Now that the U.S. intelligence community has come out with its report, liberal media is proclaiming Russia “hacked the election.” What does it really mean and is it really a settled matter now? Let’s answer it in a Q&A form.

Well, it’s quite clear that the report says Putin personally ordered his minions to rig the 2016 U.S. election; he wanted to undermine the U.S. democracy; and he wanted Trump to win. What’s the debate?

Okay, you are referring to this paragraph in Page 7, right? We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump

Right! It’s crystal clear and quite damning!

Did you see the last sentence of that same paragraph? It says “We have high confidence in these judgments.” That term does NOT mean what normal people think it may mean. In fact, the definition of that term is in Page 23 of the document. It defines “High Confidence” as follows:

Judgments based on high-quality information from multiple sources.

That sounds good? Wait. It continues: It does not imply the assessment is a fact or a certainty; such judgments might be wrong.

So, you see, the conclusions of the intelligence report gave themselves a lot wiggle room to be totally wrong. BTW, the “high confidence” verbiage was also used to claim the Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. We all know how that turned out to be bogus.

How about the fact that Putin deliberately tried to help Trump?

Again, the statements start with this: We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him. All three agencies agree with this judgment. But it goes on to say that “CIA and FBI have high confidence; NSA has moderate confidence.”

Think about it. NSA is the ultimate hacking expert in the world but it has only “moderate confidence” that Putin wanted Trump to win or that Putin tried to discredit Hillary Clinton.

So the claims of this report is like someone saying, “My neighbor is a murderer.” Then after some time, they add, “I am pretty sure of that. I maybe wrong, so don’t hold me to it.” It’s really a form of slander.

But the CIA, FBI and NSA must have real evidences!

No evidence have been shown. A few weeks ago, in another report, DNI had mentioned a certain computer malware. But that one turned out to be an old, outdated Ukrainian software that is publicly available for purchase. So, right now, zero proof or evidence have been shown. Only pure assertions are made.

Several computer experts have called all these accusations bogus. This includes John McAfee (founder of the famed McAfee anti-virus software) has argued that Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leak. He rips apart CIA’s claim about indications of Cyrillic keyboard and Russian time stamp, since even an amateur hacker wouldn’t do such mistakes.

William Binney is an NSA whistleblower. He was once in charge of 60,000 employees at NSA and he actually designed the NSA spying system. He has argued that if the Russians truly did it, the NSA would have undeniable proof. Thus he refuses to believe the story of Obama administration.

It’s also worth mentioning that Craig Murray, former UK ambassador, has said that he flew to the U.S. and secretly met with a guy who handed him the DNC emails!!

Note that the DNC refused to let FBI analyze the hacked computers! This is very strange in multiple ways.

1.  The natural response of DNC should have been to invite the FBI. After all,  Republicans could have been behind the hacking and there’s no better political bombshell to win the election than a modern Watergate. DNC’s refusal to let FBI analyze the hacked computers strongly suggests that the DNC knew it was an inside job! Let’s not forget the rumors that a DNC employee, Seth Rich, was the one who leaked the emails. He was also found murdered in a suspicious manner two weeks before the emails were released by WikiLeaks.
2. If the FBI had known or even suspected that Russia was behind DNC hacking, they would have let DNC know that who would have then agreed to let the FBI investigate. Or, even if the DNC had refused, for some strange reasons, the FBI would have invoked national security and confiscated the computers.

How about whether Russia hacked the voting machines?

The report made it clear that never happened. (“DHS assesses that the types of systems Russian actors targeted or compromised were not involved in vote tallying.”)

Okay, but how all the fake news propaganda that Putin used to influence the election?

In the report, there is not a single mention of the so-called “fake news.” The entire story about fake news itself is fake news that was spread by Washington Post to demonize conservative and independent media. Basically, corporate media wants to kill the competition!

Does the report talk about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange?

Yes. It claims that the Russian secret service used hackers such as Guccifer 2.0 to pass on the emails to WikiLeaks. Again, these claims were made without any proof or evidence.

How about the Russian propaganda tool “RT”?

LOL. It’s funny that the report spent almost 7 (out of 25) pages just for RT, complaining about it, when western corporations control thousands of TV stations, newspapers, magazines, publications etc. All the mainstream media in the U.S. and Europe sing the same song. There is not a single corporate media that doesn’t demonize Putin or Assad, for example. So, for them to complain about ONE Russian channel is either humorous or revealing. Perhaps RT is like the kid who keeps shouting that the emperor is naked!

RT stands for Russia Today. You can look it up at rt.com, YouTube, Twitter etc. It’s a very professional media news outlet that has no corporate advertisements or sensational news or silly acts (think Don Lemon of CNN getting drunk on New Year’s Eve on live TV).

BTW, RT and RT America mostly employ Americans and British journalists. Some come from mainstream corporate media such as MSNBC. Thus, RT is not evil and it’s not fake news. It’s a very serious, intellectual media outlet that gives a different perspective, especially in foreign policy matters.

So why so much energy spent on attacking RT?

When the entire western media advocates just one point of view on certain matters, disproving one claim means disproving 1000s of media outlets. Thus media outlets such as RT (and others such as Breitbart) are real threats to the illusion of free press in western societies.

And why so much effort put into the Russia hacking claim?

Many reasons. One, to discredit and delegitimize Donald Trump. Remember how Trump challenged Obama’s birth certificate? Now it’s Obama’s turn. Second, it’s a great way to deflect from the actual contents of the WikiLeaks emails which show how corrupt and rigged the U.S. system is. Third, the media and the Establishment hate Trump and look for any chance to attack him. Fourth, there are very powerful forces that really want a war with Russia.

Shouldn’t we be afraid of Putin and treat him and/or Russia as our enemy?

The answer is No. Doesn’t mean he needs to be our best buddy, but we should treat him like we deal with China. There maybe some geopolitical reasons to turn him into our good ally as well. It’s complicated and is a topic for another blog post!

Related Blog Post: Why Hillary Lost: Trump Was Brexit++