Dear Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, I Am Not Sidney Blumenthal
By Kurt Eichenwald On 10/10/16

Updated | I am Sidney Blumenthal. At least, that is what Vladimir Putin—and, somehow, Donald Trump—seem to believe. And that should raise concerns about not only Moscow’s attempts to manipulate this election but also how Trump came to push Russian disinformation to American voters.

An email from Blumenthal—a confidant of Hillary Clinton and a man, second only to George Soros, at the center of conservative conspiracy theories—turned up in the recent document dump by WikiLeaks. At a time when American intelligence believes Russian hackers are trying to interfere with the presidential election, records have been fed recently to WikiLeaks out of multiple organizations of the Democratic Party, raising concerns that the self-proclaimed whistleblower group has become a tool of Putin’s government. But now that I have been brought into the whole mess—and transformed into Blumenthal—there is even more proof that the Russians are not only orchestrating this act of cyberwar but also really, really dumb.

...

http://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-sidney-blumenthal-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-benghazi-sputnik-508635

In Russian Hacks of Democrats, a Ghost of the Soviet Past
By Jeff Stein On 10/9/16

...

The best disinformation closely hews to widespread suspicions about its target. Wikileaks’s exposure of Hillary Clinton’s private speeches to Wall Street bankers, apparently in concert with Russian hackers, seems tailored to further alienate the party’s left wing, which is to say on-the-fence followers of Bernie Sanders.

But some of the purported excerpts from her speeches are obvious fabrications, says Nance.

One quote has her saying, “Muslim Immigration and Multicultural Madness have left a trail of misery and mayhem across Germany–with far worse to come because of demographics.” She supposedly goes on to say that “Muslims make up only 9% of Berlin’s population but account for 70% of young repeat criminals…”

...

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-hacks-democrats-ghost-soviet-past-508094

Multikultistan: A house of horrors for ordinary Germans
[hr]
From: orca100@upcmail.nl
To: podesta@law.georgetown.edu
Date: 2016-02-21 00:51
Subject: Multikultistan: A house of horrors for ordinary Germans


Britain is something of the odd man out in immigration-devastated Europe,
having also received large numbers of successful non-Western immigrants such
as Hindus/Sikhs and Chinese. By sharp contrast, the UK's Muslims, blacks,
Roma and other problem immigrant groups do no better than those on the
Continent, as I will show with statistics at a later date.

Muslim Immigration and Multicultural Madness have left a trail of misery and
mayhem across Germany - with far worse to come because of demographics

· Muslims make up only 9% of Berlin's population, yet account for 70% of young repeat criminals, revealed Berlin public prosecutor Roman Reusch http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-51448987.html. To be more precise, 46% of Berlin's juvenile serial criminals are of Arab descent, while 33% of them have Turkish ancestry http://www.bz-berlin.de/archiv/jugendkriminalitaet-article961342.html. In an un-German display of harsh-truth telling, Reusch said in Der Spiegel that "in parts [of Berlin], the population consist almost exclusively of problem cases." As he tells it, immigrant children as young as six or seven years old turn to crime and grow up to see honest hard-working people as targets - walking sources of easy money. German society is completely powerless in the face of growing ruthless violence and crime. To describe the German police and criminal-justice system as a big joke would be unfair to big jokes. You won't be surprised to hear that the outspoken public prosecutor has meanwhile been sacked from his job and banned from talking to the media.

...

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/295

07.05.2007
SPIEGEL-STREITGESPRÄCH

„Das Problem explodiert“

Verständnisvoll zuhören oder knallhart durchgreifen? Der Berliner Oberstaatsanwalt Roman Reusch und der Hamburger Strafrechtsprofessor Bernd-Rüdeger Sonnen diskutieren über den richtigen Umgang mit gewalttätigen Jugendlichen.
Reusch, 53, ist Oberstaatsanwalt in Berlin und leitet dort die Abteilung für junge Intensivtäter. Der Hamburger Strafrechtsprofessor Sonnen, 66, ist Vorsitzender der Deutschen Vereinigung für Jugendgerichte und Jugendgerichtshilfen.

