The Teflon Hoax strikes again: Zero evidence does not stop the disseminators of Russophobia campaigns. (Definitive debunking)

The US Senate Intelligence report contains zero evidence of any Russian state interference in the US elections. Zero evidence of any Russian state connection to Trump. It makes giant leaps with no evidence to validate, that Konstantin Kilimnik is a Russian agent.

Konstantin Kilimnik worked also with Victoria Nuland, and was known in the US embassy in Ukraine as a ‘sensitive source’. An asset for the US state in other words. If he was seriously confirmed as a Russian agent - which this Senate report cannot do as it has no evidence to confirm this - then it would suggest that Kilimnik had infiltrated much higher levels of the US political system than Trump’s election campaign. For he was
directly involved with Nuland, who was part of the team deciding the next government of Ukraine…

This video is damning evidence of US interference in the affairs of a foreign state. Still, going along with the allegations, why would the report not show any concern for Kilimnik working with Nuland and in the US embassy? It makes no sense whatsoever. There is evidence of Manafort printing some polling data before a meeting, but this proves…nothing, other than he printed out some polling data. He was after all a
campaign manager. There is no evidence of Manafort passing this onto Kilimnik. Nor of Kilimnik passing this
onto anyone else…Manafort, apparently in a bad financial state, may well have been trying to impress some new hoped for Ukranian oligarchs, but again, no proof.

And let us say that despite the absence of any evidence, Manafort passed the polling data to Kilimnik who then passed it onto the Russian state…to what end? There is of course no proof that this information was used to interfere in the elections. There is far more damning proof that Cambridge Analytica, not the Russian state, hugely interfered in the election.

There is no video or documented proof of the Russian state involved with anything of the sort. When Manafort’s lawyers asked Mueller if he had any proof that Manafort was colluding with Russian intelligence, he said NO. If he was lying, he has committed a crime. The simple conclusion here is that he was telling the truth, under oath.

The report includes reference to the Mueller investigation. It mentioned that ‘the SC power to investigate – falls short of the FBI, so does its staffing resources and technical capabilities’…and yet the Senate report found more, it was able to uncover more than the FBI who have much greater powers of investigation such as wiretaps and
surveillance?

There is ‘evidence’ of Kilimnik sending an email with a FT link, joking about Russian interference…which is used to confirm he was a Russian agent! How does this possibly confirm he is a Russian agent? It does not.

The role of wikileaks is also included in the report. Yet Stone was not in cohorts with Wikileaks. The only contact was a DM from wikileaks stating ‘please stop making false claims of association’. That is it! Nor is there any evidence of Manafort meeting Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy. Zero record, of a heavily guarded embassy, with cameras everywhere. Simple conclusion, Manafort never visited Assange.

The telling thing here is that Assange, through his lawyers, offered to address Congress several times on the matter. Yet was ignored, by Mueller, and by the Senate report. Why would you ignore an invitation to interview one of your allegedly most perfect examples of proving your point? Simple answer is that Mueller and the senate committee had no interest in interviewing Assange for he would have denied all of their claims and likely
said much they did not wish to hear or have reported. Assange was at the very heart of the stolen emails allegations - never proven to be anything to do with the Russian state.

“I told them three times that Mr. Assange is wiling to meet with him,” Credico said. “And if Schiff is serious he can get this stuff cleared up. I’m just a courier to deal with this. And they [Schiff’s staff] just sat there and said, ‘Well noted.’ I said, if Nixon went to China, if the orange man Trump’s going to Korea, Schiff has the street cred — go meet with Assange.”

Did Rep. Adam Schiff Just Admit the US Has a Secret Indictment of Julian Assange? | The
Grayzone

The report did not mention that CrowdStrike owner, Shawn Henry, confirmed that there was no evidence connecting the hacking allegations with the Russian state. 

In one typical exchange, Henry was asked, "What about the emails that everyone is so, you know, knowledgeable of? Were there also indicators that they were prepared but not evidence that they actually were exfiltrated?"

To this Henry responded, "There's not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. There's circumstantial evidence - but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated."
iTWire - CrowdStrike chief admits no proof that Russia exfiltrated DNC emails

The report confirmed the same findings of the Mueller report of the Internet Research Agency comical marketing ads during the 2016 election. This company has not been proven to have any connection to the Russian state. Its adverts were as much pro as anti-Trump, and much of its content was apolitical. They sell sock puppet marketing to their customers, many of whom are American. They advertise jokes, kids toys, all sorts…and their net investment in the US elections was approximately $40k.

