© AP/Pavel GolovkinTraditional Russian Matreskas depicting Vladimir Putin, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump displayed in a shop in Moscow
At the end of October, I wrote an
article for
Consortiumnews about the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's campaign paying for unvetted opposition research that became the basis for much of the disputed story about Russia allegedly interfering in the 2016 presidential election on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
And the second was CrowdStrike, an anti-Putin private company, examining the DNC's computer server to dubiously claim discovery of a Russian "hack." In a similar examination of an alleged hack of a Ukrainian artillery app, CrowdStrike also blamed Russia but used faulty data for its report that it was later forced to
rewrite. CrowdStrike was hired after the DNC refused to allow the FBI to look at the server.
The piece showed that the Democrats' two paid-for sources that have engendered belief in Russia-gate are at best shaky. First was former British spy Christopher Steele's
largely unverified dossier of second- and third-hand opposition research portraying Donald Trump as something of a Russian Manchurian candidate.
My piece also described the dangerous consequences of partisan Democratic faith in Russia-gate: a sharp increase in geopolitical tensions between nuclear-armed Russia and the U.S., and
a New McCarthyism that is spreading fear - especially in academia, journalism and civil rights organizations - about questioning the enforced orthodoxy of Russia's alleged guilt.
Comment: It's not surprising to see Orban's party increasing in influence. Many EU countries are paying a high price for their almost unlimited acceptance of refugees and Hungary is one of the few that has pushed back against the influx.
For an even-handed discussion on the MENA/EU migrant crisis see: The Truth Perspective: Weapons of Mass Migration: Interview with Michael Springmann on Europe's Migrant Cris