SPIEGEL: Herr Reusch, Herr Sonnen, wann sind Sie das letzte Mal von Jugendlichen verprügelt worden?
Reusch: Das letzte Mal habe ich als Kind Prügel kassiert, aber das war etwas anderes. Früher haben wir Cowboy und Indianer gespielt. Wir wären nie auf die Idee gekommen, uns Killerboys zu nennen und Handys oder Turnschuhe zu rauben. Wir waren harmlos, heute beobachte ich die totale Verrohung.

...

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-51448987.html

Jugendkriminalität
28. August 2010 16:10

"In Berlin werden 20 Prozent aller Gewalttaten von nur 1000 türkischen und arabischen jugendlichen Tätern begangen, eine Bevölkerungsgruppe, die 0,3 Promille der gesamten Berliner Bevölkerung stellt."

Für diese Zahlen gab es gestern keinerlei offizielle Bestätigung.Allerdings schrieb Jugendrichterin Kirsten Heisig bereits 2008: „Bei Delikten der Gewaltkriminalität ist auf der Täterseite die Anzahl junger Männer nicht deutscher Herkunft – es muss hier vorrangig von türkischstämmigen, aber noch deutlicher von arabischen Tätern die Rede sein – dreimal höher als bei deutschen Jugendlichen und Heranwachsenden.“In seinem Papier „Migration ohne Integration“ verwies der damalige Berliner Oberstaatsanwalt Roman Reusch schon 2007 darauf, dass insgesamt „80 Prozent aller eingetragenen Intensivtäter einen Migrationshintergrund“ haben. Davon entfielen 46 Prozent auf Araber und 33 Prozent auf Türken.Und das Berliner Forum Gewaltprävention der Senatsverwaltung für Inneres verwies 2008 in einem Papier darauf, dass „Jugendliche mit Migrationshintergrund die Population der 14- bis 18-jährigen Inhaftierten zahlenmäßig dominieren“.

http://www.bz-berlin.de/artikel-archiv/jugendkriminalitaet

What is WikiLeaks
3 November 2015

WikiLeaks is a multi-national media organization and associated library. It was founded by its publisher Julian Assange in 2006.

WikiLeaks specializes in the analysis and publication of large datasets of censored or otherwise restricted official materials involving war, spying and corruption. It has so far published more than 10 million documents and associated analyses.

“WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.” - Julian Assange, Der Spiegel Interview

WikiLeaks has contractual relationships and secure communications paths to more than 100 major media organizations from around the world. This gives WikiLeaks sources negotiating power, impact and technical protections that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve.

...

https://wikileaks.org/What-is-Wikileaks.html

In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots
Glenn Greenwald

Oct. 11 2016

Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable, and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fearmongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him?

But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. — more so than ever — and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.

To see how extreme and damaging this behavior has become, let’s just quickly examine two utterly false claims that Democrats over the past four days — led by party-loyal journalists — have disseminated and induced thousands of people, if not more, to believe. On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official, Malcolm Nance, within hours of the archive’s release, posted a tweet claiming — with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive — that it was compromised with fakes:

...

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/11/in-the-democratic-echo-chamber-inconvenient-truths-are-recast-as-putin-plots/

Could Women Be Trusted With Their Own Pregnancy Tests?
Unmarried teenagers would jump off bridges, and other
crazy reasons at-home kits weren’t approved until the late 1970s.
By PAGAN KENNEDY | JULY 29, 2016


In 1967, Margaret Crane was a 26-year-old product designer at Organon Pharmaceuticals, sketching face-cream bottles and ointment jars. One day, as she walked through a lab at the company’s headquarters in New Jersey, she spotted rows of test tubes on shiny racks that twinkled under the industrial lights.

“What are these?” she asked one of the scientists.

