Cozy bear and fancy bear crash the democrats' party - saportareport

By Tom Baxter What a movie this campaign will make, if they are still able to make movies by the time it’s over. COZY BEAR and FANCY BEAR are a pair of Russian hacker groups, well known in

intelligence circles but not to the general public until the recent hacking of the Democratic National Committee’s computer system. They are widely thought to be the source of the 20,000

emails which Wikileaks released last Friday, just ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. A dump that large suggests all sorts of information showing the DNC unfairly

siding with Hillary Clinton’s campaign over that of Bernie Sanders. In fact the first batch of revelations from the emails seem fairly tame, given that we knew this was going on anyway. But

the timing was perfect. By the time the convention was gaveled to order Monday afternoon, Debbie Wasserman Shultz was out as chair of the party, and any worries the Philadelphia convention

would look too buttoned-down compared to the Republican convention in Cleveland last week were out the window. “Brothers and sisters, this is the real world we live in,” Bernie Sanders

implored his followers at a rally near the convention site. But even the third bear in this story couldn’t contain the fury of his followers, which spilled over into an extremely raucous

opening. Needless to say, any story with “email” in the headline isn’t good news for Hillary Clinton. The really ominous news is that Julian Assange, the impresario of Wikipedia, has

promised more to come. Does the transparent involvement of Russian intelligence groups mean Vladimir Putin is taking sides in the U.S. presidential election? The Russian leader has made no

secret of his support for nationalist parties in Europe, and he and Donald Trump already have the makings of a bro-mance. And in the long run, will it matter in this election? The heckling

from disgruntled Sanders supporters continued at some level or another throughout the entire evening, even after Sarah Silverman, a prominent Sanders supporter, urged them to “stop being

ridiculous.” It could be heard, more faintly by then, during the speech by Sanders closing out the evening. Imagine what Ted Cruz would have done if he’d had more than a thousand delegates

still chanting his name in Cleveland. Sanders did what Cruz couldn’t bring himself to do, capping the evening with a full-throated endorsement of his former adversary. But it remains to be

seen whether he can bring his restive delegates along with him. If there was one speech on this first evening which seemed to bring the convention entirely together it was Michelle Obama’s

stemwinder, which seemed tailor-made to play along with the Clinton campaign’s “Role Model” ad currently airing on cable and several battleground states. And so far, there aren’t any charges

that she lifted any of her material. _RELATED POSTS_