Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Michael Marking via Marxism]

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Greg McDonald wrote on Saturday 2018.07.28: 

>  Did someone say something about no evidence of Russian hacking? 

Yes, that was me, on Friday, 2018.07.27. I was responding to a previous
post by Jason Hicks, made Thursday 2018.07.26. Hicks’ post specifically
referenced the leak of DNC e-mails through the efforts of Russia or
Wikileaks or a disgruntled DNC staffer or (take your pick), and said
that “it's clear that it was Russian intelligence”. Although I wasn’t
clear that I was being specific about the DNC e-mail leak (sorry), I
did mention Julian Assange in my post, and I think that’s the only
mischief he’s been commonly accused of in connection with the 2016
election. 

Yes, the Intercept piece of Monday 2017.06.05, referenced by Greg
McDonald in his post, does, indeed present some evidence that
spearphishing was done in connection with the election. The attached
leaked NSA document, dated Friday 2017.05.05 (?), refers to, and
describes, a specific e-mail attachment, even providing message digests
to allow it to be identified. The NSA document asserted that the
associated e-mails were the product of Russian intelligence, and I have
no opinion on that. Nowhere, however, is there any evidence in the
document itself why this assertion was made; I presume that the NSA
document is to be read in the context of additional documents we don’t
have. The chart at the end characterizes some statements of GRU
involvement as “Analyst Judgement”. However, evidence linking the
spearphishing attack to the GRU is omitted from the document, presumably
to be found elsewhere. As far as the e-mail attachment itself goes, it
might have been done by anyone with an elementary knowledge of Visual
Basic and the English language, from a high school student in Omaha to
a scammer in Nairobi to an officer of the GRU. Much of the evidence
regarding the source of the e-mails would be found in the headers, which
are not discussed in the document. Nevertheless, nothing looks (pardon
the pun) fishy here. 

Weaknesses in voting systems have been discussed since at least as far
back as the late 1990s. I recall, but my memory may be faulty here
regarding the exact date, presentations at Defcon (an annual hackers’
conference) around two decades ago. No one was surprised when the
problems started to become big news with the 2000 election. Yet, we’re
still seeing not much action to change things. Another weakness (some
vendor was stupid enough to put PCAnywhere into voting machines)
recently surfaced. Does anyone really care? We know people have been
breaking into election systems for a long time, I’d be amazed if the
Russian government weren’t getting in on the fun. But the press and the
politicians are so upset about this Russian thing, somebody ain’t
telling the truth. 

But I’m still waiting for evidence that Wikileaks did anything to
encourage the DNC e-mail leak, beyond providing a publishing platform,
in the same way that (say) demonstrators might be encouraged to turn out
for a march or protest by knowing that they’ll get some news coverage.
I’m still waiting for any evidence that the Russians exfiltrated the
e-mails, or that they were leaked by a DNC staffer, or any other actual
clue – beyond speculation – to who released the e-mails, or how it was
done. Given the controversy, I can’t see any legitimate reason not to
release some evidence to put to rest (or maybe just to tranquilize) the
issue. 

We (in the U.S.) have a President who makes things up as he goes along,
intelligence agencies known to have lied to the people and to Congress,
reporters excluded from press events as a consequence of asking
“inappropriate” questions, a gutless and unprincipled government in
general (the best that money can buy!), and media that refuse to delve
into forbidden territories in any meaningful way. So with the chorus
chanting “the Russians did it” (which might be entirely plausible but
you’re ill advised to make up propaganda that can’t be made to appear
plausible), but with no evidence, I’m not prepared to believe anyone. 

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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Greg McDonald via Marxism]

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Did someone say something about no evidence of Russian hacking?


“The Intercept, an online news outlet that a prosecutor said Ms. Winner
admired,
published a copy of the top secret report

 shortly before Ms. Winner’s arrest was made public. The report described
two cyberattacks by Russia’s military intelligence unit, the G.R.U. — one
in August against a company that sells voter-registration-related software
and another, a few days before the election, against 122 local election
officials.“

Lifted from the NY Crimes
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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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If you judge the article by the yardstick of the kind of evidence used in a
courtroom, you're misunderstanding what you're looking at . . . .

