helped Trump become president — as well as the tall tale that Russia “hacked” the DNC emails — have all collapsed.

‘Statutory Senility’

My father, for many years a professor at Fordham Law School, used to speak jocularly of another all-too-familiar syndrome he nonetheless took seriously: he called it “the age of statutory senility.” As Chancellor of the Board of Regents, he resigned well before he reached that age, offering his own example to superannuated Board colleagues (to no avail).

These days, I think he would probably consider 70 the age of “statutory senility”, especially were he able to read the blather of once respected journalists — like Frank Rich, whose work he used to enjoy. Let’s make sure someone is working on a vaccine for the Trump Syndrome.

consortiumnews.com

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Wisconsin Defeats COVID-19 Tyranny as the State Supreme Court Tosses Out Lockdown Order https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/18/wisconsin-defeats-covid-19-tyranny-as-the-state-supreme-court-tosses-out-lockdown-order/ Mon, 18 May 2020 15:00:39 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=397358 On May 13th the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the Bill Gates-advocated stay-at-home order, previously ordered by globalist quisling, Governor Tony Evers. After hearing oral arguments on May 5th, the court in its wisdom has made a tremendous ruling that will go far in its implications, perhaps even worldwide. This is one small step for Wisconsinites, but one giant step for all American people. In this analysis we will look at the broader implications for similar possibilities in other states, but also its connection to the upcoming election.

This ruling reaches even farther than Wisconsin, and also farther than the Coronavirus pandemic, because it establishes that the Wisconsin Supreme Court is not friendly towards Democrat Governor Tony Evers.

Democrats are pushing medical tyranny and lockdown as the basis for ultimately eliminating the 2020 election, by closing polls and using online voting. Because the U.S. system gives great authority to the state governors in determining the election rules and the handling and counting of ballots, causing a partisan control over outcomes, the presence of Evers otherwise threatens Trump’s legitimate chances in Wisconsin.

Democrats are pushing for online voting through apps that would be developed by the same Silicon Valley and Google-connected firms that allowed Pete Buttigieg and his SHADOW app to ‘steal’ the Iowa primary from populist Bernie Sanders.

The Iowa outcome showed a red-flag triggering divergence between the reported vote and the exit polling – indicating that there was either tremendous error or that Buttigieg’s team was able to steal the election from Sanders’ team.

In the proposed online voting system that Democrats are pushing for 2020, citizens would almost necessarily have to use a Google Chrome compatible app, given the near monopoly that Google has. This raises a separate but related issue of monopoly practices in the information age, something Bill Gates himself profited from immensely. Just as PC’s come bundled with Windows, many also come bundled with Google’s Chrome internet browser.

Electronic voting would represent a further step away from constitutional rule and the norms of a democratic republic.

Electronic voting has already proved a disaster, and while almost the same as online voting in that respect and for the same reasons, in-person voting still made possible the exit poll. Exit polls were able to give an indication whether the reported vote and the exit poll diverged, which is how election oversight could determine if there was an error or fraud. Online voting eliminates that possibility of detection, opening up the door for more blatantly stolen elections.

Recall that Wisconsin went to Trump in 2016, and in 2019 Democrat Evers was elected governor.

The court’s ruling gives a strong sign as to how they might view Evers attempts to nullify the 2020 presidential election in the state of Wisconsin.

Even this ruling alone shows that lockdown orders are unconstitutional, and therefore illegal.

The Associated Press, in a rare moment of honesty, accurately reported that the ruling;

“essentially reopens the state, lifting caps on the size of gatherings, allowing people to travel as they please and allowing shuttered businesses to reopen, including bars and restaurants,”

They could have just as easily written that the ruling ‘essentially jeopardizes children, first responders, and health-care workers and places public health in jeopardy’, not because this is true, but because the AP has historically written about similar matters in just that way.

The blatantly illegal, unconstitutional and tyrannical order was issued by Health Secretary Andrea Palm, and in this major reversal, the court found she had far exceeded her authority to do so.

In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack put into the record that:

“Rule-making exists precisely to ensure that kind of controlling, subjective judgement asserted by one unelected official, Palm, is not imposed in Wisconsin,”

The decision however does allow schools to remain closed, but places these decisions in local governments which can create their own restrictions.

The AP reported that Evers reacted angrily in a conference call Wednesday night, saying the state has been doing well in the fight against the coronavirus. He predicted the court ruling will lead more counties to adopt their own restrictions, leading to a confusing patchwork of ordinances that will allow infection to spread.

