{"id":28574,"date":"2017-12-05T07:37:02","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T12:37:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28574"},"modified":"2017-12-05T07:37:02","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T12:37:02","slug":"how-russia-gate-rationalizes-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28574","title":{"rendered":"How Russia-gate Rationalizes Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"
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How Russia-gate Rationalizes Censorship<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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Special Report:<\/strong> The Russia-gate hysteria has spread beyond simply a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or even removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War, reports Joe Lauria.<\/p>\n

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At the end of October, I wrote an\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0Consortiumnews<\/em>\u00a0about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story\u00a0about\u00a0Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Photo by Gage Skidmore)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The piece showed that the Democrats\u2019 two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele\u2019s\u00a0largely unverified<\/a>\u00a0dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.<\/p>\n

And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC\u2019s computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian \u201chack.\u201d In a similar examination of an alleged hack of a Ukrainian artillery app, CrowdStrike also blamed Russia but used\u00a0faulty\u00a0data for its report that it was later forced to\u00a0rewrite.<\/a>\u00a0CrowdStrike was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.<\/p>\n

My piece also described the dangerous consequences of partisan Democratic faith in Russia-gate:\u00a0a sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between nuclear-armed Russia and the U.S., and a New McCarthyism that is spreading fear \u2014 especially in academia, journalism and civil rights organizations \u2014 about questioning the enforced orthodoxy of Russia\u2019s alleged guilt.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Russia-gate Rationalizes Censorship Special Report: The Russia-gate hysteria has spread beyond simply a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or even removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War, reports Joe Lauria. At the end of October, I wrote an\u00a0article\u00a0for\u00a0Consortiumnews\u00a0about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[120,6963,14697,7844,17346,12261,17345,694,15282,827],"class_list":["post-28574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-consortium-news","tag-democratic-national-committee","tag-donald-trump","tag-huffpost","tag-joe-lauria","tag-new-cold-war","tag-russia","tag-russiagate","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28574"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28575,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28574\/revisions\/28575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}