An example of the sinister and dangerous Russian infiltrators advertising which won the election for Trump (hohohoho!).

Contrast this with the estimated $6.5bn spent on the election marketing by US corporations…and the usual billionaires and dark forces, and it becomes a joke to suggest that this tiny marketing firm, with tiny investment, in both pro and anti trump advertising alongside many toys and idiotic memes designed to sell the products of their customers, had any bearing whatsoever on the elections. (As an aside, one of the alleged connections to Putin took the US government to court over this, and they had the charges dropped…of course the Intelligence agencies said it was a matter of national security, so they couldn't go ahead with the trial blah blah blah.)

U.S. prosecutors said on Monday they would drop criminal charges against two Russian firms accused of funding disinformation efforts ahead of the 2016 election, amid concerns that the companies would weaponize evidence in the trial to boost future operations.

U.S. drops charges against accused IRA sponsor over concerns Russia would weaponize evidence - CyberScoop)

Some ask why all but one on the committee signed the bi-partisan report? Not that this is evidence of any Russian state interference, but a good question regardless.

Most simple answer is that there is bipartisan obedience to the military industrial complex which is worth trillions of dollars. It may be true that Trump prefers to do business with Russia, that he wanted to get out of the endless wars, leave NATO etc…but the reality is that Trump does not run the show. For his administration have
been probably more hawkish towards Russia than even the Obama routine. Presidents are hired servants, not in charge of US foreign policy, there is simply far too much money at stake and power to trust a trillion $ empire in one man.

Continued sanctions on Russia, on Iran, on Syria, on Venezuela…all Russian allies. Removal from the INF treaty. Potential end to the New Start treaty. Continued occupation in Syria, amping up direct military engagement with Iran. And the sending of deadly weapons to the Ukranian army to continue the fight in Donbass (which even
Obama’s crowd were reluctant to consider as they worried of arming neo nazis). 

All of this is very much against the Russian state, but perhaps it is also very much against what Trump stated he wants, hence why even the republicans want rid of him, as his ideas for personal gain likely run counter to the demand for high tension with Russia to justify immense, staggering spending on military. Same goes for any serious idea of getting out of Syria. And look at Afghanistan of late…just when it appeared the US might be leaving (again) a government official (US groomed and installed) was bombed, to make it look like it was the Taliban…Much more likely the CIA or another US intelligence agency whose budget depends on the need for more war.

The roadside bomb that targeted Saleh was not strong enough to destroy thee armored car Saleh was traveling in.
While many will accuse the Taliban of having planted the bomb I have my doubts. The Taliban want the U.S. to leave Afghanistan. To attack the Vice President just as the peace talks between Taliban and the government are set to begin could prolong the stay of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

Afghan Peace Talk Spoiler Bomb Fails To Kill Its Target

The Senate report is essentially a rehash of the Mueller report. It uses ‘likely’ often, which means no evidence, no confirmation. It talks of ‘our assessment’ without offering any evidence. It presents zero proof of Russian state hacking the DNC server, colluding with Trump or interfering with US elections.

(NB. I seem to have fallen blindly into the steady allegations of my criticism of US/UK foreign policy and the western corporate media system and connections to the intelligence agencies and mega foundations which pretty much permanently run both governments - Rand, Soros, Rockefeller etc- leading to pigeon holing my position as some mega love for Putin. I quite like him as a leader, but he is no hero nor do I think he is amazing. Decent for Russia these last 20 years, but also a politician, and often makes mistakes (such as organising Navalny to fly to Germany). Criticism of the US government and western MSM is not automatically devotion to the Kremlin or Putin. That is part of the brainwashing. It is precisely the same as the hugely orchestrated idea that
any criticism of the Israeli government is by definition anti-semitic. Same story, old trick which is hugely potent. Yet also very misleading. It aims to make the US intelligence narrative beyond criticism…and it works for 99.9% of people who have no time to delve behind the headlines avalanching towards them whenever they press a button.

