Bump for a bunch of nonsense being spread about the DNC hack, this time from the left.
TL;DR: The Naiton published a piece supposedly disproving Russian hacking, but it's full of problems and its author, Patrick Lawrence, has ties to Russia media and consistently leans pro-Russia in his reporting.
https://www.thenation.com/article/a-...ears-dnc-hack/
This is actually not new and got some attention in July. It's based on a report by an anonymous guy who, hilariously, calls himself "The Forensicator."
Quote:
Forensicator’s first decisive findings, made public in the paper dated July 9, concerned the volume of the supposedly hacked material and what is called the transfer rate—the time a remote hack would require. The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC’s server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second.
These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed.
...
“A speed of 22.7 megabytes is simply unobtainable, especially if we are talking about a transoceanic data transfer,” Folden said. “Based on the data we now have, what we’ve been calling a hack is impossible.”
I haven't found a good definitive source disproving this idea, but many sources point out that the timestamps used to infer transfer speed might have been made when the files were locally copied. In addition, it appears that those "unattainable" speeds were indeed possible over the internet.
WaPo reports that the piece is undergoing an internal post-piblication review at The Nation:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.6520fee451bd
And what about the author, Patrick Lawrence? First, he's the
foreign affairs reporter for Salon. But he's also got some Seth Rich opinions:
Quote:
A complicating consideration: Lawrence tweeted last week in support of the conspirator’s notion that Seth Rich — a former DNC staffer who was murdered in what police believe was a botched robbery attempt — may have been behind the leak.
But there's more. He also writes for Russia-Insider, which is a "crowd-funded" news organization started by ex-pats living in Moscow. Its stated goal is to counter the bias against Russia seen in western media. Russia-Insider is suspected to be a pro-Russia propaganda outlet similar to RT and others--and its founder
may have gotten money from a Russian Oligarch (Note:I can't vouch for that site's credibility.) Oddly, he uses a pseudonym (Patrick L. Smith) for some if not all of his Russian writing, but he is somewhat open about it.
Here's a boring-ass video of him
appearing as Patrick L. Smith on RT. Seriously no need to watch it, but it shows his connection to RT.
A look back through Patrick Lawrence's pieces shows that he has a
definite pro-Russia slant:
Quote:
As Russian media make plain, Moscow’s practically breathless to enter a “new partnership” with Washington. It’s hard to think why Putin would follow a successful first encounter with battlefield aggression.
Quote:
NATO’s eastward advance in the post–Cold War period is a needless provocation.
Probably most damning is how
angry he got when the DNC announced that Russia was behind their server being hacked:
Quote:
Clowns. Subversives. Do you know who you remind me of? I will tell you: Nixon, in his famously red-baiting campaign — a disgusting episode — against the right-thinking Helen Gahagan Douglas during his first run for the Senate, in 1950. Your political tricks are as transparent and anti-democratic as his, it is perfectly fair to say.
...
The caker came on Sunday, when Robby Mook, Clinton’s campaign manager, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and (covering all bases) CNN’s “State of the Union” to assert that the D.N.C.’s mail was hacked “by the Russians for the purpose of helping Donald Trump.” He knows this — knows it in a matter of 24 hours — because “experts” — experts he will never name — have told him so.
...
Is that what disturbs you, Robby? Interesting. Unsubstantiated hocus-pocus, not the implications of these events for the integrity of Democratic nominations and the American political process? The latter is the more pressing topic, Robby. You are far too long on anonymous experts for my taste, Robby. And what kind of expert, now that I think of it, is able to report to you as to the intentions of Russian hackers — assuming for a sec that this concocted narrative has substance?
...
Preposterous, readers. Join me, please, in having absolutely none of it. There is no “Russian actor” at the bottom of this swamp, to put my position bluntly. You will never, ever be offered persuasive evidence otherwise.
He mad.
Okay, so that's a lot of stuff, but I think the sound conclusion here is that Patrick Lawrence (AKA Patrick L. Smith) is so pro-Russian as to be useless. I strongly suspect he's getting paid by the Kremlin or some Russian oligarch. The fact that left-leaning outlets like The Nation and Salon are falling for this stuff is pretty depressing.
