January 14, 2019

"'Well, well, well,' went the general line in the Russian media, 'look what we have here.'"

I guess that's a pretty rough translation, printed in "Fake News as ‘Moral Imperative’? Democrats’ Alabama Move Hints at Ugly 2020" by Jim Rutenberg in the NYT.  The Russian media, we're told, "were downright gleeful over new reports that a group of Democrats had used online disinformation in the campaign against Roy Moore, the Republican candidate for Senate in Alabama in 2017."
Their reaction was understandable, given the news that American political operatives had tried the same kind of troll operations that United States intelligence officials believe the Russian government used in an attempt to swing the 2016 presidential election to Donald J. Trump.

The Russian news outlet Sputnik jumped on the news, saying last week that the Alabama operation “seems to cast Democrats’ Russiagate accusations into further doubt.”

50 comments:

Darrell said...

Russia spent only $4700 on election ads before Nov. 6th--according to Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai . The Democrats spent $100,000's screwing Roy Moore. Of course the "Russia" thing is a lie concocted by Hillary's people, and picked up by Obama's people.

Darrell said...

The Russian spending was from a private firm that was trying to sell Social Media engineering services by demonstrating their effectiveness. They wanted to work for Western celebrities and movie and record companies and such. They influenced the election as much as that YouTube video caused Benghazi and Egypt.

Lucid-Ideas said...

"Ugly 2020"

What, more ugly?

n.n said...

Democrats spent $100,000's screwing Roy Moore

The warlock trial is over and still no baby, but they did manage to label the man.

The press, the DNC, social media and search engines, civil rights bulwarks, and popular culture were, are gleefully engaged in manipulating minds in order to force electoral outcomes. Politics is not a child's game.

Unknown said...

They pounced on the news.

chuck said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Limited blogger said...

The NYT will use this as a teachable moment.

For Republicans.

Don't you dare stoop as low as the Democrats did!

chuck said...

Where's the evidence that Russia tried to swing the election to Trump? Looks... Ah, the NY Times. Fake news don't need no stinkin' evidence. I'll bet Rutenberg also believes in plastic Turkeys.

Big Mike said...

If Doug Jones had the slightest scintilla of honor he would resign in humiliation and there would be a new election. But the words “honor” and “Democrat” do not belong in the same sentence.

traditionalguy said...

The FBI has used false accusations of political foes being secret Communists at large since 1922. They feel entitled to still use that weapon no matter that Russia has not been Communist since 1992 and everybody in DC and the EU has actually accepted huge bribes from Putin for the last 20 years. So using it on Roy Moore was easy for them.

Putin watches Trump standing up to DC’s corruption and he laughs as he vacations in Crimea, Russia.

madAsHell said...

I'm hoping that someone else is keeping score, but is this bad news, or good news???.....and who is it intended to smear?

John Pickering said...

Ann adds the Russian outlet Sputnik to PowerLine and the Daily Mail as her preferred news sources, and of course stands tall to defend the integrity and decency of Roy Moore. Here are Ann's readers, who if they're not Russian bots might as well be.
Ann and her readers genuinely don't care a bit that the sitting president is something ranging from the dupe, to the stooge, to the witting agent of Russian state, intelligence and organized crime interests. Ann wouldn't care if Trump shot a person to death in the middle of Fifth Avenue, that's how much in love she is.
Hey, do you think Trump, like other ex-presidents, will still get Secret Service protection when he's in jail for treason, bribery, and other high crime and misdemeanors? Will it matter whether the lockup is state or federal? We'll find out!

exhelodrvr1 said...

"don't care a bit that the sitting president is something ranging from the dupe, to the stooge, to the witting agent of Russian state, intelligence and organized crime interests."

You think if there were evidence, it wouldn't have leaked by now?

alanc709 said...

John Pickering, you'll be in prison for sedition before Trump sees the inside of a lockup. You're beyond delusional. Go back on your meds before you hurt yourself.

Mike Sylwester said...

The nonsense about Russia buying Internet ads is explained well in an article titled Mueller Indictment - The "Russian Influence" Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme on the Moon of Alabama website.

A Russian businessman named Yevgeni Prigozhin owned a food-catering business called Concord Management. At some point in time, some local people were using the Internet to criticize his business. Therefore he himself initiated a project to counteract those criticisms on the Internet.

This experience gave Prigozhin the idea for a new business, helping other organizations to use the Internet to affect public opinion. Prigozhin's new business was the now notorious Internet Research Agency.

