Insidiocracy: Russiagate, Corporate Media & Losing My Religion – Part Four

NinaIllingworth February 6, 2019November 17, 2022 2016 US Presidential Election, 21 states election systems hacked, Alex Padilla, AP, Associated Press, Atlantic Council, Belarus, Bernie Sanders, Bloomberg News, Brexit, Brian Ross, British Intelligence, British nationalism, broken bombshell, California, Christopher Steele, CIA, CIA mole Ken Dilanian, Clinton campaign, CNN, corporate media, debunking, debunking Russiagate, Democratic Party, Department of Homeland Security, Deutsche Bank, DHS, dissent, DNC Hack, Donald Trump, Doug Johnson Hatlem, Dutch foreign minister, Dutch Intelligence, Dutch media, edits and corrections, Essays, Facebook, Fake News, Fantastic Lies, FBI, Flynn, Fusion GPS, German police, Giant Russia Theory, Glenn Greenwald, Glenn Simpson, GOP, hacked voting registrtaions, hacking, Hallbe Zijlstra, Hamilton 68, hashtag, Hillary Clinton, Impeach Trump, IP addresses, ISIS, Jason Stein, Jeroen van der Veer, Jill Stein, Josh Marshall, Kazakhstan, Ken Dilanian, Klepto Kaiser, liberal mainstream media, live reports, London housing market, Manchurian Candidate, Matt OBrien, Matt Taibbi, McCarthyism, Media, Michael Flynn, MIG, Mike Flynn, Molly McKew, Mueller investigation, NBC, neocon, new cold war, new McCarthyism, New Yorker, News, Nina Illingworth, NSA, nuclear war, OODS, opposition research, Patrick Marley, Patrick Wintour, Paul Manafort, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, Politico, Politics, Putin, raw intelligence, Rec Reads, Recommended Reading, Release the Memo hashtag, retractions, Reuters, Robert Mueller, Rolling Stone, RT, Russia, Russia desk, Russia Today, Russiagate, Russian bots, Russian Hacking, Russian trolls, Sam Theilman, shady, Shell Oil, Six Things I Think, skepticism, Steele dossier, Steve Arons, swine emperor Trump, Talking Points Memo, the Baltic States, The Guardian, The Intercept, the Netherlands, think tanks, Tom LoBianco, treason, Trump, Trump Dossier, Trump Transition, Trump-Russia, Truthdig, TV, Twitter, Ukraine, US media, US politics, US sanctions against Russia, US Senate, US Senate Judiciary Committee, USA Today, Vkontakte, Vladimir Putin, walk backs, Wall Street Journal, Washington Free Beacon, Washington Post, Wisconsin

Editor’s note: this is Part Four in a five part series about corporate media corrections, retractions and walk-backs while covering pretty much anything to do with Russia or the unhinged “Russiagate” saga; you can find Parts One, Two and Three here.

Frankly, this story isn’t actually about American swine emperor Donald Trump; a creature I’ve named in writing as a fascist, a rapist, a crook, a warmonger and a liar. This series is about the disturbingly large number of misreported, or outright fabricated, stories in mainstream western media that relate in some way to Russia. These are stories with terrifying national security and foreign policy implications; released by corporate media outlets that should know better but aren’t being held to the standards of journalism by a mainstream establishment ducking responsibility for turning the Pig Empire over to a grotesquely bigoted fascist. For those of you who are curious about my position “Russiagate,” check out this December 2017 recap; nothing about my opinion has changed since I wrote that piece.

Finally, as I mentioned in Part One, a portion of the research in this article is sourced from the work of Twitter user Doug Johnson Hatlem (@djjohnso) whose recently-published thread of forty-four mainstream media “Russiagate” mistakes, retractions and clarifications, was a significant aid in helping me write this series.

We’re All Russian Bots Down Here

It’s December 2017 and I’ve begun to feel what Thompson called the “fear and loathing” in the national zeitgeist; it’s swirling all around me, enveloping me, invading the darkest corners of my mind. I’m channeling monsters who walk upright like men, in broad daylight. I’m starting to notice that anyone who the Russiagate grifters, rich Democrats and their liar lanyard lackeys in the media don’t like, eventually turns out be to working for international super-villain Vladimir Putin and mother Russia. Oh no my friends, it’s not just the NRA and the entire Republican Party. Green Party 2016 candidate Jill Stein? She works for Russia. Bernie Sanders too, and both of their supporters are actually just Russian disinformation bots. Black activists protesting murderous pig police and ongoing white supremacy? Definitely only happening because of evil Russian Facebook propaganda. Are you anti-war? Fuck you, ya commie fucking spy. Left wing dissent didn’t exist until Vladimir Putin decided to take out President Hillary and install his puppet Trump; what the fuck is an “Occupy Wall Street” anyway? Sounds like more neo-Soviet propaganda if you ask me.

