@Dr. John Carpenter

I struggle with the phenomenon of the True Believers/With Hers you refer to. But I realize once you've put all your beliefs into one container it would be hard to see that container as evil. Still, I struggle with how Hillary Clinton became connected with women's rights in the first place.

My husband and I are watching the Baseball playoffs, and our favorite team is not in the running, so we're relaxed. But in the years when our team was in the running, we were just like all the fans shown in the stadium in tense moments, standing, clutching their hands together, trembling, and in some cases, not ours, praying. Yes, praying, for their beloved team-members not to strike out. I've seen it several times, even this week. Adults, not kids, grownups, praying not to be eliminated from the playoffs. I don't know what to say about this. There's something about taking sides and having a team that represents your tribe, or your beliefs, no matter how fake or inconsequential, that makes us tremble with belief, and with the fear of loss of control.

It seems like every time I see something about "top concerns facing the country" RUSSIARUSSIARUSSIA comes in dead last. Aside from those who have something to gain by this narrative (true believers/with Hers, the media, the rich and powerful, etc.) is anyone buying this? Even the least politically aware have to see the absurdity and desperation of this stuff. (Not to mention, the harder and more desperate they push this, the more they play into Trump and his followers as persecuted outsiders.)

@SnappleBC

Thanks! The article was fabulous - and the comments and some of the links given were also very interesting, with some great points and links to connected material provided.

This, (best read in full at source - especially since being Taibbi) linked to in one of the comments, has probably also been read by most here but (emphasis mine throughout) as a refresher for those on limited devices:

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/taibbi-latest-fake-news-panic-...

Latest Fake News Panic Appears to Be Fake News

A Republican Senator and much of the mainstream media punks itself, proving we should all spend more time outside

By Matt Taibbi
September 30, 2017

...Senator Lankford initially didn't offer any specifics backing up his claim. Later, however, a spokesperson for the Senator's office directed reporters to the work of "a Russian Twitter account calling itself 'Boston Antifa' that gives its geolocation as Vladivostok, Russia."

The Post reported that Lankford's office had cited one of "Boston Antifa's" tweets. But the example offered read suspiciously like a young net-savvy American goofing on antifa stereotypes:

"More gender inclusivity with NFL fans and gluten free options at stadiums… We're liking the new NFL #NewNFL #TakeAKnee #TakeTheKnee."

We're liking more gluten free options at NFL stadiums? Does Senator Lankford think the KGB is run by the Jerky Boys? It's bad enough that none of the people who ran this story could tell this was a gag. What's even worse, though, is that none of these same people bothered to employ the magic Google machine.

Had anyone bothered to do that, they would have discovered that "Boston Antifa" had been in the news before, very recently in fact.

Weeks ago, there was an incident in Fenway Park in Boston in which a group of protesters unfurled a banner that read "Racism is as American as Baseball" over the storied Green Monster.

After the incident, a group called, you guessed it, Boston Antifa took responsibility for the action. They tweeted out a "Twitlonger" essay, "Our statement on our Fenway appearance tonight," in which they explained their motives for the banner:

"We were largely inspired by Howard Bryant who now writes for ESPN," the group wrote. "His article, 'Don't expect protests in baseball – it's a white man's game by design,' was inspirational."

Breitbart naturally jumped all over the story, which of course was a prank probably designed specifically for Breitbart audiences ("Howard Bryant and ESPN made me defile Fenway Park!" is as obvious a right-wing fantasy as you can manufacture). The only surprise was that "Boston Antifa" didn't pick Jemele Hill as their inspiration in their essay. Here is the Breitbart headline:
Boston Antifa Claims Responsibility for Fenway 'Racism' Banner, Drew Inspiration From ESPN Writer ...

...Meanwhile, in Boston, other local media outlets also credited "Antifa" with the action, despite the fact that the actual protesters were by that time more than happy to talk to the press.

In an interview with local sports outlet CSNNE, the Fenway protesters scoffed at the notion that they had any connection with "Antifa Boston." They called the idea ridiculous and added, "The five of us are in no way associated with Antifa nor did Antifa Boston have anything to do with the action."

The group actually drew some of its inspiration from Black Lives Matter, and was trying to make a statement about how Boston is "an extremely segregated city." But in another lesson about the perils of the 140-character communication generation, many took the banner to be an endorsement of racism.

In any case, an actual competent reporter at this point looked into the story. Dan Glaun of Masslive used the magic Google machine and looked up "Boston Antifa." He discovered they were what he called "alt-light" conservative jokers posing as far-left goofs. They claimed responsibility for the Fenway stunt, but actually had nothing to do with it.

