New York Times 'bewijzen' voor Russiagate vallen door de mand......

Moet je hier nog over schrijven, dacht ik toen ik het hieronder opgenomen artikel had gelezen, immers het hele Russiagate verhaal, is een hysterisch vehikel van de democratische partij, om de schuld voor het verliezen van de verkiezing te verklaren en in feite nog veel belangrijker: het verbergen van de diefstal door Hillary Clinton van de winst in de democratische voorverkiezingen in 2016, waarbij Bernie Sanders het onderspit moest delven.......

Echter je hoeft de radio maar aan te zetten, of de kranten van de reguliere media open te slaan en je hoort meer leugens over Rusland die de boel zou manipuleren in het westen....... Leugens die intussen al zo vaak zijn doorgeprikt dat je werkelijk niet begrijpt hoe iemand nog het gore lef kan hebben om met de vieze vingers naar de Russen te wijzen....

De New York Times (NYT) schreef een artikel waarin 'aangetoond werd' dat 126 miljoen VS burgers werden 'blootgesteld aan Russische manipulaties'. Echter de NYT rekende buiten het bestaan van mensen die na kunnen denken en rekenen. Uiteindelijk schijnen Russische Facebook berichten 0,0000000024% uit te maken van het totaal aantal Facebook berichten in een periode van 2 jaar voor en de presidentsverkiezingen op 8 november 2016....... In totaal zou het om 80.000 berichten gaan, die door Internet Research Agency (IRA), een Russische bedrijf, werden verspreid..... Dit terwijl het letterlijk om miljarden berichten gaat die in die 2 jaar tijd werden verspreid via Facebook, daarnaast is het niet eens duidelijk of die 80.000 berichten iets te zeggen hadden over de verkiezingen, of de VS politiek in het algemeen......

Zoals op deze plek al vaker gesteld: je snapt niet waar men zich druk om maakt, als je ziet dat de superwelgestelden, plus middelgrote en grote bedrijven de verkiezingen in de VS in feite kopen en daarnaast bepalen deze welgestelden, samen met het grote bedrijfsleven (inclusief de financiële maffia) en grote investeringsgroepen, hoe de reguliere (massa-) media dienen te berichten over de kandidaten in die verkiezingen..... Niet voor niets dat er nog maar weinig verschil is tussen de Republikeinse en Democratische partij....... Dit alles nog naast het feit dat een kandidaat die aangeeft niet gelovig te zijn, een gooi naar het presidentschap kan vergeten........ 

Over manipulatie en beïnvloeding gesproken...... Overigens, denk maar niet dat het er hier heel anders aan toe gaat, al hebben wij geen presidentsverkiezingen, is het meer dan duidelijk dat de opvolgende kabinetten aanmerkelijk veel meer doen voor het bedrijfsleven dan voor het volk, terwijl die kabinetten deel uitmaken van de volksvertegenwoordiging...... 

Lees het volgende artikel en geeft het door, de hoogste tijd dat we ons niet meer gek laten maken door geteisem dat met haar leugens juist de boel manipuleert en beïnvloed! (en daarmee angstzaait voor en haatzaait tegen landen als Rusland, Syrië, Venezuela, Noord-Korea en Iran.....)

33 Trillion Reasons Why The New York Times Is Wrong About Russiagate

November 2, 2018 at 8:34 pm

Written by Consortium News

(CN Op-ed) — Even more damning evidence has come to light undermining The New York Times‘ assertion in September that Russia used social media to steal the 2016 election for Donald Trump.

New research shows that a relatively paltry 80,000 posts from the private Russian company Internet Research Agency (IRA) were engulfed in literally trillions of posts on Facebook over a two-year period before and after the 2016 vote.

That was supposed to have thrown the election, according to the paper of record. In a 10,000-word article on Sept. 20, the Times reported that 126 million out of 137 million American voters were exposed to social media posts on Facebook from IRA that somehow had a hand in delivering Trump the presidency.

The newspaper said: “Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone.”

But Consortium News, on Oct. 10, debunked that story, pointing out that reporters Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti failed to report several significant caveats and disclaimers from Facebook officers themselves, whose statements make the Times’ claim that Russian election propaganda “reached” 126 million Americans an exercise in misinformation ('fake news', Ap).

What Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on October 31, 2017 is a far cry from what the Timesclaims. “Our best estimate is that approximately 126,000 million people may have been served one of these [IRA-generated] stories at some time during the two year period,” Stretch said.