This treason must be stopped! You gullible rubes most be protected from the evils of mediocre memes published *after* the election and the dreaded “fake news.” That’s why we’re partnering with right wing think tanks, multi-billion dollar private surveillance corporations and blood-soaked warmongers to fight Russian propaganda – and if innocent lefties get hurt, well so much the better! Nothing is sacred in the fight to protect our democracy from memes that compare Hillary Clinton to Satan. They’re out to get us you morons, it’s basically Pearl Harbor all over again! We’re bringing back the Cold War and reasonable men like George fucking Bush and Jake “so fucking what if helped cover up CIA spying on the Senate and lied under oath” Clapper, because it’s showtime baby! And if you pinko fucks don’t like it well then you can get up against the wall with the rest of the useful idiots and traitors.

Of course, this is all nonsense. I haven’t quite accepted it yet, but I’ve already written what will turn out to be my last “Russiagate” debunking article for just over the next full year. The entire saga has turned to ash and ruin and madness. Somehow I’ve found myself living in the timeline where both Idiocracy and Dr. Strangelove are documentaries. The New Old Cold Forever War has already started and I’m looking around at a complicit pundit class still questioning if punching fascists does not indeed, make you the real fascist. I’m going to walk away from all this soon for a good long rest – but not before my personal life explodes and I fall in a hole.

Tale of the Tape

Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet? – this September 28th, 2017 piece by Glenn Greenwald at the Intercept is actually a response to this September 22nd, 2017 USA Today Network article by Patrick Marley and Jason Stein, as well as numerous others like it. I’ve included it here because the author does a good job of examining the mainstream media and establishment amplification machine at work during so many of these erroneous, speculative and as it turns out, inaccurate “Russiagate” reports. The story itself is simple enough; the always reliable Department of Homeland Security reported that “Russians attempted to hack elections systems in 21 states in the run-up to last year’s presidential election” and the credulous, click-hungry U.S. media ran with the allegations immediately. This soon translated into hundreds, if not thousands of dramatic tweets by Democratic Party officials and influential “Russiagate” watchers on social media. Presumably by now, it won’t surprise you to learn that the allegations simply weren’t true; or at least some of them weren’t true. First Wisconsin balked, stating that the DHS had actually confirmed that the state’s elections systems had not been targeted. Then, Democratic Party stronghold California weighed in with a shockingly stern rebuke; in an official statement, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla (Democrat) noted that “following our request for further information, it became clear that DHS’ conclusions were wrong“ before adding “our notification from DHS last Friday was not only a year late, it also turned out to be bad information. To make matters worse, the Associated Press similarly reported that DHS has reversed itself and ‘now says Russia didn’t target Wisconsin’s voter registration system,’ which is contrary to previous briefings.” This forced the notably dishonest and incompetent DHS to release a “clarification” that hid behind “intelligence information that cannot be publicly disclosed” before later revealing that these attempts to “hack elections systems” were really just a bunch of scans from sketchy IP addresses; in other words, this entire story is bullshit. Of course, because the DHS ultimately refused to retract the allegations, the story has continued to live on forever; when last I checked, we were up to fifty states that might have been targeted by “Russian Intelligence” – despite the fact that nobody has proven a single vote, or registration was altered by hackers, Russian or otherwise.

Mueller’s Team Traveled to Interview Ex-Spy Involved in Dossier – another story I’d long since forgotten about until reading Doug Hatlem’s media “mistakes” thread, this October 5th, 2017 NBC News article by “former” CIA media mole Ken Dilanian (that was, not a joke) initially claimed that former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele had found out about the super-secret “Russian” DNC hacks before they even happened. This would of course be “bombshell” news because Steele is purportedly the author of the now infamous “Trump dossier” and its thirty-five pages of salacious “raw intelligence” accusations against the swine emperor that might actually just be junk information the CIA swears it didn’t buy from criminals in Russia. Have I mentioned that Steele, the former head of the MI6 Russia desk and the CIA know each other? Oh, good. Anyway, if Steel knew, perhaps Putin, Trump or, my gosh even both of them knew; now this conspiracy is cooking with gas! Alas for new cold warriors everywhere, it was not to be; the next day NBC issued a correction that revealed the CIA never taught Dilanian how to read a calendar and the whole story went poof. This is of course the kind of mistake one might expect to be caught during editing, but that would presuppose that anyone in the mainstream media actually bothers to fact-check “Russiagate bombshells” before launching them into the cyber-verse.

