A basis for evidence that Russia is an opaque mask for criminal activity

The purpose of this article is to create a basis in fact for the following understanding:

Russia is one of the few remaining [large] countries in the world where there is little or no surveillance, so it is possible to hide almost any crime when physically present. Basically, Russia is a black hole where information can be sucked and lost forever.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia has not implemented a domestic surveillance system similar to use in China, the EU, or North America (US & Canada). Furthermore, Russia operates a complex mix of black market norms that are illegal but common practice.

Making Russia even a more perfect mask for high profile crimes, is the fact that the new Russian capitalists will do anything for money.

Finally, there are a lot of foreign actors who are interested to utilize the "Russian Hoax" scapegoat theory. Because everything is impossible to prove in Russia, this works great for those who are not physically present in Russia (if you try this while living in Russia you will not be living long). The way it works is as follows. The 'victim' claims that he lived in or did business in Russia, and Russians abused him. So he escaped to the 'freedom' of the west, where he makes many friends with those who have used the same plot to blame their crimes on. The US Military and especially the CIA has loved the "Blame Russia" stance because it plays into Americans xenophobia and jingoism so well. Plus, a bearded Russian male with a deep voice makes a great film villian! If you think this is a joke, take a look at the number of Russian/Ukrainian villians in films around the 2014+ timeline. This scheme works great because you can never prove anything that happened in Russia! So it's easy to write books and makeup whatever story you want, get judgements courts can't enforce - the black hole is impenetrable. Anyway, most hard evidence was destroyed in 90's and there was no electronic archive because their society wasn't digitized yet, and in many aspects still isn't. So many Orthodox and Jew alike have turned this into a business, most notably Bill Browder, but there are many others. This is best elaborated in the case of Alex K, which reached it's peak during an immigration case, in which the prosecution provided evidence that was in Russian language, and the translation was provided by the prosecutor (with no independent verification). A complex case came down to he said she said, and the judge sided with the defendant.

But here was the catch: In virtually every case, the information was provided to U.S. authorities by Col. Volevodz, often translated and interpreted by him, and generally accepted at face value. And in each instance, the defense argued that Volevodz had fabricated or doctored the evidence, intimidated witnesses into lying, or dissuaded U.S. officials from trying to verify his data.

Example 1: Black Salary

For example employees are paid 'black salary' and 'white salary' - taxes are paid on 'white salary' so it's usually 10% of your 'black salary.' For example, a worker gets $200 in month 'white salary' so taxes are $35 or something like this. Then they receive $3,000 in 'black salary' which is under the table. Therefore, any economic statistics about employment & salaries must be wrong. This is so widespread it's unusual to find an organization that DOES NOT do this. What happens in Russia stays in Russia. There is no accountability for money or anything else. The salary situation is explained here 'from a native' -

чёрная зарплата (“black salary”) is the salary from which no taxes were paid. For example, you work somewhere, but not officially, so you get “black salary.” If they fire you, you won't be able to prove you worked there. белая зарплата (“white salary”) is an official, legal salary from which you and your employer pay taxes, it’s what you officially get. There is also a term «зарплата в конверте» - “salary in the envelope”, usually meaning black salary. You receive your salary in cash in an envelope. There can also be серая зарплата, “grey salary”, when part of your salary is legal, white, and the other is not. Of course black and grey salaries are illegal in Russia, but unfortunately they are quite common. Sometimes someone is ready to hire you only if you accept the black salary.

Here is a more professional source, KYC360:

In both Russia and Ukraine, companies are able to navigate the fiscal system to their benefit by dividing salaries into white (taxed) and black (untaxed) segments via any number of grey payment schemes.

White payments are the salaries declared in an employee’s contract. Black payments escape documentation entirely, often coming in the form of illegal cash payments “in envelopes,” or “v konverte,” as the Russian saying goes. Ultimately, many companies end up paying grey salaries—a combination of the two.

