On August 2, 2023, Robert Kennedy Jr. filed a 27 page complaint against YouTube. This lawsuit has huge implications - not only for whether Kennedy will be able bring his message to the American people during his Presidential campaign – but whether the First Amendment has any meaning left and whether there will be fair elections in the US. You can read his complaint at this link: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.416322/gov.uscourts.cand.416322.1.0.pdf

This important case is about the meaning of the First Amendment and the ability of the government to use social platforms such as YouTube to censor and silence its critics.

In this article, we will review the most important claims in Kennedy’s complaint and the evidence he submitted to support his claims.

In the weeks before the 2020 Presidential Election, the New York Post wrote an article exposing hundreds of emails that were on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Here is a link to this now famous article: https://nypost.com/2020/10/22/hunter-ex-partner-tony-bobulinski-calls-joe-biden-a-liar/

   

A tranche of emails from the Hunter Biden laptop revealed how he leveraged his family connections to land lucrative deals overseas and boost his Burisma pay. Here are quotes from the reporter who published the initial report in October 2020:

“Over several days, just weeks before Americans would vote for their next president, I revealed verified authentic emails from the Biden laptop showing Ukrainian business partners receiving leaks from the Obama White House, I documented an off-the-books meeting between then-Vice President Biden and a Ukrainian energy executive, and introduced the world to “the Big Guy,” who got action on a deal with CEFC China Energy Co… The Post published a federal subpoena showing the FBI was in possession of the Biden laptop since December of 2019.

But when the stories appeared on social media that morning — the venue where millions of Americans go to find their news — within hours, the reporting was censored on all major platforms, on the basis of being called “Russian disinformation.” Twitter refused to allow users to share the link to the stories, banned the links from being shared and locked the Post out of its account… It exposed the unholy alliance between the Intelligence Community, social media platforms, and legacy media outlets.”

On Oct. 19, 2020, more than 50 former U.S. intelligence officials, including CIA Director John Brennan, signed a public letter claiming the material published by the Post from Hunter’s hard drive “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” although none of them had seen it. Joe Biden cited their letter in the presidential debates to deflect questions about the laptop.

Those who lied to the American people in order to manipulate the 2020 Presidential election by signing this letter included:

James Clapper, Mike Hayden, Leon Panetta, John Brennan, Thomas Finger, Rick Legett, John McLaughlin, Michael Morrell, Mike Vickers, Doug Wise, Nick Rasmussen, Russ Travers, Andy Liepman, John Moseman, Larry Pfeiffer, Jeremy Bash, Rodney Synder, Glenn Gerstell, David Buckley, Nada Bakos, Patty Brandmaier, James Bruce, David Cariens, Janice Cariens, Paul Kolbe, Peter Corsell, Brett Davis, Roger George, Steven Hall, Kent Harrington, Don Hepburn, Tim Kilbourn, Ron Marks, Jonna Mendez, Emile Nakhleh, Gerald Oshea, David Priess, Pam Purcilly, Marc Polymeropoulos, Chris Savos, Nick Shapiro, John Sipher, Steve Slick, Cynthia Strand, Greg Tarbell, David Terry, Greg Treverton, John Tullius, David Vanell, Winston Wiley and Kristin Wood.

https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000175-4393-d7aa-af77-579f9b330000

Nearly all of the above people work for the CIA and everyone of them knew that the Biden laptop was real and in the position of the FBI and that it was not a Russian plot. If we had a functioning government, the CIA would be disbanded and all of these people would be arrested for fraud and be serving long jail terms. Instead, you can count on them to manipulate the 2024 US Presidential election just like they manipulated the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections.

On June 20, 2023, sworn testimony before a House Censorship Hearing confirmed FBI has the Hunter Biden laptop 11 months before the 2020 Election
https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/morris-testimony.pdf

On August 26, 2022, the New York Post published a poll conducted by the New Jersey-based Technometrica Institute of Policy and Politics confirming that 8 out of 10 voters would have changed their votes had they been aware that the Biden laptop was real. https://nypost.com/2022/08/26/2020-election-outcome-would-differ-with-hunter-biden-laptop-coverage-poll

Thus the FBI together with the Biden campaign, Twitter and Facebook lied to the American people in order to steal the 2020 Presidential election.

This was after the FBI and CIA together with the Clinton campaign, Twitter and Facebook worked together in an attempt to blame Russia for the 2016 Presidential election. In fact, it was not Russia that manipulated the 2016 Presidential election, it was the FBI, CIA, DNC, Facebook, Twitter and Clinton campaign. In January 2017, I wrote a detailed summary of the evidence confirming this: https://turningpointnews.org/hack-everything-special-repor

As we briefly review below, it was not Russia that started the Ukraine War. It was the CIA that started this war by overthrowing the elected government of Ukraine in 2014. Because of Joe Biden lies about the his son’s laptop and his lies about Russia and his lies about Ukraine, more than 300,000 Ukrainians have been killed and the world has been brought to the brink of nuclear annihilation. These lies need to be exposed because there is a direct link between the Biden Burisma Bribery scandal and the current proxy war against Russia.

To understand the Joe and Hunter Biden Burisma Bribery scandal, we need to understand the timeline of events leading to it. Here is a detailed summary of events – most of which have never been reported by the corrupt corporate media.

From Crack Cocaine and Prostitutes to Nuclear War
These events not only confirm that Joe Biden was directly involved in a massive corruption scheme, but they are also relevant to the current US Proxy War in Ukraine which has brought us to the brink of nuclear war with Russia.

It all started with an actual election…

2010 Pro-peace Candidate wins Ukrainian Election
On February 7, 2010, in the last truly fair and Democratic Presidential Runoff election held in Ukraine, a Pro-peace candidate Viktor Yanukovych won 49% of vote compared to a Pro-NATO incumbent who got 46% of vote.

David Spring M. Ed. April 28 2023

When drowning in an ocean of lies, even a small breathe of truth can restore hope in a better future. Thank you Tucker for having the courage to tell us the truth. It was great while it lasted.

On Monday April 24, 2023, the most popular News anchor in America, Tucker Carlson, was fired without notice. The Tucker firing is important not only because millions of people watched Tucker every night – but more important, because Tucker was the only news anchor brave enough to interview anti-war activists like Tulsi Gabbard, Dennis Kucinich and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The Tucker firing means the American people will now have a much harder time learning the truth about government corruption. Unless viewers change to alternative media sources, the only point of view they will hear on their nightly news will be the US War Machine.

Glenn Greenwald stated: “Removing Tucker Carlson from the airwaves means they are removing the only person on main stream television who would air dissent on a huge number of crucial issues.”

Kim Iverson stated: “We know we are being lied to… and Tucker pointed it out. Tucker was calling out the real problems we face as Americans. Tucker was dangerous because he kept Americans tuned into the corruption and sinister motives of the ruling class.”

Aaron Mate said: “It was only a matter of time. There is no way the corporate state would allow him to continue like this. Tucker covered issues that no one else would cover.”

