This reprint from USA TODAY shows that the Obama Adminstration's claims concerning Russian government hacking attacks against HRC and attempts to influence the election are worse than BS. Gus Hall used to give examples of the "Big Lie" used by US propaganda (North Vietnam attacks US Ships in Tonkin Gulf was one example) a technique developed by the Nazi's based on Hitler's belief that if you repeated a lie long enough people would eventually believe it.
Today's New York Times writes:
"In its statement, the administration said, “The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT-DIRECTED compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the president-elect.”" --
"U.S. Officials Defend Integrity of Vote, Despite Hacking Fears"
There is still NO PROOF that the Russian government was involved and the USA TODAY article below explains why. That the Obama government can resort to Nazi propaganda techniques to further the interests of US Imperialism in creating an anti-Russia mindset in the US population for the purposes of justifying future NATO provocations is a sign of the direction a HRC administration would have been headed as Clinton raised these charges in her campaign and they are now pretty much accepted as "fact" and repeated as such in the mass media as well in some publications on the left. The danger is that a Trump administration, with an even greater distain for the truth than the Democrats, could fan these flames to even greater intensity should its planned rapproachment with Putin fall through.
USA TODAY:
Reasonable doubt in Russian hack: Column
Richard Diamond 3:59 p.m. EDT October 24, 2016
America's spies and Democrats show an incredible lack of technological sophistication.
It certainly is convenient for Hillary Clinton to dodge the serious pay-for-play allegations raised by the WikiLeaks disclosures by blaming Vladimir Putin. Anyone paying attention to the corruption exposed in Clinton campaign advisor John Podesta’s purloined emails are, in effect, doing the bidding of the Russian strongman, she argues.
This “Russia is behind it” claim is repeated often enough, but the evidence is thin. During last Wednesday night’s debate, Clinton explained that the “seventeen intelligence agencies” under the purview of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) are in agreement. “We believe, based on the scope and sensitivity of these efforts, that only Russia's senior-most officials could have authorized these activities,” the DNI said in a joint statement with Homeland Security.
Most people would imagine the heads of America’s top spy agencies are experts on securing sensitive information. And most people would be wrong.
Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan was unable to keep his own AOL email account from being compromised by a high-school student. The teenage perpetrator didn’t need the help of a nuclear-armed state to snatch the intelligence official’s password. All he had to do was use a bit of social engineering to gather personal information about Brennan from the official’s cell phone provider. The young man then called up AOL pretending to be the intelligence chief locked out of his email account. AOL obligingly reset the password.
Not long after that embarrassing incident, DNI James Clapper had his account hijacked by the same teen using the same methods. Indeed, this is not so different from the technique used by the miscreants who took control of the Apple iCloud accounts of celebrities, including Jennifer Lawrence, so that their intimate photos and videos could be posted online for all the world to see.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Donna Brazile underscored the intelligence agencies’ findings in a conference call cited by Politico in August. “CrowdStrike — the cybersecurity firm hired by the DNC, and other Democratic organizations — confirmed that this is a Russian state-sponsored attack, based on its investigation and the forensic evidence that has been collected," she said. Which is to say that a company on the DNC payroll has echoed the assessment of Obama’s intelligence appointees, including the highly partisan Brennan.
There is a much simpler explanation that doesn’t implicate partisan motives or suppose a cloak-and-dagger conspiracy orchestrated by a foreign power. Simply put, the Democrats who were breached had really dumb passwords.
One of the disclosures from Podesta’s Gmail account was that he chose “Runner4567” as his Apple iCloud password. As passwords go, that’s about as secure as a papier-mache padlock. The campaign chief compounds his error by emailing it around the office and using the same password across multiple websites. This is why users of the 4chan website were able to take over Podesta’s Twitter account shortly after his choice of password became public.
It turns out that Messrs. Podesta, Brennan and Clapper are not alone when it comes to Internet insecurity. Leaked DNC
emails also reveal the passwords previously used for the DNC press account include “Obama-Biden-2012” and “obamain08.”
Yes, it’s true that Putin could personally have ordered the hacks, but it is equally true that his top spies would be downright embarrassed at the triviality of breaching a system secured by the secret phrase “obamain08.” Certainly, if they were involved, they would be able to cover their tracks and leave false clues that other states, perhaps the Chinese or North Koreans, were involved. The bits of malware lingering in the DNC system for over a year cited as proof of Russian involvement turns out to be based on an open source protocol. Anyone could have left such fingerprints behind.
The accusations now being thrown around so authoritatively are reminiscent of the bogus assertion that a YouTube video caused a “spontaneous reaction” in Benghazi.
Saturday, November 26, 2016
Saturday, November 05, 2016
Clinton vs Trump: Between a Rock and a Hard Place
We really are stuck between a rock and a hard place, but John Pilger is one of the world's most well known progressive left journalists (so of course not so well known to the American public). This speech was made eight months ago and we have learned a lot more about Trump's positions since then so the "More" in the speech's title is probably over the top, nevertheless the inexorable drive towards a major confrontation with Russia and/or China is fairly well documented by Pil...
See More
Thursday, November 03, 2016
Trump Lead in Florida Implies Decay of US Democracy
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This says something about how ideologically unprepared to resist racist and neofascist political appeals the American people truly are. Will the Left be able to develop a program that can reverse this? Is Center-Left "unity" really an appropriate foil to the appeal of neofacism especially when a tilt to the Center is involved? Should the Left regroup and propose a Radical and Socialist program for electoral politics based on the ground breaking rise in political consciousness signified by the Sanders movement? That such a significant percentage of people in a major swing state can be supporting the Trumpite version of ultra-right nationalism favored by the KKK is a sign of the decay of bourgeois democracy and a clarion call for the Left to mount a radical defense of the interests of the working class and the 99% by waging open ideological warfare in favor of democratic Socialism inspired by a Marxist understanding of the political and economic reality in the US.
He has no plausible path to the presidency without Florida’s 29 electoral votes, which is not true of Hillary Clinton.
NYTIMES.COM|BY NATE COHN
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