The group was most likely a pair of yahoos from Oregon named Alexis Esteb and Brandon Krebs. Glaun found the boy-girl Kaufman-esque comedy group had given an interview to right-wing media personality Gavin McInnes in April. In this interview, McInnes says, "You're not affiliated with Richard Spencer, you're just two people in fuckin' Oregon having a laugh."

"Exactly," says Alexis. ...

...It was bad enough that so many legit media outlets fell for it when they took responsibility for the Fenway stunt. But for Lankford to later point to them seriously as evidence of a looming Russian threat after they'd already been unmasked in the press was amazing. Maybe the Senator's office didn’t want to pay the eight bucks to listen to the McInnes interview?

Glaun, the Masslive reporter, was surprised that so many people fell for the Boston Antifa bit.

"It did not require some heroic feat of investigative journalism for me to find this stuff out," said the Springfield, Massachusetts-based reporter. He noted that Buzzfeed and ThinkProgress also debunked the story pretty quickly.

When the Russia story broke this week, Glaun called Lankford's office. His write-up for Masslive is amusing:

"A source close to Lankford acknowledged in an email that the Boston Antifa account may not be linked to the Russian government, but maintained that there was a high likelihood it was connected to some Russian entities, based on information collected by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"Lankford's office declined to elaborate on what evidence ties Boston Antifa to Russian influence campaigns."

So even confronted with evidence, Lankford's office dug in. Apparently they have secret information gleaned from Senate Intelligence Committee hearings that proves these two yuksters – people you can see are clearly American amateurs on video in the McInnes interview – are actually still "connected to some Russian entities."

Not one of the legacy news outlets that ran with the original Lankford story has retracted. I have my doubts that any of them will. Lankford's insistence that "Boston Antifa" really is still connected to the Russians will probably give them enough wiggle room to feel okay about not admitting the error. How's that for irony: the warnings about fake news by Lankford and the commercial press turned out, in the end, to actually be fake news. ...

Rock and roll will never die, and with Taibi's investigative work and epic writing talent, neither will Rolling Stone, still relevant among how many of the 'more established sources' - nearly all now complicit or co-opted - in this time of propagandistic censorship?

I personally hadn't seen - or possibly simply hadn't absorbed? - the fact that suspicions were accurate in at least one group of Antifa having been already identified and confirmed as not outraged and 'violent lefties' physically attacking Nazis, as re-quoted below from the must-read article.

...In any case, an actual competent reporter at this point looked into the story. Dan Glaun of Masslive used the magic Google machine and looked up "Boston Antifa." He discovered they were what he called "alt-light" conservative jokers posing as far-left goofs. ...

And I missed this confirmation because of no longer paying attention to 'more established sources' who don't, in any event, tend to produce or repeat essential material we need to know - forgetting about the few like Taibi who nearly always comes through. (Seem to remember one a while back, where I lost faith in his reporting and assumed that he'd also been co-opted, which was rather painful and a waste. But he certainly does seem to be back in his glory.)

I'm also copying, for those unable to scroll through them, some of the points made by various of the Alabama Moon commenters, as they overall raised my awareness considerably of the scope involved, even if I do speak as one less-informed than many others on this site.

It probably seems seems weird, copying comments from another site like this, but reading these outstanding comments en masse really organized a lot of the jig-saw pieces for me, and this is easily skipped by anyone who's already read them.

Any emphasis below is mine, with my comments in brackets between the Alabama Moon comments which struck me as particularly important or with potentially interesting links.

comments from below moonofalabama article posted above:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/3000-facebook-ads-the-russian-influ...
...............................

(My comment: good point made here - this bizarre attack on 'Russian' clickbait advertising' is the expansion of the current program of propaganda and censorship of free speech in the attempt to ban the advertising, accurate news reporting and Internet commentary of any people, group or countries they wish to repress, misrepresent or take down unopposed by any attempt at defense or of public awareness and protest.)

This isn't about the "truth" (or lies) wrt Russian involvement, it's about the increasingly rapid failure of the Government/Establishment's narrative ...

Increasingly they can't even keep their accusations "alive" for more than a few days ... and some of their accusations (like the one here, that some "Russian" sites were created and not used, but to be held for use at some future date) become fairly ridiculous ... and the "remedy" to "Russians" creating clickbait sites for some future nefarious use, I think can only be banning all Russians from creating sites ... or maybe using facebook altogether ... all with no evidence of evil-doers actually doing evil...