The article summarizes the technical evidence as "tracing control of email
and social media accounts and a tool for remote internet connections" and
specifies bits of what this means.  This all; seems quite straightforward
to me, with absolutely nothing particularly surprising as to what I'd
expect their technological capabilities.  Of course,  I'd be open to
hearing something from a technical expert in the field explain how it was.

Still, we'll find out soon enough.

ML
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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Tristan Sloughter via Marxism]

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> I think articles like this are unhelpful and dangerous, and this one is
> certainly full of inaccuracies.

But are hilarious. Ted Rall has to make shit up:

"Trump doesn’t even read one-page memos. Yet we’re being asked to believe that 
he supervised a ridiculously complex Machiavellian conspiracy?"

Who has argued this?

Then of course, yes, the Seth Rich conspiracy which is just disgusting of him 
to traffic in and doesn't really warrant a response.

I think it says a lot about people like Rall when they purposely distort 
everything and ignore detailed evidence (also note that the main "alternative" 
report that people point to as proving it was an inside job proves nothing of 
the sort, but it is easy to write up some computer jargon to convince people 
like Rall).

Tristan

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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Michael Marking via Marxism]

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The 2018.07.13 Reuters article, by Joseph Menn, observed at
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cyber/u-s-indictments-show-technical-evidence-for-russian-hacking-accusations-idUSKBN1K32X1,
is wrong. Despite the title and the content, there wasn’t evidence in
the indictment. 

Perhaps Mr Menn was mislead by his sources or advisers, or maybe he
simply does not understand what constitutes evidence. Either way, the
article doesn’t deliver what its title promises. 

“Evidence” is a term of art in law, with a precise meaning. This
specific term, evidence, is quite logically defined, so we don’t need
to contort our logic to understand how lawyers use it. Evidence is
“Something (including testimony, documents and tangible objects) that
tends to prove or disprove the existence of an alleged fact”. (Black’s
Law Dictionary, Ninth Edition) There is no ordinary requirement that a
complaint or indictment contain any evidence. An indictment might say,
“A murdered B, using a knife belonging to C, at 123 Main Street on 1
January 1900”: that is merely an allegation, that’s good enough. There
is no evidence that any murder took place, or the means by which it was
done, but the indictment is sufficient for most purposes. In fact, you
might allege the existence of evidence, but the indictment itself
usually cannot possibly contain any evidence. How, for example, would a
corpse or a bloody knife be included in an indictment? An indictment is
expected to contain only allegations. An allegation is merely an
assertion that something is true; the assertion isn’t necessarily true,
but it might be. It’s up to the trial to determine the truth or falsity
of allegations in the complaint or indictment; it’s during the trial
that the evidence is examined. 

You don’t convict on allegations, you convict on evidence. 

I’ll pick a few examples from the indictment, as discussed in the
Reuters article, to illustrate. I’ll omit the obvious adjective,
“alleged”, because, at this point, everything is alleged. So I won’t
say, “alleged conspirators”, I’ll just say “conspirators”.

The indictment alleges that the conspirators used a common bitcoin
wallet both to acquire a VPN network account and to acquire the use of
a server which hosted DCLeaks. There is no evidence here. If there were
a statement of such evidence, it might say something like “the
blockchain shows that the transaction shows bitcoin wallet identifiers
X and Y, and the accounting records of the ISP recorded a bitcoin
transaction of the same amount at approximately the same time, the ISP
claims that its own wallet identifier is Y, and the blockchain shows
that there were no other transactions during the interval A to B which
used either of the identifiers X or Y”. In other words, the evidence
would be alleged to show how we know that the allegation is true. (All
of this isn’t complete. For instance, how do we know that the ISP
claims that its wallet identifier is Y? Is there an affidavit? Do they
publish the wallet identifier to facilitate such transactions? But this
should illustrate the basic idea.) 

Here are a few more points consider: 

(1) Investigations and grand jury proceedings are normally conducted in
secret. So it shouldn’t be surprising that we don’t know, for example,
the bitcoin wallet identifiers. But why, in the lead-up to the election,
and just after the election, before a formal prosecution was
established, when this or that intelligence agency was supposedly
claiming that the Russians did it, weren’t we given even the least bit
of evidence to prove it true?