Pregnancy tests, he said. A doctor would collect urine from his patient and send it to the company’s lab for analysis. The results would be sent back to the doctor, who would then inform the patient.

But Ms. Crane immediately saw another possibility: Why not cut out the doctor entirely?

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/opinion/sunday/could-women-be-trusted-with-their-own-pregnancy-tests.html

Exclusive: Snowden Tried to Tell NSA About Surveillance Concerns, Documents Reveal
By Jason Leopold, Marcy Wheeler, and Ky Henderson
June 4, 2016

...

Hundreds of internal NSA documents, declassified and released to VICE News in response to our long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, reveal now for the first time that not only was the truth about the "single email" more complex and nuanced than the NSA disclosed to the public, but that Snowden had a face-to-face interaction with one of the people involved in responding to that email. The documents, made up of emails, talking points, and various records — many of them heavily redacted — contain insight into the NSA's interaction with the media, new details about Snowden's work, and an extraordinary behind-the-scenes look at the efforts by the NSA, the White House, and US Senator Dianne Feinstein to discredit Snowden.

The trove of more than 800 pages [pdf at the end of this story], along with several interviews conducted by VICE News, offer unprecedented insight into the NSA during this time of crisis within the agency. And they call into question aspects of the US government's long-running narrative about Snowden's time at the NSA.

...

https://news.vice.com/article/edward-snowden-leaks-tried-to-tell-nsa-about-surveillance-concerns-exclusive

Feb. 10 2016 3:50 PM
Is Donald Trump a Fascist?

Yes and no.
By Isaac Chotiner

...

To discuss Trump’s rise and its historical echoes, I called Robert Paxton, a leading authority on the history of fascism. A regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and an expert on Vichy France, Paxton has written numerous books on European history. We discussed the ways in which Trump is and is not a fascist, whether Trump believes what he says, and why now, of all times, so many Americans seem to be embracing him. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

Isaac Chotiner: As a historian of fascism, what do you make of Trump’s rise?

Robert Paxton: Well, it’s astonishing and depressing because he’s totally foreign to any of the skills that are wanted in a president of the United States. What we call him is another matter. There are certainly some echoes of fascism, but there are also very profound differences.

...

It’s the same thing. It’s enormously tempting. Anyway, the echoes you can deal with on two levels. First of all, there are the kinds of themes Trump uses. The use of ethnic stereotypes and exploitation of fear of foreigners is directly out of a fascist’s recipe book. “Making the country great again” sounds exactly like the fascist movements. Concern about national decline, that was one of the most prominent emotional states evoked in fascist discourse, and Trump is using that full-blast, quite illegitimately, because the country isn’t in serious decline, but he’s able to persuade them that it is. That is a fascist stroke. An aggressive foreign policy to arrest the supposed decline. That’s another one. Then, there’s a second level, which is a level of style and technique. He even looks like Mussolini in the way he sticks his lower jaw out, and also the bluster, the skill at sensing the mood of the crowd, the skillful use of media.

...


http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/02/is_donald_trump_a_fascist_an_expert_on_fascism_weighs_in.html

Monday, Nov 27, 2000 06:18 PM CDT
How Florida Democrats torpedoed Gore
If the vice president had locked up his party's traditional base in the Sunshine State, the election wouldn't be tied up in the courts.
Jim Hightower

...

These votes weren’t “lost” to misaligned butterfly ballots, pregnant chads or some conniving election official who deposited them in a closet. Rather, these were the uncast ballots of almost half of the American electorate, who chose not to vote this year largely because they feel they’ve been cast out of the process by a vacuous, cynical and elitist political system that no longer addresses their needs and aspirations.

