How insane are the Russiagate people?

Submitted by gjohnsit on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 3:31pm

putin.PNG

In case you didn't know, Hamilton68 is the main site for all-things-Russia hysterics.
To give a GOS reference: Hamilton 68: Putin apparently trying to incite American Civil War #2 (not kidding)

NYT-Russian-Bots.png
WaPo-Russian-Bots.png

Whenever you see one of these bizarre headlines, their "source" is almost always Hamilton68.

The substance of the concern or discord is underreported or ignored altogether. Online conflict is neatly dismissed as a Kremlin psyop, the narrative of Russia interference in every aspect of our lives is reinforced, and one is reminded to be “aware” of Russian trolls online.

At this point you would think that Hamilton68 was full of foaming-at-the-mouth warhawks that see Russians under every bed and behind every bush.

One problem, though: The “Russian bot dashboard” reporters generally cite as their primary source, Hamilton 68, effectively told reporters to stop writing these pieces six weeks ago.

[sounds of screeching wheels]
You read that right. One of the founders of Hamilton68 thinks the Russia bots thing is horsesh*t.

This is, not to mince words, total bullshit.

The thing is, nearly every time you see a story blaming Russian bots for something, you can be pretty sure that the story can be traced back to a single source: the Hamilton 68 dashboard, founded by a group of respected researchers, including Clint Watts and JM Berger, and currently run under the auspices of the German Marshall Fund.

But even some of the people who popularized that metric now acknowledge it’s become totally overblown.

“I’m not convinced on this bot thing,” said Watts, the cofounder of a project that is widely cited as the main, if not only, source of information on Russian bots. He also called the narrative “overdone.”

The dashboard monitors 600 Twitter accounts “linked to Russian influence efforts online,” according to its own description, which means the accounts are not all directly traced back to Kremlin efforts, or even necessarily to Russia. “They are not all in Russia,” Watts said during a phone interview last week. “We don’t even think they’re all commanded in Russia — at all. We think some of them are legitimately passionate people that are just really into promoting Russia.” So, not bots.

What does it say about "journalists" that write stories in which their primary source tells them "You've got it completely wrong. That isn't what the data shows"?
Are they even journalists at all?

Even Watts thinks the “blame the bots” shtick has gotten out of control. “It’s somewhat frustrating because sometimes we have people make claims about it or whatever — we’re like, that’s not what it says, go back and look at it,” Watts said. “There are certain times when it does give you great insights, but it’s not a one-time, I look at it for five seconds and write a newspaper article and then that’s it. That doesn’t give you any context about it.”

Jumping to blame the bots is something that’s not just happening in newsrooms around the country, but in government offices around the world. Watts recalled hearing from a couple of Senate staffers half a year ago “that were jumping off a cliff” because of something they saw on the dashboard. “It’s like — whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said, “do you understand what you’re looking at?” Apparently not.

I'm glad I read this, because now I don't blame hamilton68 (much).
Now I know the big problem is the news media in general.
This should be a HHUUUUGGGEEE scandal. Up there with Iraqi WMDs.
If it only got reported somewhere...

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scaryputin!
scaryrussia!
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Submitted by mimi on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 4:29pm
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[video:https://youtu.be/J833Sv5GCVQ]

What would you shout about for that kind of money?

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Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 6:21pm
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@mimi

(She stays bought!)

Bad

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Submitted by mimi on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 1:03am
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@thanatokephaloides
as I haven't listened to her for years now, I only remember her from the times, when she sounded like a truth digging and truth abiding talking host. I liked her in her beginning years, when Keith Olbermann was still at MSNBC and the first year or so after that.

I am somewhat doubtful that money alone can flip a person like her. I rather believe that she was intimidated and pressured and threatened, perhaps. I believe today so many Americans in the news media and political surroundings are simply threatened to the point they fear for their lives. One always underestimates the amount of cruelty that goes along with people who want their careers and keep them.

But that's just my guts talking, no evidence or factual proof to that.

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Submitted by GreyWolf on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 8:18am
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@mimi "I believe today so many Americans in the news media and political surroundings are simply threatened to the point they fear for their lives."

Coercion, the unspoken threat of death, is pretty much the basis of capitalism ... "make us masters a profit or starve." So I doubt anybody verbalized anything, Maddow has internalized her beliefs and while her subconscious saw that falling in line would be profitable, her conscious mind believes her own BS now.