Flynn prepared to testify that Trump directed him to contact Russians about ISIS, confidant says – this media malpractice “mistake” is actually a bit complicated to explain, even though the screw up is incredibly simple. During an ABC News special live report, the network initially reported that swine emperor Trump had directed (now-disgraced) former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn to contact the Russian government during the 2016 Presidential campaign; reportedly sending the stock market into an immediately tizzy. As it turns out, Herr Donald didn’t direct Flynn to contact Russia until after the election, during the transition period and only then, reportedly to talk about working together to fight ISIS. ABC News was forced to issue a correction and promptly suspended the journalist behind the report, Brian Ross; who would eventually leave the network entirely. In lieu of screenshots I was unable to obtain, I’m using this milquetoast December 1st, 2017 NBC online report that doesn’t feature Ross’s live “mistake” on television, as a placeholder.

Paul Manafort worked with Russian intel-connected individual special prosecutors allege – what difference can a single word make? How about the line between “shady” and “going to spend decades in prison?” As you can see, this Dec 4th, 2017 story by Trish Turner and Jack Date at ABC News initially stated that former Trump campaign manager and longtime scumbag extraordinaire Paul Manafort “was working with a Russian intelligence-connected official as recently as last week” according to Mueller investigation prosecutors. Official of course, would mean that Manafort’s Op-Ed collaborator was an actual member of the Russian government, which is the sort of thing that might start a literal goddamn war. Back in the real world however, it was not an “official” at all and Manafort’s creative writing partner was actually a “Russian intelligence-connected individual” – which, as we’ll talk about later on in this series, apparently means “super-sketchy Ukrainian office manager with Russian citizenship and experience as a military translator.” Finally, while there’s no question that both Manafort and Kilimnik seem like completely amoral crooks, it should be pointed out that both the charges Manafort was facing, and the op-ed Kilimnik supposedly helped him write, were related to lobbying work Manafort had done in Ukraine, long before joining the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016.

Deutsche Bank Records Said to Be Subpoenaed by Mueller – once again, I owe Doug Hatlem and his media “mistakes” thread a hat-tip for catching this Bloomberg blunder that I’d long since forgotten about. When this Steve Arons story was originally reported on December 5th, 2017 at Bloomberg News, it claimed that “special prosecutor Robert Mueller zeroed in on President Donald Trump’s business dealings with Deutsche Bank” – with the understood implication being that Mueller had subpoena’d the president’s bank records, as reported by multiple outlets. Whoops, in reality the subpoenaed records pertained to “people affiliated with president Donald Trump” – forcing Bloomberg (and the Wall Street Journal) to issue a correction the next day. Hilariously enough, this wouldn’t turn out to be the last time Bloomberg oversold the goods on a Trump-Deutsche Bank story; on the same day Deutsche Bank was raided by German police, the outlet chose to publish this op-ed playing up the swine emperor’s ties to the troubled German financial institution, even though (as most, but not all, other outlets reported) the raid had absolutely nothing to do with Downmarket Mussolini, or Russia at all.

Russian Social Media Giant Gave Info on Trump Contacts to Senate Probe – a truly bizare story, this January 3rd, 2018 “report” by Sam Theilman over at Talking Points Memo (a site run by noted “Russiagate” nuclear dramatist Josh Marshall) originally stated that Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent to Facebook, had voluntarily provided the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee with information “about contacts between an executive at the company and the Trump campaign.” Soon afterward, a correction in the form of an editor’s note appeared in the now-edited article, noting that “TPM has no information on how the committee obtained the documents, and there is no evidence to suggest Vkontakte is cooperating with the investigation” while citing a “reporting error.” Hey, fair enough; everyone makes mistakes right? Sure, but when you actually stop to examine the original article, the line between “mistake” and writing fiction whole cloth in this case, starts to blur pretty quickly.

Russian bid to influence Brexit vote detailed in new US Senate report – in the Guardian’s defense, this January 10th, 2018 article is based entirely on the details of a scaremongering report by Democrats on the U.S. Senate foreign relations committee and thus strictly speaking, it isn’t a correction. With that having been noted however, it’s pretty hard to call this evidence-light implication that there definitely was a serious Russian attempt to influence the UK Brexit vote responsible journalism either. As even author Patrick Wintour himself notes, “the (Senate) report breaks little new ground in terms of fresh evidence but says the picture remains incomplete” – frankly, it mostly consists of weird insinuations about the London housing market and New Cold War-hungry Democrats piling dodgy social media analyses on top of each other while gesticulating wildly. Furthermore, as this February 8th, 2018 report from Reuters indicated soon afterwards, “Britain says it has not seen any evidence that Russia interfered in British elections” – note the buried lede. Naturally, like all good conspiracy theories that happen to absolve a western democracy’s liberal elite of gross negligence in the wake of electoral failure, the “Russia rigged Brexit” story has simply refused to die. Personally however, I have my doubts about the power of bribes that didn’t happen and group tweeting to influence the Brexit vote and suspect it has more to do with the longstanding British conservative contempt for Europe; especially in light of the demonstrable failures of Russia-related social media analysis in other recent stories. As always, your mileage may vary but what is inarguable is that at the time the Guardian printed this story, its flat declaration that Russia had meddled in Brexit was nothing more than a unicorn fart.

