So, where's the story? The Timesclaims that "current and former intelligence officials" (who insist on remaining anonymous) say "Russians" have hacked into at least two other voting machine companies. But even these ghosts don't claim the alleged incursions altered or prevented anyone's vote.
Michael Daniel, who served as the cyber security coordinator in the Obama White House, spoke to the Timeson-the-record. "We don't know if any of the problems were an accident, or the random problems you get with computer systems, or whether it was a local hacker, or actual malfeasance by a sovereign nation-state," said Daniel. "If you really want to know what happened, you'd have to do a lot of forensics, a lot of research and investigation, and you may not find out even then."
Thus, even a Democratic White House cyber sleuth refused to take the Russiagate bait. In fact, the Times reporters could not find anyone to add substance to the impression the story was designed to make: that the Russians had something to do with voting disruptions in North Carolina or anywhere else. One strongly suspects the phony story was foisted on the three bylined reporters by their editors, responding to constant pressures from Times owners, who are the prime source of fake news. They have already scraped all the garbage from the bottom of the barrel, and are now spinning anti-Russia tales out of thin air.
"The state reverted to paper ballots on Election Day, causing many voters to give up in disgust."
In their crusade to maintain the momentum of the Obama wars by making the Kremlin the omni-villain, the corporate fake news manufacturers now attempt to absolve the white supremacist Republican Party in North Carolina of its crimes against Black voters. The Times honchos have no excuse, since they are quite familiar with the GOP's voting practices in the state. On September 6, 2016, two months before the election, the paper's editorial board wrote:
"North Carolina Republicans are at it again. Barely one month after a federal appeals court struck down the state's anti-voter law for suppressing African-American voter turnout 'with almost surgical precision,' election officials in dozens of counties are taking up new ways to make it as hard as possible for blacks, and others who tend to support Democrats, to vote."
The state's Republican Party has "bragged " and "openly celebrated " its success in keeping Black voter numbers down. They are irredeemable and unrepentant white supremacists, who are not ashamed to commit their crimes in broad daylight. Yet, the Timesattempts -- unsuccessfully -- to pin Black voter suppression on the Russians.
Rev. William Barber II, who led the Moral Mondays movement that has fought the GOP's brazen ballot criminality since 2013, said : "Voter suppression hacked our democracy long before any Russian agents meddled in America's elections.... We're looking at Putin's strongman tactics and not at our own race-based voter suppression tactics."
By conjuring up a false Russian threat to Black people's franchise, the New York Timesis shielding the actual perpetrators -- which makes them accomplices to the ongoing crime, along with the other corporate media liars and whores for war.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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