Holier Than Thou?

Littlechild@emperorsnuclothes.com/ July 18, 2018/ Uncategorized

Special council Robert Mueller must be feeling considerable pressure to “deliver the goods.” It’s become quite apparent to EVERY Republican, MOST independents, and even a few Democrats that the Russian Collusion probe is a bust. Not only has he failed to find evidence of collusion with Russia, but Americans have become aware that his past indictments of George Papadopolus, and Paul Manafort have NOTHING to do with Russian “collusion” either. Mueller has been reduced, if you’ll excuse the analogy, to sniffing around the Stormy Daniels affair. As if anyone cares. So, what’s the poor Special Counsel to do???….Indict some more people, of course! And, what’s worse, he does so on the advent of President Trump’s summit with President Vladimir Putin. Let me share some thoughts on this matter.

Before going any further, however, I must confess straight away that I am not an internet maven in any sense of the word. In fact, I’m not even what you would call “internet savvy”. (You’d have to go to an average high school student for such expertise!). So, my analysis of events having to do with the internet must be taken with the proverbial “grain of salt”. Having said that, however, I will say that when I began looking into the 2016 “Russian meddling” issue, it looked to me that a good case could be made that Russia DID indeed meddle in our election. One of the key players is a Russian organization called the “Internet Research Agency”, or IRA. Wikipedia has an informative article on the company:

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

This company, based in the Olgino area of Saint Petersburg, is said to employ over a thousand bloggers with several operational goals, among them, to criticize the Ukraine, promote Russia, praise Putin, vilify Putin’s opponent Alexi Navalny, and other goals as well. It is also claimed to have fomented strife in the US by organizing protests and counter protests concerning a number of “hot button” issues, and to do so in such a way as to BRING BOTH GROUPS TOGETHER at the same place and time hoping to bring about a clash between them.

Pretty nasty stuff, if true. And, if true, would garner my opprobrium and condemnation. Now, as mentioned above, being no expert in internet forensics, I perused the web for assessments on this matter by those more knowledgeable than I. It was surprising to me, therefore, to come across a number of contrarian assessments. I first ran across posts from Paul Sperry a past Media Fellow at the Hoover Institution. The gist of Sperry’s analysis was that he felt that Mueller’s second round of indictments were quite strange. The way he put it: there were no raids, no informants, no witnesses, no sourcing, no seizures of servers for forensic analysis and no attributions. He questioned, therefore, whether the sole basis for the indictments came from CrowdStrike, a DNC cyber organization, with very partisan biases. And, remember, in regard to Mueller’s FIRST round of indictments (February, 2018), his team is STILL stonewalling and defying a judge’s orders to produce evidence supporting the indictment of Concord Management And Consulting. Representatives for Concord have, surprisingly, challenged Mueller to produce the evidence justifying the indictment. Mueller’s team have claimed that they “need more time to produce the evidence”!!!… What???… One would THINK that if you indict a person or organization, that you’d HAVE the evidence readily at hand! But…apparently not!… Strange, isn’t it?

Another, tech savvy skeptic that I ran across is a fellow with the assumed name of Kim DotCom (née Kim Schmidt). DotCom is a wildly successful internet entrepreneur. He’s founded half a dozen Internet companies, and a couple of decades ago he founded MegaUpload, an Internet site that, during its hay day, had annual revenues of ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY FIVE MILLION DOLLARS. MegaUpload ALONE carried, at that time, 4% of the total traffic across the ENTIRE INTERNET. He subsequently has been embroiled in a number of legal battles, not yet resolved, having to do with copyright infringements and the like. But, suffice it to say, the man knows his way around the Internet. Which is why I felt compelled to take notice when he opined that Mueller’s SECOND ROUND of indictments are SO “light on evidence”, that they should be, in his words, “placed on a weight watcher’s front page!” So, while Mueller’s indictments MAY have merit, or may have some merit, there IS also room for some doubt as well.

But, suppose, even IF there is validity to the accusations of meddling by the Russians, is it appropriate for us to be SO outraged? Can WE claim that we’ve not done the EXACT same thing when it suited our purposes? Can we rightfully claim that we are “Holier Than Thou”? No, it turns out, ladies and gentlemen, no we can’t.”

Although OUR history of interfering in foreign elections generally gets scant exposure by America’s media, on February 17, 2018, the New York Times did run an article that began as follows: “Bags of cash delivered to a favored Italian politician. Scandalous stories leaked to foreign newspapers to swing an election in Nicaragua. Millions of pamphlets and posters and stickers printed to defeat an incumbent in Serbia….The long arm of Vladimir Putin?… No, just a SMALL sample of the United State’s history of intervention in foreign elections.” (emphasis mine).

And, dear readers, don’t assume that this is all “ancient history.” It’s NOT. “Way back” in 2013, under the auspices of Barack Obama, we “meddled” in the ouster of the pro Russian democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych. (Thanks, MEO). During a turbulent episode in Ukraine’s recent history, WE fomented anti Yanukovych protests. In fact, Senator John McCain flew to Kiev during the demonstrations to stand with Yanukovych’s opponents. Then under Barack Obama’s direction, we provided both monetary and non monetary support for Yanukovych’s removal and his replacement with Arseniy Yatsenukovych, a “pro western” politician. Once we had settled on Yanukovych’s successor, our ambassador to the Ukraine, Victoria Nuland, called Washington (in a communication that was, famously, leaked) saying: “Yat’s the guy!” at which time, WE basically put him in power! Is it any wonder that Russia was quite UNHAPPY with OUR meddling in the affairs of the sovereign nation of Ukraine? Is it any wonder that Russia subsequently retaliated by basically annexing Crimea, the eastern, Russian speaking, part of Ukraine (a move that was generally WELCOMED by the Crimeans, and was fully accepted by the Crimean troops stationed there, who did not block Russia’s initiative, and subsequently joined, en masse, the Russian army)?

So, when looking at the “meddling” issue from a broader perspective, we need to keep these facts in mind. We certainly need to be cognizant that we are NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, “Holier Than Thou.” And, I think it would be well advised to keep ALL of this in mind before we ratchet up tensions with one of the three nuclear superpowers that control the fate of our planet.