{"id":6864,"date":"2016-08-30T22:03:46","date_gmt":"2016-08-31T04:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6864"},"modified":"2016-08-30T22:07:58","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T04:07:58","slug":"usa-is-destroying-its-image-as-a-free-country-pentagon-controlled-media-is-sawing-hatred-here-an-example-one-of-many","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myfutureamerica.org\/?p=6864","title":{"rendered":"USA is destroying its image as a free country. Pentagon controlled media is sawing hatred. Here an example, one of many."},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Putin-sponsored October surprise?<\/h1>\n
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\nRussian President Vladimir Putin. (Maxim Shemetov\/Reuters)<\/span><\/div>\n
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By Dana Milbank<\/a><\/span> Opinion writer<\/span> August 29<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Russians have just given us an August glimpse of a potential October surprise.We learned earlier this summer that cyber-hackers widely believed to be tied to the Kremlin have broken into the email of the Democratic National Committee and others. The Post\u2019s Ellen Nakashima reported Monday night that Russian hackers have also been targeting state voter-registration systems<\/a>. And, in an apparent effort to boost Donald Trump\u2019s presidential candidacy, they\u2019re leaking what they believe to be the most damaging documents at strategic points in the campaign.<\/p>\n

Last week, we learned something else: The Russians aren\u2019t just hackers \u2014 they\u2019re also hacks. Turns out that before leaking their stolen information, they are in some cases doctoring the documents, making edits that add false information and then passing the documents off as the originals.<\/p>\n

Foreign Policy\u2019s Elias Groll<\/a> reported last week that the hackers goofed: They posted both the original versions of at least three documents and their edited versions. These documents, stolen from George Soros\u2019s Open Society Foundations, were altered by the hackers to create the false impression that Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was funded by Soros. A pro-Russian hacking group, CyberBerkut, had inserted Navalny\u2019s name, bogus dollar amounts and fabricated wording.<\/p>\n

This raises an intriguing possibility: Are Vladimir Putin\u2019s operatives planning to dump edited DNC documents on the eve of the presidential election?<\/p>\n

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Trump urges Russia to hack Clinton\u2019s emails<\/h3>\n

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Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump says it’s “far-fetched” and “ridiculous” to say Russia hacked Democratic Party emails to help him become president.<\/span> (Reuters)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Perhaps they\u2019ll show that the Clinton Foundation has been funding the Islamic State, or they\u2019ll have Hillary Clinton admitting that she didn\u2019t care about those Americans who died in Benghazi after all. Maybe they\u2019ll show that she really did lose most of her brain function in that fall several years ago and is now relying on Anthony Weiner to make all of her decisions.<\/p>\n

Russian \u201cdezinformatsiya\u201d campaigns such as this go back to the Cold War; the Soviet portrayal of AIDS as a CIA plot was a classic case. But this type of cyberwar \u2014 email hacking and, now, the altering and release of the stolen documents \u2014 is a novel escalation. It\u2019s tempting to wonder how differently the Cold War might have gone had there been cyber-hackers back then. We\u2019ll never know, of course, because the Soviet Union crumbled before Al Gore invented the Internet.<\/p>\n

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CONTENT FROM CADILLAC<\/span>How strong, silent types make their voices heard<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

These leaders know you don’t need words to make a statement.<\/span><\/div>\n

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But it\u2019s clear that Russia\u2019s disinformation wars are as active as ever. On Sunday, Neil MacFarquhar wrote in the New York Times<\/a> about Russian attempts to undermine a Swedish military partnership with NATO. The campaign is spreading false information that there\u2019s a secret nuclear weapons stockpile in Sweden and alleging that NATO soldiers could rape Swedish women with impunity. This Russian use of \u201cweaponized information\u201d helped cause confusion in Ukraine in 2014, when conspiracy theories spread by the Russians about the downing of a Malaysia Airlines jet helped Russians justify their invasion of Crimea.<\/p>\n

So does this point to a Putin-sponsored October surprise?<\/p>\n

Putin has meddled in domestic politics in France, the Netherlands, Britain and elsewhere, helping extreme political parties to destabilize those countries. He appears to be doing much the same now in the United States, where, in addition to the DNC and state voter system hacks, there have also been reports this summer about Russia hiring Internet trolls to pose on Twitter and elsewhere in social media as pro-Trump Americans. Trump and Putin have expressed their mutual admiration, and even after the departure of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, Trump and several top advisers have close ties to Moscow.<\/p>\n

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