(2) We don’t at this time know, however, if the prosecution even has
such evidence as bitcoin wallet identifiers. Maybe they just came up
with a story but without sufficient evidence, hoping, perhaps, to fill
in the blanks later. 

(3) It has been speculated that the investigation has resulted in
allegations which knowingly cannot be proven. Why would the prosecutor
do this? If, as some believe, the prosecution is politically motivated,
and if such persons as Guccifer 2.0 can’t be found or extradited for
trial, then there might never be a trial, and no evidence will ever be
adduced, so there is little risk to making claims which can’t be
supported. (I’m not saying that I subscribe to this theory, but it has
been widely mentioned in the press and on line.) 

(4) It is often asserted that the spooks (NSA, CIA, or whoever) can’t
produce the evidence because it might jeopardize “sources and methods”.
That may be true, but it’s mostly crap in this case. The technology of
analyzing server logs, tracing bitcoin transactions using wallet
identifiers, and so on, has been around for 

Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Jason via Marxism]

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Right, as I said in the other thread, that is a right wing talking point
and a blatant falsehood. It's yet another example of how Counterpunch has
no editorial or political standards, that it is acting without a sense of
responsibility. Maybe it's gotten less bad on Syria but that general
problem remains (and it's still publishing nonsense that calls the
Ukrainian government "fascist" which can only be done based on the same
political methods the Assadists use to dismiss the Syrian revolution).

The report https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf clearly says:

"We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on
the outcome of the 2016 election."

-Jason Hicks

On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 10:24 PM, Ken Hiebert via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-
> trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/ <
> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-
> trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/>"Anyway, the
> intelligence community — you know, the friendly folks at the CIA, FBI and
> NSA whom Democrats worship the way Republicans revered firefighters after
> 9/11 — says whatever Russian hacking occurred did not affect the outcome of
> the election.”
>
> I frankly doubt that the “intelligence community” said any such thing.
> How could they know how effective the Russian intervention was?
> Think of another historical example. The Italian election of 1948.  There
> is no dispute that’d the CIA intervened against the Communist Party.  But
> could any of us prove that the intervention was effective?  How could we
> prove that unless hundreds of thousands of voters kept diaries and we had
> access to those diaries?
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy <
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy>
>
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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-cyber/u-s-indictments-show-technical-evidence-for-russian-hacking-accusations-idUSKBN1K32X1


