How Hillary Clinton has been playing tit for tat with the Russians

There's an interesting back story regarding this obsession with the Russians of late. Who has this obsession with the Russians? The DNC and the Clinton campaign. What is the story? The DNC and the Clinton campaign have been caught colluding in the primary elections of this year. How were they caught? A man or a group of people who used the pseudonym, "Guccifer 2.0" hacked into the office network of the Democratic National Committee, gathered up compromising documents and released them.

Who exactly is Guccifer 2.0? Here is the Wikipedia page:

"Guccifer 2.0" is a hacker (or hackers) who hacked into the Democratic National Committee computer network and then leaked its emails to both the newspaper The Hill[1][2] and the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.[3][4][5][6][7][8][9]

WikiLeaks has not revealed its source. However, some cybersecurity experts and firms have speculated, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica,[10] that the leak was part of a series of cyberattacks on the DNC committed by two Russian intelligence groups.[11][12][13][14][15] U.S. intelligence agencies agree, concluding with "high confidence" that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the DNC.[10] The Russian government said it had no involvement in the theft.[16] Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said that there was no proof that Russia was behind the attack.[17]

It is worth noting how the DNC and the Clinton campaign have been playing this situation for diversion. Numerous alternative media pundits and social media participants have zeroed in on one simple point: What is important here is not that the Russians were involved and even capable of hacking the DNC. What is important here is the content of the documents released, not who got them and released them. You won't see questions directed to this issue like this in the mainstream media. They don't fit their narrative or their agenda.

In other words, while the mainstream media, the DNC and the Clinton campaign have deflected attention away from the content of the documents that were leaked and released, they did not explain themselves and their motives for what was revealed in the documents. Pay to play for a post as ambassador? Who cares!?! The Russians hacked us! Collusion between the DNC and the press and Hillary Clinton's campaign in support of Hillary Clinton at the expense of Bernie Sanders? Who cares!?! The Russians hacked us! Hillary has serious health problems? Who cares!?! The Russians hacked us!

The question that comes to mind then is why the Russians? Why not the Chinese, long considered to be a far greater adversary than any other in cyber-espionage? The Chinese have been painted as capable and adept cyber warriors, but today it's the Russians.

I think Naked Capitalism, a website dedicated to documenting the corruption in our capitalist economy, has offered a seemingly unrelated clue. After reading this article, John Helmer: Did Hillary Clinton Take Money From Russia Oligarch Oleg Deripaska for a Favor in the General Motors-Opel Deal?, I think a fair assessment is that we are not getting the whole truth from the mainstream media, the Clinton Campaign or the DNC. From the article, originally published at Dances With Bears:

When Hillary Clinton  was US Secretary of State in 2009, she proved she could lie to the German Chancellor Angela Merkel; keep secret her hostility towards Russia even in her secret staff emails; and take money in her back pocket for an $8 billion deal between the US, Germany and Russia recommended by her subordinates. The record, recently revealed in US investigations of Clinton’s emails and donations to the Clinton Foundation, shows why the Kremlin assessment of Clinton is hostile and blunt – Clinton invites and takes bribes, but can’t be relied on to keep her bargains.

I believe that this story adds context that is missing from the mainstream narrative. The mainstream narrative is that the DNC and Hillary Clinton's campaign are the victims of a concerted effort to hack their computer networks and point to the Russians as the villain. The story of the attempted merger between a German car company and a Russian car company, and how it was scuttled, may explain why they protest so much.

What is also interesting to note is that everyone was on board with the merger except the United States. The German labor unions, and the German and Russian governments were all ready to get the deal done. John Helmer considers in his article, the possibility that Clinton scuttled the deal to break a pattern of transactions so that she could plausibly say that she is not engaged in any pay to play scheme. She would like us to believe that she would not let the money influence her decisions. But the documents released so far, paint a very clear pattern of pay to play.

This is what I think about whenever I see Clinton accusing Trump of collusion with the Russian hackers and their government. This is what I think about when I see Clinton supporters working so tirelessly to paint Trump in the most unfavorable light while refusing to answer relevant questions concerning the leaks from the DNC. This is what I think about when I see people that I admire, including Larry Lessig and Bernie Sanders, imploring me to vote for Clinton, while implying that a vote for Jill Stein is a protest vote. I still admire them, I just disagree with them on this point.

I will not be casting a protest vote when I vote for Jill Stein this fall. I am voting for an alternative to the contempt that the elite class hold for me and the middle class that I belong to, and the poor. Their brazen acts of corruption are evidence of that contempt.

If somehow, Hillary Clinton is sidelined and replaced by Bernie Sanders, I will vote for him, no doubt. I believe that my vote is better served when cast for Bernie or Jill, as the case may be, and every Berniecrat that I can vote for. I will never vote for Hillary and I will make sure my kids (and any other kids in my family who will listen) are aware of this part of of our history.

Bernie's campaign was and is not about electing him as president, though that would be a nice bonus if he were to ascend to the White House. It is about starting a revolution where all Americans get involved in politics to shine a light on the contempt that the elite hold for the rest of us. My vote for Jill Stein or Bernie Sanders, and the Berniecrats (link to complete list) is just one effort of many that I will make to answer that contempt by replacing the self-serving and contemptuous with people who truly want to serve the people of this nation.

I don't have to ask, "If not now, when?", because the answer is now.