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Cliff Varnell

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  1. Gotta link? I think the report makes a good case for some over-counting of Hillary's primary votes, but nothing near 3.7 million. No, it's about the delegate count. The odds against total high end estimate accuracy are astronomical. Still have my Sanders '16 poster in my window. But what's right is right.
  2. Fair enough. From the linked report: <q> Based on this work, Election Justice USA has established an upper estimate of 184 pledged delegates lost by Senator Bernie Sanders as a consequence of specific irregularities and instances of fraud. Adding these delegates to Senator Sanders’ pledged delegate total and subtracting the same number from Hillary Clinton’s total would more than erase the 359 pledged delegate gap between the two candidates. EJUSA established the upper estimate through exit polling data, statistical analysis by precinct size, and attention to the details of Democratic proportional awarding of national delegates. Even small changes in vote shares in critical states like Massachusetts and New York could have substantially changed the media narrative surrounding the primaries in ways that would likely have had far reaching consequences for Senator Sanders’ campaign. </q> Given the upper estimate in every case that's a 368 swing, giving Bernie a 9 delegate win. The estimates of pledged delegates that should have gone to Sanders are largely based on analyses of 11 states. Iowa: 1 - 3 Nevada: 1 - 4 So. Carolina: 2 - 4 Alabama: 3 - 4 Georgia: 7 - 10 Tennessee: 3 - 7 Mississippi: 2 - 3/4 Illinois: 6 - 20 Ohio: 4 - 7 Arizona: 2 - 6 California: 25 - 35 So over the 11 states the range was 56 on the low end and 104 on the high end. What are the odds of every state hitting the high end estimate?
  3. I was the first Bernie supporter on the Ed Forum. That said, Hillary got 16,914,722 votes in the Dem race and Bernie got 13,206,428. The claim Hillary stole the nomination from Bernie is yet another hollow myth.
  4. Henry was under oath when he said "Yes, sir." https://www.dni.gov/files/HPSCI_Transcripts/2020-05-04-Shawn_Henry-MTR_Redacted.pdf Page 32. I have repeatedly. Henry -- under oath -- confirmed Schiff's characterization of Fancy Bear hacking the DNC servers in order to "set up" the exfiltration of the e-mails. Russian actors hacked the DNC servers, while non-State actors subsequently exfiltrated the e-mails. Assange was probably out of the loop on the Fancy Bear hacking. Meanwhile... Seth Rich's killing was exploited on Fox News and online. His parents are fed up https://www.npr.org/2022/06/15/1104511732/fox-news-seth-rich-murder Fox News Settles With Seth Rich's Parents For False Story Claiming Clinton Leaks https://www.npr.org/2020/11/24/938545344/fox-news-settles-with-seth-richs-parents-for-false-story-claiming-clinton-leaks#:~:text=The Fox News Channel has,of the 2016 presidential campaign.
  5. No evidence of exfiltration. Evidence of staging for exfiltration. That's not what Mr. Henry said. He said he had evidence the DNC servers were hacked in order to set-up exfiltration. Sigh. You're the kind of guy who has to get the last 10,000 words. Knock yourself out.
  6. No, in order for Fancy Bear to set up -- "stage" -- the e-mails for exfiltration he had to hack into the server. Fancy Bear left the same cyber fingerprints CrowdStrike found in Ukraine. A b without any evidence of an e. Doesn't seem all that difficult to grasp.
  7. Sigh. Yes, that's the e that left no trace. I stipulated to this in the very beginning. What you appear incapable of grasping is that the DNC servers were hacked -- that's the b -- to allow the e-mails to be exfiltrated by non-State actors without leaving a trace of their exfiltration. Fanatics have such confirmation bias even a simple concept like this eludes them.
  8. There's a great line in Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty where Bo says to Ronnie -- "You do the b and I'll do the e." Breaking and entering Harry Zimm's office. Fancy Bear did the b and persons unknown did the e without leaving any evidence that an e had occurred at all. Confirmation bias is such a bitch that some folks cannot wrap their head around the concept.