On Fri, Jul 27, 2018 at 4:12 AM, Michael Marking via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> *
>
>
> Yes! Where’s the real evidence?
>
> Crossing a thread line here, I agree with Louis Proyect, who wrote on
> Friday 2018.07.20, “Frankly, I don't care if Russia helped Trump get
> elected or not.” Nor am I convinced that a Clinton victory would have
> made much difference.
>
> Trump has performed a great service to the leadership and backers of
> both parties: he has provided a highly effective distraction. While
> various supporters and opponents have vociferously made their views
> known – and garnered a lot of media coverage in the process – the
> main event, the looting of the main body of the people, has gone or
> continued pretty much unnoticed in the press and among the people in
> the street. It’s all about tweets and abuse of expense accounts and
> Russian collusion, and not about the deeper story. Yes, Trump represents
> the ruling class, in the same way that a clown represents a circus. It
> doesn’t matter whether he does it intentionally or knowingly or not, but
> he does it anyway. He’s a great distraction.
>
> This whole matter of Russian collusion and the purloined DNC files
> serves as a good example, as a part of the distraction. Whether the
> collusion issue matters or not in the grand scheme of things, it has
> resulted in the insanity of just about everyone. Maybe I’m missing
> something here, so someone help me, but where is the evidence for any
> version of this story? I looked at the indictment: it has allegations,
> but no evidence. I looked at the DNI report: the same story. The gold
> standard for forensic evidence would be Clinton’s server, but, as Trump
> asked, where is it? (I doubt if Trump really comprehends the
> significance of his own question here.) Destruction of evidence is a
> crime, too, but does anyone care? I’m certainly not defending Trump
> here, but I don’t believe any statements by anyone from the FBI, CIA,
> NSA, or anyone else in the so-called intelligence community, nor do I
> have any confidence in whatever Putin or just about anyone else says.
> This whole thing is just a big show.
>
> When I tell someone I can’t accept the official version of this or that
> story (the JFK assassination, the 2001 WTC demolition, and so on), and
> people ask me what really happened, I almost always have to answer, “I
> don’t know, but the official story doesn’t work, it isn’t consistent
> with the facts”. But people have an extremely difficult time accepting
> that. It’s as if people demand an answer, even a wrong one, and refuse
> to be put into a position of ignorance. They’d rather be wrong than
> ignorant.
>
> I’m new to this Marxism thing. Somehow, until the last two years, I’d
> never been exposed to it. But it works well for my minimalist approach
> to certainty. It doesn’t matter if Putin helped Trump or if Wikileaks
> got the DNC files from any specific person or what really was behind
> any gas attack in Syria: the class analysis subsumes these things. It
> has been a little like reading Einstein’s General Theory: it encompasses
> the Special Theory, which generalizes Newton’s laws, and so on. It makes
> predictions which can be tested. It’s not complete, as we still don’t
> have a grand theory of everything, but it’s up the ladder.
>
> Of course, I get sucked into these ancillary questions, too. It’s fun,
> I’m a sucker for unsolved puzzles, and I like a good story and
> appreciate entertainment. Meanwhile, as Michelle Wolf pointed out at the
> White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the folks in Flint still don’t have
> clean drinking water. And, I might add, they’re still dying and
> otherwise suffering all over the world.
>
> I’m not asking anyone to drop these topics. As I said, I enjoy them.
> I’ve stopped reading some “news” sites since I began reading this list:
> it’s a great source of links to news and more.
>
> So I ask all you old-timers, in all humility, what have I been missing?
> Where is the real evidence that Julian Assange was or wasn’t duped,
> that he colluded or participated? While I’d find it hard to swallow a
> line that the Russian state didn’t fool around 

Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Michael Marking via Marxism]

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Yes! Where’s the real evidence? 

Crossing a thread line here, I agree with Louis Proyect, who wrote on
Friday 2018.07.20, “Frankly, I don't care if Russia helped Trump get
elected or not.” Nor am I convinced that a Clinton victory would have
made much difference. 

Trump has performed a great service to the leadership and backers of
both parties: he has provided a highly effective distraction. While
various supporters and opponents have vociferously made their views
known – and garnered a lot of media coverage in the process – the
main event, the looting of the main body of the people, has gone or
continued pretty much unnoticed in the press and among the people in
the street. It’s all about tweets and abuse of expense accounts and
Russian collusion, and not about the deeper story. Yes, Trump represents
the ruling class, in the same way that a clown represents a circus. It
doesn’t matter whether he does it intentionally or knowingly or not, but
he does it anyway. He’s a great distraction. 

This whole matter of Russian collusion and the purloined DNC files
serves as a good example, as a part of the distraction. Whether the
collusion issue matters or not in the grand scheme of things, it has
resulted in the insanity of just about everyone. Maybe I’m missing
something here, so someone help me, but where is the evidence for any
version of this story? I looked at the indictment: it has allegations,
but no evidence. I looked at the DNI report: the same story. The gold
standard for forensic evidence would be Clinton’s server, but, as Trump
asked, where is it? (I doubt if Trump really comprehends the
significance of his own question here.) Destruction of evidence is a
crime, too, but does anyone care? I’m certainly not defending Trump
here, but I don’t believe any statements by anyone from the FBI, CIA,
NSA, or anyone else in the so-called intelligence community, nor do I
have any confidence in whatever Putin or just about anyone else says.
This whole thing is just a big show. 

When I tell someone I can’t accept the official version of this or that
story (the JFK assassination, the 2001 WTC demolition, and so on), and
people ask me what really happened, I almost always have to answer, “I
don’t know, but the official story doesn’t work, it isn’t consistent
with the facts”. But people have an extremely difficult time accepting
that. It’s as if people demand an answer, even a wrong one, and refuse
to be put into a position of ignorance. They’d rather be wrong than
ignorant. 