But the narrow focus on a ‘fight’ against the coronavirus by an arbitrary numbers system has struck many as confusing the issue. The real issue is public health in general, and a critical component of this involves both being outdoors and being able to engage in the economy. For every 1% rise of unemployment in the U.S., 37,000 people die for indirect reasons resulting from that rise.

Governor Evers was elected by the efforts of organized labor and community groups who had, at the time, good cause to oppose the pro-corporate policies and anti-union policies of former Governor Walker. At issue, however, is that Wisconsinites have fared no better in his replacement. Working class supporters of Walker also had some strong justifications for supporting his anti-union policies.

For decades, labor unions have ceased being the fighting organizations of working people in the face of globalist elites, and instead have become career vehicles for demagogues who have a rotating-door relationship with DNC appointments and corrupt NGOs.

Evers then predictably betrayed the labor union rank-and-file who worked for his election, while labor union bureaucrats received kick-backs and comfy appointments in various the inflated state agencies.

Despite this fact, and yet predictably so, the Nurses union filed an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court against the petitioners. At first glance one might wrongly be led to believe that this is because nurses see there is a wide-scale pandemic, and are against a premature opening.

But in examining the fact that as of April 26th there was only 361 cases and almost 5,000 empty beds in Wisconsin, it appears that the union is using the veil of its connection to healthcare to back a partisan commitment supporting the DNC towards medical tyranny.

Imagining he still has credibility among working and middle-class Wisconsinites in the face of his unconstitutional Covid-19 response, Evers began to accuse the Supreme Court of fomenting “chaos”.

“Today, Republican legislators convinced four members of the state Supreme Court to throw the state into chaos,” Evers said. “They have provided no plan. There’s no question among anybody that people are going to get sick. Republicans own that chaos”, the AP reported.

“They have provided no plan. There’s no question among anybody that people are going to get sick. Republicans own that chaos.” He added, “In the meantime, we’re going to have 72 counties doing their own thing.”

“I can’t believe there’s a state in the nation with this type of chaos.”

The use of the term “chaos” appears to be part of a top-down DNC corporate talking point. It was used over the weekend of May 9th for the first time in a publicized way surrounding the present imposed health ‘crisis’ by Barack Obama, in a leaked call with supporters, which was the subject of its own scandal.

At the same time, Melinda Gates gave a series of interviews on corporate fake news media. In these interviews, more notable for her wearing of an upside-down cross, she also used the term “chaos” in describing the internal workings of the Trump administration’s policy and task force on the novel coronavirus.

Evers’ primary issue seems to be with local governance and community-based regulations. He prefers that Wisconsin be centrally run, as a microcosm that reflects his worldview of a single one-world government justified by the medical tyranny of a Covid-19 dictatorship.

Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruling therefore represents a small victory that is much larger in scope than we might realize at present. It sets an example of how other state supreme courts might rule, especially if in the opinions of the Wisconsin ruling are references to broader constitutional issues outside of the narrower interpretations of laws and past rulings specific to Wisconsin.

This also has an internationalist perspective, showing both workers and small business owners alike what is possible with militant activism. Recall that for its part, neighboring Michigan was the site of militant action some weeks ago, where an armed pro-constitution group stormed the capitol building.

This underscores the importance of the 2nd Amendment in defending constitutional order. An important factor moving forward will require a more deep understanding between citizens of larger urban centers of mega-cities and those of smaller and medium towns and cities.

American politics is chiefly local, where broader national discussions on abstract ideology and federal policy mask the local reality of politics. Both Democrats and Republicans play a game at the federal level which has the effect of pitting Americans against each other based on an artificially created national discourse.

The outcome of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling shows the way forward, and in no small way was a sober response to the real mood of the moment for most Americans not under the DNC spell.

Contact the author: FindMeFlores@gmail.com

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New House Documents Sow Further Doubt That Russia Hacked the DNC https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/05/11/new-house-documents-sow-further-doubt-that-russia-hacked-dnc/ Mon, 11 May 2020 16:45:26 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=390562 For two and a half years the House Intelligence Committee knew CrowdStrike didn’t have the goods on Russia. Now the public knows too.

Ray McGOVERN

House Intelligence Committee documents released Thursday reveal that the committee was told two and half years ago that the FBI had no concrete evidence that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers to filch the DNC emails published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

The until-now-buried, closed-door testimony came on Dec. 5, 2017 from Shawn Henry, a protege of former FBI Director Robert Mueller (from 2001 to 2012), for whom Henry served as head of the Bureau’s cyber crime investigations unit.

Henry retired in 2012 and took a senior position at CrowdStrike, the cyber security firm hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to investigate the cyber intrusions that occurred before the 2016 presidential election.