Example 2: Ultimate internet proxy

For less than $15 a month, you can get a VPN that will mask your identity with the click of a button. By using anonymous proxy servers internationally, it is virtually impossible to track someone down based on an IP address. You don't have to be the CIA or a hacker to use this service, you just need a computer and a credit card (or PayPal) - see the following advertisement:

HideMyAss! World's most powerful and popular VPN network - mask your identity or avoid your crappy office IP that's been abused by your underpaid marketing department.

Your IP address is your only identity online. When a browser connects to a website it creates a user session, and will collect information such as browser type, IP address, screen size, and other info. This may be done on a server level without the webmaster knowing about it, and without the use of cookies.

The above mentioned service can make your computer look like it's a user from Iceland, Germany, or even Russia. Now watch this slippery slope of manipulation:

slipperyslope

We have just above explained how it's possible to get a Russian IP for your home computer, in fact there is no limit to the amount of Russian IPs you can purchase. Of course there are far more sophisticated tools out there for IP obfuscation, the point being if this tool is so easy to install and setup for only $15 - what basis do 'news agencies' have for making the slippery slope conclusions, Russian IP = from Russia?

Daily Kos, CNN, and ABC all use a Senate report on the subject, which relies on information from intelligence agencies. Much of the report is blacked out. No technical forensic evidence is presented in the report, that would indicate they have proven it was a state actor and not a kid in his basement using HideMyAss!. It's unclear whether this is a joke or not, but this is presented as evidence:

evidenserussianhackers

Incidentally, most hackers, whether Russian or not, will use Russia as a proxy, because there is such a large and complex hacking culture in Russia which is sometimes tied to "Mafia" and sometimes to the government, it provides the perfect opaque mask.

Another point brought up by the Intercept, is the heavy use of TOR browser, an anonymous browser developed by the US Department of Defense:

I found out, after some digging, that of the 876 suspicious IP addresses that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of National Intelligence put on the Russian cyber attacker list, at least 367 of them (roughly 42%) are either Tor exit nodes right now, or were Tor exit nodes in the last few years. I have a lot of regular readers who are Tor users, and I’m pretty sure they’re not all Russian hackers. So the quick answer to the mystery of my website apparently being attacked by nefarious IP addresses listed in the U.S. report is that the Russians, along with many thousands of others, just happened to use the Tor IP addresses that my regular readers used (and still use).

Example 3: Bribes and corruption

Russia is still a place where 'money talks' - it's possible to do many things in Russia with money; including but not limited to, destroying evidence, changing official records, get out of jail, have the police or investigators look the other way, hire a 'stand in' stooge to take the fall for you, have cases lost or materially changed, etc. etc. Use your imagination. But the big catch is that this only works domestically. So for all practical purposes Russia is a black hole where criminals can escape and live worry free, as long as you have a little money. Also, due to a number of cultural and legal barriers, it is difficult to track and monitor criminals in Russia. Of course anything is possible if the suspect is wanted badly enough, but the point is there is zero cooperation with Russian authorities and they may even impede your investigation because you may discover things about their domestic operations they don't want discovered. This is unique to Russia and a few other black holes like North Korea. But unlike North Korea, Russia will accept you as a foreigner if you so wanted, and again, if you had a little money.

Here's an interesting case where the anti-corruption deputy was caught with $9 Billion Rubles (About $139 Million USD) in cash:

Russian anti-corruption police officer has been sentenced to more than a decade in jail after being found in possession of $139 million in cash bribes. Colonel Dmitry Zakharchenko, 41, was serving as the acting deputy chief of a branch at the General Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs when he was arrested in September 2016. Though he was only convicted of one charge of bribery, police found around 9 billion rubles (around $139 million) in cash—much of it in foreign currencies—at properties linked to him in Moscow, state news agency Tass reported. Zakharchenko was sentenced to 13 years in a maximum security correctional facility and slapped with a fine of around $1.8 million. He was found guilty of accepting large-scale bribes and obstructing justice, Tass explained. He was also stripped of all titles and state awards. His lawyers have said they intend to appeal the sentence.

Example 4: Many things not digitized

Some pensions are paid in cash, monthly, by a government official, where they literally count the money on the table, at a certain time every week or month. Unlike many countries Russians like to use paper Rubles. Letters are still sent by mail, documents such as medical records are still hand-written. Of course there is a lot of technology development in Russia but it is not used systematically. That means files can get lost with no backups, and it's easy to create fake documents. Oligarchs wealth is often owned by dead people or their pets.