It's a private business, the activities of which include creating various websites and webpages on the Internet for various purposes.

When Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller indicted various Russian evil-doers for meddling in and stealing our 2016 election, he indicted Prigozhin, the Internet Research Agency and Concord Management.

Concord Management is Prigozhin's food-catering business, and this was the accused party that hired a law firm in the USA to defend itself against Mueller' bogus indictment.

The public still does not appreciate that Mueller has indicted a Russian food-catering business, which is defending itself in a US court and thus is disgracing Mueller, disgracing his Special Counsel gang of Trump-hating lawyers and is disgracing the United States of America.

Nonapod said...

The use of disinformation for political ends isn't new. What is new is the scope and scale of the reaction to it, the piling of bullshit upon bullshit by the media-political complex, the weaponization of US government agenices against a sitting president, and the tone and tenor of the rage directed against those who are even slightly skeptical of the false narratives.

We live in a time where of social medai mobs and (mis)information warfare. As always, be skeptical. Question everything. Be wary of believing something absent real evidence just because it confirms your own biases.

narciso said...

The times has printed Soviet propaganda (duranty)so often it's not even funny same for Castro (matthews) north vietnamese (halberstam Sheehan) fmln (bonner) et al.

bagoh20 said...

John,
Do you think Hillary broke the law with her private server, or deleting thousands of subpoenaed emails, or collecting millions for herself and her husband from her position as Secretary of State, or trying to sway an election by funding a fictitious dossier through the Russians? Any of those? All of them?

narciso said...

Prigozhin had his merc outfit (Wagner corp) who had their butts kicked in eastern syria.
In a city of 300 oligarchs it's hard to get noticed.

Bay Area Guy said...

Both sides use disinformation to bollox up the other side.

Short of burglarizing your opponent's headquarters (See, Watergate, 1972), it is standard fare for political campaigns and elections.

Dems: When you do it, it taints the results!

Dems: When we do it, all's fair in the heat of political battle!

Jim at said...

Ann and her readers genuinely don't care a bit that the sitting president is something ranging from the dupe, to the stooge, to the witting agent of Russian state, intelligence and organized crime interests. - Pickering

I mentioned people like this the other day. Insane.
Completely, batshit insane.

Limited blogger said...

Amazing that the Democrat tampering is established as a proven fact. Thought it would be deemed 'alleged' until past 2020.

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

I guess that's a pretty rough translation

Sputnik is a international propaganda outfit owned by the Russian government. It is printed in English so no Russian to English translation needed. Just the need not to quote the articles so people can make up their own mind.

Mike Sylwester said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Birkel said...

NYT quotes Russian press.
Althouse quotes the NYT.
Therefore, Althouse believes the Russian press.

Progressive syllogism?

Bill, Republic of Texas said...

So when are we going to see indictments against all the Obama operatives running this disinformation campaign?

All the DOJ has to do is copy and paste the Mueller for indictments of the Russians for "Fraud Against the United States."

If it's a crime then prosecute all of it.

Mike Sylwester said...

The Pentagon, CIA, FBI, State Department and other US Government agencies pay contractors to write reports about foreign threats. The agencies then use such reports in order to justify bigger budgets for their own agencies.

So, if some private contractor can make a plausible argument that Russians meddling on the Internet are a threat to our national security, then that contractor will be awarded a government contract to write such a report.

On the other hand, a contractor that proposed to write a report showing that such meddling is a trivial concern never will be awarded a government contract. All contracts must show some foreign threat that would justify bigger budgets for such agencies.

In this situation, various contractors earn a lot of money by writing reports showing that foreign organizations -- for example, the Internet Research Agency in Russia -- are threats to our national security. Such reports justify bigger budgets for our Central Intelligence Agency, which needs more manpower and money to counteract such foreign threats.

Russia's Internet Research Agency threatens the USA's Democracy by meddling in and stealing our Presidential elections for unworthy candidates like Donald Trump.

=====

Any such Russian business is assumed to be controlled by the Kremlin. In particular, the Internet Research Agency surely was buying Facebook ads on orders from the Kremlin.

The business owner is assumed to be "close to Putin" and always is called an "oligarch". In this particular case, the businessman -- the oligarch close to Putin -- is Yevgeni Prigozhin, who primarily owns a food-catering business that supplies food for cafeterias, banquets and eating places in Moscow.

