Robert Parry — The Slimy Business of Russia-gate

The “Field of Dreams” slogan for America’s NGOs should be: “If you pay for it, we will come.” And right now, tens of millions of dollars are flowing to non-governmental organizations if they will buttress the thesis of Russian “meddling” in the U.S. democratic process no matter how sloppy the “research” or how absurd the “findings.”

And, if you think the pillars of the U.S. mainstream media – The Washington Post, The New York Times, CNN and others – will apply some quality controls, you haven’t been paying attention for the past year or so. The MSM is just as unethical as the NGOs are.

So, we are now in a phase of Russia-gate in which NGO “scholars” produce deeply biased reports and their nonsense is treated as front-page news and items for serious discussion across the MSM.

Yet, there’s even an implicit confession about how pathetic some of this “scholarship” is in the hazy phrasing that gets applied to the “findings,” although the weasel words will slip past most unsuspecting Americans and will be dropped for more definitive language when the narrative is summarized in the next day’s newspaper or in a cable-news “crawl.”…

Snowden hit the nail on the head. If anyone knows it is NSA and if they are not releasing evidence, they don't have it. The rest is BS, trolling, red herrings and canards.

Lets examine the data on which these "studies" are based.

Consortium News
The Slimy Business of Russia-gate

Robert Parry

San Francisco-based Twitter said Russian media outlet Russia Today, which is close to the Kremlin, had spent $274,100 on Twitter advertisements and promoted 1,823 tweets potentially aimed at the U.S. market.

Those ad buys alone topped the $100,000 that Facebook this month linked to a Russian propaganda operation during the 2016 election cycle, a revelation that prompted calls from some Democrats for new disclosure rules for online political ads.

Wow. That must really have moved the election. (snark, if you didn't recognize it)

Reuters
Twitter suspends Russia-linked accounts, but U.S. senator says response inadequate

Dustin Volz and Joseph Menn