Stretch was expressing a theoretical possibility rather than an established fact. He said an estimated 126 million Facebook members might have gotten at least one story from the IRA –- not over the ten week election period, but over 194 weeks during the two years 2015 through 2017—including a full year after the election.

That means only an estimated 29 million FB users may have gotten at least one story in their feed in two years. The 126 million figure is based only on an assumption that they shared it with others, according to Stretch.

Facebook didn’t even claim most of those 80,000 IRA posts were election–related. It offered no data on what proportion of the feeds to those 29 million people were.

In addition, Facebook’s Vice President for News Feed, Adam Moseri, acknowledged in 2016 that FB subscribers actually read only about 10 percent of the stories Facebook puts in their News Feed every day. The means that very few of the IRA stories that actually make it into a subscriber’s news feed on any given day are actually read.

And now, according to further research, the odds that Americans saw any of these IRA ads—let alone were influenced by them—are even more astronomical. In his Oct. 2017 testimony, Stretch said that from 2015 to 2017, “Americans using Facebook were exposed to, or ‘served,’ a total of over 33 trillion stories in their News Feeds.”

That 33 trillion figure is 412.5 million times larger than the total of 80,000 IRA posts in that two year period. To put that in perspective, the Russian-origin Facebook posts represented just .0000000024 of total Facebook content in that time.

Shane and Mazzetti did not report the 33 trillion number even though The New York Times’ own coverage of that 2017 Stretch testimony explicitly stated, “Facebook cautioned that the Russia-linked posts represented a minuscule amount of content compared with the billions of posts that flow through users’ News Feeds everyday.”

The Times‘ touting of the bogus 126 million out 137 million voters, while not reporting the 33 trillion figure, should vie in the annals of journalism as one of the most spectacularly misleading uses of statistics of all time.

By Gareth Porter / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo

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Zie ook:
'Geen rectificaties voor meer dan 2 jaar brengen van fake news over het kwaadaardig sprookje Russiagate'

'Britse militaire geheime dienst bedient zich van moddergooien en andere manipulaties om Europese en VS politiek te manipuleren, zo blijkt uit gelekte documenten'

'Bedrijf dat voor 'Russische bots' waarschuwde, heeft een leger met nep-Russische bots'

''Fake news': alternatieve media en bloggers in het westen zouden onzin brengen, echter niet als dit soort groepen wat roepen in landen die het westen niet welgevallig zijn'

'Waarom de burgers van de VS de illegale oorlogen steunen'

'Democraten deden zich voor als Russen in false flag operatie om Roy Moore (Republikein) zwart te maken tijdens verkiezing.....'

'Russiagate: de westerse massamedia gebruiken propaganda om het volk te manipuleren, precies waar ze Rusland van beschuldigen'

'BBC: Rusland 'misbruikt humor' om Russiagate te ontkrachten..... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Uitgelekte telefoongesprekken tussen Trump en Putin bewijzen dat 'Russiagaters gelijk hebben......''

'WikiLeaks belooft The Guardian 1 miljoen dollar als het haar leugens i.z. Assange en Russiagate kan bewijzen.......'

'The Guardian: ondanks een enorme misser (fake news) gaat men door met de valse beschuldigingen t.a.v. Assange......'

'Russiagate? Britaingate zal je bedoelen!'

'Facebook gebruikte 'fake news' beschuldiging om de aandacht voor schandalen af te leiden'

'New York Times: eerste Israëlische inval in Gazastrook sinds 2014 >> fake news!'

'Noord-Koreaans 'bedrog met nucleaire deal' is fake news o.a. gebracht door de New York Times'

''Fake News' misbruikt door dictaturen en de reguliere (massa-) media'

'Twitter weert waarheid: Paul Craig Roberts in de ban, Roberts >> de grote criticus van de illegale oorlogen die de VS voert'

'Politico rapport bevestigt: Russiagate is een hoax' (Russiagate, de enorme leugen op basis waaraan we de huidige censuurgolf te danken hebben......)

'Russiagate sprookje ondermijnt VS democratie en de midterm verkiezingen' (zie ook de links in dat bericht)

'De Israëlische manipulatie van de VS presidentsverkiezingen, gaat veel verder dan wat men Rusland in de schoenen schuift.....'

