{"id":36633,"date":"2018-08-14T08:20:30","date_gmt":"2018-08-14T13:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36633"},"modified":"2018-08-14T08:20:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-14T13:20:30","slug":"too-big-to-fail-russia-gate-one-year-after-vips-showed-a-leak-not-a-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36633","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Too Big to Fail\u2019: Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/08\/13\/too-big-to-fail-russia-gate-one-year-after-vips-showed-a-leak-not-a-hack\/\">\u2018Too Big to Fail\u2019: Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p>One year later, the VIPS memo contending that the DNC emails were leaked and not hacked has yet to be successfully challenged. Meanwhile, the country sinks deeper into the morass of the new McCarthyism, comments Patrick Lawrence.<span id=\"more-29488\"><\/span><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Patrick-S-freeport-12-2012-Color-No-3-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-29528 \" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Patrick-S-freeport-12-2012-Color-No-3-1-130x130.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"87\" height=\"87\" data-lazy-loaded=\"true\" \/><\/a>A year has passed since highly credentialed intelligence professionals produced the first hard evidence that allegations of mail theft and other crimes attributed to Russia rested on purposeful falsification and subterfuge. The initial reaction to these revelations\u2014a firestorm of frantic denial\u2014augured ill, and the time since has fulfilled one\u2019s worst expectations. One year later we live within an institutionalized proscription of proven reality. Our discourse consists of a series of fence posts and taboos. By any detached measure, this lands us in deep, serious trouble. The sprawl of what we call \u201cRussia-gate\u201d now brings our republic and its institutions to a moment of great peril\u2014the gravest since the McCarthy years and possibly since the Civil War. No, I do not consider this hyperbole.<\/p>\n<p>Much has happened since Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity published its report on intrusions into the Democratic Party\u2019s mail servers on Consortium News on July 24 last year. Parts of the intelligence apparatus\u2014by no means all or even most of it\u2014have issued official \u201cassessments\u201d of Russian culpability. Media have produced countless multi-part \u201cinvestigations,\u201d \u201cspecial reports,\u201d and what-have-yous that amount to an orgy of faulty syllogisms. Robert Mueller\u2019s special investigation has issued two sets of indictments that, on scrutiny, prove as wanting in evidence as the notoriously flimsy intelligence \u201cassessment\u201d of January 6, 2017.<\/p>\n<p>Indictments are not evidence and do not need to contain evidence. That is supposed to come out at trial, which is very <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2018\/07\/14\/clinging-to-collusion-why-evidence-will-probably-never-be-produced-in-the-indictments-of-russian-agents\/\">unlikely<\/a> to ever happen. Nevertheless, the corporate media has treated the indictments as convictions.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2018Too Big to Fail\u2019: Russia-gate One Year After VIPS Showed a Leak, Not a Hack One year later, the VIPS memo contending that the DNC emails were leaked and not hacked has yet to be successfully challenged. Meanwhile, the country sinks deeper into the morass of the new McCarthyism, comments Patrick Lawrence. A year has [&hellip;]<\/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":[5],"tags":[6963,21211,15282,21058,21057],"class_list":["post-36633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-consortium-news","tag-patrick-lawrence","tag-russiagate","tag-veteran-intelligence-professionals-for-sanity","tag-vips"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633","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=36633"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36634,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36633\/revisions\/36634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}