These mostly are middle- and low-income folks, people making less than $50,000 a year. While they make up some 80 percent of the U.S. population, exit polls on Nov. 7 found that for the first time they’ve fallen to less than half of the voting population. As the Clinton-Gore-Lieberman Democrats have jerked the party out from under this core populist constituency, pursuing the money and adopting the policies of the corporate and investor elite, the core constituency of the party has — big surprise — steadily dropped away. In 1992, the under-$50,000 crowd made up 63 percent of voters. In 1996, after Clinton and Gore had relentlessly and very publicly pushed NAFTA, the WTO and other Wall Street policies for four years, the under-$50,000 crowd dropped to 52 percent of voters. After four more years of income stagnation and decline for these families under the regime of the Clinton-Gore “New Democrats,” the under-$50,000 crowd dropped this year to only 47 percent of voters.

At the same time, those who are prospering under the Wall Street boom, cheered on by the policies of both the Republican and Democratic leadership, have become ever more enthusiastic voters. In 1996, voters with incomes above $100,000 (about 3 percent of the population), made up 9 percent of the turnout; this year, they were 15 percent of the turnout.

This rising income skew among voters causes both parties to push more policies that favor the affluent minority, which causes an even greater turn-off for the majority, which causes … well, you can see the downward spiral we’re in. This is especially damaging to Democrats, since the non-voters are their natural constituency. This constituency feels discarded, not only by the Democrats, but by the whole process.

...

http://www.salon.com/2000/11/28/hightower/

Saturday, Dec 19, 2015 07:00 AM CDT
George W. Bush vs. Al Gore, 15 years later: We really did inaugurate the wrong guy
On the anniversary of the Supreme Court ruling that installed W., a look back at all the mistakes along the way
Edward Foley

Bush v. Gore is the US Supreme Court decision that has been credited with—or blamed for—ending the 2000 presidential election with its interrupted recount still unfinished. Bush and Gore, of course, were the two candidates: George W. Bush, the governor of Texas and son of the forty-first president, challenging the incumbent vice president, Al Gore. Bush v. Gore, the court case, is often used interchangeably as shorthand for Bush-versus-Gore, the entirety of the dispute over the outcome of the election.

But that dispute encompassed much more than just the US Supreme Court’s decision, which in truth did not even end the fight. Rather, the end came the next day, December 13, when Gore announced he would not attempt to renew the recount through additional proceedings in Florida’s courts. Had he done so, he and Bush conceivably might have pursued their fight all the way to Congress, as Hayes and Tilden had over the 1876 election. If Bush-versus-Gore had reached Congress it would have been the first real test of the impenetrably ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887, with unpredictable consequences. Thus it was Gore’s concession of December 13, and not the Court’s ruling of the previous day, that truly ended the fight for the presidency as a practical matter.

Bush v. Gore, the court case, moreover, concerned only one aspect of the overall vote-counting dispute: the so-called dimpled or hanging chads produced by incomplete puncturing of punch-card ballots. Bush v. Gore did not concern issues that had arisen over absentee ballots, which the Gore campaign abandoned in the wake of public criticism. Much more significantly, Bush v. Gore did not address the problem of the so-called butterfly ballot, which apparently caused thousands of Gore supporters to mistakenly cast their ballots instead for Pat Buchanan, the conservative pundit running as a minor-party candidate. Even Buchanan acknowledged, both then and subsequently, that Gore would have been president but for the butterfly ballot.

Nor did Bush v. Gore, as presented to the US Supreme Court, involve all the issues concerning dimpled and hanging chads. The US Supreme Court was not in a posture to decide what would have been a fair process for the counting of these chads, from the standpoint of either Florida’s legislature setting up that process in advance of the election or Florida’s judiciary attempting to make the best of the situation once confronted with the challenge of how to handle these chads given the state’s existing statutory framework. Instead, the US Supreme Court’s role was limited to considering whether the Florida Supreme Court had acted improperly in its treatment of the chads, and, if so, what to do about the impropriety at that juncture and given the date by which Florida’s recount procedures needed to end.

...

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/19/george_w_bush_vs_al_gore_15_years_later_we_really_did_inaugurate_the_wrong_guy/