{"id":180775,"date":"2017-01-08T19:50:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-09T00:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/01\/08\/out-of-the-mouths-of-babes-and-sucklings-and-republicans\/"},"modified":"2017-01-08T19:50:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-09T00:50:00","slug":"out-of-the-mouths-of-babes-and-sucklings-and-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/01\/08\/out-of-the-mouths-of-babes-and-sucklings-and-republicans\/","title":{"rendered":"Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings and \u2026\u2026\u2026 Republicans?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"border: 1px solid black; float: right; margin: 0px 10px; padding: 5px; text-align: center; width: 330px;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"180\" scrolling=\"auto\" src=\"http:\/\/content.jwplatform.com\/players\/SNh8Cxke-EAYoNgFe.html\" width=\"320\"><\/iframe><br \/><i>Awkward!<\/i><\/div>\n<p>Thom Tillis, the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, reminds James Clapper <a href=\"https:\/\/www.emptywheel.net\/2017\/01\/05\/thom-tillis-reminds-james-clapper-that-the-us-tampers-in-elections-too\/\">that the US has been meddling in foreign elections on a wholesale scale for decades<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Several times in today\u2019s hearing on foreign cyberattacks on the US, James Clapper explained why he never favored big retaliation for China\u2019s hack of OPM: because he considers it the kind of espionage we engage in too. \u201cPeople who live in glass houses shouldn\u2019t throw rocks.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>When North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis got his turn, he <a href=\"https:\/\/www.c-span.org\/video\/?c4641742\/thom-tillis-raises-us-tampering-elections\">addressed<\/a> Clapper\u2019s comment, pointing out that on election-tampering, as with espionage, the US lives in a big glass house. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The glass house comment is something that I think is very important. There\u2019s been research done by a professor up at Carnegie Mulligan that um Mellon that estimated that the United States has been involved in one way or another in 81 different elections since World War II. That doesn\u2019t include coups or regime changes. Tangible evidence where we\u2019ve tried to affect an outcome to our purpose. Russia\u2019s done it some 36 times. In fact, when Russia apparently was trying to influence our election, we had the Israelis accusing us of trying to influence their election. <\/p>\n<p>So I\u2019m not here to talk about that. But I am here to say we live in a big glass house and there are a lot of rocks to throw and I think that that\u2019s consistent with what you said on other matters. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/>With regards to comparative numbers on US and Russian intervention in elections, Tillis is discussing <a href=\"http:\/\/journals.sagepub.com\/doi\/pdf\/10.1177\/0738894216661190\">research published<\/a> by Dov Levin last year (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/monkey-cage\/wp\/2016\/09\/07\/sure-the-u-s-and-russia-often-meddle-in-foreign-elections-does-it-matter\/?utm_term=.791fdd204ef6\">see WaPo version<\/a>), who found that either the US or Russia intervened in 11.3% of all elections since World War II, with the US \u2014 indeed \u2014 intervening far more often (and more broadly) than Russia.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The research shows that over 11% of competitive elections between 1946 and 2000 were hacked, and about \u2154 of these interventions were by the US state security apparatus, and wasn&#8217;t just some obscure banana republic:&nbsp; It includes things like intervening in the Italian elections of 1948.<\/p>\n<p>Glass houses indeed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Awkward! Thom Tillis, the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, reminds James Clapper that the US has been meddling in foreign elections on a wholesale scale for decades: Several times in today\u2019s hearing on foreign cyberattacks on the US, James Clapper explained why he never favored big retaliation for China\u2019s hack of OPM: because he considers &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[808,779,815,798,401],"class_list":["post-180775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-elections","tag-espionage","tag-foreign-relations","tag-history","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}