{"id":43285,"date":"2019-01-29T08:53:50","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43285"},"modified":"2019-01-29T08:55:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T13:55:19","slug":"how-russia-gate-rationalized-censorship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43285","title":{"rendered":"How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

At the end of October 2017, I wrote an article<\/a> for Consortium News<\/strong> about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story about Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016. (Gage Skidmore)<\/p>\n\n\n\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 largely unverified<\/a> dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.<\/p>\n\n\n\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 using the same software of an alleged hack of a Ukrainian artillery app, CrowdStrike also blamed Russia but used faulty data for its report that it was later forced to rewrite.<\/a> CrowdStrike was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.<\/p>\n\n\n\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\n\n\n

After the article appeared at Consortium News<\/strong>, I tried to penetrate the mainstream by then publishing a version of the article on the HuffPost,<\/em> which was rebranded<\/a> from the Huffington Post <\/em>in April this year by new management. As a contributor to the site since February 2006, I was trusted by HuffPost<\/em> editors to post my stories directly online. However, within 24 hours of publication on Nov. 4, HuffPost editors retracted<\/a> the article without any explanation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship At the end of October 2017, I wrote an article for Consortium News about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story about Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Hillary Clinton speaking […]<\/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":[120,14697,7844,1120,12261,15282,15319,857],"class_list":["post-43285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-censorship","tag-democratic-national-committee","tag-donald-trump","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-joe-lauria","tag-russiagate","tag-trump-administration","tag-vladimir-putin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43285","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=43285"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43285\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43286,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43285\/revisions\/43286"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}