The clueless Mainstream Media predictably blamed the Tucker firing on the $788 million Fox settlement with Dominion which had occurred on Tuesday April 18, 2023. In this article, we will first review the evidence that firing Tucker had nothing to do with Dominion and very little to do with his coverage of the January 6^th Protest. We will then dive into the real and much darker reasons Tucker was fired.

When I was a child, my mothers favorite saying was: “Fool me once, shame on you… Fool me twice, shame on me!” That was 60 years ago. Since then, our elected leaders and their accomplices in the media, have lied to us about regime change operations from Vietnam and Iran to Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria. During the past 2 years, these same people have repeatedly lied to us about the Corona virus, Masks, Lockdowns, PCR Tests and Clot Shots. So why should we believe anything that these pathological liars tell us now on any subject?

I have spent more than 20 years teaching college level courses in problem solving. The biggest problem we are facing right now is that some crazy people are trying to push us into World War 3 – a war which would not end well for any of us. In this article, we will examine why some people continue to believe those with a long track record of telling blatant lies. We will then propose some potential cures for this disease of naivity. Finally, we will look behind the curtain and expose the real war going on in Ukraine.

Denial is not just a River in Egypt
We have all tolerated lies and deception way too long. We simply want to live our lives in PEACE. We suffer from normalacy bias. It is time to admit that there is a group of people who are not like us. In order to avoid World War 3, we need to recognize that there are a group of people who want to control the world. Some have called these people Globalists. Others call them Nazis or Fascists or Neocons or Prism Partners or Fusion Agents or the Military Industrial Complex. The problem with all of these terms is that they are not very clear. I think we need a new term that more accurately describes the dangerous goal of this deadly group – namely, that they are People who Want to Control the World. I therefore think we should call these crazy people POW COWS – which simply stands for People who Want to Control the World. These Power Crazy people are willing not only to lie, but to destroy entire countries and even start World War 3 in order to control the world!

Here is a graphical image of a PowCow:



It is important to note that Pow Cows do not have an allegiance to any country. They have no problem destroying the US economy or killing everyone in Europe. They refuse to honor any laws. Things like killing people, breaking laws and wasting trillions of tax payer dollars are simply a means to an end… namely that they want to control the world - and in the process turn the rest of us into slaves living in a world wide prison camp.

A week before Christmas, the US Senate Intelligence Committee released a 101 page report accusing Russia of depressing Democrat voter turnout in the 2016 Presidential election - mainly by targeting African-Americans on social media. Here is the link to the Senate Russia report: https://disinformationreport.blob.core.windows.net/disinformation-report/NewKnowledge-Disinformation-Report-Whitepaper.pdf


Among the “evidence” given in the report was this picture of Jesus wearing a Trump campaign hat.



Do you think that this meme would influence anyone to change their vote in the 2016 election?

The report also claimed seven Facebook pages were used to affect the outcome of the US elections. The only one of these pages that is still in existence is a page called Friends of Russia. Here is an image of their Facebook page in October 2016:




There were no posts on this page about either Trump or Clinton. The only post was from someone named Parth Yadav who wrote “Hello Sir.” This post could not have possibly affected the outcome of the US election.

The Senate report went on to list all of the 61,483 Facebook posts that were in their database. None of these posts were actually published in the Senate report. But the report did note that only 2.9 percent of these posts even mentioned Clinton and only 4.2 percent of the posts mentioned Trump. Here is a screen shot from the report.



It is true that there were 800 more posts for Trump in the Senate Database than their were for Clinton. But keep in mind that half of these 61,483 posts occurred AFTER the election was over. Also keep in mind that Facebook has billions of posts every day. So even 62,000 posts is much less than one tenth of one percent of all Facebook posts. Could 400 posts swing an election?

False Allegations Against a Single Black Website
Surprisingly, most of the 101 page Senate Report was spent claiming that the Russians spent most of their efforts trying to convince black voters to not vote for Hillary Clinton. Here is a quote from the Senate Russia Report:

“The most prolific IRA (Russian spy group) efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets.”

The Senate “Russian” report repeatedly claimed that the main weapon used by the Russians to suppress the turn out of black voters was a website called blackmattersus.com – a website that is still in existence.

On January 6, 2017, the CIA issued a report claiming to prove that Russians hacked the US Presidential election. Here is a link to the CIA report in case you forgot to read it:
https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf


A lot of people criticized the CIA report as being ridiculous. We at Turning Point News previously reported that every claim made in this CIA report was completely false. For example, the CIA Report claimed that “Russians used a show called “Breaking the Set” hosted by Abby Martin to influence the US election.” There is only one problem with this claim: The final episode of Breaking the Set aired on February 27, 2015 – more than a year before the US election.
https://turningpointnews.org/hack-everything-special-report/hack-everything-part-6-rush-to-war-january-2017-to-present

In addition, Abby Martin is not really a Russian. She is from California. (I know what you’re thinking… being from California is almost the same as being from Russia). Here is a picture of Abby Martin, the host of Breaking the Set.


However, while Abby is not a Russian, there was an actual real live Russian mentioned in the CIA report. His name is Vladimir Zhirinovsky. On page 4 of the report is the CIA’s most damaging evidence that Russians hacked the US election. Here is the quote from the CIA report: “Pro-Kremlin proxy Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, proclaimed just before the election that if President-elect Trump won, Russia would “drink champagne.”

If fact, after several minutes of painstaking research, we now know that it was not just Vladimir who was involved in this vast conspiracy against the American people. Vlad the Diabolical was assisted by a Russian Newspaper reporter named Elena Chinkova. She conducted an interview with Vlad in September 2016 and then published it on November 1, 2016 in a major Russian newspaper called Komsomolskaya Pravda. Here is a link to her article: http://www.kp.ru/daily/26601/3617511/

Here are the juicy details of how this conspiracy came about. Elena traveled to New York in September 2016 to write a story about the US election. While she was there, she bought a Donald Trump teeshirt for herself and she bought another Donald Trump teeshirt for Vlad the Diabolical because she heard that he liked Donald Trump. She then flew back to Moscow and gave Vlad this shirt as a present during an interview.

Here is a quote by Vlad the Trump Tee Shirt Wearer from the article: “Personally, I think that Trump is going to win. Americans are independent people. One can’t trick them into doing something they don’t want. If the TV channels and the elite are against Trump, ordinary citizens are likely to vote for him. We’ll congratulate him on November 9! If he wins, we are drinking champagne on November 9!“

Both Vlad and Elena realized that not too many Americans (other than the CIA) read Russian newspapers. So to have more influence over the US election, they produced a brief video to promote Donald Trump and help him get more votes in America. Scroll to the bottom of the above article to watch this propaganda filled video.



Apparently this 14 second video did not get too much traction in the US (other than being noticed by the CIA). This was probably because the Russians forgot to post this video on Youtube. Also there seems to be something wrong with the Russian servers because the page at the Russian Newspaper took a very long time to load. So just in case you are unable to watch this powerful lesson in Russian Propaganda on the Russian website, we will quote what Vlad said (in English). We will also post this video below to make it more widely available for Americans who are interested in learning more about how these two Russian co-conspirators hacked our election. Vlad is clearly a clever speech writer. Here is the entire quote from the video. “Donald. Good luck. We in Russia are for you. We are waiting. For your victory. On 8 November, your victory will be a holiday for all of the world.”