As in, 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.' But servants could pass a lie detector test because they now actually believe that serving their masters is what they wanted to do all along.

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Submitted by Ellen North on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 11:21pm

@mimi

keeping only Maddow as what I at first thought was their 'token leftie' but turned out to be, in my guestimation, the only one of the bunch who agreed to spout propaganda for the big bucks.

I used to like her show, too.

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Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

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Submitted by k9disc on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 11:49pm
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@mimi

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

Submitted by Mark from Queens on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 4:59pm
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The New Blacklist
Russiagate may have been aimed at Trump to start, but it's become a way of targeting all dissent

The main source of the questions about Nunes was Hamilton 68, a website purporting to track the work of Russian social media bots in real time. An offshoot of the German Marshall Fund, the site represents an unpleasantly unsurprising union of neoconservative Iraq war cheerleaders like Bill Kristol and Beltway Democrats like would-be Clinton CIA chief Michael Morell.

Their Hamilton 68 "dashboard," easily accessible online to civilians and journalists alike, supposedly tells us what the enemy wants us to think at any given moment. Citing a secret methodology, it claims to track 600 Twitter accounts for their "relationship to Russia-sponsored influence," and regularly spits out mysterious conclusions about Putin's preferences in the American political scene. More and more often now, the site's pronouncements turn into front-page headlines.

When the dashboard declared that Nunes' #Releasethememo campaign had become the "top-trending hashtag" among Russian twitter accounts, a gaggle of press outlets and politicians rushed to point out that Nunes was doing the work of the enemy. (Even Rolling Stone got into the act, accusing Nunes of working "in concert with Russian propagandists").

Of course, in keeping with a growing pattern of Russiagate stories being quietly walked back sometime after the sensational headline, reports later broke that most of the Twitter furor driving #Releasethememo came from domestic Republicans – from "inside the house," as the Daily Beast put it. Even one of Hamilton 68's own was later quoted downplaying the story.

It didn't matter, because Hamilton 68 had by then moved on to its next set of headlines. The group that has seen Russians behind both left and right political causes, behind the Roy Moore Alabama Senate campaign and the decision of California Democrats to deny their endorsement to Dianne Feinstein, was soon a main source for stories about Russians playing havoc with the Parkland shooting in Florida.

The Russians, Hamilton 68 now said, were sowing discord on both sides of the gun control debate by pushing contradictory hashtags like #guncontrolnow and #NRA.

The New York Times put a piece about Russia's Parkland meddling on page A1, the choicest real estate in American journalism, and outlets like Wired, Newsweek, Vanity Fair and countless others trumpeted the same story. Even Fox News, usually a Russiagate doubter, got in the act, citing Hamilton 68 to say: "Russian bots aren't pro-Republican or Pro-Democrat. They're just anti-American."

Fox wrote the story in a way that used the Hamilton 68 data to make it seem like the Russians didn't have an exclusive preference for Donald Trump. But the defense of Trump was really a distraction. The palmed card in this propaganda trick was the mere fact that right-wing media, too, were now accepting the core principle of projects like Hamilton 68: that a foreign enemy lurks everywhere in our midst, and the source of political discontent in this country comes not from within, but from without.

This Russians-are-in-our-precious-bodily-fluids insanity has progressed to the point where an anti-Russian documentary won the Oscar and host Jimmy Kimmel proudly declared, "At least we know Putin isn't rigging this competition!"

If you don't think that the endgame to all of this lunacy is a world where every America-critical movement from Black Lives Matter to Our Revolution to the Green Party is ultimately swept up in the collusion narrative along with Donald Trump and his alt-right minions, you haven't been paying attention.

That's because #Russiagate, from the start, was framed as an indictment not just of one potentially traitorous Trump, but all alternative politics in general. The story has evolved to seem less like a single focused investigation and more like the broad institutional response to a spate of shocking election results, targeting the beliefs of discontented Americans across the political spectrum.

(Emphasis mine)

What a truly sad fucking state of affairs in this country. I've got friends I really respect falling for this complete and total bullshit.

The obvious fraud of a presidential election between the two most hated, untrustworthy, lying multi-millionaire criminals should have been the most obvious and blatant evidence, that the whole idea of democracy through electoral politics is a complete fraud and charade. And the citizenry should be headlong down the path of laser-focus on the linchpin of Money In Politics, electoral fraud/disenfranchisement, gerrymandering, the stranglehold power of lobbyists over legislation, the corporate monopoly ownership of all sectors, out of control militarism and American imperialism, etc.