''Russiagate': Intel-raport over Russische bemoeienis met verkiezingen opgebouwd met leugens en is politiek gemotiveerd, aldus Matlock, voormalig VS ambassadeur in Moskou'

'Kajsa Ollongren (D66 vicepremier): Nederland staat in het vizier van Russische inlichtingendiensten....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Ollongren gesteund door Thomas Boesgaard (AD), 'Rusland verpakt het nepnieuws gekoppeld aan echt nieuws.....' Oei!!'

'The Attack on ‘Fake News’ Is Really an Attack on Alternative Media'

'The Lie of the 21st Century: How Mainstream Media “Fake News” Led to the U.S. Invasion of Iraq'

'FBI, de spin in het Russiagate web........'

'Mocking Trump Doesn’t Prove Russia’s Guilt'

'CIA deed zich voor als het Russische Kaspersky Lab, aldus Wikileaks Vault 8.....'

'WikiLeaks: Seth Rich Leaked Clinton Emails, Not Russia'

'Hillary Clinton en haar oorlog tegen de waarheid........ Ofwel een potje Rusland en Assange schoppen!'

'Murray, ex-ambassadeur van GB: de Russen hebben de VS verkiezingen niet gemanipuleerd'

''Russische manipulaties uitgevoerd' door later vermoord staflid Clintons campagneteam Seth Rich......... AIVD en MIVD moeten hiervan weten!!'

'Obama gaf toe dat de DNC e-mails expres door de DNC werden gelekt naar Wikileaks....!!!!'

'VS 'democratie' aan het werk, een onthutsende en uitermate humoristische video!'

'Democraten VS kochten informatie over Trump >> Forgetting the ‘Dirty Dossier’ on Trump'

'Hillary Clinton moet op de hoogte zijn geweest van aankoop Steele dossier over Trump........'

'Flashback: Clinton Allies Met With Ukrainian Govt Officials to Dig up Dirt on Trump During 2016 Election'

'FBI Director Comey Leaked Trump Memos Containing Classified Information'

'Publicly Available Evidence Doesn’t Support Russian Gov Hacking of 2016 Election'

'Russia Is Trolling the Shit out of Hillary Clinton and the Mainstream Media'

'CIA chef Pompeo waarschuwt voor complot van WikiLeaks om de VS op alle mogelijke manieren neer te halen....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russische 'hacks' door deskundigen nogmaals als fake news doorgeprikt >> Intel Vets Challenge ‘Russia Hack’ Evidence'

'Rusland krijgt alweer de schuld van hacken, nu van oplichters Symantec en Facebook....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!'

'Russiagate, of: hoe de media u belazeren met verhalen over Russische bemoeienis met de VS presidentsverkiezingen........'

''Russiagate' een complot van CIA, FBI, Hillary Clinton en het DNC...........'

''Russiagate' een verhaal van a t/m z westers 'fake news.....''

'Campagne Clinton, smeriger dan gedacht............' (met daarin daarin opgenomen de volgende artikelen: 'Donna Brazile Bombshell: ‘Proof’ Hillary ‘Rigged’ Primary Against Bernie' en 'Democrats in Denial After Donna Brazile Says Primary Was Rigged for Hillary')

'Clinton te kakken gezet: Brazile (Democratische Partij VS) draagt haar boek op aan Seth Rich, het vermoorde lid van DNC die belastende documenten lekte'

'Ollongren gesteund door Thomas Boesgaard (AD), 'Rusland verpakt het nepnieuws gekoppeld aan echt nieuws.....' Oei!!'

'RT America één van de eerste slachtoffers in een heksenjacht op westerse alternatieve media en nadenkend links......'

'Rusland zou onafhankelijkheid Californië willen uitlokken met reclame voor borsjt.......'

'Alarm Code Geel: Lara Rense (NOS) voedt Rusland-haat'

'Mediaorgaan Sinclair dwingt 'TV ankers' propaganda op te lezen (Sinclair bedient rond de 70% van de VS bevolking van 'lokaal nieuws')'

'Ex-CIA agent legt uit hoe de VS schaduwregering en deep state werken, ofwel de machinaties achter de schermen......'

''Russiagate' een nieuwe ongelooflijke aanklacht van de Democraten.......'

'VS demoniseert Russiagate critici als Jill Stein.....'

'De Russiagate samenzweringstheorie dient de machthebbers.........'

'Britse en VS manipulaties van verkiezingen en stimulatie van conflicten middels psychologische oorlogsvoering' (voor VS manipulaties van verkiezingen elders, liggen er 'metersdikke' dossiers, o.a. in te zien op WikeLeaks)

New York Times met schaamteloze anti-Russische propaganda en 'fake news....'