Conclusion

Russia is a black hole, financially, legally, and culturally. This black hole has opened in the global society continum in 1991 and is being heavily exploited by political operatives, criminals, unethical business people, and the US and UK Military. It's the perfect opaque mask to use in order to cover your electronic tracks. Using the "Blame Russia" method is very obvious now, and in the case of the power grid hackers, it was shown to be false:

Even worse, there is zero evidence that Russian hackers were even responsible for the implanting of this malware on this single laptop. The fact that malware is “Russian-made” does not mean that only Russians can use it; indeed, like a lot of malware, it can be purchased (as Jeffrey Carr has pointed out in the DNC hacking context, assuming that Russian-made malware must have been used by Russians is as irrational as finding a Russian-made Kalishnikov AKM rifle at a crime scene and assuming the killer must be Russian).

As far as are there really Russian hackers, the answer is of course there are. But are government sponsored hackers really trying to 'hack' a US election? It's highly unlikely. Russia doesn't have money to fix roads, pay pensions, their healthcare system is collapsing, the only thing they have is Oil & Gas. Their economy is an emerging market but has a very long way to go. "Mob Rule" still rules over law, as debt collectors resort to physical threats and harrasment of relatives to collect unpaid balances. There is no such thing as bankruptcy, consumer rights, women's rights, and they don't know what is the 3rd gender (can you imagine?). No, hacking US elections is not at the top of the priority list. Anyone who believes the Russian hacking theory has never been to Russia and knows nothing about Russia. They may have a team of Cybersecurity experts, the most likely use is defense and for military applications in Syria and other places.

Finally, Russia is not an Imperialist country and has no precedent for manipulating foreign elections. There are only 3 countries in the world with a proven track record of manipulating the politics of a foreign election including tampering with actual ballots. The names of those countries are the United States of America, Israel, and the United Kingdom. See a short list of foreign interventions by the US (these are official interventions, it does not include many clandestine interventions nor does it include the foreign activities of George Soros).

So the US has a track record of doing it, does the US have the capability? Yes, they do. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we know about Tailored Access Operations:

TAO is reportedly "the largest and arguably the most important component of the NSA's huge Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID)^[8] (SIGINT), consisting of more than 1,000 military and civilian computer hackers, intelligence analysts, targeting specialists, computer hardware and software designers, and electrical engineers".^[2]

This is just one organization, there are many. The CIA developed for it's own use many hacking tools that can be used to create Malware, fake IPs, create fake 'fingerprints' (i.e. Russian language code comment to make it look like Russians made it) and others. It is interesting reading if you have a background in computer science, it's called Vault 7:

activities and capabilities of the United States' Central Intelligence Agency to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016, include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to compromise cars, smart TVs,^[1] web browsers (including Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),^[2]^[3]^[4] and the operating systems of most smartphones (including Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and Linux^[5]^[6]

So the CIA has these tools, NSA has 1,000 full time employees on the hacking team - what else is there? We know that the total black budget (which is money allocated that we can't know what they use it for because it's 'classified' ) is $60 Billion:

Russia will spend $250 Million USD on strengthening cybersecurity.

Based on all this evidence, Russia is not suspect fixing the election. The clear winner who has the capability, the motive, and the track record of doing this is the CIA. Now that the main "Russia Hoax" has proven to be a complete and total lie, this significant fake evidence fits inside a real conspiracy to create a coup against a legally elected President, and have the public buy it.

Anyone who understands logic and knows how to use Google could have done the research in this article and come to the same conclusions. And many people have. But the majority of people unfortunately are completely brainwashed by TV and when they see 'respected experts' provide Trump Hate emotional fuel for the brain it short circuits the right brain and overwhelms any logic or fact based speech. Due to the fact that TV is presented visually, this floods the frontal lobe making rational thought impossible. The emotions flow from the visual cortex to the reptilian brain and stay there. This is why Democrats have become so unhinged, they rely on these tricks in order to generate support for their cause, instead of making rational arguments (they don't have any).