The following excerpts from Henry’s testimony speak for themselves. The dialogue is not a paragon of clarity; but if read carefully, even cyber neophytes can understand:

Ranking Member Mr. [Adam] Schiff: Do you know the date on which the Russians exfiltrated the data from the DNC? … when would that have been?

Mr. Henry: Counsel just reminded me that, as it relates to the DNC, we have indicators that data was exfiltrated from the DNC, but we have no indicators that it was exfiltrated (sic). … There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.

Mr. [Chris] Stewart of Utah: Okay. What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?

Mr. Henry: There’s not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There’s circumstantial evidence … but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. …

Mr. Stewart: But you have a much lower degree of confidence that this data actually left than you do, for example, that the Russians were the ones who breached the security?

Mr. Henry: There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network.

Mr. Stewart: And circumstantial is less sure than the other evidence you’ve indicated. …

Mr. Henry: “We didn’t have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.

In answer to a follow-up query on this line of questioning, Henry delivered this classic: “Sir, I was just trying to be factually accurate, that we didn’t see the data leave, but we believe it left, based on what we saw.”

Inadvertently highlighting the tenuous underpinning for CrowdStrike’s “belief” that Russia hacked the DNC emails, Henry added: “There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, but the — what we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what we’d seen associated with the Russian state.”

Not Transparent

Try as one may, some of the testimony remains opaque. Part of the problem is ambiguity in the word “exfiltration.”

The word can denote (1) transferring data from a computer via the Internet (hacking) or (2) copying data physically to an external storage device with intent to leak it.

As the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity has been reporting for more than three years, metadata and other hard forensic evidence indicate that the DNC emails were not hacked — by Russia or anyone else.

Rather, they were copied onto an external storage device (probably a thumb drive) by someone with access to DNC computers. Besides, any hack over the Internet would almost certainly have been discovered by the dragnet coverage of the National Security Agency and its cooperating foreign intelligence services.

Henry testifies that “it appears it [the theft of DNC emails] was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don’t have the evidence that says it actually left.”

This, in VIPS view, suggests that someone with access to DNC computers “set up” selected emails for transfer to an external storage device — a thumb drive, for example. The Internet is not needed for such a transfer. Use of the Internet would have been detected, enabling Henry to pinpoint any “exfiltration” over that network.

Bill Binney, a former NSA technical director and a VIPS member, filed a sworn affidavit in the Roger Stone case. Binney said: “WikiLeaks did not receive stolen data from the Russian government. Intrinsic metadata in the publicly available files on WikiLeaks demonstrates that the files acquired by WikiLeaks were delivered in a medium such as a thumb drive.”

The So-Called Intelligence Community Assessment

There is not much good to be said about the embarrassingly evidence-impoverished Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) of Jan. 6, 2017 accusing Russia of hacking the DNC.

But the ICA did include two passages that are highly relevant and demonstrably true:

(1) In introductory remarks on “cyber incident attribution”, the authors of the ICA made a highly germane point: “The nature of cyberspace makes attribution of cyber operations difficult but not impossible. Every kind of cyber operation — malicious or not — leaves a trail.”

(2) “When analysts use words such as ‘we assess’ or ‘we judge,’ [these] are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact. … Assessments are based on collected information, which is often incomplete or fragmentary … High confidence in a judgment does not imply that the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.” [And one might add that they commonly ARE wrong when analysts succumb to political pressure, as was the case with the ICA.]

The intelligence-friendly corporate media, nonetheless, immediately awarded the status of Holy Writ to the misnomered “Intelligence Community Assessment” (it was a rump effort prepared by “handpicked analysts” from only CIA, FBI, and NSA), and chose to overlook the banal, full-disclosure-type caveats embedded in the assessment itself.

Then National Intelligence Director James Clapper and the directors of the CIA, FBI, and NSA briefed President Obama on the ICA on Jan. 5, 2017, the day before they gave it personally to President-elect Donald Trump.

On Jan. 18, 2017, at his final press conference, Obama saw fit to use lawyerly language on the key issue of how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks, in an apparent effort to cover his own derriere.

Obama: “The conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked.”

So we ended up with “inconclusive conclusions” on that admittedly crucial point. What Obama was saying is that U.S. intelligence did not know—or professed not to know—exactly how the alleged Russian transfer to WikiLeaks was supposedly made, whether through a third party, or cutout, and he muddied the waters by first saying it was a hack, and then a leak.