Robert Parry legt op Consortium News uit, in een artikel overgenomen door Anti-Media, waar goed journalistiek werk o.a. aan moet voldoen: een teken dat een artikel het product is van slordige of oneerlijke journalistiek, kan gezien worden als de kern van het verhaal als feit wordt neergezet, terwijl dit niet bewezen is, of onderdeel is van een serieuze discussie. Veelal wordt zo'n artikel het fundament voor andere (niet bewezen) claims, waarmee een verhaal 'wordt gebouwd', dat gefundeerd is op los zand....

Dergelijke journalistiek zou niet in de reguliere media terecht mogen komen, echter tegenwoordig is het tegendeel vaak de praktijk, zoals we zien in de reguliere westerse (massa-) media. Neem de berichtgeving over de illegale oorlogen van de VS tegen Afghanistan, Irak, Libië en nu weer tegen Syrië. 'Voldongen' leugens werden en worden als feiten en de enige waarheid neergezet.......

Hetzelfde geldt voor alle belachelijke claims, dat Rusland de VS verkiezingen zou hebben gemanipuleerd middels hacken en het publiceren van artikelen door o.a. Sputnik en Russia Today (RT). Daarbij worden  naast een 'tsunami' aan berichten op Facebook en Twitter, nu ook advertenties genoemd, die werden geplaatst op Facebook....... ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Voor al deze zogenaamde feiten, is geen nanometer bewijs, maar ze worden desondanks door diezelfde reguliere media en het merendeel van de westerse politici als de enige waarheid gezien, dit terwijl het overtuigende bewijs van het tegendeel terzijde wordt geschoven.........

Parry schrijft over een artikel dat afgelopen vrijdag over 3 pagina's werd geplaatst in the New York Times (NYT). Daarin wordt betoogt dat Rusland 'een leger van nep-Amerikanen' heeft gebruikt om de VS verkiezingen te beïnvloeden....... Of wat dacht u van: 'met een vloed aan Facebook en Twitterberichten hebben bedriegers haat en verdeeldheid gezaaid in de VS.....' ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Ja, ze durven wel hè, terwijl die zogenaamde Amerikanen elkaar al een paar eeuwen de strot kunnen afbijten!! (neem alleen al de nog steeds bestaande grove discriminatie van gekleurden in de VS....)

Facebook weigert intussen nog steeds om de advertenties vrij te geven, die volgens haar door de Russische overheid werden geplaatst....... Kortom Facebook beschuldigt een land van uiterst grove handelingen en stelt daarna vrolijk dat men maar moet geloven op de blauwe ogen van de redactie........

Lees het volgende uitstekende artikel van Parry en zegt het voort!

Has the New York Times Gone Completely Insane?

September 16, 2017 at 11:31 am

Written by Robert Parry

Crossing a line from recklessness into madness, The New York Times published a front-page opus suggesting that Russia was behind social media criticism of Hillary Clinton, reports Robert Parry.

(CN) For those of us who have taught journalism or worked as editors, a sign that an article is the product of sloppy or dishonest journalism is that a key point will be declared as flat fact when it is unproven or a point in serious dispute – and it then becomes the foundation for other claims, building a story like a high-rise constructed on sand.

This use of speculation as fact is something to guard against particularly in the work of inexperienced or opinionated reporters. But what happens when this sort of unprofessional work tops page one of The New York Times one day as a major “investigative” article and reemerges the next day in even more strident form as a major Times editorial? Are we dealing then with an inept journalist who got carried away with his thesis or are we facing institutional corruption or even a collective madness driven by ideological fervor?

What is stunning about the lede story in last Friday’s print edition of The New York Times is that it offers no real evidence to support its provocative claim that – as the headline states – “To Sway Vote, Russia Used Army of Fake Americans” or its subhead: “Flooding Twitter and Facebook, Impostors Helped Fuel Anger in Polarized U.S.”

In the old days, this wildly speculative article, which spills over three pages, would have earned an F in a J-school class or gotten a rookie reporter a stern rebuke from a senior editor. But now such unprofessionalism is highlighted by The New York Times, which boasts that it is the standard-setter of American journalism, the nation’s “newspaper of record.”