  9. Henry is the CEO of CrowdStrike. I posted how he arrived at the conclusion that the Russian actor Fancy Bear hacked into the DNC servers and set up -- staged -- the e-mails for exfiltration. I find it amusing that you separate the part of Henry's testimony consistent with your bias from the part that debunks your claim. Discussing this further is a waste of time,
  10. KH: Mr. Varnell, can you please explain why you are wasting our time That's rich coming from you. KH: Furthermore, the 8/3/2018 publish date of your article means that it was written prior to the 2020 declassification of Crowdstrike December 2017 deposition by the House Intelligence Committee of Crowdstrike President Shawn Henry which revealed that contrary to Crowdstrike's earlier fraudulent representations about having proven that the DNC server had been hacked by "Fancy Bear," CROWDSTRIKE ACTUALLY HAD NEVER HAD ANY EVIDENCE AT ALL OF ANY KIND OF HACK OF THE DNC SERVER You can lead a pedant to water but you can't make them think. MR. SCHIFF: lt provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd, data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor. MR.HENRY: Yes, sir.
  11. https://www.techdirt.com/2018/08/03/as-dnc-hacked-itself-conspiracy-theory-collapses-key-backer-claim-exposed-as-uk-xxxxx/ As 'DNC Hacked Itself' Conspiracy Theory Collapses, Key Backer Of Claim Exposed As UK T-r-o-l-l Roughly a year ago you might recall that numerous outlets happily parroted claims that the DNC wasn’t hacked by Russian intelligence (as latter reports would make clear), but had somehow actually hacked itself. The theory was never particularly well cooked, though outlets like The Nation ran with it anyway, claiming that “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” had all collectively unearthed undeniable evidence that the DNC had committed cyber-seppuku. The widely-circulated report leaned heavily on a published memo by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a collection of former intelligence experts and whistleblowers like William Binney and Ray McGovern. It also leaned heavily on the input of several, anonymous, self-professed “computer forensics investigators” who, the news outlet informed readers, had “split the DNC case open like a coconut,” providing incontrovertible evidence that Russian intelligence played no role in the now-legendary breach. But the entire claim was little more than fluff and nonsense. As we noted at the time, The Nation story relied heavily on the allegation the stolen files must have been copied locally to USB by a DNC insider because, as The Nation claimed, “no Internet service provider was capable of downloading data at this speed” (22.7 megabytes per second). In reality, 22.7 megabytes per second was simply a 180 Mbps connection, widely available around the world at the time the DNC hack took place. That includes Romania, the country that the Russian cutout Guccifer 2.0 pretended (at the time) to have originated from. We weren’t alone in pointing out that the story was flimsy, relied largely on cherry-picked evidence, and frequently stumbled into the realm of the “incoherent.” And it’s only gone downhill since. The Nation was forced to review the report, adding a meandering preamble to address criticism. In the year since, reports have forged a new infosec community consensus that yes, Guccifer 2.0 was GRU, and had been amusingly caught because Russian intelligence forgot to activate its VPN before logging into the bogus persona’s WordPress site on one occasion (one of several opsec errors made by Russian intel). But at the time, any reporter that dared report on the emerging links between Russia and the hack were quickly smeared by a website custom built to try and downplay any Russian connection. The creator of the website went by the name of Adam Carter, who was broadly cited as a respected “independent researcher” in The Nation and other unskeptical reports. Carter’s website, a collection of half-cooked straw men and conspiratorial faux-technical nonsense, also took time to go after Techdirt, claiming our pretty rudimentary analysis of the theory’s principle error was “pedantic, sleazy & condescending” (thank you). Fast forward to this week, and a new Computer Weekly report notes that Carter wasn’t much of an intelligence expert or “researcher” at all. He was, according to infosec reporter Duncan Campbell, a British IT manager and shitposter from Darlington, working in concert with U.S. trolls on a widespread online disinformation effort to downplay and discredit any and every connection between the DNC attack and Russia: The story is long and incredibly weedy, so it’s going to be overlooked by many who lack patience or attention span during an oft-apocalyptic news cycle. But it’s definitely worth winding your way through and fully digesting to understand the sheer scope of the effort. Especially if you’re interested in understanding how incoherent internet bullshit has been industrialized and weaponized on an international scale for relatively