{"id":394512,"date":"2019-01-29T12:31:19","date_gmt":"2019-01-29T11:31:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-russia-gate-rationalized-censorship-consortiumnews\/"},"modified":"2019-01-29T12:31:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-29T11:31:19","slug":"how-russia-gate-rationalized-censorship-consortiumnews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-russia-gate-rationalized-censorship-consortiumnews\/","title":{"rendered":"How Russia-gate Rationalized Censorship \u2013 Consortiumnews"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>From the Archives:<\/strong>\u00a0Russia-gate mania spread beyond a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War, reported Joe Lauria on Dec. 4, 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><strong>By <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/tag\/joe-lauria\/\">Joe Lauria<\/a><\/span><br \/><\/strong><em>Special to Consortium News<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">At the end of October 2017, I wrote an<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">\u00a0<a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2017\/10\/29\/the-democratic-money-behind-russia-gate\/\">article<\/a><\/span>\u00a0for <strong>Consortium News<\/strong> about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton\u2019s campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story\u00a0about\u00a0Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_20482\" style=\"width: 485px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/wp-content\/plugins\/lazy-load\/images\/1x1.trans.gif\" data-lazy-src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg\" class=\" wp-image-20482\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"316\"  \/><noscript><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-20482\" src=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/25681712640_b039ab7e67_k-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"475\" height=\"316\"  \/><\/noscript><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 12pt;\">Hillary Clinton speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Arizona, March 21, 2016.<\/span> <span style=\"font-size: 10pt;\">(Gage Skidmore)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">The piece showed that the Democrats\u2019 two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele\u2019s\u00a0<a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/fbi-has-not-verified-trump-dossier\/article\/2641207\"><span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">largely<\/span> <span style=\"color: #ff0000;\">unverified<\/span><\/a>\u00a0dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC\u2019s computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian \u201chack.\u201d In a similar examination using the same software of an alleged hack of a Ukrainian artillery app, CrowdStrike also blamed Russia but used\u00a0faulty\u00a0data for its report that it was later forced to\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.voanews.com\/a\/cyber-firm-rewrites-part-disputed-russian-hacking-report\/3781411.html\">rewrite.<\/a><\/span>\u00a0CrowdStrike was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">My piece also described the dangerous consequences of partisan Democratic faith in Russia-gate:\u00a0a sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between nuclear-armed Russia and the U.S., and a New McCarthyism that is spreading fear \u2014 especially in academia, journalism and civil rights organizations \u2014 about questioning the enforced orthodoxy of Russia\u2019s alleged guilt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span style=\"color: #000000; font-family: georgia, palatino, serif; font-size: 14pt;\">After the article appeared at <strong>Consortium News<\/strong>, I tried to penetrate the mainstream by then publishing a version of the article on the\u00a0<em>HuffPost,<\/em>\u00a0which was\u00a0<span style=\"color: #ff0000;\"><a style=\"color: #ff0000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/entry\/huffington-post-huffpost-lydia-polgreen_us_58fce1cae4b00fa7de1522ee\">rebranded<\/a><\/span>\u00a0from the\u00a0<em>Huffington Post\u00a0<\/em>in April this year by new management. As a contributor to the site since February 2006, I was trusted&#8230;<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/consortiumnews.com\/2019\/01\/29\/how-russia-gate-rationalizes-censorship\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Archives:\u00a0Russia-gate mania spread beyond a strategy for neutralizing Donald Trump or removing him from office into an excuse for stifling U.S. dissent that challenges the New Cold War, reported Joe Lauria on Dec. 4, 2017. By Joe LauriaSpecial to Consortium News At the end of October 2017, I wrote an\u00a0article\u00a0for Consortium News about [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2524,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-394512","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2524"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394512\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}