It's rather like Jared Kushner's now THIRD previously undisclosed private e-mail account ... fool me once versus how disorganized/dumb/arrogant/crooked is this guy?

Posted by: Susan Sunflower | Oct 3, 2017 5:36:59 PM | 23

...

(Followed by this, a little down-thread, a scary form of automatic information-sharing control imposed by 'Artificial Intelligence GIGO' decree - like drones based on algorithms which thereby include war journalists unable to have themselves removed from kill lists, or upon people having simply passed by a certain area: '... I can't add the link because wordbook automatically sends any comment containing a link to SouthFront to the spam bin since that site was deemed to be a Fake News promoter by actual Fake News promoters. ...' Hint: if the basic info of title, author and date of each article/paper are included in each post which quotes from them, the article/paper in question can still be searched for, even if the URL is broken or otherwise unusable, that being why I always include them myself, as there have been situations where information in 'sensitive' areas (official lunatic and contradictory narratives) have had site links made inaccessible to outsiders making mock of their very obvious contradictions in commentary elsewhere, where the general public can potentially see them and make the connections themselves.)

The unlinked article is tangentially related to the ultimate subject of this thread--the fake news and censorship in service of RussiaGate by the Outlaw US Empire and its vassal tech companies: Google, You Tube, Facebook. The subject is Syriagirl. I can't add the link because wordbook automatically sends any comment containing a link to SouthFront to the spam bin since that site was deemed to be a Fake News promoter by actual Fake News promoters. An excerpt:

"In our interview, SYRIANGIRL explained that she suspects that somehow her Facebook account got caught up in the tempest in a teapot around the $200,000 Russian-related entities supposedly spent trying to influence the US election. As one of our articles pointed out today:

"'Oh, Putin’s bringing out the big guns now! A couple hundred thousand dollars worth of ads! Lordy, that’s a hell of an investment…'

"So here is a concrete example of how the big Russia-gate lie is leading in a circuitous way to successful, respected, and influential independent media being shuttered.

"All independent, alternative media should rally behind her and raise hell. Her case is a precedent – if they get away with gagging her, we are next on the list."

Further excerpt providing a bit of SouthFront's opinion:

"Our videos are routinely de-monetized on YouTube without just cause, or just banned altogether with ominous threats to shut down our whole channel – yes this happens on YouTube, that purveyor of skank, vulgarity, and soft porn to teenagers. We know exactly what SYRIANGIRL is facing, but with her, they have now taken it much further.

"Actually, I think this kind of heavy-handed banning of dissent is a great thing – because it will force people to wake up and realize they have to do something about this – regulate the big tech companies as public utilities" (My emphasis)

It appears that RussiaGate isn't just about Russia more than ever as the attempts to censor all manner of media using the internet escalates. That's why b continues to write blog entries on this topic.

https:// southfront dot org To get to SouthFront's site, remove the spaces and replace the word with the symbol, then scroll down page to the Syriagirl article.

Posted by: karlof1 | Oct 3, 2017 7:32:11 PM | 26

..................................

Articles debunking these "Russian" ads should make clear that an IP address that maps to Russia isn't necessarily in Russia. Wikileaks has its Domain registrar in Russia (a wise move that stops the US taking the domain down), but one of the Russian IP addresses they were given is in fact physically located in Norway.

I'm coming to this website with the IP address [196.52.38.17] but I'm not in South Africa. There's no telling where I am without the US seizing the server logs of a physical computer in Hong Kong, and I'm not there either.

Anyone wanting to cover their tracks can use a Russian proxy server - there are websites devoted to maintaining lists of current proxy servers around the world and plugins for Firefox that look them up and arrange your browser requests to proxy through them.
Why not? - its all free. So this "Russian ads" thing is all nonsense. Another sign of an aging empire that doesn't know how to deal with the new post-empire world, other than by bombing it.

Posted by: Palloy | Oct 3, 2017 10:15:11 PM | 33

..................................................................................

Every single time a dumbass US politician or media rants about "Russian meddling or influence", replace "Russian" with "Israeli", and look again. How does it look like now? And how do you think these same US pols and media would react if one were to make the same asinine statements about Jewish people instead of about Russia and Putin? If it would look a tiny bit racist or antisemitic, then fully discard the original accusation against "Russian" stuff as utter nonsense; or maybe as gross hypocrisy.

Posted by: Clueless Joe | Oct 4, 2017 5:56:54 AM | 40

...................................................................................

(Haven't looked into this at all myself, but...)