little money. Campbell methodically spent months tracking down Carter’s real identity, noting his tactic of pretending to be combating disinformation while actively spreading it around the internet, from his g-2.space website (which he built on the back of an employer’s server without their apparent knowledge), to the bowels of Reddit’s r/conspiracy subreddit, where he was routinely found feeding baseless conspiracy theories to the aggressively gullible. Campbell states Leonard attempted to lend credibility to the theories by co-creating a second fake identity known as “Forensicator” (also cited by media outlets as a real, but anonymous intel expert). Campbell states that this analysis (again: bogus insight created by fake people), was then recirculated by an “independent” outlet by the name of Disobedient Media, which utilized Carter as a “technology correspondent” (they’re understandably none too happy with Campbell’s reporting). According to Campbell, Disobedient media has played more than a passing role in spreading conspiracy theories internationally, usually with the help of forged documents: While it’s easy to dismiss this as just some incoherent rambling by the 4chan / Qanon conspiracy set, the report notes how some of the effort’s “evidence” comically-managed to worm its way into White House policy circles. That was courtesy of William Binney, who met with CIA director Mike Pompeo at Trump’s request to dig deeper into the “DNC hacked itself” conspiracy. Nothing appears to have come of that meeting (because again, the whole DNC hacked itself theory is garbage), but it’s still worth pointing out that much of the underlying evidence was intentionally manipulated in order to deceive: One year later and The Nation’s original theory isn’t looking so hot, with even many of the original VIPS supporters running in the opposite direction, including Binney: But the damage was done, and the Brietbart, Bloomberg, Nation and other reports remain online, still widely circulated as “evidence” that the DNC hacked itself. Amusingly, many of the same people (quite justly) railing against the over-reliance on anonymous sources in stories supporting Russian involvement in the hack saw no problem amplifying this dubious report, despite the warnings that the report was leaning largely on extremely dubious, anonymous experts. Obviously real investigators continue to dig through the aftermath of the 2016 election to determine the width and breadth of Russia’s global disinformation and hacking efforts in retribution for the Magnitsky sanctions. That process should slowly unravel which organizations and individuals were simply useful idiots, and which organizations and individuals actively coordinated their disinformation assault with the help of foreign governments. But with questions arising about a evolved disinformation campaign on Facebook and another major internet disiformation effort operating out of Macedonia, it raises plenty of questions about just what real forensic investigators will unearth by this time next year. </q> https://www.techdirt.com/2017/08/16/stories-claiming-dnc-hack-was-inside-job-rely-heavily-stupid-conversion-error-no-forensic-expert-would-make/ Stories Claiming DNC Hack Was 'Inside Job' Rely Heavily On A Stupid Conversion Error No 'Forensic Expert' Would Make While we wait for the Mueller investigation to clearly illustrate if and how Russia meddled in the last election, there’s no shortage of opinions regarding how deep this particular rabbit hole goes. While it’s pretty obvious that Putin used social media and media propaganda to pour some napalm on our existing bonfires of dysfunction, just how much of an impact these efforts had on the election won’t be clear until a full postmortem is done. Similarly, while Russian hackers certainly had fun probing our voting systems and may have hacked both political parties, clearly proving state involvement is something else entirely. Quite fairly, many folks have pushed for caution in terms of waiting for hard evidence to emerge, highlighting the danger in trusting leaks from an intelligence sector with a dismal track record of integrity and honesty. There’s also the obvious concern of ramping up tension escalation between two nuclear powers. But last week, many of those same individuals were quick to highlight several new stories that claimed to “completely debunk” Russia’s involvement in hacking the DNC ahead of last year’s election. The problem? These reports were about as flimsy — if not flimsier — than the Russian hacking theories they supposedly supplanted. In fact, these reports took things one step further by claiming that the hack of the DNC was something committed solely by someone within the DNC itself. This particularly overlong, meandering piece by The Nation, for example, claimed to cite numerous anonymous intelligence sources who have supposedly grown increasingly skeptical over the “Russian hacking narrative.” Quite correctly, the report starts out by noting that while there’s oodles and oodles of smoke regarding