Here is the link to this video.


 
There you have it folks - irrefutable undeniable proof that at least two Russians were in fact trying to influence the US election. This is clearly a smoking gun if ever I saw one. No wonder these two Russians wound up taking center stage in the CIA report!


The CIA report claims that Vlad the Tee Shirt Wearer is a “proxy” for Vladimir Putin. After all, we all know that nothing happens in Russia without Putin knowing about it. Just like nothing happens in the US without the NSA knowing about it. So I decided to do some research on Vlad Zhirinovsky. Here are links to a couple of articles I read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Zhirinovsky

http://www.tol.org/client/article/22872-zhirinovsky-politics-russia-nationalism.html

These articles make it clear that Zhirinovsky and Putin do not really get along that well. Zhirinovsky seems to be an old time Russian Nationalist while Putin seems to be a Pro-Western modernist. So they are at the opposite ends of the Russian political spectrum. In fact, Zhirinovsky is the leader of one of three political parties in the Russian Duma (like our Congress) opposed to Putin. Here is a picture of Vlad the Nationalist giving a speech to his supporters in St. Petersburg in 2011:



The flags they are holding are not exactly Russian flags. Instead, they are Russian nationalist flags. Vlad the Nationalist has repeatedly said that the way to restore Russian glory is to get rid of this “pro-Western” flag and go back to a more traditional flag. Here is what the current “pro-Western” Russian “Red White and Blue” flag looks like:




To be honest, Zhirinovsky is also a bit of a nut. In 1991, he rose to power by promising all Russians free vodka if he was elected. This promise of free booz helped him come in third place in the Russian Presidential election and won him a set in the Duma.

Zhirinovsky is also a bit of a loose cannon. More recently, he has advocated for forcibly retaking Alaska and then relocating all Ukrainians to Alaska – apparently trying to solve two problems at once. Putin had to issue a statement making it clear that he has no interest in attacking Alaska - saying that Russia already has enough frozen land and does not need any more.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/vladimir-putin-annex-alaska_n_5166598.html

Below is a picture of Vlad the Nut giving a speech in the Russian Duma in 2012 advocating for building free homes for homeless people. Putin is watching Vlad give this speech. Here is a video of the speech if you want to see Vlad in action.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4OkdafMXpA



During the same speech, Zhirinovsky had the audacity of accusing every Russian political party but his own of being corrupt. Here is Putin’s facial expression as Crazy Vlad accuses Putin’s party, United Russia of being corrupt. (note: LDPR stands for Liberal Democratic Party of Russia which is the party Vlad is the leader of).



Do you really think that Putin would put Crazy Vlad in charge of a campaign to elect Donald Trump??? More likely, Putin is thinking, how do I get rid of this guy?

Vlad has also claimed that the US CIA has hacked elections in Russia in the past (which is true)… and that the US CIA is likely to hack elections in Russia again in the future. Here is a picture of a US hacker in a recent Russian newspaper:



The US army hacker looks pretty scary, doesn’t he? Apparently Russians are just as afraid of US hackers as we are of Russian hackers. And newspapers in both countries use fake images like these to help attract more readers and sell more papers.

As one final comment on the CIA contention that Crazy Vlad is actually a Proxy Spokesperson for Putin, if this were true then why was Vlad’s “Trump promoting” video never picked up by RT America (which the CIA contends is also a mouthpiece for Putin). As near as I can tell, Vlad’s video has never been seen by anyone in America (outside the CIA) before being published in our Turning Point News article. So how can it be that Vlad influenced the American election when not a single American ever saw his video before the election? .

Conclusion: The CIA is not always wrong
Since there is now well documented ireffutable undeniable proof that Russians were in fact attempting to influence the US election, we think it is only fair to publicly apologize for our previously claiming that “every sentence in the CIA report was false.” We now stand corrected. There was one sentence in the CIA 15 page report that was true. Please share this report with everyone you know. It is important for the American people to know that the CIA is not always wrong. Clearly at least some Russians were trying to influence the US election.

Regards,
David Spring
Turning Point News

By Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed.

January 15, 2017

The American people are being driven like sheep to the slaughter by a flood of false anti-Russia stories now in the main stream media. In this article, we will look at how war hysteria and warnings about “fake news” are being used as cover for new laws that attack our First Amendment right of free speech.

“The best way to take control over a people and control them utterly is to take a little of their freedom at a time, to erode rights by a thousand tiny and almost imperceptible reductions. In this way, the people will not see those rights and freedoms being removed until past the point at which these changes cannot be reversed.”

― Pat Miller, Author


The Rise in the Public's Fear of Fake News
In October 2016 there was a sudden dramatic rise in people's interest in the topic of “Fake News”. According to Zerohedge, “… the Washington Post was instrumental in planting the phrase "Fake News" - along with Buzzfeed, factcheck.org, and The Guardian.”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-10/washington-post-instrumental-coining-term-fake-news-now-wants-it-gone


This chart shows the google searches for “fake news”:





The Rise in Suspicion of Independent Media
Fake news has been around since the dawn of human history. (Remember the Gulf of Tonkin Fake News that led to the Vietnam War and the Weapons of Mass Destruction Fake News that led to the Iraq War?). Yet the past few months has seen a dramatic and perhaps even planned rise in stories about fake news. A month after flooding the population with stories claiming “fake news” was rampant, on November 24^th the Washington Post published a list of 200 “fake news” websites ranging from right to left on the political spectrum – From Drudge and Brietbart on one side to Consortium News and Truthdig on the other. What do these diverse websites have in common? The Washington Post's “prop or not” team claimed that all of them were purveyors of Russian propaganda, puppets of Putin and too danger for Americans to even read. Note the scary image which appears on the Prop or Not page:
http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html



It was only after some of these slandered Independent News websites threatened to sue the Washington Post that WaPo posted a retraction saying in part:

“Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. … A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post... does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.b6ca6d0bd7ba


Despite the push to get Americans to distrust independent media, via chicken little “the sky is falling” antics and listing websites as supposed Russian sympathizers, a recent Gallup survey shows that the number of Americans who trust mass media has been decreasing. Notice the decrease in trust Americans have in mass media by party:




http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass-media-sinks-new-low.aspx


Why the decrease? Today, thanks to the internet, anyone can do their own independent research and start their own independent news website, and they have. Independent news websites have given the American people an alternative to the spin and distortions of the main stream media. There is a huge difference between how main stream media and independent media report on and frame the news. Take the reporting of Russia hacking U.S. elections. Here are two two headlines. One from main stream news and the other from independent news.


Wall Street Journal (December 29, 2016) - “U.S Punishes Russia over Election Hacking with Sanctions” http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-punishes-russia-over-election-hacking-with-sanctions-1483039178


Washingtonsblog (December 30, 2016) - "Creator of NSA’s Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report”

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/creator-nsas-global-surveillance-system-calls-b-s-russian-hacking-report.html


So depending on where you get your news from, you will hear a completely different version of events. While the Wall Street Journal insists on spinning Russian Hacking as a fact sent down from Heaven, Washington’s blog readers learn several important reasons why the Russian hacking story might be utterly false. Thus, the purpose of the new “fake news” laws is not to protect the American people from fake news, it is to prevent them from learning the truth.