This is what is being investigated by Robert "The FBI Whitewasher" Mueller.

narciso said...

And Concord catering just happens to interfere with muellers former client Facebook, just a coincidence, now there was thos kerfluffle of a fling between guccifer and a bond film extra, that went away.

Leland said...

Going back to Johnathan Turley's question; if it is just cognitive bias; wouldn't the FBI be opening an investigation into the Alabama collusion and meddling? If for no other reason, than to rule out what happened in Alabama is not what happened in the federal election. With VPN's, currently marketing all over the place on the internet, it is not difficult to mask bots in Alabama to look like they are in Russia (or vice versa).

narciso said...

Yes the dems had a version of the plumbers, that would be Intertel chalk full of fmr?? Puzzle palace and Kennedy operatives like Walter sheridan, they did security for the NFL amomg other private work, and political surveillance, akin to terry lenzners igi.

Mike Sylwester said...

It's likely that the people who used fake Russian bots to sabotage Roy Moore's campaign ultimately hoped to win a threat-analysis contract from the US Government.

Those people have gained actual experience and have proved a threat concept. They did this secretly, but officials in the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, etc. who make the decisions to award threat-analysis contracts will be adequately informed about those people's special experience.

After all, those people know a lot about Russian bots and about how such bots can affect US elections. Who else should win the US Government's contract to write threat-analysis studies of how Russian bots can affect US elections?

The contractors who write such studies and the government officials who award such contracts know each other. It's the "revolving door". The contract officials eventually retire and then get hired by the contractors.

narciso said...

I didnt know about them till I read James Hogans spooks, molded interference also touches on that, since it focused on professional football and mob ties (this is the book that moldea hired Ken Starr to avoid libel charges)

Drago said...

So, just to summarize Pickering: we are supposed to go "all in" on believing that for which there exists zero evidence which is literally admitted to by the participants themselves all the while ignoring actual, once again admitted, evidence of that very type of behavior on the part of the dems!!

As noted earlier on a different thread, actual, demonstrable, real, admitted democrat/lefty/LLR subterfuge and collusion and collaboration and shenanigans is to be overlooked, if not praised (!), while clearly falsely constructed accusations against republicans are to be fully criminalized!!

Pickering, like Inga and like LLR Chuck perform a useful service on Althouseblog showing us a potential Beria-like/Kafkaesque future that awaits should the left ever gain sufficient power.

Mike Sylwester said...

John Pickering at 1:43 PM
Ann adds the Russian outlet Sputnik to PowerLine and the Daily Mail as her preferred news sources .... Will it matter whether the lockup is state or federal? We'll find out!

Usually John Pickering makes more sense than he makes today.

Maybe he's very drunk today, but his fundamental problem is that he feels absolutely certain that Donald Trump has been being blackmailed by Russian Intelligence.

Pickering's certainty is similar to the certainty that the Trump-haters in our Intelligence Community felt already in mid-2015 (fifteen). Their reasoning was that Trump was a sleazy businessman doing business with sleazy Russians, and therefore he was being blackmailed by Russian Intelligence.

Trump must have been watching prostitutes pissing on hotel beds in Moscow, and Russian Intelligence must have secretly videotaped him watching. Furthermore, Russian Intelligence must have used those videotapes to blackmail him.

If Trump was not watching pissing prostitutes, then he was doing a lot of other sleazy stuff that was being videotaped secretly by Russian Intelligence. The essential point was that he must have been being blackmailed by Russian Intelligence.

This supposed blackmail was the initial certainty of the Trump-haters in the US Intelligence Community. Eventually the blackmail idea was replaced by the collusion idea. Instead of being blackmailed by Russian Intelligence, Trump was colluding with Russian Intelligence to steal the 2016 Presidential election from Hillary Clinton.

The blackmail idea has remained in some Trump-haters' minds to the present day. For example, Sally "The Logan Act Enforcer" Yates accused Michael Flynn mainly of being vulnerable to RUSSIAN BLACKMAIL for violating THE LOGAN ACT.

chuck said...

> It's a private business, the activities of which include creating various websites and webpages on the Internet for various purposes.

IIRC, David Axelrod's business specialized in creating phony grass roots movements. I am so old I recall when the first advertisement going out over the internet was a scandal...

Bay Area Guy said...