In this case, it allows reporter Scott Shane to introduce his thesis by citing some Internet accounts that apparently used fake identities, but he ties none of them to the Russian government. Acting like he has minimal familiarity with the Internet – yes, a lot of people do use fake identities – Shane builds his case on the assumption that accounts that cited references to purloined Democratic emails must be somehow from an agent or a bot connected to the Kremlin.

For instance, Shane cites the fake identity of “Melvin Redick,” who suggested on June 8, 2016, that people visit DCLeaks which, a few days earlier, had posted some emails from prominent Americans, which Shane states as fact – not allegation – were “stolen … by Russian hackers.”

Shane then adds, also as flat fact, that “The site’s phony promoters were in the vanguard of a cyberarmy of counterfeit Facebook and Twitter accounts, a legion of Russian-controlled impostors whose operations are still being unraveled.”

The Times’ Version

In other words, Shane tells us, “The Russian information attack on the election did not stop with the hacking and leaking of Democratic emails or the fire hose of stories, true, false and in between, that battered Mrs. Clinton on Russian outlets like RT and Sputnik. Far less splashy, and far more difficult to trace, was Russia’s experimentation on Facebook and Twitter, the American companies that essentially invented the tools of social media and, in this case, did not stop them from being turned into engines of deception and propaganda.”

Besides the obvious point that very few Americans watch RT and/or Sputnik and that Shane offers no details about the alleged falsity of those “fire hose of stories,” let’s examine how his accusations are backed up:

“An investigation by The New York Times, and new research from the cybersecurity firm FireEye, reveals some of the mechanisms by which suspected Russian operators used Twitter and Facebook to spread anti-Clinton messages and promote the hacked material they had leaked. On Wednesday, Facebook officials disclosed that they had shut down several hundred accounts that they believe were created by a Russian company linked to the Kremlin and used to buy $100,000 in ads pushing divisive issues during and after the American election campaign. On Twitter, as on Facebook, Russian fingerprints are on hundreds or thousands of fake accounts that regularly posted anti-Clinton messages.”

Note the weasel words: “suspected”; “believe”; ‘linked”; “fingerprints.” When you see such equivocation, it means that these folks – both the Times and FireEye – don’t have hard evidence; they are speculating.

And it’s worth noting that the supposed “army of fake Americans” may amount to hundreds out of Facebook’s two billion or so monthly users and the $100,000 in ads compare to the company’s annual ad revenue of around $27 billion. (I’d do the math but my calculator doesn’t compute such tiny percentages.)

So, this “army” is really not an “army” and we don’t even know that it is “Russian.” But some readers might say that surely we know that the Kremlin did mastermind the hacking of Democratic emails!

That claim is supported by the Jan. 6 “intelligence community assessment” that was the work of what President Obama’s Director of National Intelligence James Clapper called “hand-picked” analysts from three agencies – the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation. But, as any intelligence expert will tell you, if you hand-pick the analysts, you are hand-picking the conclusions.

Agreeing with Putin

But some still might protest that the Jan. 6 report surely presented convincing evidence of this serious charge about Russian President Vladimir Putin personally intervening in the U.S. election to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Well, as it turns out, not so much, and if you don’t believe me, we can call to the witness stand none other than New York Times reporter Scott Shane.

Shane wrote at the time: “What is missing from the [the Jan. 6] public report is what many Americans most eagerly anticipated: hard evidence to back up the agencies’ claims that the Russian government engineered the election attack. … Instead, the message from the agencies essentially amounts to ‘trust us.’”

So, even Scott Shane, the author of last Friday’s opus, recognized the lack of “hard evidence” to prove that the Russian government was behind the release of the Democratic emails, a claim that both Putin and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who published a trove of the emails, have denied. While it is surely possible that Putin and Assange are lying or don’t know the facts, you might think that their denials would be relevant to this lengthy investigative article, which also could have benefited from some mention of Shane’s own skepticism of last January, but, hey, you don’t want inconvenient details to mess up a cool narrative.

Yet, if you struggle all the way to the end of last Friday’s article, you do find out how flimsy the Times’ case actually is. How, for instance, do we know that “Melvin Redick” is a Russian impostor posing as an American? The proof, according to Shane, is that “His posts were never personal, just news articles reflecting a pro-Russian worldview.”

As it turns out, the Times now operates with what must be called a neo-McCarthyistic approach for identifying people as Kremlin stooges, i.e., anyone who doubts the truthfulness of the State Department’s narratives on Syria, Ukraine and other international topics.