Russia and its Threat
Let's turn now to Russia and the increase in the anti-Russia news we are reading. Incidentally, Russia has less than half of the population of the U.S. and spends a tiny fraction of what we do on military / national security. Click here to start researching the military and economic differences between the U.S. and Russia. http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/compare/Russia/United-States/Military Also, notice the location of Ukraine (left side, UKR).





Russia Hacking our Elections to Change Vote Tallies? No.
Thanks to the main stream media's anti-Russian news echo-chamber, (yet questioned by most readers of independent news), many Americans believe that Russia hacked our elections, including our vote tallies, preventing Hillary Clinton from becoming president. See December Yougov poll results here, which compared Clinton voters and Trump voters and their perceptions:



http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2017/01/top-american-intelligence-official-debunks-fake-news-russia-hacking-votes.html


Note that half of all Democrats fell for this fake claim. However, responding to the question of whether or not Russia had indeed hacked our vote tallies, on Jan. 5^th at an Armed Services Senate hearing, James Clapper, the head of all U.S. intelligence, told Congress that Russia did not change any vote tallies.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2017/01/05/clapper-no-evidence-russians-changed-votes-in-presidential-election-n2267531


But instead of reporting the truth, that Russia did not alter even a single vote, the main stream media has continued to publish headline after headline that “Russia hacked the 2016 Presidential Election.”


Did Russia Hack the Vermont Electric Grid?
On December 30^th the same Washington Post that brought us Prop or Not, published headlines telling us that Russia was threatening the electrical grid in Vermont. And it's the middle of winter and super cold. The headlines really scared Americans as we imagined the poor people in Vermont freezing to death! This news of this “new Russian hack” spread like wildfire.

The Washington Post, December 30, 2016:




New York Times, December 30, 2016:



Reuters News, December 31, 2016:


The mainstream media was in a frenzy sharing this story. Millions of people read the news. It was tweeted and facebooked and shared widely. The story was on the TV nonstop. Maybe you talked about it with your friends. It was only after the manager of the Vermont Power Grid published a statement insisting that they were not hacked in any way and that there was no danger of folks freezing, that the Washington Post wrote a small retraction at the end of the article which read: “An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.”

It turned out that the malware on the laptop was not even related to Russia but WaPo could only admit that the Russians had not attacked Vermont “so far.” In response to the fake story of Russia hacking the Vermont Utility company, Glenn Greenwald, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the Intercept, wrote:

“After spreading the falsehoods far and wide, raising fear levels and manipulating U.S. political discourse in the process (both Russia stories were widely hyped on cable news), journalists who spread the false claims subsequently note the retraction or corrections only in the most muted way possible, and often not at all. As a result, only a tiny fraction of people who were exposed to the original false story end up learning of the retractions”:
https://theintercept.com/2017/01/04/washpost-is-richly-rewarded-for-false-news-about-russia-threat-while-public-is-deceived/

It therefore appears that the real purpose of the Washington Post is not to inform people but to spread as much fear as possible.


Is Russia Attacking the U.S? – The Shut down of C-Span

And now we have yet another supposed Russian attack. On January 12, this was a headline at Yahoo News-

“Watch Kremlin-Backed Russia Today Take Over C-SPAN’s Feed (Video)”

If you read just the headlines, it's pretty scary – Russia took over a US TV station! However, if you read the actual article you would read the manager of C-SPAN clarifying: “We do not believe we were hacked… Instead, our initial investigation suggests that this was caused by an internal routing error. We take our network security very seriously and will continue with a deeper investigation.”

Very sadly, American readers just read the headline, decided it was true and didn't bother to read the actual article. Then they posted 1,000's of comments like this:

Read the article and its comments here:
https://www.yahoo.com/tv/watch-kremlin-backed-russia-today-over-c-span-221702255.html

Today many Americans, like nancy g hate Trump and sadly, many Americans believe we need to go to war against Russia, that Russia is our enemy, thanks to misleading and disgraceful headlines like these. There is no real evidence that Russia hacked the DNC or Vermont or C-Span, but we are told to believe the CIA and the NSA the government and the media.

Here are two reports by computer security experts who don't believe the Russians are behind Hillary Clinton's presidential loss or are out to destroy the U.S. They tell you about Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, the names that Cloud Strike gave to the DNC hackers. Interestingly, the DNC hired a private security firm to investigate the hackers and refused help from the FBI.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/12/creator-nsas-global-surveillance-system-calls-b-s-russian-hacking-report.html


https://turningpointnews.org/hack-everything-special-report

We are certainly in a dangerous political situation in our country and we are, in my opinion, being herded to accept a war against Russia and a crack down on our freedom of speech.


Why Demonize Russia? Ukraine
The U.S. and Russia have been on oppostite sides of two major conflicts: both in Ukraine and in Syria. Essentially, they have been fighting proxy wars already. In 2014 the U.S. gave 5 billion tax payer dollars to fund anti – government forces in Ukraine to support their efforts in overthrowing their Democratically elected government. Yet most Americans would have trouble locating either Syria or Ukraine on a map!

RT News explained this funding:

“Such funding is a well-known tool of the American government. Washington describes it as promoting a positive change and denies accusations that it gives money to get leverage to pursue its own goals in targeted countries… Some like film director Oliver Stone even call it a US-staged coup, while former US Congressman Ron Paul called for the US to stop meddling in Ukraine.” https://www.rt.com/news/233439-us-meddling-ukraine-crisis/

But did we hear about our tax dollars going to overthrow a Democratically elected leader in Ukraine and some of this $5 billion going to Nazi sympathizers in the mainstream news? When you read independent news, you are more likely to get important information like this:


“Washington has chosen to spearhead Neo-Nazis into positions of authority. Under a “regime of indirect rule”, however,  they take their orders on crucial military and foreign policy issues –including the deployment of troops directed against the Russian federation– from the the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-u-s-has-installed-a-neo-nazi-government-in-ukraine/5371554



Here is a picture of John McCain shaking hands with Svoboda neo-Nazi party leaders.http://www.globalresearch.ca/there-are-no-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-and-the-obama-administration-does-not-support-fascists/5370269

Glenn Greewald also wrote about how the U.S. was funding Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine: “Just as the U.S. spent years funding and arming the precise extremist elements it claims it wants to combat – in Libya, in Syria, and long before that in Afghanistan – arming Ukrainian forces would empower a monstrous crew of fascists and outright Nazi sympathizers. The coup itself, which the U.S. government supported, almost certainly did exactly that.”
https://theintercept.com/2015/02/27/clapper-calls-arming-ukrainian-forces-actually-empower/


Which was really overthrown... Crimea or Ukraine?