"Increase the quality of your argument not the level of your voice." - Reasonable Person

Russia is a place where the court will rubber stamp whatever the prosecutor says. The thinking is that, if the defendent was arrested by an agent of the government (the police) - he must be guilty. And if he hasn't already bribed his way out of jail, he's not worthy of any legitimate defense. That's Russia today. So coming from that environment, it's easy to see how it is a black hole where you can not only Blame Russia, but use it as an opaque mask.

Regarding the DNC circumstances, were emails 'hacked' or were they 'leaked' ? According to many, there was never any evidence of any 'hack' provided:

Nearly three years have passed, however, and no one has produced forensic evidence of a DNC “hack” by “the Russians”—and that includes special counsel Robert Mueller, whose 2018 indictment of a dozen or so Russians presents zero evidence to support his accusations. Not even the FBI discovered evidence of any hack at the DNC because, in part, the nation’s federal law enforcement body never examined the DNC’s computer servers.“In fact,” two former intelligence experts write, “the available forensic evidence contradicts the official account that blames the leak of the DNC emails on a Russian internet ‘intrusion.’ The existing evidence supports an alternative explanation—the files taken from the DNC between 23 and 25 May 2016 and were copied onto a file storage device, such as a thumb drive.”

So, according to the FBI, files were copied on a thumb drive which could only be done in person, meaning files were 'leaked' or the Russian hacker physically broke into the office dressed like an Obama staffer and snook off with the goods. What sounds more probable? Even the crooked Washington Post admits that it was the DNC and Clinton campaign that paid for the 'Dossier' that supposedly proved Trump was working with the Russians.

The facts of all these cases were overlooked, as the media pumped catch phrases that were repeated until they became circular reference facts. "We all know the Russians meddled in the election, but.. " says who? The only evidence so far has been circumstancial, Tor Exit addresses. No corroborating evidence. Again, that's like saying the Gun was an AK so the shooter must be Russian. That's not deductive logic, but the creators of it know it very well, they know it wasn't the Russians this is all a bad hoax. Let's take another look at the 'smoking gun' senate intelligence report:

"Bloggers" or "Bots" are not evidence of election meddling. If there is any meaty evidence behind the blackouts (there's not, that's why it's blacked out) it should be released in part.

The whole situation is absurd, and this hoax is paid for by taxpayers! What a waste of time and money.

The DNC and Clinton had admitted spending money on their own Bot armies, isn't it logical that they would have hired a Russian troll farm, with no proof of their own involvement, to Troll Republicans? We know that Soros has been caught hiring fake protestors:

But in response to the revelation that several of the professional activists, including the two young women who accosted Senator Jeff Flake last week, were exposed as "employees" of a non-profit organization funded by George Soros, President Trump has weighed in on Twitter, blasting the "elevator screamers" in a tweet that was essentially red meat for his base.

The conclusion is, if there were Russian bot armies trying to manipulate the elections, they were likely hired by US firms. Democrats seem to be the bigger players here with more experience, but after the 2000 election rigging by Republicans, it seems election fixing is a bipartisan pastime.

The political situation is not the only time that Russia is used and abused as a fake perpetrator, but it provides the best case for analysis as many have bought the 'Blame Russia' method hook, line, and sinker.

We'll finish with a small economic anecdote. Bill Clinton likes to take credit for good economic conditions in the 90s, however we must consider the macro elephant in the room. With the Soviet Union destroyed in 1991 billions upon billions in capital flowed to the US as well as talent, not only from Russia. During the 90s there really was a chance for the US to dismantle the military industrial complex, which was why 911 was critical to continue Pax Americana - the perpetual American Imperial State. In other words, Clinton was lucky it wasn't any policy that made that happen. In the wake of the crisis, not only assets were seized and transferred to the west, there were boundless opportunities in Oil & Gas, Gold, Banking, Commodities, Manufacturing, and it could all be done tax free! And to this day, Russia remains one of the only large countries on planet Earth where you really can get away with murder.

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A basis for evidence that Russia is an opaque mask for criminal activity

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