Putin’s involvement in the election hacks, the fire (hard evidence) has been hard to come by so far: But it’s then that’s where things get a little weird. The report repeatedly proclaims that a laundry list of anonymous “forensic investigators, intelligence analysts, system designers, program architects, and computer scientists of long experience and strongly credentialed” have been hard at work “producing evidence disproving the official version of key events last year.” But one of the key conclusions by these experts — and a key cornerstone for of all of these stories — makes absolutely no sense. The reports lean heavily on anonymous cybersecurity experts calling themselves “Forensicator” and “Adam Carter,” who purportedly took a closer look at the metadata attached to the stolen files. Said metadata, we’re breathlessly informed, indisputably proves that the data had to have been transferred from inside of the DNC network and not over the internet, since the internet isn’t supposedly capable of such transfer speeds: That reads like a semi-cogent paragraph, but it’s largely nonsense. 22.7 megabytes per second (MB/s) sounds impossibly fast if you don’t know any better. But if you do the simple conversion from megabytes per second to megabits per second necessary to determine the actual speed of the connection used, you get a fairly reasonable 180 megabits per second (Mbps). While the report proclaims that “no internet service provider” can provide such speeds, ISPs around the world routinely offer speeds far, far faster — from 500 Mbps to even 1 Gbps. And despite the report oddly pooh pooh’ing Romanian broadband’s “delivery overheads,” many Romanian cities actually have faster internet connectivity than either Russia or in the States (check out Akamai’s global broadband rankings). Bernie Sanders learned this last year when he unintentionally pissed off many Romanians when trying to highlight the dismal state of U.S. connectivity. Even then, the hacker in question could have used any number of tricks to hide his or her location and real identity from a high-bandwidth vantage point, so the claim that the hacker couldn’t achieve 180 Mbps through a VPN is simply nonsense. Obviously this raises some questions about what kind of cyber-sleuths we’re talking about when they can’t do basic conversions or look at some fairly obvious broadband speed availability charts. And it also raises some questions about why reporters thought flimsy anonymous experts were the perfect remedy to the other flimsy anonymous leaks they hoped to debunk. While The Nation couldn’t even be bothered to do the simple calculation to determine the speed of the connection used by the hacker was relatively ordinary, in a story titled “Why Some U.S. Ex-Spies Don’t Buy the Russia Story,” Bloomberg actually did the conversion to get the 180 Mbps speed, and still somehow told readers that such speeds were impossible: Yes, all but impossible! Provided you ignore that DOCSIS 3.1 cable upgrades and fiber connections deliver speeds consistently faster than that all around the world every day — including Romania. False claims and sloppy math aside, after the Bloomberg column ran, several actual, identifiable intelligence experts also came forward doubting the legitimacy of the supposed intelligence sources for these stories altogether: Surrounded by raised eyebrows, The Nation is now apparently reviewing its story for accuracy after numerous people highlighted that a major cornerstone of the report was little more than fluff and nonsense. Bloomberg has so far failed to follow suit. So again, there’s certainly every reason to not escalate hostility between the United States and Russia with many details still obfuscated and investigations incomplete. And there’s also every reason to view reports leaning heavily on anonymous intelligence insiders skeptically after generations of distortions and falsehoods from those same agencies. That said, if you want to debunk the anonymous claims of a growing number of intelligence insiders who claim Russia played pinball with our electoral process, perhaps running into the arms of even more unreliable, anonymous intelligence sources — without checking your math — isn’t your best path toward the truth. </q>
  12. Assange had an excellent reason to bring up Seth Rich -- to divert attention away from his actual source. Assange does not even once verify that Seth Rich was the source. You are unaware of the grave violation of journalistic ethics by revealing a source. Here's an article about almost 50 journalists or news organizations jailed and/or fined for refusing to reveal sources, up to 2019. https://www.rcfp.org/jailed-fined-journalists-confidential-sources/ It's a violation of accepted journalistic ethics to reveal a source, and Assange properly said he would not comment on his sources -- like any good journalist. Because you cannot grasp the idea he would protect his sources by bringing up Rich, you assume he was holding "two competing principles in his mind at once," which is nothing