Maybe they meant Activia measures?
4 Likes
I understand all the cynicism and it could not be more justified.
But I like the idea of pushing Trump to show his hand with Russia.
Sure, his base are living “post facts”, but the majority of Americans voted for the Democrats, and they need to stay outraged. You need to start preparing for your Arab Spring.
Obama doesn’t have a lot of options, this is something at least.
18 Likes
Is there more definitive evidence of Russian hacking?
I’m all for fact-based politics, but I’m also for evidence-based facts… 
3 Likes
Sam Biddle false flagging?
2 Likes
Yeah, it’s not like they’re communist dictators and kleptocrats. They’re fascist dictators and kleptocrats. Who will make the right wing base rich, right?
3 Likes
I said hopefully.
It all may be true, I’d just like to see a smidgen of evidence…
" the charges of Russian responsibility for the e-mail hacks of the Democratic National Committee and of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta have been repeated so often and so emphatically that it’s become easy to forget that they have yet to be conclusively proved."
1 Like
" It is also troubling that the finger-pointing over the leaked e-mails has provided Clinton campaign operatives and surrogates with an excuse for deflecting criticism of the kind of campaign they ran. There’s a striking cognitive dissonance at work here: Liberals who have traditionally been wary of the national-security state and justifiably suspicious of its claims seem to have become its most vociferous supporters, at the very same time that former intelligence officials are urging caution."
1 Like
In the good old days the movie villains were orientals and eastern Europeans. Now it’s Arabs and Russians. You can always trust patriotic Hollywood.
And Brits. You forgot Brits.
2 Likes
Just order them 4 Ubers each, let market solutions hold sway.
3 Likes
Like all Obama “hardline” positions I am sure this will amount to nothing. Would love to be proven wrong, but I doubt it.
Unless it is drone strikes or whistleblower beatdowns, of course.
7 Likes
I think this was a little clearer for laying things out as a narrative:
Since then CloudStrike found the same malware and keys used in the DNC attack were used in attacks by the GRU against Ukrainians in the Russian-Ukranian war/invasion. In that case they infected systems that were used by Ukrainian artillery units where Russia targeted infected systems with their own strikes to take out >90% of the Ukrainian units. It’s really, really hard to explain how the same malware/C&C IPs/keys could end up on the DNC servers in 2016, the Bundestag hack in 2015 (collecting intel on the German parliament), and a Russian military target in 2014 by non-state “hacktivists” or how any other state level org. could and would managed to be engaged in that sophisticated and long of a game that serves only the interests of one state: Russia. Today Trump announced plans to drop the sanctions Obama had levied in response to the Ukraine invasion and continuing occupation of Crimea. Putin won.
14 Likes
There’s a whole lot of evidence. The thing is since it’s forensic evidence, and the bizarre antics of some party/parties involved in the hacks dumping docs and interacting with people after the attack, all accounts are based on appearances and probabilities from that. There’s no one inside the FSB/GRU/Kremlin who is going to fess up and point to things going on from that side or anything that 100% absolute. Instead it’s analysis that makes a case that’s more like 99%+ probable. Solid enough for a really easy conviction in a court, though, if this was that kind of thing. With the evidence we have at this point in time, we have an actor who was involved in the Ukraine war aiding the Russian military who has been studied for years, engaged in attacks on the Bundestag which German intelligence is now quite confident from investigations were perpetarated by Russia, and also engaged in the DNC hacks. Those three aren’t the only ones, they’ve been a persistent attacker of various government/media targets around the globe for many years, but those three all have one smoking gun - the same crypto keys, and InfoSec analysts have many reasons to believe they’re Russia’s military intelligence/cyberwarfare division, the GRU. That actor when caught on DNC systems pretended to be a Romanian hacktivist, Guccifer 2.0, but clearly wasn’t Romanian, and dumped DNC documents that were covered in fingerprints that point to a large Russian organization cooperating on editing them. With all that you have to come up with a story. There’s a parsimonious, straightforward one that fits all the evidence and points to Russia who had a very clear motive. There’s no other parsimonious account that points to any other actor that could possibly have been involved or who had any intelligible motive. When the same malware/C&C/keys are being used by a Russian cyberwarfare division against Ukraine and later against the DNC, there’s really no other explanation that could be offered and not laughed off. FWIW, that Intercept article is sort of right (we are arguing from probabilities), though it’s also totally shameless FUD, and skipped some of the most damning evidence.
16 Likes
No.
They are fourth order dictators and kleptocrats.
First Order: Liberalism
Second Order: Communism
Third Order: Fascism
Fourth Order: Duginism
2 Likes
That’s hardly surprising.
9 Likes
Yes, there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence. No denying that. (Except by the people who actually KNOW where the information came from, but who believes anything Wikileaks or Assange says anymore?)
Maybe there is enough evidence for a “really easy conviction in a court”. But in the U.S. criminal cases must be proven “beyond a reasonable doubt”, while civil cases only require “the preponderance of the evidence”. The level of certainty matters.
One of the possibilities Obama is talking about is WAR (physical, “cyber”, it’s still war). Personally, I want an even higher level of certainty than “reasonable doubt” for going to war of any sort, war which could affect hundreds of millions of people, than what we use in a court of law that only affects a small handful of litigants. Have we learned nothing from past experience?
And let us not forget the glaring fact that while so many people are upset (and rightfully so, and I will be, too, should it be proven beyond allegations and circumstantial evidence) that Russian may have attempted to influence the election, and it questionable whether it had any effect at all…
… let us not forget that the DNC itself tampered with the election, and that is provable through the emails that were released and of which no one is denying the authenticity.
3 Likes
See there are two issues going on here. And sadly some people are ignoring what the Russians did or down playing it only because they helped their team win. Only they have no political loyalty and will probably target them in the future. It is extremely stupid and short sighted to down play their hacking as no big deal. No matter if or how it directly affected the election, Russians trying to influence it and hacking private servers is bad.
But, on the other hand, it did show the ugly underbelly of politics. Contrary to popular believe, the political parties, Republican and Democrats, have NO obligation to select the most popular candidate. They can literally put up whomever they want on the ticket. USUALLY they do the whole primary process to find the person who is most likely to win, but they aren’t beholden to it. If you want political reform, demand it before the next election.
And finally we can boil down the question to: how much did the hack and leaks of emails affect the election? Directly, not at all. It isn’t like they tampered with the voting. Indirectly I am not sure one can even measure it. I think you would need to take a large sample poll and see if the leaks either 1) made people vote for Trump or a third party when initially they were going to vote for Hillary or 2) made people stay home and not vote for Hillary. I have a feeling that SOME people are in category two, especially disenfranchised Bernie supporters. But whether that number was significant, and significant in states which would have swung the Electoral College vote is not known.
But again, even if the damage was low or nil, Russians or any foreign power interfering is a bad thing.
12 Likes
Well, they sure didn’t help my team win, the DNC saw to that… 
Of course the DNC doesn’t have to select the most popular candidate, but they do have rules and bylaws, which they violated. Plus voter suppression and other illegal games (which they’re fast learning from the GOP, which seems to have made a science of it).
Again, I am not denying the claim about the Russians, I am all for reality-based news and actions. I’d just like to see evidence-based reality, and very high certainty evidence given that our leaders are threatening war with a nuclear power…
1 Like