40
They all do it. The idea that the cyber tools anybody develops will not be shared by all is laughable.

From state of art information warfare in 2005.

Over the past 24 hours, seven people have checked into hospitals here with telltale symptoms. Rashes, vomiting, high temperature, and cramps: the classic signs of smallpox. Once thought wiped out, the disease is back and threatening a pandemic of epic proportions.

The government faces a dilemma: It needs people to stay home, but if the news breaks, mass panic might ensue as people flee the city, carrying the virus with them.

A shadowy media firm steps in to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception. Rather than alert the public to the smallpox threat, the company sets up a high-tech "ops center" to convince the public that an accident at a chemical plant threatens London. As the fictitious toxic cloud approaches the city, TV news outlets are provided graphic visuals charting the path of the invisible toxins. Londoners stay indoors, glued to the telly, convinced that even a short walk into the streets could be fatal.

This scenario may sound like a rejected plot twist from a mediocre Bond flick, but one company is dead set on making this fantasy come to life.

Strategic Communication Laboratories, a small U.K. firm specializing in "influence operations" made a very public debut this week with a glitzy exhibit occupying prime real estate at Defense Systems & Equipment International, or DSEi, the United Kingdom's largest showcase for military technology. The main attraction was a full-scale mock-up of its ops center, running simulations ranging from natural disasters to political coups.

...

In another doomsday scenario, the company assists a newly democratic country in South Asia as it struggles with corrupt politicians and a rising insurgency that threatens to bubble over into bloody revolution. SCL steps in to assist the benevolent king of "Manpurea" to temporarily seize power.

Oh, wait, that sounds a lot like Nepal, where the monarchy earlier this year ousted a corrupt government to stave off a rising Maoist movement. The problem is, the SCL scenario also sounds a lot like using a private company to help overthrow a democratically elected government. Another problem, at least in Nepal, is that the king now shows few signs of returning to democracy.

The company, which describes itself as the first private-sector provider of psychological operations, has been around since 1993. But its previous work was limited to civil operations, and it now wants to expand to military customers.

Cambridge Analytica of Donald Trump and Brexit fame belongs to SCL Group.
Anybody who pays may be their customer. They are controlled by shareholders - who may be anybody with money to pay.

But yes, the trail goes to Israel, not to Russia.

It was mainly Netanyahu who rooted for Trump not Putin.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 4, 2017 7:39:20 AM | 42

And - of course - the US government uses SCL, too

The website of SCL Group, a private British behavioral research company, featured the State and NATO logos and used language touting their "approval" of the company's "methodology" until last week.

The company was awarded State Department contracts this year to help fight ISIS recruitment and has taught behavioral change science at a NATO-affiliated training program.

Posted by: somebody | Oct 4, 2017 7:53:42 AM | 43

This here is a profile on Nigel Oakes - SCL groups founder

SCL and CA, whose board until recently had Trump's chief strategist Stephen Bannon on it, are backed by the enigmatic American billionaire, Republican mega-donor and model train enthusiast, Robert Mercer.

The consultancies are deploying "military-grade data firepower" and expertise in behavioral analytics to find strategic communications solutions for clients in governments, militaries and humanitarian and commercial organisations across the world. The endgame is to mould public opinion to suit the client's end. Oakes himself had once described what they do as "mindbending".

SCL has been especially active in the developing world, in markets as far flung as South Africa, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nepal, and India, among others. Its contracts, as listed on the company's website that's often rather obtuse and limited in its descriptions, includes a "voter-suppression" project in Nigeria.

In August 2000, Oakes had to flee Indonesia post-haste after a botched attempt to save the image of then President Abdurrahman Wahid who was embroiled ..

But perhaps the most startling yet effective summary of Oakes' brand of mass persuasion was provided by him in a 1992 interview with British trade magazine Marketing where he said that in order to get people's agreement on a functional level you've got to appeal to them on an emotional level. He began with, "We use the same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler."

Posted by: somebody | Oct 4, 2017 8:10:06 AM | 44

...

Yesterday the Washington Post had an editorial on Catalonia which -- incredibly -- blamed Russia for the turmoil there.