Unreliable Source

In the article’s last section, Shane acknowledges as much in citing one of his experts, “Andrew Weisburd, an Illinois online researcher who has written frequently about Russian influence on social media.” Shane quotes Weisburd as admitting how hard it is to differentiate Americans who just might oppose Hillary Clinton because they didn’t think she’d make a good president from supposed Russian operatives: “Trying to disaggregate the two was difficult, to put it mildly.”

According to Shane, “Mr. Weisburd said he had labeled some Twitter accounts ‘Kremlin trolls’ based simply on their pro-Russia tweets and with no proof of Russian government ties. The Times contacted several such users, who insisted that they had come by their anti-American, pro-Russian views honestly, without payment or instructions from Moscow.”

One of Weisburd’s “Kremlin trolls” turned out to be 66-year-old Marilyn Justice who lives in Nova Scotia and who somehow reached the conclusion that “Hillary’s a warmonger.” During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, she reached another conclusion: that U.S. commentators were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias perhaps because they indeed were exhibiting a snide anti-Russia bias.

Shane tracked down another “Kremlin troll,” 48-year-old Marcel Sardo, a web producer in Zurich, Switzerland, who dares to dispute the West’s groupthink that Russia was responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine on July 17, 2014, and the State Department’s claims that the Syrian government used sarin gas in a Damascus suburb on Aug. 21, 2013.

Presumably, if you don’t toe the line on those dubious U.S. government narratives, you are part of the Kremlin’s propaganda machine. (In both cases, there actually are serious reasons to doubt the Western groupthinks which again lack real evidence.)

But Shane accuses Sardo and his fellow-travelers of spreading “what American officials consider to be Russian disinformation on election hacking, Syria, Ukraine and more.” In other words, if you examine the evidence on MH-17 or the Syrian sarin case and conclude that the U.S. government’s claims are dubious if not downright false, you are somehow disloyal and making Russian officials “gleeful at their success,” as Shane puts it.

But what kind of a traitor are you if you quote Shane’s initial judgment after reading the Jan. 6 report on alleged Russian election meddling? What are you if you agree with his factual observation that the report lacked anything approaching “hard evidence”? That’s a point that also dovetails with what Vladimir Putin has been saying – that “IP addresses can be simply made up. … This is no proof”?

So is Scott Shane a “Kremlin troll,” too? Should the Times immediately fire him as a disloyal foreign agent? What if Putin says that 2 plus 2 equals 4 and your child is taught the same thing in elementary school, what does that say about public school teachers?

Out of such gibberish come the evils of McCarthyism and the death of the Enlightenment. Instead of encouraging a questioning citizenry, the new American paradigm is to silence debate and ridicule anyone who steps out of line.

You might have thought people would have learned something from the disastrous groupthink about Iraqi WMD, a canard that the Times and most of the U.S. mainstream media eagerly promoted.

But if you’re feeling generous and thinking that the Times’ editors must have been chastened by their Iraq-WMD fiasco but perhaps had a bad day last week and somehow allowed an egregious piece of journalism to lead their front page, your kind-heartedness would be shattered on Saturday when the Times’ editorial board penned a laudatory reprise of Scott Shane’s big scoop.

Stripping away even the few caveats that the article had included, the Times’ editors informed us that “a startling investigation by Scott Shane of The New York Times, and new research by the cybersecurity firm FireEye, now reveal, the Kremlin’s stealth intrusion into the election was far broader and more complex, involving a cyberarmy of bloggers posing as Americans and spreading propaganda and disinformation to an American electorate on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. …

“Now that the scheming is clear, Facebook and Twitter say they are reviewing the 2016 race and studying how to defend against such meddling in the future. … Facing the Russian challenge will involve complicated issues dealing with secret foreign efforts to undermine American free speech.”

But what is the real threat to “American free speech”? Is it the possibility that Russia – in a very mild imitation of what the U.S. government does all over the world – used some Web sites clandestinely to get out its side of various stories, an accusation against Russia that still lacks any real evidence?

Or is the bigger threat that the nearly year-long Russia-gate hysteria will be used to clamp down on Americans who dare question fact-lite or fact-free Official Narratives handed down by the State Department and The New York Times?

By Robert Parry / Republished with permission / Consortium News / Report a typo

=================================

Zie ook: 'JULIAN ASSANGE OFFERS U.S. GOVERNMENT PROOF RUSSIA WASN’T SOURCE OF DEMOCRATIC PARTY LEAKS, SAYS WSJ' (op Stan van Houcke die het overnam van Global Research)