Instead we're on a bogus propaganda treadmill of pathetic groping lies and deception - all designed to keep people in fear and fealty to the Greatest Country In The World, who we pledge allegiance to to "keep us safe," and in servitude to those two other great lies, American Exceptionalism and the purposely elusive American Dream.

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Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 10:14pm
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@Mark from Queens

who are so invested in Putin Gate. They probably thought that people would see through their new attempt at WMDs propaganda because they have gone to the well too many times, but no. People fell for it again. Will people wake up in time to stop the next war? Probably not. And no matter what Trump does to Russia, he's still a Putin puppet.

I've seen people saying that the only reason Trump wants to bring the troops out of Syria is because Putin told him to do it. "I can't believe that Trump is just going to give Syria to Putin." Now how dumb is that? They also believe that everything that happens is because of Russia. BLM? Russia. OWS? Russia. Just like that tweet above that states that the feud between Ingram and Hogg is because of Russian bots. Good lord people. Think.

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Submitted by Ellen North on Sun, 04/08/2018 - 12:43am

@snoopydawg

...Will people wake up in time to stop the next war? Probably not. ...

One of the deeply gut-wrenching things about this coldly written Truthout article is that this is written as though the spilt blood, broken bodies and minds, grief, loss, dispossession, suffering and death and other pointless destruction already caused and further planned in the universal infliction of TPTB's psychopathic greed and long-planned goals of global fascist domination, are not considered factors - as though right and wrong have no role.

As under the fascist control of psychopaths, they don't, within their limited and destructive 'I want - you have - I take' perspective. Their unthinking response to a self-protective deterrent is murderously suicidal.

Another is the pathological determination of a group of lunatic and blindly ignorant psychopaths to destroy life on the planet if they cannot personally micromanage and profit from every facet of it and organism on it.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/44045-pentagon-plans-for-three-front-...

Pentagon Plans for Three-Front "Long War" Against China and Russia
Tuesday, April 03, 2018 By Michael T. Klare, TomDispatch | News Analysis

...On the new geopolitical map, however, America faces well-armed adversaries with every intention of protecting their borders, so US forces are now being arrayed along an updated version of an older, more familiar three-front line of confrontation. In Asia, the US and its key allies (South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia) are to face China across a line extending from the Korean peninsula to the waters of the East and South China Seas and the Indian Ocean. In Europe, the US and its NATO allies will do the same for Russia on a front extending from Scandinavia and the Baltic Republics south to Romania and then east across the Black Sea to the Caucasus. Between these two theaters of contention lies the ever-turbulent Greater Middle East, with the United States and its two crucial allies there, Israel and Saudi Arabia, facing a Russian foothold in Syria and an increasingly assertive Iran, itself drawing closer to China and Russia. From the Pentagon's perspective, this is to be the defining strategic global map for the foreseeable future. Expect most upcoming major military investments and initiatives to focus on bolstering US naval, air, and ground strength on its side of these lines, as well as on targeting Sino-Russian vulnerabilities across them.

There's no better way to appreciate the dynamics of this altered strategic outlook than to dip into the annual "posture statements" of the heads of the Pentagon's "unified combatant commands," or combined Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine Corps headquarters, covering the territories surrounding China and Russia: Pacific Command (PACOM), with responsibility for all US forces in Asia; European Command (EUCOM), covering US forces from Scandinavia to the Caucasus; and Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East and Central Asia where so many of the country's counterterror wars are still underway.

The senior commanders of these meta-organizations are the most powerful US officials in their "areas of responsibility" (AORs), exercising far more clout than any American ambassador stationed in the region (and often local heads of state as well). That makes their statements and the shopping lists of weaponry that invariably go with them of real significance for anyone who wants to grasp the Pentagon's vision of America's global military future. ...

...To counter such developments and contain Chinese influence requires, of course, spending yet more taxpayer dollars on advanced weapons systems, especially precision-guided missiles. Admiral Harris called for vastly increasing investment in such weaponry in order to overpower current and future Chinese capabilities and ensure US military dominance of China's air and sea space. "In order to deter potential adversaries in the Indo-Pacific," he declared, "we must build a more lethal force by investing in critical capabilities and harnessing innovation." ...