Let's turn to another part of the U.S. and Russian conflict in Ukraine: Crimea. Crimea had been part of Russia from 1792 to 1954 and the vast majority of people identify more with Russia than Ukraine. https://www.quora.com/Do-they-speak-Russian-or-Ukrainian-in-Crimea

In 2014 with the overthrow of the Ukranian government, Crimeans wanted to return back to Russia. According to the BBC, “Some 95.5% of voters in Crimea have supported joining Russia… Russia's Vladimir Putin has said he will respect the Crimean people's wishes.” Clearly, the Crimean people could not happily accept the new government in Ukraine. They are now part of Russia.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26606097


So while the U.S. media told us that Russia was invading Crimea and had to be stopped, it seems like the majority of Crimeans are now happy to be again part of Russia. Here's a 2015 report on Forbes with the headline - “One Year After Russia Annexed Crimea, Locals Prefer Moscow To Kiev”.



http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/03/20/one-year-after-russia-annexed-crimea-locals-prefer-moscow-to-kiev/#6fd6c2be5951


How Russia Fear Mongering is used to Crack Down on Free Speech in the US
Here's Seattle author Mike Whitney whose articles appear on Counterpunch, tying together the crack down on free speech in the U.S with the U.S. main stream media's anti-Russia hysteria and hysteria against Donald Trump. In short, he is saying and I agree that all of this hoopla is about getting President elect Trump on board to go to war.

“Their (The mainstream media's) job is to prepare the American people for an escalation of hostilities between the two nuclear-armed superpowers…. Washington wants to  reassert its exceptional role as the uncontested steward of global security and the lone ‘unipolar’ world power. That’s what this whole “hacking” fiasco is about. The big shots who run the country are trying to strong-arm ‘the Donald’ into carrying their water so the depredations can continue and Central Asia can be transformed into a gigantic Washington-dominated corporate free trade zone where the Big Money calls the shots and Capital reigns supreme.”
http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/01/10/us-intel-agencies-try-to-strong-arm-trump-into-war-with-russia/

The Crackdown on Free Speech
The rise in anti- Russian propaganda and the creation of “Do Not Read” lists seem to be part of the latest push to narrow our right to free speech to protest against U.S. imperialism. There is a piece of legislation, which proves my point, that was signed into law just before Christmas. This legislation, which was introduced in the House in May 2016, (many months before the election) was entitled “Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016.” The purpose of this law is:
“… Identifying current and emerging trends in foreign propaganda and disinformation… to expose and refute foreign misinformation and disinformation and proactively promote fact-based narratives and policies to audiences outside the United States.”

You can read the text of the bill here.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/5181/text

This bill passed the House and the Senate by huge margins and, just before Christmas, it was part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which President Obama signed. Now we have a law that allows the government to attack ideas that it doesn't like both at home and abroad – Do you think it is a coincidence that we have lists of “do not read” websites now? Read more about that law here.
.http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-12-24/obama-signs-countering-disinformation-and-propaganda-act-law




Interestingly, this legislation and its intended purpose is very similar to what President Obama's friend and 2008 Head of Information and Regulatory affairs, Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein had proposed in a 2008 essay he wrote when he gave suggestions about what the U.S. government should do about conspiracy theories:

“What can government do about conspiracy theories? … (1) Government might ban conspiracy theorizing. (2) Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories. (3) Government might itself engage in counterspeech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories. (4) Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counterspeech. (5) Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help.”

Download and read Sunstein's prescient essay here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers2.cfm?abstract_id=1084585

Glenn Greenwald's responded to Sunstein's essay by saying: “...the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class.”
http://www.salon.com/2010/01/15/sunstein_2/


Control of the Media = Control Of the Future
The “powers that be” would like to control free speech. It is much easier to control a population and prevent them from revolting if you limit what they read, hear and are allowed to say.


“I know the secret of making the average American believe anything I want him to. Just let me control television…. You put something on the television and it becomes reality. If the world outside the TV set contradicts the images, people start trying to change the world to make it like the TV set images….’’
-Hal Becker, media “expert’’ and management consultant, the Futures Group, in an interview in 1981

Clearly, our intelligence agencies, mega-corporations and government have an interest in controlling the news we rely on for information. One glaring example of media colluding with corporate / government players is, as you may know, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post in October 2013 for $250 million and that same year the CIA signed a $600 million deal with Amazon to use their cloud services. This relationship between the CIA and the Washington Post probably impacts what the Washington Post writes and how stories are framed.

Former CIA agent Ray McGovern describes the CIA – Bezos relationship as:
““… compelling proof that the Fourth Estate (the press) is moribund, and that defenders of the independence and integrity of the Web must thwart attempts by bozos at CIA and Bezos at the once-independent Washington Post from leaving still more stain on journalism.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/cia-cloud-over-jeff-bezoss-washington-post/5563127

Think back to “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq”. (There were no weapons of mass destruction.) It was The Washington Post, that Jeff Bezos now owns, that led the way to push for the invasion against Iraq, which resulted in millions of lives destroyed, with an incredible 140 front page stories, and 27 editorials. Here is a 2014 headline in The Nation reminding us of the Washington Post's push for war:

https://www.thenation.com/article/eleven-years-how-washington-post-helped-give-us-iraq-war/

While independent news outlets decried the upcoming Iraq war, The Washington Post gave it a thumbs up. There are more examples of stark differences in mainstream and independent media views on issues: Look at the TPP trade deal, Obamacare, Common Core, Wall Street bailouts, Ukraine, Syria, any issue.

This is why the U.S. founders wrote the first amendment, so we could get ideas out in the open and speak about them out in the open, and talk to each other, and make decisions out in the open. This is why we have elections. If we don't protect free speech and the free exchange of ideas, we are on a slippery slope to rule by an oligarchy. If you see how money in politics hurts us, think about how money in media hurts us. If you look at independent media you know they are often asking for money. They aren't owned by the rich. Here is more about the power of the mainstream press - http://www.newprogs.org/the_powerless_press

The simple fact and danger today is that today 90% of all of our media is owned by 6 corporations, up from 50 companies in 1983. And the people who own the media are rich, super rich. Here you can meet the 15 billionaires who own the media.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2016/06/01/these-15-billionaires-own-americas-news-media-companies/#2277dc4330b4

This simple Venn Diagram from 2010 showed us the relationship between media and government.

It can be found here on the blog of a high school Economics teacher - http://haywardeconblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/blog-post.html

The teacher is a regular person, like me. I'm a teacher too. Like you and most everyone else in our country he wants freedom and fairness. Finally, note this mega-merger in the works between AT+T and Time Warner. Headline from CNN - “The top executives at both AT&T and Time Warner appear hopeful that President-elect Donald Trump and his administration will not stand in the way of their companies' $85.4-billion merger.”
http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/06/media/att-time-warner-bewkes-stephenson/


$85.4 billion. WOW. It's a very small group of elite people, who want to determine what it is that the rest of us read. I don't feel comfortable with that. That's why I read widely. The mainstream media doesn't always lie, but it has lied many times in the past and it will continue to mislead us in the future – especially if we do not have Independent News sources to keep the main stream media in check.