more than the product of your own imagination. You smear people readily. You don't know me or my politics. You might think about taking medication for your over-active imagination. https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/05/politics/fbi-russia-hacking-dnc-crowdstrike/index.html <q> The DNC told Buzzfeed News that they did not receive a request from the FBI to access their computer servers. “The DNC had several meetings with representatives of the FBI’s Cyber Division and its Washington Field Office, the Department of Justice’s National Security Division, and US Attorney’s Offices, and it responded to a variety of requests for cooperation, but the FBI never requested access to the DNC’s computer servers,” Eric Walker, the DNC’s deputy communications director, told BuzzFeed News. The FBI instead relied on the assessment from a third-party security company called CrowdStrIke. </q> Somebody was performing CYA -- you automatically assume it wasn't the FBI. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/danger-close-fancy-bear-tracking-ukrainian-field-artillery-units/ <q> In June CrowdStrike identified and attributed a series of targeted intrusions at the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and other political organizations that utilized a well known implant commonly called X-Agent. X-Agent is a cross platform remote access toolkit, variants have been identified for various Windows operating systems, Apple’s iOS, and likely the MacOS. Also known as Sofacy, X-Agent has been tracked by the security community for almost a decade, CrowdStrike associates the use of X-Agent with an actor we call FANCY BEAR. This actor to date is the exclusive operator of the malware, and has continuously developed the platform for ongoing operations which CrowdStrike assesses is likely tied to Russian Military Intelligence (GRU). The source code to this malware has not been observed in the public domain and appears to have been developed uniquely by FANCY BEAR. Late in the summer of 2016, CrowdStrike Intelligence analysts began investigating a curious Android Package (APK) named ‘Попр-Д30.apk’ (MD5: 6f7523d3019fa190499f327211e01fcb) which contained a number of Russian language artifacts that were military in nature. Initial research identified that the filename suggested a relationship to the D-30 122mm towed howitzer, an artillery weapon first manufactured in the Soviet Union in the 1960s but still in use today. In-depth reverse engineering revealed the APK contained an Android variant of X-Agent, the command and control protocol was closely linked to observed Windows variants of X-Agent, and utilized a cryptographic algorithm called RC4 with a very similar 50 byte base key. </q> I already cited this. The Russians did not exfiltrate the e-mails. They hacked the DNC computer to set up the exfiltration by a non-State actor. Probably Roger Stone's IT guy, who would no doubt live in fear of getting whacked. You left this part out: MR. SCHIFF: lt provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd, data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor. MR.HENRY: Yes, sir. If you grasped what Henry actually said -- which you disingenuously left out -- you would know that there were no "Fancy Bear extrications." What does the have to do with Crowdstrike's analysis of the Ukrainian military computer cited above? Guilt by amorphous association? Andrew McCabe! There's a real beauty. A couple days after James Comey re-opened the bogus Hillary e-mail investigation McCabe leaked to the Wall Street Journal the on-going FBI investigation into the Clinton Foundation. His excuse was absurd... https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/internal-investigation-hits-mccabe-misleading-statements-n865811 <q> The report says McCabe authorized the discussion of the FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation with a reporter from The Wall Street Journal in an effort to “rebut a narrative” about McCabe’s impartiality in the investigation. The reporter had previously written about McCabe’s wife, who took campaign donations from Hillary Clinton’s close political ally Terry McAuliffe for her run in a state election in Virginia. The IG found that while McCabe was authorized to release such information to news reporters, he did so to “advance his personal interest” and “violated” the FBI’s and the DOJ’s media policy, and therefore his actions “constituted misconduct.” The report found that McCabe also contradicted his previous statements. During an interview under oath on Nov. 29, 2017, McCabe finally acknowledged that he had authorized the disclosure to the Journal. He then denied having said that he had not authorized the disclosure. The government watchdog found this contradiction to be in violation of the FBI’s offense code. </q> Your star witness is a proven liar not above acting in his own interest. You appear to project a lot. The FBI had no problem sticking a couple of shivs into Hillary in 2016, so why would they protect the Democratic Party now?