So if anyone wants to reply, please don’t focus on this spoon fed position…instead, challenge the facts, provide some credible evidence to lead to discussion. Condemning anything which challenges the Western narrative as kremlin troll is ignorant and instructive of zero capacity for critical thinking. Its the same as the extreme left or
extreme right…who swiftly rant and rave FASCIST! SNOWFLAKE! as they have an extremely narrow perspective and cannot tolerate, let alone consider anything which challenges their narrow perspective).

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First published on 17 Feb 2018

Mueller Indictment - The "Russian Influence" Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme

Yesterday the U.S. Justice Department indicted the Russian Internet Research Agency on some dubious legal grounds. It covers thirteen Russian people and three Russian legal entities. The main count of the indictment is an alleged "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States".

The published indictment gives support to our long held belief that there was no "Russian influence" campaign during the U.S. election. What is described and denounced as such was instead a commercial marketing scheme which ran click-bait websites to generate advertisement revenue and created online crowds around virtual persona to promote whatever its commercial customers wanted to promote. The size of the operation was tiny when compared to the hundreds of millions in campaign expenditures. It had no influence on the election outcome.

The indictment is fodder for the public to prove that the Mueller investigation is "doing something". It distracts from further questioning  the origin of the Steele dossier. It is full of unproven assertions and assumptions. It is a sham in that none of the Russian persons or companies indicted will ever come in front of a U.S. court. That is bad because the indictment is build on the theory of a new crime which, unless a court throws it out, can be used to incriminate other people in other cases and might even apply to this blog. The later part of this post will refer to that.

In the early 1990s some dude in St.Petersburg made a good business selling hot dogs. He opened a colorful restaurant. Local celebrities and politicians were invited to gain notoriety while the restaurant served cheap food for too high prices. It was a good business. A few years later he moved to Moscow and gained contracts to cater to schools and to the military. The food he served was still substandard.

But catering bad food as school lunches gave him, by chance, the idea for a new business:

Parents were soon up in arms. Their children wouldn’t eat the food, saying it smelled rotten.

As the bad publicity mounted, Mr. Prigozhin’s company, Concord Catering, launched a counterattack, a former colleague said. He hired young men and women to overwhelm the internet with comments and blog posts praising the food and dismissing the parents’ protests.

“In five minutes, pages were drowning in comments,” said Andrei Ilin, whose website serves as a discussion board about public schools. “And all the trolls were supporting Concord.”

The trick worked beyond expectations. Prigozhin had found a new business. He hired some IT staff and low paid temps to populate various message boards, social networks and the general internet with whatever his customers asked him for.

You have a bad online reputation? Prigozhin can help. His internet company will fill the net with positive stories and remarks about you. Your old and bad reputation will be drowned by the new and good one. Want to promote a product or service? Prigozhin's online marketeers can address the right crowds.

A Russian influencer

To achieve those results the few temps who worked on such projects needed to multiply their online personalities. It is better to have fifty people vouch for you online than just five. No one cares if these are real people or just virtual ones. The internet makes it easy to create such sock-puppets. The virtual crowd can then be used to push personalities, products or political opinions. Such schemes are nothing new or special. Every established "western" public relations and marketing company will offer a similar service and has done so for years.

While it is relatively easy to have sock-puppets swamp the comment threads of such sites as this blog (which is why comments are strictly controlled), it is more difficult to have a real effect on social networks. These depend on multiplier effects. To gain many real "likes", "re-tweets" or "followers" an online persona needs a certain history and reputation. Real people need to feel attached to it. It takes some time and effort to build such a multiplier personality, be it real or virtual.

At some point Prigozhin, or whoever by then owned the internet marketing company, decided to expand into the lucrative English speaking market. This would require to build many English language online personas and to give those some history and time to gain crowds of followers and a credible reputation. The company sent a few of its staff to the U.S. to gain some impressions, pictures and experience of the surroundings. They would later use these to impersonate U.S. locals. It was a medium size, long-term investment of maybe a hundred-thousand bucks over two or three years.

The U.S. election provided an excellent environment to build reputable online persona with large followings of people with discriminable mindsets. The political affinity was not important. The personalities only had to be very engaged and stick to their issue - be it left or right or whatever. The sole point was to gain as many followers as possible who could be segmented along social-political lines and marketed to the companies customers.

Again - there is nothing new to this. It is something hundreds, if not thousands of companies are doing as their daily business. The Russian company hoped to enter the business with a cost advantage. Even its mid-ranking managers were paid as little as $1,200 per month. The students and other temporary workers who would 'work' the virtual personas as puppeteers would earn even less. Any U.S. company in a similar business would have higher costs.

In parallel to building virtual online personae the company also built some click-bait websites and groups and promoted these through mini Facebook advertisements. These were the "Russian influence ads" on Facebook the U.S. media were so enraged about. They included the promotion of a Facebook page about cute puppies. Back in October we described how those "Russian influence" ads (most of which were shown after the election or were not seen at all) were simply part of a commercial scheme:

The pages described and the ads leading to them are typical click-bait, not part of a political influence op.
...
One builds pages with "hot" stuff that hopefully attracts lots of viewers. One creates ad-space on these pages and fills it with Google ads. One attracts viewers and promotes the spiked pages by buying $3 Facebook mini-ads for them. The mini-ads are targeted at the most susceptible groups.

A few thousand users will come and look at such pages. Some will 'like' the puppy pictures or the rant for or against LGBT and further spread them. Some will click the Google ads. Money then flows into the pockets of the page creator. One can rinse and repeat this scheme forever. Each such page is a small effort for a small revenue. But the scheme is highly scaleable and parts of it can be automatized.

Because of the myriad of U.S. sanctions against Russia the monetization of these business schemes required some creativity. One can easily find the name of a real U.S. person together with the assigned social security number and its date of birth. Those data are enough to open, for example, a Paypal account under a U.S. name. A U.S. customer of the cloaked Russian Internet company could then pay to the Paypal account and the money could be transferred from there to Moscow. These accounts could also be used to buy advertisements on Facebook. The person whose data was used to create the account would never learn of it and would have no loss or other damage. Another scheme is to simply pay some U.S. person to open a U.S. bank account and to then hand over the 'keys' to that account.

The Justice Department indictment is quite long and detailed. It must have been expensive. If you read it do so with the above in mind. Skip over the assumptions and claims of political interference and digest only the facts. All that is left is, as explained, a commercial marketing scheme.

I will not go into all its detail of the indictment but here are some points that support the above description.

Point 4:

Defendants, posing as US. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences. These groups and pages, which addressed divisive US. political and social issues, falsely claimed to be controlled by US. activists when, in fact, they were controlled by Defendants. Defendants also used the stolen identities of real U.S. persons to post on social media accounts. Over time, these social media accounts became Defendants' means to reach significant numbers of Americans ...

Point 10d:

By in or around April 2014, the ORGANIZATION formed a department that went by various names but was at times referred to as the "translator project." This project focused on the US. population and conducted operations on social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. By approximately July 2016, more than eighty ORGANIZATION employees were assigned to the translator project.

(Some U.S. media today made the false claim that $1.25 million per month were spent by the company for its U.S. campaign. But Point 11 of the indictment says that the company ran a number of such projects directed at a Russian audience while only the one described in 10d above is aimed at an U.S. audience. All these projects together had a monthly budget of $1.25 million.)

(Point 17, 18 and 19 indict individual persons who have worked for the "translator" project" "to at least in and around [some month] 2014". It is completely unclear how these persons, who seem to have left the company two years before the U.S. election, are supposed to have anything to do with the claimed "Russian influence" on the U.S. election and the indictment.)

Point 32:

Defendants and their co-conspirators, through fraud and deceit, created hundreds of social media accounts and used them to develop certain fictitious U.S. personas into "leader[s] of public opinion" in the United States.

The indictment then goes on and on describing the "political activities" of the sock-puppet personas. Some posted pro-Hillary slogans, some anti-Hillary stuff, some were pro-Trump, some anti-everyone, some urged not to vote, others to vote for third party candidates. The sock-puppets did not create or post fake news. They posted mainstream media stories.

Some of the personas called for going to anti-Islam rallies while others promoted pro-Islam rallies. The Mueller indictment lists a total of eight rallies. Most of these did not take place at all. No one joined the "Miners For Trump" rallies in Philly and Pittsburgh. A "Charlotte against Trump" march on November 19 - after the election - was attended by one hundred people. Eight people came for a pro-Trump rally in Fort Myers. 