In Closing… It is up to all of us to protect and promote independent news
We should denounce the “prop or not” black lists and the legislation enacted to shut down our First Amendment Rights. We need to think for ourselves and not just go along to get along. And what about the media we disagree with? What about people writing really vile things? We need to speak out more and not be afraid to challenge ideas. For example, I am very opposed to the demonization of Muslims in the U.S., which some independent media on the right promotes. But I'm also prepared to talk about it and march about it and write about it and meet with people who hold these views and help elect people who share my views by respecting the rights of all religons. But I'm not going to say that those Americans can't have those views because if I do that, pretty soon, someone could get into power to shut down my views. We are meant to be participants in a Democracy and not just sit on the sidelines.

Our nature as Americans is to be free. People from around the world come to the U.S. to be free. I love the U.S. and I don't want to lose my freedom. What we need to do is to become more of an informed and active populace, now more than ever.




The government is now trying to silence, not only its overseas enemies, but all of us who speak the truth as we see it. For example, if we question Russia's interference in our elections or President elect Trump's relationship with Putin, we could be labeled "Russian agents” or “Russian sympathizers”. Maybe the powers-that-be hope that their demonization of Russia has so scared our fellow Americans that they will turn their backs on our voice and demonize us. Well, I hope I can count on you not to. If we all stick together, we can protect the right of free speech for everyong. If you would like to learn more about independent news and how it is different from the main stream media, here is a list of independent news sites I read nearly every day. https://turningpointnews.org/our-favorite-independent-media-sources

If you agree that we need to stop the attack on our first amendment right of free speech, please share this article on social media.

Regards,
Elizabeth Hanson,
Turning Point News

By Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed.

January 1, 2017

In this article I compare the headlines of mainstream news to the headlines of independent news as an example of why we need independent news. I also give suggestions on how to ascertain the truth when reading news articles on the Internet.

In November of 2016, the Washington Post published a blacklist of 200 websites which they deem as promoting Russian propaganda and thus dangerous to U.S. consumers of news. It was published by a group called “Prop or Not”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/russian-propaganda-effort-helped-spread-fake-news-during-election-experts-say/2016/11/24/793903b6-8a40-4ca9-b712-716af66098fe_story.html?utm_term=.3a6e770f8ac7

Here's the link to the Prop or Not list -http://www.propornot.com/p/home.html

The Washington Post has many excellent reporters and has published some great stories over the years, so when I first heard about this list, I thought “Oh… it probably lists some sites like Russia Today (RT), sites directly related to Russia.

However, much to my surprise upon reading their list of propaganda websites, I found that the Prop or Not list contains the ten websites I have read almost daily for many years. Here in alphabetical order:

#1: Black Agenda Report

#2: Consortium news

#3: Counterpunch

#4: Global Research

#5: Naked Capitalism

#6: Oped news

#7: Truthdig

#8: Truthout

#9 Washingtonsblog

#10: Zerohedge


The Washington Post's Prop or Not team also provides us with this graphic to scare the living bejesus out of people, in hopes, I assume, to deter Americans from visiting any of the sites they deem as propaganda and to show us that they mean business:




The team at Prop or Not then goes on to tell us that we should be reading news from these main stream media news sources instead of independent news sources. Here is a quote from their website:

“Obtain news from actual reporters, who report to an editor and are professionally accountable for mistakes. We suggest NPR, the BBC, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, Buzzfeed News, VICE, etc, and especially your local papers and local TV news channels. Support them by subscribing, if you can!”



Comparing Headlines of Prop or Not Approved Sites versus Independent News Sites
Here's a look of some of their recent headlines of Prop or Not's trusted media sources regarding Russian hacking and the subsequent sanctions Obama is putting on Russia.

NPR: “US. Officials Say Russia Hacked A Vermont Utility”

New York Times: “U.S. Sanctions Russia Over Election Hacking”

Wall Street Journal: “Obama Strikes Back at Russia for Election Hacking”

Washington Post: Obama administration announces measures to punish Russia for 2016 election interference

These mainstream news headlines are being widely read by Americans and will likely have the effect of pushing most Americans into agreeing with sanctions and perhaps further aggressions against Russia.


We saw how believing in weapons of mass deception led to aggressions against Iraq and resulted in well over 100,000 civilian deaths between 2003 and 2010.




http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-11107739


And there were no weapons of mass destruction found. Ever since 9 / 11, millions of Americans have become disillusioned with the mainstream news, and its framing of news related to subjects like trade agreements, foreign policy, banker misdeeds, the economy and education have been reading news from independent media.

Let's compare those “ra-ra sanctions against Russia” headlines to the headlines in some of the independent media Americans read which are on the Prop or Not list:


Black Agenda Report - “Freedom Rider: Syria, Russia and American Desperation”


Consortium news - “Details Still Lacking on Russian ‘Hack”


Counterpunch - “We Do Not Live in “Post Truth” World, We Live in a World of Lies and We Always Have”


Global Research- “Obama’s Sanctions against Moscow “Intended to Box In Donald Trump”. Evidence that Hacking of DNC Accusations are Fake”


Opednews - “DHS FBI Claim of Russian Hacking is Fake News”


Truthdig - “Experts Aren’t Convinced by FBI and Homeland Security Report on Alleged Russian Hacking”


Washingtonsblog - “Creator of NSA's Global Surveillance System Calls B.S. On Russian Hacking Report”


Zerohedge - "Something Stinks" - Like Iraq WMD Fiasco, Russia Story Doesn't Add Up


While the mainstream media reported the Russian Hacker story as if it were the truth, alternative news sources reported why the Russian Hacker story might not be true.


Six Principles for Evaluation the Truth

I'm a teacher with a background in Linguistics. An always interesting question to answer with my students is how do you know if a media source is telling the truth?

I follow these six principles:

#1: Have they told the truth in the past? (Weapons of mass destruction, Economic recovery)

#2: Who is funding the site? (Gates money, CIA money)

#3: Is there power or money to be gained by the corporate rich by publishing this story? (Overthrow of Ukraine, Syria, Libya, Iraq, private charter schools)

#4: Are they willing to tell the truth even if the truth isn't popular? (Federal Reserve continuously bailing out failing banks, the labor participation rate, GMO crops and farmers)

#5: Do they provide the underlying links to source documents? Are the links they provide real source documents or are they linked to fake source documents? (The Russian hacking evidence)

#6: Does the information seek to damage our civil liberties or to game the economy against us? (TPP, repealing Glass-Steagal)


Also, I recognize my own bias and don't automatically discount others' views. For example, I still read news from the sites that Prop or Not wants me to read even though I dislike Prop or Not. I'm not saying that all Mainstream news is fake. Just some of it.


Why is this subject so important?
Our rights to free speech hanging by a thread. In addition to Prop or Not's black listing 200 websites, the federal government has just granted $160 million to create, as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, a center to combat propaganda aimed against the U.S. (You'd wonder why anyone in the middle east might hold some anger against the U.S.) Here is part of a recent article from Alternet:

Obama Just Signed off on a Shadowy New 'Anti-Propaganda' Center That Will Be Handed Over to Trump

Without meaningful debate, the provision was included in the 2017 defense bill.