Russian Twitter accounts push #releasethememo conservative meme, researchers say – as I mentioned above, there is a growing body of evidence that most of the cyber analysis bombshells and especially, the reports based on social media traffic, are politically hyper-partisan and frankly not worth the paper they’re (not) printed on. This January 22nd, 2018 story by Tom LoBianco and Matt O’Brien over at USA Today (via the Associate Press) is a perfect example of that phenomenon. Citing only “research” from the now-thoroughly discredited unholy alliance between neocons and liberal interventionists that is “Hamilton 68”, this article claims that Russia was behind the spread of a popular pro-Trump, anti-Russiagate hashtag on Twitter. Precisely one day later, Twitter would reveal that an in-house analysis showed “authentic American accounts, and not Russian imposters or automated bots” were largely responsible for the hashtag; because as everyone who has ever been on social media already knows, aging crypto-fascists are obsessed with hashtags. Of course, none of that stopped noted unhinged Bircher propagandist Molly McKew from using these exact same allegations to fearmonger about Russia more than ten days later over on Politico; I guess when you’re payed to start wars, you don’t have to bother Googling your facts.

Correction: Trump-Russia Probe story – this is easily one of the dumbest mainstream media corrections on this entire list, but there’s a pretty good chance you’ll remember it because it makes loudmouth, revanchist “conservative” media figures very angry to this day. Almost from the moment it was released, mainstream liberal media have done their level best to imply, and sometimes outright state, that the previously mentioned “Steele Dossier” was originally the result of Republican opposition research, funded by a conservative website, to be used against Herr Donald during the 2016 GOP nomination process. As this February 3rd, 2018 correction for the Associate Press and this lengthy New Yorker review of testimony by Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson both note however, that is simply not true. Although the Washington Free Beacon originally hired the firm ultimately behind the dossier (Fusion GPS) to do opposition research, that effort was halted once it became clear that swine emperor Trump was going to win the GOP nomination. At that point, the company was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign to continue their research; Fusion GPS would then hire ex-MI6 spy Steele in June of 2016 and he would go on to produce the 35-page “raw intelligence” dossier that coincidentally sounds a lot like junk blackmail material the CIA swears it didn’t buy in Russia and nobody can prove it passed on to good friend, Christopher Steele. So, why does any of this matter to the soulless zombies who dominate both “sides” of our public discourse? Politics, of course. If you’re a member of the liberal establishment, it’s in your best interests to prop up the dodgy dossier as nonpartisan and obscure the Democratic Party’s role in its creation. If on the other hand you’re a crypto-fascist “conservative” or the Klepto Kaiser himself, it’s in your best interests to try and discredit the (admittedly sketchy) dossier as a partisan smear, commissioned by your political enemies. Frankly, the whole thing is headache inducing for anyone who doesn’t already have a terminal case of brainworms; what matters here is that once again, the mainstream media keeps reporting something that just isn’t factually true, about the Trump-Russia investigation.

Dutch foreign minister admits to lying about meeting Vladimir Putin – as in the Guardian story above, this February 12th, 2018 piece over at Politico highlights a scandal that isn’t so much about a retraction, as a question of abrogating editorial standards and a truly alarming absence of journalistic integrity. At a 2016 People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy conference, soon-to-be Dutch foreign minister Halbe Zijlstra claimed to have overheard Vladimir Putin detailing a hilariously familiar plot to carve out a “Greater Russia” that included Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic States and possibly Kazakhstan, all the way back in 2006. Although the claims didn’t get much play in America, they were widely reported by Dutch media – at a time of still-heightened tensions between the two countries in the wake of the 2014 downing of flight MH17 over Ukraine that killed 196 Dutch citizens. Whoops, turns out that Zijlstra was lying about being at the meeting in an effort to bolster his foreign policy credentials. Not to worry however, the Dutch foreign minister assured observers that he “wanted to tell the story because of its “geopolitical importance” and that he’d only lied to protect his source, former Shell chief Jeroen van der Veer. Unfortunately, this too turned out to be less than accurate, as van der Veer told reporters he believed Putin’s 2006 comments had been “historically intended“ and further added that Zijlstra’s interpretation of the comments “did not come from me or from the words I used.” The next day Halbe Zijlstra would resign, triggering a no-confidence vote against the Dutch Prime Minister (who knew about the lie weeks before but didn’t tell anyone) – which the government survived. Was reporting Zijlstra’s claims at face value an honest mistake by the Dutch media? Perhaps, but in light of the fact that the story sounds like a whackjob imperialist conspiracy theory and many of the ex-minister’s own colleagues had doubted Zijstra for quite some time – one does have to wonder why it took the Dutch media so long to uncover the deception.