From the very outset, in the absence of any hard evidence, from NSA or from its foreign partners, of an Internet hack of the DNC emails, the claim that “the Russians gave the DNC emails to WikiLeaks” rested on thin gruel.

In November 2018 at a public forum, I asked Clapper to explain why President Obama still had serious doubts in late Jan. 2017, less than two weeks after Clapper and the other intelligence chiefs had thoroughly briefed the outgoing president about their “high-confidence” findings.

Clapper replied: “I cannot explain what he [Obama] said or why. But I can tell you we’re, we’re pretty sure we know, or knew at the time, how WikiLeaks got those emails.” Pretty sure?

Preferring CrowdStrike; ’Splaining to Congress

CrowdStrike already had a tarnished reputation for credibility when the DNC and Clinton campaign chose it to do work the FBI should have been doing to investigate how the DNC emails got to WikiLeaks. It had asserted that Russians hacked into a Ukrainian artillery app, resulting in heavy losses of howitzers in Ukraine’s struggle with separatists supported by Russia. A Voice of America report explained why CrowdStrike was forced to retract that claim.

Why did FBI Director James Comey not simply insist on access to the DNC computers? Surely he could have gotten the appropriate authorization. In early January 2017, reacting to media reports that the FBI never asked for access, Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee there were “multiple requests at different levels” for access to the DNC servers.

“Ultimately what was agreed to is the private company would share with us what they saw,” he said. Comey described CrowdStrike as a “highly respected” cybersecurity company.

Asked by committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) whether direct access to the servers and devices would have helped the FBI in their investigation, Comey said it would have. “Our forensics folks would always prefer to get access to the original device or server that’s involved, so it’s the best evidence,” he said.

Five months later, after Comey had been fired, Burr gave him a Mulligan in the form of a few kid-gloves, clearly well-rehearsed, questions:

BURR: And the FBI, in this case, unlike other cases that you might investigate — did you ever have access to the actual hardware that was hacked? Or did you have to rely on a third party to provide you the data that they had collected?

COMEY: In the case of the DNC, … we did not have access to the devices themselves. We got relevant forensic information from a private party, a high-class entity, that had done the work. But we didn’t get direct access.

BURR: But no content?

COMEY: Correct.

BURR: Isn’t content an important part of the forensics from a counterintelligence standpoint?

COMEY: It is, although what was briefed to me by my folks — the people who were my folks at the time is that they had gotten the information from the private party that they needed to understand the intrusion by the spring of 2016.

In June last year it was revealed that CrowdStrike never produced an un-redacted or final forensic report for the government because the FBI never required it to, according to the Justice Department.

By any normal standard, former FBI Director Comey would now be in serious legal trouble, as should Clapper, former CIA Director John Brennan, et al. Additional evidence of FBI misconduct under Comey seems to surface every week — whether the abuses of FISA, misconduct in the case against Gen. Michael Flynn, or misleading everyone about Russian hacking of the DNC. If I were attorney general, I would declare Comey a flight risk and take his passport. And I would do the same with Clapper and Brennan.

Schiff: Every Confidence
But No Evidence

Both pillars of Russiagate–collusion and a Russian hack–have now fairly crumbled.

Thursday’s disclosure of testimony before the House Intelligence Committee shows Chairman Adam Schiff lied not only about Trump-Putin “collusion,” [which the Mueller report failed to prove and whose allegations were based on DNC and Clinton-financed opposition research] but also about the even more basic issue of “Russian hacking” of the DNC.

[See: “The Democratic Money Behind Russia-gate” republished today.]

Five days after Trump took office, I had an opportunity to confront Schiff personally about evidence that Russia “hacked” the DNC emails. He had repeatedly given that canard the patina of flat fact during an address at the old Hillary Clinton/John Podesta “think tank,” The Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Fortunately, the cameras were still on when I approached Schiff during the Q&A: “You have every confidence but no evidence, is that right?” I asked him. His answer was a harbinger of things to come. This video clip may be worth the four minutes needed to watch it.

Schiff and his partners in crime will be in for much tougher treatment if Trump allows Attorney General Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham to bring their investigation into the origins of Russia-gate to a timely conclusion. Barr’s dismissal on Thursday of charges against Flynn, after released FBI documents revealed that a perjury trap was set for him to keep Russiagate going, may be a sign of things to come.

Given the timid way Trump has typically bowed to intelligence and law enforcement officials, including those who supposedly report to him, however, one might rather expect that, after a lot of bluster, he will let the too-big-to-imprison ones off the hook. The issues are now drawn; the evidence is copious; will the Deep State, nevertheless, be able to prevail this time?

consortiumnews.com

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