By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet

December 30, 2016

“….Termed the Global Engagement Center, the body is granted broad and ill-defined powers to surveil the “populations most susceptible to propaganda,” compile reporting and social media messaging critical of the U.S. government and disseminate pro-American propaganda… (Also) The language indicates that federal authorities will have a new mechanism for monitoring social media and reporting that is critical of the U.S. government.”

See http://www.alternet.org/human-rights/obama-just-signed-shadowy-new-anti-propaganda-center-will-be-handed-over-trump


The legislation to create this Global Engagement Center had been in the works since June of this year, well before the election. We can only wonder what else has been and is in the works to be launched against both the American people and people worldwide. I'll tell you one thing that has been in the works - tensions against Russia.

Another Example of the Need for Independent Media
Today at the gym I was watching the TV while on the treadmill and all of the mainstream channels were talking about the Russians hacking into…. Then when I came home I read an article by Glenn Greenwald, a very trusted journalist who I've read for years and who I've never seen lie.
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/31/russia-hysteria-infects-washpost-again-false-story-about-hacking-u-s-electric-grid/





In this article, Greenwald reviews the false claims made by the Washington Post and then says,

“The Post’s story also predictably and very rapidly infected other large media outlets. Reuters thus told its readers around the world: “A malware code associated with Russian hackers has reportedly been detected within the system of a Vermont electric utility.”

WHAT’S THE PROBLEM here? It did not happen. There was no “penetration of the U.S. electricity grid.” The truth was undramatic and banal. Burlington Electric, after receiving a Homeland Security notice sent to all U.S. utility companies about the malware code found in the DNC system, searched all its computers and found the code in a single laptop that was not connected to the electric grid.”


This is why we need Independent Media
Just like with Iraq, the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction against the US Electric grid was all made up by our recklessly dishonest main stream media. Glenn’s article is proof yet again, that we need to embrace independent news. Great danger lies in believing information because it's shiny. In closing, many of us have been seeing this crackdown on free speech and free thought for years and over the last few weeks it's been amplified. If we allow a controlled media, and police each other for signs of transgression in thought and word, we ourselves will be building up a society which I don't think any of us really wants.



About the author:
Elizabeth Hanson M. Ed. Is a college instructor from Seattle Washington and co-founder of turningpointnews.org. She is also a co-author of the book, “Weapons of Mass Deception, The War against our public schools.” https://weaponsofmassdeception.org/

Elizabeth can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

On December 29, 2016, the Hill posted an article discussing a 13 page report by the FBI and DHS claiming that their 13 page report was “evidence” of Russian hacking in US elections.
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/312132-fbi-dhs-release-report-on-russia-hacking


Wikileaks has repeatedly stated that the source of its leaks was a disgruntled Democratic Party insider.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4034038/Ex-British-ambassador-WikiLeaks-operative-claims-Russia-did-NOT-provide-Clinton-emails-handed-D-C-park-intermediary-disgusted-Democratic-insiders.html


However, President Obama issued a press release on December 29 2016 using the DHS-FBI report to justify increasing sanctions against Russia.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/12/29/statement-president-actions-response-russian-malicious-cyber-activity


I therefore decided to see what the evidence was of Russian involvement in US Elections. The Hill article linked to this 13 page government press release as its proof of Russian hacking.
https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR_16-20296.pdf

The government press release written by DHS-FBI did not mention Wikileaks in its report. Nor did the report provide any evidence of Russian hacking in the US elections. Instead, the press release stated that “technical indicators” of Russian hacking were in the “CSV file and XML file attached with the PDF.” However, there was no CSV or XML file or link attached with the PDF. I was eventually able to find these two files at this link.
https://www.us-cert.gov/security-publications/GRIZZLY-STEPPE-Russian-Malicious-Cyber-Activity

To see the evidence of Russian hacking first hand, I downloaded the CSV file and converted it into a spreadsheet. The CSV file and the XML file both contained the same data. Here is the XML link to this data which can be viewed online in a web browser.
https://www.us-cert.gov/sites/default/files/publications/JAR-16-20296.xml

Both files provide a list of 895 “indicators” of Russian Hacking. Unfortunately, nearly all of these indicators are simply IP addresses. In other words, it is a list of 895 servers from from more than 40 countries around the world. But the list also includes a few website domain names. (Domain names are simply the name of the website such as Youtube.com). I looked up these website domain names with the the following tool which tells us who owns the domain names and where they are located:
https://www.whois.net/

My review of these domain names confirmed that none of these domain names have any relationship to Russian government hackers. Here are the results for four of the domain names provided by the DHS and the FBI as evidence of Russian hacking:

ritsoperrol.ru is not in use. It is registered to a private person. The named server hosting the domain is nserver: ns0.xtremeweb.de. This is a German web hosting and consulting company whose address and phone number are publicly listed on their website. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers would use a public German web host to register and host their domain names.

littlejohnwilhap.ru is not in use and is available to be purchased. It is unlikely that Russian hackers would use a domain name like this to launch a cyber attack on the US.

wilcarobbe.com is taken and is not in use. It is registered to Arsen Ramanov in Groznenskaya Russia. His address, phone number and email address are all publicly listed. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers would use a domain name that was publicly listed. Hackers are not idiots.

one2shoppee.com is taken and is registered with GoDaddy.com. It is not currently in use. But it is highly unlikely that Russian Hackers would register their domain names with GoDaddy – which is a US server. In fact, it is very unlikely that Russian hackers would ever use any US servers. They would only use their own servers.

How did these four domain names get on a list of Russian hackers? It is possible that some unknown agents took over these domain names and may have used them for some kind of hacking activity. However, the agents could have just as easily been from the US as from Russia. In fact, it is not likely that these domain names were taken over by Russian hackers for the simple reason that Russian hackers are way too smart to be using these silly tactics.

None of the 885 IP addresses have any confirmed relationship to Russian Government Hackers
An IP address is simply a numerical designation for a server. The 885 IP addresses listed in the DHS – FBI CSV file were even more interesting. The IP addresses were located on servers from the US and more than 40 nations around the world including more than 30 IP addresses supposedly located in China. Here are a few of the IP addresses


167.114.35.70

185.12.46.178

46.102.152.132

178.20.55.16


I looked up several of these IP addresses using the following tool:
http://whatismyipaddress.com/ip-lookup

Here are a four examples of IP addresses in the DHS-FBI report:

167.114.35.70 is a Canadian Corporate server specializing in the promotion of Bitcoin. They are within a few miles of the US border.


185.12.46.178 is a Swiss corporate server associated with the domain name leavesorus.com. The domain name leavesorus.com is currently available to be purchased. This indicates that this is a fake domain name and likely a fake corporation.


46.102.152.132 is another Swiss corporate server this one specializing in emails and associated with the domain name maxsultan.xyz which is a fake domain name. This also indicates that this is another fake corporation.