Posted by: lysias | Oct 4, 2017 1:04:50 PM | 51

I just finished reading an article in the latest issue of Smithsonian magazine on the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution which ended with a claim that Russia's interference in the U.S. election was a continuation of policies originated by Lenin to interfere in other countries. No mention of the crucial role played by czarist Russia in the American Civil War, when Russia played a major role in deterring Anglo-French intervention on the side of the Confederacy

Posted by: lysias | Oct 4, 2017 1:13:40 PM | 52

and today the NYT has a front page article (from the Magazine, Technology sector, not an editorial)

What if Tech Platforms Are Too Big to Regulate? Attempts by governments to rein in companies like Facebook might instead have to resemble diplomacy.

article.

cow gone / barn door unlocked / too late -- it has always been too late ... because tech was supposed to save the farm (sorry, block that metaphor) by the creation and maintenance of American global tech dominance ...

D'yall see that Yahoo revised the number of accounts "hacked" in 2013 upward by two-thirds, from one-third of total to every-single-one ... only took 4 years for that transparency ... (hint)

Posted by: Susan Sunflower | Oct 4, 2017 3:44:54 PM | 53

Well, I found this on the Wall Street Journal,

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russia-targets-soldier-smartphones-western-...

So Russians are practicing the usual and normal SIGINT activity, if what the article says is true.

But the true stupidity is that any military force, especially the US Army, is using personal cell phones in a combat zone. I don't know what happened to the notion of opsec over the years but personal cell phones should be the #1 banned item from any operational unit.

Or, because it's the WSJ, it's a fake story and just disregard until some field commander calls his girlfriend and the call gets sent to his wife as a voice mail.

Posted by: Stumpy | Oct 4, 2017 7:38:40 PM | 54

...

(My comment: the emphasis by The Psychopaths/Parasites That Be on Black Lives Matter and all objections to routine police murders of unarmed American citizens with darker skins being 'a Russian plot' cannot be missed. In their world-view, it is unAmerican to object to casual State murders of citizens, because Non-Billionaire-Americans are Disposables to Those Who Matter. This is, in my view, fascist conditioning, in the next step onward in the plan.)

The "Russians" were selling fake BlackLiveMatters T-shirts on Facebook says CNN:
Exclusive: Russian-linked group sold merchandise online
Or maybe someone who wanted to make a few bucks? CNN did not ask that question ...

Here is some helpful advice for those who also want to become "Russian influencers" on Facebook: How to Make Money Using Facebook

There are lots of ways to earn money on Facebook, from using link-type advertising programs to creating a fanpage and then selling the posts. You can even use Facebook to advertise and sell your products.
Posted by: b | Oct 6, 2017 12:13:19 PM | 59

So, not only is FB complicit in Russian click-bait and merchandising, but so is the capitalism creating this situation where such is possible? Making capitalism a Russian plot?

@59 b... those evil ruskies are just up to no good i tell you... how dare they compete with western corporations!! sacrilege!

Posted by: james | Oct 6, 2017 12:53:22 PM | 60

And that last is kinda the point of this global take-over and micro-managed control, isn't it? That American corporations (and those of some other countries) cannot, in any sense, stand competition.

The moonofalabama commenter brainstorming and information-sharing copied above is important and should, I feel, be shared as widely as possible, as should that here and many other sites, because the more input and the more we know, the better - while we still have an internet, as we may not much longer, at this rate.

Much of the censorship will never even be evident, in things we simply never see...

Of the 3,000 ads Facebook originally claimed were "Russian" only 2,200 were ever viewed. Most of the advertisements were mini-ads which, for the price of a coffee, promoted private pages related to hobbies and a wide spectrum of controversial issues. The majority of the ads ran after the election.

All that "adds to the evidence of the broad scope of the Russian influence campaign"? "...designed to damage Hillary Clinton and boost Donald J. Trump during the election"?

No.
Moon of Alabama just sums it up so well

What it all ads up to is... click-bait advertising. You make a page full of cute stories about puppies or hot-button topics like Hillary Clinton and then pop a $3 ad on Facebook for it. People flock to the page. Some of them click the ads. You can automate the generation of the click-bait pages. This is not new.

You don't believe that? You should. Trust your experienced politician!

Samantha Power @SamanthaJPower - 3:45 PM - 3 Oct 2017
This gets more chilling daily: now we learn Russia targeted Americans on Facebook by “demographics, geography, gender & interests,” across websites & devices, reached millions, kept going after Nov. An attack on all Americans, not just HRC campaign washingtonpost.com/business/econo…

This nonsense indeed gets more chilling. It's fall after all. But it also generates ad revenue.

Of course, it is also click-bait revenue for WaPo, CNN, et.al. And don't you love how "being targeted by demographics, geography, gender & interests," is suddenly something evil? I need to go see the long list of bills she has sponsored to curtail google and facebook's activities in that vein. I'm sure she's been a proud warrior in the fight for citizen privacy.