... A similarly embattled future, even if populated by different actors in a different landscape, was offered by Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of EUCOM, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on March 8th. For him, Russia is the other China. As he put it in a bone-chilling description, "Russia seeks to change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine US leadership in order to protect its regime, reassert dominance over its neighbors, and achieve greater influence around the globe… Russia has demonstrated its willingness and capability to intervene in countries along its periphery and to project power -- especially in the Middle East." ...

...The cutting edge of EUCOM's anti-Russian drive is the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), a project President Obama initiated in 2014 following the Russian seizure of Crimea. Originally known as the European Reassurance Initiative, the EDI is intended to bolster US and NATO forces deployed in the "front-line states" -- Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland -- facing Russia on NATO's "Eastern Front." According to the Pentagon wish list submitted in February, some $6.5 billion are to be allocated to the EDI in 2019. Most of those funds will be used to stockpile munitions in the front-line states, enhance Air Force basing infrastructure, conduct increased joint military exercises with allied forces, and rotate additional US-based forces into the region. In addition, some $200 million will be devoted to a Pentagon "advise, train, and equip" mission in Ukraine.

Like his counterpart in the Pacific theater, General Scaparrotti also turns out to have an expensive wish list of future weaponry, including advanced planes, missiles, and other high-tech weapons that, he claims, will counter modernizing Russian forces. In addition, recognizing Russia's proficiency in cyberwarfare, he's calling for a substantial investment in cyber technology and, like Admiral Harris, he cryptically hinted at the need for increased investment in nuclear forces of a sort that might be "usable" on a future European battlefield. ...

...In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CENTCOM commander Army General Joseph Votel concentrated on the status of US operations against ISIS in Syria and against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but he also affirmed that the containment of China and Russia has become an integral part of CENTCOM's future strategic mission: "The recently published National Defense Strategy rightly identifies the resurgence of great power competition as our principal national security challenge and we see the effects of that competition throughout the region." ...

... China is also seeking to enhance its geopolitical clout both economically and through a small but growing military presence. Of particular concern, Votel asserted, is the Chinese-managed port at Gwadar in Pakistan on the Indian Ocean and a new Chinese base in Djibouti on the Red Sea, across from Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Such facilities, he claimed, contribute to China's "military posture and force projection" in CENTCOM's AOR and are signals of a challenging future for the US military.

Under such circumstances, Votel testified, it is incumbent upon CENTCOM to join PACOM and EUCOM in resisting Chinese and Russian assertiveness. "We have to be prepared to address these threats, not just in the areas in which they reside, but the areas in which they have influence." Without providing any details, he went on to say, "We have developed… very good plans and processes for how we will do that." ...

... An Invitation to Disaster

In relatively swift fashion, American military leaders have followed up their claim that the US is in a new long war by sketching the outlines of a containment line that would stretch from the Korean Peninsula around Asia across the Middle East into parts of the former Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and finally to the Scandinavian countries. Under their plan, American military forces -- reinforced by the armies of trusted allies -- should garrison every segment of this line, a grandiose scheme to block hypothetical advances of Chinese and Russian influence that, in its global reach, should stagger the imagination. Much of future history could be shaped by such an outsized effort.

Questions for the future include whether this is either a sound strategic policy or truly sustainable. Attempting to contain China and Russia in such a manner will undoubtedly provoke countermoves, some undoubtedly difficult to resist, including cyber attacks and various kinds of economic warfare. And if you imagined that a war on terror across huge swaths of the planet represented a significant global overreach for a single power, just wait. Maintaining large and heavily-equipped forces on three extended fronts will also prove exceedingly costly and will certainly conflict with domestic spending priorities and possibly provoke a divisive debate over the reinstatement of the draft.

However, the real question -- unasked in Washington at the moment -- is: Why pursue such a policy in the first place? Are there not other ways to manage the rise of China and Russia's provocative behavior? What appears particularly worrisome about this three-front strategy is its immense capacity for confrontation, miscalculation, escalation, and finally actual war rather than simply grandiose war planning.

At multiple points along this globe-spanning line -- the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, Syria, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea, to name just a few -- forces from the US and China or Russia are already in significant contact, often jostling for position in a potentially hostile manner. At any moment, one of these encounters could provoke a firefight leading to unintended escalation and, in the end, possibly all-out combat. From there, almost anything could happen, even the use of nuclear weapons. Clearly, officials in Washington should be thinking hard before committing Americans to a strategy that will make this increasingly likely and could turn what is still long-war planning into an actual long war with deadly consequences.