Some simple facts:

China population: 1.4 Billion
Russia population: 144 Million

China GDP: 14 Trillion (2nd highest in world)
Russia GDP: 1.7 Trillion (11th highest in world)

China military: A whole lot of Asians, not too many nukes
Russia military: Not many Rooskies, but a lotta nukes (many obselete from Cold War era)

Ever since the Sino-Split (1972), and Soviet Collapse (1989), China has ascended into a global economic power, while Russia has fallen by the wayside.

That's life.

China is our economic rival. But as long as they aren't invading countries or subverting democracies across the globe (like the Commies did), we can live with them.

Russia is too small to be our economic rival. They have a lotta old Nukes, which probably don't work too well. But are they threatening us or the world, militarily? I tend to doubt it. No need to expand NATO into their backyard. If they attempt to invade Latvia again, we can revisit this.

Bottom line:

Post Cold War, the world is a much safer place. Russia ain't no longer a threat. China has grown leaps and bounds, but probably isn't a threat either. We can co-exist with an economic rival.

No need to fear the Putin.

That is all.

Unknown said...

Even if Trump was all that Pickering claims in his unhinged rant, the stone cold truth remains.... he's still worlds better than Hillary would have been. Hands down.

Putin, for all his faults, at least vaguely has somewhat of a moral compass. He's out to enrich himself, not remake mankind in his own utopian image.

Hillary wanted to be the next Hitler and make the new German Citizen.

--Vance

Charlie Currie said...

Mike Sylwester said:
"The public still does not appreciate that Mueller has indicted a Russian food-catering business, which is defending itself in a US court and thus is disgracing Mueller, disgracing his Special Counsel gang of Trump-hating lawyers and is disgracing the United States of America."

Oh, it gets better than that. The catering company wasn't even in business at the time of the supposed Russian meddling. As is said, he indicted a ham sandwich.

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

When I was a young lad in kneepants, Grandpa Gritzkofe would ask us kids if we had heard the story of the three holes in the ground.

No.

Well, well, well.

narciso said...

and this was why, dubelier, who has practiced in Miami as well as new York courtrooms, was behaving a little like otter Stratton, because mueller was behaving ridiculously

iowan2 said...

Pickering, maybe you can explain exactly what evidence leads you to the conclusion that Trump is either in concert with Russia or is being blackmailed by them.
I await your explanation.
Don't forget. I have been paying attention since 2 days after the election when Clinton's wife sobered up enough to blame Russia. Having paid attention, every single accusation made has been debunked...that I am aware of.

The Godfather said...

I propose the following thought experiment about Russian bots interfering with US elections:

1. Someone posts the following statement on the internet: "The sitting President of the United States is something ranging from the dupe, to the stooge, to the witting agent of Russian state, intelligence and organized crime interests."

2. How can we determine whether or not that post was made by a Russian bot or a human US person?

3. What difference does it make?

Bay Area Guy said...

During the Cold War, when nuclear weapons pointed at the US -- the Dems say, "why can't we have peace with the Russians?

After the Cold War, when nuclear weapons are not pointed at the US -- the Dems say, "The Russians attacked our election. We are at war with Putin!"

CWJ said...

"...the sitting president is something ranging from the dupe, to the stooge, to the witting agent of Russian state, intelligence and organized crime interests."

C'mon Pickering. Examples please! I'm so tired of this evidence-free crap.

narciso said...

the problem is we are wedded to the same tired narratives, for at least 25 years now:

http://securitystudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/SSG-New-Way-Forward-in-the-ME-01142019.pdf

DEEBEE said...

One was obviously corrupt while the other was laudable, because shut up!

tim in vermont said...

C'mon Pickering. Examples please! I'm so tired of this evidence-free crap.

It’s all you are going to get, and you’ll like it! Because reasons!

tim in vermont said...

When John Pickering explains to me why Obama being caught on an open mic asking Putin to ease up on him before the election so that he could be more “flexible” after the election isn’t collusion, I am going to figure that he is just one more partisan hack with nothing but his own certainty as evidence.

tim in vermont said...

One unfortunate thing about this blog is the low quality of most of the trolls.

Gretchen said...

Remember when Hillary and Obama tried to cozy up with the Russians, Hillary had her silly "reset" aka "overcharge" button?

Remember when Obama told Medvedev he'd be more flexible after the election

Remember when The Dems laughed at silly Romney for saying the Russians were our primary geopolitical threat.

Why are they suddenly enemy number one? Certainly they are bad actors, and always have been, but conservatives have always been wary of Russia, it was the Democrats who loved them. It is almost as if the Democrats needed a scapegoat.