178.20.55.16 is a proxy server with no known location but has been used as a TOR router exit node. A proxy server is another name for a mirror or server used to bounce information from one server to another in order to hide the true location of the original server. This proxy server is associated with the domain name nos-oignons.net. This domain name was registered on December 31 2012 and is valid until December 31 2017. In other words, whoever got this domain name paid for its use for 5 years. But they did registered the domain name anonymously. The website associated with this server appears to be a group in France promoting the TOR router. They became an association in May 2013 – 5 months after getting the domain name. The group currently has 5 members and it costs one Euro to join this group. Their website was reported 9 days ago as having been infected with the Zues virus. This infection does not leave tracks on server logs. So it is difficult to tell where it came from. Removal of this virus requires a complete rebuild of the server. In short, some agency decided to take out this server and then use it to make a cyber attack on some US government agency and thus have the IP address listed on the DHS-FBI list as one of 895 indicators of Russian hacking.


Many of the IP addresses yielded the same dead end or otherwise highly suspicious result - meaning that some very large agency is using hundreds of servers in various countries around the world as a front for hacking attacks. I recently researched a series of attacks on my personal websites from hundreds of IP addresses using hundreds of servers that were supposedly located in the Ukraine. I was able to confirm the exact location in the Ukraine that was supposedly being used to launch literally thousands of attacks on my websites. However, it is not credible that anyone in the Ukraine has the millions of dollars needed to be running hundreds of servers in a remote Ukrainian location. Nor is it likely that anyone in rural Ukraine would even have the knowledge to take care of hundreds of servers even if they did have the millions of dollars needed to plow into buying these servers. Nor are they likely to have the knowledge needed to be running very complex cyber attacks. Ukraine is just not a good location for servers. This experience convinced me that attacks were being launched from other locations and were merely being routed through Ukraine in order to mislead people about where the attacks were really coming from.


Next, the CSV file provided by DHS-FBI listed the physical location of all 885 IP addresses. What is most ironic is that, only two of the 885 IP addresses were from servers in Russia. The most common location of the hacking servers was the United States. Over 30 of the servers were supposedly located in China. But it is known that the NSA has the ability to use satellite mirrors to hide the locations of their servers – making folks believe that the attacks are coming from China (or Ukraine or Mongolia) when in fact they are coming from servers located in the US.





Here are 50 more servers. Again, no Russians:




Here are 50 more servers. How can servers in the US be used as evidence of Russian hacking?



Here is another batch of 50 servers. Again, no Russians.



Wait a Minute… Is this the Smoking Gun???
Actually, there were two Russian servers located on lines 259 and 261. Here are the IP addresses.

93.171.203.244

95.105.72.78

Here is more information about each of these:


93.171.203.244 This is a clean broadband server located near Ufa which is a city in Russia with one million people. It is associated with an organization called Miragroup Ltd. The website is rxbrothers.ru. Naturally, this is a fake domain name which is available to be purchased. Miragroup is actually a corporation located in Great Britain.


95.105.72.78 is another clean broadband server located near Ufa. The organization is JSC Ufanet and the website is ufanet.ru which is a public broadband service started in 1997. Someone apparently is using this broadband service to hack the US government. Could this be the smoking gun that the Russian government is attacking the US? Think about it. If you were a Russian hacker, would you really use a public server located in some Russian town? I don’t think so. This is more like evidence that some hacker was using the local public library.

Imagine someone launching a cyber attack from the Seattle Public library – and then our government declaring that they have evident that the mayor of the City of Seattle was responsible for the attack because “nothing happens in Seattle without the approval of the Mayor!”. This is worse than a silly accusation. It is ridiculous. It is irresponsible.


Real Russian Hackers do not use Windows Servers
Only three of the servers provided in the DHS/FBI report included detailed information (despite the fact that the IP addresses provided information on all 895 servers and that DHS/FBI certainly have detailed information on all of the servers). All three servers listed in the report were Windows servers. It is highly unlikely that Russian hackers or Chinese hackers would be using Windows servers. Instead, all real hackers use Linux servers because Linux servers are much more secure than Windows servers.
https://techlog360.com/top-15-favourite-operating-systems-of-hackers/


If there really was evidence of Russian hacking, the NSA would have it
Former NSA leader turned whistleblower William Binney recently stated that if the Russians really did hack the Democratic Party servers, the NSA would certainly have real evidence (not the nonsense put out in the DHS-FBI CSV file). Here is his quote from a December 29 2016 article by Glenn Greenwald: “The bottom line is that the NSA would know where and how any “hacked” emails from the DNC, HRC or any other servers were routed through the network. This process can sometimes require a closer look into the routing to sort out intermediate clients, but in the end sender and recipient can be traced across the network.”
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/29/top-secret-snowden-document-reveals-what-the-nsa-knew-about-previous-russian-hacking/

Edward Snowden has not only confirmed that the NSA has this ability – but that he himself used an NSA program called XKEYSCORE to monitor such attacks.
https://theintercept.com/2016/07/26/russian-intelligence-hack-dnc-nsa-know-snowden-says/

Anyone with any kind of technical background in defending against hacker attacks would understand that what Binney, Snowden and Greenwald are saying is true. The evidence of their truth – most of which was supplied by Snowden from NSA documents – is overwhelming.


Conclusion
An important research principle is to follow the money. People around the world need to ask themselves who has the money and technical ability to be running hundreds and perhaps thousands of real servers and real IP addresses from fake corporations using fake websites in fake locations in more than 40 nations around the world? What agency has already been proven to be running mass surveillance on billions of people in more than 40 nations all around the world? Whose military cyber budget is more than 10 times larger than the cyber warfare budget of the rest of the world combined? There is certainly an elephant in the room – but it is not a Russian elephant.

At a televised press conference on April 2016, former NSA agent, Edward Snowden asked the Russian leader Vladimir Putin if the Russian government engaged in mass surveillance of millions of people in a manner similar to the NSA. Putin replied that Russian law prohibited the Russian government from engaging in mass surveillance. Putin then pointed out that the Russian military budget was less than 10% of the US military budget. So even if they wanted to engage in mass surveillance, they simply did not have the money.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/apr/17/snowden-putin-russia-surveillance-phone-in-video

People also need to ask themselves why the FBI DHS chose to place their evidence in a CSV file and XML file rather than a normal document or spreadsheet. If this were real evidence, it would have been placed directly in the PDF report for everyone to read – not hidden away in a file the general public has little ability to read.

Finally, for the FBI or the DHS to claim that the XML-CSV file contains evidence or even indicators of Russian hacking is simply a false statement. It is a perfect example of fake news. Any news agency promoting this claim without doing even the most basic of research that would easily confirm it is false, should be listed as a fake news agency.

The real question that we should all be asking is why the DHS and FBI would destroy their reputation by posting such a fake report?
Several years ago, our CIA claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We now know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction – meaning that we went to war and spent over a trillion dollars on a fake report. Is this new fake report a pretext for launching a cyber war against Russia? Is it intended to justify increasing US military spending?

It is hard to say what the real purpose of this fake DHS-FBI report is. But the fact that this silly list of IP addresses was the best evidence they could provide should be a strong indication that there really is no evidence of Russian hacking. Instead, it is more likely that Wikileaks is telling the truth in stating that they got the emails from a disgruntled Democratic Party insider.







About the author

David Spring M. Ed. is a retired college instructor from Seattle Washington who specializes in website design and security. David recently founded an independent news site called Turning Point News.org in order to speak truth to power and shine a light in the darkness. You can reach david at the following email address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.