I’m new to this Marxism thing. Somehow, until the last two years, I’d
never been exposed to it. But it works well for my minimalist approach
to certainty. It doesn’t matter if Putin helped Trump or if Wikileaks
got the DNC files from any specific person or what really was behind
any gas attack in Syria: the class analysis subsumes these things. It
has been a little like reading Einstein’s General Theory: it encompasses
the Special Theory, which generalizes Newton’s laws, and so on. It makes
predictions which can be tested. It’s not complete, as we still don’t
have a grand theory of everything, but it’s up the ladder. 

Of course, I get sucked into these ancillary questions, too. It’s fun,
I’m a sucker for unsolved puzzles, and I like a good story and
appreciate entertainment. Meanwhile, as Michelle Wolf pointed out at the
White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the folks in Flint still don’t have
clean drinking water. And, I might add, they’re still dying and
otherwise suffering all over the world. 

I’m not asking anyone to drop these topics. As I said, I enjoy them.
I’ve stopped reading some “news” sites since I began reading this list:
it’s a great source of links to news and more. 

So I ask all you old-timers, in all humility, what have I been missing?
Where is the real evidence that Julian Assange was or wasn’t duped,
that he colluded or participated? While I’d find it hard to swallow a
line that the Russian state didn’t fool around with computers and
opinions and engaged in propagandizing, is there any real evidence that
the DNC files ended up in the hands of Wikileaks because of the Russians
and not because of an insider’s leak? Is there any real evidence that
Assange knew one way or the other? As far as I can see, we (the
outsiders?) don’t really know anything for sure. That’s pretty
remarkable, in itself. In fact, that’s probably more interesting than
the truth behind the revelation of the files. Just as, the truth behind
the lack of a real, independent investigation into the 2001 WTC event is
probably just as interesting as, if not more so than, the event itself.
It’s one thing to commit a crime, and another thing – 

[Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Ken Hiebert via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/
 
"Anyway,
 the intelligence community — you know, the friendly folks at the CIA, FBI and 
NSA whom Democrats worship the way Republicans revered firefighters after 9/11 
— says whatever Russian hacking occurred did not affect the outcome of the 
election.”

I frankly doubt that the “intelligence community” said any such thing.  How 
could they know how effective the Russian intervention was?
Think of another historical example. The Italian election of 1948.  There is no 
dispute that’d the CIA intervened against the Communist Party.  But could any 
of us prove that the intervention was effective?  How could we prove that 
unless hundreds of thousands of voters kept diaries and we had access to those 
diaries?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Italy 



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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

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Right now, there's breaking news that Michael Cohen asserts that Trump knew
about the 2016 meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower before it took
place.

The entire Russian association is real and important, though it's
essentially a sideshow for the general carnival of corruption around the
president and his minions.

Cheers,
Mark L.
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Re: [Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Jason via Marxism]

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I think articles like this are unhelpful and dangerous, and this one is
certainly full of inaccuracies.

This one is particularly egregious:

"WikiLeaks didn’t get the DNC documents from Russia or any other state
actor. They got them from a disgruntled pro-Bernie Sanders staffer at the
DNC."

If anyone wants to review the evidence, it's clear that it was Russian
intelligence and the idea that it was a DNC staffer was a cover story.
Seymour Hersch backed up this cover story with the same "single-source
method" he's been using on Syria though he tried to walk this one back.

Now, you're not going to have a livestream of the Russian military carrying
out the DNC hack and then you could still claim it was faked. However, the
following claim is easily refutable:

"Anyway, the intelligence community — you know, the friendly folks at the
CIA, FBI and NSA whom Democrats worship the way Republicans revered
firefighters after 9/11 — says whatever Russian hacking occurred did not
affect the outcome of the election."

This is a common right wing talking point.

However, one can read the report
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf and it clearly says:

"We did not make an assessment of the impact that Russian activities had on
the outcome of the 2016 election."

The fact the left is repeating right wing talking points that are laughably
easy to refute is disturbing to me.

-Jason Hicks



On Thu, Jul 26, 2018 at 7:44 AM, Louis Proyect via Marxism <
marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:

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> https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-trump
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[Marxism] Why the Russia-Trump Collusion Conspiracy Theory Isn’t Catching On

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

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https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/07/26/why-the-russia-trump-collusion-conspiracy-theory-isnt-catching-on/
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