No, there will be no future and it won't be a long war at all... these are some of the Generals to whom Trump has handed control.

Batshit insane isn't enough to cover it, or them.

Somehow, we, the humans, must stop them, clean all psychopaths out of all influence to reinstate sanity and build democracy within our countries while anything yet remains to lose, or submissively die, likely horribly, along with the remainder of planetary life, at any point in the very near future. And I have no idea how...

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Submitted by MrWebster on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 6:56pm

@Mark from Queens It started in 2016. I saw an article in Commondreams attacking a NYTimes "straight article" accusing Putin of fommenting anti-TPP protests. The corporate oligarchs are now using Russiagate every which way they can.

Two University of Iowa academics wrote a "research article" on how RT was undermining GMO acceptance. (They reported their results even thought their paper was still being juried.) Wow, now Mansanto is getting it over the price of their GMO cotton seeds in Inida. Reported maybe about month ago Russia had record wheat exports and lead all nations. And this wheat is non-GMO. The Russians apparently want to make all of their food exports also organic. Don't like GMOs? Russian puppet!

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Submitted by jim p on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 5:29pm

At the time i worked out the percentage of (claimed) Russian bots, ad spending etc against the totals of same by all people, period.
It was on the order of 0.0000001%.

What should be mentioned is how there's this underlying contempt for humanity underlying the Faction Formerly Known as Liberal gullibility on the bots and the whole Russia thing. As if people are turned by seeing something online.

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Orwell: Where's the omelette?

Submitted by lizzyh7 on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 6:04pm

@jim p splash back on any of the PTB can we? And the way they've divided all of us slowly and surely over the years just makes it all so much easier for them to justify it to those who will believe it.

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by EdMass on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 6:01pm
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Submitted by lizzyh7 on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 6:21pm

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Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 6:22pm
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even though I hate giving them clicks. His little band of Moosetiteers are all howling at the moon insane. It would be funny except for the fact that they’re allowed to mingle in public with the rest of us.

Who was it that paid for that Dossier and fraudulently used it to obtain wire taps on their opponent? It wasn’t Putin. Or Trump. Or even Bernie Sanders. It was the lying harpy who’s loss they’re still grieving. How they can overlook that simple fact is mind boggling. I guesd it’s like Farcebook, any lie, act of dishonesty, or just plain damn cheating is acceptable if it means they can have their way.

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Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 7:38pm
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@Amanda Matthews

Ewww. Went to Markie Moosetits dump even though I hate giving them clicks. His little band of Moosetiteers are all howling at the moon insane.

But is their hair perfect?

Smile

[video:https://youtu.be/iDpYBT0XyvA]

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Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 9:19pm
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@thanatokephaloides

Creature is “with the RUSSIANS! too.

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Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by snoopydawg on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 10:23pm
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@Amanda Matthews

Many of the kos kids have amnesia over why so many of us left the site after the ides of March. They really believe that we were Russian bots spreading false propaganda against Herheinous, not real people who supported Bernie. This is why the site is much more peaceful. They're delusional just about everything now because they just can't accept that the Clinton Creature lost.

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Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 12:03am
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@snoopydawg

Ignorant souls who were duped by those evil RUSSIANS!

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

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Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 9:32pm
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Two words: Bill Kristol

Hell no, they’re neoconservative hacks.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

Submitted by jim p on Fri, 04/06/2018 - 10:29pm

-- when it's proven that Putin personally voted 2,750,000 times across 6 states -- She will be restored to Her rightful place reigning over the 40% or so that survived the War with Russia. For now.
And EVERYONE will speak sensitively with regard for everyone's feelings.

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Submitted by MrWebster on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 7:20pm

@jim p Putin has been given mystical powers like out of some horror movie. In fact, he has been protrayed as the devil by some major newss outlets.

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Submitted by Snode on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 7:03am

Are they cute, like Furbys, do they talk and sing? can they do tricks? do they make great gifts? I want a Russian bot of my very own!

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Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Sat, 04/07/2018 - 8:30pm
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@Snode

I want a Russian bot Are they cute, like Furbys, do they talk and sing? can they do tricks? do they make great gifts? I want a Russian bot of my very own!

They come in family sets.

The little ones fit inside the bigger ones.

Wink

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"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides