Posted on

Despite the Hype “Russian Hacking” Claims Fail to Prove Altered Election Results

dr strangelove

January 6,2016

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Misleading the American people to advance a political narrative has been a hallmark of President Obama’s foreign and domestic policy. The most recent example is the administration’s attempt to conflate the hacking of the Democratic Party with potential cyberattacks on the US Election.

Last week, federal officials went as far as to tell the Washington Post that malware linked to Russian hackers was found on a laptop at Burlington Electric, a Vermont power company. By Monday the Post had recanted, writing that investigators “are finding evidence that the incident is not linked to any Russian government effort.”

The Obama administration and many Democrats as well as Republicans led by Sen. John McCain and Lindsey Graham have ordered hearings and are pushing the Russian hacking story instead of focusing on the hacking of Hillary Clintons unsecured servers and Clinton operative John Podesta being caught in a basic phishing hack giving access to all his emails.

In October the Clinton campaign declined to confirm the authenticity of the WikiLeak documents but called them “stolen, and ” the latest move by Russian operatives they claimed were trying to help Donald Trump.

The problem for Democrats is the WikiLeak released emails, proved unequivocally that the DNC had rigged the primary race against Bernie Sanders, worked in collusion with the mainstream media, the Hillary received debate questions ahead of time, that DNC staffers used inflammatory and derogatory language toward minorities, women and gays, but the most damming was the implication that the entire media appeared to be on the Clinton’s payroll.

Recount efforts failed as Trump picked up more votes and voting irregularities in Detroit pointed to DNC tampering.

Today DNI Chief Clapper took swipe at Trump, Assange as he defended the Russia Hack Intel. This is of course is the same James Clapper who in 2014 the Washington Post featured a story in which a group of congressmen led by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) were pushing for President Obama to fire, the director of national intelligence, claiming he misled Congress about the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance activity on American citizens.

NBC reported, Clapper without offering any evidence said Russia had “clearly assumed an even more aggressive cyber posture by increasing cyber espionage operations, leaking data stolen from these operations, and targeting political infrastructures systems.”

In mid-December  Jeh Johnson head of the Department of Homeland Security explained DHS’s cyber team was ready on election night and they didn’t see “anything that affected the ballot count,” he said.

When pressed, asking whether he could assure Americans that Russian hacking did not affect the outcome of the election.

Johnson said, “We see no evidence that hacking by any actor altered the ballot count for any cyber actions that deprived people of voting,”.

Posted on

How Julian Assange Turned WikiLeaks Into Trump’s Best Friend

Wikileaks_founder_Julian_Assange_theridgewoodblog

Can a lonely man in a tiny bedroom deliver a real October Surprise?

Max Chafkin
and
Vernon Silver
October 11, 2016 — 6:00 AM EDT

Julian Assange is 45 years old and, if an old online dating profile is to be believed, roughly 6 feet, 2 inches tall. He has soft features, prematurely silver hair, and skin that seems to border on translucent. This undercooked appearance is the result of more than four years of self-imposed confinement in a tiny bedroom in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He has little access to sunlight, few in-person companions—or really much of anything going on, except what’s on the internet.

The founder of the online publishing platform WikiLeaks was the world’s best-known activist hacker when he walked into the modest row house in 2012, applying for humanitarian asylum rather than face questioning in Sweden over accusations of rape and sexual molestation. He claimed the case had been ginned up by the U.S., which, he believes, has been secretly trying to have him extradited for much of the past decade. The U.S. opened a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks after the organization published hundreds of thousands of leaked State Department cables in 2010. Although he has not been formally charged, Assange has often implied—without much hard evidence—that the U.S. would gladly try to assassinate him.

So it wasn’t entirely surprising last week when, on the occasion of WikiLeaks’s 10-year anniversary, Assange abruptly cancelled a planned appearance on the embassy’s balcony, citing security concerns. Instead he opted to appear, Oz-like, via video at a heavily hyped press conference held in Berlin. The Oct. 4 event had been announced for the Volksbühne, a grand old playhouse that seats 800, but when guests began showing up just before 10 a.m., the entrance was locked.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-11/how-julian-assange-turned-wikileaks-into-trump-s-best-friend

Posted on

Assange vows Google, US election leaks as WikiLeaks turns 10

Wikileaks_founder_Julian_Assange_theridgewoodblog

The whistleblowing site was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, who today said he “feels sorry” for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Controversial website WikiLeaks began spilling secrets 10 years ago, and there’s more to come.

In coming weeks, the site is set to publish documents related to Google, the US presidential election and more, according to controversial founder Julian Assange.

A video showing the top 10 leaks on the site today opened a press conference marking the 10th anniversary of the whistleblower site, in which time it has published 10 million documents. Assange promised new information every week for the next 10 weeks, related to Google, military operations, arms trading and mass surveillance. He also promised all documents related to the US presidential election would be published before the vote on November 8.

https://www.cnet.com/news/assange-10-years-of-wikileaks-berlin/