Thursday, October 20, 2016

Meanwhile, back at the puzzle palace

Remember this?

The planting of false stories is nothing new; the Soviet Union devoted considerable resources to that during the ideological battles of the Cold War. Now, though, disinformation is regarded as an important aspect of Russian military doctrine, and it is being directed at political debates in target countries with far greater sophistication and volume than in the past.

The flow of misleading and inaccurate stories is so strong that both NATO and the European Union have established special offices to identify and refute disinformation, particularly claims emanating from Russia.

The Kremlin’s clandestine methods have surfaced in the United States, too, American officials say, identifying Russian intelligence as the likely source of leaked Democratic National Committee emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

The Kremlin uses both conventional media — Sputnik, a news agency, and RT, a television outlet — and covert channels, as in Sweden, that are almost always untraceable.

Still has nothing to do with what's going on in this country, right?

Trump didn’t mention, or perhaps he didn’t know, that in the hacked email Brazile appeared to leak a single question to Clinton about the death penalty. According to the email, that tip came a day before a CNN Democratic primary town hall with then-opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), not a debate.

Brazile left her position as a CNN commentator this summer to chair the Democratic National Committee. CNN has denied giving out any questions ahead of time, and Brazile has denied both having access to any questions and sharing any questions with the Clinton campaign.


After the debate Wednesday night, Fox News anchor Megan Kelly confronted Brazile about that email. In response, Brazile insisted that some WikiLeaks emails have been shown to be doctored. It's unclear what, if any, evidence she had to back up that assertion.

If it didn't sound so damned conspiratorial, one might even say the absence of evidence is a tell.  If only anyone knew anything about the Kremlin leaking false information.

It is a puzzle.

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