The sock-puppets called for rallies to establish themselves as  'activist' and 'leadership' persona, to generate more online traffic and additional followers. There was in fact no overall political trend in what the sock-puppets did. The sole point of all such activities was to create a large total following by having multiple personas which together covered all potential social-political strata.

At Point 86 the indictment turns to Count Two - "Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud and Bank Fraud". The puppeteers opened, as explained above, various Paypal accounts using 'borrowed' data.

Then comes the point which confirms the commercial marketing story as laid out above:

Point 95:

Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.

There you have it. There was no political point to what the Russian company did. Whatever political slogans one of the company's sock-puppets posted had only one aim: to increase the number of followers for that sock-puppet. The sole point of creating a diverse army of sock-puppets with large following crowds was to sell the 'eyeballs' of the followers to the paying customers of the marketing company.

There were, according to the indictment, eighty people working on the "translator project". These controlled "hundreds" of sock-puppets online accounts each with a distinct "political" personality. Each of these sock-puppets had a large number of followers - in total several hundred-thousands. Now let's assume that one to five promotional posts can be sold per day on each of the sock-puppets content stream. The scheme generates several thousand dollars per day ($25 per promo, hundreds of sock-puppets, 1-5 promos per day per sock-puppet). The costs for this were limited to the wages of up to eighty persons in Moscow, many of them temps, of which the highest paid received some $1,000 per month. While the upfront multiyear investment to create and establish the virtual personas was probably significant, this likely was, over all, a profitable business.

Again - this had nothing to do with political influence on the election. The sole point of political posts was to create 'engagement' and a larger number of followers in each potential social-political segment. People who buy promotional posts want these to be targeted at a specific audience. The Russian company could offer whatever audience was needed. It had sock-puppets with pro-LGBT view and a large following and sock-puppets with anti-LGBT views and a large following. It could provide pro-2nd amendment crowds as well as Jill Stein followers. Each of the sock-puppets had over time generated a group of followers that were like minded. The entity buying the promotion simply had to choose which group it preferred to address.

The panic of the U.S. establishment over the loss of their preferred candidate created an artificial storm over "Russian influence" and assumed "collusion" with the Trump campaign. (Certain Democrats though, like Adam Schiff, profit from creating a new Cold War through their sponsoring armament companies.)

The Mueller investigation found no "collusion" between anything Russia and the Trump campaign. The indictment does not mentions any. The whole "Russian influence" storm is based on a misunderstanding of commercial activities of a Russian marketing company in U.S. social networks.

There is a danger in this. The indictment sets up a new theory of nefarious foreign influence that could be applied to even this blog. As U.S. lawyer Robert Barns explains:

The only thing frightening about this indictment is the dangerous and dumb precedent it could set: foreign nationals criminally prohibited from public expression in the US during elections unless registered as foreign agents and reporting their expenditures to the FEC.
...
Mueller's new crime only requires 3 elements: 1) a foreign national; 2) outspoken on US social media during US election; and 3) failed to register as a foreign agent or failed to report receipts/expenditures of speech activity. Could indict millions under that theory.
...
The legal theory of the indictment for most of the defendants and most of the charges alleges that the "fraud" was simply not registering as a foreign agent or not reporting expenses to the FEC because they were a foreign national expressing views in a US election.

Author Leonid Bershidsky, who prominently writes for Bloomberg, remarks:

I'm actually surprised I haven't been indicted. I'm Russian, I was in the U.S. in 2016 and I published columns critical of both Clinton and Trump w/o registering as a foreign agent.

As most of you will know your author writing this is German. I write pseudo-anonymously for a mostly U.S. audience. My postings are political and during the U.S. election campaign expressed an anti-Hillary view. The blog is hosted on U.S, infrastructure paid for by me. I am not registered as Foreign Agent or with the Federal Election Commission.

Under the theory on which the indictment is based I could also be indicted for a similar "Conspiracy to Defraud the United States".

(Are those of you who kindly donate for this blog co-conspiractors?)

When Yevgeni Prigozhin, the hot dog caterer who allegedly owns the internet promotion business, was asked about the indictment he responded:

"The Americans are really impressionable people, they see what they want to see. [...] If they want to see the devil, let them see him."

Posted by b on February 17, 2018 at 20:09 UTC | Permalink