  13. I'm sure he was, but his statement -- "we don't comment on who our sources are" -- discounts the possibility it was Seth Rich. Your insistence otherwise is nothing but a smear. "Stretching the boundaries"? No, that would be a gross violation of journalistic ethics. That you insist on impugning the integrity of Julian Assange is disgraceful. Click bait isn't evidence. When Nieuwsuur pressed him on it Assange said it was a matter of concern but he in no way verified it. Assange wasn't revealing his source, he was protecting his source. Classic misdirection. A brilliant play by Assange. But the interviewer (mis)understood him to explicitly designate his source -- even though Assange explicitly said he would not comment on who his sources were. You're flat out accusing Assange of lying. Factually incorrect. In order to "set up" the e-mails for exfiltration the Russian actor Fancy Bear had to hack into the DNC computer. He left the same cyber fingerprints found on an earlier hack of Ukrainian defense computers. Yes, that's because the Russians did not exfiltrate the e-mails. It was a "non-State actor". I guess you missed this part, spoken by Schiff and agreed to by Henry: data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor I guess Mate couldn't grasp this either: "data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor" "Yes, sir." Do you really not understand that it was the FBI who opened a phony investigation into Clinton's e-mails 11 days before the election which turned the tide decisively in Trump's favor? I don't see any rebuttal to Henry's claim that Fancy Bear hacked the DNC computers to "stage" exfiltration. Why is that? So Seymour Hersh is quoting an FBI official? And we are supposed to believe the FBI what's on that laptop? That's your basis for smearing Assange's ethics? I have an understanding that what's called "the Deep State" is deeply factional. It was a faction of the FBI who pushed to re-open the Clinton e-mail investigation on the basis of e-mails they knew were duplicates. Edward Snowden said at the time that it would have taken a half hour to determine the e-mails were duplicates, but the FBI took 8 days. As a JFKA researcher I would think you'd have more skepticism toward the claims of the FBI. Projection. Your smear of Assange is egregious; your reliance on the FBI reflects gullibility, as does your inability to process "data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor." I know all about the left-Russiagate Deniers. You don't support Trump you just repeat some of his talking points and ignore his lust for autocracy. Your smear of Assange shows who got suckered.
  14. At the 1:04 mark in this interview Assange states: "We do not comment on who our sources are." Assange has the highest journalistic ethics -- Seth Rich was NOT his source. Assange said in another interview that his source was "a non-State actor" -- disputing the claim that he received the DNC e-mails from Russian operatives. A non-State actor might fear getting murdered in the streets by other non-State actors for whom they worked. The House testimony of Shawn Henry of Crowdstrike, the company that investigated the hack of DNC e-mails in 2016, in regard to the Russian hacker Fancy Bear: <q> MR. SCHIFF: lt provides in the report on 2016, April 22nd, data staged for exfiltration by the Fancy Bear actor. MR.HENRY: Yes, sir. So that, again, staged for sure which, I mean, there’s not -- the analogy I used with Mr. Stewart earlier was we don't have video of it happening, but there are indicators that it happened. There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case, it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just don't have the evidence that says it actually was. </q> Russians did indeed hack the DNC in order to “set up” the e-mail exfiltration by non-State actors.
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